More New York Comic-Con Thoughts:
Saturday afternoon Summit Entertainment unveiled their panel, which involved a showcase for “Knowing,” “The Hurt Locker” and “Astroboy.” With a video introduction by director Alex Proyas (“Dark City”), we plunged into two clips for “Knowing” (about just under 10 minutes of footage total) which features Nicolas Cage as a man who learns the numbers found in a time capsule reveal a number of natural disasters that have or will happen in the future. What theoretically started out as a sci-fi think piece obviously became “Nicolas Cage’s Final Destination” with both sequences showcasing some startling violence not apparent in the trailers.
The first was a surprising one-shot scene featuring Cage witnessing a plane crash and jumping into the chaos to save random people. Aside from Cage’s incredulous acting and immaculate hairpiece, it was a visceral, technically dazzling moment. Anyone who lived through 9/11 (us), really clenched up and were incredibly taken aback from the plan crash footage. The effects definitely needed major work — and Proyas himself said so — but regardless, we were totally taken aback.
The second scene featured Cage warning people of an impending subway train crash that he can’t prevent, only for the train to go off the rails and take out what the trailer claims to be 81 people. It was pretty technically impressive, but also really harrowing stuff. Nice to know Proyas isn’t finished after “I Robot” but still- these scenes of carnage might be too much for some people. The Playlist folks in attendance were split. Some are now looking forward to the film, but our EIC was feeling a little ill. We didn’t stick around for “Astroboy” either. – Gabe Toro
But what is apparent in the trailers is some terrible CGI. This film truley looks like shit, which makes 6 staright for Cage. Wow, and this guy was in “Raising Arizona”!
The CGI does look horrible, but to try and be fair (and believe it, we try), Proyas said the CGI was unfinished.
Will it get even 50% better? Seems doubtful, but regardless of how cheap some of it looked, it was sort of harrowing watching that footage. Esp if you were in NY and around for 9/11 like I was (and many of us were i presume).