It’s been six years since Superman flew on the big screen.  However, Superman Returns was met with underwhelming box office and a lukewarm reception.  The series was deemed fit for a reboot, and after an intensive search for a new director, Zack Snyder landed the job.  A surprising choice, Snyder, who previously went to the deconstruction of the superhero genre with Watchmen, has now come to the ultimate superhero.  Where does Snyder hyper-kinetic style meet a classic character like Superman?  There’s so many ways to make Superman take to the skies and save the day, so what does Snyder have in store for the Man of Steel?

Hit the for the recap and the first Man of Steel poster.

Guillermo del Toro is an established, Comic-Con favorite, but that doesn’t mean watching him participate in a panel gets any less entertaining.  The guy is incredibly affable, genuinely funny, and he curses like a sailor.  It’s been four long years since his last directorial effort (Hellboy II), but he’s finally back with a new film, and it’s a biggie.  Pacific Rim is a true monster movie, as the pic centers on a battle between gigantic, human-manned robots called Jaegers and massive creatures called Kaiju.

We got our first look at the truly epic footage Saturday in the 6,500 seater Hall H at Comic-Con 2012.  Hit the jump to read my full recap of the panel.

Following Quentin Tarantino is no easy task, but director David Ayer did just that Saturday afternoon in Hall H at Comic-Con for his latest cop drama End of Watch. The film stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena as two beat cops who stumble upon some surprising information that makes them targets of a drug cartel. Though Ayer’s previous films (he wrote Training Day and wrote and directed 2006’s Harsh Times) focus on corrupted officers of the law, End of Watch is a change of pace in that Gyllenhaal and Pena play honest, hard-working cops just trying to do their job well.

Though I figured I pretty much knew what I was in for with the film, the footage and panel from Comic-Con really got me enthused for a type of cop drama that we haven’t seen in a very long time. Hit the jump to read my full recap of the End of Watch panel at Comic-Con 2012. [Full disclosure: Collider editor-in-chief Steve Weintraub was the moderator for this panel.]

Quentin Tarantino and Hall H are made for each other.  It’s a feedback loop of pure enthusiasm.  The trailer for his latest film, Django Unchained, was met with lots of love, and all of his fans have been chomping at the bit for more.  Tarantino doesn’t hand out spoilers, but he’s not disturbingly protective to the point where he’s scared to show a single frame of his movie.  He’s a guy who’s always proud of his work, and he wants to share his excitement.  At Saturday’s opening Hall H panel, I couldn’t have been more excited to see Tarantino share his latest pride and joy.

The moderator opened by bringing out cast members Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Kerry Washington, Walton Goggins, and Don Johnson.  And then the man himself: Quentin Tarantino.  Hit the jump to check out the recap.

I’m ready to say that Archer is the funniest show on television.  There is no show that makes me laugh harder and more often.  The panel was billed as a screening—given that season three just ended and there is no premiere date set for season 4, I had accepted the fact they would probably show one of the better season three episodes.  But I was pleasantly surprised they somehow got “Coyote Lovely,”  an episode from the upcoming season, ready in time to show us.

Hit the jump for a recap of the panel with creator Adam Reed, H. Jon Benjamin, Aisha Tyler, Amber Nash, and Chris Parnell.

There is no show I look forward to more each week than Breaking Bad.  And it’s been a long week since the last episode.  I am so pumped for the premiere on Sunday, that I really had no business being at this panel filled with cryptic teases.  What’s going on in Germany?   What that about gray matter?  And most importantly, what is the context of Jesse’s line “Magnets, bitch!”

Creator Vince Gilligan, Bryan Cranston, Aaron Paul, Dean Norris, Anna Gunn, Jonathan Banks, R.J. Mitte, and Betsy Brandt were on hand to address these questions without ever actually answering any of them.  Hit the jump for the bullet point recap.

TV pilots are always tricky.  Even the best show can start out rough.  Seinfeld took three seasons before it hit its stride.  With this in mind, one has to consider not just what is shown on screen, but what also the potential of what is not. Cult, the new meta-series from Farscape mastermind Rockne S. O’Bannon, has an especially rough pilot, but it also has great potential.  Hit the jump for a summary of the pilot and more info on the show.

I am one of those stupid people who goes to Comic-Con and knows very little about comics.  I apologize for my ignorance, but if you came to Collider for comics coverage, you’re in the wrong place.  Movies are our specialty, so at Joss Whedon’s panel for his comics label Dark Horse, I took note of everything he said that related to the cinematic arts, including the reveal that he is actively working on Dr. Horrible 2.  Even without the comics, there’s still a lot to talk about.  Ninety percent of the hour left Whedon up on stage alone to answer questions from fans who mostly have the same interests I do.  Hit the jump for a bullet point recap.

Neill Blomkamp‘s District 9 was an amazing feature film debut, and whatever he chose to do next would demand the attention of all the fans he amassed in 2009, myself included.  His new film, Elysium, had been cloaked in mystery until a synopsis recently appeared online.  I was even more intrigued after reading the synopsis, and Elysium was easily one of my most-anticipated movies of Comic-Con 2012.  And the presentation didn’t disappoint.

Hit the jump to check out the recap, and click here for all of our Comic-Con coverage.

Full disclosure: The line to get into Ballroom 20 was very, very long this morning, and the Community panel (the first of the day) had the audacity to start without me.  I was about 20 minutes late, and I don’t know what excitement happened without me.  It is probably for the best, since I was a rubbernecker looking to see how they would deal with the recent ugly firing of Community creator Dan Harmon.  (Answer: They addressed it without really discussing it, even when I wasn’t there.  Not surprising.)

There was a big group: Joel McHale, Yvette Nicole Brown, Gillian Jacobs, Alison Brie, Danny Pudi; writers Megan Ganz and Andy Bobrow; producer  Russ Krasnoff and new showrunners David Guarascio and Moss Port.  I hope you’ll forgive my tardiness and hit the jump for an abbreviated bullet-point recap, along with a brand new gag reel.

Writer/director Rian Johnson is a talent like no other, as evidenced by his two previous features Brick and The Brothers Bloom.  He’s next set to tackle the sci-fi genre with the time travel story Looper.  The film takes place in a future where time travel exists, but it’s only used on the black market.  Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as a man who is contracted to kill people that are sent back in time, and then he disposes of the bodies in a time period in which they don’t exist.  Things go awry when his future self (Bruce Willis) is sent back in time as an assignment and Gordon-Levitt lets him go.

Johnson took the stage in Hall H at Comic-Con on Friday with stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Emily Blunt, where they screened footage and talked extensively about the film.  Hit the jump for my full recap.

It’s rare for a film to come to consecutive Comic-Cons, but Total Recall showed up last year at the beginning of production, and now it’s returned with its theatrical release only weeks away.  We’ve seen multiple trailers, TV spots, images, and featurettes, so I was curious what a panel would have to offer.  It’s return to Comic-Con is part of a final big push.  Having seen both panels, and being less-than-impressed the first time around, I was curious to see if a sneak peek at the completed footage would get me on board.

Hit the jump for my recap, and click here for all of our Comic-Con coverage.

The Resident Evil film franchise is still going strong, and star Milla Jovovich and director Paul W.S. Anderson brought the latest installment to Comic-Con’s Hall H.  This fifth entry in the series is called Resident Evil: Retribution, and Jovovich and Anderson were joined onstage by co-stars Michelle Rodriguez, Li Bingbing, Oded Fehr, and Boris Kodje.  Hit the jump to read my recap of the panel.

I don’t know anything about the Green Arrow comics.  Literally, nothing.  All I had was an educated guess that he wears green and wields a bow.  This worked well for my first viewing of the Arrow pilot, because I was fascinated by the backstory.  The opening scene throws you in the middle of the action as a disheveled man in green is climbing about a rock island.  Even with the expository narration, it’s a thrilling way to launch a new series.

They pull back to reveal that the man in green is Oliver Queen (played by Stephen Amell), a billionaire playboy who shipwrecked five years ago and was presumed dead.  Oliver’s awkward attempts to reintegrate with his former life are intercut with flashbacks to the night of the shipwreck.  Unfortunately, as Arrow drifts away from the island and spends more time in the city, the show loses its luster.  Hit the jump for the rest of the brief review and a recap of the Q&A with stars Stephen Amell and Katie Cassidy as well as producers Marc Guggenheim, Andrew Kreisberg, and David Nutter.

At last year’s Comic-Con, we couldn’t fathom why the programmers would stuff Game of Thrones into Ballroom 20, especially when there were so many sparsely-attended panels in Hall H.  This year, even though Hall H has plenty of good stuff, Game of Thrones is in the line-up and rightly so.  It’s easily one of the most popular geek properties currently on TV, and the show only got better in its second season.  While filming on Season 3 hasn’t begun, Season 2 is still fresh in the minds of fans, and Hall H was packed to see author George R.R. Martin and some of the cast to talk about the popular HBO series.

Hit the jump for the recap of the Game of Thrones panel, and click here for all of our Comic-Con coverage.