WonderCon 2009 was fun and I took a lot away from it. I’d like to share a quick look back at a few moments I experienced while there!

On Friday I walked the entire floor, checking out the booths for both product and celebrity appearances. The floor is definitely more focused on games and comic books. While browsing around, I asked a few folks about the size of the con and a few of them thought it was smaller than in previous years.

The Chuck panel at the 2009 WonderCon was attended by Zachary Levi (Chuck), Yvonne Strahovski (Sarah), Josh Gomez (Morgan), Adam Baldwin (Casey) & exec producers Josh Schwartz and Chris Fedak.

We were treated to some previews and upcoming scenes.  There is definitely a lot more skin this season than last.  Wouldn’t you agree?  No, I’m not having a problem with it – just saying.

Alien Trespass is the classic example of a movie that’s made for consumption by the crowd at WonderCon. Directed by X-Files veteran, R.W. Goodwin, Alien Trespass is the story of an intergalactic lawman transporting a terrible monster, the Goata, when his spaceship crashes into Earth. The alien becomes freed and terrorizes a small 1950s desert town. The premise of the film is a throw back to classic science fiction films, but quite meta in the explanation of its storytelling.

The Watchmen panel was the highlight of my time at the San Francisco Wonder-Con. Probably because I have been anticipating this film since it was published as a graphic novel.  After hearing a mix of reviews about the film I was slightly apprehensive about attending the panel and seeing the first 20 minutes of the film. Especially because most reviews have said that those 20 minutes are incredible, and the rest of the film is sort of a let down.

When I first heard of Harper’s Island, I didn’t give it much thought. In fact I might have dissed it in a previous post on the TV seasons. Yet let’s take a look at the minds behind the show: Executive producer Jeffrey Bell (Angel, The X Files) and co-exec producers Dan Shotz and Karim Zreik (Jericho).  I have to give pause one moment and wonder anew about this show. Some of the cast includes Katie Cassidy (Supernatural), Christopher Gorham (Jake 2.0, Ugly Betty) and Elaine Cassidy. I was also surprised to see Harry Hamlin and Richard Burgi in it. Oh, and Jim Beaver plays the town sheriff. That’s Bobby Singer from Supernatural!

The Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles panel had Josh Friedman, Summer Glau and Shirley Manson in attendance.

The panel started with a preview of upcoming scenes from the rest of the season.  First, we watched Catherine Weavers daughter skipping down a typical hall in her mom’s big company.  She accidentally finds John Henry.  John Henry asks her if she wants to play hide and seek.  The door shuts behind the little girl, but John Henry is across the room and it seemed obvious the little girl didn’t shut it.  Creepy imagery.

McG (pronounced like McGeee) came on stage and was pretty energetic and it helped spark the crowed to an even higher level of anticipation.  He was pretty liberal with his language, so I won’t be translating literally.  As someone sitting next to me said, wow, he cusses a lot.  I looked over at them and said no sh**!   The rest of the panel included Anton Yelchin, Moon Bloodgood, Common and Bryce Dallas Howard.

We were running short on time so we flew through these combined panels.

Knowing

Alex Proyas chatted to us remotely via a video about Knowing, telling us what we were about to see.  They showed us the movie trailer and two scenes from the movie.

The Star Trek Panel filled the room… of course.

J.J. Abrams, Chris Pine (James Kirk), Zachary Quinto (Spock), Zoe Saldana (Uhura), Robert Orci (Co-writer) & Bryan Burke (executive producer) were in attendance.  The crowd went crazy as they came out.

We were treated to a new movie trailer and there were scenes in this particular trailer that have not been seen before.  In fact this trailer will be the one airing with Watchmen when it hits theaters on March 6th.  According to some folks sitting next to me, they were a little ruffled at what they showed in this new trailer.  I won’t blow it for you because when you see this scene, you probably won’t realize what you’re seeing, but it is definitely a new Trek-verse.

I arrived at WonderCon around mid afternoon and walked the floor to see what they had.  It is a lot more low key than the San Diego Comic-Con and the focus is so much more on comics and video games.

The hall is only 2/3rds full of vendors and booths today.  It’s odd to see so much empty floor space in a convention like this.  Is the economy hitting even here?  I’ve been told that the Con filled the hall last year.

I think it’s inevitable that the new Roland Emmerich film 10,000 B.C. will have a killer opening weekend so I guess I’ll talk about it a bit more.

At the WonderCon panel they debuted a brand new trailer, which built upon the previous one in terms of impressive visuals. If I had to come up with one word to describe what’s been shown so far it would have to be: Spectacle.

The movie seems to be all about incredible vistas populated with a combination of ancient temples, pyramids, woolly mammoths and a cast of (CGI) thousands. Even though it looks to me like this will be the worst sort of fluff, you never know. Perhaps with the proper attitude adjustment before entering the theater, it could turn out to be good fluff.

On order to get this out to you guys faster I’m working off of notes instead of transcribing from my recording of the panel. I spent the morning typing up my one on one interview with director Jon Favreau which will be up in two parts, one here and and a more technical oriented one over at Iron Man fan site Advanced Iron some time in the next week or so.

So let’s see what I didn’t cover in Part I of the panel…

Jon Favreau stated that the movie was fun to shoot due to the cast. Speaking of the cast, one interesting item was the fact that he had to fight for Robert Downey Jr. for the part. Robert lobbied hard for the role, but initially the studio wanted to cast a young twenty-something as Tony Stark. Thankfully Jon prevailed.

Favreau is hoping that the film is successful enough to greenlight sequels because he’d very much like to make more Iron Man movies. If this film is a big success, he may have the opportunity to direct the Avengers movie.

[UPDATE: Click here for the new full Iron Man movie trailer!]

Director Jon Favreau was the only person involved with Iron Man who appeared at WonderCon, but like at last year’s San Diego Comic-Con he had something special for those who showed up.

I was expecting to see the new trailer that is to premiere during the next episode of ABC’s Lost and would have been very happy with that. But oh, there was more.

Probably in reaction to the super-quick-cut edited Super Bowl commercial, we were shown a couple of extended scenes from the film.

The main scene that we were treated to was a very extended version of what was shown in the Super Bowl spot, where we seem him testing the flight capabilities of the suit in his very large garage populated with rare cars.

At the Universal panel, we were treated to an entire scene from the upcoming action film Wanted.

You’d better brace yourselves for this one, folks.

The action in Wanted is going to be ultra-over-the-top. Basically I felt like I was watching a superhero movie, even though it’s actually about an elite group of assassins with no super-powers.

The sequence was not quite complete in regards to music (Danny Elfman is scoring) and visual effects, but it definitely gave us the tone of the film.

Last night I had the opportunity to attend a 30 minute preview of the new Brendan Fraser film Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D. We were able to see both the 3D version of the trailer as well as a number of completed scenes from the movie.

The big deal about this film is that it is the first live action, digitally shot 3D movie, and it was “filmed” using James Cameron’s new 3D Fusion camera system.

Now here’s the thing to keep in mind about Journey 3D: It’s goal is to be the film that ushers in the 3D movie revolution. It’s going to provide amazing 3D visual effects and (literally) a rollercoaster ride for the audience.

[UPDATE: Click here for the new full Iron Man movie trailer!]

Check out this sweet new poster that debuted at Wondercon. For tech-geeks, it’s ultra cool – showing all three armors from the film: The original Mark I, The prototype Mark II and the final red & gold Mark III Iron Man armor.