Going to San Diego Comic Con is a lot like visiting the future — you spend a lot of time obsessing over TV shows and movies that won't arrive for months, or even a year or two. We just spent five days in San Diego, discovering all of tomorrow's entertainment obsessions, and now we're back with full documentation. Here's the very best of what we saw at Comic Con 2012. .First of all, the view from a dozen light years away. Here are our choices for the biggest winners and losers in Comic Con's perennial buzz wars. And here's our painstaking roundup of all the coolest displays, and things to buy, on the Comic Con floor. (Not to mention the most embarrassing advertisements.) Despite all the logistical challenges, this remained a once-in-a-lifetime event. Superhero movies still ruled Comic Con. Marvel's panel in Hall H included Robert Downey Jr. portraying Tony Stark, some thrilling Iron Man 3 footage, and glimpses of Ant-Man and Guardians of the Galaxy. Plus we saw Marvel's latest short film, Item 47.
And Marvel's Kevin Feige explained to us how the studio can go back to solo films after The Avengers. And meanwhile, our first sight of DC's Man of Steel included some mind-blowing flying and some hints about the movie's take on Superman's origins. And we were lucky enough to catch an early screening of the new Judge Dredd movie — and it blew us away with its intellect and non-stop action. We caught our first glimpse of the giant robots and the giant monsters in Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim. Neill Blomkamp's Elysium showed us some intense footage. But we also saw a giant model spaceship and some fantastic concept art. And Looper, the time travel crime movie from Brick director Rian Johnson, looked like the noir time-travel movie of our dreams. And Johnson explained his theories of time travel to us. Tim Burton showed us some hilarious footage from Frankenweenie, plus a huge exhibition of art from the film. Meanwhile, Sam Raimi showed us a new trailer for Oz: The Great and Powerful and also explained to us just how he's reinventing the classic flying monkeys.
And ParaNorman impressed us with its blend of John Hughes and John Carpenter. Some movies took the approach of showing a lot of footage, just to prove they were packing a punch. The final Twilight movie showed us the first seven minutes, and they were a visual treat. Ditto for ten minutes of Wreck-It Ralph, the surprisingly fantastic video game odyssey. And a dozen and a half minutes of The Hobbit went a long way to silencing the doubters. (Meanwhile, Peter Jackson told us he'd like to make The Hobbit a trilogy. And Sir Ian McKellen told us why Gandalf the White wasn't his favorite character to play.) And the Total Recall reboot showed us footage that was heavy on shout-outs to the original. There was even a banner for Robocop's evil corporation OmniCorp. Perhaps the biggest news at Comic Con wasn't about an upcoming project — it was Firefly's 10-year reunion, which will become a Science Channel special soon. We also attended a Q&A where Joss Whedon talked about the show's legacy.
And we learned from some of our favorite writers and scientists how actual science can make SF stories much, much better. There were some great posters, including this awesome Comic Con exclusive Princess Mononoke poster from Mondo. And there were tons of exclusive toys for sale — if you could navigate the confusing ticket systems. Plus special Comic Con My Little Pony toys! We saw some creative cosplay, including an Engineer from Prometheus, Disney villains, Disney princesses, Zombie Bilbo Baggins, a Roswell waitress, and a female Geordi La Forge. Just like last year, television ruled a lot of Comic Con, with more shows than ever getting into the giant Hall H. And more excited conversations about Doctor Who and Game of Thrones than ever before. Among the sensational TV panels, The Walking Dead showed us our first glimpses of Michonne and the Governor, and then the producers told us the naked truth about season three. And meanwhile, Game of Thrones unveiled some new cast members, and we heard from Alfie Allen why he's excited about Theon Greyjoy's future.
Doctor Who's panel raised the roof, and that was before we saw new footage of one of the weirdest juxtapositions in television history. Not only that, but we also spoke to the stars and producers about the heartache that's coming this fall. We saw the pilots for five new TV shows, and two of them looked especially noteworthy. We also got excited about Steven DeKnight's space-war show Incursion. We learned how Community will keep exploring the fictional world of Inspector Spacetime. And Danny Pudi told us which Comic Con panels Abed would go to. Meanwhile, the Futurama panel included a costume contest, a drawing showdown, and the "Fry meme." We found out about an upcoming death on Falling Skies, discovered Syfy's TV/MMO crossover series Defiance, and learned which classic villain is coming to Once Upon a Time. We also Observed what's next on Fringe and Supernatural. And we found out some hints about who's back on Warehouse 13 this year. In cartoons, we saw a bit of the How to Train Your Dragon spin-off, we explored the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot, we saw Legend of Korra concept art, and saw Star Wars: The Clone Wars clips.
Plus the Venture Bros. creators talked crazy talk with us. And finally, we got a look behind the scenes of the upcoming Blu-ray release of Star Trek: The Next Generation season one. Even though movies and television generate some of the longest lines, comics still made waves at Comic Con. In particular, there was the announcement that Neil Gaiman is writing a Sandman prequel comic. But also, we thrilled to our first glimpse of the comic called simply Star Wars, with Alex Ross illustrating Darth Vader. There was a sneak peek from Great Pacific, a science fiction comic about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. And in case you missed any comic book news, here's the best comics news from the Con.Above is Bolg as you'll see him in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. He's the son of Azog the Defiler, the pale white orc introduced in An Unexpected Journey, and he's actually in the book The Hobbit, where he plays a role in the Battle of the Five Armies at the end. You'll notice that Bolg is CGI, just like Azog.
Here is Bolg as he appeared on set: That's Conan Stevens under that make-up. He was also originally cast to play Azog, who was also painted out of the movie. You may know Conan as The Mountain Who Rides in Game of Thrones; he left that show to shoot a trilogy of movies in which he will not appear. Design-wise I don't even know how it's possible to argue that the CG Bolg is better looking than the practical Bolg. CG Bolg, like CG Azog, is kind of generic-looking, a fairly boring orc. The practical Bolg is absolutely awesome, his skull held together by metal bands and his big, red beard adding a splash of bloody color to him. The CG Bolg has studs in his head, indicating he also has a fractured skull, but they don't have the power of those bands. CG Bolg is also wearing less armor, losing the bulky authority of the practical design. Here is a GIF of CG Bolg in motion, giving you a better sense of his design. Bolg was likely a casualty of the decision to make Azog CG in the first film;
as his son and as a character who has a dialogue scene with Azog, it would be weird to have a real orc talking to a crummy CG one. The only option, I guess, was to make them both crummy CG orcs. But in a larger sense Bolg is the casualty of Peter Jackson's new aesthetic in these movies. While there is CGI in them, the Lord of the Rings films are among the most tactile big budget blockbusters of this century; the use of bigature models, prosthetic make-up and New Zealand's stunning landscapes gave The Lord of the Rings movies a sense of reality. You could go there. You could meet these characters. You could encounter these villains. In The Hobbit films Jackson leans much more heavily on CG, disconnecting the whole trilogy from the original films. The Desolation of Smaug features a distracting amount of green screen work, and many of the great New Zealand landscapes feel like background plates, not an actual location. It isn't until the company gets to Laketown that we enter an environment whose presence reminds us that MIddle Earth was once a place we believed in, not a computer generated fantasyland.
Some people have wondered why I'm so down on the CGI in The Hobbit and yet love a CG-drenched film like Pacific Rim. I don't hate CG. It is a tool, and when used well it's a good tool. For instance I appreciate Guillermo del Toro's decision to animate the Jaegers and Kaiju in his film, as opposed to mocapping them, which gives them a similar feel of pleasant artifice as you get from traditional stop motion animation. I don't quite understand why Jackson, whose WETA Digital is one of the premiere FX houses on Earth, never seems to use CGI that well. We can go back to Return of the King, where the Battle of Pellenor Fields is jammed with dodgy CG and shitty compositing. That same compositing issue haunts parts of King Kong - which also has CG work that is beyond next level. Desolation of Smaug has that green screen problem again, which led one friend of mine to wonder if Robert Rodriguez hadn't been advising on the thing. At this point I wonder if shitty compositing of live action and CG elements is actually an aesthetic choice that Jackson is making.