Comic-Con ’08 is in full swing and the nerd parade is on! San Diego is full of adults that basically look like The Comic Book guy from the Simpsons, plus a whole fleet of poindexters in make-up, costumes and an array of nerd pageantry.
You can get autographs, you can touch famous people, you can look at posters for movies that haven’t even had page of their screenplay written! It’s amazing. We do have few friends down there. Karina from Spoutblog, who normally doesn’t give a flying fuck for comics is practically out-blogging all the geeks with her almost rapid-fire posts of related geek ephemera. Others tell us that on Wednesday afternoon 30 fans were lined up for a “Twilight” panel that didn’t start for another 24 hours!
Our friends in the field gave us a top-level view of what’s it’s like down there. Surprisingly they are not as frightened as we thought they might be.
“Comic Con is like a carnival for all the people that didn’t get invited to [the real] prom. They are dressing up now, just in anime and character costumes with gun holsters. The “grown ups” look like Kevin Smith and Jack Black. The huge convention floor is completely filled top to bottom with booths and branding signs for the various vendors. The floor itself is pretty boring for someone like me who doesn’t want autographs, collect figures or want ten free keychains. Warner Bros gave away 19K recyclable bags by 11am. 130,000 people attend. The panels are far more interesting, they all run about an hour long and there are anywhere from 5-10 different ones happening at a time. The lines for the big ones like ‘Twilight’ and ‘Watchmen,’ etc start waay early and go long. There is just no way to get a handle on what is happening or where you should be but the people watching is well, amazing. It’s totally SXSW for the nerd set.”
Highlights from Comic-Con ’08 include:
– Robert Rodriguez unveiled new “Red Sonja” posters. He won’t direct, his first AD will, but he’ll produce it. Slashfilm says he’s under contract by the Weinsteins and so this is just his way getting around not being the director “officially.” He also says the “Barbarella” project is dead and he has another summer blockbuster project under his belt, but he wouldn’t say what it was (“Could it be this mostly, long-forgotten project perhaps?)
– Rodriguez also said “Sin City” 2 and 3 have scripts completed by Frank Miller, but it’ll be a matter of schedules since they both have so many other projects. His “Machete” project with Danny Trejo (from the “Grindhouse” trailers) is also eventually coming. “We need our own Mexploitation character,” he said.
– “Tron 2″ was announced and Jeff Bridges will star in it again. Footage was screened and this was apparently a big surprise.
– Hugh Jackman made a surprise appearance for “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” and unexpected footage of the film was also screened. Shots of Sabretooth (Liev Schreiber) and Wolverine apparently gave geeks full-blown erections.
– A life-size version of the Owl’s ship from “The Watchmen” impressed a lot of people that enjoy life-sized models of sci-fi vehicles.
– Guy Ritchie talked both “Rock N’ Rolla” and his upcoming Sherlock Holmes project starring Robert Downey Jr. Ritche promises less pontificating and more ass-kicking (naturally). “It’s going to be very contemporary… Originally Sherlock Holmes was this intellectual action man. I think what happened was they played down the action man aspect [in previous films] because they just didn’t have the means of executing the action in an interesting way. Well, we do have the means and we have the technology.” He high-mindedly says of “Rock N’ Rolla,” “It’s a commentary on how crime [and] identities have shifted.”
– Jennifer Connelly is apparently in “The Day The Earth Stood Still” remake with Keanu Reeves. What HAPPENED to her career??
– Speaking of Keanu, he confirmed that he will NOT be Plastic Man in any Wachowski Brothers film, though he is eager to work with them again.
– Anne Thompson saw three comedies in a row: “Step Brothers,” “Pineapple Express” and “Tropic Thunder.” She liked ‘Pineapple’ the best. She says of ‘Thunder’: “It’s a rather reflexive and sophisticated treatise on filmmaking in Hollywood today as well as the art of acting, [but] it gets top-heavy as a star-studded big- budget action film shot on location in the jungle, [though] the Comic-Con crowd ate it up.” She also notes that aside from Tom Cruise, Matthew McConnaughey also has a cameo in the film.
– The vampire-emo teen drama “Twilight” was everywhere and there was lots of screaming and panting and crying.
PS for the 10,000 guys already planning on being Heath Ledger’s Joker for Halloween, spare us your unoriginality and herdist ideas and try something else (even Two-Face is more acceptable). That way October 31 will be slightly more tolerable (but not by much) when it arrives.
