Randomosity on Fridays: Comic Con Edition (5)

'When will this recap ever end?' I hear you ask. 'It's been over 2 months since it happened!' I know, it's like a never-ending recap, but like I said last time, we haven't gotten to the BEST PART yet. Even now, the entire experience feels surreal to me.

So please indulge me in my need to set this down in pictures and words, and who knows? Maybe it'll convince some of you who have been thinking about going to SDCC actually make plans to go! Onwards!

DAY 3 / Saturday (Part 2)

Last we left off about mid-afternoon in our long Saturday sitting in Hall H. In case you were wondering, the Sister and I had a lunch that consisted of a wrapped up Hot Pocket, some birthday-cake Oreos, and fruit snacks. Yeah, we were real healthy...

After the super cool Women who Kick Ass panel, things got real interesting real fast. 20th Century Fox did their block, which consisted of the films Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Wolverine, and X-MEN: Days of Future Past. It was all fancy because they gave us 3-D glasses and presented all their trailers in 3D.

There wasn't too much to RISE since they were early in production. They showed the Wolverine trailer, which admittedly looked more interesting than the teasers I'd seen, and then they trotted out Hugh Jackman.

As you can imagine, he was lovely, charming, and funny. He left the stage and Bryan Singer came out to talk about X-MEN. They ran the trailer, which guys, it seemed pretty freaking cool, and when the lights came back on, he noted how oh the panel table seems really long and there are so many seats...

Yes, they pretty much brought the ENTIRE combined cast of the X-MEN franchise. There was so much star power at that panel, you can imagine the freaking out that was going on and the number of camera flashes that went off. It still kind of blows my mind that we saw ALL OF THEM sitting there together.

Of course, they were charming and hilarious. Sir Ian McKellan was super cute with Sir Patrick Stewart and he kinda/sorta proposed to Michael Fassbender. James McAvoy was adorably excited to be there. Jennifer Lawrence and Peter Dinklage were their usual charming selves. So on and so forth...

To top it all off, as the cast exited the stage, 20th Century Fox passed out claim vouchers for swag - and as you saw from our SDCC swag post, it was a lot of stuff - posters, shirts, hats.

The Marvel panel was next, the last panel of the day and pretty much the one we were most excited to see. But after 20th Century Fox starstruck us and then gave us free stuff, it was hard to imagine what Marvel could possibly do to top that. The crowd was still all astir from that panel when moderator Chris Hardwick and Marvel'sKevin Feige took the stage.

Since there was no THOR 2 panel, they started just by saying it was releasing in November and that they were going to show us a new trailer. But as you've all probably heard by now, the microphone and lights cut out in the middle of Feige's trailer introduction and we heard a voice that sounded a lot like Loki.

The Sister and I looked at each other and said, "Sounds like Tom... Is that Loki? IS HE HERE?!" because the room was completely dark and it sounded like it could be a voice-over. Most of the crowd seemed confused as well, like we were waiting for the trailer to start playing any second now...and then the lights flickered back on...

[Photo/ the Sister]

Now, please imagine a room of 6500 people surging to their feet and screaming, camera flashes going off like strobe lights. That's what happened. The Sister and I were FREAKING OUT that Tom Hiddleston was standing on the Hall H stage in full costume acting completely in character. It was UNREAL.

Loki was snide and charming, insulting and baiting and even shushing the crowd, and still he had 6500 people chanting his name by the end. Loki's army? It is a real thing.

I won't bore you with any more blurry pictures. Suffice to say, I was too busy freaking out and texting my fellow Hiddleston fangirl and lady geek Nicole, who was sitting in the Hall H line outside for Sunday's early panels to really take pictures. Nicole was texting me in ALL CAPS about how she was DYING that she wasn't in the room.

And that's how Marvel managed to top all the panels before them and how Loki won Comic Con.

If you haven't seen the speech yet, there are multiple versions of the Loki speech online. Here's one for your viewing pleasure.



And then they showed the THOR: THE DARK WORLD trailer, which was very similar to the newest trailer that is out now (but with a few crucial, I guess SDCC exclusive segments missing). And they showed us an extended scene before moving on to the CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER panel.


Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson and some of the returning SHIELD gang, as well as new actors for the new characters. It was cool because we saw an early clip.

The next panel was for Marvel's GUARDIAN OF THE GALAXIES, which had just started filming 12 days ago. So it was a big surprise that they'd flown in the entire cast from London AND put together a quick teaser trailer for us. I have no idea how they put together those things so fast because it looked pretty good for something that had been thrown together in 12 days!

Eee! Lee Pace, whom I adore!

And the adorable Karen Gillian (of Doctor Who fame) revealed that she had shaved her head for her role. In her excitement, she flung her wig into the crowd.


And we thought that was it, but of course, Marvel had one last card to play. After the stage was cleared, Joss Whedon ran in to tell everyone yes, he was working on Avengers 2 and that they had something for us. They then played a very short teaser thing that ultimately revealed that the subtitle for Avengers 2 is The Age of Ultron.

So when the lights went on and we were cleared from the room, the Sister and I headed to the Fulfillment room to pick up our 20th Century Fox swag. This whole process took a while (another long line was involved), but we were still shell-shocked from all the geekery that went down.

When this was done, we headed to the lobby of the Marriott to meet up with the lovely @laurenspieller who was staying with us for a night. This was my first meeting with this online writer-friend, so that was quite exciting as well. While we were being starstruck, she had spent the day on the convention room floor and had racked up an impressive 14 free books! I don't know how she managed to lug that load around all day, but she's just a bamf like that.

The last exciting thing that we discovered from Nicole (other than that she and her friends were willing to do a line-sharing duty thing with us, so we could get into the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary panel on Sunday) was that Tom Hiddleston was doing a last-minute NERD HQ panel on Sunday afternoon. Unfortunately, the tickets had gone online while the Sister and I were still shuffling out of Hall H in a daze and were sold out by the time we found out.

But luckiest of luck, the Sister happened to see a tweet from a girl who had 2 extra tickets she was willing to sell to the first 2 people who tweeted her for it. The Sister managed to get one in, but since she hadn't specified she needed 2 tickets, the other ticket went to someone else. I was, of course, bummed but also thrilled that one of us would get to see him. As you know though, this story ends happily and I do get to go see Tom, but that's for the SUNDAY recap.

With that, we headed back to our apartment to pack up (since we had to check out early the next morning and get back in the Hall H line).

Saw this cool, planetary promo on the way back to our apartment.

For more SDCC goodness, here are my previous related posts:

1) What's Up Wednesday (7) / RSW (6)
2) SDCC Recap No. 1
3) What's Up Wednesday (8) / Our Comic Con Fashion
4) SDCC Recap No. 2
5) SDCC Recap No. 3
6) What's Up Wednesday (10) / Our Comic Con Swag
7) SDCC Recap No. 4