Ryan Reynolds says he took the title role in Green Lantern to play a hero that can “throw a punch, tell a joke and kiss a girl”.
The actor, along with castmates Blake Lively, Peter Sarsgaard and Mark Strong and director Martin Campbell, presented a clip from the film at Comic-Con on Saturday for some 6,000 ecstatic fans, many of whom camped out overnight for a chance to see the presentation.
Campbell says the 3-D movie blends realistic action with humour and an otherworldly trip to the planet Oa, home of the Green Lanterns. He added that while the hero’s costume is “a work in progress”, his cinematic story is set: He is joined by his fellow Green Lanterns for a face-off against Parallax, whom Reynolds describes as “the physical manifestation of fear in our movie”.
The clip showed Reynolds as Hal Jordan, who, after a fight with street thugs, takes the Green Lantern oath and uses his new powers to blow them away.
Reynolds recited the oath for the Comic-Con crowd, which rewarded him with cheers.
No just cartoons
The concept, look and tone of Super, a new superhero movie which had its presentation at Comic-Con, reminded me of something but I can't think what. See if it rings any bells for you. It's about an ordinary shlub (Rainn Wilson, aka Dwight from the US version of The Office) who decides to become a superhero called Crimson Bolt, complete with crummy homemade costume. He fights back against the neighbourhood crooks, drug dealers and miscreants; he has no powers, but he does have some ordinary household tools and a cute but humorously foul-mouthed teenage sidekick (Juno's Ellen Page).
Sounds like a kick-a** idea, right? Judging from the excerpt screened, the film is going to kick so much a** that all our a**** will feel well and truly kicked.
If only I could think what Super reminds me of. No clues from the panel, which included Wilson, Page, Liv Tyler and the writer-director James Gunn, who seemed keen to point out that he came up with this idea eight years ago. It was probably a good thing that the event was so under-attended; it left lots of space for the elephants in the room; I ducked out 10 minutes before the end.
Guillermo del Toro arrived to correct the misapprehension that he would be directing The Haunted Mansion in fact, he'll be writing and producing. He also talked a little sadly about The Hobbit, revealing that the design stage of the first part of his version was 98 per cent complete.
"I say this as a fan because I have no moral authority any longer over the project," he went on, "but I hope they get made because they're beautiful and we need them in the world, and I hope to God that Peter [Jackson] directs them."
I enjoyed the panel Graphic Novels: The Personal Touch, even if the advice of the assembled novelists never really got beyond homilies such as "If you're true to yourself, your work will feel personal."
Gabrielle Bell said sheepishly that she was "always trying to block out my personal touch, to make it more universal and professional".
When the fabulously spiky C. Tyler (author of Late Bloomer) called her on that, asking what she meant by "professional", Bell confessed: "I wanna draw like the guys."
What a shame there wasn't time to address this male domination of the art-form, particularly on the same afternoon that Entertainment Weekly staged a panel entitled "Girls Who Kick A**: A New Generation of Heroines".
Here's hoping the person who went for that infantilising "Girls" over "Women" (why not go the whole hog and call 'em "Chicks"?) was the first to get his (or her) a** kicked.
Green Hornet flops
The mass exodus during the panel for Michel Gondry's The Green Hornet, another DIY superhero movie, was frankly embarrassing, and so emphatic that you half expected the panel members Gondry, writer and star Seth Rogen, and bad guy Christophe "Attendez les crème!" Waltz to down tools and stomp out as well. From the clips we saw (in 2D, though the film will be in 3D) it looks like a moderately glossier version of Gondry's usual thrift-store kookiness, complete with Matrix-style fight sequences. It's not hard, then, to see what sent the fans running. A movie geek may be insatiable, but she or he can also be highly conventional. The Green Hornet looks like innocuous fun to me, but the sight of Seth Rogen goofing around, blasting his sidekick in the face with a gas gun, is no Dark Knight disciple's idea of a superhero film.
Rogen, whose banter became steadily more subdued, seemed to know it. He started off admitting "there have been lots of conflicting ideas out there about what the movie should be" and ended up responding to a question about his dramatic weight-loss with a sullen: "No, I'm just dying."
You couldn't argue with that.
Eva so charming
Will Ferrell, Eva Mendes and Mark Wahlberg were on good form promoting The Other Guys, an action comedy about the nerdy cops who have the next desk along from two Lethal Weapon types.
Mendes was quizzed by a boy with whom she had flirted at Comic-Con five years earlier.
"You told me to come back when I was older," the lad said with a grin. "Well, I'm older." The laughter didn't quite eclipse the sound of a thousand seething adolescent boys grinding their teeth in envy.
Hero's welcome from Han Solo
It was as though Han Solo himself had stepped into San Diego Convention Centre.
Harrison Ford made a surprise appearance at Comic-Con on Saturday, and some 6,000 fans greeted him with a sustained standing ovation unmatched by any other at this year's event. The Star Wars hero smiled, bashfully, seemingly moved by the warm welcome. ''I just wanted to make a living as an actor,'' the actor said. ''I didn't know about this.''
Ford was on hand to help present his new film, Cowboys & Aliens, joining a panel that included co-stars Daniel Craig, Sam Rockwell, Olivia Wilde and director Jon Favreau.
The film looks like an old fashion Western when suddenly a spaceship arrives. Favreau said he aimed to balance the two genres without relying too many computer-generated effects.
-- with inputs from AP
