WonderCon 2011 Wrap Up – Tales from the Esplanade Ballroom

WonderCon returned to the Moscone Center in San Francisco to celebrate its 25th Anniversary and play host to the makers and fans of every facet of pop culture. Many consider it San Diego Comic-Con‘s little sister, but it might not be for much longer. This was the first year that both Friday and Saturday sold out (Sunday was close), bringing crowds from all over the United States and around the world. Despite the record crowds, it didn’t feel overly packed (well, Saturday I did have to walk sideways down a few aisles, prompting a San Diego flashback or two). I was able to get into all of the panels I wanted to see, except the packed-to-capacity (in a small room) Clone Wars panel. Next time, I guess.

The Green Lantern movie panel late on Friday gave us an extended peek at all new footage from the upcoming movie, flooring the fans who were hungry to see Hal Jordan and his intergalactic pals in action. The CG effects still look… well, CG, but it’s to be expected when you see a gathering of thousands of Lantern Corps members from every alien race in the known and unknown galaxy. There’s no other way to put something like that on the big screen. Both Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively showed up to talk about their characters and what they went through to inhabit their little green corner of the DC Comics universe. When asked which hero he enjoyed playing more, Green Lantern or Deadpool, Ryan replied, “Well, Deadpool’s not really a hero. He’s an asshole,” to which the audience responded with a massive outburst of laughter and applause. Of course, just because we all agree that is true doesn’t mean that we don’t want to see him play the Merc with a Mouth again.

         

Click here to see more pictures from WonderCon 2011, including backstage at the Masquerade

The biggest surprise of the weekend for me was how much I enjoyed the footage for the movie Hanna and its star Saoirse Ronan. The throbbing Chemical Brothers soundtrack pounding through the speakers didn’t hurt either. Very excited to see this one.

The other films featured in the Esplanade Ballroom that day benefited from their exposure to that crowd as many didn’t realize that the guy behind the Resident Evil movies (Paul W.S. Anderson) made a new Three Musketeers movie starring Logan Lerman, Luke Evans, Orlando Bloom, and of course, Anderson’s wife, Milla Jovovich. Luke Evans pulled double duty that day when he also showed up on stage to promote the Immortals movie starring the new Superman, Henry Cavill (sucking up most of the audience Q&A questions, especially from the ladies). But the real star of the Immortals panel was director Tarsem Singh, who kept the crowd in stitches with his rambling, often incoherent, but still hilarious rants on whatever topic he was asked about. How he isn’t one of the world’s biggest directors based just on charisma alone is a mystery. In the end, all of the panels capably presented their films in a favorable light. We didn’t get one panel that felt it had to be suffered through (not always the case with big conventions). Even the Priest 3D panel managed to scare up some interest from me. Between a great cast (including Paul Bettany, Cam Gigadnet, Karl Urban, and Lily Collins, who was just cast in one of the 3 upcoming Snow White movies mere hours before she joined the panel), and some stunning looking fight scenes, Priest looks like great summer fare. I just wish that movies wouldn’t rely so much on the 3D hook. Priest apparently has a strong backstory, coming from some classic Korean manhwa (manga). Looking forward to all of it.

Of course, television had its time on stage on Sunday afternoon, with panels for Doctor Who, the new Steven Spielberg produced Terra Nova series, the return of an animated Thundercats series on Cartoon Network, and two shows on the edge of cancellation, Human Target on Fox and “V” on ABC. Writer Neil Gaiman joined the Doctor Who panel to talk about his work on the show and tease his upcoming appearance as himself on the Simpsons (apparently, he and Moe have a disagreement if the sketch of Moe holding a knife to the writer’s throat is any indication).

The stars and creators of Terra Nova showed off some of the first footage seen anywhere of the new series, bumped from a May debut to next fall in order to give the visual effects teams more time to finish the massive amounts of digital effects that the show requires. Considering that their characters move from a dystopian future to a prehistoric past populated with dinosaurs in the course of the first episode, it’s understandable. Terra Nova is now officially my most anticipated new series of 2011.

From there, the men behind the revamped Thundercats series took the stage to show off some stills and a new trailer for the Cartoon Network series. While I was never a die-hard TC fan, Larry Kenney, the original voice of Lion-O and self-proclaimed protector and approver of all things Thundercats, kept me and the rest of the crowd laughing throughout the panel with his stories and bad puns: “Cheetara was the original ‘Thundercats Ho’.”
By the way, here’s that trailer they showed us:

TV Day wrapped up with two panels that made some people wonder exactly why they were there in the first place, considering that they currently exist on the razor thin edge of cancellation. But while some fans and industry insiders have already written them off as dead, the capacity crowd in the Esplanade Ballroom made it appear that such claims couldn’t be further from the truth. Human Target stars Mark Valley, Jackie Earle Haley, and Janet Montgomery (she’s British!) told stories from the set and teased about what would be happening next season should they get picked up for another batch of episodes. And speaking confidently in hopes of not jinxing anything, Marc Singer and Elizabeth Mitchell of “V”, talked as if the show was already renewed (even though they made it clear that it wasn’t at the time), excitedly talking about what Elizabeth’s character has gone through so far and what she could expect to face in the future, especially with Singer’s character joining her in her battle against the Visitors in the season finale.

Once again, beyond the great panels, WonderCon continued to amaze with it’s staggering number of cosplay enthusiasts roaming the exhibition hall and taking part in the Masquerade, mixing with normally dressed fans who soaked up the stacks of free comics, exclusive toys, rare collectibles, and row after row of celebrities waiting to sign an autograph. If San Diego is too intense for you (or you just can’t get in), WonderCon is (for now) a more manageable convention for the common (or extraordinary) fanboy or girl. Be sure to catch it next year so you can say along with 50,000 other people that you remember the way it was “before”…