Comic Con 09: Day 1 Wrap-up – Tron 2, Alice, New Moon, Avatar

Comic Con

I’m writing this from my hotel lobby computer, of course I don’t have a laptop with me. Also if you’ve been checking out our Twitter account you should be receiving some of my Comic Con updates. Day 1 is done. Here’s what I did.

First off: Preview Night was last night so I ran across the showfloor from 6pm-9pm. It was intense seeing everything and trying to figure out what exactly was worth filming for 30 seconds. I’ll be posting it on our YouTube account probably next week. At times I think I had a little too much fun with the camera. Hopefully the footage turns out decent.

Day 1: If you thought Comic Con was about walking around from booth to booth think again! I spent the entire time sitting. Yes for the most part it was comfortable excluding the morning when we had to wait outside in order to get into Hall H. This Hall houses Comic Con’s largest discussion panel. This is where all the big announcements are made.

The very cool thing about Hall H this year was that it was upgraded to Dolby Digital 3D and High Definition projection capabilities. So yeah all the artwork and footage shown was in HD and many moments were in 3D!

Disney 3D: Disney started Comic Con off with a bang. Robert Zemeckis showed up to promote his new CGI 3D film A Christmas Carol. It stars Jim Carrey in multiple roles. Kind of odd to see an actor play that many different characters in the same movie even if it’s CGI. The clip shown was basically Scrooge being told that he was going to be visited by three ghosts. We’ve seen this movie done over and over before. From the footage shown, I didn’t really see anything that stood out to me this time around other than it’s in 3D.

Then Disney went on to bring out Tim Burton to show off Alice in Wonderland. Guess who also magically showed up? Mr. Johnny Depp made a quick peek-a-boo and the audience flipped out. The trailer that we watched was pretty brief, maybe a minute to two, so they decided to play it three times! This too was in 3D. Everything about this film from the artwork to the idea of telling a more in-depth story made me extremely excited to see this film. The trailer shown looked breathtaking in 3D. Unlike A Christmas Carol, this film mixes CGI and real actors. It’s something that I find much more believeable and interesting.

Finally Disney brought out the best part of the panel. Well it’s the part that I at least was looking forward to the most. Tron Legacy materialized. Dammit the first scene that they showed was so mindnumbingly perfect! I don’t want to ruin it, but by God the 1980’s are back! The second scene that they showed was test footage that was originally released at last year’s Comic Con. Holy crap sure I loved the first scene, but this was light cycles in glorious 3D! If Tron Legacy can manage to pull off a good science fiction story this will be one hell of movie.

That was it for Disney so I walked away to grab some food. A hotdog and waterbotel which cost me almost eight bucks. While I was away some random 3D films were being showcased. I believe Joe Dante showed off a new horror film that he was working on. It looked cheap and cheesy. One that grabbed my attention was The Final Destination. Sure the trailer seemed pretty good when it was first released on the web a couple months ago, the amount of choas and death in 3D was uproarusly hilarious and of course gruesome.

Summit Entertainment: Summit was next and they showed off Astro Boy, Sorority Row, and New Moon. Astro Boy looked like it could be entertaining. The trailer was rough with some CGI scenes that still needed to be finalized. Sorority Row is a college horror movie. Sounds typical, but the trailer really provided a great setup for a horror movie. Hot babes involved in a prank gone for the worst and then they become hunted down by someone who knows the truth about their activities. Insert sex scene here. Now onto another horny bunny film called New Moon. I had no interest in this what so ever going into it – BUT – the stupidity of the actors on the panel made the experience worthwhile. I don’t know what was going on, but they were all so squirmish. They babbled about nothing when trying to answer questions. They were either on drugs or they have underdeveloped brains. When this panel come onto the stage the amount of screaming was practically overwhelming. I thought the amount of screaming for Johnny Depp was lot, but New Moon greatly overpowered it.

Avatar: As nerds we at Comic Con already know the basic premise behind Avatar. James Cameron knew this going in and thankfully he didn’t lecture us like he did at E3 for thirty minutes. Instead he was gracious enough to show us around twenty-five minutes of film. Oh wait, what? It was in 3D! The scenes shown were slightly scattered and followed a basic story that allowed us to see how Avatars work on the planet Pandora. The footage really captured me when it began with real sets and actors. Then it mixed in the CGI Avatars and finally it became a pure CGI movie. I’m sure that there will be various scenes across the film with real actors, once and if human marines come into play. If you’ve seen video games liked Uncharted 2 and films like FernGulley, you now know what the planet Pandora will look and feel like. Things are bright and colorful yet still retain a video game pre-rendered cutscene feel. Hopefully the character development that James Cameron is known for will seep through these character’s fake CGI pores.

Anyway it was a big day for Comic Con and I don’t think it will get any bigger than this. We’ve still got a MGM party for Stargate Universe later tonight. Let you know how it goes as soon as possible.

Author: DaveWeLike

I'm the editor of StuffWeLike.com.

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