Friday, January 9, 2009

Lautner Returns as Jacob: CG to Provide Male Enhancement

Well, this is likely to be a pessimistic post. One, because my plans to go see Twilight again in the theater tonight were thwarted by old man winter. Enough already! Bring on spring.

But mainly because it's confirmed that Taylor Lautner will indeed be back as Jacob Black in New Moon. I feel like this was a selfish and stupid decision, in part made by Summit, but also by Chris Weitz. Chris Weitz, in case you don't already know, is the guy who took over the reigns of directing the Twilight saga from Catherine Hardwicke.

This gives me another reason to doubt Summit's ability to make rational decisions. It's like they want future Twilight films to fail. They've repeatedly done stupid things:

1. Fired Catherine Hardwicke
2. Decided to only bump up production moneys for New Moon to $50 million, just barely more than the shoe string budget they allotted for Twilight. Even though New Moon will require extensive CG effects for werewolf transitions, site shoots (in Italy, no less!), cast additions (Volturi, anyone? HELLO.), more spectacular vampire stuff and lastly the freaking cost of digitally turning Taylor Lautner into something he clearly IS NOT; a feasible Jacob Black. Which brings me to the last dumb thing:
3. Brought Taylor Lautner back as Jacob. Fans are familiar with his face already. SO WHAT. If you remember right, A LOT of fans didn't want Robert Pattinson to play Edward. So, fans don't always know best and can be fickle. I mean, the same fans that said Robert had a gargoyle's face are now adoringly sighing his name on message boards.

Since Summit is throwing away most of the budget on uber sizing Taylor to pretend that he has any assemblance with the maturing Jacob Black, they might as well throw some money into making Kristen Stewart's acting believable. Let's face it, it's kind of uncomfortable watching all her twitching, eye rolling and stuttering.

One thing you can bet on, since Summit is being stingy with the cash to make New Moon, somewhere quality is going to suffer. Especially since a goodly amount of money will be allotted to correcting the glaring mismatch of Lautner as Jacob. They plan to resize him in every scene (ala Hagrid in the Harry Potter films). Let's remember just what a big part Jacob plays in New Moon. That's a lot of male enhancement!

One thing that will be in the forefront of my mind while I'm watching New Moon is that Taylor is not real. That he's just a little guy trying to fill the shoes of my big old Jacob. I hate it! I want a real man to step into the role.

Perhaps the crappiest thing of all is that when New Moon doesn't do as well, Summit will blame it on Edward not being present through a large part of the story. When the truth is if they'd went about making the movie smartly New Moon would be even greater than Twilight is.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

They should have casted Steven Strait for the role. I highly agree with you. A kid should not be filling a man's role. It should stay true to the book and it would be less costly than the CG.