From the looks of it, Henry Cavill is going to make a great Superman. Especially in the abdominal area.
But the Brit actually said staying in shape for the physically demanding roles in Immortals was a major challenge for him and the entire cast--except for Kellan Lutz, of course.
"Kellan, obviously, is always in shape," he said, gesturing to Lutz, who joined Cavill, Freida Pinto, Luke Evans, Stephen Dorff, director Tarsem Singh and the film's producers today for a Comic-Con panel in Hall H.
"It took a good bit of hard work," Cavill continued. "The training beforehand, and then maintaining that leanness throughout, was probably the most difficult thing, because Tarsem otherwise made it very easy for us."
Pinto agreed with that sentiment, though she knew Singh was just going to have to bring up the sex scene...
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"The first day we started shooting," the director recalled, "it was really embarrassing because, even before we started, the first scene we had was a sex scene. Without any dialogue, it was like, 'Get in the bed.' A bit embarrassing, but she delivered and it was gorgeous."
"How can it be embarrassing? I was with Henry," Pinto added.
"There's a reason why we cast such good-looking, strong gods," Singh said, the producers having pointed out earlier that, if the gods were immortal, why would they forever be preserved as old, gray-haired men?
"Those gods are every young and very aggressive, and they are pissed," producer Gianni Nunnari said. "The other gods [in movies] are maybe less original...[Immortal's] gods are something I have never seen, for sure."
Even Pinto, who plays Phaedra, admitted that her favorite part of making Immortals was "watching the men."
"I think it's very rare that you get to be part of a film where the men have to bare it all and you can just be covered, so this was a definitely treat for me," she said. "And on a more serious note, working with Tarsem."
But why be serious?
When asked how he researched his role of Poseidon, Lutz--who referred to his character throughout as "the king of wetness"--said that his favorite movie is The Little Mermaid.
"I had to watch that numerous times," the Twilight hunk said.
Evans, who plays Zeus in Immortals and Apollo in Clash of the Titans, said he didn't plan to take on more than one god role. "I don't have a god complex," joked the busy Welsh actor, who also showed up for The Raven panel yesterday and is currently working on The Hobbit films.
"I have certain images in my head," Singh explained how he envisioned the look of the action-packed, body-part-hacking, blood-spraying film. "It's why I get spat on by critics...Most people like a good script and, unfortunately, I usually don't start with that. I start with a good visual."
At least he admits it.
Meanwhile, a different sort of heroics was going on in Knights of Badassdom, starring Ryan Kwanten, Steve Zahn, Peter Dinklage and Summer Glau as LARPers (live-action role-players) who accidentally summon a heart-chomping succubus in the form of Margarita Levieva.
Zahn was missing, but today's Hall H panel also included Community's Danny Pudi, Mad Men's Michael Gladis, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's Jimmi Simpson and director Joe Lynch, who made it very known how much of a badass he thinks Dinklage is.
"I come out here like a douche and Dinklage just raises his hand," Lynch cracked about his enthusiastic, "can't believe I'm here" entrance versus Dinklage's cool stroll to his seat.
Asked why his character was named Hung, the Emmy-nominated Dinklage said slyly, "Wait for the DVD." And he pretty much kept that up the whole time.
"I liked working with everyone but Jimmi," he deadpanned at one point, to which Simpson said, "I was going to use that joke." Dinklage fired back, "Wait, I'm not done," then, looking at the audience, "See? That's what I'm talking about."
Glau, who says she got onboard because she was dying to work with Zahn and compared the shoot to "six weeks of summer camp," later said that her Comic-Con costume of choice, were she to dress up, would be She-Ra, Princess of Power.
"Summer just took mine," Dinklage deadpanned.
The red-banner trailer we saw was hilarious, profane and violent, but with a message: "The whole movie is wish fulfillment, be all that you can't be," Lynch said.
Also today, we were treated at a private press event to the premiere of the trailer for The Darkest Hour, a 3-D action thriller about two Americans, played by Emile Hirsch and Max Minghella, who head to Moscow for business, just in time for an alien invasion.
Describing the look of his film as simply "epic," director Chris Gorak described one sequence that took five days to film, the result being that Red Square looks entirely abandoned. "It was completely worth it."
"Technically [shooting in 3-D] is a little bit more difficult and it takes a longer time. You have to weigh that against what you get from it," said The Killing's Joel Kinnaman, who plays the shady businessman Hirsch and Minghella's characters meet up with before energy-hungry aliens who can shred humans into dust with only a touch come into the picture.
But "this movie's also about what sort of choices you make when you're faced with this kind of threat and the instinctive quality that every human has within him," Kinnaman added, describing his character's instincts as "questionable."
"He's a soulless, money-hungry bastard who has to come around," he said.
Funny how alien invasions tend to accelerate that process.