Hey U Guys

When Hey U Guys arrived at the MCM Expo (a movie, comic and anime convention held at the Excel Centre, London) we were confronted by hordes of cosplayers and an inordinately long queue for tickets. After coming to terms with the shock of seeing fully grown adults dressed as Sailor Moon and Pikachu, and being assured that the Stormtroopers and Daleks were ‘tame’ we left the safety of the toilet cubicle, and went into the exhibition hall.

Despite the size of the Excel centre and the number of visitors, the exhibition hall was actually relatively small, giving the event a feeling intimacy. Most of the space was taken up with stalls selling action figures and signed photographs, although there were a number of comic artists and writers, all of whom were more than willing to talk about their work.

Of course in addition to the stalls was the stage area, which was where the panels and the question and answer sessions were held. The first panel we made it into was Gerald McMorrow talking about Franklyn. Unfortunately this panel was a bit of a disappointment. Because McMorrow was trying to avoid spoiling the film the interview lacked the sort of insight into how the story came about. That said, we did learn that Ryan Phillipe holds a black belt in Tae Kwan Do.

The second panel was for Moon, with writer/director Duncan Jones and visual effects supervisor Gavin Rothery. The presentation focused on the production of the film, and was, at least for us, the highpoint of the whole event. There was so much information given during the presentation that we’ve decided to write it up in a separate post, so stay tuned for that, and some cool images of some of the models used in production shortly. The final presentation we attended was a question and answer session with Linda Hamilton (the original Sarah Conner). Anyone who has ever seen the Terminator films will recognise Hamilton’s voice, and it was slightly surreal to have her in the same room as us.

Again, the Q and A didn’t yield a lot of new information (although we did learn that at least two people had seen her in the eighties ‘Beauty and the Beast’ TV series). She did reveal that she wasn’t particularly impressed by Terminator 3 (she hasn’t yet seen the fourth film), and that she was pretty appalled by Christian Bale’s outburst on the set of Terminator Salvation, assuring us that it wouldn’t have happened if Jim Cameron had been the director. It was shortly after this that we became overwhelmed by the sheer number of real-life anime characters and had to escape to the safety of the real world, but if you’d like to check out the Expo for yourselves it’s still on tomorrow (Sunday) and at only £10 for entry it’s well worth it.

By the way, the image is of Linda Hamilton at her Q&A session. Courtesy of Kristi Barnett