14 DAY TRIAL // One of the biggest and most ardent questions fans of “The Twilight Saga” had as regards the second film in the franchise, “New Moon,” was how director Chris Weitz would tackle the issue of Edward Cullen’s absence from the story. A while back, it was announced that the movie would not, under any circumstances, be Pattinson-less. This aside, Weitz is now ready to offer more details on the upcoming flick.
Sitting down with MTV, the director says that all the hype surrounding “New Moon” will hopefully be completely justified, as the entire cast put in a lot of effort to make it something that fans would enjoy and, at the same time, not be disappointed by. The idea is, of course, that “New Moon” has to meet a lot of expectations, both in terms of being a sequel to “Twilight” and in light of Stephenie Meyer’s book. However, Weitz admits, one stepping stone was knowing how to insert Pattinson’s character throughout the film.
“[We wanted to avoid] just randomly inserting Rob throughout the movie in a back-at-the-ranch sort of way, which would just be about box office and us being worried about whether people would deal with the darkness of the second book. People are actually very ready for [the dark] aspect of it. What we basically did was to take the aural hallucinations that Bella has of Edward and turn them into visual hallucinations. But I wanted to do them very subtly.” Weitz shares, adding that “New Moon” will ultimately portray “someone’s presence as absence.”
In order to keep up with Meyer’s second book, the director explains, he chose to have as much of Robert as possible (not to anger the fans, he jokes), but without making him as a character on his own. What audiences will see of Pattinson in November, when the film comes out, will be Edward through Bella’s eyes, just like in Meyer’s novel. Another significant detail is that the film will also include the dreams that Bella has with her vampire lover, which, again, means more onscreen time for Pattinson.
As for one of the biggest scenes in the novel, the one where Bella goes cliff-diving all alone, Weitz says that will certainly match fans’ mental picture of it. “It’s a hybrid – a reallocation of mapping the texture of real locations onto green screen and creating computer models of real locations. We needed to create just the right kind of stormy weather, so there’s a lot of CG water and waves, which we combined with pool work that we did with Kristen. And so, eventually, it looks like a scene with a real location, but in order to get the kind of pinpoint control that you want to accurately represent what’s in the book, you need to employ the very best that you can in terms of CGI.” Weitz reveals.
For the full interview with MTV, please see here.