San Diego Comic Con gave Twilight fans a chance to meet the actors bringing their favorite vampire book to life. The cast of Catherine Hardwicke‘s adaptation of Stephanie Meyer’s book showed some scenes and took questions from fans packed into the 6,500 seat Hall H. We grabbed Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner, the two leading men of the film, before they got swarmed by their adorers.
Meet Edward Cullen and Jacob Black
Robert Pattinson: “I play Edward Cullen in Twilight, who’s the kind of semi-reluctant vampire. He’s 108 years old, maybe 109 this year I think. He’s stuck in the body of 17-year-old school kid pretending to be a human. He’s a semi-reluctant vampire, pretty much 100 years, he wants to either die or become a human again. Then he meets what becomes the love of his life who’s a mortal girl called Bella. He falls in love with her. The story is the problems, the trials and tribulations which occur when a vampire falls in love with a normal girl who he wants to kill all the time.”
Taylor Lautner: “I’m not a vampire. I’m not a werewolf yet. Eventually I will be. No, in the first book, Twilight, I’m a native American, part of the Quileute tribe. I’m a family friend of the Swans and I’ve got a pretty stinkin’ big crush on Bella.”
Support Your Local Monster
Robert Pattinson: “I try to be nice to people and stuff but not really. That’s kind of what a lot of the story is about, Edward deciding to go against his kind of base instincts. He knows he’s a vampire and he knows what vampires do is go around killing people. That’s kind of the whole point in being a vampire. Denying that, it’s kind of boring. The other thing as well, the Cullens don’t act like superheroes at all which is really strange. They have all these super powers and they don’t go around helping people or saving anyone. They just want to have as normal life as possible. Literally I save Bella’s life and I could have saved some other people’s lives and I just don’t.”
Taylor Lautner: “Edward? Who’s Edward? Is there an Edward character in the book? I’m just kidding. You know, in the first movie, Jacob’s hot. Just one, Jacob is hot. Literally, but Jacob, he won’t live forever. You have people that say that’s cool to live forever but he’s more humanlike than Edward. I guess with the first movie or the first book, you don’t really know much. You just know that he’s this really happy go-lucky guy who just is in love with Bella. That’s all we know so far.”
A Faithful Adaptation of the Book
Robert Pattinson: “I mean, it’s completely [faithful]. The only difference is the action scenes aren’t really in the book because the book’s written from Bella’s perspective, and most of the time she’s either unconscious or everybody’s moving too quickly so they don’t know what’s going on. All the action stuff is put in so you can see it.”
Taylor Lautner: “I think the movie is very close to what the book is so that’s the answer.”
Reading the Books
Robert Pattinson: “I read them after my screen test. I’d never even heard of them before. Then we were doing the movie and it kind of got exponentially bigger and bigger and bigger and everybody knew about it, so it was kind of strange, unexpected.”
Taylor Lautner: “While I filmed Twilight, I wanted to focus on the book Twilight so I read Twilight before filming, and then when I got done filming Twilight, I started reading the second and third.”
The Weather in Oregon
Robert Pattinson: “Oregon has the strangest weather stuff that happens, especially in the spring when we were shooting. It would be like sunny, snowing, raining and hailing at exactly the same time. Though it could be raining, there’d be no clouds in the sky and stuff. I don’t know, it was like fake weather.”
Taylor Lautner: “Yeah, the weather was probably the hardest thing by far.”
Experiencing the Twilight Phenomenon
Robert Pattinson: “It’s bizarre. You kind of know that it is essentially the book. The book has so many obsessive, obsessively loyal fans. It’s strange because people just immediately relate you to the character right away rather than you as an actor. Everybody hated me at the beginning, universally. It is kind of weird. When you read the description of him, it says he’s so beautiful it hurts to look at him. I think it’s kind of difficult to act that so I wouldn’t really know how to go about doing it. I hope there’s been a lot of post production.”
Taylor Lautner: “I’m not online crazy 24-7 but I run across things sometimes. It’s weird. It’s weird to see shirts that say Team Taylor on them and other materials of clothing. Definitely it’s very surprising but at the same time it’s not because the fans behind it just are extraordinary so the fans are driving this thing and the storyline’s awesome. It’s got everything in it so it’s going to be interesting to see on the big screen.”
Twilight Action Figures
Robert Pattinson: “I like the doll. The doll is cool. That’s what I really want. I want to have a little button in the back so you can do stuff. I’m looking forward to the doll more than the poster.”
Taylor Lautner: “I’ve had an action figure before and it was weird, for Shark Boy and Lava Girl. They had action figures at McDonalds and Target. It was definitely weird. We have a couple. We have a couple saved because you never knew that it would happen again but look how lucky I am.”
Edward and Jacob at Comic Con
Robert Pattinson: “It is my first experience at Comic Con. I mean, I’m kind of terrified. They said there’s like 6,000 people.”
Taylor Lautner: “I’ve never been to Comic Con before so it’ll be fun. I just actually got here like 15 minutes ago and the second I got out of the car, ‘Taylor! Taylor!'”
Twilight opens in theaters December 12, 2008
