WHAT WENT WRONG - The Twilight Saga

Episode Date: May 1, 2023

Robert Pattinson’s bushy eyebrows, too much butt crack, and an insane production schedule. This week Lizzie force-feeds Chris everything that plagued the remaining four films in The Twilight Saga (New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn Parts 1 & 2). Find out what Renesmee almost looked like and why Kristen Stewart deserves all the praise for keeping her cool throughout this sparkly train wreck. Make sure you listen to our previous episode on Twilight (2008) first! Go Ad-Free - Join Our Patreon!Check Out Our Merch!Follow Us on Instagram!What Movie's Next? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, and welcome back to what went wrong, your favorite podcast, full stop that happens to be about how insanely hard it is to make a movie, let alone a good one, which they may or may not have for this episode. As always, I am joined by my incredible co-host, Lizzie Bassett, Lizzie. How are you doing this fine afternoon? Chris, I am stoked. I am jazzed. I am ready to talk through the greatest movies we've ever covered. Yes, I said movies, plural, because we're doing what went wrong first today and attempting to cover four movies in one episode. But before we get there, we do just want to give a special shout out to all of our Patreon supporters, which those of you,

oops, I was going to say you can watch us right now. You can't. It's not a video episode. I lied. But anyway, thank you to all of our Patreon supporters for being our supporters. And as a reminder, if you want special bonus content, including some really cool below the line interviews, subscribe to our Patreon. Also, we have video episodes

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in Hollywood and just one camera operator of the year. That's our most recent episode. We have an incredible upcoming episode. I'm not going to spoil it yet, but we have a really remarkable, let's say, can we say, should we say? Let's wait. Let's wait until we've actually recorded with person because I can't believe that they've agreed to be on our podcast. We don't want to jinx it. As always, guys, though, we have connected with a lot of these folks through you, our incredible audience. So if you work in the industry, if you know someone who works in the industry and you

think that they would have a good background to share with our audience, perhaps in a role that not a lot of people understand or know about, even though they see it in the credits every time they watch a movie, please feel free to drop us a message. you can hit us up on Instagram at What Went Wrong Pod. Yes. Lizzie. Or you can always email us at what went wrong pod at gmail.com. That's right.

And that's the first time we said that today. I think we need to get to today's episode. We got to get moving. Because like these movies, this podcast is all killer, no filler. And these movies, they move at a pace that I can only describe as, glacial. We are, of course, talking about the incredible Twilight saga. That's correct. So not the first Twilight, but the Twilight saga films which follow it. If you are just listening to this episode and you have not listened to our previous episode on Twilight, please go back and listen to that

because it's very important. It kind of sets the stage for everything we're about to talk about with the remainder of the movies. This was heavily requested after the first Twilight episode. So you got your wish. We sat down and watched, what is it, like nine hours of these movies. So to recap, it's Twilight, the Twilight Saga, New Moon. Then the Twilight, which is the second film. Then the Twilight Saga, Eclipse. Oh, yeah, maybe.

The third film, which feels like the same movie. Nothing happens. I can't tell you the plot of Eclipse. Nothing happens in, I don't think much happens in either one. Then you have Twilight Saga breaking down part one, also known as, Rosemary's Baby Redux. Incredible. And then they have Twilight Saga Breaking Dawn Part 2, Lethal Snowball Fights, which is the second film,

where they Harry Pottered it and they split the last book into two movies. Where I can appreciate why they did that for Harry Potter, I'm angry at them for doing it for Twilight. I loved it. This was, obviously, guys, this podcast is not about taking down movies in any way. I actually have a lot of positive thoughts about these movies. But Lizzie, I do want to know what went wrong because these movies are very convoluted. They're very complicated. I found them hard to follow.

I can't imagine they were easy to make, especially the rate at which they were pumping them out. It seems like they'd release one and two weeks later another one would come out more or less. Well, you're going to learn over the course of this episode that the headline here is speed. They are moving very, very, very fast. And in keeping with that theme, I am also going to be moving very fast because, again, we are covering four movies. So your podcast to 0.75, guys. Yeah, you might want to slow this one down because there's a lot to cover. There's going to be stuff that I'm going to miss and skip.

Please don't come at me, TwiHards. I do want to briefly shout out. There is a creator who I've been following on Instagram who does all Twilight content. and she is so funny. And as I was researching this, and I would go into deep dark twilight holes, I just want to give at Yasmin underscore Saheed a shout out on Instagram because her Jasper impression is the funniest thing I've ever seen.

So please check her out. Truly, truly incredible. Jasper is Jackson Rathba? Yeah. Okay, great. So without further ado, let's go ahead and move on to the first movie we're going to be covering today, which is, again, the second movie in,

the Twilight franchise. This is, of course, New Moon. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. It's a little shout out for all my Twilight fans. So the IMDB synopsis is Edward leaves Bella after an attack that nearly claimed her life. Oh, I do remember this one. In her depression, she falls into yet another difficult relationship. This time with her close friend, Jacob Black.

I was going to say, this time with her bay window. It's a nice window. She just sits in it for literally months on end during a montage. Well, likely sings a song that she wrote for this movie. Great soundtrack. Great soundtrack. And this, I'm not going to really go into the soundtrack too much because it's pretty excellent, but I will say that one of the only bands that refused to be included in New Moon was My Chemical Romance.

Interesting. So New Moon was released November 20th, 2009. Now you may remember that the first Twilight was released in November. of 2008. Yeah, I thought you were about to say also 2009. Fortunately, they had almost exactly a year. That's insane. And to give people a quick point of reference to, just from my own personal experience,

we made this movie Moonshot for HBO Max. We, from the minute that we started prep, basically, or for the rewrite, until we delivered was 11 months. And that was the fastest thing that I had ever worked on that really a lot of people involved had worked on. It was unusually fast, and our budget was much smaller than New Moons. So that's, I just can't imagine pulling off a movie of this size in that amount of time. It's absolutely crazy. And that's what we're going to get into as we're kind of covering these movies is just pay attention to the dates because I don't know how Robert Pattinson

and Kristen Stewart didn't just collapse under exhaustion. Like, this is honestly nuts. So let's go back to November of 2008. So right before Catherine Hardwick, who directed the first Twilight, right before her Twilight had even come out, Summit Entertainment announced that they had bought the film rights to the rest of the series. So we covered in this the first episode, but like the first movie was quite a gamble. They did not know if this was going to be a big hit or not. They did not cast big name actors in it.

They did not put a lot of money behind it. I think its budget was like $37 million. And also Summit Entertainment making this is not the same as Warner Brothers doing Harry Potter. No. This is a small operation. Yeah. Also worth noting is that the last book Breaking Dawn had also just been released in August of 2008. So this is like all happening very fast.

And the franchise itself is building a fan base at the same time the movies begin releasing, which I think is important. But it does seem like Summit was kind of getting ahead of things just in case Twilight did well. Because long before they announced that they had bought the rest of the film rights, Melissa Rosenberg, the screenwriter, and by the way, I think the only person outside of the cast who stays throughout the franchise, began working on the screenplay for New Moon in June of 2008. And a fun fact is that she alternated between writing Dexter during the week and New Moon on the weekends. I feel like that kind of comes through. Tough weekends. Yeah. Hey, I like them both. For the record, New Moon is my favorite. That was not a criticism. That was not a criticism of her writing at all.

I'm saying to go and adapt these books on your weekends. That is a tough weekend. It is hard, although I will say for all of the shit that Stephanie Meyer, the author of Twilight, gets, it sounds like she was relatively easy to work with across this series with maybe a couple of exceptions, but I do think Melissa Rosenberg enjoyed working with her, which is not always the case when adapting an author's work. So, Twilight premieres on November 21, 2008, and it makes... bank. This thing makes $35.7 million on its opening day. So that's the whole budget. It made its whole budget back in 24 hours. Naturally, that is all they need. So the next day on November 22nd,

summit announces that new moon is a go. Twilight has just come out. And Robert Pattinson walked into a river. Collapsed. Yeah, that's the thing. You have to wonder, like, were they hoping this would be done after one? I don't know. So Twilight is just, just come out. It's a massive success, and you would think that they would want to keep the woman who literally created this entire on-screen world as part of the franchise, right? I would assume. You would be wrong. When Hardwick initially started talking to Summit about the sequel, it became immediately apparent that they wanted to start, like, yesterday. She was like, no, I really want more time. That was something that had been very difficult for her on Twilight,

and she wanted the chance to do right by the rest of these films. By all accounts, like, she liked the source material, and I think she felt like she could do something really cool with it. However, after only two weeks of negotiation, they said, nope, and unceremoniously replaced her. Wow. And that would be the last time that a woman would direct a movie in the Twilight franchise, all men from here on out. So we begin the revolving door of Twilight directors, starting with Chris White's, who is the director of New Moon.

Now, as I mentioned, Twilight came out in November of 2008, and less than one month later, they announced Chris White's as the director of New Moon. So my question there is, was he already waiting in the wings before Catherine said no? Maybe. My guess is that he had worked with or knew one of the producers and that they, yeah, so my guess is that they, maybe they floated it to him, but I'm guessing that if the negotiations were not going well, they probably went to him and they were like, look, we need someone. That's true.

You know, like, can you come in and do this on short notice? and maybe he did it as a favor, maybe he really wanted to do it. Who knows? I think he was into it. And he, I think he did a great job also. This is a very hard book to adapt. And I think he made an engaging,

one of the most engaging movies, I think. I know you don't agree. But he had just directed the Golden Compass, which is based on the His Dark Materials novel series by Philip Pullman, which I was obsessed with. That was, of course, supposed to launch a franchise as well, but it did not do well. Interestingly on that, he did not have a positive

experience on that book to screen adaptation because he said the studio had basically recut the entire movie and taken it in a totally different direction from the book, which he really did not enjoy. By all accounts, he did enjoy Twilight, that that was not the case, that he was able to kind of stick closer to the material and work closely with Stephanie Meyer and all that. He had written and directed about a boy. American Pie. American Pie. Yes, that's right. So Chris gets a little bit more money, around 50 million this time, which is still really not a lot. And you have to imagine the actors, I'm guessing, have negotiated somewhat higher salaries going into this one.

I don't know, Chris, because the thing is, when you're doing a franchise, I'm sure they signed contracts that had, like... Not if they... I don't know if they didn't have the rights yet for the other books. We can't, we don't know. It's speculation. I don't know. I'm not sure. God, I hope they were able to, but I don't know how much they were able to negotiate. He literally has 11 months to start pre-production until when it actually... actually premieres. Right. That's insane.

Yeah. With a movie full of VFX werewolves. Yes, which we're going to get into. This movie is way, way, way more VFX heavy than the first one. So he makes some pretty big changes to the aesthetic of the franchise, including mostly the color palette. You may have noticed it goes from very cold and green, sort of lots of like Dutch angles and hot topic fun in the Catherine Hardwick one to something much warmer.

He said he based a lot of the look and feel on pre-Raphaelite Victorian paintings, which The Lady of Shalot is a good example of this. You've ever seen that. And actually, I think it does look like that. When I saw that reference, I was like, all right. Now, if you've read the books, you know that Jacob Black's physical transformation is a big part of New Moon. He's supposed to basically look like a completely different person. He's supposed to, like, grow, like, you know, seven inches and he's, like, crazy tall.

And this is the Taylor-Lotner, Native American character. Yeah. Which we covered in the first. Which we'll get into here as well. Taylor Lautner is not Native American, which is not great. But Taylor Lautner was 140 pounds in Twilight. I would like to point out he was also 16 years old. He's a baby.

This part makes me sad. So Chris White's was not 100% sure about keeping skinny 16, now almost 17-year-old Taylor Lautner in the role. I did not realize that's how young he was when they started filming Twilight. That's crazy. So Chris White's goes so far as to announce. to MTV News that they're making a full effort to recast the role. He literally is like, he's out.

Michael Copon, I think is how you say his name. Star of the Scorpion King, too, if you remember it, Chris. I don't. And also a recurring character on One Tree Hill was apparently at the top of Whites' list. Copon then goes on a bit of a cringe-inducing publicity campaign via his Facebook statuses, updating them to say things like, quote,

Michael Copon is in a twilight zone and quote Michael Copon is the older Jacob Black and you all may remember this was at the time when the only way you could do a Facebook status was is something so Oh, that's right. I forgot about that. I forgot about that.

I'm like sitting there and trying to figure out how to write in that he wants to take over the part. Anyway, I just feel so bad for Taylor Lautner. Like can you imagine being a 16 year old kid who's been busting your ass in Hollywood for years? This is your breakout role. and they're just like, yeah, we're going to recast you. Yeah.

He and Catherine Hardwick could have split a bottle together probably at this point. No, they couldn't. He's 16. Of tapwire. Of Coca-Cola. But Taylor Lautner is not about to let this slip through his little fengies. So he began training the day after he wrapped his scenes on Twilight, literally the next day. He gets a trainer.

He starts hitting the gym for two hours a day, five days a week, sometimes seven days a week. this 16-year-old kid is eating upwards of 3,200 calories a day. He literally had to have his trainer, like, bring him food to shovel into his mouth all the time because he couldn't eat enough. So filming on Twilight wrapped May 2, 2008, by January 7, 2009, he had put on enough muscle to get the green light. It was announced that despite Chris White's, he was returning as Jacob. Wow. I think this had everything to do with the fan base. People were pissed that they were talking about replacing him.

They did not want them to, yeah. Oh, it's good. So they liked him. It did, yeah. I mean, that's, you know, it's a weird move. Like, this is somebody people have attached themselves to in the first movie as a character. Well, if he's supposed to be seven inches taller and look like a different person in the book, I could see the justification. True.

But he eventually put on over 30 pounds that he had to maintain through the rest of the movies. He worked very hard. I really hope they didn't put him on steroids because he was 16 years old. I hope he did not do steroids. Yeah. There's actually a steroid line and new movies. where she's like, I've heard anabolic steroids are like really bad for you. And I was like, oh, is that a rough joke?

Like, did he do that? It's like, shut up, no. Shut up, don't tell him. Taylor Lautner has been candid in recent years that this experience caused some pretty major body image issues because the reality was that, and I really appreciate that he said this, like, you cannot look like that without spending hours in the gym every single day. And as soon as he stopped, once the franchise was done, and started living a more normal life. He got so much shit in the tabloids for like, quote unquote, letting himself go. And he's like,

I thought I looked fine. Like, I just wasn't going to the gym every day. It's... Oh, he looks great. Yeah. You look great, Jake. You're a very handsome person. He is a very handsome person. Also, I listened to his podcast. He seems very sweet. So another Taylor who did not make the cut. Do you know who it is, Chris? Well, there's only one other Taylor in my life. And it is. That's Taylor Swift. That's correct. Really? She was supposed to be in this movie? Well, sort of. So she was a huge Twyhard. And she had the same agent as new director, Chris White's. So she reached out asking for literally any part in this movie. She was like, make me a lunch lady in the cafeteria. I don't care. I want to be in it. Okay, I want to watch the movie where she's the lunch lady. Me too.

But Chris White said no. He was worried that she would be too distracting and would take audiences out of the movie. He said, quote, the hardest thing for me was to be like, the moment that Taylor Swift walks on the screen for about five minutes, nobody's going to be able to process anything. He said, I kick myself for it too because I was like, wow, I could have been hanging out with Taylor Swift. She must have been like, who is this jerk? I agree with him.

She would have been distracting. I still didn't process a lot of what was. happening. Just because, again, I think if you haven't read the books, it's a little hard to keep track of everything that's happening. That's not their fault. It's a complicated lore that they're translating. Is it? Or is it just that nothing is happening? I think it's both. It's everything and nothing. Because I have read the books. So, all right, obviously, the bigger issue with keeping Taylor Lautner in the part is that he is not Native American. And that other guy was not either, by the way. So it's not like they were talking about replacing him with someone who was native.

They weren't trying to do right by the Native American community. Just trying to get a beefier beefcake. Exactly. Not cool. So thankfully they did at least cast the rest of the wolf pack with Native actors. I don't know if any of them were quillude. I don't think they were. Of course, we also have fantastic Native actors, Gil Birmingham, a what went wrong favorite,

and Graham Green also reprising their roles. Now, you would think that using the tribe's name, some of their most, mythology, albeit heavily adjusted, would result in some money making its way back to the tribe, right? Especially because there was so much merchandise sold for these movies. I would hope, but I wouldn't think. Oh, well, that's too bad. Because legally they were not required to offer the tribe anything, despite making millions of dollars off of merchandise featuring supposedly Quilute characters, and the franchise opted to not give the Quilute tribe a dime.

Great. Yeah. there's a lot of stuff that I mean you could do a whole episode on New Moon to be honest because I think I think the way that they handled Stephanie I mean to a certain degree there's not much they could do because the biggest problems with this actually stem from the source material and the fact that Stephanie Meyer kind of chose this tribe yeah and like the thing is she's she is ascribing mythology to this tribe that is like loosely loosely based on what is essentially their Genesis story so this would be. be like somebody going back and rewriting the Adam and Eve story for Christians and being like, it's fine. It's not a snake. It's an owl. And then Eve turns into a goat. And it's a, you know, like a, I don't know, Chris, help me out here. It would be as if Christians were a persecuted minority. And then you rewrote their history. And then you put it on beer coesies and sold it for five bucks and you didn't share any of the money with them. Hell yeah. America. That's it what's, I think,

was frustrating, and I don't know anything about Stephanie Meyer, but it is, I think, ultimately lazy in the sense that she is reaping the rewards of a rich mythology. Yeah. Without sharing her subsequent success that, to a certain extent, stemmed from, you know, and it's very different than, okay, I'm going to take the universal tropes of vampirism and turn that into, you know, a movie. It's very different to take a culture's specific tradition. and name and location and then turn that into fodder. Because what I learned is that they're basically co-opting the origin story of this tribe,

which begins with two wolves that became people and that that was their original myth, basically. And of course, this does something very different than that and just completely changes it. But you may also have noticed that all of the members of the wolf pack have a very specific tattoo. It's of two wolves, and it is inspired by, I think, think that actual quillute story. However, it was designed by a non-native artist who, for aesthetic reasons, decided to mix that style with that of a completely different tribe, the Haida Nation. So just problems all around on this, and the fact that they didn't get any money is insane. Another big change in this movie is that they moved to Vancouver. The first one had shot in and around,

I think mostly in Oregon, actually, and then some in Washington. They reconstruct the Swan House in the Vancouver area with an addition you might have noticed is not in the first movie. Chris called this out already, but it's that big ass bay window. That's not there. Do you got to have something to look out from? There's a possibility.

I did like that sequence. They have a nice circular dolly shot around Kristen Stewart staring out the window as the seasons pass. It's a good VFX lockoff shot where they replace what's outside. Also, the windows. This one has the best music

and a lot of it is written for the movie, which I've discussed. It's got a great, great, great original songs. Yeah, this one's original, I believe. I think Boni Vair and St. Vincent wrote Rosalind for this one. Rosalind, which is a town in eastern Washington, not Western Washington. Oh.

Yeah, Rosalind is a town in eastern Washington. Who cares, Chris? Geography is for not Sparkly Vampires. So, sure, all of the vampires hated their color contacts, but Kristen Stewart also had to wear them because she has very beautiful green eyes. but Bella has a sad regular brown eyes. Nothing against all you brown-eyed folk. Apparently it got particularly bad during rainy scenes to the point where she could not wear the contacts,

so they had to actually recolor her eyes in post for a couple. I wear contacts, guys, and I have worn for a skit one time black contacts. They are the most incredibly uncomfortable things. And I wear contacts every day. It was awful. So I can't imagine what these actors are trying to ask. act without blinking. It's bad.

Because also, yeah, you don't want to blink a lot while you're acting because editors will cut around blinks and so cut around you. So, yeah, that's tough with contacts. I didn't know that. Hot tip. Robert Pattinson also refused to wax his eyebrows after seeing himself in the first movie. He was like, nope. And if you look, there is a pretty big difference.

His eyebrows are like three times the size. He looks great. I like a thick brow. Me too. He looks a lot better. They put less lipstick on him in this one, too, which is also an upgrade. the first movie, he's really, he's wearing like the Mac special. So that underwater shot where Bella is sinking and we see Edward kind of appear next to her. Whites originally wanted to shoot

it vertically and attach weights to her feet at the bottom of a 12 foot pool. So pulling a Jimmy C. here. Apparently Robert Pattinson had done some underwater work for Harry Potter. So he was like totally fine with this. But Kristen Stewart, to her credit, it was like, no, I'm not doing that. Noted 37-pound actress, Kristen Stewart, didn't want concrete weights put on her feet and thrown into a pool. She's like 19 years old, so I have a lot of respect for the fact that she was like, I don't want to do that. And Chris White's was like, nah, 12 feet isn't that deep.

Like, it's totally fine. I'll show you. 12 feet is so. Have you guys ever dove to the bottom of a 10-foot pool? That's two more feet. Yeah. It's down there. Chris White didn't think that through because he was like, I'll show you.

I'm going to do it. It's going to be easy. And Kristen Stewart's like, go ahead, Bozo. So he does it. And as soon as he gets to the bottom, he, like, had a panic attack. I was like, hell, no. He pops back up. And also, to his credit, he said, we're not making her do that.

Good for Chris White's. Good for the director to say, let me try it. Let me see if this is actually a reasonable request. And he learned his answer. And it was no. So they end up just shooting it sideways instead, and it looks fine. I actually think those shots underwater look pretty cool. A lot of shots in this movie look cool.

I just don't exactly know what's going on again. Chris, that's my bare concern. It's very simple. She's very sad. Her entire plan is just go into the woods and die, but it gets foiled by the wolf man, shirtless jorts man who comes and picks her up, brings her back. And then she sits in her room and doesn't shower for months. And her dad is like, I can't deal with this anymore. You need to go see not a therapist, but your mother get out of my house.

And then she's like, no, no, I'm staying. I love shopping. And then she learns, Chris, that she can still see Edward if she does dangerous things. He appears. No, I know. I remember. She gets on the bicycle with the fat guy. Well, then that's it.

That's the whole movie. That's it. I know. I know. I remember. Okay. I'm being somewhat facetious. Okay.

Well, it's great. And then they go to Italy, which brings me to some new casting. So one of my favorite characters across the entire series is, of course, R.O. Diego Luna and Ben Barnes were under. consideration for the role. Ben Barnes, coming hot off of Prince Caspian heels, campaigned quite hard for R.O., which I think is interesting. He's a lot younger. Yeah. Then the person who ends up getting the role, which is, of course, Michael Sheen. Michael Sheen. Michael Sheen. Michael Sheen, who just played a werewolf, a likened in Underworld. And he is so great because

he understands the tone of both movies so well. Like, he's so good. Good. My favorite part of Breaking Dawn is when he keeps getting the wedding invitation and then the birth announcement and he keeps just murdering whatever human servant brings the invitation. And he understands the tone of the movie so well. He's like, whoops, guess you brought us the invite so you're all going to get killed. He's so funny. He's great. I really love him in these movies and I love him in the underworld movies. He's so good. And he's such a talented actor. It's so good. He's having a blast, probably because you know he had to show up for, like, I don't know, 10 days tops on these things. And he just got to take a trip to Italy and then just like ham it up. And he is so fun to watch. Casting for this movie was weird and kind of a circus, though. There's also this bizarre German reality show hosted by German actor Til Schweiger, who you might know as one of the bastards in Inglorious Bastards. Yeah.

He's great. He puts the pistol into that German officer's crotch. Yes. Remember in the bar scene? I'm a real Frederick Zaller from this distance as he shoves the pistol into the guy's crotch. Good scene. Tilshweiger, good actor. Tils Schweiger, great actor and also maybe not so great reality show host because this was a show called Mission Hollywood,

where the prize was a role in New Moon, or maybe a clip. I actually can't tell. I kept looking at the timeline. I was like, what's happening? Misham, Hollywood. And then you don't get to go. It just becomes Mishin Italy because you go shoot in Italy. Mishin, Hollywood.

That's great. So based on timing, it's really hard to know what movie they were aiming for here. I don't know. Also, it just, like, fizzled out. Like, it happened, and it started airing. They did the show, and they just didn't give a prize. I don't think they won. If somebody did win, they didn't make it to the movie.

They've gotten cut. Anyway, so RIP Mission Hollywood. I don't know what happened there. But one major difference that we've called out between Twilight and New Moon is that there is way more VFX needed. Whereas Twilight, you may remember, there was almost none.

Pretty much all of the vampire stunts were done practically on wires. And they looked really good. I liked all the wireworks they did in the forest. There's some pretty funny ones. The baseball scene remains an incredible piece of cinematic history. So, remember, they are filming this at breakneck speed because it has to come out one year after the first twilight.

So they hire Phil Tippett, who you may remember. Love Phil Tippett. From our Jurassic Park episode. Listen to that. Animatronic expert. Yeah, creatures are very much his thing. He like made that kind of his world is building these creatures. So Tippett said, quote, it was the worst conditions possible for computer graphics. The skies are overcast, so the lighting is very flat.

Unlike something like Transformers or District 9, where you have a lot of light kicking off of hard shell candy, surfaces, we have wolves with fur and fur soaks up light. So when you think about all that, honestly, this looks great. And they had like no time to do this. And they're not trying to make the wolves look realistic, either in the sense that they're supposed to look enormous. And again, to just go a little further on what Lizzie was saying about how light hits objects. So one directional lighting, very hard one directional lighting, is a lot easier to animate than broad, diffused lighting. So, for example, one of the reasons

the Tyrannosaurus wrecks in Jurassic Park looks so good in that night scene when it escapes the paddock is there's really just one hard source of light, which is the moon. And it's in silhouette for large portions, and it's very wet and reflective, as opposed to, like we were saying, a fabric or a fur. Also, for every hair follicle moves independently. you know, it's incredibly hard to do animation for fur.

And they had just done it with Chris White's has just done it with Golden Compass with the polar bear. Which also looks good. Yeah. Yeah, it does. But that's also very hard to animate. If you want to hear more about digital fur technology, I think that's what they called it. Listen to our very first episode on cats. Right, on cats.

Yeah. So you can hear how this is like, honestly, what Phil Tippett did here. All you got to do is watch cats to see he did a great job. So he also said, just have a blast. We call it doing the Vulcan mind-meld thing when we're reading each other's minds because we're working so fast. He's not kidding. Post-production on New Moon overlaps with shooting on Eclipse, not pre-production on Eclipse, shooting. That is how fast they're turning this shit out. So a little fun fact, a large portion of the rough cut for New Moon was edited in the

backseat of a car. Whose car? That would be editor Phil Lambert, who pulled the cut together on a laptop while being shuttled between Twilight and working as an assistant editor on Body of Lies. Wow. They had less than three months from Rough Cut to Final Cut, and the final was due two weeks before it actually premiered. So, like... Wait, the editor was cutting two movies at the same time? Yeah.

Wow. Yeah. I've never heard of that. That's crazy. Well, he was an assistant editor on Body of Lies, and he was, I think, that's what I read. And he was definitely the main editor on this, and he was doing the vast majority of the first assembly in the backseat of the car while he wrapped up. up work on the other movie. Can't stop, won't stop. So New Moon comes out November 16th, 2009,

and it makes an absolute buttload of money. It set the record for biggest two-day total at 115 million passing the Dark Night. Remember, this had a budget of 50 million, so they are breaking in the money here. It's crazy. So let's move on. Let's move on to Eclipse. So remember November 16th, 2009 for New Moon? That's New Moon releases. New Moon releases. Well, guess what? Eclipse is coming at you.

June 24th, 2010. So they're releasing it eight months later. Correct. It's not even a year. Wow. They're like, we want more money now. It's crazy. Is Summit trying to pay off like a bounty on their head and they need the money faster? I don't know why they did this.

They're like, guys, they're going to realize these aren't good if we give them an time. Like, we have to get these out. This is, I feel this, I really would like to stress, like, don't do this. It is, well, of course, don't do it, but it is such a remarkable achievement that these movies are finished. They are more or less coherent. The actors survived. Yeah. It is, this, I wish I knew anything about construction. It would be like putting up, you know, two baseball stadiums in two years or something like that, because it's just absolutely mind-boggling the pace. And it's not just the pace.

It is that you are not getting a break. No. And I specifically mean the actors. Obviously the crew, but the actors, because they are in prep, which means they're having to rehearse. They're learning their lines. They're doing their stunts.

They're training. They're doing their wardrobe fittings. They're probably doing like, I mean, Kristen Stewart, by the time she gets the breaking dawn, she's doing prosthetics and heavy making. up. Then they're promoting the next film, that film, which is full press junket, which is an absolute full-time job and a half.

They're traveling for the, traveling for premieres. And then they are immediately going into that process on the next film. Yeah. And they're not getting to take any other jobs. They're not getting to mix up their work, you know, in a way. Like, it's just. It's crazy. I mean, somehow they did squeeze in some extra work.

I know Kristen Stewart did shoot the runaways. sometime. I'm not exactly sure when that lands, but it had to have been before Eclipse because she had a wig in Eclipse because she'd cut her hair for the runaways. But even that's like that was a tiny indie movie. It probably shot really fast and she probably had no downtime. And I bet you she got a lot of shit from the studio and the producers about doing that because they're trying to protect their investment. Let's get into the synopsis of Eclipse. This is the one that if you put a gun to my head, I don't know that I could remember what happens here. So, the synopsis, according to IMDB, is, as a string of mysterious killings, grips Seattle, Bella, whose high school graduation is fast approaching, is forced to choose between her love for a vampire Edward and her friendship with Werewolf Jacob. Is she? I feel like there's never a choice here, and she's always Team Edward. Oh, yeah. That's my one criticism of the movies versus the books, is that the books, there's a lot more will-they-want-they with Jacob. And he's also, like, way hotter.

And it's just, you know, like, Taylor Lawtoner's great, but. Well, I think the issue, Taylor Lautner seems younger than, which I think he is. He's younger than, so there's just no world where when you're in high school, the older guy wins. Yeah. Like, that's just kind of how I think we all are wired when we're that age. And so it just doesn't, it didn't make a lot of sense.

No, but, you know, Chris, it all works out in the end because it turns out that Jacob was just in love with her fetus. So. Well, he needed a younger woman. That's what I clearly learned. Okay. We'll get into that. That took a turn.

So the budget for Eclipse goes up a little bit. We're around $68 million now. But these things are still coming in at like Philein's bargain basement prices. Like I don't... No, this is insane. These movies are making $700, $800 million at the box office, and they're keeping them under $100 million, you know, per installment. That's what makes me think these actors did not get to renegotiate a lot, but I don't know.

Now, because they are cranking these movies out, Chris White's had to be in production on New Moon when pre-production on Eclipse began, so he could not direct that one. They were like, he's like, I'd love to come back and they're like, ha ha ha. You can't. We've started. Exactly. So he actually was originally attached to come back for Breaking Dawn, I think.

But he, even at that point, he expressed some concern because he had a little kid at that time. And he was like, I don't know if I could, like, that's potentially two movies that might be like a year and a half to two years. And he was like, I have like a two-year-old child, so I don't know. Yeah. There's only so many times I can make this kid watch a battle boy. Yeah, seriously. I have to go back to father.

So, spoiler alert, he does not direct Breaking Dawn. And from everything I saw, I think that that was his decision. Instead, in April of 2009, it's announced that David Slade will take over as director of Eclipse. Now, Slade is an interesting choice coming from a very hard R horror background with movies like hard candy and 30 days of night. Hard candy, starting Elliott Page. And Patrick Wilson. Yes, it's a pedophile revenge story effectively. It is good.

It's really, really dark and not supernatural in any way. It feels very grounded. Fun fact, the producer of that film came and did like a career date presentation at my high school randomly when I was in high school. That's cool. Yeah. 30 Days of Night is a vampire movie. And it's a hard R action. And it has a couple of really cool scenes in it too, including Danny Houston's head getting punched out.

That's right. So Patinson said that he felt like he was playing a totally different character in this movie, and that Slade was, quote, fighting to make it not so solemn. It kind of, I'm reading between the lines here, but it kind of sounds like maybe Patinson did not get along very well with David Slade. He said that Chris White's attitude when he joined was that he liked the first movie and he wasn't really trying to change too much about what they'd done. That Chris White was kind of like, it worked.

Like, I'm not going to fuck with it too much. David Slade basically wanted to take a sledgehammer to the series. Slade reportedly, when Pattinson expressed that this was like totally not what he'd been doing, Slade reportedly told Pattinson, quote, doesn't matter. I just want to do something completely different. All right. All right. I mean, like, I don't know.

Part of me is kind of like, why not? Like, you know. Yeah, why not mix it up? Yeah. Now, Slade was an interesting choice to direct a Twilight film for another reason. David Slade hated Twilight. Oh. So about a week after he's confirmed as director, Slade learned that the internet never forgets anything.

Someone dug up a tweet of his where he said, quote, Twilight drunk, no, not even drunk. Twilight on acid, no, not even on acid. Twilight with a gun to my head, just shoot me. But what he didn't put in that tweet was Twilight for $5,000 to $700,000. sign me up. That's correct. So he is forced to release a public apology because Twyhards are understandably pissed.

And I would just like to say to, like, if you work, again, this obviously does not apply to, there's an echelon of people who can and should say what they want that work in this industry about whatever film they'd like. But for the rest of us... Be careful. Yeah. No, no, no, I would say for the rest of us,

don't tweet shit on other people. people's movies, you know, save that for your private conversations. You might work with some of these people at some point. And everyone works really hard. Yeah. And as we all know, everyone works so hard, even on a movie that doesn't turn out well or turns out terribly. It's an incredibly difficult process. And, you know, I'm sure he meant the tweet ingest, but that is frustrating that somebody who is a director who knows how hard it is to make a movie would just turn around and take an easy dunk on a movie that's not really meant for him anyway. It's not.

And to his credit, he issued an apology right away saying that none of the statements were from the heart and that he hadn't even seen the movie or read the books when he said that. He basically... Which I would believe. Because that sounds like something you would say just as a... I could get 12 likes on this right now.

Exactly. He acknowledged that he said that because he was basically just dunking on a movie that was being openly made fun of at the time. But don't worry. He has seen the movies and read the books now and said that he was, quote, quickly consumed with the rich storytelling and the beautifully honest characters that Stephanie Meyer created. All right.

You take it a little too far there, David. AKA, he already cashed that check. Yeah, exactly. So at this point, Slade is already in pre-production on Eclipse because they're moving so fast, which is I'm guessing why Summit didn't just fire him. Because, like, that feels like something that, like, really pissed off the fan base. But anyway, he stays on. Four months later,

Eclipse is in full production. These actors, as we have discussed, had zero break between these movies. I've seen some reports that he got 50 days to shoot this. That's a good length. Is it? For this?

Yeah. It feels like there's a lot in this. It's long. Well, no, that's true. There's a lot in this. It's long. There's a lot of action. For reference,

my first film, Worm, which didn't have nearly as much action. Read none We shot in 20 Yeah exactly We shot in 20 days So 50 seems like a lot to me No no but you're right it's not

It seems like The shining was like 147 days God no thank you All right So there's another victim of the breakneck speed Of production in this movie And that is Rachel Lefevre A.k.a. Victoria

Right Yeah you may have noticed that suddenly she becomes Bryce Dallas Howard She does in the worst wig I've ever seen. And Ron Howard is narrating the movie. Oh, that would be great.

So Summit actually picked up Lefebvre's contract for Eclipse originally, but then she booked a 10-day film role, and Summit decided they couldn't possibly work around those 10 days. Now, Lefev claimed that Eclipse's shooting schedule was over three months, but that's not what I saw. I did see 50 days. And to be honest, if 50 days is correct, I can see why they recast her. No, no, no, no, no.

A 50 days, that would be three months. That would be 10 weeks. Oh, okay. Cut that out. 50 shooting days. Because I can't do that. We can explain it. 50 days would be 10 shooting weeks at five days per week.

This is why Chris is here. Okay, in that case, still, that's a fifth of the movie that she would be missing. That's actually a lot. It just depends on, so when you schedule a movie, you have to factor in a whole host of things. including locations and continuity and then actor availability. So you're attempting to, if there are actors who have scenes together, they have to be scheduled together. And obviously there are scenes like Kristen Stewart who are going to be run-of-show,

which means they're going to be there the entire time. And then there's Michael Sheen would be the best example. You're kind of like high-paid cameo. Right. You're slotting him in. You want to make sure that you're shooting out his scenes in as condensed a period as possible to make the role. to make the role more enticing to him.

And whereas Rachel, someone like her, unfortunately, would fit in is they probably wouldn't care very much about her schedule when they're scheduling the film. And so my guess is that her days might have been peppered throughout the shoot. And so if that 10-day shoot, I'm not saying Twilight did the right thing, I'm just saying that if that 10-day shoot at all became an inconvenience. She's out. She's out.

There's a little bit more context here. Things got a little ugly in the press because Lefebvre comes out in Stokes fan outrage by basically saying that she was blindsided by this news. Summit pushes back and says that she knew she shouldn't have booked that role and did not disclose that she'd done it until like less than two weeks before they were supposed to start filming. It kind of seems like she might have thought she could just sneak this past them, but this is Twilight, baby. They're going 100 miles an hour. And to Chris's point, this is probably a very complicated schedule to pull together. Also, this is just a hunch, but perhaps Rochelle just pissed someone off because Anna Kendrick revealed a couple of years ago that she actually filmed up in the air at the same time as New Moon. And they did move some dates around for her and did not stop her from doing up in the air.

So. But up in the air, again, it's all politics. She's doing a Jason Reitman George Clooney prestige picture where she's basically second build to George Clooney in that movie. And so that's a good thing for the Twilight series. That's a good point. I didn't think about that. But she said that they were, she was like they were great to their credit. They totally could have stopped me and they didn't.

But you are right. There may have been political advantages to not stopping that. Not so much for Lefebvre, though, because another plot twist is that Bryce Dallas-Haward was originally offered Victoria in the first movie, but turned it down because it was too small of a role. Suddenly, Victoria gets a bigger part. and Bryce Dallas Howard shows up. So there is that. And I like Bryce Dallas Howard. She's great, and she's a great director.

She is a great director. Not a great wig. Also, her hair is red. She has beautiful red hair. Why do they put this thing on her? It was the wrong shade. They had to get something different. It's the craziest wig I've ever seen.

And I've seen some bad wigs. It's like worse. It's not the craziest. Yes, it is. Yes, it is. It looks like a plastic, raggedy and wig. Like what it's, I think I was watching this at a lower resolution.

I didn't notice it. I thought it was fine. Go back and look at it. It's nuts. I'll take your word for it. Now, the filming of this movie is pretty uneventful, but the speed at which they're producing it continues to cause some problems. I saw in one place that a lot of Nikki Reid, who plays Rosalie,

a lot of her climactic fight scene moments towards the end got cut because apparently the dailies were over-exposed, and Slade didn't have time to reshoot them. So he was just like... And they were still shooting on film, I think, on this. Were they? I'm not sure, but I mean, over-exposed, I would assume that's, I don't know. You can't overexposed digital, but anyway. Anyway, she also didn't even like shooting.

I think she had maybe not a great time. The rain made her sort of thick vampire makeup streamed down her face, which she did not love. Also, the original editor was abruptly fired just three months before Eclipse came out, because apparently Summit did not think that his cut had the intensity they were going for. So they bring back Nancy Richardson, who had edited the first movie, to take it. a pass on the final cut. There's a couple of deleted scenes that never made it to air in this one. One, where Kristen Stewart, do you remember the scene where they, they, they know.

Pull it together, Chris. The scene where they flash back to the quillute supposed quote unquote legend. Oh, yes, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then the wife saves the day by slashing open her own, was it wrist or she stabs herself in the stomach, I think. that originally was Kristen Stewart in the flashback. What? Yes.

Yes. Like in a past life? I don't know. I don't know what the choice here was. It sounds like one of those ideas that you have that sounds really good when you're all in a meeting. And you're like, but it's symbolic and it's going to be Kristen and we don't have to schedule somebody else. And then it's more of Kristen and it's great. And then you shoot it and you're like, what were we thinking?

Well, they got farther than that. This actually made it to test audiences, and it was so bad that people laughed openly at it. I'm sure. And so they did reshoot that whole sequence. There's another deleted scene where Jacob and Bella are shown growing old together, but apparently that didn't even make it to post-production because the prosthetics looked so bad. They were like, yeah, we can't do this. Jacob and Bella.

So Taylor Lawtoner. They're doing like the old man face swap. Yeah, they didn't pull off the Benjamin button on this one. So I liked when they, was it in New Moon when they had an older actress playing the older version of, right, in her dream at the beginning? I liked that. I thought, I was like, oh, they actually cast somebody. Yeah. Older to play her.

That was great. Like, why not just do that? It's a fun moment when she realizes that the person she thought was grand is really just herself because she's so old at 18. Yeah, I'm never going to think that about my grandpa. Like, it was so weird. Anyway, go ahead. Last fun fact on a clip. and then we will move on to Breaking Dawn.

In the scene where Taylor Lautner is carrying Kristen Stewart up the mountain, basically, yes. That is him carrying her with no aid, because apparently they built a rig that was supposed to support her weight, but the movement did not look natural. So poor Taylor Lautner, who I just feel like this guy is so game for everything, he was like, it's fine, I'll do it. She weighs like 90 pounds.

It's not a big deal. But they have to shoot it over and over again, and he's climbing up this. mountain and it apparently took him like days to recover from this because it was a lot. It's just amazing he didn't drop her. He did not, did not drop her. So, Eclipse premieres making $698 million dollars worldwide. Now here's the other thing.

At some point in 2009, between the production of New Moon and Eclipse, Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart start dating. Right. It's like both the best and the worst thing that comes. could ever happen to this franchise. So the timing of this is really murky. I don't think anyone knows exactly for sure when it started because they were very, very private about it and actually almost never confirmed it.

It was definitely known to producers by the time they're working on Eclipse, though, because they were very concerned about what might happen to all their sparkly dollar bills if they were to break up. Right. Very concerned. Yeah. So. Maybe that's why Summit was pulling in the release dates.

I mean. Oh, sweet Jesus, we got to make sure they don't break up. Maybe, and they almost did it, but not quite. By pulling the release dates in, they're putting so much more strain on the relationship. Yeah, I mean, this must have been really hard. So I'm going to cover Breaking Dawn parts one and two together because they were shot as one movie. So moving on to Breaking Dawn part one, the IMDB synopsis is the Quilutes close in on unexpected parents. Nope, sorry, on expecting parents.

Well, they weren't expecting it to go the way that it goes. On expecting parents, Edward and Bella, whose unborn child poses a threat to the wolf pack and the townspeople of Forks. It is released November 18th, 2011, so a little bit more of a break between Eclipse and this one. The budget is... When did Eclipse come out, June of 2010?

Yes. Okay, so a little over here. So the budget is somewhere, between 110 to 120-ish million. I saw 127 million, according to Forbes. So we're going to go with that. They must have renegotiated between the last one of these. That's my guess because...

This is them getting the paychecks one. Good, because the money jumps up substantially here, and boy, I hope it went to the actors. Yeah. Breaking Dawn Part 2. And boy, I hope it didn't go to that CG baby. Chris, I have such a surprise for you. Just hold on.

So breaking dawn part two, the synopsis is after the birth of Rennes Mae slash Nessi, the Collins gather other vampire clans in order to protect the child from a false allegation that puts the family in front of the Valturi. After the birth of the Antichrist. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we're going to, maybe we should just, so let me get this out. And then I think we should take a second to talk about these movies because these movies

Boy, I forgot how that shit crazy these are. So Breaking Dawn Part 2 then releases November 16th, 2012, so almost exactly a year after Part 1. But again, they... Back to the normal cadence. Back to the normal cadence. But again, these were shot together. The budget for this one was $137 million, according to Forbes. This is the most expensive of all the Twilight movies.

And as Chris said, I have to imagine a lot of that went to the actor's salaries, I hope. So I saw these in theaters when they came out And like I understood that what I was watching was crazy But I didn't understand how crazy Having watched these again Oh, you didn't understand how crazy it was To have a full-grown man fall in love with a baby Dude, what is happening in these movies?

Like immediately And then people are just making jokes about it People are just like totally cool with the fact To like tell her, tell him, tell her about, tell Bella, tell Bella, Tell Bella what you really think about her baby. Let me just explain. Let me explain what Chris is talking about. So for those of you who have not watched this movie, somehow, first of all, the whole series,

they're concerned about Edward and Bella having sex because to have sex, he might kill her. That's it. That's the whole plot. That's the premise of Twilight. Sex is the devil. They wait until marriage. They do it when she is still human and he is a vampire. And somehow, not explained, but somehow they accidentally create a,

a whoopsie undead demon baby, which was not thought to be possible. And she, the makeup that they put on her, it is horrifying. Horrifying. Like, they did a good job. They did a great job. She looks, it was so uncomfortable.

I filmed myself watching the entire birth sequence. Maybe Lizzie will share some on social media. I get very queasy. I thought I wanted to be a doctor when I was little. I went to grand rounds with my grandpa and quickly. realized that was never going to happen. I couldn't watch the Nick that TV series. I had a really hard time watching this sequence.

It's gross. It looks really graphic. And she looks so emaciated. And again, kudos to the effects team and the makeup team. They did a great job. It really creep me out. We're going to talk about it a little bit. But basically, this baby is like eating her from the inside out.

And she is dying because of the baby. There's a whole pro-life thing that happens where she keeps talking about it as the fetus and Nikki Reid's character has to keep going, you mean the baby? So there's that. I don't even want to get into that. There's just a lot. That's not what this podcast is about. Not what this is about. But boy, that did not sink in when I was 20 in watching this.

And then, so she has the baby, or should I say, Edward, choose the baby out of her. Oh, it's wild. Choose it out. And then they bring her back to life. They turn Bella into a vampire. And the delivery is just Jacob and Edward and her. Yes. There are no doctors.

There are no vampire doctors. There's no one. But seriously, I was like... Why is Carlisle not there? Yeah. I just did not understand why it was just the three of them. Because it also, it wasn't like, for example, there was a big storm and everyone got delayed, and then she went into labor early, and then they had to do it because it was an emergency.

It was like there were people in the other room. It's a private moment when your husband chews your baby out of you. But anyway. And then the other guy that you almost went with is also there. This is the final part of this is that once the baby is delivered, Jacob imprints on the baby. This is something that Stephanie Meyer developed where these werewolves do a thing called imprinting and they can't control it.

And when they've done it, they are forever bound and forever in love with this other person. and the rest of the wolf pack then cannot attack that person because they are protected by being imprinted on. This is obviously a plot device to figure out what to do, and it's the weirdest one she could have done. But anyway, Jacob falls in love with the baby. It's deeply upsetting. It's not, it is, and it's really, it's not well handled

because there's no way to handle it well, but it's particularly poorly handled because he sees the baby, which is a CGI monstrosity that, again, this is not a criticism of the work of the CGI artist, just the design they landed on. It's like, it's very uncanny value. Well, we're going to talk about that, and I want to save a little bit of that until we get there. There's a- Okay, we'll save it.

Let's save that. But really quickly, the reason he falls in love with this baby is because you then see it, not as like a full-grown woman. And you see flashes that really mostly you see it as a 10-year-old girl. Like a 10-year-old girl. Yeah, it's really weird. And so it's like, guys, guys, no, he's not in love with a baby. He's in love with a 10-year-old.

It's fine. And it's so gross and weird. And it's not, again, if it was, there was, I feel like there's an easy workaround where it's like, no, it's like a dog. It's like how a dog gets protective of. a baby. And you could have just said that, right? Like, it's just, it's not like he's in love. He's just like a German shepherd gets protective of the new baby in the house. No, you can't, Chris, because here's the problem. The book, this is very much the book, and it is an important plot point that he is in love with and imprinted on Renzma.

Oh, I understand. I'm saying Stephanie Meyer should have done that. No, she did what she wanted to. So, um, a couple of very interesting names are initially thrown around to direct Breaking Dawn, but the two that I saw over and over again were Gus Van Sant. And Sophia Coppola. Interesting. Sophia Coppola makes a lot more sense to me than Gus Fans. He would have been very weird. So Coppola reportedly almost did it, but she only would have been able to direct the first one due to scheduling conflicts.

And they knew at this point they needed to shoot them together. I like the Lost in Translation version of this movie. I do too. I want to see that. Yeah. I really like her. I think she's a very character-driven director. So who knows what it would have been.

It would have been interesting. But April 28th, 2010, it's announced. that Bill Condon will direct Breaking Dawn. Condon had just directed Dreamgirls. He wrote the screenplay for Chicago and wrote and directed Kinsey. He had also written and directed Gods and Monsters, which he won the Oscar for Adapted Screenplay before.

Starring Brendan Fraser. Starring Brendan Fraser. Listen to our episode on The Moment. Yes. Timing-wise, I do think it's interesting that David Slade does not stay on to direct because this is not as close to production as the New Moon Eclipse timing was.

I think it would have been pot. You know, maybe he just wanted to change too many things and gotten too many fights. And they decided we needed someone who was just kind of kind of deliver the movie that we knew at the end of the day. Well, Bill Condon does it. So these two films filmed together from November 2010 to the end of April 2011. A couple of fun facts from filming, Robert Pattinson is really driving that boat that you see going out to the island in Brazil. And he crashed it in front of the entire cast and crew, according to Pattinson. And at Comic-Con 2012, he said, quote, that was pretty symbolic of the crazy journey.

Yeah. And then I ran a speedbroke into a wall. Yep, sure did. He and Kristen Stewart also had some makeup struggles in the Brazilian heat where his white makeup was dripping onto her tan makeup. And that was dripping on him. So Stewart said of the experience, quote, we're both really white. No more makeup. Yeah.

Yep. Also, there are a couple of moments in Breaking Dawn Parts 1 and 2 that originally earned both movies are ratings. I think that's fair because particularly Breaking Down Part 1 is horrifying. I thought it should have been rated art. Honestly, the whole birth sequence, that was tough to watch. There's a shot that I was like, I can't believe this is PG-13, which is when they show her from top down and you can see her horrible skinny legs and you see like blood. coming out of her vagina and I was just like, oh my God. I'm already terrified of giving birth.

I don't need this. I watched my wife's C-section and I had an easier time doing that than watching this scene in Twilight Breaking Dawn Part 1. This is a vampire C-section. They do it differently. A V-section. A V-section. So a couple scenes in the first one that garnered it in R-rating. One is the sex scene.

It was pretty tame. It is, well, they re-edited it. There were rumors that Kristen Stewart was supposedly too sexual and there was too much thrusting, which like, fuck off. Like, whatever. But according to Robert Pattinson on The Ellen Show, there was a different issue. So I want to play you a little clip. Because I heard that it had to be recut because you went crazy or something. Didn't you?

Didn't you just kind of go until like it was too steamy. for anybody. No, yeah, I lost it. You lost it. With my mind. No, I didn't. Well, what happened? Why did they have to recut it?

There was good so much butt crack, I think. That was one thing I never cut up. Too much butt crack? Yeah, but they didn't cut out the shot or whatever. They just cut the crack out. They just painted, as I found out. They just painted over it. It makes you look like you don't have a crack.

They cover it so there's no crack on your butt. You just look like you just look like. Like one solid cheek? Yeah, you're allowed to show cheek. You can show cheek, no crack. You can show cheek no crack. So that was their solve. Wait.

So they just painted his ass crack now? So literally it's the cat's butthole problem 10 years before. Yep. That's amazing. That's right. Oh, my God. Paint it out the crack. You know, I want to do an episode for our Patreon at some point about how the MPA came about

and how the guidelines were formed and go back to the, the haze coat and everything. But it is just remarkable that you can show somebody chew a baby out of a woman, but God forbid you show a butt crack and we need to digitally make this thing out. That was so funny. But anyway, so they did re-edit the sex scene in addition to painting out Rob's butt crack. No crack allowed in Twilight. The other scene that almost got it in our rating is, of course, the birth scene.

Right. Both Edward Pulp Fiction style injecting her with his venom and also him. chewing the baby out of her. I didn't know they had venom. He goes, what is that? And it is a syringe, the size of my arm. My venom. Which I was like, seeming to seeming.

What is he talking about? It was very weird. Whatever. Don't ask any questions. So Condon had a pretty good solve for this, which is that you see almost everything in this scene happened from Bella's perspective. So they're able to kind of dip in and out of consciousness. It's very well done.

Yeah, it's horrifying. It's very scary. Also, fun fact, all the goop. all over the baby is strawberry jelly and cream cheese, which is disgusting, but kind of cute. Apparently, they also handed part two in R rating because of all the beheadings that happen in that bonkers snowball fight in part two. It's pretty tame. But it's like statues getting their heads shut off.

You know what I mean? It's like, it's so, it's so Atlantic. I actually really enjoy the battle in part two. Oh, it's very fun. I just love how like the solution is just ripped the head off. Everyone. It's very easy. All right.

So, Chris, you've been talking a lot about this uncanny Valley baby, so let's get into it. This baby. When the baby showed up, I went, I literally went, wow. It was terrified. Well, if you thought that Rennes-May looked bad in the movies that you watched, originally she looked much, much worse. Oh, God. I hope it's not because it was a real baby.

That was too scary. Just you wait, my friend. So everyone had been worried about how they were going to represent the baby that had somehow acquired adult expressions and emotions. That's a big part of the book is that when she comes out, she is like fully emotive, even as an infant. Obviously, you can't use a regular human baby for that because they don't do that. They're just mush.

So at first, it was not CGI, but it was, in fact, an animatronic doll. Love it. Love it. I want to own it. Well, you can see it. So it was so horrifying that the cast and crew called it Chuck Esme, after Chuckie. And Chris, I want to play you a clip of Nikki Reid on set holding this thing and talking about what it was like to film with it. Just get ready.

I'm so excited. This made me laugh so hard. Can you see that? Oh, my God. Yeah. Are you ready? It looks like a Victorian child mixed with a blobfish. It does.

Wait until you see it. Move. Hold on. Okay. I'm gonna play it. Wait, that's animatronic? Yeah. Just wait. And also watch Nikki Reid's face in this because... I really like Nikki Reid's funny. This is really fun. Okay. I understand the theory behind it. And it would have this little creature that does all the hand movements and stuff. I want the whole world to forgive me now before this movie comes out because I'm holding like a 60 pound mechanical doll.

It's 60 pounds. And me and the doll have to, like, move our bodies at the same time. And so I've got, like, two men sitting right below me, like, you know, doing, like, puppet stuff with her hands. And, like, one guy, like, puts the hair, like, puts me the eye there. It's really difficult. It's really difficult for me. She looks so afraid of it. So it's really, like, it's this moment where she's supposed to be tender with the baby.

And the baby's, like, grabbing her face very sweetly. But you can tell she's so scared of this baby. It's really horrifying. It's really horrifying. You guys have to go and see this. Google this. I'm sure you can see it. I will post a picture of this on Instagram so you can see Chuck Esme in action. Also, it looks the funny thing is, look, it's terrifying. It's awful. But it looks

great. Does that make sense? I mean, if it were a horror movie, maybe. That's what I'm saying. No, but yes, like it looks very, it looks very weirdly alive when it's moving its eyes, the hand, the way the hands moved. Like, it looks great. It's just the design is scary. Terrifying. So after about one day, they were like, we absolutely can't use this. There's no way. So they did not.

I wonder if they were like, let's sleep on it. And they came back to set and it was sitting in a chair and they're just like, no, we've got to move on. I think they ended up using real babies and children and doing the aforementioned also fucked up CGI to their faces. But honestly, it's so much better. Once you see that doll, you're like, yeah, I know this is fine. The uncanny Valley is fine.

What's weird about the CGI. The obvious thing that's wrong is the baby's head's too small. Yeah, it's weird. The face takes up too much of the head. Yeah. By the way, they also use the same techniques that police used to age up missing children in order to turn Rinesbé into an 18-year-old. No wonder we're finding none of these children ever.

Sorry, that was horrible. It's true. So she's played throughout by 10-year-old McKenzie Foy, and that's who they base most of the... McKenzie Foy is who Jacob falls in love with. The 10-year-old. In the flash-forward, the 10-year-old. Yeah, exactly. And they do an aged-up version of her as well with GGI.

The missing children technology for. All in all, I think the VFX team did a pretty amazing job on these two movies. I thought the wolves looked a lot better in especially breaking down part one. They do. I mean, they had a lot more time than they did on New Moon and Eclipse. So I think that shows here. They look great. The shot where she turns into a vampire is obviously hilarious because she gains makeup magically, a lot of eye makeup.

Yeah, a lot of weight and eye makeup. I did like all of the inside her body, doctor house. That was fun. Like, CG stuff. That was good. But that's also a very tough shot to do, the one where she transitions because they're doing a composite. No, I was wondering, is that, yes, is that like a motion control rig or something? No.

So that is a composite of transitions between what was a puppet of the very emaciated Kristen Stewart and herself. And they used a puppet. They also used prosthetics on her to give her that very emaciated look. And then, like, the legs and the body on the table, that's a puppet. but that's her real head. Right. That is sticking out. Sticking her head through the table.

And like the CPR, that's also her head. But then everything below the head is not. It's a puppet. Apparently Kristen Stewart was a total champ. She was like strapped into that thing for hours and hours. And she just did a great job. Also the Cullen House, which was partially built in Vancouver and then partially rebuilt on soundstages in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, I think, was very hard to shoot in.

Why, Chris? Tons of windows? Bingo. All the windows. A lot of reflections. Exactly. They had to do hundreds of composite shots where they were removing reflections of crew and cast in the windows.

So Breaking Dawn Part 1 premieres November 18, 2011. It makes $712 million worldwide, $138 million in its opening weekend alone. So Breaking Dawn Part 2 has a release date already set for mid-November 2012. Everything's already been shot. So outside of the press tours, these actors are finally free to make different movies. are released. Kristen Stewart was cast in a retelling of Snow White called Snow White and the Huntsman opposite Chris Hemsworth and Charlize Theron.

So she began shooting this film in August of 2011. Snow White premieres June 1st, 2012, and it does pretty well. It's not Twilight, but it's definitely a box office success. So Kristen Stewart seems well on her way. I actually like that movie. I thought it was pretty good. She's good in it. Charlie's Theron's having a blast. She's always great.

She is clearly well on her way at this point to becoming a blockbuster. Star. But on July 4th of 2012, Us Weekly published paparazzi photos showing Stuart and Rupert Sanders, the director of Snow White, kissing and snuggling in public, and it is an absolute disaster. Twilight fans are losing their minds. Also losing his mind was Donald Trump, who was weirdly very invested in this and tweeted about the whole thing. You don't remember this? He was constantly taking to Twitter to tell Robert Pattinson to dump Kristen Stewart because she was a loser and he could do better. Stewart immediately releases this. Of course, everyone's focused on Chris and Stewart, not the guy who just cheated on his wife and has kids. Yeah, we'll get to that. Yeah, we'll get to that. So Stewart immediately releases this extremely sad statement. Quote, I'm deeply sorry for the hurt and embarrassment I've caused to those close to me and everyone this has affected. This momentary indiscretion has jeopardized the most important thing in my life. The person I love and respect the most, Rob. I love him. I love him. I love him. I'm so sorry.

This, by the way, is the first time she's ever officially acknowledged that she and Robert Pattinson were in a relationship, even though it was common knowledge at this point. I do want to remind you that Kristen Stewart had just turned 22. Yeah. Like, 22. This stuff happens. It happens.

When you're 22. But it shouldn't when you're 40. 41. Rupert Sanders, on the other hand, was a married 41-year-old man with a wife and two kids at the time. Fun fact, his now ex-wife, Liberty Ross, is the sister of Academy Award-winning composer Atticus Ross. He issued an apology as well, saying he hoped he and his wife could, quote,

get through this together. She tweeted out, wow, and deleted her Twitter. They divorced. Good for you, Liberty, Ross. Stewart was dropped from the sequel to Snow White, and she gets absolutely destroyed in the press. As Chris pointed out, the press pretty much exclusively focused on her. just ripping her to shreds.

There were very public photos released of her moving her things out of her home with Patinson into a U-Haul. They're really sad. Pattinson appeared on the Daily Show in August of 2012, and John Stewart hands him a pint of ice cream to console him. She and Patinson seemed to try. Not a good move, John Stewart. I typically like you, but that's a little.

I still like him, but yes, it definitely played into the lake. No, I do too, of course. Yeah, I'm just saying it just goes to show you that, Every, once that train starts moving, everyone, it's not just the Donald Trumps of the world that are piling on. Everybody does it. So she and Pattinson did try to get back together, but the next few months must have been absolutely miserable because Twilight stops for no one. They were careening straight into the press tour for Breaking Dawn, Part 2, which was set to release right on time on November 16th, 2012. And this is no ordinary press tour.

Throughout that fall leading up to the release, they were scheduled to. to hit Australia, Japan, Brazil, South Africa, Scotland, Ireland, and the United States. And they did it together. Fun. To their eternal credit, they both showed up. They did their job. This must have been awful. Yeah.

I can't imagine. They eventually break up for good in 2013, although it does seem like there is no ill will there. She speaks very, very highly of him. He does the same, although I think she has actually. talked a bit more than he ever has about this. And she did a really good interview with Howard Stern, actually. That's definitely worth listening to where she talks a lot about how difficult this was and just how young they were and, like, how much pressure they were under during this.

Going to your first big breakup in public while promoting a multi-billion-dollar film franchise that's about the two of you being vampires in love forever and having a weird, having a weird gross baby together. Yeah. And it's, yeah, that would be impossible to handle with Grace. But they did. She really did. And she didn't really say, like, she tried so hard to just do everything she could to keep her shit together.

She did in later years say, like, she never slept with Rupert Sanders. It was really just, like, making out and basically an emotional affair. But she was basically like, who is going to believe me at this point? It doesn't matter. So she didn't even try to defend herself. all in all, the Twilight franchise grosses over $3 billion. It launched the careers of Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, and it does bring me joy every time I watch one of these bonkers movies,

although I don't know if children should be allowed to watch them. No, absolutely not. I don't want to get into anything political on this podcast, but this is the most anti-feminist film series I have seen. I both agree and don't agree. I'm being hyperbolic, but I just, there was a lot in it that is just, I just wanted to be like, you should go study abroad. Like, go to, just like take some time to yourself. Or get with Jacob.

Reading the books, I was always like, what are you doing? Go sleep with him. Try it out. Give it a shot. Who knows? Yeah. You know, your dad's hot, but I'm just kidding. Her dad is super hot.

He's great. He's a smoke show, Charlie Swan. The hottest man in all of these movies. God, that guy would clean up and forks Washington. Just saying, everyone in this movie looks great. They're all incredibly attractive. It's got a lot of really good actors in it. You know, I think to your point about this being a very sort of anti-feminist franchise,

I think it is to Kristen Stewart's credit that it doesn't go as far as the books do, to be honest. I think she understood both what was wrong about this and also what was fun about it. And I think that she leaned into it and managed to turn Bella into something that was engaging on screen in a way that she's really not in the books. And we talked about this in the last episode. But like that is by design that Bella kind of doesn't have a character. She's sort of an empty shell that any woman can step into and imagine themselves in. And truly, truly, to Kristen Stewart's credit, she did breathe some life into this character. And that had to be hard. Now, many people have on Twilight in the years since it came out, including Anna Kendrick, who claimed she didn't even remember being in them. But there is one person in particular who, despite everything she went through, still has some love for the movies, and that is Kristen Stewart. She told Patty Smith in an interview for interview magazine, quote, the intention is so fucking pure in a weird way. Anybody who wants to talk shit about Twilight, I completely get it. But there's something there that I'm

endlessly and to this day fucking proud of. My memory of it felt still feels really good. That's great. Yeah. Good for Kristen. Stand up for the work that you've done. She's never shit on it. Never. Yeah.

Don't do a James Corden and dump on the VFX artist of the movie. You just got paid millions of dollars to be in. It's bullshit. It's a bad look. Don't pretend to forget movies that you were in, which is not a lot. Other actors have done that. Oh, yeah. Listen, I love Anna Kendrick.

Yeah. Yes, Anna Kendr's amazing. I don't love Jared Letto, and he is apparently. done that a couple of times. But good for Kristen Stewart for standing up for a franchise that, you know, was formative in a lot of ways. Like that was her college for better or worse. Like she was from 17 to 22 making these movies and doing a great job and then making some mistakes and learning from those mistakes. Everything that you, you know, all the fuckups that you, a lot of us, not all of us, of course, got between the ages of 18 and 22 and we had the cover of, you know,

well, it happens. You're this age. She didn't have that excuse. And again, it would be very easy for her to say, yeah, I just did it for the money. I was young. I needed a job. Nope, she stood behind it. She didn't do that. And I really appreciate that. So that brings us to the end of the Twilight Saga, Chris. What a doozy. Well, the Twilight Saga never really ends. That's true, because Stephanie Meyer has been rewriting it from Edwards' perspective. Really? Yeah. That came out. Midnight, Midnight Sun. I don't know. Don't quote me on that. What went right, Chris? I think a lot of things went right throughout these movies. And I will say, I know we've talked about Michael Sheen, how he gets the tone. Like, you know, he really creates a tone of his own. But it's not just him. All of these other actors, I think, are having a really fun time.

Specifically the Collins, the family of vampires around her, like Nikki Reed, Kellyn Lutz, Jackson Rathbone. Ashley Green, Carlisle. Peter Fassanelli. I love Peter Fassanelli in these movies. My point is I just get the sense from these actors that there's a feeling like they're in a movie and they're never going to be in anything like this again.

And not to say they won't be in a bigger role or a better role later, but just like they're never going to be in something like this. How could you be? It's the craziest shit you've ever seen. It's crazy. But they're doing it in a good way. I feel like they're having fun.

in a way that's not poking fun at the audience or poking fun at the source material. But they're not treating it too seriously. It's a fine line. So I'll say really, honestly, it would be so easy to phone these movies in. And I think to a certain extent, there are certain elements that have to be phoned in

in the sense that, like, there's, I think the books are pretty lazy in a lot of ways, but if you're going to be accurate to the books, like you have to be accurate, you know what I mean, to them? And so I just think it goes to the whole crew, but I will specifically say the cast and I really, the Collins, because they're a fun group. Every time we go back to the Collins,

I'm like, you guys don't really make a lot of sense? And it's a lot of fun. And your wings are getting worse every movie. And your wings are getting wild. But I just like it. And like, I just, like, I feel like they're having a good time. And they're like, oh, we get a good scene today. This is exciting.

Let's go enjoy it, you know. So credit to the entire cast that worked their ass off for a number of years to make these movies happen. Yeah. And for taking very, very, very silly material and doing something fun with it. I'm a bit torn in terms of what went right. I think 100% mine would be the cast and particularly the kind of the core cast. I think that they did an excellent job, as Chris just said.

But to shout out some other things that I think went right, I do think that Chris White's direction on New Moon was really good, although I would have liked to have seen Catherine Hardwick take over. the rest of the franchise. I really appreciate what he did. I think he brought kind of a softness and just the colors that he brought, I actually do think, made a difference. And then also, whoever is the music supervisor for these movies is crushing it because these soundtracks are great. So I will definitely say the soundtracks. And if you haven't listened to all the Twilight soundtracks, you're missing out. They're great from the first one all the way through the last

one. New Moon is my favorite soundtrack and movie as well. But check them out. These movies are wild. Just go watch them. They're so weird. You're not going to be bored. Well, maybe in eclipse you'll be bored, but the rest of them not so much. I, okay, well, I will disagree. I think New Moon's the most boring. You're wrong. You're wrong. It's amazing. Okay. Well, then you have to watch and be the tiebreaker guys. As always. As always. We have to shout out our full stop supporters, starting with Tom Kristen Stewart. And I'm going to subvert what I just said I liked about this movie and say, Soman Chai Nani you should have been in this movie.

Sumin Chai Nani, thank you so much for being full stop supporters on Patreon of this podcast. As always, guys, if you enjoy the work that we put out with what went wrong, please go on Apple Podcasts and give us a rating and review. Yes. Tell a friend or family member or stranger on the bus about our podcast. We don't have any money to market this. And your word of mouth... We have a little bit now.

That's true. But your word of mouth is really the only way that we are starting to climb those charts. And I love the... What's the word? The validation. I want to see us go higher on the charts. So please tell some people. The validation of Strangler.

strangers is important to both of us. I want to destroy Paul Shear and the unspooled podcast, which is number one in film history. I love Paul Shear. We're so close. We are number two, and we can't unseat the bastard. I think we broke him for one day. And so, guys, help us take down the unspooled monopoly and the dark demon that is Paul Shear, that bastard. Destroy Paul Shear.

And, of course, as promised, we're going to announce the next day. episode, which will be, it's me, a Mario. Oh, no. That was better than what Chris Pratt did for the new movie. It is Super Mario Bros, the 1993 version with Bob Hoskins and John Louisiana. I am so excited to talk to you guys about this film. And of course, Mario just became the most successful video game adaptation ever. So get ready for a bunch more Mario sequels, you dorks.

just went and saw that movie. I'm not ready. We'll be covering Mario next, and thank you for voting in the poll. Dune won the poll, so we will be covering Dune as well in the coming weeks. Thank you so much for listening, guys.

Check out our Patreon if you want to check out more content. Leave us a rating and review, and if you ever have film suggestions, feel free to drop us a line at What Went Wrong Pod, Instagram, and What Went Wrong Pod at gmail.com. And if you're enjoying this hot, hot, hot vampire content, that I've been providing you, let me know, because I have a couple other vampire movies I might want to cover.

We'll see. Yep. Maybe one where I have to cross oceans of time to find you. We'll see. No one understood that reference. Yes, they did. They will know it. All right.

Goodbye. It's me, Yamario. Please tell some people. Go to patreon.com slash what went wrong podcast to support what went wrong and gain access to bonus episodes, video content, and more. What Went Wrong is a sad boom podcast. Presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Editing music by David Bowman with cover art from Euthanau. So they just painted his ass crack out?

That's right. Painted out the crack. Painted out the crack. It's me. So they just painted his ass crack out? That's right. Paint it out the crack.