Fans of all ages fall victim to ‘Twilight’ conventions
Romantic. Hot. True Love. Obsessed.
When I asked Twi-hards at a recent Twilight convention in Arlington, Va., why they loved the saga, these words came up in every response.
And who can blame them? The plot allows for Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner and the Quileute Wolf Pack* to spend a large portion of the movies with their shirts off wielding rock-hard abs.
*By the end of the Twilight book series, there are 10 shape-shifters in the Quileute Wolf Pack – Jacob Black (Lautner), Sam Uley (Chaske Spencer) , Embry Call (Kiowa Gordon), Quil Ateara (Tyson Houseman), Seth Clearwater (Booboo Stewart), Jared Cameron (Bronson Pelletier, pictured above), Paul Lahote (Alex Meraz), Collin Littlesea and Brady Fuller. The pack has one female member, Leah Clearwater (Julia Jones), Seth’s sister, who manages to stay covered up in the books.
For Taylor Robeson, 14, of Fairfax, Va., Edward Cullen (Pattinson) was her favorite character until the movies came out. That’s when she had to switch to Team Jacob (Lautner). “Because of the abs,” says her friend and classmate, Nina Lucas. “Yeah. When his shirt’s off,” they agree, giggling.
The Official Twilight Convention Tour — featuring live Q&As with the actors, photo ops, autographs, karaoke, a monster ball, and a costume contest — will travel around the country for another year bringing Twi-hard fans everywhere their fix of vampires and werewolves. In the meantime, there are movies to flock to: the first part of Twilight: Breaking Dawn is released in theaters Nov. 18, with the final chapter out a year later.
Read below for more of my experiences from my Twilight convention, including interviews with two Twilight stars.
His wife Maggie Gyllenhaal dated Batman (and Two-Face!) in The Dark Knight, and Peter Sarsgaard follows her lead into superhero movie waters, playing the villain Hector Hammond in Green Lantern. “Now I guess its my turn, although I didn’t do much kissing,” Sarsgaard quips. He’s a biologist and a university professor, Sarsgaard says, “but in his private time he’s quite interested in extremophiles. Extreme violence on earth is the way to understand creatures that live on another planet. There’s a fine line there between science and wishful thinking.” And after he comes in contact with a meteor, he gains powers and a really huge brain. Check out a clip below of Sarsgaard explaining some of the inspiration behind his portrayal of Hammond.
It’s not shocking to see Nathan Fillion, the Castle star who’s an object of affection for geek girls everywhere, clad in a Green Lantern shirt. At Comic-Con, he is among his people, Fillion says. And those are the same people who campaigned to have Fillion star in the new Green Lantern movie, a role that went to his co-star from the late-1990s sitcom Two Guys and a Girl, Ryan Reynolds. “I’m wearing the shirt to embrace that idea,” Fillion says of fans’ ongoing passion for him to play a big-screen superhero (he does star in the upcoming superhero flick Super, playing the Holy Avenger). “But Ryan Reynolds is an excellent choice. I’ve got to say it. Anything extraordinary, you have to approach it with honesty. And that’s something Ryan Reynolds has always been able to do. From the moment I met him on Two Guys and a Girl, with the out-of-bounds kind of reality that his character had — Berg was always a little bit out of his mind – he always approached it with an honest reality.” I also told Fillion that it’s a good thing he didn’t wear an Ant-Man shirt, since there were already rumors swirling that he’d be joining old friend Joss Whedon’s The Avengers movie as the shrinking hero. “It’s too small!” he quips.
