While Jamie Campbell Bower’s Stranger Things season 4 monster, Vecna, proves that the Volturi member could have been an incredible antagonist. It is not particularly controversial to claim that Twilight didn’t make the most of its vampire characters. Primarily concerned with the love triangle that obsessed its fans, The Twilight Saga often outright ignored the horror elements of the franchise despite the main characters being undead bloodsuckers.
Even series star Robert Pattison complained that Twilight’s vampires “didn’t do much vampire stuff,” which meant it was no surprise when the saga’s villain, Caius, wasn’t a particularly threatening screen presence. Played by a young Jamie Campbell Bower, Caius was the third and least-seen member of the Volturi, a villainous coven of vampires who ruled the undead world with an iron fist. Despite this reputation, Caius did almost nothing in the Twilight movies, and his actor’s recent roles have highlighted what a major mistake this was.
The terrifying Stranger Things season 4 villain Vecna proved that Jamie Campbell Bower could play a truly chilling villain who thought that his supernatural powers made him superior to everyone around him. That is something that Twilight didn’t even try to pull off. Like his fellow Volturi member Marcus, Caius was intended to be a monstrous figure whose uncaring attitude toward human and vampire lives alike made him impossible to reason with. However, this never came across in the Twilight movie adaptations, where the canonically bloodthirsty Caius seemed half-asleep for most of his screen-time.
How The Twilight Saga Wasted Caius
Even though Jamie Campbell Bower’s character is a cruel, murderous monster according to Twilight lore, in the movie adaptations he's an aloof presence who receives less focus and screen-time than the already underused Volturi as a whole. Michael Sheen’s coven leader, Aro, gets a few scenery-chewing moments and even Marcus gets his tragic Aro’s power-hungry demeanor meant that Caius had no specific supernatural abilities, the Twilight novels clarified that the villain made up for his lack of special skills by being particularly remorseless, with the character personally overseeing the attempted eradication of werewolves due to one encounter with a werewolf during his youth.
This ferocity doesn’t translate onscreen at all, where Campbell Bower’s under-seen villain seems to be an onlooker who is barely involved with the Volturi’s escapades. While the character’s book equivalent led massacres that slaughtered scores of immortal children, his Twilight movie counterpart essentially leaves the running of the coven up to its older and sits back whenever he’s onscreen. Vecna’s Stranger Things story made Campbell Bower’s skill as a villainous actor obvious, but it was a talent that the Twilight movies thoroughly wasted in their depiction of Caius. While his vendetta against the immortal children, in particular, could have been the source of some chilling moments worthy of Vecna, the Twilight villain’s disappointing screen incarnation left Jamie Campbell Bower waiting another decade before Stranger Things cemented his status as a classic screen villain.
