Hollywood’s art of the con...
Film
Some unexpected guests from The Empire join the queue for the Rogue One panel at Star Wars Celebration
Are You Talkin’ To Me?
A Film column by Jamie Hill
I went to my first proper big scale
film convention last month. And it was
for the biggest franchise of them all
- Star Wars.
The Star Wars Celebration was
pretty damn immense. It took over
the whole of the Excel in London’s
docklands for three stiflingly hot days
in July.
Walking through it was like a
wonderland for any film fan. There
was even a full size tie fighter ffs!
You had to jostle past Jedis, scoot
past stormtroopers and dart past
the occasional Darth Vader to get
anywhere. It was like being in a
different galaxy but not so far away.
The talk of the con was the fact
that Star Wars 8 had just finished
filming and that Rogue One - the new
Star Wars one-off was only a few
months away.
Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher,
Anthony Daniels, a very hairy Peter
Mayhew and assorted other stars
of the franchise were all there for
signings and photographs - at a
price.
Actually everything came at a
price. The money changing hands was
out of this world.
But despite this huge cost I still
ended up with a Star Wars Light
Saber Selfie Stick (tm) which is
probably the best item of anything
that I will ever own.
Anyway with all these cons, it’s all
about the reveal at the panels. And
The Rogue One reveal was a bit of a
doozy as they released a new trailer
which might have had a certain
baddie deep breathing at the end.
At the time of writing this we’ve
just had a whole plethora of similar
type reveals across the Atlantic for
San Diego ComicCon.
From DC we had a new trailer for
the ‘still being made’ Justice League
- which actually had some humour
in it - something that DC have really
needed in their efforts so far.
A new Wonder Woman trailer was
also received really well, as well as
next month’s Suicide Squad which
at one point seemed to take over
my Facebook feed with character
reveals. (I’m especially liking Killer
Croc.)
From Marvel, Dr Strange was the
belle of the ball with a mindbending
trailer to fix your eyes on and they
even officially announced Brie Larson
(The Room) as the new Captain
Marvel.
And then the big secret trailer for
con-goers only (much like the Rogue
One trailer) was Guardians of the
Galaxy Volume Two which created
a buzz so loud that you would have
thought that the whole of San Diego
had been invaded by a killer swarm
of bees.
The trailer that gave me
goosebumps though was Kong: Skull
Island which was more exciting than
that time the brakes didn’t work on
my Grifter.
But I’ve always been a sucker for
skyscraper high gorillas. Ask anyone!
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25/07/2016 20:50