SDCC 2024: Activations, Apes and Other Animals

San Diego Comic-Con is known for its activations, and the best of 2024 were, by far, presentations by Paramount+ and 20th Century Fox. Outside the San Diego Convention Center, for the second year in a row, Paramount+ used Happy Does Bar as its base for The Lodge. Although the film "Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes" was already out, to help hype the August 27th home media release, 20th Century Fox hosted an entertaining and informative panel inside and an activation outside.

The lines were long over the weekend for all the activations, especially FX with its personalized parasols, Hulu's fun Animayhem and Paramount+'s The Lodge, but The Lodge was in its last stop of 2024. The Lodge was in select locations in Colorado, Vermont, Austin (SXSW) and Lake Tahoe before hitting SDCC (Happy Does Bar).

That gave it the advantage of being a well-honed family-friendly experience. Star Trek fans got to order a free customized Star Trek-themed t-shirt, eat a generous slice of pizza in celebration of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (plus themed drinks), select a temporary tattoo and take photos with imaginary creatures from the film "If" and to commemorate SpongeBob's 25th anniversary. There, I got to imagine being on vacation somewhere tropical, only to be attacked by three different creatures from the Star Trek universe. Am I just adventurously lucky or ominously jinxed? 

Outside the convention center, the "Enter the Forbidden Zone! The Planet of the Apes Experience," fans could view costumes, props, videos and comic books of the ten films of the cinematic franchise. The photos ops were bird-related though. You could get a photo with Lola, a Harris hawk and have a short video of you on a horse with a hawk coming to perch on your arm. Yet the most instructive and fun part of the activation was being taught by the film's movement coordinator, Alain Gauthier, how to move like an ape and how the movement of apes differ from humans and from each ape type (e.g. gorilla versus orangutan).

That experience definitely helped prepare attendees inside the convention center for the panel: "Unveiling the VFX magic: 20th Century Studios’ Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes" with cast members Freya Allen ("The Witcher"), Kevin Durand ("X-Men Origins: Wolverine"), Owen Teague ("It" and  "It Chapter Two"), and Peter Macon ("The Orville," "Family Guy") alongside Halon Entertainment visualization supervisor Casey Pyke ("The Batman"), Wētā FX visual effects supervisor Erik Winquist ("Avatar" and  "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness"), and one of the film’s editors, Dan Zimmerman (The Maze Runner franchise). Of course, the actors who were screen-captured to play the different apes talked about the ape school experience.

Owen Teague commented it was "the most deeply wonderful experience I've ever had making a film" and it "recalibrated the way that I think about acting as a craft."

Freya Allan, who didn't play an ape, noted, "I really didn't have to imagine that there were apes in front of me because they're so ridiculously good at it and still are. They can't let go of it." More seriously, she added, it was "incredible getting to see them go through that process."

Winquist, who was nominated for a 2015 Oscar (Best Achievement in Visual Effects for "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes") explained one aspect saying "the camera operators really needed to memorize the beats of the camera and be able to reproduce that because we would get the performance of these guys" and then "we would ask them to step out and then in shots where say Mae (Freya Allan) was by herself, having to pretend to play the same shot over again to nobody, sometimes like dragging herself around the room as she being you know tugged by a gorilla."

He also noted, "having the experience from the previous movies really kind informed what parts of that process were the most important and allowed me to make a video of how we make these movies." That video was used to "instantly calibrate the entire crew and the cast for what the process was about to be that we were all heading into together."

Yet the actors can change the process and plans. In one specific scene Kevin Durand's performance as Proximus Caesar stunned the production team and changed how the movie was originally storyboarded. Hearing him switch from his normal talking voice to the deep, menacing growly voice of Proximus Caesar was impressive. 

The VFX magic of the Planet of the Apes franchise was mentioned in another animal-related panel: "Animals on Screen" which mostly looked at exotic animals and a means for promoting the work of the non-profit Lions, Tigers and Bears. The panel featured Lion, Tigers and Bears founder and director Bobbi Brink and included Emmy Award-winning VFX Supervisor Mark A.J. Nazal ("Gotham and "Westworld") and producers PJ Haarsma ("Con Man") and Drew Lewis ("Couch Soup") of Redbear Films.

This panel was basically the same as this year's Wonder-Con panel under the same name with a few tweaks such as Haarsma and Lewis recounting how problems on a commercial that used a monkey and a dog were resolved by using computer-generated images.

There were some misstatements made during the panel in reference to the American Humane Association and to Peter Jackson's 2012 "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey." Both at Wonder-Con and SDCC, no representative from the American Humane Association was present. While the AHA has been criticized in the media, it was also reported there was a problem of jurisdiction. "The Hobbit" was filmed in New Zealand.

Without the presence of AHA or animal trainers, the panel seemed like an echo chamber. Moreover, the presentation left no time for audience questions.

While the activation for "Those About to Die" was bloodless and relatively civil as four mechanical chariots with horses trotted around the slotted track, the TV series uses real horses and in one account, that can sometimes be dangerous. Yet the "Animals on Screen" panel didn't comment on that. People familiar with animal welfare issues are often cautious when approaching animal welfare groups since PETA has come out against dog shows like Westminster and the training and showing of horses. PETA did join AHA in calling for expanded oversight as a result of "The Hobbit."  PETA seems to support the end of horseback riding, which is usually less risky than a four-horse chariot for entertainment. From the panel, it wasn't clear how Lions Tigers and Bears sided on those issues. 

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