Comic-Con 2006

Sunday, July 23, 2006

Where to begin, where to begin? We'll it was a great convention this year. Great people, great panels. Now I only went to about 4-5 panels with different sections within each. Let us start with the first!

The Activision panel, featuring Phil LaMarr, Stan Lee, and that chick from 90210 just to name a few. It started off with a great cinematic from Marvel's Ultimate Alliance. In the cinematic it contains the following characters: Spider-Man, Thor, Wolverine, Captain America, Nick Fury, Doctor Doom, and what looks like some Ultron robots. Long story short it was a funny as hell panel with one guy getting grilled for not liking Iron Man appear in X-Men Legends II (I believe). I went out early to go look around at the booths which were amazing. Of course DC Comics had one of the biggest booths, but Sci-fi channel took the cake. A big ass replica of a space ship I believe from their new Battlestar Galactica comprised the whole booth. Hasbro on the other hand had a giant Optimus Prime ready to go into battle at a moments notice. What I did find interesting was that there was a booth for Snakes on a Plane. What that was doing there I wouldn't know, but it's Snakes on a motherfucking Plane! Now after looking around buying a few things, like a mathematical delicious shirt, I then headed over to the dreaded Hall H.

Hall H is where they hold the most popular panels, ranging from big budget movies to the most popular cult figure in history. So we arrive, and it's a Disney panel. They talk about a four disc extended edition of the Chronicles of Narnia: the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. They showed some extended scenes and some behind the scenes stuff. But then we get to the Pirates of the Caribbean. As soon as it goes on, screams and yells started to erupt. Now, imagine a room full of 6 thousand people, though it mainly sounded like teenage girls doing most of the screaming...We were shown some clips from the new movie that's going to be out and I can only say one thing about it: Singapore.

So I stick around see what else is going to be next and then, it's the Sony panel. Oh how I waited for this panel the whole time I was there. The first part had a discussion on Ghost Rider the movie. They showed us the trailer and then had the main cast and the main crew members come out. It was an interesting panel. I believe Nicholas Cage was stoned as hell during it. His whole thing about he flies in his dreams and when he wakes up he thinks that he can still hover......fucked up no? Very interesting panel indeed. After that however, we were treated to a most delightful treat, a panel on Spider-Man 3. Sam Raimi came out along with another producer. Sam starts poking fun at the other producer, Laura Ziskin I believe, by giving her the hardest question about the villains. She got all flustered and started to walk off and Raimi took the helm once again. Things started off by showing a trailer of the clip.

It shows more than the teaser of course, but one thing we weren't expecting: the movie's appearance of Venom. Sharp teeth and all. Everyone screamed, clap gave a standing ovation to it. It was great. We then are introduced to the main cast of the movie. Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, Thomas Haden Church, Topher Grace, Bryce Dallas Howard. However, James Franco did not show up, I believe he was under the weather or something of the sort. We being the Q & A. For about 15 Minutes it's all "I have a question for Mr. Raimi" "I have a question from Tobey" "I think your hot Kirsten Dunst" "I loved Lady in the Water" "How does it feel to play Venom Mr. Grace?". Everyone neglecting old Tommy boy. Though when we finally get to him, he gives out the most outrageous answers. Ranging from "being feed from Sam Raimi's breast" to "I would wreak havoc with corn, I shall be called the Corn Cobgoblin!". What I didn't expect, should've, that Sam Raimi mentioned that after Spider-Man 3 is wrapped up he will start on a new or remake of Evil Dead. He then begins to take jabs at Bruce Campbell about him being in almost all of his movies cameo or not.

When that was over, we were surprised by a recent addition to the day's festivities. A panel by Kevin Smith. This was by far the funniest, and the one with the most use of the F word that I have been in. He talks of course about Clerks II and by his surprise that it was given an R rating without any cuts required. How his movies are extremely crappy, in his opinion, and that he was surprised by the success they had. When asked about Jason Mewes being in attendcing. He said yes, then a prompt not saying that he was just fucking with us, and then another yes where he finally comes out and answers some questions also. The most interesting part was one when guy had a question, but he needed an interpretur because he can only communicate in sign language. He had fun with the interpretur making him say...well lets leave the lew sex acts out of this...He then goes onto debunk the rumor of him working on the Green Hornet movie. Describing that he would just have both of them leaning on their car the Black Beauty and go off screen to fight crime and we would only hear it, then go back to leaning on the car and make sex jokes. All in all it was a great convention....though the prescence of G4 kind of suck, most of the time they were barely filming and when they weren't their booth only had a few a people. Don't know why they even went. Oh well got to see Zach Selwyn and Wil O'Neal I believe from Attack of the Show. Still a great Con though. If you are able to go to San Diego for next year's Con I encourage you to go. It's like the Con of all Cons.

Side note: If you didn't know, the god like man known as Peter Cullen will be voicing Optimus Prime in the new Transformers movie. The original voice of Optimus! I'm still geeking out over it!!!