San Diego’s Comic-Con International may be a great place to hear Hollywood stars pitch their latest superhero, sci-fi and horror-themed projects in a cavernous hall filled with thousands of fans during the day, but it’s at the parties at night where the A-listers really let their hair down as they celebrate all things gloriously geeky.
On the Wednesday evening before the official Comic-Con kick-off,
Star Trek director
J.J. Abrams quietly bellied up to the bar at HitFix.com’s bash at the Hotel Solamar with a notebook in hand, and he admitted he hadn’t quite gotten into the headspace to be one of the Con’s reigning rock stars just yet. “My head’s not quite there yet, “ said Abrams. “I’ve got a writing deadline, but I’m sure I’ll come around.”
Thursday night offered a plethora of party options, from Marvel Vs. Capcom on the rooftop of the Hard Rock Hotel, where hip hop star Big Boi charged up a crowd that included
The Green Hornet star and comic book lover
Seth Rogen, Willa Ford and Marvel Comics executive editor Joe Quesada and a scantily clad superheroine without an invite watched the action from her hotel room window. Rogen had strolled over from Britt Reid’s garage bash at the PetCo Park baseball stadium, where he and director Michel Gondry showed off the
Green Hornet’s muscular fleet of Black Beauties to an admiring throng of geeked-out gearheads.
Just a Rambo-knife’s throw away on the Hard Rock rooftop was IGN.com’s fete for the action-star-slobberknocker
The Expendables, where
Sylvester Stallone was joined by co-stars
Dolph Lundgren,
Terry Crews,
Randy Couture and Steve Austin (pictured, above) – and, inexplicably, inaction star
Pauly Shore.
Inside the Hard Rock, G4 and Lucasfilm teamed up for “GPhoria Strikes Back,” a tribute to the 30th anniversary of
The Empire Strikes Back in a ballroom where the walls had been converted to look like a massive starfield space backdrop. A cadre of Stormtroopers made sure the guests didn’t get too close to G4 host Olivia Munn’s heavenly body; Jawa-sized Seth Greene of Robot Chicken strolled by an impressive Darth Vader who lightened up his Dark Side to pose for a female fan who wanted to kiss his helmet; and
Buffy the Vampire Slayer guru and
Avengers director
Joss Whedon showed off his super-powered dance skills grooving to a ceaseless string of ‘80s-era hits as J.J. Abrams – now fully in Con-mode, looked on in amusement.
Whedon’s dance-dance-revelation continued on Friday when he commandeered the dance floor at the From Dusk Til Con party at Stingaree, busting moves with an improvised dance crew of soon-sweaty webmasters. A few blocks away, Disney and MySpace had taken over an unoccupied building to re-create the classic Flynn’s Arcade from the original
Tron film and populated it with the 1982 film’s stars
Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner, who’re reuniting for the upcoming sequel
Tron: Legacy. Additional stars of the new film, including
Garrett Hedlund and
Beau Garrett, polished their old-school video gaming skills on a plethora of arcade classics, joined by
Nathan Fillion,
Zachary Levi,
Tia Carrere and another original Tron vet, Cindy Morgan.
Up the street
Will Ferrell resisted the urge to cannonball into the rooftop pool at the Hotel Solamar (earlier in the day he
promised us there’s be no public nudity on his part at the party) during Maxim’s fling for his film
The Other Guys, choosing instead to chill in a cabana with co-stars
Mark Wahlberg and
Eva Mendes. As expected
Maxim’s bash brought out cutting edge displays of the latest breast enhancement technology on many of the not-shy lady party guests, who were happily ogled by
Twilighter
Kellan Lutz and his gal pal
AnnaLynn McCord,
The Big Bang Theory’s
Kaley Cuoco, and
Simon Helberg and
True Blood’s
Sam Trammell, but at Comic-Con even a celebration of cleavage was upstaged by the arrival of the King of the Con himself, comic book legend
Stan Lee, the octogenarian who hit the red carpet still wearing shades. Now we know where
Iron Man’s Tony Stark got all his cool.