By Greg Ellwood
Special to MSN Movies

July 21, 2008

It's hard to believe that with this year's Comic-Con -- more hyped than ever (and with no ceiling in sight) -- Paramount Pictures is notably absent from the crowded fan-presentation schedule. Last year, the studio was the talk of the convention after debuting early footage of "Iron Man" and Angelina Jolie's CG backside in "Beowulf." With "Star Trek" and "G.I. Joe" on the horizon in 2009, it was presumed the studio would be back in full force this summer. Instead, it's sitting this one out, claiming neither movie has adequate materials to preview or talent available to appear in San Diego. That doesn't mean, however, that Paramount won't do everything else it can to make fans happy.

First off, the studio is distributing four exclusive "Star Trek" posters, each featuring a new franchise cast member: Chris Pine as Captain Kirk (evil), Zachary Quinto as Spock (spot-on), Zoe Saldana as Uhura (one word: Beyoncé) and Eric Bana as Nero (um, nice tattoo). When put together, the posters form the symbol for the Federation of Planets (if you have to ask ...). Paramount is also sponsoring free wireless Internet at the convention in conjunction with its new Shia LaBeouf thriller, "Eagle Eye." However, most impressive are the T-shirts the studio will give away on the convention floor. Dispensing of the traditionally bland movie-title designs, each T-shirt has something a bit smarter going for it. The "Transformers 2" shirt reads "Even Bigger Giant [expletive] Robots Are Coming," the "G.I. Joe" one has a logo for "MARS" with the tagline "Better Living Through Technology" (not sure what that means), and the T-shirts for M. Night Shyamalan's "The Last Airbender" and DreamWorks Animation's "Monsters vs. Aliens" aren't too shabby either.

3-D Dreams for "Monsters"

Still, knowing it is missing out on a major publicity opportunity at the convention, Paramount invited a busload of press to watch early footage of "Monsters vs. Aliens" and "Eagle Eye" in Los Angeles. Starting off at DreamWorks Animation's Glendale, Calif., campus, the press was greeted by company founder and CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, who seems energized by the 3-D nature of "Monsters."

"I've been in the movie business my whole life, and to me there have been two great revolutions in filmmaking and film-going," Katzenberg says. "The first occurred when we went from silent films to talkies, and the next occurred when movies when from black and white to color. And I put this on the par with those two events. I think this is that big a game-changer."

To that point, "Monsters" already has made history as the first animated film constructed completely in 3-D. Previous movies have been shot or animated conventionally and then put through a 3-D process. In fact, the company is so high on the new technology that all upcoming DreamWorks Animation movies will be designed for 3-D. And although Katzenberg admits that more than 200 employees are committed to research and development, it's the story that's still most important.

According to "Monsters" co-director, Rob Letterman, the inspiration initially came from the dumb and scary monsters featured in 1950s B-movies. Letterman recalls, "We sort of asked ourselves, 'Whatever happened to those old monsters? What if they were captured and locked up in a secret prison?'"

Katzenberg and crew previewed a completed scene in 3-D that was remarkably engaging. Beginning with a gigantic alien robot arriving on our planet (with a reporter making the obvious joke, 'Why does this only happen in the United States?'), the president of the United States (voiced by Stephen Colbert, no less) attempts to personally communicate with the robot. Unfortunately, dialogue means playing the theme from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," but when that doesn't work, they play "Axel F" from "Beverly Hills Cop." Displaying hostile intentions, the alien easily crushes our Army's conventional forces. But as Letterman teased before, there is hope.

"The only thing they can do is follow this Hail Mary plan by Gen. W.R. Monger, a grizzled, cigar-chomping, five-star general played by Kiefer Sutherland," Letterman says. "[He] pitches this idea of using the monsters we have had in captivity for the last 50 years to fight the aliens in return for their freedom. So, it's kind of a 'Dirty Dozen' homage."

The filmmaker expanded on the motley crew charged with saving Earth after years of distrust and scorn and the movie stars recruited to bring them to life:

Ginormica (Reese Witherspoon): "She starts off as regular old Susan Murphy. Greatest day of her life: She's getting married. A half hour before the wedding starts, a meteor comes crashing down and exposes her to this weird radiation that alters her, making her incredibly tall and strong. [She ends up] bursting through the wedding chapel and is captured, taken away from the man she loves."

B.O.B. (Seth Rogen): "Our blob, a chemical-altered, ranch-flavored dessert topping combined with a genetically altered tomato at a snack-food plant and gained consciousness to become an indestructible mass."

Dr. Cockroach (Hugh Laurie): "The most brilliant scientist in the world who was trying to merge the survival instincts of cockroaches with humans and did a test on himself that worked great -- it just gave him the side effect of having a cockroach head. He's like a 'MacGyver' guy. He can build anything out of Wrigley's Spearmint gum."

The Missing Link (Will Arnett): "The link between prehistoric man and our undersea ancestors. The problem is when he took that step, it was at the height of an ice age and he instantly froze. He was thawed out in the '50s by paleontologists."

Insectasaurus: "He was a tiny grub in a Pacific island off Japan that was exposed to nuclear radiation that grew to this 340-foot tall [monster]. He's literally a baby at heart and he's teething, but the problem is he's teething on skyscrapers. The only way he can communicate is through an infant scream that sounds a lot like Godzilla's roar. And the only guy who can translate it is his best friend, The Missing Link."

LaBeouf's Disturbing "Eagle Eye"

Following a quick trip over to the DreamWorks live-action campus on the Universal Studios lot (that is, Steven Spielberg's offices), the press was treated to a screening of the first 35 minutes of the September thriller "Eagle Eye." As the trailer suggests, Shia LaBeouf plays Jerry, a down-on-his-luck young man who gets entangled in a misunderstanding where the government thinks he's a terrorist. Meanwhile, a voice eerily similar to Julianne Moore's is seemingly in control of everything from the subway to construction cranes to any cell phone in the vicinity, and the voice keeps telling him what to do, whether he likes it or not.

What you haven't seen, however, is a mysterious group that is also controlling Michelle Monaghan, threatening the life of her young son if she doesn't cooperate. Eventually forced together, the duo is led on a wild car chase through the streets of Chicago, unsure of what awaits it in Acts 2 and 3.

The movie also features Billy Bob Thornton as a government agent who thinks Jerry really is a bad guy and Rosario Dawson as an Air Force investigator trying to determine if the death of Jerry's twin brother is tied to this whole mess (confused yet?).

After the preview, director D.J. Caruso (who helmed the LaBeouf-starrer "Disturbia") and producers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci (screenwriters of "Transformers" and "Star Trek") discussed how difficult it was to make such an intricate thriller.

"This movie was unbelievably hard to construct, because you can come up with really cool scene ideas, but at the end of the day, you'd end up hitting the eject button on half of them because they don't pay off in the right way," Kurtzman says. "It isn't really about surveillance equipment or who is manipulating this surveillance equipment. It's about this people and how they get out of it."

Still, Caruso adds, "At the end of this movie, we want everyone to fear their Blackberry."

Kurtzman and Orci had to take a break during the production of "Eagle Eye" to return to the writers' room for another LaBeouf flick, Michael Bay's "Transformers 2."

"We broke basically the whole story down before the [writers'] strike. And they were able to prep an [off that outline], and the second it ended, it was like, 'We're locking you in a room for two months until we have a script.' It was nuts," Kurtzman says. "We finished the script, and they were shooting it like three weeks later."

At the moment, however, "Eagle" is at the top of the agenda and, as the session ends, the filmmakers look relieved that the press seems impressed with their sneak peek.

"It's funny, because I was thinking beforehand, 'God, I hope the first act isn't too slow," Orci says. "Because when it gets going, it's like a bullet to the end."

Our verdict? Intriguing entertainment? Absolutely. Anywhere near believable? Not so much.

Keeping checking back for continuing coverage of this year's Comic-Con. Much more to come!

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