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July 26nd, 2004 - Constantine at San Diego Comic-Con Constant Serpentine on Constantine at SDCC Well I was one of the 6500 packed in to see the montage of clips from Constantine. From what I saw the film will be flashy and it looks to have plenty of action and CGI. I recognized a few bits of dialogue from the comics. Gabriel's telling John why he's going to Hell is pretty much the same as when Ennis wrote it. There was also a scene where John has a cockroach under a highball glass and blows smoke into it which was similar to the moment in issue #8 I believe. There was no incidental music but it did have a scene where Keanu is wailing on a roomful of demons with the Holy Shotgun to the tune of "Ina godda da vida" which came off exactly like it would sound as well as Dave Brubeck's "Take 5" playing in the background of the "Q" scene. Nobody asked about the Lisa Gerrard situation. In fact it was obvious just about everyone was there for Keanu. It was embarrassing how much fawning occurred over him. Poor Djimon Hounsou hardly said a thing. A good move however was having Karen Berger on the panel to remind everyone that this is a comic and if they liked the film then they could pick up the trade paperbacks which inspired the film. She kept saying the the movie retained the feel of the book although I'm not sure I agree. Overall it looks like it could be a decent flick although it's not going to be the Hellblazer movie we all have playing in our heads. Steven T. Seagle pens Constantine comic adaptation Steven T. Seagle and artist Ron Randall are working on the official Constantine adaptation for Vertigo comics. Speaking about the project, Steven had the following to say - "The mythos surrounding the movie is very much what you know from the comics. While it's true that John is no longer blonde or British, he's very much the same man underneath it all. And many of the best bits from the best comics stories are in the movie as well." "This is a strict adaptation. There's not room to expand - quite the opposite. A movie to comics adaptation is all about what isn't making it rather than what is. It's a giant cutting process - tell the story in half the length. That does make for some interesting and cool eidting - I play out two scenes simultaneously that are more time-bound in the film. That kind of stuff works best in comics. But by and large, the two mirror each other well." "Hollywood builds in a lot of quick little visual beats that would take a page to fully develop in a comic," continued Seagel. "The dialogue, I play fast and loose with. Because what someone can say quickly in a film needs its own panel in a comic. And things always read different than they sound, so I go more for how it reads on the page - still conversational, but more to the point." "Keep an open mind. I was pleasantly surprised. No, it's not exactly the same as the comic book, but we've already got the comic book. This is something different, and as that, it definitely stands on its own.". Empire Online covers Constantine at SDCC So who would have guessed that one of the previously most-maligned comic book adaptations around would steal the show? For Keanu Reeves popped into San Diego yesterday to plug his latest flick, Constantine, in which he plays a world-weary and amoral mage who must thwart a demonic plan to destroy mankind… while trying to figure out a way to defeat his own terminal lung cancer. So far the project has been much-maligned by fans of Hellblazer, the comic upon which the $100 million movie is based. Mainly because the title character, John Constantine, is British and blond. Reeves is neither of those things. On such small details can fanboys turn, the thinking being ‘if they can’t even get that right, there’s no telling what damage can be caused!’ Well, it was damage limitation time today, as Reeves, director Francis Lawrence and co-star Djimon Hounsou brought with them an astonishing 17 minutes of footage. And boy, did that damage limitation work. The length of the montage of clips from the movie indicated a refreshing confidence in the movie and so it proved. When the lights had been brought back up in Hall H at the San Diego Conference Centre, the mood had changed from palpable scepticism to unalloyed optimism. Of course, we’ve yet to see the remaining hundred minutes or so, but right now Constantine’s looking pretty damned good. Without going too far into spoiler territory, the footage included: one of the best ‘out of the blue’ car accidents committed to film; Tilda Swinton as an androgynous Archangel Gabriel, sporting a lovely pair of wings; a fresh and feverish depiction of Hell, through which Constantine takes a small detour; several unnerving sudden demon attacks; an exorcism more terrifying than anything hinted at in the Exorcist: The Beginning trailer (which also played at the Warner Bros. presentation); and a fun sequence in which Constantine takes out a roomful of demons armed with a crucifix gun and a sprinkler system filled with holy water. Yet this isn’t simply The Matrixorcist. Yes, Reeves does get to do the action thing, but this is dark, brooding, deeply twisted and disturbed, visually stunning (and we’re not talking wildly spinning cameras, as you might expect from a former music vid director, but a locked down camera and superb use of shadow, creating a sense of overwhelming menace) and most of all, very scary as Constantine is assailed from all sides by demons of all kinds. Imagine if David Lynch had directed Ghostbusters and you’re on the right track. “We wanted to show the fans that we have not made Van Helsing,” said Lawrence. “My approach from the beginning was never to treat it like a comic book movie. Everybody’s done all the dutched angles and all the bright colours, and made things super-campy. There’s plenty of elements of horror in this. There’s plenty of scares. It’s creepy throughout.” At the heart of it all, though, was Reeves, whose gritty, SFW turn as the nihilistic Constantine (rapidly encroaching lung cancer and all, a storyline taken from Garth Ennis’ run on Hellblazer) had the geeks eating out of the palm of his hand. And, as if to reciprocate, the notoriously private and often prickly Reeves was personable and fun during the presentation (during which he was asked 90% of the questions), flashing a constantly bemused smile as his every word was greeted with shrieks and shouts. At one point he even leapt down from the stage to receive a present from an endearingly eager fan, who declared that ‘You are DA BOMB!’ Luckily, it turned out to be an actual present and not a thinly veiled bomb threat. “Anything where there’s a great enthusiasm and where there’s a coming together to share what you think is cool, I think it’s awesome,” said Reeves of the Comic-Con experience, before expounding further on the appeal of Constantine. “I ditched the accent,” he laughed. “But I really loved the guy. I loved his anger. I loved his wry sense of humour about the awfulness of the world and what that’s turned him into. He’s like a warrior in this world of shit, and he’s trying to deal with it.” Constantine is released in the UK next February. Cinescape break down the SDCC footage of Constantine Today Warner Bros. held a special panel at the San Diego Comic Convention to promote their upcoming horror film CONSTANTINE. The film's leading man, Keanu Reeves (John Constantine), as well as co-star Djimon Hounson (Papa Midnite) were in attendance to present footage from the film, discuss the movie and answer questions from the audience. A special reel of footagee from the film, including the recently released trailer, was shown to the crowd. In total the material screened ran for 18 minutes and showed a number of scenes from what appears to be just the first half of the film. While what was shown was still in a rough form (some places used temporary special effects), the material screened suggested that CONSTANTINE will be a dark horror film, and that director Francis Lawrence's strong visual style will, at the very least, make for some intriguing imagery. Please note that, since this report describes the footage shown in CONSTANTINE, including describing certain scenes from the movie, a spoiler warning must be issued. Decide for yourself if you want to read further or not! Seemingly to address the controversial decision to make the JohnConstantine character in the film a dark-haired American as opposed to the blonde Brit he is in the comic series, the movie footage began with a shot of Constantine smoking. (The character is a chain smoker in the comics as well as in the film.) In fact, there were at least six shots of Constantine lighting a cigarette in the footage shown at San Diego. Next came a scene set in a place that appeared to be an urban wasteland, where a man finds a peculiar object wrapped in a Nazi flag. The man unwraps the flag surrounding the object which appears to be a metal spearhead of some kind. Upon doing so, the man suddenly looks like he's possessed. He starts walking away, crosses a road and a car slams directly into him. Surprisingly, the automobile is totaled but we don't see if the mystery man suffered any wounds from the accident. Next: Constantine is in his apartment's bathroom. He spits up blood into the sink. Black sigil-type tattoos cover both of his arms. Then we're in a doctor's office or a hospital. A medical doctor tells Constantine he has lung cancer. It's terminal. True to his form, Constantine lights up after seeing his lung x-rays. Next: We're inside a nondescript room. Some sort of religious relic hunter is trying to sell different items to Constantine: stones from the road to Damascus, a "screeching beetle," something called "dragon's breath" that Constantine thought this guy couldn't get. The man tells Constantine "I know a guy who knows a guy" – Constantine holds out a metal sceptre rod/tube thing and flame shoots out of it. Then we're introduced to Angela Dobson (Rachel Weisz), a cop that's investigating the suicide of her twin sister, Isabel. In Angela's apartment she looks up John Constantine in the police database – his arrest record, mug shots, newspaper articles about occult occurrences on the rise. As she contemplates the information, one by one, all the phones in her apartment start ringing. Intersperced with the footage showing Angela's research, we see Constantine performing an exorcism on a possessed girl tied to a bed. As he starts the ritual the girl is thrashing about, but shortly her body goes limp. Constantine thinks he's gotten rid of demon, but as he looks closer at the girl suddenly a toothy demon face lunges out of her throat at him. Next scene: Constantine is on street (maybe in front of the hospital?) in the rain. A big guy in shadow approaches him and asks, "Hey, buddy, you got a light?" When Constantine looks closer, the "man" turns out to be a hulking creature made out of bugs. This may be a nod to Mnemoth, an insect demon seen in Jamie Delano's run on the HELLBLAZER comic. Next: Enter Djimon Hounsou as Papa Midnite in his pink fur-collared '70s pimp coat. He's with Constantine, maybe in Midnite's office. Constantine is worried that demons are coming into our world. Midnite says that they can use us as puppets, not doorways: "Demons stay in Hell, angels in Heaven. The great detante of the original superpowers." In the next scene we're treated to our first look at the character of Gabriel (played by Tilda Swinton, who doesn't look as androgynous as expected.) Constantine comes across as a little whiny here, which is somewhat out of character from his comic book persona; the occultist asks the angel in human disguise what he did to get cancer. Gabriel says it's because he's smoked 30 cigarettes a day for X number of year, then she adds here final thought on his chances: "You're fucked." Now we're back in Angela's apartment. As she prepares to leave Constantine alone and go out, we see him hold a cat's head steady between his hands, staring directly into its eyes. For a moment you're not sure if he's going to snap the cat's neck. Constantine says, "God, I hate this part." Constantine travels to Hell by looking in the cat's eyes. Hell is most stylized part of the footage, all red with high winds, burned-out cars and a post-apocalyptic landscape. Out of the shadows come some creepy half-headed demons with spindly legs that crawl about on all fours. They begin coming after Constantine who's come to Hell to look for Angela's dead sister, Isabel (also played by Weisz.) Constantine finds Isabel. She has bandages around each of her wrists. The bandages start to come off in the high wind. As the demons start to close in Constantine climbs on top of a rock, reaches up and grabs the bandage from Isabel's wrist -- -- and he's back in the room just as Angela shuts the door. A cool scene on the street follows next, with Constantine and Angela exchanging dialogue, then a huge swarm of flying demons attack them. Constantine wraps Isabel's suicide bandage around his hand (maybe doing something else, like lighting it on fire or whatever), and a blast of light emerges from his hand. The demons are shredded into bits and glowing embers. Next: inside an office building, Angela and Constantine talk. Something grabs her and yanks the police officer backwards through the walls, crashing through offices and cubicles. There's a long tracking shot cutting horizontally across the walls and partitions of that floor as Weisz gets pulled/plows though all obstacles. Constantine gives chase. It ends with the big pull-back shot from the trailer where Constantine is framed in the hole in the outside of the building; he's at the edge and can't pursue any further, as the camera pulls back and above into the night. Angela's gone. The holy shotgun is not seen much at all, just in Constantine's hand a couple times. Not as cool looking as one had hoped, it looks like something left over from the production of VAN HELSING. We're then treated to a scene showing Constantine and Midnite in a room full of Midnite's collection of magical artifacts. Constantine sits in electric chair from Sing Sing (Papa says something like "Over 200 men died in that chair.") Constantine takes off his shoes and socks and then Midnite splashes vodka on floor around Constantine's feet. Constantine pulls his feet up ("It's cold"), takes a drag off bottle, then Papa lights the vodka on fire. Next came a short but sweet scene. Constantine is inside a large room (an office building? Looks like florescent lights) full of vaguely menacing twentysomethings glaring at him. The fire sprinklers come on and, disturbingly, the water starts eating away at the workers' faces. The girl in front asks him, "Holy water?" as they dissolve. Last sequence: a flashback showing Constantine as a young boy on a bus. Reeves provides a voiceover talking about how he's always been able to see strange things others cannot. Kid Constantine is staring at an old woman on the bus a few seats up. She turns around to look at him and her face morphs into a demonic visage. The young Constantine is taken aback, and when he looks again the old woman is gone -- because she's now behind him. Cinescape article on the Constantine panel When a bearded Keanu Reeves walked out on the stage last Friday at the San Diego Comic Convention panel for CONSTANTINE, a wave of thunderous applause greeted him. Thousands were in the audience to see Reeves, his CONSTANTINE co-star Djimon Hounsou, director Francis Lawrence and Vertigo group editor Karen Berger talk about the new movie based on the HELLRAISER horror comic book series. While he appeared to be a little sunburnt on the face, Reeves looked quite happy to be there to talk about his new movie. Created by SWAMP THING writer Alan Moore more than two decades ago, the comic character of John Constantine is a true rogue, the occult world's equivalent of Han Solo. Draped in a trenchcoat and a chain smoker, the British Constantine from comics was first designed to mirror the lead singer of one of the world's biggest bands at the time: the blonde-haired lead singer of the Police, Sting. Eventually the character was spun off into his own monthly book, HELLBLAZER, which has just celebrated its two hundredth issue. As a man, Constantine can prove to be just as deadly to his friends and relatives as the demons and hellborne adversaries he constantly faces. Nevertheless, it's his humanity to try and do the right thing -- no matter what the consequences may be -- that make John Constantine one of the more fascinating characters in comics today. When asked by someone in the crowd what attracted him to play a character like Constantine, Reeves said that he likes characters that are "trying for redemption, trying to be better. I'm not doing that well on it personally, but I got together with Francis and hopefully we made a good picture. "It's one of the best experiences I've ever had in making a film… I really like the character." While it's quite apparent that the movie version of the magician won't sport golden locks or a British accent, director Lawrence said that they strived not depart from what works in the book. "[We] really stayed true to who Constantine is," said Lawrence. "He's a con man. He's a magician." Lawrence did explain that they had to change the film's title to avoid any confusion with Clive Barker's HELLRAISER series of films, but apart from that factoid and the decision to Americanize Constantine and his home turf, there are no other differences that he can think of. Reeves added that he worked closely with the film's director and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman to get, as he puts it, the comic's "Constantinian Constantine" transported into the world of film. "He's not quite happy with the way the world works, and I can relate." Vertigo group editor Karen Berger was there to witness the birth of the character when she edited SWAMP THING back when Moore wrote the title, so she's probably the most qualified person in the room to pass judgement on the cinematic version of Constantine. Berger told the crowd that she had just seen the movie on the Warner Brothers lot a few days ago, and she had already formed an opinion about it. "It really felt like HELLBLAZER," Berger said to the audience. "It really looked like a Vertigo world. The movie feels right." Djimon Hounson, who plays Constantine ally Papa Midnite, also felt that the look of the movie was a big selling point for him. Said the actor, "The visual reality of CONSTANTINE hit home for me personally being as I came from a world that knows voodoo." Even though a whopping 18 minutes of footage from the movie was shown, nobody wanted to talk in detail about what the film's storyline was, although it did come out that the picture incorporates story elements from HELLBLAZER writers Garth Ennis and Jamie Delano's runs on the book. Finally, the question arose as to just how hardcore a CONSTANTINE movie could be without receiving a hard R-rating. While Francis Lawrence ducked around addressing whether they intended to make a movie with a PG-13 or higher rating, he did say that the movie was in the process of receiving its rating from the Motion Picture Association of America. Lawrence said that he wanted the film to be scary and intense, and he thinks they have succeeded. "I think the tone is dead-on for the comic," Lawrence finished saying. <<< Back To Index.