Welcome back everyone.
Well when it rains, it pours. It’s one thing to be completely exhausted and swarmed by one’s job, but things really start to suck when the things that manage to relieve the strain start to fight against you, like for instance, your computer. I tried nearly everything to keep my computer afloat for the last few weeks, but it finally just stopped giving a crap about all that really and became a large paper weight for a certain period of time. Thank God for iPhones or I think I would have been completely cut off from the world. Fortunately, I think I’m back to running at full speed, and hopefully won’t have any bumps in the road for the time being.
This report is pretty late, but I’m back with more of my thoughts on my San Diego Comic-Con adventure. Traveling to geek paradise was an awesome experience and one that I recommend to anyone with fanboy love in their heart. Getting to see or even interact with filmmakers, TV personalities and Comic Book professionals in the way that SDCC allows is a rare thing indeed and I can’t stress enough how overwhelming the entire thing can be. Let me tell you , you know you’re having an awesome time when you eventually get desensitized to walking by the costumes from Iron Man because you’ve already seen so much other stuff there that’s just as cool.
I’ve heard a lot of naysayers lately talk about how the Con has gotten too Hollywood and lost its way, but that’s why SDCC is so popular in the first place. It’s hard to share that viewpoint when you get to actually interact with celebrities such as Robert Downey Jr. or get to actually speak to James Cameron. Things like the massive lines and crowds are a pain to be sure, but there’s no doubt that that good totally outweighs the bad when it came to San Diego.
Well, this week I’d go over some of the panels that most excited me while attending Comic-Con. Right off the top, I would like to mention that due to scheduling conflicts and general exhaustion, I did outright miss some of the panels I wanted to attend, such as Iron Man 2 and Kick Ass, both of which supposedly rocked the house in Hall H with awesome footage. I’ll also exclude Avatar since I devoted a lot of last week’s column to it, as well as panels that were involved in any movies I screened (Trick r’ Treat and Give ‘em Hell Malone) and TV panels (namely Lost, which was awesome). So, these are the ones that made the largest impressions on my experience otherwise.
Favorite Movie Panels at Comic-Con (That I got to see and that weren’t Avatar)
Disney 3-D – One of the best panels I was able to see at the Con was the first one I got the opportunity to attend. Letting us use some fancy new 3-D glasses that were a lot heavier and yet I think more comfortable than standard Real-D glasses, the panel was hosted by Patton Oswalt and treated us to a really nice array of terrific footage. It seems obvious, but while many panels, such as the one for Lost were full of jokes and just trying to be entertaining, this one was about showing us how 3-D was starting to change the movie-going experience, and how these films were stepping stones along that path. Also, Johnny Depp showed up for second.
First out was Robert Zemeckis, who came out to discuss and then introduce some scenes from his upcoming Motion Capture adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. I have to tell you, when I first heard about this project I was a little disappointed. I thought Beowulf was good overall and really terrific at times, but I thought it was a backward step for Zemeckis to approach a story that has already been told so often. That was before I saw what the director really had in mind.
A Christmas Carol looks to be a pretty bold retelling, emphasizing the darker aspects of the story. The visuals are pretty phenomenal, especially in 3-D, and the scene we were given, showcasing the appearance of Jacob Marley, showed us exactly the direction I hope this movie is going. Zemeckis can be a master when he wants to be, and I think he’s got the opportunity to put the definitive version of this movie up on screen for us this Christmas. My hope is that these movies really brings out how adult the original story was at times and not just present us a showcase for star Jim Carrey to be able to ham it up for two hours.
Zemeckis doesn’t necessarily command the room like some directors did during interviews, but you could still see how passionate he is about the project and about 3-D in general. He believes the future of film making rests down this path, and seems to be having a blast exploring it.
Speaking of directorial visions, Tim Burton came out to premiere the teaser trailer for his upcoming version of Alice in Wonderland. Oswalt and Burton joked how Burton would bring the gritty realism to this story that the director lived in every day, and from the looks of it, that’s exactly what we’re. The trailer that’s out now is the one we got to see in 3-D, except our version had a different soundtrack, with MGMT’s “Time to Pretend” really setting a terrific mood for Burton’s visuals. Oswalt was so taken with the footage he showed it three times.
Repeated asking the director if he’d brought anything Burton insisted this was all there was to show, until he relented and announced he’d brought someone else to say hi to the crowd, and then Hall H erupted as Johnny Depp took the stage. It was a pretty incredible moment, even if all Depp did was basically wave to the crowd and walk back. Still pretty awesome.
Lastly for Disney 3-D was the Tron: Legacy panel, which debuted a small amount of new footage and then reshowed the VFX test footage from the previous year, this time in stunning 3-D. I can’t wait for this movie to be honest. The footage was new and beautiful, but still managed to look like Tron in my opinion, and it sucks we have to wait till next summer to return to that world.
Sony – Sony’s presentation was an interesting one, as it debuted a red band trailer for Legion, which was a movie I had no idea was even coming out, and then also showed us an extended 7-minute trailer for District 9, a movie I desperately wanted to see, and which of course, turned out to be awesome. Back to Legion for a second though, while I still find the movie a bizarre concept, I’ll admit to being intrigued, and the footage shown looked to be action packed.
A lot of the cast, including Paul Bettany, showed up to promote the movie, and everyone was really entertaining to listen to. I especially liked to hear Bettany be kind of self deprecating about his career, and talk about how this could finally be his break into action films. I certainly hope this ends up being a successful venture for him, and again I’m intrigued by the movie, or at least the idea that a studio green-lit a giant action picture featuring Angels and bazookas.
The main attraction for this particular panel though, was getting to see Peter Jackson. While District 9 has already been released and proven itself as one of the best films of the summer, just a few short weeks ago, I’m pretty sure most of us were still in the dark about what this film was about and how it was going to play out at all. Other than Avatar, I think there were few films that could match up to the excitement and mystery that District 9 was building up, and the 7 minute trailer, as well as the screening that took place during Comic-con only managed to build into the positive buzz this movie was starting to receive.
This was also our first exposure to director Neill Blomkamp and star Sharlto Copley, both of which seemed very humble, but ready for this movie to come out and show what they’re capable of. Blomkamp and Jackson went into great detail about their experience on trying to get Halo off the ground, and how this movie ended up the result of them going back to the drawing board after that picture fell through, and it turned out what we got might have been something even better. In the end, few individual movies proved to have more positive word of mouth than this movie did, and with its box office success and talk of sequel already out there, you can definitely call this a Comic-con success story.
That’s probably going to do it for me this week, but I promise to be back on time next week and wrap up my favorite panels, including Warner Brothers’ awesome showing and Disney Animation’s geek studded event. Then after that I’m wrapping up the summer and finally getting to talk about some of the really awesome stuff that’s come out lately.
Lastly this week, one of the movies I’m most excited about on the horizon is the upcoming James McTeigue film Ninja Assassin. Why I’m excited about the project is pretty obvious, as my love for Martial Arts, Samurai, Yakuza, and Ninja movies runs pretty deep and wide and I’ve shown that over the years with this column. Thing is, I’m starting my prep for the movie as we speak, but I’d like to take any suggestions people might have on more Ninja and Kung Fu movies out there that would help with me getting ramped up for this thing. Any help here would be great, and I can’t wait to hear from you.
See you guys next week.
