Comic Con Movies: Cowboys & Aliens Panel

Jon Favreau, who's known how to rock Comic Con going on four years now since arriving to promote the first Iron Man, brought his most recent project, Cowboys & Aliens, to Hall H Saturday evening. 

The first big announcement during the Cowboys & Aliens segment was that the film will be shot and shown in glorious 2-D. Apparently the crowd really liked that one. Favreau said that Westerns should only be shot on film and thus his convenient artistic excuse to keep things in a couple dimensions. The cast then came out on stage: Daniel Craig, Olivia Wilde, Sam Rockwell, Adam Beach and none other than Harrison Ford. Ford was apparently stunned when the crowd went nuts for him. Favreau had told him what to expect but he wanted to see it for himself.

The panel was short due to an incident that occurred earlier in Hall H. Apparently there was a seat dispute that resulted in one person stabbing another in the eye. Favreau did field one solid question about fusing Western and science fiction styles. He said the film is pretty strictly classic Western in the style of a Sergio Leone or John Ford film and the sci-fi elements were more classic: subtle stuff that leans more toward suspense and horror, such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Filming in New Mexico has only been going on for four weeks, but there managed to be a few clips. The first featured Craig inspecting a nasty wound he's received. He's got a gold bracelet on as you can see in the image they've released (which is below) and then actor Clancy Brown's character holds him at gunpoint, commenting how only victims or villains get shot like that. Craig isn't sure which he is. The second clip showed a confrontation between Craig and Paul Dano's character in adjacent prison cells and the third revealed a bit of Ford as Dano's father. The last clip culminated with a huge sequence: alien ships blowing up the town, glimpses of some of the other characters and Craig using his bracelet (which has become a weapon) to take down one of the alien ships. 

Reaction was distinctly positive for this genre film and considering it won't have come out by next Comic Con, expect a lot more same time next year.