After the strong start for the Warner/Legendary Presentation (documented here) we were treated to Chris Hardwick killing time until the next panel was ready to go.
The next panel was: 300: Rise of an Empire.
Yawn.
This movie looks like a video game and that’s not a good thing. It looks boring, to be honest. Pretty, but boring. Eva Green looks fantastic in it, though.
Where the first 300 was a cartoon caraciature for historical events, this film looks like it’s just a superhero comic book version of things. It’s turning into its own sub-genre.
They showed an extended trailer and it looks exactly like the first 300, but with a different color palate, since so much of it happens on boats over water. If you liked the first 300, this is going to be a movie you’re going to see. If you found the first 300 lacking, I don’t see why you’d think differently of this one.
The next film, I think, took everyone’s breath away.
Here’s Alfonso Cuaron, presenting Gravity:
Gravity
Alfonso Cuaraon: “The story is about two astronauts in space. There’s only two all the way through the film, there is no other cast. It’s only Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. If I was going to be stranded in space, I wouldn’t mind being stranded with them. It’s a non stop ride, very dense. It’s a journey with the characters and we wanted to give the audience the feeling that they’re floating in space.”
Then, Cuaron went on to explain that the trailer is a bit misleading. The actual film doesn’t have that sound in space. The trailer did that for audiences, but the film is not that way. He also mentioned that the film has lots of extended takes, like Children of Men.
Then they ran a clip. It went on and on, through the inciting event of the movie, with very few cuts if any. It floated around and so gorgeously captured what being in space might be like.
This movie looks absolutely daring. Like Children of Men stylistically, but in space. It’s anxiety inducing, thrilling to watch, and just… Wow.
Sandra Bullock came out on stage and talked quite a bit about why she liked doing it, and explained how challenging it was, and how this was a way to address some of her fear of flying and claustrophobia. And why she went right after to do a comedy.
The film comes out 10/4/13 and it’s not coming soon enough. To be honest, I think this was the absolute highlight of the WB/Legendary panels.
Next on the docket was The LEGO Movie, which I’ll admit looked much, much funnier than I was expecting.
The filmmakers came out and explained that EVERYTHING in this movie is something you could have assembled with bricks. The water is bricks. The clouds are bricks. Everything. And the voice cast they’ve assembled is incredible. Morgan Freeman, Will Ferrel, Liam Neeson, Will Arnett…
But they also made some announcements about other voices and characters that will be in the film: Channing Tatum is Superman; Jonah Hill Green Lantern; Wonder Woman is Cobie Smulders.
There will also be Ninja Turtles in the movie. There will be other franchises that LEGO has licensed, but it’s too early to talk about them. The other two major franchises are Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, which I think would be achingly cool to see, but somehow, I don’t see Disney letting them put Star Wars on the big screen again before they get to.
This film comes out 2/7/14.
Penultimately, we were treated to Edge of Tomorrow, more recently known as All You Need is Kill.
The trailer was shown first. Tom Cruise, who seems to be showing his age a bit, is some sort of soldier in a war, and he keeps meeting Emily Blunt, who’s a soldier in that same war. They wear these massive exo-skeletons with guns attached and it looks painful. Tom Cruise’s character is having visions of things and… it’s all pretty vague. They explained on the panel and the impression that I got is that it’s Groundhog Day with a war, the day he’s repeating is the first day of an alien invasion.
When the panel came out, Tom Cruise revealed that he and Chris Hardwick had both played Stacey Jaxx in versions of Rock of Ages and the two of them started singing a Foreigner song as a duet. It was quite bizarre.
The film, written by Christopher McQuarrie, actually looks quite good. The release date is a very confident June 6, 2014.
Come back for Part 3 for information about the Superman/Batman announcement!