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"Comic-Con is the best organised convention in the world, but when 63,000 people have pre-registered for a single day, nothing in the world can cope with that". The person who's made this comment to me is talking about Day 3 of Comic-Con, and generally referring to the surrounding chaos that the increase in popularity has brought with it. By way of example, last year I was able to just stroll into the main ballroom (capacity: 4000 people), just half an hour before the New Line panel I was most interested in began. I guess, a year ago today, the signs were all there that 'Treasure Planet' was not going to be a great success. This year was completely different: lines for pre-registration for the day were a mile long (and apparently remained so until about 1pm) and, to be blunt, the only way to get into the ballroom venue for most of the Hollywood panels was through a combination of fervent text messaging between a co-ordinated group of friends (Thank God for impulse purchases of tri-band phones!), sweat, tears, sheer bravado and a LOT of luck!
Why the ridiculously high increase in numbers this year? My theory is that last year the Hollywood guests were a surprise. This year they were pre-announced - a big mistake in my book, and huge national press in advance of the event only helped dramatically increase the numbers this year. There were near-riots left, right and centre as the system clearly failed to work. People who'd queued for hours found themselves unable to gain access to the main ballroom because guards were refusing to let people into the building before the scheduled start time of 10am, where others who had not queued and were feeling brazen enough, managed to walk past guards to go and join queues inside the building. The maths of trying to squeeze 63,000 pre-registered attendees into a room with a capacity of just 4000 don't add up and could never add up - but neither does the fairness of a system that encourages cheating instead of proper timed ticketing, and all across the exhibition floor I heard one tale after another of people queueing for this signing or that limited edition statuette, only to lose out to people who'd joined the queues later because of ill thought out logistics. It was small wonder that so many decided to just give up on the convention altogether! What this all means for the future of Comic-Con is unclear. Reading various Internet responses people seem to fall into one of two camps - those who think this is the first year in a long time where things have fallen apart vs those who think the ridiculously high numbers are "a great thing for comic books". Most observers seem agreed though that numbers will likely increase again next year!
		Getting back onto the subject of what was available for those resilient enough to brave the queues, there was a huge rush on the new TheOneRing.net's 'Gandalf for President' button badges, and also for a surprise New Line giveaway of pewter key rings of the logo of the movie title. This latter item got swallowed up in about 5 minutes! The day's "exclusive to Comic-Con limited edition lithograph" showed how much busier the show was: Queues were getting so silly that the hand-outs were abandoned after about 15 minutes with a new handout time of 1pm being scheduled to try and lessen the demand. I got into the main ballroom eventually (long story), having missed the Warner Brothers presentation, just in time to hear Halle Berry finishing her session. With the room already full there was a queue of just over 1000 people waiting in line and things were getting very ugly as people realised the queueing system had completely broken down and was extremely unfair. Outside, friends who had planned to attend the convention just gave up - spending four hours in a mile-long queue just to collect your pre-booked ticket is just not anyone's idea of the best way to spend a Saturday! Halle Bery was followed by Angelina Jolie who was advertised as promoting the forthcoming Tomb Raider II movie. This didn't happen and instead we got an hour-long Q&A session that made last year's storming of the hobbit actors and continual requests for autographs, seem sophisticated by comparison! Question after question was just another "I love you" or "Will you meet me afterwards" which the actress handled with a smile and kind reply, but which was in truth an insult to her. Jollie was in a no-win situation when emotional blackmail got added to the mix. "I'm HIV+ and I've waited my whole life to meet you" was the start of a farcical series of attempts to get special access to the actress after the planned Q&A. When this tack worked others jumped on the bandwagon. "I've been HIV+ for 22 years" was the next claim and almost had me running up to the mic to 'ask' a question along the lines of "My sister's got cancer, I've got AIDS and all my kids are crippled. Will you sleep with me?"! Before I get ridiculous emails from people attempting to justify their appalling actions I should point out I did volunteer work in an AIDS hospice for over a year and lost my partner to the disease six years ago, so don't bother trying to emotionally blackmail me! The actress was in a no-win situation - if she says 'No' she's politically incorrect, if she says 'Yes' she encourages others to play the same emotional blackmail game). The net result of all this madness was that in an hour-long session we learnt next to nothing about the actress or the forthcoming movie - a complete waste of time! Thankfully things improved dramatically when Kevin Smith stepped up and gave an hour and a half Q&A that was effectively a 90 minute stand-up act. It was very rude, very disrespectful ... and VERY funny. "I guarantee three quarters of you are waiting for hobbits to come. You're all going 'Who the **** is Kevin Smith? Where's Frodo?" he started. Although a subsequent exodus when he finished, and very long queues for his signing session afterwards proved this statement to be incorrect, the Lord of the Rings theme came up again later. Discussing how his life was spent wasting too much time reading people telling him he was a jerk on the internet and how this started to affect his confidence he said "People say 'You suck!' and I go 'Oh no! Frodo12 is right!'". Smith was followed by the New Line presentation we had all been waiting for. Well not quite, as we first got a long horror/slasher clip from the forthcoming Freddie vs Jason movie, followed by a panel discussion with the two main actors, director and producer. Whoever decided to combine this panel with the one for The Lord of the Rings clearly has no understanding of how offensive the majority of fans find this sort of material (personally I can enjoy such movies if in the right mood, but I think I'm probably in a minority of one here!). Slasher madness apart, the Lord of the Rings finally got underway with a series of clips from 'The Two Towers' before Sala Baker dressed as an Uruk Hai warrior arrived on stage and made menacing moves towards the audience. Sala was followed by Richard Taylor who told us that this year he'd decided to focus on Helm's Deep and demonstrate the costumes and arts departments at Weta. As the session progressed we got to see three volunteers made up into a hobbit, a female elven warrior and a Rohan warrior (I think it was a Rohan warrior!)
With make-up chores completed, while Richard Taylor gave a running commentary, it remained only for someone to come and check the finished work. First up was the hobbit costume and Richard announced a hobbit judge would be needed, a cue for a surprise guest Dominic Monaghan, with newly blonde-died hair, to walk on stage!
		With a severe lack of sleep, and a flight to catch to London, this report will have to end early here. Click here for Page 2 of this report Click here to read previous day's report (Day 2)
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