Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a report on the Disney presentation as well as a look at the HEROES panel. I didn't catch the Disney panel because I thought it was only presentations on the NARNIA super deluxe special edition supreme thing, that I have no interest in, so I opted for another panel. Looks like I made a mistake! PIRATES 3 footage was shown. Here's our new spy with info on that as well as the HEROES TV pilot presentation! I'll be back afterwards...
Hello,
This is the first time writing in to your site. I have gone to comic-con for 5 years now and this is the first time I went to any of these panels.
I don't see any mention of the Disney panel in Hall H...maybe I missed it on your site. I am sorry that I didn't catch the names of the people but they talked about the 4 disc Narnia set coming out. They are filming Prince Caspian next...probably not news.
Then one of the effects guys that worked on Pirates came out and went into a lot of technical detail about how they created the effects for Davy Jones. They showed a lot of side by side shots of the actors in their motion capture suits and what the finished characters looked like. He also brought along a kind of gag reel that showed some of the jokes the animators did at the end of filming. The 2 that caught my eye were the 'Krispy Kreamed' scene. They made the rolling water wheel a krispy kreme doughnut. A lot of the animators had just worked on SW3 and showed a scene where Elizabeth was wielding 2 light sabers instead of swords. They then showed what I thought was a fairly long preview of the next movie. 2 of the scenes they showed that caught my eye was where Sparrow tells off the 2 women from Tortuga in a funny exchange after which they both slap the crap out of him. There is another scene where Sparrow asked if anyone rescued him just for the sake of rescuing him or liking him and all were quiet...except the monkey raised his hand. It looked pretty cool and should be a fun movie next year.
I also sat in on the premier of a special extended edition (72 minute w/o commercials) of the Heroes pilot that will be airing on NBC this fall. All I can think of for this show is it is some take on the Rising Stars comic. Jeph Loeb is working on it so I can see me sticking around for a few episodes. From what I can tell Ali Larter's character has a mirror image that kicks ass. Her son is a super genius. The dude from Gilmore Girls thinks he can fly and his older brother does fly. There is a guy who paints things before they happen (paintings done by real comic artist Tim Sale). There is someone who has radioactive hands. The funniest scenes belonged to the guy who is playing the Japenese boy who can teleport. Those scenes are pretty funny and got the most reaction from the crowd. There is also some mysterious plot surrounding someone or some group trying to gather all these 'specials.' Oh, there is one girl who has Wolverine's healing power. Those scenes were cool and I am sure are some of the ones that will be cut out for the actual TV pilot. They show her friend filming her (she plays a 'cheerleader' and her friend is the guy who a cheerleader would never talk to) going to the top of a walkway between two grain silos and her jumping/falling off...she lands face first on the ground and when she gets up her shoulder is out of socket and she casually puts it back in. A bit later in the same scene it shows 2 ribs sticking out of her side that she just puts back in. Later in the show she is at home and puts her hand down the garbage disposal...she takes it out and it is totally mangled. I am guessing that stuff is too violent for regular TV. Someone asked how the creator would keep it fresh and not retread on other hero powers. I don't think he answered very well. His take is he doesn't read or will not read anything on comics so in his mind he is not stealing anything. He said a lot of this will focus on the characters and not their powers (didn't like this answer). Damon Lindelof did an interview with the creator that was in a comic they handed out at the door. Even Damon sent him a copy of Rising Stars since thematically it seems similar (similar in that these random people get powers or have powers that start to manifest themselves from an unknown source). Again, not sure how the series will go but the pilot they showed was cool enough and it has actual comic people (Loeb/Sale) working on it so it will keep me around for the first few weeks anyway.
Also, I don't know if Quint is going to add this later or if he just doesn't care about Ghost Rider...but they showed an extended trailer that I hadn't seen before. It seemed ok. Don't know much about the GR character. My buddy I was with who had read some of the stuff said his only question is why they would have the Nic Cage/Johnny Blaze GR riding next to an older version on a horse. Some people asked whey this wouldn't come out on Halloween as opposed to the Feb 18 date that is announced. Avi said it isn't a horror movie and didn't want to be limited by that release timeline. The panel was pretty cool...but I must say that Nic Cage seemed to be...well...under the influence of...something. Never heard him talk in that environment so don't know if that is normal. It was pretty wild.
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Thanks.
(btw, I really enjoy your site. Don't always agree with you but enjoy reading your opinions).
I missed the Grind House panel...anything cool come from that? Didn't see that posted either.
