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Click on any picture to see a larger version. Move mouse over picture for explanatory text. IMPORTANT NOTICE: All images on this site are Copyright Ian Smith and may not be reproduced or sold on Ebay without my express permission! Views expressed in these reports are those of Ian Smith only, and do not in any way reflect the views or opinions of The Official Fan Club, TheOneRing.net or any other fan organisation that might have linked to this site!

There is an old saying that something good always comes out of something bad, and while the recent spat with those rather strange people running Christopher Lee's Official Web Site is an experience I would not wish upon my worst enemy, it has ultimately resulted in my having access to a decent portable recording system to nip accusations of being 'a liar' or 'a fantasist' in the bud much quicker in any future reporting! One nice side-effect of this new purchase is that it means I am able to provide a complete transcript of the New Line panel separately from this web report. Please note that transcription of the Return of the King trailer is NOT included in this transcript as that would be breaking rules laid down by New Line and Comic-Con organisers at the start of this session.
		In all honesty, I felt the 'world exclusive' Return of the King trailer (or 'the three minute preview of the twelve minute preview of the three hour film' as Peter Jackson called it) was seriously over-hyped. There really wasn't much new here at all, and in fact more than 2/3rds of the 'preview trailer' was actually the director, producers and cast and crew talking up the forthcoming movie, rather than material from the actual movie itself. We may have got maybe 30 seconds of new footage, none of it particularly significant in terms of revealing what might or might not be in the next movie and it was all relatively spoiler-free. Past experience of such previews shows that even the short excerpts shown may not actually appear in the final film anyway. I felt the fuss over this whole 'world exclusive' thing, which upset fans who couldn't attend Comic-Con, was a marketing department achieving a lot in terms of 'hype over substance'! Far more interesting to me was the clip of Andy Serkis auditioning for Gollum. Although the actor pooh-poohed his performance ('Jesus Christ! How did I get the job?') it was an incredible audition, and it was easy to see how the actor got the part and how excited Peter Jackson must have been to find this actor. Serkis is very much a 'method' actor (there's some fascinating insights into his style on the 'DeathWatch' DVD - worth the price of admission if only for the first-time director's commentary) and one can't help but hope the Internet rumours that Serkis is next to play King Kong are untrue - anybody who's seen the afore-mentioned Death Watch, Topsy-Turvey or 24 Hour Party People knows that this actor has an incredible range and doesn't just 'play himself' as so many Hollywood celebrities appear to these days, and having him play another CGI character would, in many ways and in my own view, be a waste of his particular talent. It should also be said that the girlies in my party were most impressed with Andy's new 'buffed up' appearance, judging by the number of times I heard the phrase 'He's toit!'! There were some technical problems in this session, mainly arising from problems with Bay Raitt's (I just know that spelling is wrong!) laptop and the seeming inability of whoever was operating it to switch to full-screen display mode. This was a shame, as Raitt had some fascinating insights to give, and one sensed that he had to miss out some of the material he had brought along for showing ('not to be video-taped or shown to anyone outside this room') in the rush to squeeze everything into the 60 minutes that comprised this New Line 'Lord of the Rings' session. You can read more about some of Raitt's revelations in the accompanying transcript to this report. The format for this session was much improved on last year - no more Q & A nonsense after the farcical 'Will you sign my picture?' madness of last year - which meant it was, overall, a better session (although somewhat rushed, and some of us would have preferred separate Weta and New Line sessions as we had last year). Even the usual storming of the podium for pictures, as each actor came on stage, was more subdued this year, thanks mainly to the excellent job of the volunteer security staff. I had a disconcerting moment during one piece of madness during an earlier session (Angelina Jolie, I think) when a single volunteer managed to effectively control a large group of slightly hysterical fans without losing her cool. 'You're doing a great job', I said, trying to offer encouragement in contrast to the complaints from the minority spoiling the show for everyone else. 'Thank you, Ian' she said, which threw me as I had never met the lady before and didn't have a visible name badge, until I later found out she was a member of the Official fan club. Her actions were typical of those I experienced from most volunteers and I'd like to pass on a public thanks to the security guy who took me round the back corridors of the ballroom trying to get me in, while confiding 'I'm probably going to get into trouble for this!'. I have had a spate of emails complaining about how bad Comic-Con was this year, how rude and unfair the security people were, and how an open letter of complaint to the organisers is being arranged (you should apparently watch TheOneRing.net for details of possible link if you want to add your name to this). Some emails have said that the bad experiences I had trying to get into the ballroom were but the tip of the iceberg compared to the unfairness of the way autograph signing was handled after the New Line session. I can only offer my sympathy to those who, like me, found this year's organisation just not up to scratch compared with last year, but would add that I had tremendous admiration for all the volunteers I met who, despite low numbers, managed to control the angry crowds politely, with little fuss and with good humour. Most of our party seemed to have success with getting the access we wanted to the ballroom and to fan signings but, to be blunt, I think this was only because of incredible patience and luck, or the 'serendipity' of just plain pushing in and getting away with it! There comes a point where, when everyone else is doing it, it's hard to take the higher moral ground and just queue and take your turn! One can only hope this is sorted out for next year. For my own part, I was just grateful I had a team of friends to help sort things out, keep me informed as to progress (or lack of it) and co-ordinate those necessary 'loo' breaks - there wouldn't be any pictures or report here if I'd been on my own!. Bottom line on all this: I doubt I'll be back next year - it's bad enough queueing as it is but with the added hassle of lugging heavy camera gear from one end of the exhibition hall to the other in an attempt to be 'where the action is', it's just an exhausting, stressful experience, and not the 'stress-reducing' holiday it was meant to be. Admittedly, this state of affairs was partly my own fault - I was not covering this event for Decipher as the company were out in full force and wanted to cover the event for the magazine themselves - and had no Press Pass, which seemed to automatically legitimise a certain amount of queue jumping. With individuals who really had no more press identity than a personal web site on one of the free ISPs with associated low allowable traffic it was clear that Press passes are available based primarily on the ability to blag, and I clearly missed an opportunity here! But enough of the whingeing (of which there was a lot from attendees this year)! As I sat at the back of the hall, thankful for the opportunities a digital camera with long zoom lens offered, and with the sweat pouring off me (the air conditioning in the ballroom didn't appear to be working properly) I realised there were some having a much worse time of it than me. Watching Sala Baker in that heavy Uruk Hai uniform under hot lights in an stuffy room brought home to me just how much hard work and dedication the Weta folks put into everything they do. And if they can cope with it all, who am I to whinge? After the New Line session I stayed around for the Sony and Van Helsing sessions in the same room (leaving the ballroom was a big no-no as once you went out you were into rejoining a queue of several thousand people waiting to get in!). The highlights of those sessions for me were the screening of about 5 minutes of footage from the new Spider-Man 2 movie (awesome footage of Doctor Octopus being operated on at a hospital) although I couldn't help thinking that there's no way on earth this is going to get a 12 rating, based on what was shown - very 'horrific'! Another big highlight was the 'Making of' for Hellboy which, arguably, showed that this is the first comic book adaptation that is going to look EXACTLY like the comic book does. Great stuff! Photo's from these panels will appear in my 'Sunday closer' report (when I was 'all photo-ed out' and only attended the show for an hour, without my camera gear) as this Saturday report is already seriously overloaded with pictures. After the various sessions I went down to the usual TheOneRing.net meeting point. Andy Serkis, accompanied by his web master, Keith Stern was on the Weta stand and attracting large crowds for autographs. I'll post the one or two pictures I took of that in my Sunday report. It was nice to have a very brief chat with both Serkis and Stern (if only to see the reaction on Stern's face when he suddenly thought I might have been taping our conversation!) but I didn't envy them their attempts to extricate themselves from the stand in a timely fashion! You can see Keith's photo's of Andy at the event at Andy Serkis' Official web site. We also ran into Marc B Lee from RingCon at the stand. Marc told me that pre-registration for RingCon 2003 in Bonn, Germany in November, was currently equal to the whole attendance figure for last year's event, indicating that the event was likely to be attracting twice as many attendees as last year, which is good news for European fans wanting events like those our American counterparts enjoy, to take place in Europe.
A long day and a tiring one, but one that had made this trip out to San Diego worthwhile, although those who abandoned their plans to attend because of the long queues to pick up their tickets may disagree. Certainly all of the Brit party were happy with the New Line presentation, if not with the stress and hassle it took to get to see it. Click here for last few pictures and notes from Sunday (Day 4 of Comic-Con)
Don't forget you can check out reports of lots of other Lord of the Rings -themed events in the Web Logs section

Email: ian@iansmith.co.uk