CC 2009: Enough With the Screaming!

OK, I’m going to get this one out of the way right up front. It’s my one and only real complaint about Comic-Con and even then I realize it’s not totally their fault. One of the things that has ensured Comic-Con has survived for 40 years now is the fact that through it all they have managed to stay relevant and always on the cutting edge of what is new, hip and cool. So please understand that this diatribe isn’t really directed towards them but the mania that has pushed them to include something in their programming.

ENOUG IS ENOUGH! Seriously enough with this TWILIGHT crap already! For the 2nd year in a row I had to sit through 6,500 screaming prepubescent girls and menopausal women in the NEW MOON panel.

Now don’t get me wrong I’m all for there being more women at Con. When I started going a dozen years ago you could throw a rock from one end of the convention floor to the next and you would have been hard pressed to hit anyone of the female variety. My eyes and I are VERY glad that this is a trend that has rapidly changed and that geekdom now appeals equally to both genders.

That being said I’m not sure there has ever been a group of fandom more vacuous and utterly juvenile than the Twihards or whatever stupid name they want to call themselves. Dissension and argument are not uncommon amongst the ranks of the fan-boys. There is nothing geeks love to do more than argue whether Captain Kirk is cooler than Han Solo or if Wolverine could kick Batman’s ass (Just for the record he can’t and Solo has ALWAYS been cooler than Kirk) but at the end of the day we respect each other and we look out for each other. We realize we are part of a unique, eccentric minority and while we may darn near come to blows over the new BSG versus the old one at the end of the day we can get together, have a ball and no one gets hurt.

I wish the same could be said for the literally PSYCHOTIC people that count themselves as TWILIGHT fans. I heard more than a few stories from my fellow Con attendees about how they were almost trampled to death by the ravenous hordes of estrogen filled wannabe-geeks as they poured into Hall H in a desire to be close enough to smell Robert Pattison’s hair gel or something.

Now lest you think this is all just some misplaced, vitriol laced diatribe allow me to get to my coverage of the panel which I think explains exactly where this frustration comes from.

TWILIGHT SUCKS! It’s a barely passable book that was obviously passed around some writer’s circle that lucked into getting published. It’s not very interesting and there is very little if any conflict. This book was made into one of the single WORST movies I’ve ever seen. Seriously it’s shameful how bad it is. The studio hired a completely incompetent director and cast two stars that have almost no chemistry together and who’s acting in the films mainly revolves around them running their hands through their hair. None-the-less the movie made money because teenage girls are impressionable and menopausal women are… well, I don’t care to speculate.

So here we are a year later and the inevitable sequel has been shot. The studio has at least hired a director with some skills and they’ve been able to train Robert Pattison how to act in front of a crowd but Kristen Stewart is a massive mess. So much so that even the die hard TWILIGHT fans were commenting on her and I’m beginning to question how or IF she will ever work again after this franchise.

Footage was shown and of course the Twihards went nuts but not because it’s good. Both clips involved men taking off their shirts and that’s about it. While the film looks to be better done than the first one (Not that that’s hard) it still looks lifeless, dull, rushed, poorly made and just plain dumb. If you think I’m being too harsh then I refer you to almost every other panel the rest of the weekend in which talented directors, actors and actresses made sly, cutting comments about the quality of the footage that was shown.

Comic-Con 2009 had many bright spots. So many that it’s almost hard to name them all yet once again for several hours on Thursday all the fun and excitement was sucked out of the convention by a franchise who’s popularity boggles my mind and apparently that of many other people. The only positives I can take away from my two years running TWILIGHT experience / nightmare is the fact that if the studio’s release schedule stays intact next year will be the last year I have to suffer through the madness before this craze dies the slow death it so richly deserves and this silly franchise becomes little more than a footnote and blemish in the annuls of pop culture. The second and slightly more heart warming thought was something brought up by the ever wise and sage Kevin Smith. A few years from now most of these TWILIGHT fans will be 18 and with luck this will have only served as a gateway drug to geeky things that are actually worth their time. The geek fan-boy community is always eager to add more to its rank especially if they’re female.