This week, Bernard, CJ and Zach react to the Oscars! Listen to find out how they did on their predictions and hear their thoughts on the show’s overall presentation. Also, filmmaker Alex Proyas recently lashed out at movie critics following a landslide of negative reviews for his movie Gods of Egypt. The boys dissect his resentment and discuss whether the hate is misplaced, misguided, or perhaps even warranted. Plus, we’ve got three new, glistening, unbelievable, don’t-miss-it-or-we’ll-kick-your-ass amazing Indie Picks of the Week!

Topics

• Indie Picks (3:53)
• Oscar Reactions (15:46)
• Alex Proyas Critic Hate (1:00:57)

Articles Referenced

• Cemetery of Splendour TIFF Review
• The Witch Review
• The Witch Indiecast
• Impossible Light Interview
• Oscar Foreign Film Feature

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Starting tomorrow, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival once again bestows upon the Bay Area some of the most rarified film experiences you’ll find in the world. It runs from May 28th-June 1st, and as always, the program is like a gilded treasure box lifted from the past, containing precious jewels you won’t find anywhere else.

Take, for instance, the special presentation of a film called Lime Kiln Field Day by Burt Williams. It was a 1913 production with an all-black cast that never saw the light of day due to its white producers slamming the door shut on it indefinitely. Jump forward one century to 2013, when MoMA found and reconstructed the film’s unedited reels so that we may enjoy and appreciate one of the earliest artifacts of black film history. The film will be playing as a special presentation called “100 Years In Post-Production: Resurrecting a Lost Landmark of Black Film History.” MoMA Associate Curator Ron Magliozzi will be presenting a variety of materials from the production as well.

Also on the lineup is the silent version of All Quiet on the Western Front, which many consider to be superior to the award-winning talkie version. Sherlock Holmes will be making an appearance as well in Sherlock Holmes, a pivotal piece of Sherlockian history once thought long lost. Contributing to the conversation of modern feminism are Why Be Good?, The Deadlier Sex, and Sweden’s Norrtullsligan, three films that serve as fascinating reminders that feminist filmmaking has had a long history. The Last Laugh, a must-see for any true film fan, also rounds out the program.

One of my favorite parts of the festival is the live instrumentation, and the lineup of musicians on-hand is typically tremendous. The world-renowned silent film players include Stephen Horne, Frank Bockius, Guenter Buchwald, Diana Rowan, Steve Sterner, Serge Bromberg, the Matti Bye Ensemble, the Donald Sosin Ensemble, the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, and Bruce Goldstein and the Gower Gulch Players.

I sat down for my annual chat with festival’s Artistic Director, Anita Monga, to talk about this year’s program and examine the silent era’s influence on modern filmmaking.

For more info on the festival, visit silentfilm.org

Farm-to-table dining is something that’s swept the nation but has always been a big part of San Francisco. It’s about artisans putting a lot of love and work and time into presenting the best ingredients with utmost respect. I think this festival is the film version of that, where everybody involved—the preservationists, the programmers, the musicians—really get their hands dirty to present an incredibly special experience.
Yeah, it’s a one-of-a-kind experience, each and every screening. People always say, “Aw, I’m not going to see The Last Laugh. I’ve already seen it a million times.” You’re not going to come to see it with the group of students from the Berklee College of music perform it once in your lifetime? Come on!

Right. I’ve seen some silents several times live, but it’s a different experience every time.
Absolutely. But I also have to say that masterpieces are worth revisiting again and again. There are some films that I’ve seen 20, 30 times. And it’s amazing to see them in a movie theater like the Castro with that amazing screen and people who also appreciate this live cinema. It’s an extraordinary experience. We’re very lucky in San Francisco.

We are. I was sharing a nice lunch with a friend here in the city today, and I was telling him that one of the best things about the festival is the crowd. Being with those people, you feel like you’re part of something special.
It really is special.

You mentioned masterpieces, and I’ve got to mention All Quiet on the Western Front. It’s interesting to me that the silent version is considered by many superior to the award-winning sound version.
That’s not completely unheard of during that transition from silent to sound. Films were often made in two versions because many theaters didn’t have the capacity to make that transition. We’re living through a relatively similar transition from 35mm to DCP. A lot of little theaters have had a really hard time making that transition because it’s really expensive. The answer during the transition from silents to talkies was that different versions were made. At the beginning of sound, it was very rudimentary. The silent version of All Quiet on the Western Front has a different kind of rhythm. It isn’t bogged down by the script.

The editing is the biggest difference.
Right, because you can’t have paragraph-long intertitle cards, so the story has to be told through the action and through the characters’ faces.

People seem to have forgotten what cinema really is. Most critique I hear from younger people is focused on the script or narrative rather than what’s actually on-screen. It’s like they’re writing a book review of the screenplay.
David Thompson wrote a piece for our book on All Quiet on the Wester Front in which he has a very poetic waxing. At the end of the essay he’s talking about ways of watching a film, and he did an experiment by watching sound movies with the sound turned off. Film is both a visual and aural experience. There are amazing things to be heard. When you have a modern film you think is being silent, if you pay attention, you’ll hear all of the sounds the filmmakers put in to suspend the film in a bath of sound.

Have you seen Mad Max?
I haven’t seen it yet! I’m so looking forward to seeing it.

I’m excited for you to see it because I think it pays homage to old-school movie-making. There are things like people wobbling on tall poles that really reminds me of Keaton and Lloyd. Really daring stuff.
That’ll be the first thing I see. I remember seeing the original Mad Max, and what a revelation that was.

I remember when you guys did the “Hitchcock 9” program, with all the silents he made. I loved it. I remember seeing a vignette where Martin Scorsese said he’d watch Hitchcock with the sound turned off.
Hitchcock is amazing, but I wouldn’t advise turning off Bernard Hermann’s score! [laughs] You watch a film like Vertigo, and there are whole parts of that movie that seem suspended in some kind of other world. There isn’t a lot of talking. The sound design of those movies is extraordinary. That “Hitchcock 9” thing we did was a real revelation to me because Hitchcock was at one of the earliest junctures of filmmaking. He was just born, fully formed as a storyteller.

I know Hitchcock mourned the end of the silent era.
Film is a marriage of technology and art, and any filmmaker would be happy with technology as it changes and enhances. The silent era was an incredible period for honing visual expression, but I think the best filmmakers embraced sound and technology. Who doesn’t want to be able to do something extraordinary that was impossible before?

Back to the festival: I just watched Cave of the Spider Woman. That was something else! The imagination on display was wonderful.
My mind boggles at how that print got to Norway. It was a very popular genre in Shanghai in the ’20s, that kind of spirit story. Films were made, but there are no prints left. This one was sitting in a library in Norway. The film was made in 1927 and imported and distributed around Norway in 1929. They burned the Norwegian subtitles on the cards, so the translations came from the Norwegians, not the Chinese. Our contribution was that we had a translator go back to the Chinese intertitles and translate those. The Chinese translator found that the frames were slipped, so the Norwegian subtitles would be printed on cards that would be flipped and upside down. It was a really difficult job.

This movie was a big hit when it came out, but there’s only the one print!
Right! Only one that we know of.

Sherlock Holmes is as trendy as he’s ever been right now.
The restoration we’re presenting was kind of the holy grail for Sherlockians because the person behind it was William Gillette, who convinced Arthur Conan Doyle to do this Sherlock Holmes film. It was years after Conan Doyle had killed off Sherlock, but Gillette was known as the major stage interpreter of Sherlock Holmes. He wrote a script that combined several of the Sherlock stories, and Doyle was impressed. That film was completely lost. A number of people went looking for it, and it was discovered in a vault at the Cinémateque Francaise.

I also caught The Deadlier Sex and loved it.
Good! That was a restoration that just happened at the Academy Film Archive. Blanche Sweet is pretty great. It’s a really small part, but it’s a really early role for Boris Karloff.

I love how nimbly that one switches from drama to comedy. It’s really modern in that way. Why Be Good is another one I really liked.
It’s really great. Colleen Moore plays an effervescent flapper, a “good girl” who the boss’ son falls in love with.

Feminism is such a hot topic today, as it should be. I think it’s important to look back at films like this to get a sense of how feminism has evolved over the years.
If you’re interested in that, Norrtullsligan has very strong female characters. It’s definitely a feminist film.

Let’s take a look at some other things on the program.
“100 Years in Post-Production” is going to be a really great presentation. Lime Kiln Field Day started production in 1913 and was shelved before it ever came to fruition. MoMA found the unedited reels of this all-black production. We all know what happened in 1915 with The Birth of a Nation, and it’s been speculated that that kind of put the kibosh on this film coming out. MoMA reconstructed it. Don’t miss Flesh and the Devil, don’t miss Pan…

I’m really excited for that one.
I love this film so much. It has a very strong, modern psychological sensibility that will be really surprising and revelatory to a lot of people.

As a bit of a musician myself, I always try to sit close to the musicians during the show. You can feel the sound from their instruments wrap around you in a really magical way.
Do you ever watch the musicians?

I do!
It’s so interesting. We have this wonderful photographer, Pamela Gentile, and my favorite thing she does is take a picture from the audience; you see the screen, the musicians, and sometimes you’ll see the musicians looking up and the characters in the film looking down. It’s beautiful.

For people who say things like, “I don’t want to watch old movies,” I say, at the very least, you can just watch the musicians. They’re incredible.
People who say they’re going to be put off by things being old…I get where they’re coming from. Some people have a problem with seeing a black and white film. I can tell you that you’ll forget that they’re not talking. Plus, there are plenty of bad films made in the silent era; we just don’t play those films. We have 20 films we’re showing every year. We don’t have to show the bad stuff. We try to show a breadth of the silent era, but every film has some relevance for modern audiences.

It’s a world gone mad in Mad Max: Fury Road, and director George Miller wastes no time establishing the no holds barred, kill or be killed state of living in his post-apocalyptic vision. A brief montage of sound clips outlining civilization’s downfall plays before Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy) shows up, looking over a desert wasteland before fleeing in his car. He’s chased down and captured by a few “War Boys,” devout followers and henchmen of Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne). Joe is the cultlike leader of The Citadel, a desert city where he controls the oil, water and food supply. He’s barely living, with most of his body made up of machinery designed to keep him alive, and he rules over his impoverished masses with no mercy.

Just as Max is taken prisoner, Joe sends out his War Rig (a massive truck/war machine) to get gasoline from their supplier. The truck is driven by Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), whose shaved head and black war paint immediately establish her as someone not to be messed with. She drives off, but at a certain point makes an unexpected detour. Joe and his minions soon realize that Furiosa has taken Joe’s five young wives (called “breeders,” for reasons that should be obvious), and his only chances at getting a male heir, with her, prompting Joe to chase her down with everything he’s got.

And with that, Mad Max: Fury Road starts its nearly two hour long car chase, with Furiosa and her five companions driving across the desert in the hopes of escaping Joe’s fast-approaching army of cars and War Boys. Max winds up tagging along with Nux (Nicholas Hoult), a dying War Boy hoping he can go out in a blaze of glory.

It’s hard not to see the onslaught of marketing for Mad Max: Fury Road and believe that the film will represent some sort of transgressive alternative to the usual homogeneous pile of tentpoles unleashed every summer. Fury Road only delivers on that promise to some degree; the production design offers plenty of neat things to gawk at, implying there’s plenty more to this world than what’s on screen, and the minimal exposition is a breath of fresh air. What’s disappointing is how much of Miller’s film feels familiar and formulaic. It’s the same old story, just dressed up in a spiky, oversaturated outfit.

It’s not that Miller is just copying and pasting another film’s plot—I’m having a hard time thinking of any other movies where ghoulish men hunt down their leader’s pregnant sex slaves. The familiarity comes from the structure and story beats, which emulate what’s been done plenty of times before: character development and themes boiled down to one word statements (survival for Max, redemption for Furiosa), a romantic subplot with no bearing on anything, a second act tragedy putting our protagonists’ success in doubt, and a “crazy” last minute plan acting as a transition into the final act and climax. And when your film literally moves down a straight line through a flat, two-colour landscape, a lack of variety will drag things down considerably.

Action films with a simple, one-track mindset can be far from a bad thing (both The Raid: Redemption and Dredd are great, recent examples of the KISS principle in action), but Fury Road never successfully establishes any stakes. It’s easy to know where and how things will end up, and for that reason it’s easy to detach from the onscreen spectacle. There’s a point in the climactic car chase where Furiosa comes face-to-face with Joe, and angrily says “Remember me?!” It’s played as a cool, kick-ass moment, but I found it a strange thing to say, considering this is the first time both characters actually share the screen together. There’s no weight or purpose to this moment, but it falls in line with the expectations and structure of an action film, so it has to be there. That safeness, that feeling of Miller eccentrically colouring within the lines, is Fury Road’s downfall. It’s a world gone mad, but this film is anything but.

With the help of the Internet, missing Comic-Con no longer means you miss out on all the sneak peeks and fun videos shown.

We’ve put a few of the essentials up so you can catch up all in one sitting. Of course there’s a few things that you can only see if you are there (Marvel hasn’t released the Avengers: Age of Ultron trailer), but this should tide you over for now.

The Avengers assemble for Age of Ultron Panel

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 Teaser

The film comes out Nov. 21, 2014

Horns Trailer with Daniel Radcliffe

Frank Miller’s Sin City: A Dame to Kill For Red Band Trailer

Film comes out Aug. 22, 2014

Mad Max: Fury Road Comic-Con First Look

Film is coming out May 15, 2015

Kevin Smith’s Tusk Official Trailer

Movie releases September 19, 2014

Kevin Smith Describes Visiting the Star Wars Episode VII Set

The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies Full Panel

The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies Teaser for Trailer

The film releases Dec. 17, 2014

The Walking Dead Season 5 Preview Trailer

Game of Thrones Blooper Reel

Warcraft Title Teaser

Saturday at Comic-Con is the closest thing to being in one of the many fictionalized dystopian futures of literature and film that keeps the fans coming out to the convention. Comic-Con-ers camped out the afternoon of Friday and over-night in order to finally gain access to Hall H at 9am Saturday morning. Some of them are “Hobbit Heads” — fans of Peter Jackson’s Tolkien franchise — and thus were anticipating the first panel of the day, but the majority of those sleep-deprived, un-showered fans were looking forward to an entire day of movie news and insider scoops, especially the end of the day’s Marvel panel.

And boy were they rewarded.

Warner Bros. Pictures

The first panel of the day was anything but subtle. Immediately beginning with what fans would most want to hear about: Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. Director Zak Snyder brought in Batfleck himself, Ben Affleck, along with Superman, Henry Cavill, and the film’s third superhero, Wonder Woman, played by Gal Gadot, though why she has a sword and not a whip is beyond us. Curtains on either side of the hall revealed extra screens, the better to provide a sensory immersive experience for Snyder’s Batman v. Superman teaser.

The very short teaser showed Batman on a rooftop on a dark night, his eyes glowing through the mask of his Batsuit. He turns on his Batsignal, illuminating the sky and revealing Superman floating in the air, red eyes fixed on Batman. The two stare each other down a moment and it’s over. Hardly anything at all, but it was more than enough to excite the crowd of over 6,000.

Along with character shots, including a look at Wonder Woman’s outfit, Snyder showed off the film’s logo and assured the crowd filming is going “amazingly well”. Plan is to release the film May of 2016.

Next up, they jump straight into the Wachowskis’ Jupiter Ascending. No Wachowskis in the house but out comes Channing Tatum to say hello and show some footage. Tatum’s eye-makeup-ed Caine, talking to Mila Kunis’s Jupiter Jones about her role as monarchy in the universe. Lots of cool visual elements, great fight scene between Tatum and a winged-monster. It looks like the sort of visual fare we love from the Wachowskis, let’s hope the story doesn’t get in the way too much. They move quite quickly into the next big project for WB, Mad Max: Fury Road. Charlize Theron says hello in a video and then they show a video recap of the previous Mad Max films… which transitions into footage from the new film. A canyon and lots of post-apocalyptic vehicles. Director of all the Mad Max movies, George Miller, comes to stage and tells us that he considers chase scenes to be the purest form of cinema, and so he wanted to make a film that was one long chase scene. No Tom Hardy, but Miller reveals their won’t be a lot of dialogue in the film. They close this portion with more footage, a chase involving lots of tornado dodging.

And then, with still an hour to go in the panel, they move on to what people most wanted to hear about: The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. And that’s when Stephen Colbert takes over the panel as moderator, dressed in head to toe Hobbit-wear. First some funny video, mostly a gag reel from all of the movies. Then a huge chunk of the cast takes the stage along with Peter Jackson: Andy Serkis, Elijah Wood, Evangeline Lilly, Benedict Cumberbatch, writer Philippa Boyens, Luke Evans, Lee Pace, Orland Bloom, and Cate Blanchett. They joke about each LOTR movie deserving two more films with Colbert saying “You owe me 6 more Lord of the Rings films,” “If Warner can find a way to do that” Jackson pokes. After some discussion they finally play the trailer for the new film which features a decimated Laketown as Smaug blows fire all over it. Lots of soldiers and armies assembling. The song Billy Boyd sang during Return of the King plays in the background as we see a chase scene on ice, a flash of Sauron, and Bard asks Thorin “Will you have peace or war?” to which Thorin responds “I will have war!” The panel ends with an announcement for TheHobbitFanContest.com, a chance to go to New Zealand to see the latest film before it’s released.

Legendary Pictures

After two hours of WB, the crowd is obviously not as enthralled for Legendary picture’s announcements, but there is plenty to be excited about. Thomas Tull, CEO of Legendary comes out. A video from Godzilla director Gareth Edwards where he says once he’s finished with “a little sci-fi film” (the Star Wars spinoff) he’ll return to Godzilla with the second film. They tease us with a little video that reveals the potential new monsters Godzilla will fight: Mothra, Rodan, and Ghidorah. “Let them fight” it says. Crowd likes that.

They show an extended preview of As Above, So Below, the new horror film in the catacombs of Paris. You can see the trailer here. Moving on, Michael Mann makes his first Comic-Con appearance to discuss Blackhat, a cyber hacker thriller. The footage they show is interesting but a bit generic. Chris Hemsworth, star of the film, comes out to chat but mostly just proves he doesn’t know much about coding and computers. Wrong audience dude.

Finally someone we can get behind, Guillermo del Toro (who we saw in Thursday’s Book of Life panel) comes out to talk about Crimson Peak. Apparently excited not to be discussing a children’s film, del Toro takes the opportunity to make use of colorful language. He gives us a brief first look, though the film is a year and a half away, so not much. The logo covered in blood, Tom Hiddleston’s voice, “Houses as old as this one become, in time, a living thing. They may have timber for bones and windows for eyes, and sitting here all alone, it can go slowly bad. It starts holding onto things. Keeping them alive when they shouldn’t be. Some of them good. Some bad. Some should never be spoken about again.” It’s satisfyingly creepy, along the Pan’s Labyrinth route. Even more satisfying is del Toro’s use of a female lead, Mia Wasikowska, and his comment that he wants a story about a woman that shows their life beyond getting the man, that there is more to a female then her love interests. We can’t wait. He teases about Hellboy 3 (which gets a huge audience reaction) and At the Mountains of Madness (which gets decent applause).

Next up is Warcraft. Director Duncan Jones explains they wanted a LOTR style set with Avatar-level CG. They show some brief footage that does show some decent CG art. Thomas Tull ends the panel telling Guillermo to finish Pacific Rim 2 and then they can discuss his other projects. Then he shows a brief clip of King Kong and the title “Skull Island.” Looks like we have a prequel or sequel on our hands?

The Boxtrolls

All day people were joking that Boxtrolls got both a great spot and bad spot for their slot at Comic-Con. For one, they were guaranteed an audience as no one would leave Hall H before Marvel, and yet all those fans would be extra tired by the time Boxtrolls was up. And sure enough, plenty of sleeping people in the audience during this panel. But they did show an adorable clip of the Boxtrolls digging through garbage and playing with a ragged teddy bear. Cuteness overload and the stop-motion animation looks absolutely flawless. A short panel with Elle Fanning, Sir Ben Kingsley, and Isaac Hempstead along with creators Travis Knight, Anthony Stacchi, and Graham Annable allowed them to describe in greater detail just how long (8 years) and strenuous it is to make films like this.

Frank Miller’s Sin City: A Dame to Kill For

A strange follow-up to so cutesy a film, next up is the gritty sequel to Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City. A bit strange to see a sequel 10 years after the original, but when you’ve got all the original creators and actors working on it, no one is complaining. Rodriguez and Frank Miller were both on hand to discuss the film along with cast members Rosario Dawson, Jessica Alba, and Josh Brolin. The extended preview they gave us looks just as cool as the original, which really hasn’t yet been recreated successfully in other films. All the skin, guns, cars, and well placed color you’d expect. It looks incredible, but we’re still a bit dubious Miller and Rodriguez are going to get the reception they hope for. Let’s hope 10 years is enough time to build up some good nostalgia.

Marvel Studios

After what was almost exactly 24 hours of waiting for many in Hall H, the fans finally got what they were waiting (and chanting) for.

The panel began with a reel of all the Marvel films, edited together to effectively show the many ways they have all crossed paths and fit together. In it was a little bit of footage from Age of Ultron, teasing the audience for what they most wanted info on. The reel morphed into a Guardians of the Galaxy trailer which ends with Thanos floating through space on a throne. Kevin Feige, President of Marvel, came out and told audiences we’d be talking about 2015. And he meant it. Not much beyond next year was covered.

First up was Ant-Man, and he brought out Peyton Reed, the film’s new director (after Edgar Wright’s drama-filled exit). Determined to assure audiences he was the right man for the job, moderator Chris Hardwick asked about Reed’s past with Ant-Man, and he showed the audience a drawing he once did, where he turned himself into Ant-Man for a band picture. Reed also admitted this was his 20th time at Comic-Con. Clearly they are out to prove Ant-Man is in good hands. Out comes Paul Rudd who will star as Ant-Man, along with Evangeline Lilly, who they’ve just revealed will play Hope Pym, Corey Stoll (who they revealed will be Yellowjacket), as well as Michael Douglas as Hank Pym. After a few comments from the actors — Lilly knows almost nothing about her character as she’s not yet seen a script, Stoll alludes to his character being the scientist bad-guy, and Rudd prepares for superhero stardom — they played a video made just for Comic-Con, as the film hasn’t started any filming.

In it they pan around a laboratory while Michael Douglas’s holds a conversation with Rudd as Scott Lang, Ant-Man’s alter ego, asking Lang to do a “small” job for him (Lang is a thief). They jump to a costumed Lang running through a room, then a hallway, a man holds a gun up to him and he morphs into the tiny version of himself landing on top of the gun. Then more footage of him riding the back of a flying ant. The perspective is great, and even if this is conceptual footage, it looks really good.

Moving on to what fans most wanted Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” plays as the cast of Avengers: Age of Ultron take the stage. Robert Downey Jr. charms the entire audience with flowers (which he handed out to his female co-stars as well). Most exciting was the newest Avengers, Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Quicksilver, Paul Bettany as Vision, James Spader as Ultron, and Elizabeth Olsen as the Scarlet Witch. The only notable missing persons were Scarlett Johansson and director Joss Whedon who just had knee surgery and couldn’t attend. After some fun banter with the entire panel — Hemsworth joked about the new sex-change of his character being his chance at an Oscar, Elizabeth Olsen says she’s been practicing staring at pencils for months willing them to move, and Robert Downey Jr. asks that she soon release him from the spell she cast on hims as “it burns” — we finally get a trailer for Avengers: Age of Ultron.

It begins with a dinner party with all the Avengers playing a party game where each tries to pick up Thor’s hammer. Tony Stark jokes that if he can do it, he gets to rule Asgard, right? It doesn’t budge, he tries again with the Iron Man glove, no dice. Not with the help of Cheadle’s War Machine hand either. No luck from Bruce Banner, but he wasn’t in Hulk mode, so… Hawkeye is a no go. Black Widow says that’s not a question she needs answered and Captain America gets the hammer to budge slightly which causes Thor obvious alarm. He picks it back up himself, satisfied, when suddenly a voice booms out at them. James Spader’s mechanized voice of Ultron, telling them that the only path to peace, is their extinction. As the hyper aware robot, built by Stark, Ultron plans to wipe them all out as the only way to solve their war problems. Cut to devastation, battle sequences and a creepy rendition of the Disney Pinocchio song “I’ve Got No Strings” sung behind the footage. Ending with a shiny new Ultron saying “I’ve got not strings on me.” The puppet has become the puppet-master. It looks awesome.

There’s nothing else to say. And that’s the end of the panel, except, a quick appearance by Josh Brolin donning Thanos’ Infinity Gauntlet. Which the audience loves. Especially when Downey Jr. offers him a flower, and Brolin commences to tear it up in his mouth and chew on the petals. Oh yeah, he should do nicely for ultra-villain Thanos. You can watch the panel (minus footage) here.

That’s Saturday at the con folks. Crazy long and so much happening. That pretty much concludes the film events of Comic-Con so it’s time this girl went and caught up on a heck of a lot of sleep.