Tag Archive for: Tron

Comic-Con Day One, otherwise known as Tron Day!!!  Yes, after two years of teasing with concept art and LARPs, Tron his Comic-Con in full force this year.  Preparing for this, we decided that Thursday would be the day we committed to standing in line for the Hall H, where the H stands for “Hell”.  We had tried to get to bed early on Wednesday night, although we had to stay up to wait for the arrival of Lisa, the final fourth in our fantastic group.  Lisa had worked in the art department of Tron, so she also shares my love of light cycles and glowing discs.  Landall, fueled by his new-found Comic-Con enthusiasm, agreed to wake up early, take the first shuttle down to the convention center and hold our place in the Hall H line while we three got up, got dressed, had a nutritious breakfast (it’s the most important meal of the day, especially at Comic-Con when you may not get to eat anything but nachos for 12 or more hours) before jumping on our own shuttle to head down. 

Lisa and Me waiting in the Hall H line

We arrived at the Hall H line, which was considerably more civilized than previous years since the organizers installed enormous canopies to cover the line-up area.  It was like attending a ridiculously large wedding where you never got to see the bride and groom and if you left the line to pee, you’d never be let back in to the party.  The line-waiting was as excruciating as it may seem because it’s only Day One and we were more excited than exhausted.  Got to meet some friends of Kevin’s in line and generally get a lay of the land (fewer Cos Play enthusiasts than expected).  As we were standing, a young gentleman came through the line, asked if we were waiting for the Tron panel (natch!) and handed us little cards with a “666” on it and said that they were to be used in exchange for a gift at the end of the panel.  oooooo-kay.  Tossed it into the bag and back to chatting to kill time.   We weren’t sure if we could actually get IN to the 6000+ seat room, but after only two hours (!) of waiting, in we went. 

Unlike last year, where we had to sit through the several long panels (including the <ugh> Twilight panel) to get to the Avatar panel, this year Summit Entertainment spared us a Twilight attraction and there was only one panel to sit through before Tron, MegaMindMegaMind will be coming out this fall and stars Will Ferrell, Tina Fey, Jonah Hill and Brad Pitt.  Everyone but Brad hauled their asses down to San Diego to try to drum up some buzz for this movie, which honestly looks cute and plays off the concept of “what if the buffoonish villain (Ferrell) actually one” (which explains why Brad didn’t bother to come down; evidently he dies in the first reel.  Ooops, spoilers.)  It’s a Dreamworks animation picture, which means that the heart has been ignored to be replaced with pop culture references, not a bad move for the Comic-Con crowd (note that Pixar doesn’t bring their stuff here).  It’s clearly a “we’ll wait for the reviews to come out” sort of flick. 

11:00 a.m. and finally the main event — Tron:Legacy!  Yes, for this I missed one of the LGBT panels, I’m that excited!  Disney pulls out all the stops, bringing in all the stars (Jeff Bridges, Olivia Wilde, Michael Sheen and Garrett Hedlund (who plays Flynn’s son)) as well as director Joseph Kosinski and Tron director, Steven Lisberger.  Moderator Patton Oswalt is the best anyone could ask for, which is why Disney brings him back year after year.  He’s clear proof that having a comedian moderate your panel is a sure way to get the audience pumped and keep things moving along.  We’re shown 8 minutes of footage, mostly how Flynn’s son, Sam, gets sucked into the Game Grid and how he is assimilated into the world of Tron.  By necessity, most of these eight minutes had to focus on Mr. Hedlund, who has had a short resume up until now.  While I’d like to chalk it up to “wow-green-screen-acting-is-tough” syndrome, it is safe to say that Hedlund’s acting is . . . well, he wins the Jake Lloyd award for sucking the life off of the screen and out of the movie.  It was clear that the marketers were expecting an eruption of fanboy hoots and hollers at the end of the clip and what they got, unfortunately, was closer to polite applause.  Hardly the kind of enthusiasm to generate great amounts of buzz.  Seemingly like a remedy to this almost-anticipated reaction to the footage, Joe Kosinski  then took the mic to explain that they wanted to set a Guinness World Record for most number of people ever directed by one director. 

Yes, this was a pretty brilliant move, to have us all "in" the movie

Representatives from Skywalker Sound were in the room to record crowd noises that were going to be conducted by Kosinski (along with the help of a “follow the bouncing ball” animation on-screen) and these sounds were going to be (allegedly) mixed in the final print of the film for the massive coliseum fight scenes.  We spent the next ten minutes being directed in chants like “DISK WARS!  DISK WARS!” and “DE-REZ!  DE-REZ!” and stomping, cheering, etc.  It is a testament to both Comic-Con attendees and the savvy of Disney marketers that the 6000+ people in Hall H took this whole thing with DEADLY SERIOUSNESS.   Man, I love that about Comic-Con. 

As this was still the Disney panel, the Tron folks moved on and Patton Oswalt continued to talk about other  Disney properties.  He asked the audience “if there was one Disney property that you would like to see remade or rebooted, what would it be?  Well, clearly he should have stipulated that he meant recent Disney property since we all shouted “THE BLACK HOLE!”.  Alas, no, (although there IS a Black Hole remake in the works to be directed by Joe Kosinski).  No, this is Comic-Con and the place for major studio announcements.  Patton turns the panel on its head to announce that Disney will remake/reboot the Haunted Mansion movie, but it will no longer be an Eddie Murphy starring comedy, but an actual horror movie produced by Guillermo Del Toro

999 Happy Haunts got these . . .

And those cards we were handed in line?  Evidently there were only 999 of them (to mirror the “999 Haunts” that are in residence in Disney’s Haunted Mansion) and we can trade them in for signed and numbered exclusive lithographs of this awesome poster by Ragnar.  Now THIS is what I love about Comic-Con: exclusives that you get just by being in attendance, not because you stood in line to buy something. 

While Lisa wanted to stay in Hall H for the Entertainment Weekly “Visionaries” panel, Kevin and I risked our spots in the big hall to run out to the main convention center to grab our limited edition posters.  more line waiting.  Clearly, the impression that Kevin-the-first-timer is getting is that Comic-Con is all about lines and he’s not too wrong.  

With our posters in hand, we immediately high tailed it back to Hall H to try to get in for the Visionaries panel (which this year featured J.J. Abrams and Joss Whedon).  Nearly two more hours in line and we just barely made it in for the panel, which was kind of worth it.  Joss made “official” the worst kept secret in Hollywood, that he was directing The Avengers and they pretty much geeked out on each other’s work.   By the time they were done with the panel, we were done with Hall H. 

After a full day of movie panels, we were in desperate need of sustenance and headed into the Gaslamp Quarter in search of food.  This is proof of why Los Angeles and Anaheim will be hard pressed to host Comic-Con after 2012; there is just no comparable food/hotel center for either of those cities’ Convention Centers.  On our way to get food, we ran into my friend and fellow student Daniel Ponce, who had just gotten his entrance ticket into Flynn’s Arcade by participating in the Tron LARP that has been going on for months.  By following a specific Twitter feed, players were directed to a specific coordinate in the Gaslamp district at approximately half-hour intervals.  Once there, players were required to snap a cell phone picture of themselves with a Tron-related item in the background (typically a poster that had just been posted minutes before) and then run to a second set of coordinates to check in with Disney employees.  Dan mentioned that since he had just completed one set, another one was bound to happen in about thirty minutes, so he recommended we hang around the Gaslamp and wait.   Sure enough, in half an hour, we read the feed and Lisa, Kevin and I were off to the coordinates.  Since we weren’t coming up all the way from the Con, we were among the first to get there and received our Flynn’s Arcade entrance passes along with a glow-in-the-dark Identity Disc.  Geek Swag!!! 

The experience of Flynn’s Arcade (which Lisa and I had done last year) deserves its own post, so I’ll be filling that in shortly.