Ahoy, squirts!
Quint here.
Sorry, but this one has to be short. It's already 2:30am as I start this and I'm already having to skip a panel I swore I wouldn't skip: THE COREYS panel... Yes, Corey Feldman and Corey Haim will not be seen by me tomorrow morning and I already regret it more than anything else I've missed in my life. But I sacrifice the Corey worship so I can get you folks the skinny on the panels I saw today.
It was a whopper of a day. Let's start with BATMAN BEGINS/CONSTANTINE:
Unfortunately, WB really dropped the ball on the BATMAN BEGINS presentation. Sure, they had Chris Nolan and Christian Bale tape a 45 second "I'm sorry we couldn't make it" spot from the set, but throughout the whole thing Bale looked bored and uncomfortable and we didn't get to see anything special. WB didn't even present the trailer which I know is ready. Why not? Who knows?
They did have writer David Goyer and the dude who's playing SCARECROW, 28 DAYS LATER's Cillian Murphy. Here are the good bits from the Q&A:
-WB is leaving Nolan alone and let Goyer write the BATMAN film he's always wanted to see as a comic book fan.
-Nolan wouldn't have gone through with the project if he felt he would betray the fans in any way.
-They went to DC and got their stamp of approval on the script and their plans for the movie.
-Goyer has seen a lot of the footage and says it's exactly what he's hoping it'd be.
-They won't talk about the Scarecrow costume, but say it will be scary. Goyer said that a friend of his saw the first footage of Murphy in the suit his exact quote was: "Man, that's fucked up!"
-Goyer calls BATMAN BEGINS a "cinematic reboot" of the franchise and says it's possible in any sequels that we'll see villains like The Joker and Two Face and others that have been done in universe set up by Burton.
Now for CONSTANTINE.
They showed a whopping 18 minutes of scenes from throughout the film. Here's what I liked:
-Tone is dark and spooky.
-Cinematography is excellent.
-The scene where Constantine is performing an exorcism on a little girl and the demon inside of her literally tries to rip out of her body through the neck.
-The scene were Constantine is a little boy and he sees an old woman on a bus whose face starts to decay in front of his eyes. He closes his eyes tight... opens them and she's gone. SUDDENLY, from behind him comes an even scarier shrieking dead dude.
-The Iron Butterfly "I'm a badass" music montage (even though Mann used the song in MANHUNTER).
-Some dude finds the spear that pierced Christ's side and gets totally fucked up unexpectedly.
There wasn't anything I really didn't like from what I saw, but I also admit to not knowing a damn thing about the comic it's based on, HELLBLAZER. Interesting tidbits from the panel with Keanu Reeves:
-Director says that while the character of Constantine isn't British or has bleached hair, the film does capture the character of Constantine, which he viewed as the most important aspect.
-Vertigo Editor lady says the rough cut she's seen capture the world set up in the original book.
I'm looking forward to it.
HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY was a surprise trailer during the INCREDIBLES panel (which I'll discuss tomorrow). It's a teaser in every sense of the word, but goddamnit if it didn't get everybody's blood pumping. The cheer for the trailer was one of the loudest for any trailer show so far.
It opens up with the vastness of space and WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD... Earth comes into view as the song plays and it holds for a second. Then BOOM. The earth explodes, but freezes during mid-explosion and the words DON'T PANIC! come on the screen. The footage rolls again and all the little bits of earth gather together and form the HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY insignia... Think the BPRD logo from HELLBOY, but instead of holding a sword the hand is posed in a thumbs up.
I can't wait. Great teaser.
BLADE: TRINITY They showed 2 clips from BLADE 3 (Jessica Biel and Ryan Reynolds joined David Goyer on stage).
The first clip was my favorite. Biel is walking down a deserted subway/train yard type area with a baby in her arms and she's jumped by 3 vampire punks. She gets beaten to the ground and her baby taken from her. One vampire is about to rape her while the other is undoing the baby from the bundle to find a plastic baby with a crying voice box and the words: FUCK YOU written on its chest. It sprays holy water out, burning the vamp's face.
Biel jumps into action, putting the beat down on these punks. She has the knife-toe thing going on and uses that to good effect and whips out her bad-ass looking bow to take out the last ones.
Very cool stuff. I have a feeling Biel's gonna steal this movie.
The second clip they showed was of Ryan Reynolds captured by a few vampires... chained to the floor with Triple H talking shit down at him. But before all that he's unconscious on the floor being nuzzled by a little fluffy rat dog. He pushes it away and all of a sudden the dog's mouth opens up like a Reaper's mouth in BLADE 2. "A goddamn vampire Pomeranian?" It really came off as pretty funny.
The cast talked about the possibility of a NIGHT STALKERS spinoff with Biel and Reynolds if BLADE 3 does well.
ROTK: EE
Oh, shit! Oh, shit! Oh, shit! Saruman's speech on top of Orthanc down to Gandalf and his companions! The Mouth of Sauron!!! Holy shit, the Mouth of Sauron... shot most with close ups of the grotesque, horrifying mouth... wet, slimy... with long, pointed teeth... as the dude reveals Frodo's mithril shirt to Aragorn... Aragorn's challenge to the Sauron via the Palantir gave me goosebumps... Aragorn healing Eowyn...
The footage shown was all of that and more. They brought a 4 minute preview which had most of that above and showed 3 full clips. One was Faramir and Eowyn's first tender moment in the houses of healing, where he consoles her saying that the darkness that weighs heavy on her heart will lift. They also showed a scene that I saw being filmed during the pick-ups last summer with Faramir talking to Pippin and we find out that the Gondor armor Pip has was Faramir's boyhood armor, though Faramir doesn't think it fits the hobbit quite right.
Pip says, "I'm not going to grow anymore, except sideways."
The other bit was an extended scene from the Paths of the Dead. In this cut Aragorn's "What say you!?!?" shout doesn't end there... The Dead don't accept and disappear... all of a sudden Legolas, Gimli and Aragorn are being showered with an avalanche of skulls. They fight against the growing tide and barely make it out of that chamber.
That's what they showed... more quick bits from the 4 minute preview include Eowyn getting beat-up upon by Gothmog, Denethor being more of a bastard to Faramir, Merry's pledge to Theoden, Grima getting smacked by Saruman... Gandalf being caught in a fireball from Saruman's staff... and the ending one... the coolest one... Gandalf being stopped by the Nazgul on the Fell Beast when riding up to save Faramir from burning to death... The ugly brute steadily approaches the wizard and taunts him... The then raises his sword to the sky and it erupts in flame. Gandalf is about to get F'ed in the A.
Anyway, I know that's quick, but I got a huge day tomorrow... Sky Captain, Sin City, Team America, Star Wars, AvP, Fantastic Four... bunches and bunches. Please excuse any typos that spell check didn't catch... I'll be more detailed in tomorrow's report... Tomorrow night I won't waste my writing time slamming back shots with the SHAUN OF THE DEAD boys and Ken Fucking Foree and do my job. Don't worry! Big stuff coming, squirts. I did 3 exclusive 1-on-1 interviews today and I have 5, count 'em, 5 1-on-1s on the docket for tomorrow. Until then, this is Quint bidding you all a fond farewell and adieu.
-Quint
