Even though they include sparkling vampires and a problematic romance, the horrifying Twilight Baby remains the franchise’s most infamous hit. Adapted from Stephanie Meyer’s latest novel in the book series, Breaking down was divided into two parts. At this point in the saga, Belle is a vampire, she and Edward are a couple, and they have a child on the way. Twilight: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 Begins after Bella gives birth to a half-mortal half-vampire baby, Renesemee.
Renesmee’s introduction was one to remember. It wasn’t because Bella was meeting her daughter for the first time, but because the movie used a CGI baby instead of a real one. Renesmee Cullen is not a normal child. As a half-mortal half-vampire being, the Twilight Baby grew rapidly and could speak seven days after she was born. The crew of Breaking down Knowing that they have to show an already grown baby even if it is a baby and opted for digital effects. However, the baby Renesmee they created with CGI was the least human-looking thing in it Twilight Franchise.
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Why CGI Renesmee was so uncomfortable
The Twilight Baby is straight from Uncanny Valley
The result was a CGI Twilight Baby that couldn’t do the trick when the film was originally released (and even less so now). Most audiences agree that the Twilight The baby is quite restless because her facial expressions do not correspond to the preconceived idea of ​​what a baby looks like. In many ways, what the CGI Renesmee created was an example of the uncanny valley, an effect that occurs in film when CGI or animated characters appear just human enough to uncomfortable audiences with very subtle differences.
And yet, bonus materials released with the box set version of the films reveal that Renesmee could have looked a lot worse. A behind-the-scenes featurette included in Twilight Forever revealed what the CGI Renesmee originally looked like, and it was so bad that the production crew named it “Chuckesmee,” thinking it resembled the Chucky doll Play child’s play. This version was a mechanical doll, but the actors could not stand to act comfortably around it during scenes.
Doll Producer Wyck Godfrey said (by The Guardian) that Chuckesmee was “One of the most terrifying animatronic babies to ever be seen on film.“They decided to go with CGI instead, as they were trying to”Create something that was otherworldly,And she had toBe intelligent still look like a baby but actually look like a more mature baby.“
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How the Twilight Baby was created
The VFX team looked to Kirsten Stewart and other places for inspiration
While the animatronics Twilight The baby is reportedly horrifying, the CGI baby Renesmee also looked wrong in every way. However, the production team did what it needed to do to get a CGI Twilight Baby on the screen at the last minute after the original plans failed. The team that created Renesmee was Lola VFX, and it was a complex process to create this baby. The eyes were inspired by Kristen Stewart’s eyes from photos of her as a baby. The team also created the older version as a teenager using the same tech used to help find missing children.
However, it didn’t look quite right. Even with Stewart and young actor Mackenzie Foy as inspiration, it never quite worked out. This is no shocker in the history of creating CGI characters on the big screen. In recent movies vi Captain Marvel And Indiana Jones and the Dial of DestinyCGI was used to de-age Samuel L. Jackson and Harrison Ford, and it looked very realistic.
But, go back to Terminator: Salvation And there were many complaints about how fake Arnold Schwarzenegger looked in the movie when created by CGI. That was just two years earlier Breaking downAnd it showed The technology isn’t quite up to the task yet. In the decade since Breaking downTechnology has made leaps and bounds, so it can work now.
Why the Twilight Baby nearly ruined the movie
It was the biggest talking point
The Twilight Baby came dangerously close to ruining Breaking down Since it was all people could talk after the movie was over. CGI is a wonderful tool that can easily go wrong, as technology can make or break movies by stranding its subjects deep in the dreaded Uncanny Valley. The Uncanny Valley is exactly where the CGI Renesmee satAs audience members were in shock and awe that something resembling Renesmee could make it into a franchise as popular as Twilight.
The main problem with the baby is that it pulls focus from the rest of the story. Every scene a CGI Renesmee was in was completely dominated by her creepy, unblinking presence, and all dramatic and narrative points of importance were completely overshadowed when the Twilight Baby was around, sending audience members into either hysterical laughter or sheer terror. Breaking down is designed to shut out the Twilight timeline, and the creepy baby did nothing but distract from the conclusion, five movies in the making.
There were a lot of features that the crew wanted Twilight Baby to have – so much so that the overabundance of CGI effects only made her look too unrealistic, disturbing and even a little nightmare-inducing. In the end, Renesmee was A valuable lesson in how to create CGI characters. TwilightRenesmee Baby’s strange CGI will forever be remembered for how bad it looked, dating the film’s poor use of technology from day one. But, surprisingly, the initial animatronic was worse.
Lionsgate needs to take a different approach to Renesmee in the Twilight TV series
Today’s technology should help
It was announced in April 2023 that Lionsgate was rebooting Twilight Like a TV series. The new project will be completely unrelated to the movies and tell the story of the Twilight Novels from scratch. It has an opportunity to deal with a lot of narrative and visual elements differently. One aspect of the US Twilight Movies the reboot show should approach differently is the Twilight Baby. If the series reaches the end, it is No reason Renesmee should be a CGI baby Or an animatronic doll.
Despite Renesmee’s difference from normal babies, with heavy special effects to represent a human-looking baby he throws the audience too far into the invisible valley. However, it’s not just the CGI baby that’s problematic when it comes to Renesmee The Twilight Saga. The Twilight Books have not been free of their own controversy, with many romantic relationships between its characters at the center. A key Twilight The older relationship is that between Renesmee and Jacob – Bella’s former almost lover.
The imprinting element of between, And what it means for Renesmee and Jacob is incredibly problematic even when rationalized by the lore. That underpins his world of werewolves and vampires. Outside the obvious change for the Twilight Baby, Lionsgate might consider overhauling her character and her place in the Twilight Narrative, in its entirety.
Which was worse, the CGI Twilight baby or the fake American Sniper baby?
Renesmee is not the only weird child of modern cinema
While Bella and Edward’s CGI baby in 2012 Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2 It was something of a laugh when the film was released, it is not the only notorious child of the 2010s cinema. In fact, Renesmee only had two years before she would face competition for being the most hilarious misrepresentation of a baby on the big screen. In 2014, Clint Eastwood’s action movie American sniper Released, and it also started making headlines for a particularly hilarious scene with a newborn.
The baby in American sniper Only shown in one scene, but it was so bad and jarring that according to many reports, members of the audience were actually laughing out loud – not the response Eastwood was going for with his grim war biopic. The baby in American sniper Also makes it somewhat easy to forgive the team responsible for CGI Renesmee in Twilight. The baby in Breaking Down Part 2 Was inarguably bad, but at least effort was made in its creation. The baby in American sniper Was literally just a plastic doll.
The scene with the baby in American sniper Is so jarring and off-putting that it’s really surprising the sequence made it into the final cut. Seeing Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller manipulate a plastic baby arm while pretending the stiff package contained a real person was comical, and completely juxtaposed the tone of the rest of the movie.
Considering how little of the baby is actually shown, the American sniper Creative team could have opted to use CGI to represent it without risking another Twilight Baby Fiasco. Instead, they simply left the scene as shot, with Miller and Cooper passing a prop baby between them. It is an oversight that has damaged the response american sniper, And it would be unfair on those Twilight Movies to claim the CGI baby is worse.
It must be noted that using a prop baby was not Clint Eastwood’s original plan American sniper. Two real babies are due to be on set, however Producer Jason Hall revealed in a since-deleted tweet (by The Independent) that one did not show up, and the other had a fever. The doll was used in their place, although the scene was not digitally altered during the final cut of American sniper Was edited remains a mystery. So, while the CGI Twilight Baby is unnerving and comically awkward to look at, it’s not the worst fake baby in a 21st century film.