Comic Con 2010: Part 2
Aug. 9th, 2010 06:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
corrielleOn Saturday, the first thing we wanted to see was the Warner Brothers panel because they would be talking about the next Harry Potter movie. We were determined not to make the same mistakes that had led us to be left out of the Bones Panel on Friday. We thought we were fine… we were going to Hall H, which is bigger than Ballroom 20, and we were in line at 8 AM. We sat under the tents they had put out on the lawn for about two hours, and there were tons of people behind us. When the line started moving, we thought we had a pretty good chance of getting in. And then, when there were only about 100 people ahead of us, the line stopped. A few minutes later, con staff announced that the Hall was full and they wouldn’t be letting more people in until after the WB panel. I was so angry. If we had been even a little bit earlier, we could have gotten in. As it was, we stood in line and I saw a couple of guys playing a card game I thought no one but my family had ever heard of. Turns out it’s a Midwestern thing, and my mom’s family is from the middle of Oklahoma.
Anyway, Rae, Pura, and I hung around just in case they let people in. We knew we had a good chance of being in the next group to be let through the ropes, and we weren’t going to get out of line anyway. We wanted to see other things in the Hall later, anyway. (Mostly all of the Marvel stuff at the end of the day.)
The line started moving again near the end of the WB panel, and we got to see the last few minutes of the presentation about Sucker Punch, which from the trailer looks like it’s going to be all kinds of awesome. Girls in a mental institution participating in multiple realities in which they are so very badass… I’m definitely interested now.
The first panel we got to see all of was for Let Me In, which is an American adaptation of Let the Right One In. At first, I was skeptical. American adaptations of foreign films are often unnecessary and oftentimes make me cringe for the sake of the originals. However, this doesn’t look like one of those cases. They showed some footage from the movie, and after seeing that and listening to the creator talk, it seems that there was a lot of respect for the original film while at the same time trying to make the story fit with its new setting. (Middle America in the 80’s.) The young actors in this movie look awesome. One of them, Chloe Moretz, I just saw in Kickass as Hit Girl, and she looks equally fantastic here – shy and sweet while having this not-quite-human creepiness. This is another one I want to see when it comes out.
Next, they showed a bunch of trailers. They had given us 3-D glasses, but we didn’t need them for very many of them, and for someone like me who already wears glasses, I think the effect doesn’t quite work because there’s an extra lens in the way. *sigh* Anyway, a couple of funny things happened…
So this trailer comes on for this movie about some people stuck in an elevator, and the lights keep going out and one of them keeps attacking the others, and they don’t know who it is. I thought, “Huh… interesting concept for a thriller…” and it sounded like a lot of the crowd agreed with me. Then, the words, “Directed by M. Night Shyamalan” went across the screen, and as one, all 6,500 of us laughed. And for the rest of the trailer, it was a giant nerd MST free for all. I have never heard a bunch of geeks come to a consensus so fast.
They showed the trailer for the Priest movie, which will be an adaptation of a manga I quite enjoyed. A little more research tells me that Paul Bettany, whom I adore, is going to be in it. I should be happy, right? Wrong. The manga I remember wasn’t all futuristic and post-apocalyptic looking. It was… a Western with hard edges and creepy vampires. And I liked it that way. So… other than the fact that there’s a priest who kills vampires, there’s really not much left of the original story I enjoyed. RAWR. Sorry, Mr. Bettany, I love ya, but I don’t think I’ll be seeing this one. Go be Stephen again? Please?
I saw the Tron trailer… don’t have much to say here, but it looked cool. Slick CGI and what looks like an engaging story with a lot of shout outs to the original movie. I’m sure that
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World looks fun. You couldn’t walk five steps at con without running into an ad for this, and there was a huge big-as-the-building poster on a skyscraper next door to the con. Anyway… it looks like a fun, fannish movie that loves its audience.
The last trailer they showed was for some… thrown together teenage superhero movie that, from what they showed, was going to suck. (I can’t even find anyone who mentioned it to remind myself what the name was.) Again… fans know what they want, and the general mood of the room was… “What is this nonsense?” (The Charlie St. Cloud preview got the same response, which amused me a bit, because even if Zac Efron is a cutie, that’s not a trailer you show to a room full of comic book geeks there for Thor and Captain America.)
The next thing they did was the Resident Evil panel… all I can say is that Mila Jovovich is adorable, Ali Larter is glowing and beautiful and pregnant, and I’m still out of the loop when it comes to video games about zombies.
After the Resident Evil panel, one of the more infamous incidents of the week occurred… the “stabbing” in Hall H. (By the way, NOT a stabbing. I’ll get to that later.) The first I got wind of it was when a clump of people started forming in the next section about a hundred feet from where we were sitting. Some were laughing, others were yelling, and someone eventually called for security. People started standing on chairs and taking pictures and twittering their friends who were closer. Finally, security and the paramedics showed up, and the announcer got on the PA and told people to sit down and clear out. Then, the rumors started flying. The going theory was that two people had got into a fight over a good seat and one of them had stabbed the other in the eye with a pen. As Rae pointed out later, this was frickin’ ridiculous because that gurney came in, and then it went out empty. If someone had really been stabbed in the eye, there is no way they were going to let him walk out of there. Apparently, what really happened is that two friends got into an argument and one of them scratched the other on the face hard enough to draw blood. What really disgusted me, though, was all of the jerks in the hall crowding around and being stupid, idiotic morons. Usually, Comic-Con is a time when I’m proud to be a nerd because I see people doing nice things for strangers and being genuinely good to each other. This was the exact opposite. This was people being mean and cruel and calloused. I don’t even remember some of the stuff I heard said because I was so furious that I blocked it out, but there wasn’t a lot of compassion considering that we all thought that someone had just gotten seriously injured. Then, there was the skinny guy with the vuvuzela who had been blowing on it whenever there was a lot of applause, and that was obnoxious, but at least he wasn’t doing it at inappropriate times. But then, during the lull while security was trying to sort out the “stabbing” and people were crowding around like ambulance-chasing lemmings, he starts standing on his chair and blowing on the frickin’ thing because God forbid there be something going on that didn’t need him adding noise to it… Rae turned around, made eye contact, and said, “Seriously?” and he looks at her like she’s trampling on his super special snowflake’s right to self expression and says, “Yeah… seriously…” in this “Screw you, bitch” kind of way, and he’s really lucky that Rae and Pura and I are nice people and not the type to get violent in the middle of a crowd, because we were all ready to, as Pura put it, “take that thing from him and shove it down his throat.” *deep breath* Yeah… Hall H sometimes raises my blood pressure when I have to sit in front of jerks, but this year was ridiculous.
After that all got sorted out, they moved on to a panel for a movie called Paul that I knew nothing about. Turns out, it’s Simon Pegg and Nick Frost making a movie about two nerds who road trip to Comic Con and, on their way home, stop by… I think it was Area 51, and end up running into an alien named Paul who has escaped from federal custody. It. Was. Hysterical. The spoof of the convention was hilarious, but obviously done with so much love and affection for the con and the people who come to it. They showed a few clips from the movie, and had a bunch of stars come out… Sigourney Weaver (classy as ever, by the way) plays the FBI agent who wants Paul back in custody, Jason Bateman is one of her underlings, Jeffrey Tambor is a sci-fi author the main characters adore but is a total jerk, and Seth Rogen, who does Paul’s voice… they were all there, and all really funny. Someone asked the cast if they wished they could just walk around con like normal fans, and Seth Rogen’s answer was, “I’m pretty unrecognizable since I lost some weight. Actually, everyone thinks I’m J.J. Abrams… I’ve been taking credit for Star Trek all day!” Heh. Now that I think about it, I do kind of see the resemblance.
The next presentation was about a movie called Cowboys and Aliens that I had never heard of before stepping into Hall H that day. (I have since learned that it’s based on a graphic novel that I’d kind of like to read…) Before the panel began, I thought it was going to be something silly an obnoxious that I was going to have to sit through before we got to the all the Marvel “good stuff.”
I. Was. So. Wrong.
The director came out first, and he talked a bit about the decision to make the “Western” elements very pronounced, and about how he was going for a classic, John Ford-esque feel. That got my attention immediately. I may not talk about it much, but I love old Westerns. I was raised watching them with my dad, and one of my favorite pieces of “dress up” clothing was an old kids’ cowboy hat. Give me some six-shooters, a lot of dust, and some windswept scenery, and I’m a happy camper. The director also talked about wanting the aliens to be much more psychologically scary that CGI-tentacles scary, and how he had decided that aliens that aren’t seen can be just as scary as aliens that are, citing Close Encounters of the Third Kind as an example.
Then, he brought out a couple of the stars, who were at con even though they were still in the middle of filming. (I think someone said they’d been at it for about a month…) The first person who came out was Daniel Craig. I think my jaw nearly fell out of my head. The crowd went totally insane, and I grabbed Rae’s arm to make her look up from the text she was sending, or whatever it was she was doing with her phone. For the record, I think that Mr. Craig is a fantastic James Bond, and sinfully well-built, too. He is just as hot in person as he is on film, and he had barely waved at the crowd and sat down when they introduced the next guest, who we were informed had never been to Comic-Con before…
And out walks Harrison Ford. HARRISON FORD. I… there are no words. The man who played Han Solo and Indiana Jones had just shown his face at Comic Con, and all I could do was freak out with the rest of geekdom.
I’ve heard a lot of Comic-Con screams in my day, and the noise in that room when he walked out was EPIC. In all of the years that he’s been in iconic fannish movies, he’s never been. In fact, I read somewhere that he told his current director that he’d have to drag him in handcuffs to get him to con this year… And so as a joke… that’s what they did. He was “escorted” on stage by two buff security guards and wearing silver handcuffs. He looked a little dazed at the roaring mass of geeks who were flipping out over his presence, but I think he was a bit amused, as well.
With the stars on stage, the directed asks if we’d like to see some rough footage from what they’d shot so far… and we scream our approval. (I was SO hoarse by the end of the day…) The footage they showed looks… awesome. The feel of it is perfect. It’s gritty and dusty and harsh. The first scene we saw was Daniel Craig wandering into an empty house and taking a look at a wound in his side that elicited a sympathetic pain-induced hiss from the audience. It’s not gory… it just looks… real. Another part we saw was a classic “my daddy’s going to come get me out of this jail cell, just you wait and see…” bit with a super obnoxious kid in one cell the marvelously stoic Mr. Craig in the cell next door. Turns out “daddy” is Harrison Ford, who can do the Western villain thing like nobody’s business… (also, it turns out that Western attire looks so fine on Daniel Craig that I have a hard time remembering much else about some of this…) The last bit we saw was Craig being loaded into a wagon for transport to the next town (by the same actor that played Wild Bill on Deadwood… that man is MADE for the Old West…) when the aliens show up. We just see their ships, but that’s enough. The ships start shooting up the town, people scatter, and this odd looking but not terribly obtrusive wrist-cuff thing that Craig has been wearing the whole time lights up. Looks like he’s got himself some alien tech, there… he’s right in the middle of the street, his calm making him stand out even in the middle of all the chaos, and as a ship flies overhead, this little targeting device pops up, and he blasts one of the ships right out of the sky. It. Was. Epic.
I suspect because of the “incident,” they didn’t have much time for questions, and I don’t even remember if they took any or not, but the director assured us he’d be back next year… because the movie won’t even be out until after next year’s Comic Con.
The last two panels of the day were for Captain America and Thor. Captain America looks fun… we saw a very short Comic-con special trailer for it where we got a glimpse of the costume for the first time. (Actually, it turns out that what we saw was from a costume test, which is even more special… They’d only been filming for four days.) The actors all seemed to be lovely… and I geeked out hard over Hugo Weaving being there. One of the things I remember best is Mr. Weaving talking about his process for coming up with the “voice” for his character… and when people started yelling “Do it!” he responded with an, “Oh, it’s too early for that…” kind of thing… and then the director says, “Actually… we’ve got this clip…” Massive fannish pandemonium. Again.
Now, I have less than no knowledge about the Captain America universe… but I was still pulled in by what I saw. World War II. Big library/museum-looking place. Crypt. Hugo Weaving in (I think) an SS uniform. Magical super-important cube in crypt… fun times.
Thor also looks like it’s going to be a fun ride. It’s closer to being finished, so we got a nicely polished trailer, which mostly consisted of Thor getting banished from… wherever it is he’s from by his father, who is played by Anthony Hopkins of all people. He ends up on earth somewhere in dusty New Mexico, where all sorts of people are very interested in who the heck he is and what on earth is up with the hammer that fell from the sky…
By the way, lots of people made a big deal about the hammer. I guess little things about how it looks are a big deal for fans of the comic (understandable…) and say something about the direction the creators of the movie are going to go. I thought the hammer looked badass—simple and understated and unassumingly powerful. It doesn’t need fancy decorations to be cool.
Let’s see… other things that I remember…
Natalie Portman was lovely, happy to be doing a film with Hugo again, and happy to be rounding out a female character who apparently hasn’t had much character development in the comic.
Anthony Hopkins is hugely excited to be doing this. One of the actors told a story about how all of them were in costume on the big, grand “hall of the gods” type set, and Mr. Hopkins was really giddy, and said something like, “Can you believe all of this?” sounding very much like a kid at a candy store. That… makes me happy. I’ve always really liked him, and it’s neat to hear that he has such fun doing what he does.
The actor they got to play Loki is… very much what a trickster god should look like, in my opinion. Crafty, on the thin side, and possessed of an imperious, “I’m more clever than you” attitude.
The guy they got to play Thor is smoking hot. And I think his arms were about to bust right out of the button-down shirt he was wearing. He seems sweet and intelligent and eager to get to know the universe (I think he said he’d been reading a lot of comic books since he got the part…).
After they showed the Thor trailer one last time, we all thought that we were done for the day, and we started packing up our stuff, but the announcer came on and told us that there was one more thing coming up. And Samuel L. Jackson walks out. People cheer a lot, and the room got even more noisy when he introduced Robert Downey Jr, who walked on stage having obviously taken a break from filming the second Holmes move… (that hair… *sigh* Oh, Holmes…) But on this day, he was in full Tony Stark mode, playing the crowd like a well tuned violin. One by one, he starts bringing out the cast of the Avengers, including getting the actors for Thor and Captain American back on stage. With each new name, the energy in the room spiked as pockets of fans of that particular character went crazy. Finally, when all of them were out on stage, RDJ says something like, “And I knew we had to get someone you all would approve of to direct this movie… so here’s our director…” And out comes Joss Whedon. After that, they all groups together for the thousands of cameras that were going off. This is a good shot, I think… I like RDJ’s Tony-esque pointing. Right at the end, a cool looking avengers logo flashed on the screen, and it was over.
For the first time since coming to Comic Con, I didn’t go to masquerade.
Sunday
On Sunday morning, Pura and I were both up before 5:30 and at the trolley station fifteen minutes before the first trolley showed up. We got to the convention center before 7 AM, and there was already a long line of people waiting to be let in to the convention in general (though I think that most of them were there for Ballroom 20… not much else was going on Sunday morning). We ended up standing next to a couple of nice girls who were Supernatural and Smallville fans, and we chatted for a while, and when the con staff let us into the building, I tried to do my best power-walking to keep up with them. It was a good thing, too, because we were at the tail end of the part of the line that got let into the building rather than having to wait outside under the tents on the balcony. The staff member at the door wasn’t going to let Pura and me in, but the girls in front of us informed her we were with them, and she let us go through. Eventually, the line shifted a bit, and we got away from the door, and the next people to come in after us were to really pretty girls, one with a sexy Superman costume, and the other with the same costume, but in black and silver. Now, these weren’t just pretty girls who wanted attention. They were hard core costume people, and I heard them talking about how they had made their outfits and how much work had gone into them. It was neat, and they seemed really nice. Now, as I mentioned before, they were really pretty. They were blonde, with nice bodies and hot superhero costumes. So, this guy who is sitting right in front of us who has never even met the pretty girls before climbs over me and tries to wedge himself into the two cubic inches of space between us in the crowded line with his back to me while he tries to engage them in conversation about the fact that *gasp* they both own iPads. *sigh* If I would have been even a little less tired and out of it, I would have loved to have said, “Excuse me, I know you’re trying to lamely hit on two girls who are way out of your league, and I’m cool with that, but would you mind doing it while not sitting on my lap?”
Rude fanboy aside, we when the line started moving, it moved pretty quickly, and all of our hours of waiting paid off. We got in close. We were on the left side of the stage, three rows behind the seats that are reserved for special guests and family and friends of panelists. (I saw the guy who plays Shawn Spenser from Psyche sitting right in front of us… I stared a creepy amount while I tried to decide if it was him or not.) And after the Smallville panel, we moved even closer to the center, which did fun things for my ability to take decent pictures of things that weren’t on the screens.
Now, the con program did not have any names under the description of the Supernatural panel. I guessed that Eric Kripke and Sera Gamble would probably show up, but I had no idea of Jensen, Jared, or any of the other actors were planning on making an appearance. So, I was absolutely shocked when out came, not only Eric, Sera, Jensen, and Jared, but Misha Collins (Castiel) and Jim Beaver (Bobby) as well!
The panel was an absolute blast. Jared and Jensen are always fun and have such a great, easy rapport with each other and the rest of the cast. Misha is a crazy, dorky guy who I love to pieces, and Jim Beaver probably made me crack up more times than everyone else combined.
One of the first things they did was show a bit of the episode that Jensen directed, which is going to be called “Weekend at Bobby’s.” The scene was just Bobby and Crowley, which made me excited for Pura, seeing as how she loves Crowley so much. And it was such a fun scene. Bobby wants his soul back, Crowley points to some fine print about how the contract only says he has to make a “reasonable effort” to return the soul, Bobby turns out the lights to show a Devil’s Trap in red laser light on the floor right where Crowley is standing, and Crowley calls in one on his hell hounds, which is breathing right in Bobby’s face just as the clip cuts away. It was… awesome. Smart and quick and surprising and suspenseful, all in about two minutes.
I don’t remember much about what order the rest of this happened in, so here is a selection of random, interesting stuff I wrote in my notes about the panel:
Sera Gamble seems really smart and competent. She seems heavily invested in the mythology and the health of the show, which was good to see, since she’s taking over for Kripke. She talked about how they were going back to some monster of the week episodes, saying, “We really wanted to shoot some monsters in the face…” which got her a lot of cheers. The other thing that really impressed her was this: At one point, a fan came up to the microphone and asked the two producers how they felt about having their show, which had been heavily marketed at a male demographic, ending up with a fanbase that is largely female. It was a respectful question, and, I thought, an interesting one. Sera’s answer made me grin. She talked about how she wasn’t really that surprised because lots of women are genre fans, and how some of the most hard core horror fans she knew were women. I thought of lady_entropy17 and smiled.
Jim Beaver, as I said before, is hilarious. Somehow, the conversation got onto Bobby and Crowley’s “kiss” last season, and the following exchange occurred:
Jim: I can assure you that the kissing days between Bobby and Crowley are over.
Eric(?): And how can you assure that?
Jim: Because you need me to film them!
Heh. I also like Jim’s curmudgeonly description of Jensen’s directing debut. “I know how to pick up a phone, Boy!” (This was apparently his response to Jensen explaining a scene setup to him...)
As of the panel, Jared had not seen the finale all the way through. (This floors me… actors who don’t watch their finished products… but it’s more common that I thought it was, especially for actors whose characters go through massive amounts of crap.)
Eric answered the “Is Chuck God?” question by saying it was open to interpretation. He also said it would be a little too M. Night if he were to have a character come out and say “And I’m GOD!” (The tone of voice when he said this was special beyond belief.)
Mitch Pileggi will be back! Yay for Granddaddy!
Eric also talked about how much the finale changed considering there wasn’t originally going to be another season. He said it was about 80% the same, and that the Lucifer and Michael arc was largely untouched. His initial response was priceless, though… “Well, more people lived…” I have a feeling that means you, Castiel and Bobby.
He also joked about putting all of this time and work into the finale and going online and finding scathing fan reactions that made him feel all hurt for a while before he shrugged it off. I don’t know where he saw that, by the way. I guess I’m not really “in” the fandom. my little group of Supernatural fans I know all… I don’t want to say “enjoyed” because there was a lot of pain… appreciated it.
Apparently, we’re going to pick up a year after the finale. Dean is settled, and the first couple of episodes are about how he gets pulled back in. And, from the note I have scribbled in the corner of a page that says “Creepy Faerie!” I think that Fae might be involved. One of the moments that it was Dean and not Jensen talking was when they were talking about how vampires are going to show up again, and Jensen leans into the mic and says, “I’m looking to killing some vampires properly this year,” in this gruff, angry voice. It was magical.
The last thing they did was show a gag reel for season five, which was super fun. I think that seeing Misha go from Cas’s seriousness to his own goofiness in two seconds flat is jarring, but hysterical.
The Glee panel came next, and I wish I had taken better notes on it. Here are some of the things I remember:
The creator handled the first “Doesn’t Finn deserve a bit of an apology from Kurt?” question really tactfully. (The question was respectfully phrased, too, which was nice.) He basically said that the storyline was ongoing, and that there were definitely still things that needed to be resolved.
Kurt’s actor is an enormous geek. He came out in a Transformer’s shirt, and when someone asked him, “Since you talk a lot about how your experiences as a gay teen is similar to Kurt’s, I’d like to know a way that yours has been different.” He just smiled and pointed to his shirt.
Tina is apparently going to fall for… Oh, I can’t remember his name now… one of the boys who hasn’t had many lines yet. (Artie’s actor looked all sad when the creator said this, and Tina reached over and hugged him. It was terribly cute.)
Brit and Santana’s actresses were sweet, and hearing Brit’s voice say things that weren’t incredibly, brilliantly stupid was a bit confusing at first, but it was fun to hear the two of them talk about their relationship.
Mercedes’ actress got told by one of her fans what an inspiration she was, and she was really happy and gracious about it.
When asked what song they hadn’t done yet but wanted to, Kurt’s actor said, “Time Warp!” Then, the director hinted that they might be doing a Rocky Horror episode, and the Comic Con crowd loved him for it.
After the panel, Pura and I went to the fulfillment room and picked up our free stuff from the panels. I got a Captain America shirt (that I gave to Jessica) and a Glee foam finger (which I also gave to Jessica because I had nothing to do with it).
Rae and Lynx had packed up the hotel room and checked out for us, and so after we walked around the Exhibit hall for a while, we rode the trolley for the last time back to the station, walked back to the hotel parking lot, and got on our way. On the way back, we stopped at an In n’ Out because Pura had never experienced the deliciousness that is their burgers. She was suitably impressed, I think. The drive home was a bit slow getting out of San Diego since the whole con apparently got on the I-5. (I even saw some of the giant con giveaway bags through windows of cars that were creeping along next to us.)
All in all, it was a good year. I got to see the things that were most important to me, I got to meet and get to know Pura, who is all kinds of awesome, I got to spend some time with Lynx, who I don’t see nearly enough, and I got all kinds of books and free swag. And I didn’t even have to miss the new Burn Notice… Now that is the mark of a true con pro.