The only other film really matching Tron 2 as far as hype is, of course, Green Lantern. And yeah, maybe that new Harry Potter film, which literally sent the girl sitting next to me into orgasmic spasms, clutching herself each time a new trailer scene popped up. And what better place to hold panel conferences for such overly-anticipated films than Magical Hall H, next to which people are known to camp out all night or at least wait in line for a good 4 hours to check out maybe 2 minutes of footage, only to get rejected when you’re about 50 yards from the door? Green Lantern is being helmed by Mask of Zorro/new James Bond director Martin Campbell, and judging by the footage, looks every bit as f&%ing rad as the crowd was hoping it would be, despite Campbell’s insistence that what was being shown was mostly rough and early FX.
It was a precious 30 seconds or so, packed with shots of the cities of Planet Oa, Sarsgaard/Hammond’s head undergoing a massive traumatic expansion, and Ryan Reynolds throwing a, uh, flaming Green punch after getting his ass kicked in an alley. Ryan Reynolds stated that although he wasn’t an aficionado of the comic to begin with, he’s taken time to immerse himself in the GL Universe and grown attached to it. He hasn’t taken off his Green Lantern ring for 3 months, and at one of the panel’s best moments, recited the Green Lantern oath for an 8 year old kid, and made his mouth literally drop open. Pretty cute.
Sarsgaard said what attracted him first and foremost to the character of Hector Hammond was his character arc and how he went from one extreme to the other in the course of the movie. “He seems like he would have been the kind of kid who took a hanger on the top of a building during a thunderstorm”, a kid that was always just looking to experience such things for the sake of experiencing them. Sarsgaard ‘s interest in the character gives me hope for the film, along with these new scenes.
Then came the new extended Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows trailer, and that girl next to me into cardiac arrest, like one of those Japanese kids having a seizure while watching Pokemon. I kept thinking of what it would be like if Billy Graham or Pat Robertson saw Jesus come back to earth, or Oral Roberts when he saw the 900-foot Jesus in Oklahoma. Yeah, ‘ol Harry is bigger than the Messiah in many ways, and at times it didn’t seem too far off from a Beatles concert, with people looking like they were going to be carried off on stretchers. I still haven’t read/seen one, but in this trailer, Harry looks like he’s getting the sh*t kicked out of him by that Voldemort guy, there’s a bearded dude (Robbie Coltrane maybe?) flying on some steampunkish engine in the sky, and lots of stuff is getting blowed up real good, so I was pretty much hooked.
The two films, along with the hot chicks that came out to support the mind-blowing scenes from Zack Snyder’s new film SuckerPunch, made the Hall H presentation more than worth it: Crashing zeppelins, burlesque dancers, machine guns, trench warfare, dragons, pretty much every piece of eye-candy imaginable you could imagine, all spilled out onto some multi-genre plate of awesome.
The winner here was definitely Harry Potter, and it didn’t hurt that Tom Felton came out to promote it. “This is my first Comic-Con, and I must say it’s definitely lived up to the hype,” Felton announced. He was pretty gracious in the few seconds he was up at the podium. But SuckerPunch looks most promising, if only for its ridiculous-yet-amazing trailer and the fact that it’s Zack Snyder’s first original film, but it’s not out til March as far as I know. Until then I can only wait. And salivate…here’s a peek:
Words by Jeff Nau
