Rating: ****
It took nearly 40 years but Morgan Spurlock
finally made it to San Diego Comic Con in 2009, and what he saw was good. Spurlock’s
enthusiasm translates in his documentary Comic Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope,
as all the energy, excitement and unbridled nerd enthusiasm fills a tight 90
minutes highlighting all the lines, all the costumes and all the madness that
is world’s largest yearly gathering of the geekish.
The film opens with the type of epic music
you might expect from your average superhero movie, but the film actually goes
much smaller than that. We meet Eric and Skip, two aspiring comic book artists
hoping that showing their portfolios at Comic Con will be there in to the biz.
We also meet Holly, a cosplay enthusiast who’s putting together an act based on
the video Mass Effect for the masquerade, and hoping to prove her skills
as a costumer. Representing the old school is Chuck, the owner of Mile High
Comics in Denver who’s been going to Comic Con for 38 years and is just hoping to
make enough money to keep selling comics. And finally there’s James, who met
his girlfriend Se Young at Comic Con a year earlier and hopes to propose to her
at this year’s Kevin Smith panel.
Although there are confessionals featuring
celebrities and geek glitterati like Joss Whedon, Stan Lee and Harry Knowles
(who all co-produced the film), the focus is really on these five “characters,”
if you will. Director Spurlock, in an unusual move for him, keeps himself out
of the story, which allows the five different storylines he’s following to
unfold in a very natural way.
I’m not sure how Spurlock found or chose these
five people in particular, but their stories unfold in exciting and dynamic
ways. James’ plan to propose to Se Young, and the hiccups he therein encounters,
is like something out of a romantic comedy, and the scene where he finally does
pop to the question in front of Smith and literally hundreds of fans at the
Q&A it has all the anticipation, if not more, than any average Hollywood rom-com. Meanwhile,
over at the masquerade, the animatronic head on one of the costumes is
malfunctioning as Holly’s group is a few minutes away from taking the stage.
Talk about tension.
Through Chuck, Spurlock does touch on one
of the sore spots for long time revellers at Comic Con, the growing de-emphasis
of comics. Along with that are Chuck’s universal struggles of a stagnant
economy and a business going through difficult changes as digital encroaches on
comics as much as it does on any other print industry. He decides to sell a
rare Marvel Comic that will go for enough money that he can pay off his debt,
and made his business secure in the short term. It’s heartbreaking because
Chuck is a collector too, and now he’s trying to scrape by, and he’s relegated
to a corner of the convention that doesn’t get nearly the attention despite the
fact that Chuck is one of the people that built Comic Con.
And it is to those people and the ones that
follow in their foot steps to whom A Fan’s Hope is dedicated. It’s not
to the Hollywood establishment that now treat Comic Con like a focus group and it’s
not the celeb gawkers who just want to see stars, it’s the people with a hope
and a dream and the creativity to and guile to try and make it happen. As a
geek myself, Spurlock’s Comic Con is a crowd-pleaser through and
through, heartfelt and lovingly dedicated to the people who only ever feel at
home surrounded by movie collectables and people dressed as anime characters.
