Sure, seeing the Watchmen footage was pretty cool, but it was basically just a mild extension of the trailer giving it something of a “Scene it” impression. Also, seeing the first bit of footage from Wolverine was pretty cool (details here), but it was just more of the same. Outside of seeing the VERY impressive teaser trailer for Tron 2 (details here), the Comic Con panel hosted by Entertainment Weekly with directors Kevin Smith, Judd Apatow, Zack Snyder and Frank Miller was easily the most enjoyable thing I have seen so far.

To be 100% honest with you I have no idea what the ultimate goal behind this panel really was. It was called “Visionaries” but it really boiled down to an extended Q&A session beginning with moderated questions and ending with several questions from attendees. It was filled with humor and Kevin Smith’s inner fanboy leaked out all over the stage, as did his belly, but I am not here to judge (but I will say someone needs to talk to Smith because he is looking unhealthy).

The first question asked of the entire panel began and basically ended with Smith. When asked, “Why did you get into filmmaking,” the answer from Smith was simple, “I just wanted to get my cock sucked sir.” The place erupted. Judd Apatow basically reiterated Smith’s sentiments with a personal story from his past, but when Zack Snyder had a hard time verbalizing his answer Smith blurted out, “Thank God your visuals are so good man!” Laughter once again affording Smith the opportunity to begin gushing over Watchmen.

Earlier that morning was the panel for Watchmen hosted by Warner Bros. and featuring Snyder and all of the principals from the film. Previewed was Watchmen footage of which I already commented on, but to say Kevin Smith was impressed would be an understatement. Smith then began leading the charge to try and get the footage shown one more time to no avail. His comment on seeing the footage and his anticipation of seeing the movie was, “[Once I see the Watchmen movie] I’ll be ready to die… my life will have been fulfilled.” He considers his words and rolls his eyes, contemplating what he just said. His excitement was fun to watch.

More questions popped up.
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I haven’t taken a look to see what other websites are saying about the Max Payne portion of Fox’s Comic Con panel on Thursday, July 24, but you can consider me completely unimpressed. Dollied out for the presentation were director John Moore and stars Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis and Chris “Ludacris” Bridges and the panel was moderated by producer Erwin Stoff.

Stoff began the panel quoting Moore saying what he believed to be the best description of what a film adaptation of Max Payne really is. He said, “John [Moore] put it best when he said ‘It’s not minimum pain, it’s not medium pain, it’s Max Payne.’” Sorry, but cheese dick taglines like that sound gimmicky every time you hear them.

Following a bit of banter they previewed the first clip from the film, which looks like it may be the opening of the film as Wahlberg as the title character, Max Payne, is searching what appears to be an abandoned house searching for someone named Alex. As he shouts like bulbs flicker in his face and a mirror in the distance is banging around with a dead body lying on the ground in front of it, half-way in a doorway, the other half in the hall. Payne nears the body when he is attacked from behind. Max Payne is getting his ass kicked. Crawling slowly across broken glass and about to be hit once again, he turns and fires several shots from an ankle holster and kills his attacker. End scene.

This clip was mildly atmospheric, but it wasn’t impressive by any means. It felt like any other glossy teen thriller. It lacked substance and it lacked any kind of real originality. A zombie could have appeared or vampires could have fallen from the ceiling and it wouldn’t have been shocking. The scene really brought nothing to the table in terms of giving the audience any reason to get excited, and it appeared it worked to that end.

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“Klaatu barada nikto,” the famous words from the 1951 sci-fi film The Day the Earth Stood Still, and it was the first film Fox previewed at their Comic Con panel on Thursday, July 24. After a screen of static played featuring those three words Keanu Reeves comes out to introduce the participating panel attendees including Jennifer Connelly, director Scott Derrickson and producer Erwin Stoff.

The first comments came from Stoff who mentioned how he had an idea for a remake of the 1951 feature way back in 1993 following Reeves’ break out role in Speed. Unfortunately the idea went awry as the traditional Hollywood shuffle sent execs in and out the doors and the project lost its steam. However, 15 years late Reeves is indeed starring in the film as Klaatu, an alien come to earth for unknown reasons, and on December 12 we will all see what happens when the Earth stands still.

The panel presentation featured two clips and one final Comic Con exclusive trailer.

For those of you familiar with the trailer (featured here), the first clip was an extended version of the interrogation scene you see in the trailer. However, as boring as that may sound, for those actually familiar with the original film it was interesting to see a difference in how the Klaatu character acts, at least in the early moments of the film. Keanu Reeves explained the difference well referring to the 1951 Klaatu as “warm and fuzzy”, Reeves says, “That’s not me.”

In the interrogation clip Klaatu takes over the mind of his interrogator, but he gains information and leaves the room with the man seemingly dead on the table wearing his suit with the corridor filled with dead guards Klaatu was able to kill using the ear pieces they were all wearing. It’s definitely a far darker character, but the second clip told us what direction that was going to go in…

The second clip featured Reeves with Jaden Smith who plays the young boy in the film named Jacob. His role appears to mirror the Bobby character from the original film, but it is obviously coming from a different angle as Jennifer Connelly’s character also plays a larger part in the film compared to her predecessor. In the footage Jacob and Klaatu are talking to one another and you get the feeling Klaatu is starting to understand and sympathize with the human race and may be second guessing what appear to be his original intentions to destroy the humans in an effort to save the Earth. The clip ends with Jacob asking, “What happens to us?”

Gort also came up in conversation and based on the final piece of montage footage they showed and the comments made it appears Gort is not going to be drastically difference in appearance from the original although he appears to be extremely larger as he see him silhouetted in glowing yellow. The reason we haven’t seen a final version of Gort yet, as Derrickson explains, is because they are still finalizing his look after going through hundreds of different version, which all rolled back to the original.

Also, the spaceship Klaatu lands in is nothing like the original, but I think the change is definitely an interesting one. The idea is that back in the ’50s science fiction was far more industrial based, focused on the machinery involved. With this film the goal is to show that the more intelligent species is no longer industrial based, but biological. All that plays into the story, which appears to be also highly environmentally themed as Klaatu tells Connelly’s character (Helen), “If you live the earth dies, but if you die the earth lives.”

It’s an interesting idea and hopefully they can pull it off. It certainly will be a much larger film than the more personal original, but it looks like they may be on the right track.

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Walt Disney featured the teaser trailer for Tron 2 (shown as TR2N in the trailer) only a few minutes ago featuring Jeff Bridges. Bridges played Kevin Flynn/Clu in the original. In the trailer his character watches on as a pair of participants battle it out on light cycles in the iconic neon lit game environment.

I know nothing about the original Tron so I can’t tell you much, but in conversation here at the Con, Cybergosh from UGO (a big fan of the original) believes one of the people battling on the light cycles was in fact SARK from the original, he said, “It looked like a digital recreation… I was having a hard time figuring out what I was looking at.”

Cybergosh tells me it appears SARK may have found a way out of the game, because after the game ends in the trailer he walks up to his losing opponent who says, “This is just a game,” to which he replies, “Not anymore.”

Not knowing much about what I was seeing didn’t stop me from being terribly impressed.

I had head about this project, but didn’t know it was this far into production.

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Okay, so I haven’t had time to digest the madness that is Twilight at Comic Con, but I thought I would share the introduction of the panel guests with the Twilight MANIACS:

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