A little concerned about the surplus of new villains in Iron Man 2? Don't worry -- as the filmmakers told Movieline at Comic-Con, they are, too. Still, they argued, it was essential to introduce those new characters to fix the one niggling issue they had with their original film: the villain.
Has it only been two days since we were lost inside the geek fantasia that was Comic-Con 2009? The calendar says as much, but that strange, leotard-friendly universe already seems light years away. With some breathing room from its 24-hour hype machine, we take a look back at the hits, misses and too-soon-to-tells from a watershed year in San Diego's nerd-overrun Gaslamp District.
For all the public concern that has followed Where the Wild Things Are over years of development and production, Warner Bros. has to be pretty happy with the goodwill it managed to accrue last weekend at Comic-Con. But even some critics' observations that WTWTA was "the most beautiful thing we have seen" during this year's event haven't prevented Warner from enlisting author Maurice Sendak himself to defuse any lingering skepticism. Watch him make his case after the jump.
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"I'm Jonah's love interest, I guess you could call it. But it's sort of not very conventional. She's a prostitute he's been visiting for years and they have a special relationship," was how Megan Fox described her Jonah Hex character to a group of journalists at Comic-Con on Sunday. As a measure of character commitment, she traded in Michael Bay's favored low-rise jeans for a period gown with a liver-bursting 19 inch waist.
"The corset obviously changes the way you walk and your breathing patterns," she explained. "I wanted that cinched as tightly as possible."
If Comic-Con has a geek goddess, it's surely Kristen Bell. The actress is a regular fixture at the Con, and her resume nails every niche: a cherished cult TV show (Veronica Mars), a stint as a superheroine (Heroes), a videogame voiceover (Assassin's Creed)...hell, the women even donned Princess Leia's slave bikini for Fanboys. Bell was at this year's Comic-Con promoting the voice she contributed to Astro Boy, but beyond that she's poised for mainstream success, with a slew of big comedies (including the Vince Vaughn-Jon Favreau reunion Couples Retreat) on the way.
Bell took the time to talk to Movieline about her Con dominance in a wide-ranging interview that also touched on Veronica Mars, her stint on Party Down, and her excitement over campy auteur Tommy Wiseau.
· Disney's Tron Legacy had by far the coolest promotional stunt of anything at Comic-Con with its Flynn's Arcade experience, but -- putting aside the conceptual art they previewed -- the total amount of finished footage screened at the panel amounted to 0 minutes. So what's this nearly three-minute clip, which has appeared and disappeared on YouTube for about a year now, and appears to now be there for good? It's not the trailer, but rather test footage that screened for Comic-Con 2008 audiences. Still, as year-old test footage goes, it should succeed in mercilessly tickling the remote geek-quadrants of your brains.
In some ways, women won the gender battle at Comic-Con by proving that if their fandom involves the bare, glistening abs of a 17-year-old, they can outdo mere Avatar fans in line-waiting prowess any day. Still, though, women have their limits, and a panel toplined by Patricia Heaton was clearly it. Says THR's James Hibberd:
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A Nightmare on Elm Street is the latest remake from Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes shingle, a specialty horror label whose modus operandi is to take a low-budget cult-classic from the '80s, then have it "re-envisioned" by directors with good eyes for slick editing and camera work, but tin ears for tone, performance, and all those other harder-to-nail elements that masters like Sam Raimi and Wes Craven would bring to the proceedings. The result is a steady stream of forgettable shit: Marcus Nispel's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday the 13th reboots both needed to be dragged to a basement and cleaved, while the only scary thing about 2005's The Amityville Horror was the number of times it found an excuse to have Ryan Reynolds battle a home demon-infestation with his shirt off.
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As we noted earlier, Scarlett Johansson told us at Comic-Con that at one point, she'd discussed the possibility of playing three other superheroines with Marvel: Scarlet Witch, Blonde Phantom, and the mysterious "Moon." At the time, we couldn't find a Moon in Marvel's collection, but we think we've found out who Johansson meant, and she's a doozy.
Season 2 Episode 6: "Hard-Hearted Hannah"
We're at the Hotel Carmella (part of the Starwood Telepathic Resorts chain) in Dallas, where people are looting a counter of its True Blood swag -- giving me a serious Comic-Con flashback. (More on that later.) Eric is sucking on a bimbo's neck, when vampire Kara DioGuardi (aka Lorena) from the end of last episode saunters up and you find out Eric was the one who summoned her to Dallas.
Scarlett Johansson's path to playing Black Widow in Iron Man 2 had one very public obstacle -- Emily Blunt was cast in the role first, then had to drop out due to scheduling issues -- but as Johansson told me at Comic-Con, there were several other cinematic superheroines she'd previously discussed playing with Marvel.
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As noted earlier, Robert Downey Jr. will be starring opposite Zach Galifianakis in Todd Phillips's Due Date, and I had the chance to ask Downey Jr about it briefly at Comic-Con. "Yep, I'm doing it," he confirmed, though when I brought up reports that he'd essentially be playing straight man to Galifianakis, he recoiled in mock-horror. "What? Why would I want to do that?" he said. "I think Zach and I will have a nice time seeing who's the straight man to who."
There's been all sorts of unconventional promotion at Comic-Con -- just ask poor, neglected Fandango -- but the most imaginative was surely Flynn's Arcade, which Disney built to tout Tron Legacy. The carefully scheduled, surprise-filled warehouse was one of the most talked-about places at the Con, so let me give you a tour!
I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere else, but as yesterday's panel began, the monitors showed an image based on the season one key art of our nearly-silhouetted survivors on the island. The only difference? There had to have been twenty or more characters there, lending additional heft to rumors that numerous killed-off stars are returning. Also hefty: Boone's coming back. Those Ian Somerhalder fangirls are sooo excited right now! [EW]
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