Twilight New Moon: 3 Weird Facts Only Real Fans Know
It is a truth universally acknowledged that the "Twilight" movies are... kind of wild. Criticized at the time for being shallow and marketed exclusively to teenage girls, the "Twilight" film franchise gifted the world with two of the best actors working today — leads Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, who play Bella Swan and Edward Cullen, respectively — and it keeps gaining fans as new generations discover the four films, each of which is based on the original series of novels by Stephenie Meyer.
After Catherine Hardwicke helmed the first film, "Twilight," director Chris Weitz stepped in to handle the sequel, "New Moon" — which watches as Edward, a vampire who fears for his human girlfriend Bella's safety around his undead family, leaves her behind, believing it's for her own good. Bella, though, slips into numbness and depression, rescued only by her exploits with Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner)... and naturally, he turns out to be a werewolf. On top of all of that, when Bella gets word that Edward is going to put himself in danger on purpose because he thinks she's dead, she has to team up with his family and rescue him.
That's all complicated on its own, but the stuff going on behind the scenes was plenty dramatic as well. From accidental baldness to a water stunt gone wrong, here's three crazy things you didn't know about "Twilight: New Moon."
Nikki Reed wore a wig — because of a horrifying reason
The Cullen family is known for being ethereally beautiful, especially the "children," all of whom were frozen in time when they were turned into vampires by their adoptive father Carlisle Cullen (Peter Facinelli). Perhaps the most beautiful of all is Rosalie (Nikki Reed), whose signature characteristic is her ice-blonde hair. Apparently, though, changing Reed's natural brunette hair to blonde in the first movie was a little too rough on her follicles — and she revealed to MTV News ahead of the release of "New Moon" the reason why she needed a wig for the sequel.
"My hair fell out," she admitted. "It took 36 hours initially to make me blond, and every other day, I was bleaching my head and my skin. This time around, we are testing out different wigs and stuff."
"I really wanted the fans to understand that I was dedicated, and I was going to do whatever I needed to do, even at the expense of going bald," Reed continued, acknowledging that fans might not be thrilled that she was using fake hair. "But it was such a brutal process, plus we have a break in between where I have a couple of other projects. And then I go back to Rosalie. So I don't think I'm bleaching my hair this time. I know how upset everyone is going to be, but [my devotion to Rosalie] is why I did it initially. The goal is for something better, just better, all around better."
Jackson Rathbone took things just a little too far
The Cullen family of vampires regards themselves as "vegetarian," as they restrict themselves and only drink the blood of animals rather than humans. One of their "younger" members, however, has trouble with this because his thirst is just so strong (and remember that the word "younger" is extremely relative here, as this particular vampire fought in the Civil War during his human life). That vampire is Jasper (Jackson Rathbone), and during the birthday party the Cullens throw for Bella in "New Moon," she accidentally cuts her finger... and Jasper loses his cool. According to Rathbone, he actually freaked Stewart out pretty badly on set during that scene.
"Yeah, I was going pretty method," Rathbone told MTV News at TwiCon, a convention for the franchise. "We choreographed it — so I wasn't too worried about attacking Kristen — but I told the guys to hold me back, because you want it to look real. You want it to be as real as possible, because you want that to transfer on film, and you want the audience to feel that frightened sense that I gave Kristen. I felt really bad, man. There was a couple of moments where she was like, "I thought you were going to hit me that time!" I come so close; it's pretty intense." Obviously, Stewart came out unscathed, but Rathbone really went for it in the moment.
The director nixed a death-defying stunt intended for Kristen Stewart
In one pivotal scene in "New Moon," Bella tries cliff-diving — partly because she discovers that whenever she puts her life in danger, she has visions of her lost love Edward. (She's not doing very well at this point in the narrative.) After she hits the water, she nearly drowns and sees Edward in the water with her — and Weitz, aware that Pattinson filmed a lot of water stunts while filming "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," wanted to use a practical effect. As he told Rolling Stone, though, he tried it himself first... and immediately changed his mind.
"In order to get this shot right, we needed to get a top shot of Kristen as Bella sinking down in the ocean," Weitz told the magazine during an interview after the film's release. "The best way to do that is to have Kristen at the bottom of a 12-foot pool weighted down, just sort of floating there immobile. And Kristen was already expressing a bit of concern about deep water, and I told her, '12 feet isn't that deep!' I decided to go down there in a wet suit weighted down and I started to panic."
"I thought, 'Holy crap, this isn't fun at all!'" Weitz admitted. "We adjusted it so we could make our shot sideways and it looks just the same as a top shot. And Kristen had a cold that day, so that was the last thing I was going to do — put someone with a cold at the bottom of a 12-foot pool with weights in their pockets. That didn't seem like a wise move." Ultimately, they decided against making Stewart sink in real time... which feels like it was for the best.