Comic-Con 2013: five things we learned Jul 22nd 2013, 12:26
Superman v Batman, Avengers 2 and a very sexy Frankenstein monster ... Ben Child picks the top five stories from this year's Comic-Con, the annual convention for comic-book culture and superhero fans
1. Superman and Batman remain the biggest draw in comic books
Both the man of steel and the caped crusader have been through their fair share of disastrous outings on the big screen. For Supes, there were the last two Christopher Reeve movies and the god-awful fawning Bryan Singer paean to the Richard Donner years that was 2006's Superman Returns. For the dark knight, readers will recall with horror George Clooney's bemused and Bat-nippled turn in the execrable Batman and Robin in 1997. But times have changed, and the combined success of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy and Zack Snyder's passable Man of Steel have pushed the pair back to the top of the superhero tree. The loudest shout from Comic Con's Hall H was not the one which greeted the announcement of the title and villain for the next Avengers movie, it was the one that erupted after Warner Bros revealed that Superman is to battle Batman in Man of Steel 2. Take that Iron Man, Thor and Captain America!
2. Joss Whedon is desperate for more originality in superhero movies - up to a point
"Pop culture is eating itself at a rate that is going to be dangerous," opined Avengers director Joss Whedon during a Friday night Q&A in which he railed against remake culture. "I think it's important for us to step back from that and create new universes, new messages, and new icons ... so that 10 years from now we can reboot those."
So how does that tally with Marvel's announcement that the Whedon-directed sequel to last year's $1.5bn box office megalith will feature the villain Ultron, a character well-known from the comic books? The Buffy the Vampire slayer creator was insistent that fans will be getting something new: "We're doing our own version of the origin story for Ultron," promised Whedon. "We're crafting our own version of it where his origin comes more directly from The Avengers we already know about."
The Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator's bosses at Marvel are also bringing sequels to Thor and Captain America to the big screen over the next year, a fact which would also appear to clash with Whedon's clarion call for originality. Yet few in the audience were too upset at the studio's decision to wheel out fan favourite Tom Hiddlestone/Loki - complete with repetition of that wonderful "mewling quim" jibe from The Avengers - for the Marvel panel in San Diego. Sometimes the old ones are the best.
3. Frankenstein's monster is a sexy beast
If flat-bonced, bug-eyed Boris Karloff springs to mind when you think of Mary Shelley's hideous creation on the big screen, be prepared for a reeducation. The panel for Stuart Beattie's forthcoming I, Frankenstein introduced a version of the reanimated beast played by hunky Aaron Eckhart from The Dark Knight/Thank you For Smoking and equipped with impressive martial arts skills. Renamed Adam Frankenstein, the new creature is a far cry from Karloff's interpretation in the 1931 horror classic and does not bear much resemblance to the iteration imagined by Shelley, partly because (according to Beattie) "there's only so much you can do to make Aaron Eckhart ugly." The introduction into the Frankenstein mythos of Underworld-style duelling supernatural clans suggests this one might be scary for all the wrong reasons.
4. In Alfonso Cuarón's space, no-one can hear anything
Sci-fi aficionados will know there are two possible ways to "do" sound in space on the big screen. One either goes for the realistic approach, which means that scenes filmed outside spacecraft are screened silently, or one opts for the completely wrongheaded (but significantly less soporific) method in which large objects smashing together in space create exciting explosion noises. The teaser trailer for Cuarón's highly-anticipated new film Gravity went for the latter mode, much to the chagrin of the Mexican film-maker, who is planning an audio-free take on space reminiscent of iconic 70s sci-fi movies such as Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. "They put in explosions [in the trailer]," said Cuarón, whose film stars George Clooney and Sandra Bullock as astronauts struggling in the aftermath of an accident involving a space shuttle. "As we know, there is no sound in space. In the film, we don't do that."
5. The World's End may not be Pegg, Frost and Wright's last hurrah
It debuted in UK cinemas this weekend, but Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and director Edgar Wright were on hand in San Diego to push the sci-fi comedy to American filmgoers ahead of the film's US release in a few weeks' time. The good news: The World's End might not the last comedy the Spaced trio work on together, despite being the final instalment in the "Cornetto Trilogy" which began with 2004's Shaun of the Dead and continued with 2007's Hot Fuzz.
"The next thing we do together won't have to abide by [the trilogy's rules]. Maybe it could be set in the past," said Pegg, though he admitted: "We're not due to have our next idea until four weeks' time." Any future movie will have to fit into a schedule that includes future Star Trek instalments for Pegg and Wright's long-gestating Ant Man movie for Marvel.
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