Seven Lessons To Take From Comic-Con 2010

The takeaways from the horror and Hornets, Cowboys and Aliens, and busty babes of this year's Comic-Con.

You don’t need to buy a badge for Comic-Con’s wilder film events.

You might’ve heard some of the more interesting movie panels in San Diego were not at the convention center, but off-site events, usually for films deemed too violent for what organizers would like to be a family-friendly event.

This meant the bloody “Piranha 3D” panel would be held at the Horton Plaza, “Saw VII” announced their swan song away from the masses and you didn’t have to shell out $150 to enjoy the free garlic bread Universal Studios was giving away on the street as part of their massive “Scott Pilgrim” experience, which included silkscreened T-shirts and free screenings at the nearby Balboa Theater on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

Instead of hosting a panel, Fox deployed a taco truck with Robert Rodriguez, Danny Trejo and Michelle Rodriguez were handing out tortillas full of carne asada outside Hall H before setting up shop in a parking lot where tequila was served and seven minutes of “Machete” footage was shown.

A day later, the same parking lot was occupied by Paramount for “Jackass 3D” for a screening of eight minutes of Bam Margera getting pummeled with a bat and the making of something called “the poo cocktail supreme” (I’ll let /Film‘s Peter Sciretta explain). Many of these events were invite-only, but since there were many people rumbling around the convention center willing to beg, borrow and deal anyway, it was a welcome alternative for those who were too late in reserving their badge for this year.

You will be unprepared.

As these very words scrolled past the extended trailer we saw for Zack Snyder’s “Sucker Punch,” I remembered why I kept returning to Comic-Con even though I was well aware of the four hours in line every morning, the crummy food and the lack of sleep that inevitably are part of the routine. Thanks to the massive pre-coverage of the event beforehand and the guessing games that follow, the element of surprise has been greatly reduced. Warner Brothers gave Entertainment Weekly the exclusive on the Green Lantern’s suit a week early and someone associated with “The Avengers” couldn’t keep a secret long enough that Mark Ruffalo would be joining the cast as the Hulk.

There were some things that were unexpected — I’m looking forward to “Skyline,” a film I had no idea existed before San Diego and the Will Ferrell/Adam McKay-produced comedy “The Virginity Hit” really came out of nowhere. Likewise, there’s an exhilaration that comes with being the first to see footage that came directly off the set à la “Cowboys & Aliens” and the first peek of Red Skull in “Captain America: The First Avenger,” even though both films haven’t even filmed their second acts yet.

Still, what I was personally unprepared for was how excited I was for Snyder’s “Sucker Punch” chopped up in a way that probably will never be seen again — it was scored with Led Zeppelin’s “When the Levee Breaks” just for Comic-Con, so it’s unlikely Warner Brothers will show it again because of rights issues, though the alternate public version is here. (Then again, I’ll warn that I was similarly bowled over for “Alice in Wonderland” last year when the trailer included MGMT’s “Time to Pretend.”)

While it’s true I’m trying to catch up to what the “300″ director has in store for audiences in March — I know it involves machine guns, burlesque, dragons and an insane asylum for girls — I was more overwhelmed with the feeling that Snyder was once again able to wow the Comic-Con crowd on a large scale with something that they had never seen before.

It was a convention of extremes, where films like “Super” and “Skyline” muscled their way into Hall H on low-budget ingenuity and the eight minutes of “Sucker Punch” we saw demonstrated that creativity on a grand scale was alive and well. For better or worse, it means there’s less attention being paid to the middle, but given all the haranguing over what value Comic-Con has as part of pop culture, it was encouraging that beyond the marketing, the movies still stood supreme.

[Additional photos: "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark," Miramax, 2010; "Thor," Marvel Studios, 2011; "Sucker Punch," Warner Bros., 2011]

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