Dear Summit Entertainment,

You have recently announced that the final book in the Twilight Saga Breaking Dawn is to be adapted as a film. There is even the possibility of it being broken up into two films a la Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. As I’m sure you’ve seen around the internet, this is a brilliant idea. It will make you a boatload of money, and you will be able to package and repackage these films every Christmas for pretty much eternity.

There have been other, better writers that have weighed in on why Breaking Dawn should be adapted to film. I don’t want to retread their ground. I won’t get into the story specifics like a werewolf falling in love with a freshly pulled from the womb baby. Or the vampire fang C-Section that leads to said love affair. Or the incredibly violent sex scenes between Edward and Bella. These things are tailor made to be projected on the big screen, and I cannot wait to see Kristen Stewart attempt to play a character whose apparent only goal in life is to die and be reborn a vampire, and to be thrown around and smashed apart as much as possible in the meantime.

No, I’m not going to tell you why I think this movie would be brilliant, and why its a necessity that you make it. You have your own very lucrative reasons. What I would like to point out though is how, for the first time probably ever, you could completely ignore the fans of the series and make even more money out of it.

It’s no secret that only the twi-est of the twi-hards are in love with Breaking Dawn. It’s violent, it’s sadistic, it’s messy, painful, and embarrassingly anticlimactic. They have spent their time and money on the budding and established romance between two characters for the last half decade. And then they get to watch them both tear each other apart. And watch a werewolf fall in love with a bloody pulp of a freshly released humpire. The fans of Twilight don’t need this last chapter told to them. The following is how you can make the final movie in The Twilight Saga as bloodily brilliant as possible, and still make your money.

Eclipse, I believe, is still shooting with David Slade. The last movie ended with the cliffhanger of a wedding. Simply move the marriage of Bella and Edward (Spoiler? Really?) from the beginning of Breaking Dawn to the final scene of Eclipse. End the film with Alice’s precognitions of Bella and Edward’s life together. Show their honeymoon, their married life, and their life with their daughter Renesmee. It ends happily ever after, and all the women who paid to see the film will leave completely happy, satisfied, and willing to purchase the trilogy when it comes to DVD and Blu-ray.

Which leaves you with the ample opportunity to turn Breaking Dawn into a hard-R, disgusting romp that sets its box office sights on the people that hate the Twilight Saga. I can pretty much promise that for every twi-hard, there are two people that cannot stand the fact that this series of books has choked out pop culture for the last two years. Delivering a movie to those people that is exactly faithful to the book would be a marketing stroke of genius.

Storyboards for the (hopeful) Breaking Dawn adaptation.   *credit to Minelaaa

Not only are you guaranteed an opening weekend for the record books from the same people that made the first few films into the phenomenon that it is, you have the added bonus of word of mouth. As more and more people start complaining about how insane and uninhibited the violence is in the movie, you will start seeing the people who would never be caught dead in a Twilight movie queueing up for a ticket. A chance to see a vampire fuck a human into obliviousness? Yes.

Add to the fact that it has become increasingly clear that Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart enjoy playing these roles very little (and given the zero percent depth they have, who can blame them?), and a chance to go ridiculous nuts destroying them would bring a vigor not yet seen in the making of these movies.

Just please, do not bring Chris Weitz back. His influence on New Moon had zero to do with its financial successes. To do Breaking Dawn right, you need someone with an absurd sense of vision and purpose. Someone who is not afraid to get things messy and tell a story on a red-colored set. I am not an internet journalist who thinks he can hire a director as well as a studio can – You won’t be seeing me pimp Jackson and Burton here. Cronenberg maybe (doubtful), but the only hint I will let slip is for whomever is in charge of production to watch a French film called Inside. The two men behind that minor macabre masterpiece know how to mix light, staging, CGI, and gallons of blood to great effect. The budget there was relatively small. Imagine what the outcome would be with the cashflow you’d be able to provide them.

It’s an easy formula: You Fistful of Dollars the audience. On one end, you’re simply providing an entirely accurate portrayal of Stephenie Meyer’s words. On the other hand, you are telling the rational, intelligent people who hate Twilight to come on in – we’re taking the characters you hate and throwing them in a meat grinder for a couple hours. The plan is sheer elegance in its simplicity.

Please Summit. Give us a chance to believe in you. Provide the twi-hards with a trilogy that satiates all of their needs in a tween-romance tied package. And then, give the rest of the world a release. Give us one movie that lets us vicariously rip apart this whole terrible phenomenon. We need blood, and the book gives it to us. All I’m asking is for you to make the movie the book demands. A movie that would make Paul Naschy and Ruggero Deodateo  jealous of its depravity. You can do this. I believe in you. And I’m willing to back it up with a ticket purchase.

Sincerely,

Tom Nix
Editor, The Red Circle.

Share

And maybe this sounds a little farfetched, but it’s those two guys that sell the picture. John Landis made a groundbreaking decision to have David and Jack act like real people who are really best friends. From the first minute they step out of that sheep truck, up to the minute their lives take a turn for the hairy, these guys simply ARE two college kids backpacking in England. There are no “clever” jokes or banter about pop culture. It’s two guys enjoying each others company. Even up to the point where they are being stalked by the werewolf, they react exactly as humans do. Nervously singing out loud* and cursing when that doesn’t work. Questioning one another with questions they don’t have answers to. It’s, in a word, perfect.

It’s so hard to write a “mini” about one of my favorite movies of all time, so I will try to condense this now so that I may take a longer look later on. Everything in this film, from David’s fever dream (within a dream) in the hospital, to the shockingly brutal attacks on the English – the tunnel chase being one of the best examples of tension in modern horror. Let’s not forget the porno theater full of the undead werewolf victims all yelling at David to kill himself so that they can finally rest in peace.

And then there’s the music. The flick is probably just as well known for disincluding Warren Zevon’s ‘Werewolves of London’ as it is for what it does include. Sure, virtually every song choice has the word moon in it, but it all works, especially the legendary transformation scene. Nowadays when a character morphs into a werewolf it’s all guitar metal music or suspenseful chords. Oh, no. Not here.

Set to the staggering soul of Sam Cooke’s “blue Moon,” we get to listen as every inch of passion is sung out of Sam as every inch of flesh, tendon and bone is pulverized within David. A juxtaposition for sure, but one that doesn’t feel like its playing opposites. In keeping with the feel of the whole movie, this feels just perfect.

*I think this is an integral and weird part of human nature. It’s as if, in defense against some unseen or perceived but unacted threat, we begin singing something so happy or ridiculous that it makes our brain create the parallel reality where “Nothing could ever happen right now. We’re singing ‘Just Dance’ and there is no logical reason for anyone to get killed why they are singing Lady GaGa.”

Share