Among the 130,000 crowd in San Diego were stars of the comic
book movies who, now, regularly invade the precincts of the Comic-Con.
■ Tom Hiddleston, playing Loki, the Norse
trickster god in “Thor: The Dark World,” crashed a panel on Saturday morning to
surprise fans. “It was one of the most exciting buzzes of my life,” Hiddleston
confessed to Truitt at USA Today. “As
someone who’s trained in the theater, 6,500 people is about the biggest gig
I’ve ever played.”
Yup — 6,500
is the seating capacity of the Convention Center’s gigantic Hall H.
■ Physicist
Stephen Hawking appeared in an
introductory video at the start of “The Big Bang Theory” panel, explaining,
“When I’m not playing Words With Friends, I like to think about the universe”
and then began reciting the lyrics to the show’s theme song.
■ The
“Ender’s Game” panel was remarkably free of the controversy that has stalked Orson Scott Card, whose novel inspired
the movie. Card’s opposition to gay marriage resulted in his leaving a DC
Comics Superman project some months ago, and during the panel, when a woman
asked about it, she was shouted down with cries like “Let it go!” and “Leave it
alone!” But writer/producer Roberto Orel
addressed the issue anyway, saying:
“You never
want to invite controversy, and we were concerned with anyone who might have
been hurt. But rather than shy away from the controversy, we’re happy to
embrace it and use the spotlight to say we support LGBT and human rights.”
■ Comic-Con
hero Harrison Ford, asked why he
signed on to do the movie about aliens set to destroy humanity, said: “I was
drawn to the complexity of the moral issue. And the complex moral issues that
are involved in the military. The book was written 28 years ago, and it imagined
a world with the ability to wage war removed from the battlefield. That is one
of the realities of our life now, with drone warfare, but this was unknown 28
years ago.”