This year’s ShoWest Convention finally “got real” with Universal Studios’ presentation of their spring and summer line-up including the debut of new trailers and footage from all of their big summer movies including the on-screen debut for The Incredible Hulk trailer (available online now), the first look anywhere at the first trailer for The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, an awesome new trailer for Guillermo del Toro’s Hellboy II: The Golden Army, and an extended action scene from Timur Bekmambetov’s Wanted. They also showed a couple of clips from Tina Fey and Amy Poehler’s comedy Baby Mama and the new trailer for the musical Mamma Mia!. The event was hosted and introduced by Universal’s President of Marketing and Distribution, Adam Fogelson.
The teaser for Hellboy II: The Golden Army didn’t really give anyone much of an idea about the plot for the upcoming sequel, but the new trailer made things much clearer while giving a look at most, if not all, of the creatures we’ll be seeing in what looks to be Guillermo del Toro’s latest masterpiece. For those who read Superhero Hype!’s set report, the trailer shows a lot of the creatures and plot developments that were discussed there.
The new trailer opens at the Blackwoods auction house where they’re putting the Royal Crown of Bethmoora up for auction when Luke Goss’ Prince Nuada shows up to reclaim it, and his henchman Mr. Wink crashes through a door with what looks like his metal fist dangling from a chain. It then cuts to the BPRD headquarters to reintroduce the concept of the BPRD being called upon to deal with supernatural occurrences, and Hellboy, Liz and Abe Sapien show up at the location which is completely trashed and empty, and Hellboy says something to Liz, like “There’s no one here, babe” and she retorts “Don’t call me babe!” which he responds, “I didn’t call you babe, I said ‘Hey!'” Hellboy makes a comment about it not looking good when thousands of Thooth Fairies, tiny winged creatures with sharp teeth fly out from the shadows of the walls attacking them. The rest of the trailer is very quick and goes by very fast, but we finally see Princess Nuala and get glimpses of a lot of the creatures of the Troll Market including Cathedral Head, and after we see one of the more hideous creature, it cuts to Hellboy yelling “I see you” and we see that the creature is disguised as an old bag lady (presumably this is the creature referred to as “Bag Lady” in the production office). We see more of Hellboy fighting against the Golden Army, the giant mechanical beetles that Prince Nuada brings to life, and more of his fight with Mr. Wink with the two of them smashing their stone fists together and Wink’s fist crumbling as he looks at the results and whines. The final scene is the street scene with the giant Elemental but this time Hellboy yells at the creature, “Now you’ve done it. You woke the baby!” and pulls out his Big Baby gun.
After reminding the audience how Universal’s The Bourne Ultimatum was the only 3-quel last summer which exceeded the gross of the prior installment, Fogelson introduced the debut of the first trailer for The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor by mentioning that not all archeological digs take place in Egypt and not all mummies are wrapped in gauze.
The trailer opens with the Great Wall of China then shows explorers in a cavern with flashlights as they explore and come upon a room filled with the Terra Cotta Warriors of the Dragon Emperor, an emperor who was cursed and turned into a mummy of stone. According to one of the explorers, “no two faces are the same” but then there’s some sort of earthquake where the cavern starts to cave in and they start coming to life including the emperor who is on a chariot that starts moving, and we see Brendan Fraser’s Rick O’Connell trying to hijack a car to chase after the chariot. Frankly, there was so much stuff to see that it was impossible to keep up with it all, but there seems to be lots of martial arts, huge battle sequences like in the last movie, and lots of Chinese imagery and mythology. One cool scene has an airplane flying through the battlefield and cutting through the Terra Cotta Warriors which crumble as they’re hit. There’s also a three-headed fire-breathing dragon that looked a bit like Monster X, and there’s a funny argument between Fraser and his son Alex, who is older than he was in the previous movie, this time played by Luke Ford, as they argue about how to deal with the situation. Rick tells his son that he’s defeated two mummies, but Alex corrects him that he only fought and defeated one mummy, which Rick shouts back, “Twice!” I wish I could have caught more of the trailer as it went by to describe but it looks very cool, with a scope as big and epic as the last movie and hopefully a little more energized with Rob Cohen on board and with the location and mythologies to work from.
While earlier in the presentation, they showed the latest Wanted trailer, Adam Fogelson pulled out a last-minute surprise by showing an extended scene from the movie from where James McAvoy first meets Angelina Jolie, though it’s no normal introduction, as it includes a massive gun fight and car chase. Apparently, this was shown at WonderCon, even though they said they only finished scoring the sequence only 48 hours beforehand. Either way, we’ll have a description of the footage, as well as the clips from Baby Mama and the new trailer for the musical Mamma Mia! later, since we’re off to cover Warner Bros. “The Big Picture” which should be just as much fun.
