Superman Eats a Burrito

The comics are gone from Comic-Con: It's all about movies, video games & fatsuperheroes

Someone forgot to tell her that Wonder Woman wears pants now.
Just another low-key pair at Comic-Con.
These guys don't know they're past their prime.
Who you gonna call? A bad sequel!

Rule No. 1 of Comic-Con: Some people shouldn't wear spandex. Even if they have super powers.

"My favorite part of #SDCC so far is seeing what superheroes would look like super fat" one attendee tweeted.

Comic-Con International — ground zero of geek and nerd fandom — has taken over the San Diego Convention Center.

This year's biggest rumor isn't about the movies, video games or comic books that traditionally dominate Comic-Con. It's about the home of the conference possibly moving to Los Angeles when the San Diego Convention Center's contract is up in two years. Many feel that keeping LA an arm's length (or in this case a two-hour drive) away is essential to maintaining the spirit of a conference that rebels at the thought of being perceived as "mainstream."

Comic-Con brought Tina Fey, Will Ferrell, and Jonah Hill promoting the movie Megamind. The hilarious trio treated guests to jokes mainly poking fun at Brad Pitt, who is in the film, but didn't make it to San Diego for the largest comic book convention in the world. A Brad Pitt cardboard cutout filled in for the megastar and it ended up in Fey's lap.

When an audience member asked, "Who is your biggest nemesis?" Ferrell quickly shot back, "Charlize Theron. I can't really get into it, but there's a lot of bad blood there." Jonah Hill showed some support for Mel Gibson while he was on stage — jokingly of course. Hill isn't that crazy.

Luckily, the time zone difference makes it very easy for Houstonian to hear all of the latest news coming out of Comic-Con without having to wake up early.

Forget the comics, it's a movie thing

More and more, Comic-Con is becoming almost the Sundance of future summer (no-thinking) blockbusters. Hollywood is making more and more flicks about comic books and video games — things that appeal to the outer nerd. Here are the most promising movies pushed in San Diego:

The Clockwork Girl — This CG-animated feature is in pre-production with Alexa Vega (Spy Kids) set to play Telsa, the story's protagonist. Telsa, the Clockwork Girl, is a robotic girl that tries to live in a world of adults only. She is joined by Huxley, the Monster boy who constantly creates the conflicts within the story. Time to catch up on some comics.

Tron: Legacy — Academy Award winner Jeff Bridges is back playing Klu and Flynn in the newest sequel to the 1982 movie, Tron.

Before showing the newest clips of the film at Comic-Con, they showed a clip of all of the pop-culture references Tron has produced over the years, including the legendary Simpson's clip. The entire film will be shot in 3-D with no post production, which means it was shot like Avatar not Alice in Wonderland.

The original Tron, Bruce Boxleitner is in the sequel and said, "he was thrilled to get a chance to revisit a character after 28 years." It doesn't get any geekier than Daft Punk creating the score for the film.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World — Professional mumbler Michael Cera headlines a cast that includes Jason Schwartzman, Aubrey Plaza, and (yuck!) Brandon Roth. He'll get booed for Superman Returns.

The Expendables — Not really excited about this one. Wait for the DVD to come out.

Video Games

Marvel vs. Capcom 3 — Chun-Li (Street Fighter), Doctor Doom (Marvel vs. Capcom 2), Trish (Devil May Cry), and Super Skrull (Fantastic Four) were all confirmed as characters in this sure mega-seller, while Thor (Marvel), and Amaterasu (Okami) were leaked. It's taken nearly a decade for a new game in the series. The newest of a fighting-game trilogy, it will be available this Spring 2011.

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood — This sequel to Assassin's Creed II brings the adventure to Rome, which dramatically ups the scope of the game.

Halo: Reach — The manufacturers are trying to pump the campaign mode of the juggernaut Halo series, but most devoted gamers could care less about that feature.

Token Television Moment

Dexter - The trailer to the new season was shown and the cast spent plenty of time mingling. Michael C Hall is there himself with some swag — Showtime recyclable grocery bags. Yeah!

The Panel of Panels

Entertainment Weekly: The Visionaries — Joss Whedon and J.J. Abrams in the same room. Paramedics stood at the ready for all geeks and nerds hyperventilating.

Ah, the finer things in life. I'm going to do everything I can to be there next year.

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Movie Review

Action-packed Kraven the Hunter showcases gritty Marvel antihero

Photo by Jay Maidment

Aaron Taylor-Johnson in Kraven the Hunter.

One of the oddest things about the blockbuster era we live in is that while Disney owns the rights to the majority of Marvel comic book characters, Sony Pictures owns the rights to Spider-Man and any affiliated characters. Since they’re sharing Spider-Man himself with Disney, Sony has been trying to capitalize on those rights by making stand-alone films using niche characters that only comic book fanatics would know.

Having exhausted Venom and whiffed on attempts with Morbius and Madame Web, they’re trying again with Kraven the Hunter. Also known as Sergei Kravinoff, Kraven (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is a self-styled vigilante who, as the film tells it, travels the world exacting vengeance on the truly bad people of the world. He’s the son of Nikolai (Russell Crowe), a hard-edged Russian oligarch, and brother to Dmitri (Fred Hechinger), who is relatively weak compared to the rest of his family.

The origin story has Kraven gaining his animal-like powers - including super-strength, speed, and jumping abilities - as a teenager from a mysterious serum given to him by a girl named Calypso (played as an adult by Ariana DeBose) after he was mauled by a lion. The two maintain a tenuous partnership as adults, with Calypso helping him hunt down other villains like Aleksei Sytsevich (Alessandro Nivola) and The Foreigner (Christopher Abbott).

Directed by J.C. Chandor and written by Richard Wenk, Art Marcum, and Matt Holloway, the film looks and feels enormously lazy, something made merely to hold on to potentially valuable intellectual property. Other than the tense family dynamic between the Kravinovs, little makes sense in the story. Kraven has an indecipherable moral code that has him going after poachers - because he’s part lion? - in addition to other high-powered criminals, with no clear goal except to … get back at his father?

The laziness extends to the action scenes, which feature Kraven being mostly impervious to any damage, whether it’s hand-to-hand combat, knives, or guns. The CGI-heavy scenes don’t even allow moviegoers to enjoy an R-rated bloody free-for-all, as all of the blood splatter is computer-generated, too. Since apparently one Spider-Man villain is not enough, three others make appearances with abilities that are under-explained and CGI that is poorly done.

That’s not even counting Calypso, another Spider-Man villain whose purpose in this film is nebulous at best. Her early connection with Kraven is so coincidental as to be laughable, and her continued reasons for helping him as an adult strain credulity as well. The only saving grace of her presence is that the filmmakers don’t try to shoehorn romance into the plot; perhaps they’re saving that for the (inevitable?) sequel.

Taylor-Johnson has had one of the most prolific-yet-anonymous careers in modern Hollywood, with appearances in big films like The Fall Guy, Bullet Train, and Tenet that have made very little impact. Even as the star here, he fails to hold your attention, with the story and visuals doing him no favors. DeBose has followed up her Oscar win for West Side Story with schlock like I.S.S., Argylle, and this, which doesn’t bode well for her career. At least Crowe gets to chew the scenery.

With a contractual inability to mention the name “Spider-Man,” movies like Kraven the Hunter exist in a weird area that forces filmmakers to make up stories for characters to which most people have no attachment. And just like Sony’s previous efforts, it is a very poor way to spend two hours in a movie theater; avoid at all costs.

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Kraven the Hunter opens in theaters on December 13.

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