Warner Brothers and Legendary Pictures had the single largest block of time in the Hall H schedule on Saturday, and it made me hopeful that we’d see something truly special to kick off the day in the hall.
The room buzzed with the idea that a major announcement would probably be made by the end and we were all hoping for something truly special. But we can get to that at the end.
First, we had Seventh Son, which looks far better than I could have expected.
Here are my notes as I took them live in the panel:
The clip showed first off was longer than the trailer, but only really expanded on the ideas portrayed there. Chris Hardwick brought Jeff Bridges out, as well as the director, and other members of the cast, including Kit Harington, Jon Snow.
The film looks awesome, but it’s worrisome that the release date is 1/17/14, not a traditionally confident release date.
Jeff Bridges basically is The Dude, reading snippets of quotes and notes about his character and needing to realize peace through imagination.
The panel moved at a very brisk pace. Jon Snow and the Dude were ushered off stage and we were treated to the sights of Godzilla.
This movie looks like it could be truly special. The trailer implies that it has the real world gravitas that Pacific Rim brought to the world of Kaiju, but it will also just kick ass.
At the start, we were shown a black and white clip of an A-bomb in the Pacific. They then played last year’s sizzle clip and then brought out the director, Gareth Edwards, and cast, including Bryan Cranston.
The crew finished their last day of shooting just two days ago on a night shoot in Hawaii. They came to San Diego straight from the wrap.
Cranston: “Godzilla was always my favorite monster when I was growing up. He was unapologetic. King Kong was… (mimes feelings)… I was a boy, I wanted to see destruction.”
Cranston wasn’t sure he wanted to take the role, but had a conversation with Gareth and watched “Monsters.” Because it was a monster movie that was character driven, that’s what attracted him to Godzilla. “You get all of the character stuff AND Godzilla, which makes it the best.”
The codename on the film was “Nautilus.”
Perhaps one of the best stories told was Gareth Edwards giving the codename of the film to Canadian customs on their way to filming and the customs guys not quite buying it, so they go to the Internet quickly as they’re holding them, do research, and come back and say, “You’re directing Godzilla, aren’t you?”
To which Edwards replies, defeated, “Yes.”
To which the customs agent says, “Don’t fuck it up.”
Just after Cranston almost whipped out his penis, they showed a teasing trailer that looked phenomenal. Cranston appears to be a scientist, Ken Watanabe looks to be in it, as well as David Straithairn. There’s lots of footage of people running and human destruction. Then a Mothra like villain attacks an airport. Hope looks lost… And then Godzilla arrives.
My god. The sound of his roar was incredible. This film hits theatres May 16, 2014
The next film on the docket was Warcraft.
Since this film doesn’t even start shooting until early 2014, it was obvious they were just making an announcement here. They played a sizzle reel of a human fighting an Orc. It looked pretty clearly like test footage.
After the trailer, Duncan Jones, director of Moon, was brought out and announced to be directing this film.
Anticipation in the crowd was very high for this one.
That’s it for Part 1. In Part 2 we’ll talk about 300, Gravity, The LEGO Movie, and… Superman/Batman.