‘Twilight’ Fans Missed Out on 1 Sweet Bella-Jacob Scene Because of Makeup Issues
There are plenty of reasons why the Twilight movies are so popular. One is certainly the fact that the films were so faithful to the eponymous books. From author Stephenie Meyer, Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn were all bestsellers. And they ensured that the five films would have a massive built-in audience eager to see the characters brought to life. But not every part of the book translated well on screen.
The ‘Twilight’ movies weren’t always faithful to the books
Although Meyer didn’t become a producer and screenwriter on the Twilight movies until the later films, she had a lot of influence on them. The original production company that purchased the rights to Twilight planned to change her story in a drastic way. So she did everything she could to make sure Summit Entertainment (the company that eventually produced and distributed the blockbuster films) stayed true to her books.
Of course, Meyer couldn’t always ensure that the Twilight movies covered every detail she thought was important from the books. Often, she had to make peace with the fact that there simply wasn’t enough time to show all the important plot points from the books. Other times, the author disagreed with how the characters were behaving, but the filmmakers overruled her. And occasionally technology stopped her story from being fully realized on film.
This scene between Bella Swan and Jacob Black didn’t make the cut
One sweet scene that ultimately landed on the cutting room floor due to technology featured Bella Swan and Jacob Black growing old together.
Fans of the Twilight books will recall that in Eclipse, Bella has a vision of a potential life with her best friend, Jacob. This occurs when they kiss on the mountain right before the fight with the newborn vampires begins.
In the vision, Bella imagines herself growing old with the werewolf and having kids. The latter was something she thought she could never have with her then-fiancé, Edward.
Why the scene of Bella and Jacob growing old got deleted
Although the scene never made it into the movies, the actors did film it. However, the prosthetic makeup that aged Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner (the actors who portrayed Bella Swan and Jacob Black in the Twilight movies) looked so terrible that the scene landed on the chopping block.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, David Slade, who directed Eclipse, got candid about the deleted scene.
“There were a lot of issues with prosthetic makeup,” Slade said. “It gives me a bit of a shiver, as a filmmaker. As an idea, it was wonderful. What happens with a film is it becomes organic and it grows, and it tells you what it wants, and it was screaming loudly, ‘I don’t want that!’ to me.” We’re sure that Twilight fans who were Team Jacob are sad that they never got to see the scene on screen. But it’s likely for the best that the scene exists only in Meyer’s book and in the imagination of loyal fans.
