Shoulda Been The Days of Future Past
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes was the main feature of the panel, with the largest most star studded cast present. Keri Russel, Andy Serkis, Gary Oldman, and director Matt Reeves were on stage to talk about the upcoming sequel to the surprisingly good Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Set ten years into the future after the outbreak of the devastating Simian Flu, we will see a world where a devastated human population still exists against the emerging ape society. While the ultimate outcome is known (spoiler alert: it’s the Planet of the Apes for a reason) we will have a chance to explore the journey it took to get to that point. Keri Russel was amazingly adorable in person, and Andy Serkis schooled a fan who asked him to call him a filthy hobbit, presumably as Gollum, by doing it in his normal voice instead.
The Maze Runner showed off a trailer for the upcoming adaptation from the popular book of the same name. The cast and author were on stage. The footage looked alright, this wasn’t a property I had too much interest in.
How to Train Your Dragon 2 showed a cut down sizzle reel, which brings us back to the world of the movie set five years after the events of the first movie. Hiccup is starting to come into his own, and we see the transition the various characters have made over time. I haven’t seen the first one so it was hard to get into, but the visuals were stunning and the characters had a lot of charm. Oddly enough, the panel sold me on watching the first one. Jay Baruchel seemingly had a blast being in a room with people talking about his character Hiccup, and the love was clearly evident in his voice.
The Secret Service was announced and some test footage was shown off for this movie. I thought initially that this was just a throw in “We can’t talk about Days of Future Past so we’ll throw something out there” but I was very pleasantly surprised with how good the footage looked. Directed by Matthew Vaughn (Kick-Ass), the footage shows Colin Firth basically being a posh gentleman, and then beating down on some thugs who happen to interrupt him while he’s trying to recruit someone. I want to know so much more about this and will be keeping an eye out for information from the movie as it comes out.
And Days of Future Past was very very briefly covered at the tail end of the panel. The fight sequence that opens the movie was shown on the big screen as well as the final trailer for the movie. Brian Singer was notably and understandably absent as Simon Kenberg took the stage to field questions about the movie. The highlight of the brief Q&A-Less panel was hearing him say that they were excited to make this as it’s the 2nd most famous X-Men story after Dark Phoenix, and he hoped that they did a much better job this time around. The very self-conscious thought generated a lot of good-natured chuckles from the crowd.