Twilight Saga producer Wyck Godfrey has revealed how the filmmakers are considering handling Breaking Dawn‘s graphic birth scene, and why 3-D is still an option for the final installment of the franchise. In an interview with FEARnet, Godfrey confirms what Summit said emphatically to EW last month — the movies, to be directed by Bill Condon, will be rated PG-13 so the younger fans of the books can actually see them. Playing along with the idea that he could’ve gone the Cronenberg route, Godfrey joked, “Yeah! Dead Ringers. We should go full on! My wife’s an OB-GYN so we should bring her on set to make sure that if Edward is going to do an oral Cesarean, he really needs to make the proper incision with his teeth.” Then, he shared the anti-gore rational that, I have to admit, makes perfect sense:“I think the one thing that we’ve done that we’ve really done in all the films is keep them very subjective and keep them from Bella’s point of view. So the conversations we’ve had with Bill, is that we’ll try to do something similar here; you’re with Bella’s perspective and her point of view of what’s taking place in the rush around her, as she’s in intense pain. Not so focused, objectively, on her body and his body and that. So I think it’ll be something like that, in terms of trying to make the audience experience and feel the confusion, almost, of what’s happening to her.”
Having us look out from Bella’s eyes could be effective. I know the image of my sister’s horrified face as she told me, “You don’t want to see it” when I got a nasty cut above my eye when I was young and thought it would be fun to tap dance on a coffee table, is still with me. That plan will rely on Condon getting great performances out of his actors (and that ability is one of the reasons Godfrey says the Dreamgirls director was hired, because Kristen Stewart will be exploring adult themes — marriage and motherhood — that are new to her).
When rumors first broke in February that producers were considering going 3-D for Breaking Dawn, 67 percent of readers responding to a PopWatch poll didn’t like the idea. But Godfrey makes a reasonable case for that as well:
“We have considered it, and everything’s being discussed, but I know that part of a way to differentiate the two movies would be to have one be in 2-D, and when she becomes a vampire we move into 3-D. But we haven’t really gotten far enough to decide what we’re going to do. I’m of two minds of it, frankly, and I think everyone is; I don’t want to chase the format if it’s not organic and appropriate. If we think it is, we will.”
