San Diego Comic-Con ‘08 Wrap Up

So the 2008 San Diego Comic-Con is officially over – today feels like coming down from a “high.” Covering the Con is always a whirlwind, but at least this year (my second covering it) I felt like a was a bit more in control.

We did our best to bring you the lowdown on what is relevant to you although we couldn’t cover everything. That’s the problem with the Con – as far as movies and television almost everything is relevant to what we cover here at Screen Rant: Sci-Fi, superheroes, action and a bit of horror.

We managed to cover:

• The Stargate Continuum DVD movie red carpet premiere.
• JJ Abrams’ Fringe panel.
• Battlestar Galactica.
• Joss Whedon’s highly anticipated Dollhouse TV series.
• The Stargate Atlantis panel.
• Zack Snyder’s follow up to 300: Watchmen.
• The pretty much waste of time that was ABC’s Lost panel.
• The completely opposite of that, which was the Heroes panel. They brought the ENTIRE cast plus premiered the entire first episode of Season 3: Heroes – Villains.
• Bringing you news that Terminator Salvation actually looks like it might be awesome.
• The train wreck of a film that is called The Spirit.
• Coverage of what I predict will be a monster hit, even if it’s not very good: Twilight.
• Plus Knight Rider, Red Sonja, The Wolfman, Max Payne, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Push and Alex Proyas’ Knowing.

Whew!

You know, I hadn’t really put it all into one big list – that’s a hell of a lot of stuff we covered. Kudos to Bruce for helping me flesh out our coverage big time!

I know we missed a lot, but it was just myself and Bruce Simmons on the beat, as opposed to most of my online movie friends who seemed to each have their own entourage of minions (you know I mean that affectionately, guys) to help them cover far more than we could. At least as a bonus Bruce turned out to be a photography buff and we were able to provide you with a few pictures of this year’s event. Actually I think he still has a couple hundred in his camera that didn’t managed to make it onto the server.

Last year was brutal, as I was covering the Con not only in general for Screen Rant but in particular for AdvancedIron.org, the number one Iron Man fan site in the world (with some help from my pal John Comerford). This year I was determined to relax a bit and enjoy the event more.

Probably the biggest reason I go to these things is to have the opportunity to hang out with my friends who run other great movie sites, talk shop, kick back and have a drink (or 4). I had the opportunity to get together with:

• Pete Sciretta of /Film (and his boyz, including David Chen who was nice enough to include me in a couple of their Con coverage videos).
• Alex Billington of First Showing and his entourage of super nice guys (take a hint from ‘em, will ya Alex?).
• The great and mysterious El Mayimbe and Kelvin from from the kick-ass and extremely plugged in Latino Review.
• Eve and Dave (who saved me seats in the big hall) from the funky Geeks of Doom.
• My friend John Campea (who is always surrounded by gorgeous babes) and finally the irreverant Doug Nagy from The Movie Blog.
• Ed Mazamian, the most movie-industry-plugged-in real estate guy on the entire planet.
• Robert Sanchez from IESB, who worked his butt off to put together the killer Wrath of Con party.
• Michael, who runs the appropriately snarky Great White Snark (the best place online to see the costumed folks at Comic-Con).
• Neil Miller of Film School Rejects and the 85 guys he brought with him. OK, I’m exaggerating. A little.
• Andy Sorcini from The Drill Down.
• Kris Tapley of In Contention.
• The beautiful and super-nice Elisabeth Rappe of Cinematical.
• The incredibly funny and witty Kevin Kelly, who I affectionately nicknamed “whore.”

If I missed anyone, I apologize… my memory is almost as bad as my hearing.

Highlights of the Con:

• Getting to meet in person the entire cast of Stargate SG-1 (except for Claudia Black). I’m a HUGE SG-1 fan and that was a big thrill, especially when they all turned out to be so nice.
• Seeing the additional Watchmen footage which was even more amazing than the trailer.
• Getting hyped about Terminator 4 due to the footage and McG’s presentation and his description of his vision for the film.
• Attending the Tropic Thunder screening (thanks, Tamar!) which was hysterically funny.
• Hanging out at the Wrath of Con party, in particular the ladies from the upcoming grindhouse movie Bitch Slap.

Lowlights of the Con:

• Verification that The Spirit does indeed look like it’s going to be awful despite the passion of Frank Miller for the material.
• Sitting through an hour of the Lost panel to learn virtually nothing. At least the audience participation part of it was funny.
• Enduring the almost literally ear splitting (due to the almost non-stop screaming of female fans) Twilight panel, having to listen to questions from the audience like “boxers or briefs,” and watching some of the castmembers totally work the audience with their “yeah I know I’m hot” attitude.
• No Star Trek panel or new footage.
• Getting into the Wrath of Con party.

While Watchmen and Terminator Salvation were big this year along with Wolverine, they weren’t “Iron Man big” as far as generating buzz on site. I have a feeling that next year’s Con will have more to offer comic book fans with Iron Man 2, Captain America and The Avengers movies coming out in 2010.

That’s about it for this year I guess. I don’t know if it’s doable, but I’m hoping that if Screen Rant continues to grow (tell your friends about the site, will ya??) that next year I can afford to bring Bruce, Jamie, Heath and Kofi to help cover Comic-Con 2009.

Thanks for reading our coverage and your support of it!