Behind Edward’s Wings

I just watched Twilight for the fourth time, and finally noticed how beautiful Edward looks with angel wings in the lab scene thanks to a prop sitting right behind him. I thought the effect was too perfect to be mere coincidence, and apparently I wasn’t the only one who noticed. Britten from Feyavanya’s Thoughts spotted the owl behind Edward, and decided to ask Catherine Hardwicke what that was all about in a live online chat. Her response?

“Okay, the set decorator came and she had all these cool birds, you see all birds in the scene and an armadillo, the Texas state animal, you know, I am a Texan. Anyway I saw that owl and I remembered there was a beautiful art exposition one time where an artist took a photograph of ashes in the snow and nothing else and while the artist took the picture an eagle was flying by and the photograph was taken at the same time (snaps fingers), it was really cool with the wings right behind it, so when I saw that owl and I thought this could be kind of cool, so we worked it around.”

Honestly, I wish she would’ve gotten a little deeper here. Besides being a cool effect, she could’ve gone into details about why do this particular effect in this particular scene.

When I saw the wings on Edward, I immediately thought of Claire Danes in “Romeo and Juliet” when she’s dressed as an angel, so could that have been a source of inspiration for Hardwicke? After all Edward and Bella have been  compared to a Romeo and Juliet many times before.