Summit Entertainment released a set of five The Twilight Saga: New Moon Volturi coven images on the web today via MySpace, Moviefone, Examiner, MTV News and Yahoo! Movies (see below).
The images depict Volturi leader Aro (Michael Sheen), Marcus (Christopher Heyerdahl), Caius (Jamie Campbell-Bower), Alec (Cameron Bright) and his twin sister Jane (Dakota Fanning) with hand painted red contact lenses and heavy Photoshop tweaks for that silky smooth promo look.
I’m particularly digging Dakota as Jane. She looks like the misfit and reclusive schoolgirl all the guys find attractive but are afraid to talk to in fear of what she may or may not be capable of. You know, the one the unlikely jock usually ends up with while everyone else look on in amazement.
Along with the images comes a rather lengthy description of the Volturi by director Chris Weitz. He has clearly put a lot of thought into how the coven is to be portrayed in the film.
“No matter how strange one of the characters is in a work of fantasy, I think you have to approach them as people and then so you start to think, ‘They’ve been around for 2,000 years. How would they interact with one another?’ The conclusion was that after 2,000 years you’d probably be more than mildly insane. No matter how cultured or gracious you appear on the surface. And I think that’s what Michael Sheen managed to portray as Aro, the head of the Volturi — on the surface he’s terribly gracious, warm, a wonderful host and at the same time he’s lethal and frightening. It’s also what Dakota Fanning conveys as Jane. She’s innocent looking in appearance but she’s absolutely deadly. The first thing I wanted to do was put them in a setting that wasn’t Dracula’s castle. There have been so many vampire movies and werewolf movies and horror movies where everything has been dark and dreary. Instead, their headquarters is surprisingly light and crisp. And the characters that they play have a kind of a tactile reality to them in spite of how bizarre their situation is really. The whole point is not to leave Forks, Washington where everything has really been quite realistic and then suddenly go to a location that completely throws you out of the movie. And the set although it’s huge and grand and magnificent actually feels like a real place.”
