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San Diego Comic Con 2006 updates
by Stevyn Pascoe
I have to admit, I was not thrilled with the idea of going to the Fallen panel. I had seen a couple of trailers on TV and figured it was a Disney-everyone-learns-a-valuable-life-lesson version of Touch by An Angel. Heck, the last thing I liked having anything to do with angels and god was Dogma. No way could Fallen come anywhere close to that. I suppose it also should be noted that I had no idea it was based on a series of books. I guess that’s the part that sold me on going to the panel. It being based on a book I mean. That made it a little more legitimate in my mind. That it was based on something of worth, rather than a cheap knock-off of something else. The panel itself started off with a 5 minutes trailer followed by the open question format common to Comic-Con. The trailer, which was apparently just made for the con, was decent. Unlike the spots I had seen previously it seemed to focus more on the conflict aspect of the story; basically that there’s a war, of sorts, between angels, which we mere mortals don’t really notice. The panel was made up of a representative from ABC Family, the executive producer for the Fallen video game, , Tom Sniegoski the author of the Fallen books, Paul Wesley, who plays Aaron and Rick Worthy who plays Camael. (I must apologize here; I honestly don’t remember the name of the first two panelists.) I found the questions themselves typical of the Con, though a couple did peak my interest. First was a question asking what their reasons for doing this movie were. They were basically asked what their main motivation was In Tom’s case, who speaks with a wonderful Boston accent, it was his memories of the church he attended as a child. Since I won’t do his words justice here, suffice it to say that I could see the frescos and statues he was talking about clear as day based on his descriptions. For Rick, the motivation was a little closer to home. He was convinced an angel, or, perhaps the spirit of his grandfather protected him when his father’s store was robbed. Perhaps the most motivation came from Paul. His story was one of driving home with a friend. He had fallen asleep during the ride. For some reason he woke up, buckled his seatbelt and fell back asleep. A few moments later the car went off the side of the road and over-turned. Like Rick, he’s convinced something protected him that night, though in Paul’s case he seemed to lean more towards belief in an angel than a spirit. The other question I liked, which just showed a bit of humility was one based on the trailer. Paul mentioned in it that he was afraid of heights. One audience member caught that and asked how he got over it. Paul gave a very honest answer of, “I didn’t. I’m still afraid of them.” Maybe it’s just me, but I always am impressed when people can admit their weakness; even more so when they can laugh about them. All in all it was a decent panel, better than a lot I’ve seen at Comic-Con, both from this year and from previous. If nothing else, it did what it was supposed to. I got them one more person watching the movie who wouldn’t have watched it otherwise.
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