Saturday is always the big day at the San Diego Comic Con, yet the talk was all around five movies in particular that day - a hardcore swords and sandals epic, a loving throwback to sleazy 70's exploitation cinema, a western-like Faustian comic book tale, and a glimpse of the third installments in two of the biggest film franchises ever. Here's a look at what I caught:
300
Director Zack Snyder, comic legend Frank Miller and actors Gerard Butler and David Wenham were on hand for the "300" panel by Warner Bros. The stylised film uses green screen backgrounds and is slavishly loyal to the material, just like Miller's "Sin City". The big difference though is the subject matter and the budget - the former being about the 480 BC-set Battle of Thermopylae in which 300 elite Spartan warriors held off a contingent of a million Persian soliders from entering Greece.
An extended very R-rated trailer set to Nine Inch Nails music showed this not to be your average "Gladiator" style rip off - lots of sex and nudity, dark visual stylings bordering on horror/fantasy, and touches ranging from plenty of violent bloodshed to fascinating cinematography tricks (lots of frame rate changes for example) essentially bring the original graphic novel to life almost exactly. The clip was so well received, it ended up playing three times. Butler and Wenham played off each other well, answering some rather lame audience questions with good humour.
Ghost Rider
Despite being at the con last year, Director Mark Steven Johnson and actress Eva Mendes turned out to promote "Ghost Rider" but brought co-star Nicolas Cage this time which got a strong reception from the audience. A new trailer debuted, showing off some scenes already shown in the teaser, but added a lot more action. We see glimpses of Peter Fonda's devilish side, more of Wes Bentley as villain Blackheart, and the money shot of Cage's face burning off and away into the Rider. Another cool shot was the chain in action - turning victims into stone and then shattering them.
Cage talked a little about the film, saying that "An American Werewolf in London" is the main inspiration for the film's tone of mixing "comedy, horror, suspense and drama" elements. He's added some character quirks of his own to Johnny Blaze - "Johnny loves to relax to the vocal styling of Karen Carpenter and has Martini glasses filled with jelly beans". A much more in-depth interview and set visit for the film will be coming shortly.
Grindhouse Probably the 'coolest' footage of the whole con was a long reel from this double feature throwback to 70's exploitation cinema. Directors Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez were on hand to premiere an extended scene and a montage with a deliberately scratchy visual style. Tarantino's film begins shooting in four weeks so all the scenes were from Rodriguez film which involves zombies and various small town cops. There's all sorts of geek-tastic moments - the extended scene had a score of which John Carpenter would be proud and Tom Savini bitching about how some guy bit his finger off. Michael Biehn plays the sheriff, and Freddy Rodriguez is some prisoner in their custody who is more than he seems.
The montage showed off a hilariously over the top sense of humour - to give you an idea Rose McGowan plays Rodriguez girlfriend who's in hospital after her right leg has been eaten. Shortly after the pair end up on a motorbike outchasing zombies whilst she shoots at them with a machine gun that has been shoved into her leg stump. Other scenes involved random violence including some woman disintegrating into a cloud of blood after being thrown into the path of a high-speed tanker, and a glimpse at 'The Babysitter Twins' - two sexy girls who start bashing up a car with sledgehammers.
There was also short glimpse at one of the specially made intermission trailers for 'Machete' in which Danny Trejo plays a guy who carried around 30 machete knives in his trenchcoat, makes out with two hot blondes at the same time, and spur-of-the moment attaches a gattling gun to the front of his motorbike. After the footage, Tarantino did his usual spiel with lines like "We're going to make two, sleazy grindhouse movies that will deliver on the posters… and beyond. This isn't some Twilight Zone the Movie fcking thing. This is not a faux double feature. This is two fcking movies for the price of one! You're $10 will be well spent at the Grindhouse, baby". He also mentioned plans for two anime "Kill Bill" prequels.
Pirates of the Caribbean 3 Disney had weak presentation this year, opting mostly to plug its DVD product. Yet there was one little treat that got everyone excited - the premiere of the first footage from the next "Pirates of the Caribbean" flick. In the clip we see Chow Yun-Fat's Captain Sao Feng doing much of the talking whilst there's lots of sword fighting action between Jack Sparrow, Barbossa and Davy Jones. One funny scene has Sparrow trying an interesting method to turn a ship on its side.
Spider-Man 3 If there was one panel to see at Comic-Con, it was "Spider-Man 3". Many people got locked out of seeing it because the auditorium was so full, but for those who did get in it was a treat. The footage was what looked like a 90-second second trailer that was in the works with half the FX shots being animatics. They literally only just finished shooting and are about to go into editing so most of the visuals aren't complete, yet there was some great finished looking stuff too.
Amongst the shots on offer were some more Sandman visuals, a bit more of Harry Osborn using his dad's gear to go after Peter, Eddie Brock praying to God to kill Peter, lots of shots of Peter ripping off his black costume, some more shots of the moving black substance, and brief glimpses of both Gwen Stacy and Mary Jane. The money shot though caused the audience to literally leap in applause - in a church, Brock feels a black substance splash on his hand, he looks up as a huge blob of it falls down onto him, a few quick flashes shows his transformation, and then we see Venom in all his glory on all fours. The creature roars as the camera rushes down into its throat.
Director Sam Raimi was on hand with actors Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, Bryce Dallas Howard, Topher Grace and Thomas Haden Church to talk about the film though all were under strict orders not to talk about the film much. Most of the questions naturally went to the topic of Venom which Grace fielded though didn't reveal much. Raimi said Steve Ditko and Todd McFarlane's work on the "Venom" comic series proved a big inspiration for the script.
