San Diego Comic Con 2015 has long been over, and I bring to you my finally thoughts on…in my humble opinion….the studio panel that “WON” whole day.

While my personal favorite movie panel of the day was The Hateful Eight one, and while I thought the Legendary panel had a great roster of movies to share…Fox showcases a series of project that I feel were both worthy of the Hall H crowd and look to be just flat out entertaining movies in general.

Starting off with…..

The Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials

I surprisingly like the first film, The Maze Runner, quiet a bit.

It’s a fun, well paced, well directed little sci-fi adventure. I dug the cast (specifically Dylan O’Brien and Ki Hong Lee) and I enjoyed the characters. It’s not a movie I had any intention of seeing again….but I’m down to see the second one.

The clip they showed had Dylan O’Brien’s character Thomas teaming up with a new character to the films, Brenda (played by Rosa Salazar) We see them walking down a dark underground hallway. Walking along the darkness they stumble upon a zombie/cyborg looking creature called a Crank. These things look gnarly, and continues to showcase the really great effects work that the first film had. While I might be a bit zombied out today thanks to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and to Patient Zero, these things were genuinely creepy and look great. Director Wes Ball continues to impress and he created some great tension and action in this little clip. Once Ball is done with The Maze Runner series, I really hope someone gives him a shot with a film with a much bigger budget (hey Marvel…have you found a director for Inhumans or Thor: Ragnorak? Maybe you should give Ball a call! Oooohhh, he should pay for such a good slogan.)

I know most folks were here for the comic book stuff…but I really dig what they’re doing with this Maze Runner thing and I look forward to seeing more from this world.

Victor Frankenstein

James McAvoy, Daniel Radcliffe took the stage with Director Paul McGuigan to showcase some footage from Victor Frankenstein! I’ve been curious about this flick for one reason; screenwriter Max Landis.

I know that Landis is a…how do I say this….a…divisive online personality. (click here to read an old Agent Patrick on the man.) Part of my interest in this film is to see what else can he bring to the screenwriting world. Chronicle was the last film he wrote (and ironically, the director of Chronicle is here today to talk about the next film I’ll be writing up on, Fantastic Four.) but I legitimately love that films, especially the screenplay. Landis has quite a lot to prove this year. He will have at least three movies that he wrote come out and this will be the biggest budgeted one.

From the panel, the idea for this movie was to basically cherry pick elements from different adaptations of Frankenstein, Mary Shelly’s original book, and to give context and history to the most miss-remembered element of the Frankenstein lore….the character of Igor. Igor never actually fully existed in any version of Frankenstein in the past, but public knowledge thinks that he did. The films inspiration is to created a backstory for Igor and for THIS version of Frankenstein to have Igor as not only is assistant, but also his best friend.

Essentially, this film is a bro-mance between Igor and Frankenstein…but with freaky monsters made of human parts and electricity. Ok…not gonna lie, I’m kinda diggin that. The footage they showed had a bit more an action vibe then a horror vibe (especially a sequence with a resurrected monkey.), but the creature effects look great and there was great bit of fun chemistry between McAvoy and Radcliff’s Frankenstein and Igor. This actually looks like a great deal of fun. The tone is great and the humor is spot on.

My only real knock on this whole film so far is calling it the weak title of Victor Frankenstein. It doesn’t really tell us what THIS version of the overtold tale is about. Why not call it something like Igor and Frankenstein or Frankenstein’s Assistant. Ok, those aren’t that much better, but you get what I mean.

The flick is coming out October of this year so expect a trailer for it soon, and maybe you guys can see what I’m seeing in that this looks like it could be a nice little Halloween treat.

Fantastic Four

I really truly can only say….”well….lets wait and see.”

The whole cast was there as well as director Josh Trank and producer Simon Kinberg. Everyone is saying all the right things. Jaime Bell saying that The Thing is the heart of the group. Toby Kebbell saying that Doctor Doom is the “best villain of them all.” (He is…in my opinion.)

Lets ignore all the crazy rumors concerning this production. Lets ignore the rumors you might have heard about Josh Trank. Lets just judge this film as it is.

Right now, as a HUGE Fantastic Four fan, I’m personally not feeling the tone…the vibe…and this take on it…if the marketing of the film is 100% on the films tone.

I think the cast is great (and Miles is feeling more and more right in the role the more scenes I see him in.). If you pretty much made up your mind about the movie, fair enough. Nothing I saw today would change that.

I will say this, this is a film driven with a strong vision that was confident in it’s direction from Josh Trank. The last Fantastic Four films lacked that. At least it will be an interesting disaster as oppose to a forgettable one.

And folks…..the lights went out in Hall H…and up on the screen, was a masked little asshole telling us folks in Hall H that this shit is gonna get crazy.

“From the studio that sewed his fucking mouth shut the first time..”

Yep folks….it’s time for…

Deadpool

Well…by this point, most of you have already seen the leaked footage. For shame!…lol, it’s ok, I get it…this was the one that most folks were excited to see.

Clearly, the trailer worked as it’s the ONLY trailer the whole day that had a standing ovation and the crowd begging it to be played one more time. This folk, is the reason why Fox won Hall H today.

So why did it kill? Because director Tim Miller apparently made the Deadpool movie that fans wanted. Violence up the wazoo. Non-stop humor. Dirty joke after dirty joke. Ryan Reynolds proving over and over again that he is PERFECT as the Merc with the Mouth. Deadpool breaking the fourth wall. I’m not the biggest Deadpool fan, but even I know that this is exactly how a Deadpool movie should look and feel like. The trailer they showed was the perfect trailer to cut for Comic Con. I’d never though I’d see Rob Liefeld cameo in a Marvel movie, but there he was (and even thought Stan Lee has JACK to do with Deadpool, it’s crazy surreal to see him in this thing too.) Personal things I dig? Cutting the trailer to DMX’s “X Gonna Give it to You” is a stoke of genius. Pre- Deadpool Wade Wilson begging them to make sure to not put him in a green costume that’s animated (a lovely dig at his last attempt at being a comic book superhero.) I also appreciated the fact that the film is still gonna try to add SOME heart into this. The beginning of the trailer has  Wade and his girlfriend ,Vanessa (played by  Morena Baccarin), at the doctors as they find out that Wade has cancer in the prostate, lungs, liver and brain. (“All things that I can live with out.” quips Wade.) but this stuff didn’t feel like a tacked on situation.

I’ve been telling folks for years that if you love Deadpool, you gotta thank comic writer Joe Kelly. Joe Kelly’s run in the ’90s defined the version of the character today. So I was happy to learn that not only did this footage feel like the work on his run was brought to life, but that both characters that were a big part of Kelly’s Deadpool run, Weasel and Blind Al were in this film. I actually knew about Weasel being in the flick a while back when they announced T.J. Millers casting, but I flat out didn’t know that Blind Al (she’s the one in the trailer that told Wade it sounded like he’s got a dick in his mouth.) was even in the movie! That made me quiet happy.

I have no clue if the rest of the world will GET Deadpool, but I’m just glad that Fox was willing to risk it and make the movie the fans wanted. Even if it bombs, even it actually sucks, it exists. Last year, we didn’t know if it was ever gonna happen…cut to a year later, it’s beating a Batman and Superman movie in terms of the most talked about footage at SDCC. Crazy.

X-Men: Apocalypse

Like the Deadpool trailer, by now most of you pretty much already either saw the trailer…OR you guys saw the official pictures from the movie thanks to Entertainment Weekly.

It seemed unanimous from fans that Storm and Psylocke look AMAZING (Psylocke in particular looking JUST LIKE HOW JIM LEE DREW HER!) And I’m a big fan of Storm with a mohawk.

It also seemed like like a lot of fans HATE how Apocalypse looks like….a lot. A ton of folks couldn’t stop talking about how much they hated his look. Agent Earl even did this nice little comparison photo of Apocalypse and the villain from the Power Rangers movie, Ivan Ooze.

I found it funny at first….until I saw what felt like the 80th post on social media saying the same damn thing. I get it guys, I get it.

Funny enough, my reaction to him while I was sitting through the panel in Hall H….

“Oh…thats it? Ehh.”

Yeah, I wasn’t crazy about it, but I certainly  wasn’t as pissed off as most folks were. While I’m not excited about the look, the actor underneath the make up, Oscar Isaacs, is fantastic. So, why don’t we do a  silly thing and WAIT till the movie comes out and see how we feel about him then. Maybe if he’s written well, performed well and directed well that we can see his movie look in a positive light if the film is any good. So take a breather, and WAIT.

Besides that, the footage looked pretty good, but it’s still a bit too early for me to get too excited. There wasn’t a ton of action, but there was a lot of mood.

This film is the finale to what I call, Bryan Singers “History W/ the X-Men” trilogy (yes, I know, Matthew Vaughn directed First Class, but Singer was a producer of the film and did help come up with the idea of the movie). I honestly have been having a good time with these, and one hopes that this film will be a satisfying finale to Bryan’s vision of the characters as well.

I will say this, the last shot of the footage they showed us was James McAvoy in his full baldness glory and I swear the fan reaction to that shot in Hall H was the equivalent of the Thanos reveal during The Avengers.

Whew….ok…and with that…my write up on the Hall H Saturday presentations is FINALLY over. It was a blast folks. Till the next San Diego Comic Con!