‘Breaking Dawn’: Robert Pattinson cheers ‘Twilight’ director Bill Condon

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Reviews for ‘The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn -- Part 1’ might have been, well, mixed, to put it kindly -- as of Sunday evening, the movie had a 29% fresh rating on the website Rotten Tomatoes. But the film’s director, Bill Condon, has at least one very prominent supporter: the movie’s star Robert Pattinson.

The 25-year-old English actor, who plays Edward Cullen in the series, had nothing but kind words for Condon, the fourth director to sign on for a ‘Twilight’ film and the man who will conclude the saga next year when ‘Breaking Dawn -- Part 2’ is released. He said he appreciated what the filmmaker was up against: a tonally challenging narrative, a special-effects-intensive production and pressure to meet outsize fan expectations for the first half of the finale of the franchise adapted from author Stephenie Meyer’s bestselling vampire romance novels.

‘It was a massive undertaking, much bigger budgets and huge expectations, since it was the last one in the series,’ Pattinson said of the production. ‘There was much more pressure than the last one.’

Pattinson said he felt that Condon had a point of view with the film -- Condon told The Times that he wanted to marry melodrama and horror in telling the story of Edward’s marriage to Bella (Kristen Stewart) and the fallout from the unplanned pregnancy that happens soon after. The actor also enjoyed Condon’s humor, which showed up both on-screen and off.

‘It’s very easy to become cynical about stuff, especially where you are doing five movies in the series,’ Pattinson said. ‘It’s a very sentimental story in a lot of ways, and I’m an incredibly cynical person. Bill would always have a great explanation for why it’s not ridiculous and it’s not corny. It was great to have someone on set who could convince me of those things.’

Pattinson said that from the beginning, the shoot was a challenge. The six-month filming schedule for both parts of ‘Breaking Dawn’ kicked off in Brazil, where Pattinson said ‘everything went wrong.’

‘Just the fact that he didn’t get overwhelmed within two seconds was a big deal,’ Pattinson said of Condon. ‘We were in Rio [de Janeiro] for one day. Two cameras broke down, a crane broke down and everything was crazy. There was no crowd control, and he stayed perfectly calm. Bill was really thrown in the deep end, and we came up with really nice stuff. It was really pretty and nice.’

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-- Nicole Sperling