For their first year at Comic-Con, Summit Entertainment may have brought three films to present, but the crowd only cared about one: “Twilight,” the much-anticipated adaptation of Stephanie Meyer’s novel about a normal teenage girl who falls in love with a centuries-old vampire. That particular panel was so popular, in fact, that 20th Century Fox actually benefited from preceding it, yielding nearly twice the audience they would have attracted had the thousands of teenage girls and middle-aged women not camped out for primo seating. Of course, Comic-Con is all about waiting, so the best was saved for last, while the rest of the audience was subjected to sit through presentations for two of the most unoriginal sci-fi movies ever made.
Push (guests: director Paul McGuigan and stars Chris Evans, Camilla Belle and Djimon Honsou)
Paul McGuigan’s “Push” desperately wants to differentiate itself from the pack as a sci-fi actioneer about psychics living in the real world, but if there’s one thing I learned from watching the opening sequence and listening to the cast talk about the film, it’s that movies like these are rarely good. When you add to that the fact that Djimon Honsou had absolutely no interest in talking about the film (let alone even remembered anything about the character he played), and you have to ask yourself: if the actors themselves aren’t interested, how the hell is the audience supposed to get excited? Thank God for Chris Evans, then, for doing his absolute best to explain everything he possibly could about the movie’s complicated plot, as well as serve as the comic relief. Dakota Fanning was late to the panel, and therefore was unable to offer up her two cents (which might have been helpful, since she is the protagonist of the film), but I don’t think even she could have helped matters. The crazy “Twilight” fans had only one thing on their mind, while the rest of us simply couldn’t wait to get it over with.
Knowing (guest: director Alex Proyas)
Director Alex Proyas is probably best known for making one of the most underrated films of the past decade (“Dark City”), so why does his latest movie look so bad? A sci-fi tale about a mathematical cipher that has correctly predicted every major disaster of the past 50 years (cue obligatory reference to 9/11), there’s something so eerily familiar about the set-up of “Knowing” that it’s hard to imagine it took Proyas so long to work out the specifics of the story. The movie feels like a hybrid of “A Beautiful Mind” and “Déjà Vu,” but with Nicolas Cage hamming it up as a man who is convinced that the cipher really works. Cage appeared in a similar movie just last year (the pre-cog film, “Next”), and it really makes you wonder why he signed up for something so similar so soon. The trailer (which has been available on the web for weeks) is pretty unimpressive, but the movie just feels like a disaster of its own. It would have been nice to learn more about the story, but because Proyas was so hush-hush about the plot, it seemed almost pointless that he came to present anything at all.
Twilight (guests: director Catherine Hardwicke, author Stephanie Meyer, and stars Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, Cam Gigandet and Taylor Lautner)
Sitting in Hall H during the “Twilight” panel was like attending an N ‘Sync concert in Japan during the height of their popularity. (Some fans had been waiting in line since 1:30 PM on Wednesday). Women screamed like Elvis himself had just been resurrected in the room, and as a result, the participating cast and crew had no idea how to react. Apparently, the actors didn’t have a clue as to just how rabid the fanbase was, and between the uncomfortable questions from the crowd (“What’s it like playing a super sexy vampire?”) and the uncomfortable answers from the panelists (“Ummm…”), the following 30-odd minutes were less than productive. Director Catherine Hardwicke introduced some promising footage of a major sequence from the end of the film, but I think fans were expecting much, much more. I mean, the movie is scheduled to open in less than five months, and with very little CG, it’s hard to imagine that more footage wasn’t compiled in time. Of course, the fans couldn’t have cared less. All they came for was to gawk at Robert Pattinson in all his messy-haired glory, and, well, he delivered. I’m not exactly sure how the British-born actor (best known for his role as Cedric Diggory) managed to cull such a large fanbase since his controversial casting as the film’s lead vampire, but whatever he’s doing has clearly worked.
