From SuperHeroHype:
*About to start any minute and they're putting up the signs of who is on-hand for the presentation. The people who are closer by can actually read them and they were cheering as each name was revealed. We're too far back, even in the reserved press section, to see the names.
*
Place is going insane and people are still looking for seats and even the reserved section has no seats left. Here's hoping it lives up to all the hopes, dreams and expectations!
*Moderator Scott Mantz is being booed by the crowd.
*Kevin Feige just came out and was asked how they were going to raise the bar, and he responded that he does it by bringing him out first. (ha ha)
*Huge round of applause and a lot of people standing for John Favreau, who comes out to the tune of Black Sabbath's "Iron Man." "You don't know how much we've been looking forward to this. Nobody cared before we came here two years ago!"
*They just showed a splash reel teaser for the movie that was kind of lame but Robert Downey Jr. just walked out and is giving Favreau a hard time about the crappy footage they just showed. Favreau is giving excuses that they just finished a week ago and that the FX aren't ready. Favreau says it's his son Max's birthday and the audience is half-heartedly singing "Happy Birthday" to him... they're really juicing it before showing footage.
*Going to take a little time to write up the footage we just saw... the crowd is going NUTS! We got to see
Mickey Rourke's Whiplash in action, as well as Scarlet Johansson's Black Widow.... and holy crap... WAR MACHINE!!!!!!*Sam Rockwell is here... so is Scarlett Johansson and Don Cheadle... will start writing up the footage while the moderator asks them dumb questions. First question is to Favreau how to make it bigger and better, but we think he's delivered.
*Footage opened with Iron Man without his helmet sitting in a giant donut on top of the donut shop (which we've seen in early pictures). We see the back of Sam Jackson's head as
Nick Fury calls Tony Stark to "Come down from the donut" and the next scene shows the two of them talking inside the donut shop, continuing the conversation that began in the ending scene in the first "Iron Man" about him possibly putting together a group of heroes.*The second scene takes place in a courtroom where Tony Stark is being grilled by
Senator Stern played by Gary Shandling, who is trying to find out why Tony Stark has a specialized weapon that he's not sharing with the government. We get the same sort of sass and gumption we saw from Downey's Stark in the first movie and hopefully we'll have time to share some of the funnier bits.
The scene ends with them calling Col. James Rhoads and we get our first look at Don Cheadle in his role replacing Terrence Howard as he comes out and has a few words with Stark, as it's apparent that the former friends are now on opposite sides of the fence.*
The third scene introduces Mickey Rourke as Whiplash and unfortunately, the voice over was hard to understand because of his thick Russian accent, but we can see him sitting at a workbench
working on something that is revealed to be a similar chest plate as Iron Man's. We then get to see Whiplash in his full costume (similar to the picture that was released a few weeks ago) and he's whipping these insane energy whips on the ground sending up sparks. That leads into a shot of Iron Man flying through the air and the logo, which everyone thought was going to be it...but nope!!*The last bit is the first look at Sam Rockwell as
Justin Hammer walking up to the original Iron Man armor lying on a table and asking what it is to which he's told that it's classified by Cheadle and a general with him. Hammer then starts pulling out all sorts of weapons to retrofit on the armor and Cheadle says "I think I'll take it... ALL OF IT" and sure enough, we then see our first look at the retrofitted Iron Man armor*Favreau was very political about whether he might direct The Avengers because he's been so busy making Iron Man 2, but he says that he's been
seeing Thor come together and liked what he's been seeing.*They were asked about working with Mickey Rourke to which Downey Jr. said "I thought I was eccentric" then passed it onto Rockwell who works with him more in the movie. Rockwell was giving his usually short answers but mentioned "smoking a few cigarettes" with Mr. Rourke. Favreau is talking about the origins of the new Whiplash character and how Rourke went into a Russian prison to get into the character after hearing that his character had spent time in one. Downey made a joke about how Rourke's "9 1/2 Weeks" was one of the first movies shown in Russia after the fall of the Wall and said "Where else do you want to go when you're a sex symbol in Russia but a Russian prison." (rimshot)
*Favreau says that they're
not doing the "Demon in a Bottle" storyline and won't be going that dark even though they'll be going further into the character and how his decision is affecting his life and the people around him.*Scarlett Johansson is telling about the training she went into and why she wanted to do as much of the stunts as she could.
*Just showed the footage again and it looked just as impressive as the footage shown two years ago.
*Incidentally, there have now been two shout-outs to Moon, one by the moderator and one to a guy asking questions who said Rockwell should get an Oscar nomination.
*Don Cheadle has been asked how much of Terrence Howard's performance influenced his own, to which Cheadle responded that he tried to make the character his own although he admits to being a "vampire" who takes something from everyone. There are a lot of questions for Don Cheadle, though most of them are pretty lame.
*Someone just asked how Bob Layton's work on the comic has influenced the movie and Layton is being brought up on stage, and he's talking about being invited on stage and he says that he was really proud of the first movie and thinks the new one will "knock your socks off."
*Sadly, the panel is over very quickly... faster than anyone hoped. I'll be writing up a more detailed description of the footage right after the panel is over so check back in about a half hour or so and we'll have some more about the footage and some quotes from the panel.
