While most of San Francisco frolicked in the beautiful spring weather on Saturday, I joined over 18,000 of my pale geek brethren at the Moscone Convention Center for WonderCon 2007. WonderCon is the San Francisco arm of San Diego's ComicCon, and while it's a bit smaller in scope, it still brought out some big names in comics, movies, television and geek culture. If the idea of seeing Brad Bird in person gives you a nerd boner (aka a pwner), there's a wrap-up of all the panels after the jump.
:As the intersection of comic books and film continues to widen, comic conventions are becoming more and more a place for studios get the truly dedicated fanbases in a lather over their various offerings. While only 6 of the more than 90 events running at WonderCon were dedicated to movies, the movie offerings were easily the best attended. Even huge names in comics like Brian K. Vaughan drew around 75-100 people, while over 3,500 packed into the ballroom to get a peek at footage from Spiderman 3. The movie presentations went on nearly non-stop all day, with serious fans staking out good seats an hour or more before the presentations began.
First up was Brad Bird, director of The Iron Giant and The Incredibles, showing off some footage from his upcoming movie for Pixar, Ratatouille. The two scenes he previewed were pretty spectacular -- like Bird's previous two films the characters have the loose-limbed expressiveness of classic Tex Avery and Chuck Jones cartoons, while the CG itself has taken a leap forward, losing some of the plastic-y sheen of The Incredibles or Cars. When Bird was asked whether he planned to return to traditional 2D cel-based animation, he replied that while he certainly planned to, his next movie would be live-action. Called 1906, and set during the catastrophic 1906 San Francisco earthquake, it will be Bird's fist attempt at a live-action movie. As for the possibility for a sequel to the Incredibles, Bird replied that while none was planned, he would certainly return to the Incredibles universe if there was a story to tell there. In other words: no, but maybe.
Next up was a preview and QA for The Reaping, the Hillary Swank movie about a Louisiana town besieged by the ten Biblical plagues. The movie looks like a bad combo of dumb and self-serious, and the QA was a snooze, with a lot of celebrity-addled geeks stammering out their love for Hillary Swank, though the fanboy in me did get kinda hyped about seeing Idris Elba, who played the awesome Stringer Bell on HBO's The Wire. Producer Joel Silver played coy when questioned about the upcoming Speed Racer adaptation and the recent parting of ways of Joss Whedon and the Wonder Woman movie.
My personal favorite film QA was next, with Kevin Munroe director of the upcoming TMNT, the CG-animated entry into the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise. Like many twentysomethings, I have absurdly fond memories of the late 80s/early 90s cartoon and movies, and I was a kinda leery of this adaptation, but hearing Munroe speak (and seeing some footage of the movie) put those fears to rest. Munroe seemed to really respect the franchise and want to deliver something that would satisfy both the studio and the fanboys. Munroe mentioned that film barely managed to squeak by with a PG rating, and it looks like it'll nicely toe the line of being okay for kids while still having enough shell kicking to satisfy us nostalgic nerds.
After that came a forum for a small little movie, perhaps you've heard of it, called 300. Director Zack Snyder and stars Gerard Butler and Lena Headey were on hand. Snyder showed off about five minutes of a battle sequence, and the crowd was going batshit for it, literally screaming aloud as Persians got hacked up in some nicely composed slow-motion sequences. The QA session afterwards was a letdown -- most of the questions boiled down to: "Gerard Butler and Lena Heady, you are both very attractive. Would you care to comment on this?" Geeks and beautiful people are a bad combination. One bright spot was Snyder speaking briefly about his attempt to film Alan Moore's magnum opus The Watchmen, saying that he plans to begin filming this summer.
I'll be honest -- I stuck around for the panel on Resident Evil: Extinction purely to hold onto a seat for the Spiderman 3 footage. In theory I should love the Resident Evil series -- I'm all about zombie movies -- but the Resident Evil movies usually tend to be more action flicks that happen to have zombies in them, and pretty miserable action flicks at that. I kinda went into another place for most of it. Ali Larter is blond. Her costar is not. Something about it being a great experience. Something about it being a lot of fun.
Finally, it came time for the the promised highlight of the whole day: some unseen Spiderman 3 footage. In reality, it turned out to be the equivalent of those free vacations offered by time-share condo schemes. We had to sit through nearly 45 minutes of a dull presentation for some goddamned animated penguin movie before getting our three minutes of Spiderman. The natives started getting restless and began booing, but quickly forgave all when the footage finally came and we got the first official look at Venom rocking it. Even the brief glimpse of Venom was enough to give me goosebumps. Still, it was a bad faith gesture on Sony's part to pull a bait-and-switch.
All in all, it was interesting, but rarely exciting. Trailers for movies can be seen anywhere now, and even the big payoff of the Spiderman 3 trailer, the appearance of Venom, had been leaked on the Internet months earlier. The chance to see directors and actors speak about their films is cool in theory, but there seems to be an inverse relation between how famous the celebrities appearing are and how enjoyable the QA sessions will be. Famous stars mean fawning questions from nervous attendees and Inside the Actor's Studio-ish rambling from celebrities, while lesser-known directors and actors tend to field more insightful questions from fans. Next year I'll stick to the smaller movies, and hit up the trade floor when everyone else is crammed in to see "exclusive" footage from Hellboy 2 or Ironman.
