COMIC CON ’07: LIVE AT THE MARVEL PANEL

4:20 Eric Morrow from IGN takes the podium to introduce, as he says, the first ever Marvel Studios panel in Hall H.

4:22 Gale Anne Hurd. Avi Arad. Kevin Feige. Louis Leterierre. Liv Tyler. Ed Norton. Wait, Ed Norton! Tim Roth and William Hurt couldn’t make it.

4:24 Kevin Feige: This is part one of a whole new Hulk saga.

Gale Anne Hurd: We have a Hulk who is not going to be three different sizes in this movie. I think everyone will be happy about that.

Hulk concept art: GREEN. And rather grim. Dishevled hair.

4:27 Ed Norton: I came in not only to act, but to write the script for this.

EDIT: There’s some confusion here, but yes, the current news seems to be that Ed Norton is scriptwriter on the new Hulk film. Madness! Now back to the panel…

I was a Marvel kid, I had subscriptions to a lot of Marvel comics. I alway felt like [The Hulk] was one of those great contemporary myths. It comes almost out of a tradition of Greek Myth, the notion of suppressing your inner demon. So when I talked to Kevin and Louis about starting from scratch and reconceiveing it as a mythic saga, it was really appealing. lots of stories get retold. We made a film of The Painted Veil last year and that was the fourth film made of that novella. So something as rich as The Hulk has almost limitless potential to remake and reconceive. When Kevin and Louis and I talked about the TV show, it gets relegated to green paint and kitch, but the show doesn’t talk down to the idea, it takes it seriously. And Bill Bixby brings a lonely pathos to the character. And that drew me to it – a moral person with this thing inside him.

4:31 Liv Tyler talked earlier today about being directed to be afraid and helpless in The Stranger, and how her natural inclination is to be a fighter. So her Betty Ross could be alright. Sez Tyler: In this film we’re basically looking for a cure for him.

4:33 Gale Anne Hurd is confident that they’re going to bring the humanity as well as the aciton to life. The Remains Of The Hulk!

4:36 Norton: I’ve made a lot of lo-fi tough characters, but I haven’t done something that involves the interface between acting and effects that this does. One of the first questions I asked Kevin and other people at Marvel was: Once the Hulk pops out, does that take me out of the picture as an actor? And as Gale implies, there’s a whole set of technologies that have come online that change completely the way an actor can interface with the animation of a character. The notion of not having these characters be split, but getting to play both halves was a big part of me deciding I had something to bring to it.

Performance capture ahoy.

4:38 Liv Tyler is really nice to a sweaty fan Arwen who takes the mic.

4:39 The origin question comes up. More of a TV show or original comic book origin?
Norton: I’d say two things about that. I don’t even like the phrase origin story. I don’t think in great literature or films explaining the roots or the history means that it necessarily comes at the beginning. I think that the art of telling a story well is answering those questions not by frontloading all of it. If there’s something I wish was done better in these movies it’s that I don’t want them to race through the origin and get to the rest, it seems obligatory to get through the origin. So we talked about grappling with our own version of the story, and spooling it out throughout the script. I wouldn’t say that this film is rooted exclusively in the television show at all. We’ve had a deep exploration of the Bruce Jones series and Hulk grey, and the fun in this was not to remake anything but to spin our own fantasy of the interface between all these things.

Leterrier: Ed and I really love Return of the Monster, so for me it was a mix of the TV show, the comic books, the old and the new.

Norton: Since Captain America asked that question, there’s all these fun things in the Marvel universe, like the Super Soldier serum. Part of the fun of this is referencing those things in creative ways.

That’s something to chew on.

Leterrier: Look for a lot of Easter Eggs and homages — you know ‘homage’ is French for stealing ideas from American films and not getting sued for it.

4:47 Favreau knows who he’s playing to. He’s got this thing cold.

4:48 Holy shit, this footage looks great. Recap later.

4:55 Favreau jabs at The Dark Knight viral marketing. ("I was afraid we were going to have to dress some guy up like The Mandarin and send you all on a scavenger hunt.")

4:57 Terence Howard looks genuinely enthusiastic about this film.

4:59 The first fan question refrences Downey’s drug past. Downey lets it fly like a champ.

5:00 Favreau calls this a ‘big independent movie’, praises Nolan for casting a big movie like this as if it was an indie. And it’s honestly amazing to look up and see Favreau, Howard and Downey up there for a fucking Iron Man movie. I guess Paltrow is up there, too.

5:02 Favreau references Heavy Metal with respect to the soundtrack. "Iron Man is rock and roll when he gets down to business."

5:03 Asked about prep. Downey: Gweneth was my personal assistant for two months. That was after we wrapped photography. Sometimes you do the prep afterwards. (pause for laughter) Doesn’t have to make sense, as long as you’re laughing.

5:04 Howard: I’m pretty lazy when it comes to reading the script. I sorta let the other actors decide my character — you see how they react and behave with you. I kinda let them create it, and I let the director once in a while.

5:05 Favreau: there’s someone else I want to bring out. Ladies and gentlemen, Karen Allen! Actually, no. It’s just Stan Lee. It’s like he hasn’t aged a day since Mallrats.

5:10 They run the trailer again and we’re out. I’m up to the Iron Man interviews…