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San Diego Comic-Con '04
So, it looks like half the people who voted in a Crowsnest poll
a couple of months back have never been to a convention. Which is
a little sad when you come to think of it - there's really nowhere
else on earth you get to indulge your genre weakness like a Con. If
only because everyone else there is doing exactly the same thing.
Tempting? Afraid of being over-run by the Klingon-speaking hordes and forced to join their ranks…? Yup, thought so. As happens, the Klingons are very nice and only too happy to pose in various ferocious poses for your holiday snaps. Fab costumes, by the way. Pretty damn professional in every way, you can only imagine that these are the people Trek producers consult when they mislay a show bible.
Of course, spend the weekend somewhere like San Diego’s Comic-Con and you’re just as likely to run into the Trek producers themselves as you are the Klingons. Literally, the venue for anyone who’s anyone in the arena of all things remotely fantastical (and some decidedly not), this is Con-ing on a grand scale. And this year, despite not being exactly au fait with the complicated world of comics, I got to go. This time last year, I was looking at the pictures of Comic-Con ’03 and consumed in paroxysms of jealousy. Holding your con within commuting distance of LA has about every advantage you can think of in terms of attracting Big Names. Especially Big Names with something to sell/something very expensive to promote, who have been instructed by their promotional team to go all out with winning over the crowd. It turns out that this con is the con. This was the audience every remotely genre film/show/book/ comic wanted to attract, and they made no bones about it. It looked shiny. At least, it did this time last year. Reality kicked in pretty hard by July 21st this year. We’d landed in California at the beginning of the month, covered 4000 miles, several hundred motels and broken at least one hire care already. But that, as they say, is another story. San Diego was supposed to be a break for a couple of days – hang out at the Convention Centre, watch a few films, stay as far away from the car as possible. Lesson number one of conventioning: all hotels in the area will be booked solid. The prices of those that aren’t will pretty much mean you can’t stay at them either. So, blazing rows or no blazing rows with the receptionist about the crappiness of the hotel room you booked way in advance, you’re still going to have to stay there for the next five days. Fun. And that was even before we saw the queue to register… Last time I looked, they were expecting 100,000 people. In 35 years, it’s officially become the biggest genre convention in the world. And they all seemed to have turned up just before we did. Having spent the morning wandering a blazing desert down at Joshua Tree, waiting in line to register wasn’t really so bad. The Convention Centre is a model of big glass buildings, which was nice, as we weren’t about to see much daylight for the next 4 days. That’s really not how these things work. When we finally got handed party packs, name badges and all, it was getting dark. But hey, we were in. And so begins, one of the best bits of any con: going through the programme to find all the stuff they didn’t tell you about beforehand. The way CC works, that would be all the really Big Names then. It does get complicated doing a con schedule, especially when you’re with someone else. Things being as they are, programming is always going to clash, so either go with someone with astonishingly similar tastes; someone who’s flexible enough to give in to your dictatorial demands or be prepared to split up and go it alone for some of the time. I think we went the astonishingly similar taste route this time, with special mentions for making sure we (and the rest of the female population?) were distinctly not missing Keanu Reeves making an appearance for ‘Constantine’ or Jude Law flogging ‘Sky Captain’. A girl has to have her priorities, after all. Aside from this, it’s a case of working out what you’d be prepared to miss the first or last half of if you absolutely have to. And we did pretty well, considering. Lesson number two: get lots of sleep before braving a con. Despite (or because of) spending most of the day sitting in a darkened room for hours on end, it’s absolutely bloody exhausting. Needless to say, it was somewhere after 3am when I finally considered putting the programme booklet down on Wednesday night. One of the highlights of Thursday and Friday pretty much had to be the ‘New Kids in the Universe’ panel – mostly Del Rey authors who had emerged relatively recently – and notable because they’d shipped in China Mieville just in time to promote ‘Iron Council’. As these things invariably do, it descended into a debate on the relevance of SFF between China and Alexander Irvine. Entertaining, yes, but the quieter contributions from fellow authors Howard Hendrix, Andy Fox and Minister Faust also stood out – the latter two tying for best book titles of the year, in my opinion, with ‘Bride Of The Fat White Vampire’ and ‘Coyote Kings Of The Space Age Bachelor Pad’ respectively. Only poor Lorna Freeman got drowned out pretty completely as the only girl there, which was a shame, because her debut book deserved more attention. I had the feeling I may have been the only person there who’d heard of ‘Covenants’ and that was only because I’d had a review copy. It ended, appropriately, by running out of time just as China was about to tell everyone quite why he hated ‘Harry Potter’ so much…and we were kept hanging, dammit. I nearly worked up the courage to ask at the signing afterwards (couldn’t wait to get my mitts on ‘Iron Council’!) but sadly chickened out at the last minute. What was really sad was that I’d lugged my poor battered paperback of ‘Perdido Street Station’ all the way across the Atlantic just to get it signed. After all the excitement, we were off to switch our brains off for a couple of hours at the ‘Summer Movie Preview’. Like so many of the presentations, it was a trailer show – it got to the point where I now know the trailers for ‘Cellular’ and ‘Alien v. Predator’ off by heart. Which is scary. The twist with this showing was that it involved most of the editors of ‘Cinefantastique’ (a cross between ‘Empire’ and ‘SFX’ from what I could work out) hosting and giving their verdict on the trailers and prospects. They tipped ‘Open Water’ in a big way and we received our first warning about just how dire ‘Riddick’ was. Really wish we’d listened…! There was just time to squeeze (literally) into the other big author panel of the day: ‘Kicking Serious Butt: Action and Adventure in SF and Fantasy’. Only in America could you say that with a straight face. What it really entailed was the chance to get names like Harry Harrison, Raymond E. Feist and Robert Jordan in the same room to fight it out…well, verbally, anyway. We turned up so late that not only were there no chairs left, but no standing room either. Nabbing the last 2 inches of floor space to sit on meant I couldn’t actually see anything but, hey, I got to hear them. Not sure exactly who was saying what, but it was certainly interesting. I’m still trying to work out which author admitted to getting stuck and cannibalising a role-playing game he’d played in college for a plot. Ignoring all warnings, we staggered straight out of there and into a late screening of ‘The Chronicles of Riddick’ down the road. And, oh dear God, I really wish I hadn’t. Talk about enough to destroy your faith in the genre for good. Somewhere in the same cinema, we missed the Americans being introduced to ‘Shaun Of The Dead’ for the first time. Which was a crying shame, because apparently they loved it and we could have been smug about seeing it way back when already… The next day, having suppressed all memories of Vin Diesel over-acting, we set off to drool over Keanu Reeves from a great distance. The Warner Bros. presentation was one of the most hyped events of the whole weekend due to the ‘Batman Begins’ panel and Neo himself making an appearance. Ah, ‘Batman Begins’. Probably a lesson in how not to sell that particular adaptation to this particular audience, both director Christopher Nolan and star Christian Bale were no-shows. What we got instead was a taped message saying how they were too busy filming and Cillian Murphy and screenwriter David Goyer making an appearance instead. Not terrible in itself, but the lack of a trailer was fairly unforgivable. I’d accept that maybe they hadn’t had time to make one yet, but that reasoning was disproved pretty spectacularly when said trailer turned up instead on Fox Breakfast News 3 days later. Interesting way to promote ‘Batman’ anyway. David Goyer was always fun, even if Cillian Murphy was a little quiet. After the Constantine trailer had spectacularly failed to impress at the preview the night before, no-one there was really expecting them to go all out and show 20 minutes of footage that was, shockingly, really rather good. Go figure. No-one also expected Keanu Reeves to show up and be the most entertaining person there – surprisingly, after the ‘Batman’ preview finished, the hall was half-empty anyway. Before he showed up, Djimon Hounsou did a good impression of someone not really wanting to be there. Every question directed at him was about ‘Amistad’ or ‘Gladiator’ and he really did his best to keep steering it back to ‘Constantine’, which was highly amusing. Keanu Reeves, a surprising choice by most fans of ‘Constantine’ to play a character who is originally a) blonde and b) British, amazingly looked as if he wanted to be there and was actually – gasp! – having fun. Made a nice change from the bored monotones of some celebrity guests I could mention. After all the excitement, it was nice to come back down to earth.. metaphorically, anyway. There was a serious clash between the author panel for ‘Tropes of Fantastic Fiction’ and Neil Gaiman’s ‘Mirrormask’ presentation We really meant to leave ‘Tropes’ after the first half but the combination of Terry Brooks, Christopher Paolini, Nancy Holder, Greg Keyes, Margaret Weis and Peter David was too good to leave early. Terry Brooks, especially, stole the show but Christopher Paolini was impressive considering he was about ten or twenty years younger than the rest, not to mention the fact he wrote ‘Eragon’ at 15. Just the kind of story the publicity departments love but, as we found out the next day, that guy has worked himself to death promoting it after his parents helped him self-publish. After that performance, when we found out Terry Brooks was interviewing him on Saturday, we had to change the schedule to fit that in! Missing half of ‘Mirrormask’ was annoying, because it looks absolutely extraordinary. Pitched somewhere between ‘Labyrinth’ and ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’, I get the feeling we missed a good chunk of the clips but we did get to hear Neil Gaiman and artist Dave McKean talk (so nice to hear a British accent!). The couple of scenes we did get to see had everyone salivating, especially the musical scene, a deeply strange rendition of ‘Close to You’! It apparently got commissioned because dear old ‘Labyrinth’ and ‘Dark Crystal’ were making millions on DVD. Unfortunately, Gaiman and McKean have been set the task of replicating this on a fraction of the budget - they seem to have done wonders with it, anyway! Rounding off the day was the event that everyone just had to show up to: New Line’s presentation not only had David Goyer popping up again with Jessica Biel and Ryan Reynolds to promote ‘Blade: Trinity’ and the ever so slightly less anticipated ‘Cellular’ and ‘Harold And Kumar Go To White Castle’ (don’t ask. Seriously.) but the LOTR camp there to promote the Extended Edition of ‘Return Of The King’. Much hysteria was had by all when a)Billy Boyd turned up and b) they started showing clips. I could leave happy knowing that Faramir and Eowyn get their Halls of Healing scene reinstated after all that. Saturday dawned relatively early with the prospect of JJ Abrams making an appearance to promote ‘Lost’, his new series about plane crash survivors on a spooky desert island. While Abrams didn’t actually show up, we did get treated to the first hour of the pilot. While it initially looks like ‘Jurassic Park IV’, the producers were keen to stress that ‘it’s not a dinosaur!!’. So, plane crash survivors, desert island, something mysterious, non-dinosaur, large and apparently hungry crashing through the jungle. It’s good. No, it’s really, really good, although I don’t recommend watching the plane crash scene with anyone who is a) scared of flying and b) due to be crossing the Atlantic by plane sometime in the next week. Big mistake! It was nice to see Matthew Fox get a decent series lead after ‘Haunted’ crashed – he’s really the stand out in a cast that includes some impressive actors. Needless to say, both he and newcomer co-star Evangeline Lilley got drowned out in the hysterical screams that meant an LOTR actor must be around – this time it was Dominic Monahan playing a drug-addled musician. And no, before you ask, it was not pipeweed. We ended up making time to see Christopher Paolini interviewed by Terry Brooks before lunch even though I haven’t even read ‘Eragon’, it was highly entertaining to just sit open-mouthed through the whole story of how it came to hit the ‘New York Times’ best-seller list. What with being home-schooled in the wilds of Montana, taking a year at 15 to write a book, which his parents then agreed to help him self-publish, then flogging it at every school and medieval fayre in the country, all before any publishers actually caught wind of it and offered him huge amounts of money for it. Talk about life being more surreal than fiction…! Unsurprisingly, it was incredibly easy to completely miss the big Star Wars announcement that George Lucas had come up with yet another completely unmemorable title for Episode III that day – not when there were much more interesting things happening like the ‘Farscape: Peacekeeper Wars’ panel. As anarchic as only a ‘Scape event could be, they showed the (fabulous) mini-series trailer a couple of times with a few dozen blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moments (ie, ‘was that Grayza?? Pregnant??!’ as someone squeaked in disbelief during the Q&A session.). Claudia Black and Ben Browder kept everyone entertained by taking pictures of just about everything from the stage and David Kemper filled us in on how insane it was trying to fit the whole of season 6 into a 4 hour mini-series. The general consensus was that 4 hours is way, way better than nothing and roll on October! The plan almost everyone had next was to camp out in the unbelievably big Hall H for the rest of the day – not only was Jude Law up next, but the Comic-Con shy Sarah Michelle Gellar had finally caved and was here to promote ‘The Grudge’. The one thing we weren’t expecting when we pitched up for ‘Sky Captain’ was the sneak look at Southpark’s Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s new film, ‘Team America’. Not having a clue what we were watching, having missed the first half hour, they showed a scene where al-Qaida plant a bomb in France and most of Paris gets trashed by Team America’s crack anti-terrorist World Police whilst foiling the terrorists. This would, of course, not be remotely funny – except that the whole thing is done with marionette puppets a’la Thunderbirds. Who says the Americans don’t get irony?! Actually one of the funniest, most relevant previews of the whole convention, it’ll be interesting to see if they can keep it up for an entire movie. While the ‘Sky Captain’ footage was technically impressive and obviously a labour of love for writer/director Kerry Conran and producer Jon Avnet, it left me with a nasty feeling that the actual actors were being reduced to puppets (that was George Lucas’ grand plan last time I checked!). It looks gorgeous, in a retro 1930s SF serial kind of way and it’s certainly unique but perhaps lacking heart. Jude Law certainly seemed sold on it, though, so the jury’s still out until I can see the whole thing. After seriously expecting Sarah Michelle Gellar to be slightly unenthusiastic about being there, she went and surprised everyone with a list of ten (seriously comic-themed) reasons why she hadn’t turned up before now…methinks her husband, notorious comic fan Freddy Prinze Jnr., had been consulted about some of the more obscure references that passed me by, but she ended on a grand flourish with the observation that there wasn’t nearly enough merchandise with her face on it. ‘The Grudge’ re-make she stars in came across as another ‘Ring’, only more faithful to the original, with a seriously spooky trailer. It might have been a bit more convincing if SMG had changed her appearance just a tiny bit since her ‘Buffy’ days. As it was, her hairstyle had me flashing right back to season four. The other big event of the day was the ‘Alien vs. Predator’ panel (fairly dull) which was remarkable for having the audience still screech when they showed the same trailer for the 15th bloody time. Expectations running high, by the look of things. The trailer itself is fine, the footage they screened somewhat less exciting. As Sanaa Lathan herself admitted when she appeared in the panel, she’s really not another Sigourney Weaver. ‘Fantastic Four’ had barely been cast, let alone started shooting, but we were treated to Eoan Gruffud, ‘The Shield’s scary Michael Chiklis and a newly blonde Jessica Alba turning up to pose while they explained that ‘Chris Evans is playing the Human Torch, but he can’t be here today’. No, not that Chris Evans. This Chris Evans is the young, bland star of ‘Cellular’ and currently ‘Fantastic Four’ is looking equally bland. Should be interesting come next year, anyway. Sunday was not only the last day, *sob*, but also the home of all my favourite things. While it was nice to imagine that the ‘Dead Like Me’ panel might be as blackly comic as the show, guests Ellen Muth (George), Jasmine Guy (Roxie) and Callum Blue (Mason) were kept on a tight leash by a corporate vice-president vetting all the questions...yawn! It was a pretty tame affair, made all the worse by ousted creator/current TV genius Bryan Fuller sitting in the audience across the room. It’s not like the show’s quality has diminished since he was reduced to a ‘consulting’ role, it’s just that he’s funny as hell in person and these questions, sadly, weren’t. Way too early on a Sunday morning, apparently. We made it back just in time for Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright to show up promoting ‘Shaun Of The Dead’. Apparently, zombies invading North London really strikes a chord across the Atlantic and most of the questions were just drooling praise from Con-goers who had been at the preview screening on Thursday night. The Region 1 DVD promises lots of extras us Region 2 people won’t be allowed, though, dammit!. Quite aside from ‘Cabin Fever’ writer/director Ely Roth showing up in the question queue to wind Simon Pegg up and then run amok down the centre aisle (you probably had to be there), the highlight by far was the ten minute ‘presentation’ of ‘Spaced’ to the Americans. Quite, quite bizarre from where we were sitting, having devoted Friday nights to that particular genius, well, years ago. Literally a blast from the past for us Brits, we did get the impression from all the clapping that the Yanks loved that as well. Quite right, too. Just to round off Comic-Con in style for the last two panels, first up was the incomparable Joss Whedon promoting ‘Serenity’ (don’t ever make the mistake one tongue-tied questioner did of calling him Josh...it really doesn’t go down well!). While we were promised ‘surprise guests’, of course the entire ‘Serenity’ cast of nine showed up to rapturous applause. Anyone who hasn’t bought the entire, sadly short, series of ‘Firefly’ on DVD should go out and remedy that because it’s just simply staggeringly good. The only trouble is, as good as the continuation on film as ‘Serenity’ looks, ‘Firefly’ is a Joss Whedon product through and through and they always work best on TV and over, say, several years. There was a hedged confession that perhaps the series would never be returning in a TV format but even this dampener was brightened by the first glimpse of the trailer to borrow a favourite ‘Firefly’ catchphrase: Shiny!! Joss even made everyone watch it again (oh, the hardship!) because he thought we missed the big moment of ‘Reavers!!’ right at the end. The applause was that loud! Roll on April next year was the general consensus. After the miraculous resurrection of ‘Firefly’, it was time to end on a more bittersweet note. When Bryan Fuller left ‘Dead Like Me’, he teamed up with former ‘Angel’ head dude Tim Minear. The fact that the sublime result, ‘Wonderfalls’, was cancelled by Fox after a record 4 episodes is a testament to how truly arbitrary the survival is of anything genre these days. For the majority of people who won’t have seen it, picture ‘Dead Like Me’s George not dead with an over-achieving family, a philosophy degree and working retail in a souvenir shop at Niagara Falls. Oh and inanimate objects are suddenly telling her to do very strange things. It’s about fate and surrendering to destiny, had a funky theme tune and was far too good for Fox. Sadly. Having seen nearly all of the episodes now, it’s incredibly frustrating that this crashed and burned and stuff like ‘Andromeda’, ‘Mutant X’ and even the truly terrible ‘Enterprise’ have notched up quite so many episodes. Even Eliza Dushku’s much-hyped ‘Tru Calling’ displayed very little brain compared to the average episode of ‘Wonderfalls’. Dammit! As a treat, the small crowd left after ‘Serenity’ cleared out got the chance to see the unaired 7th and 8th episodes, which managed to be seriously twisted, funny and sweet all at once. Now that’s multi-tasking. The panel with Bryan Fuller and Tim Minear was great, although they seemed sweetly worried we wouldn’t like it before they screened the episodes. Absolutely no chance of that: we laughed, we cried, we all went home with the promise of a DVD boxset release sometime soon. And that was Comic-Con 2004. So much for a break. We emerged blinking into the evening sun, dazedly working out how in hell we could make it again next year. Jennifer Howell all rights reserved
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OTHER CONTENT - November 2004
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So,
it looks like half the people who voted in a Crowsnest poll a couple
of months back have never been to a convention. Which is a little
sad when you come to think of it – there’s really nowhere else on
earth you get to indulge your genre weakness like a Con. If only
because everyone else there is doing exactly the same thing.
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