Comic-Con Day Two: Cage, “Skyline” and “Super” Bring a Touch of Indie Spirit

Nicolas Cage drives angry, James Gunn brings the "Super" in day two of Comic-Con.

The film itself looks like a B-movie with A-level effects, as the trailer and an additional clip showed an army of alien invaders descend from the sky, shine their blue lights into the eyes of any human that dare look directly at them and convert them. Although it’s best not to pass judgment until the finished project, the Strauses casting of TV stalwarts like Eric Balfour, Donald Faison and Brittney Daniel doesn’t exactly inspire confidence when it might’ve been a better idea to go with unknowns. But the Godzilla-sized alien monsters were impressive, even more so when Colin Strause said he implored his crew to embrace “the crazy shit that when you try to get it through the 20 other producers and studio people, everyone always filters down.”

Eventually, the Strauses showed a few minutes of “Skyline” to Brett Ratner, who in turn passed it on to Ryan Kavanaugh at Relativity, which secured a deal at Universal to distribute the film. Greg acknowledged, “As independent as we may speak about wanting that control at the beginning of the process, we want as many people as possible to enjoy the movie and see it and the reality is there is no independent distribution method really.”

While that point may be arguable, he’s probably right for a film like this, which makes one hope someone will be as creative in figuring out the distribution side of things as the Strauses have been on the production side. “Skyline” will be released on November 12th.

“Super” doesn’t have a distributor yet, a point that was hit home several times during the panel for this promising Rainn Wilson/Ellen Page superhero dramedy, but, like “Kick-Ass” last year, Comic-Con provided a perfect launch pad, since it appears the film’s got the goods.

Indie film fans will be encouraged by the presence of producers Ted Hope (“Adventureland”) and Miranda Bailey (“The Squid and the Whale”), who don’t make a habit of appearing at places like Comic-Con. Genre fans are probably already aware “Super” is the sophomore directorial effort from “Slither” writer/director James Gunn, who apparently had financing for both films roughly eight years ago and decided to go with “Slither” first.

While that film firmly established Gunn’s unique voice and rough-edged humor in a way his scripts for “Scooby-Doo” and “Dawn of the Dead” may not have as clearly, Gunn admitted it didn’t make it easier to mount “Super,” which he called “sort of hellish the whole way.” Still, the result looks worth the trouble.

Wilson stars as a down-on-his-luck schmo who takes it upon himself to become a superhero called the Crimson Bolt, whose primary superpower is being very angry and oblivious to adhere to proper societal etiquette, as suggested by a clip where he belted a person and his female companion across the face with a wrench for cutting in line at the local theater. (It’s far funnier than that sounds, the type of black humor you’d expect from Gunn, who cast Rob Zombie in a cameo as the voice of God in the film.) Page plays his sidekick Libby (“a sociopath hinging on psychopath,” said Page), who helps the Crimson Bolt save a drug addled Liv Tyler from the clutches of a local kingpin (Kevin Bacon).

As moderator Ted Striker noted, it was unusual to see a film like this collect such an impressive cast considering its low budget, especially when Gunn was so selective, particularly about his lead. “It was a very difficult role to fill because it had to be a guy who had comedic chops, but it also had to be a guy that had dramatic chops because there’s a lot of drama in the movie and it also had to be somebody you could believe could be picked on by everybody else who works at the diner with him and yet at the same time be powerful enough to take down a bunch of people with a wrench and a shotgun.”

Gunn only happened upon Wilson when his ex-wife Jenna Fischer suggested her “Office” mate and had Gunn e-mail him while they were waiting for shooting to start on the sitcom. After 27 pages into the script, Wilson wanted in and the two became incredibly protective of the script, to the point that producer Hope only found out about the film through his Twitter feed.

Hope recounted, “Rainn Wilson tweeted that he and James were about to go out with an F-ed up, low-rent ‘Watchmen.’ I had wanted to do a movie in that vein and I think it only took me three months or so to convince you guys.” (Hope later said making the film “wasn’t a choice. It was a compulsion.”) Likewise, Page was attracted only when Wilson e-mailed her the script and loved it.

Although none of this happened overnight, it wasn’t a leisurely shoot. Gunn said the crew was doing 54 camera set-ups a day (15 is a good number for a typical production) and during the panel, co-star Nathan Fillion put Liv Tyler on the spot when he asked her about injecting a real needle (filled with water) into her foot when the film called for her character to test out a new shipment of heroin.

Typically, such matters are handled by a second unit, but Tyler has a “real pet peeve about like hand and foot doubles in movies because I have such big hands and feet.” She continued, “James thought I was nuts.” (Fillion countered, “If I was half the woman you are, I’d be twice the man I am” to big laughs from the audience.)

If it seemed like a strange fit beforehand to showcase the film in Comic-Con’s largest venue, “Super” showed the potential that it could play to an 8,000-seat room and in turn, offered up a new paradigm for independent filmmakers who may have ambitions outside of a particular genre, but know which audience they want to attract and can build buzz before securing a distribution deal.

The Comic-Con crowd seemed genuinely receptive to “Super,” no small feat considering all the bells and whistles the studios put into their panels to draw attention and when Gunn said, “I made the film I wanted to make,” it didn’t sound like a boilerplate platitude; rather, it pierced through the cynicism and suspicion that this event is so often associated with now.

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