Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope
Director: Morgan Spurlock
Writer: Joss Whedon, Morgan Spurlock, Jeremy Chilnick
Part of: /slash Filmfestival

Plot:
In Comic-Con Episode IV, Spurlock follows a few people during their Comic-Con experience: two guys looking to break into the comic industry as artists, a comic vendor trying to break even, a costume designer team, two attendants who fell in love at the last Comic-Con and an action figure collector. And interspersed are interviews with famous (and also not so famous) geeks and attendants like Kevin Smith, Joss Whedon, Seth Rogen, Seth Green, Eli Roth and with a special appearance by Stan Lee.

The movie was fun and very nice, but I did have some issues with it. Though those at least didn’t take away much from my enjoyment, because during the film I was very well entertained.

There were two things that bothered me during watching the film. One was the fact that I could not stand the couple they followed through the show. The guy plans to propose to her and for that he has to get about 10 minutes on his own to pick up the custom made ring he ordered. And he doesn’t get away from her at all. And that is just levels of clinginess that creeped me out. That and the – in my opinion generally completely inappropriate – public proposal and it was pretty much the couple from hell.

The other thing was the lack of female voices. The only woman who really gets to say something is the head of the costume designing team – and that is just not very representative, in my opinion. Even though Comic-Con might have started out as a men’s playing field, it definitely isn’t anymore. Fandom is full of women. Comic-Con Episode IV is not.

But other than that I enjoyed the stories of the people they chose to follow and maybe even more than that I enjoyed the short interviews with the random attendants and the stories they told. And the interviews with all those famous geeks were pretty damn cool, too.

The movie certainly isn’t a critical look at the con (the two negative things: “it’s not really that much about comics anymore” and “it stinks. Literally”), but rather a celebration of nerddom. And I’m down for that.

Summarising: Enjoyable.