BoxOffice® Pro - November 2011

BIG PICTURE > THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN—PART I
What did you take from each of the past three films in studying them to
figure out what you wanted your own voice to be?
The big thing I took was how different they are from each other. That was part of
the appeal of getting involved because I feel that within the template of Twilight,
those are three very different directors who made three very different movies,
each of which reflected their interests. That really appealed to me. I always saw
Breaking Dawn Part I as being kind of a bookend to the first movie. Everything
that gets set up there gets resolved in the last. I think it has it’s own completely
different style, but there are echoes of moments and musical references more to
that movie than any of the others.
I think of the first one as having this youthfulness, the second as having
this almost adult heartbreak, and the third as having this action and
interest in vampire lore.
Absolutely.
Where do you fit in?
First of all, these two movies I made are each very different from the other, but I
would say Breaking Dawn I is a real immersion in romantic melodrama, but as a
grown-up story. I feel like it’s Twilight Grows Up. The actors have adult concerns
now. Take the vampires and the werewolves away and it’s about what the first year
of marriage is like, or for Jacob, after you’ve lost, how do you grow out of this and
become your own person. I have to say, the last act of this movie is a horror movie,
too. It’s a flat-out horror movie. And that excited me because I have a background in
that [with Candyman 2] and it’s something I wanted to explore again.
Once of the things of Twilight that I feel goes overlooked is the almostlegal
element added by the Volturi, the ancient vampire clan who enforces
the rules. You have to wrangle with them a lot in your films.
I always think of them as being the Vatican of the vampire world. There is a strict
set of rules that need to be obeyed and that’s where it gets complicated—politically,
they’re not wrong about what they’re trying to enforce. Except there’s a
power-grabbing element that corrupts it. As you know, the first movie hardly
deals with them at all, but the second movie brings them into focus.
I bet you could make a movie from the Volturi’s point of view where we’d
think, “Why are Bella and Edward making things so complicated for
everyone?”
Right, and also just the idea that the need for secrecy is to put the needs of the
community before the individual. There’s something to be said for that. That is
why laws are made. They’re just so nasty about it.
The government always has the right idea, but the execution—here, literally—is
wrong. Tell me about picking Mackensie Foy to play Bella and
Edwards half-vampire child.
That was so interesting. We were meeting a lot of girls and then suddenly this
young actress walks in. First of all, she looks like she could be the child of Robert
Pattinson and Kristen Stewart. Renesmee is this very otherworldly creature—
she’s half-vampire, half-human—and there’s a stillness and a confidence to
Mackensie that makes her seem very ethereal.
NOOOOOOOO!
A HEART-BROKEN JACOB RECEIVES HIS WEDDING
INVITATION
It’s a very adult role—she’s basically playing an adult in a child’s body.
It’s very true. She is just an incredible natural. I was learning about motion capture
58 BOXOFFICE PRO NOVEMBER 2011