Cowboys and Aliens Comic-Con Panel Reveals First Photo, Footage, and Harrison Ford
Posted 07.27.10 by Ryan
Cowboys and Aliens is still in production, and has only been shooting for a month, but that wasn't going to keep director Jon Favreau away from this year's Comic-Con. "I wanted to come back and say thanks to the fans," Favreau told USA Today. "You don't want to be forgotten by these guys."
Favreau continued that the Iron Man panel from the 2008 convention "changed everything," and he feels that "it's important to let them know what they did for me." Favreau ended up giving fans a pretty memorable impression, showing two rough scenes from the movie, and bringing them a Comic-Con icon to his first convention.
During the Cowboys and Aliens panel, Deadline reports that Favreau's first announcement was that the movie would not be in 3-D. Favreau himself had announced he was shooting "3-D tests" in May, but told the audience that for 3-D he would have to shoot the movie digitally, but preferred to use film instead, in keeping with the Western genre.
Favreau brought out his cast, most notably a hand-cuffed Harrison Ford, in what was a pre-planned joke and not a comment of the pen-stabbing incident that occurred before the panel. The Washington Post captured Ford's entrance, which ignited a standing ovation until Ford commented, "I just wanted to make a living as an actor."
Even though Cowboys and Aliens is unfinished, Favreau showed two scenes from the movie, one which showed Daniel Craig riding into town on a horse and being accosted by Clancy Brown, and another that involved Craig using a wrist device to shoot down an alien spacecraft, as evidenced in the first official image released for the upcoming movie.
For Favreau fans, the image should look familiar, as Craig's wrist device looks eerily similar to Iron Man's repulsors. For instance, does the below Iron Man 2 image look too different from the following Cowboys and Aliens image?
It sure looks like a Favreau movie, all right, and one that he says won't be like some other Western and science fiction mash-ups.
We weren't going to do a Jonah Hex or a Wild, Wild, West. We're going to play both sides straight. We want to be true to both genres and apologize for neither. Westerns and alien movies are a better combination than I thought they'd be. The themes do intersect. And it's pretty wild to see a gunfighter, on horseback, running from an alien ship.
Favreau promised he'd back at next year's Comic-Con, as Cowboys and Aliens opens on July 29, 2011.