While I was absolutely shocked when the Breaking Dawn Part 2 twist ending initially played out, among comparing and contrasting how the finale plays out, I’ve always found the movie version to be a clever solution to a bit of an anticlimactic ending to a four book series (from a visual standpoint anyway). If the Breaking Dawn ending had been adapted beat by beat, it would be a 20-minute sequence of vampires initially talking in a field (it was a 68-page showdown in the novel).
Apparently Stephenie Meyer knew this about her ending, too, and even debated whether to give the rights to Summit to make a movie for this reason. Per screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg to Buzzfeed:
Before I signed on, and before Stephenie had even given the rights to Summit to do the fourth book – she was debating whether she wanted to give them the rights, because she knew you couldn’t do that ending. She knew that it wasn’t cinematic. But she was afraid it would turn into something that wasn’t the book. That it would have to be so altered in order to be cinematic that she wouldn’t want to do it.
Can you imagine if the Twilight saga had just ended with Eclipse? The fans needed an ending, and luckily Rosenberg met with Meyer about a new ending.
Then, Meyer And Twilight’s Screenwriter Thought Of A New Ending To The Saga Together
In the same interview, Melissa Rosenberg shared that she and Stephenie Meyer “both came up” with the twist ending together. Here’s how it came about:
We were up here in Vancouver having a steak dinner, just socially, it wasn’t a work dinner. And we started talking about it, and neither one of us can remember whose idea it was to do this for the ending? It may have been her, she may have said, I have a terrible idea. Not so terrible! I started getting really excited about it. It was at that moment we realized that was the solution to it.
Isn’t it neat that Stephenie Meyer was so involved? I really love when changes made in movie versions of books get the go ahead by authors, because sometimes even they have they want to update the source material. Especially for the film medium. Director Bill Condon said this to Vulture about the alterations:
The reason why I think it works is that it’s within the universe of what Stephenie created, and it could as well have been the way it went down in that book, you know? You understand why she wouldn’t have spent all that time writing a battle, but again, it honors the ultimate outcome.
It’s a great point, because Stephenie Meyer wasn’t really the “writing battles” type, but from a movie standpoint, it was awesome to see vampires and werewolves in action.
The Filmmakers Had A Blast Crafting The Battle… And Deciding Who To Kill First
Once Meyer, Rosenberg and Condon were all on board for the twist, it was time to craft the scene. Check out what the director also told Vulture about how it all started for him:
When I got involved, it was just a sentence, ‘There’s a battle.’ But then it was fun to actually come up with it. That was, I would say, the biggest thing I worked on for two years. [The most fun part was] deciding who to kill!
Going back to Melissa Rosenberg’s Buzzfeed interview at the time, she was the one who decided it would be Carlisle who would get the first “death”. In her words:
My approach to it was the very first person who’s killed in the vision has to be someone who incites the war. Who is the most impactful to die? And that was Carlisle. The minute he’s dead, the minute he’s set on fire, the entire band launches into it. I tried to kill a bunch of people. There are a couple of choices: who’s going to die, how are they going to die, and who’s going to kill the bad guys. I had a much longer sequence initially. Everyone was dying. It just became unwieldy and slowed the pace down. I know I sat there first and just killed people.
What a fun job for Rosenberg. Condon also offered more insight on who was on the chopping block when they were creating the shocking sequence:
Obviously, all the bad guys get wiped out and that’s satisfying, but as for the good guys, I think the first one I wanted to kill was Seth. The idea of using that pain on an animal, I think that’s more powerful because we’ve seen Jane do that to other creatures before, other vampires and humans. And then the ones you don’t expect like Carlisle and Jasper, you know, those were the ones that would have the biggest ‘oomph’ and surprise.
Even though Meyer originally signed on to the idea, she did have some thoughts about who would die in the vision. Bringing us to this next point.
