Why was Renesmee as a baby made of CGI?

In 2012, “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 2” hit theaters. The feature film, which closed the Twilight film franchise, was highly anticipated by fans, however, what no one expected was that the CGI used in the film would be so resonated on social networks.

In production, we can see for the first time Renesmee, the daughter of Bella and Edward. The girl was half human and half vampire, so she was no ordinary baby. Despite having all the physiognomy of a human child, she was mentally more mature than other babies – and the film needed to convey this to the audience.

Thus, it was decided that Renesmee’s face would be done with visual effects, so that it could pass the look of a more mature newborn. However, the CGI did not match the rest of the child’s body, which made the girl skittish on the big screen. Check out!

And things could have been even worse! The decision to use CGI was only made after the production tried to use a mechanical puppet that was so scary that it was dubbed “Chuckesmee” backstage. The mechanism weighed 27kg, and two production members, who stayed on the floor, next to the actors, commanded the movements, just like a puppet. In the end, the actors weren’t comfortable with that baby at all.

The doll was only revealed to the public in an extra feature of the franchise, where it showed some of the backstage of the films based on the works of Stephenie Meyer. According to The Guardian, the producer Wyck Godfrey revealed that Chuckesmee was “one of the most terrifying animatronic babies never seen on film”.

Despite Chuckesmee being left out of the story, the use of CGI almost ruined the feature. That’s because when people left the cinema, they didn’t comment on the plot of the final chapter of the saga, but on the poor quality visual effect. Furthermore, any scene in which the computerized baby appeared, it took the focus off the moment, distracting viewers from the narrative.

When Renesmee stops being a baby — which happens quickly, since she is a hybrid —, the character was played by the actress Mackenzie Foywho was 11 at the time.

twilight series

In April, Lionsgate announced that it will remake the Twilight saga in series format. One of the main goals of retelling this story from scratch is to be able to approach it with new narrative elements and new visual effects. It is likely that the baby Renesmee is not an electronic doll or made of a CGI of dubious quality.