What Sofia Coppola’s ‘Twilight’ could have looked like
Unless 2009 didn’t happen to you, you can surely remember the chokehold the Twilight franchise had on the world – whether you were Team Edward, Team Jacob or simply did not care, there was no escaping the obsession. However, the dramatic ending of the saga could have looked very different. Famed director Sofia Coppola admitted in a recent interview that, at one point, she was considered to take the reins on the project (oh, what could have been).
“We had one meeting and it never went anywhere, I thought the whole imprinting-werewolf thing was weird,” Coppola told Rolling Stone. “The baby. Too weird! But part of the earlier Twilight could be done in an interesting way. I thought it’d be fun to do a teen vampire romance, but the last one gets really far out.”
Twilight may be a cult favourite for many, (who could forget that dramatic blue tint that hangs over the movie?) but as the saga progressed and we were introduced to the CGI nightmare fuel that is baby Renesmee, the franchise went off the rails to a point where even Coppola’s directorial greatness couldn’t have saved its downfall.
However, if the filmmaker did takeover, we wonder if she would continue that infamous blue tint or would she take on a more Coppola-esque colour grading – perhaps reminiscent of the soft, slightly hazy grade of Lost in Translation or the gaudy pastels present in The Virgin Suicides. Similarly, perhaps we would have been treated with those signature lingering shots synonymous with Coppola – a sweeping shot of Bella’s trademark grey hoodie tossed on the floor comes to mind.
And of course, it wouldn’t be a Coppola classic without a killer soundtrack (not saying that Decode by Paramore for the original Twilight soundtrack isn’t a bop), think along the lines of Marie Antoinette getting ready whilst Siouxsie and The Banshees’ Hong Kong Garden fills the palace. Or Scarlett Johansson’s character Charlotte gazing longfully out of a Tokyo taxi window as My Bloody Valentine’s Sometimes soundtracks the main character moment.
And when it comes to Bella Swan, the character could’ve fit the bill of the badass female leads we’ve seen amongst Coppola’s filmography – think, the Lisbon sisters in The Virgin Suicides or even Marie Antoinette. As Swan gets herself swept up in a strange love triangle with the hunky werewolf and a melodramatic emo vampire, we can’t help but imagine what cinematic nuances Coppola would bring to the melancholic, sad girl and her supernatural paramours.
Maybe we’d even see an appearance from Coppola’s muses with a fanged Kirsten Dunst, or better yet, a bloodthirsty Bill Murray? One can always dream. Either way, it is a big shame we never got to see what Coppola’s mind could have envisioned for the dramatic finale of the hit saga.
