comic-con 2011

Breaking News from the Twilight Panel: Robert Pattinson’s Back Muscles are Impressive

Photo: Michael Buckner/2011 Getty Images
Photo: Michael Buckner/2011 Getty Images

The woman from the audience had a question. Well, not really a question. More of a statement.

“Rob, I was very pleasantly surprised by your back muscles in the trailer,” she said.

On the dais in Hall H, Kristen Stewart turned to an embarrassed Robert Pattinson. “I told you!” she laughed.

But the woman from the audience wasn’t finished: “I think I speak for all of us” — the audience assembled for the Twilight: Breaking Dawn panel at Comic-Con — “when I say nom-nom-nom.” Indeed.

Today was Twilight’s first time back at Comic-Con since Stewart, Pattinson, and Taylor Lautner came to San Diego with the first sequel, New Moon, and the audience was just as devoted this go-round, with many fans having camped out for days to get into the panel. (Not that it took a toll on their excited screaming.)

What did we learn? A couple things:

- Kristen Stewart has gotten pretty good at this press thing! Known for hemming and hawing during most Q&As and looking like she’d rather be anywhere but there, Stewart was so spirited and talkative today that she prefaced one interruption of Lautner with, “Not to be too talkative — I’m usually not like this — but …” The actress enthusiastically discussed Breaking Dawn’s famous birth scene, promising, “We definitely tried to go as hardcore as we could,” but when the questions turned fluffier, she was just as game. After one unlikely Twilight fan (a blond surfer dude … who knew?) asked Pattinson and Lautner what it was like to work with such beautiful women, the two actors stumbled over their responses before Stewart took a look at her co-stars and expertly deadpanned, “It’s weird that we’re all so hot,” earning the biggest laugh of the panel.

- But she’s not too polished. Asked about the end of the franchise, Stewart said, “I’m so goddamn nostalgic,” before gasping, covering her mouth, and apologizing. “There are little ones in the audience,” she said. “I’m so sorry.” (It’s okay, K-Stew. Even the children have unnerving Dexter lanyards attached to their badges.)

- Breaking Dawn features a hilarious sex-preparation montage! One of the clips shown at the panel featured Edward (dressed like a banker on his lunch hour) and Bella (in a white dress cinched with a tiny Michelle Obama belt) entering their honeymoon suite for the first time (and as they approached the bed, squealing fans screamed out loud, “Bring on the feathers!” referencing the pillow-bursting sex scene to come). Still, Bella’s not ready to give up her V-card just yet. “I could use a few human minutes,” she tells Edward, before departing to the bathroom to worriedly shave her legs, brush her teeth and her hair, and rifle through sexy underwear to the tune of upbeat chick rock.

- Director Bill Condon said that in a new sequence that wasn’t in the book, an ailing, birthing Bella will need more vampire blood. He then promised that we were about to watch the clip of said sequence, but it was just Jacob looking all sad about the situation and vowing to his fellow wolves that he’ll destroy Bella’s new vamp-baby. Boo!

- Brazilian honeymoons aren’t all they’re cracked up to be: Though they shot the Twilight honeymoon in South America, the actors had to contend with moody, rainy weather. “It was kind of like having a honeymoon in England,” moaned Pattinson. “We were playing board games inside instead of making love on the beach.”

Breaking News from the Twilight Panel: Robert Pattinson’s Back Muscles are Impressive