Comic Con: Paramount panel w/ TMNT, Hot Tub Time Machine 2 and more!

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

Thursday's Paramount panel at Comic Con had a few tricks up its sleeve. There was the expected TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES footage, but the studio also brought out surprise appearances by Christopher Nolan and his new INTERSTELLAR trailer, HOT TUB TIME MACHINE 2, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and much more! Read on below for the full rundown. 
 

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES

TMNT co-creator Kevin Eastman was joined on stage by director Jonathan Liebesman, producers Andrew Form and Brad Fuller and human stars Megan Fox and Will Arnett. 

The panel featured two new extended clips from the film, featuring footage you might've already seen in any of the many behind-the-scenes pieces:

Clip #1: Megan Fox's April O'Neil is trying to make a name for herself and get a scoop on the masked vigilantes running around the city. She follows some members of the Foot Clan in to the subway and is immediately taken hostage as the Foot soldiers (led by Karai) plant explosives everywhere. All of a sudden a subway car rolls through and the turtles jump off the roof and begin taking out the baddies. The action is really fast and shot to conceal the turtles identities, but they're very quippy with one liners during the fight. Once they're done, they go up on the roof to celebrate and are interrupted mid-high five by a camera flash. This leads to the scene from the first trailer where she first discovers them and faints. (In the full scene, there are jokes about Raphael scaring her with his "Batman voice" and discussion on whether or not they can trust her to leave.) They take her to their lair where she meets Splinter. The catch is she knows who he is as soon as she sees him and he tells her, ""It's been a long time." Say what?!

Clip #2: was a longer version of the snowy mountain chase featured in the trailer. You can watch it here.  The footage did end with a quick sizzle reel featuring more footage of Shredder looking like a bulky transformer. You see some fighting between him and the turtles (he moves pretty fast for a guy covered in 200 pounds of metal) and then a money shot with Splinter dodging his flying spikes in slow motion. 

– The footage looked fine, but from the level of humor, it's clear this is a movie aimed at kids. There's a lot of pop culture references from Piano Cat to Xavier's academy. And pretty much everything Michelangelo says is geared to make teen boys laugh. ("She's so hot I can feel my shell tightening!")

– Johnny Knoxville and Tony Shaloub sound wrong as Leonardo and Splinter in the brief clips we saw. They didn't alter their voices at all so every time they spoke all I thought was "Jackass" and "Monk."

– Kevin Eastman admitted that Shredder was almost called Grater after a cheese grater in his kitchen.
 
– When asked about the alien rumors, Eastman said in the previous comic they suggested the ooze was of alien origin as a tribute to George Lucas and Star Wars.

– The Foot Clan will have a paramilitary feel in this iteration to make them believable in today's world, according to Liebesman. 

– Everyone (Arnett, Fox, Liebsman and Eastman) said their favorite turtle is Michaelangelo,  

PROJECT ALMANAC

The cast and crew of this Michael Bay-produced found footage time travel movie— director Dean Israelite (TMNT director Jonathan Liebesman's cousin) and stars Jonny Weston and Sofia Black D'Elia—came out before they showed the following clip… and then were awkwardly gone after it was done without really saying anything to the audience. 

In the clip, we see the five teenage main characters in a parking lot, filming themselves and trying to psych themselves up to go back in time. Once they're prepared, they huddle together and a little mini tornado starts building around them until they all get knocked around and the camera falls down. They run back to one of boy's houses and find his past self asleep. He draws a smiley face on his neck in marker and they watch as the same image appears on his future neck as well, confirming that their time jump worked. Unfortunately, this also wakes him up and when the two see each other they both start to flicker and fade, before his friends grab him and get out of the house. Then there was a brief sizzle reel showing the group using their powers to go to past music festivals, win the lottery, etc., with hints that it takes a darker turn as things naturally spiral out of control. 

The clip suggested there could be some fun with the time travel concept (at one point one of the kids actually says, "Have you seen LOOPER. God, I love that movie!"), but the found footage format and Michael Bay as a producer leaves me skeptical. We'll see when it's released in January 2015.

SPONGEBOB MOVIE: SPONGE OUT OF WATER

Spongebob voice actor Tom Kenney came out to briefly introduce a SPONGERS Avengers parody poster and the first trailer for the new Spongebob movie, which is a live action-CGI hybrid film (like THE SMURFS) featuring the characters as superheroes. 

The clip started off as the normal cartoon, and featured the characters engaged in a condiment war. When someone steals their recipe for crabby patties, Spongebob and friends must travel on to land to get it back. There were some brief shots of the characters in their CGI form interacting with humans. Spongebob was shown creating bubbles to save everyone from flying bowling balls, while Patrick's superpower seems to be being a literal magnet for ice cream. I don't know much about Spongebob, but this looks like a great flick to get high to. 

HERCULES

At one point, the moderator left and there was a bit of awkward silence. Then screams began to erupt from the front of Hall H before everyone realized The Rock was making a surprise appearance, not on stage but walking through the crowd. Eventually he made his way on stage to announce some free Comic Con screenings, but that was it. No footage, no questions.

HOT TUB TIME MACHINE 2

Immediately following The Rock, Clark Duke came out flanked by two models. "In the proud tradition of THE GODFATHER PART II, EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, and SISTER ACT 2: BACK IN THE HABIT," he introduced the first trailer for the "best hot tub time machine sequel ever made."  You can watch it below. (There were no questions and no other cast members present, just the trailer.)

INTERSTELLAR

And finally to close out the panel properly, Matthew McConaughey and Christopher Nolan came out to talk INTERSTELLAR and show a new trailer. You can read more on that here.