Beaks here...

As far as I'm concerned, Thursday, July 24th, 2008 is a date that will live in Comic Con infamy as "The Day the Drapes Fell on Frosty." For everyone else, it'll be The Day Hugh Jackman Surprised a Packed Hall H and Unveiled a Money-Shot-Laden Teaser for X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE.

I'll not bore you with the details of the collapsing black drapes in the San Diego Convention Center's mammoth Hall H (which rained their flimsy metal fury down upon the noggin of Collider.com's Steve "Frosty" Weintraub - he's concussed, but recuperating) aside from noting that, combined with the complete shutdown of I-5 South and the news of mass firings at Paramount, it seemed like this year's Comic Con was utterly cursed before the studio show-and-tells could get underway. Maybe this is just my shit, but the vibe seemed off starting with "Preview Night": sure, the floor was unusually packed for a Wednesday evening, but the studio booths were largely underwhelming (WB's to-scale Archimedes and THE SPIRIT's snow machine excepted). Factor in the looming absence of heavy hitters like J.J. Abrams's STAR TREK, TRANSFORMERS 2 and G.I. JOE, and the venerable SDCC appeared to be on the ropes (sustaining body blows from its increasingly popular spring competition, the New York Comic Con).

Amazing how a muscular, charismatic Australian and three minutes of deftly cut together footage changed all that.

I just got back to my hotel room after a long day of interviews and panel watching (which concluded with a brilliant, if barely orchestrated two-hour celebration of Robert Smigel's TV FUNHOUSE), so I've no idea if the WOLVERINE footage has leaked to the tubes (a cursory search turned up nothin'). If Fox is smart, they'll make the clip live immediately. In the interim here is my initial, verbatim reaction:

"Sabretooth! The Blob! Gambit! Deadpool! Weapon X! Holy retracting balls, I'm twelve again!!!"

Fox pulled off a similar coup de somethin'-or-other back in 2002, when Bryan Singer unleashed an invigorating assemblage of footage from the still-filming X2. Though WOLVERINE has at least wrapped, the nagging reports of a rough shoot down under made what Jackman introduced today feel far more impressive. This doesn't look like a film in turmoil; this looks like the top grossing picture of 2009. The scale is huge, the tone is classic 1980s X-Men, and the volatile chemistry between Jackman and Liev Schreiber's Sabretooth will have you clamoring for a retroactive expunging of Tyler Mane from the first X-MEN movie. There's still plenty of time to fuck it all up, but for now, it's looking like the immensely talented Gavin Hood might've pulled it all together.

And with that, Comic Con 2008 appears to be in fine shape.

As for the other two films featured on the Fox panel, I guess I'm most interested in Scott Derrickson's remake of THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL. Though I loathed Derrickson's first film, THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE, he at least has a solid eye for composition; he also went out of his way to let us know that he a) once had dinner with Robert Wise (who advised that his debut feature should be a horror flick), and b) watched the original a number of times in preparation for this redo. To Derrickson's credit, this version feels nothing like Wise's bluntly stated anti-nuke allegory; unfortunately, everything I've seen from the film thus far (including the interrogation sequence and a clumsily-written back-and-forth between Keanu Reeves's Klaatu and Jaden Smith's Jacob) comes off as crushingly banal. But it's all out-of-context. There could be a compelling movie hidden underneath Keanu's patented monotone.

Missed opportunity of the day: not getting to ask Keanu if he's ever fired his gun in the air and yelled "Aaaaaahhhhh!" But it was nice to see Jennifer Connelly.

Mark Wahlberg kicked off the MAX PAYNE panel with one of the sharpest observations on the fanatical Hall H crowds I've ever heard: "It's like doing a concert in Japan." He then noted that he suddenly understood the New Kids on the Block reunion tour. "Gets you warm in the pants."

It was nice to see Wahlberg working the crowd like a natural born performer; gives me hope that, one of these days, he'll figure out how to be a great leading man. Of course, that won't happen until he picks better star vehicles. And while MAX PAYNE looks like ten tons of agreeable silly, the major action sequence Fox proudly unspooled played like Brett Ratner's remake of DIE HARD: basically, it's a huge office shootout in which glass is shattered, sprinkler systems are triggered, and Payne sustains a good bit of damage. The major difference is that, in DIE HARD, there was a reason for Hans Gruber to order the random destruction of glass (McClane's bare feet); in MAX PAYNE, it's just an aesthetic consideration for the filmmaker (i.e. John Moore).

They also showed us a special, extended-for-Comic-Con trailer that was cut (badly) to an alternate Led Zeppelin recording of "Whole Lotta Love". Put me off the movie entirely.

That was the only major studio panel I got to check out today, and I ain't complainin'. I filled the time by chatting with guys like Robert Smigel, Dino Stamatopoulos, Frank Darabont and Clark Duke. Transcriptions are on the way.

Faithfully submitted,

Mr. Beaks