Fan Expo Canada 2019 Recap

Our first Fan Expo everyone! Its been one that I’ve been meaning to get to for quite a while but this year, we didn’t go to Toronto Comiccon and EGLX is now in October which is a conflicting month so my fellow blogathon co-host Drew from Drew’s Movie Reviews met up with us in Toronto and we headed to check out Fan Expo this past weekend. A nice little meetup and a cool event to check out together.

I’ll do a haul post later for the trip as a whole since my trip started out on Friday when we arrived and went to Vaughan Mills for a late lunch and a stroll to take advantage of some shopping since I hadn’t been to a Uniqlo in Canada yet either.

While the actual event started on Thursday, we were there for the last 2 days: Saturday and Sunday. We had a pretty tight schedule especially when factoring in all the lining up and such.

After a crazy run through bag check at security, getting our badge and then having to activate it, we finally got to go in. Drew and I split up to do our own panels for some part of the day on Saturday so maybe he will recap it or whatnot but here is what I checked out!

SATURDAY

Panel: Brendan Fraser

Brendan Fraser was a really cool panel with a ton of laughs. He was asked to imitate some parts of movies like George of the Jungle yell. It was a lighthearted one and a great way to start off the day. He had some fun things to talk about and shared his thoughts on doing another Mummy and his opinion on the new one. He talked about some his current projects and upcoming one that he just finished filming in Johannesburg.

It does feel like Brendan Fraser hasn’t been in movies as much but definitely feels like there are things in the horizon to look forward to as he promises that he isn’t going anywhere when a fan asked him where he has been.

Panel: The Umbrella Academy
Tom Hopper and Emmy Raver-Lampman

Next up is Umbrella Academy’s panel with Tom Hopper and Emmy Raver-Lampman who play Luther and Allison respectively. Its rare that we get a show done in the year of its launch so we were all about checking this panel out especially since I had caught another two cast members back at Montreal Comiccon in July. This panel was a lot of fun. The dynamic between these two cast members are great and it really shows as they talk about their roles and moments and such.  There were some fun questions by the fans  as well. There were a lot of questions on the direction of Season 2 since its currently filming which they obviously couldn’t say anything about.

Panel: Blade Runner
Sean Young & Edward James Olmos

While I have yet to watch Blade Runner completely, the next panel was for my husband who wanted to check it out as he is a huge fan. I have very basic knowledge of this one however, the panel itself was pretty good as well. Edward James Olmos did a lot of the talking in the panel  especially when they talked a lot about how each of them had their own way of approaching their roles with their different experience at the time. There were questions about how it was working Ridley Scott and their feelings towards Blade Runner 2049. There’s some bitterness here towards a few things but at the end of the day, it was really nice as Edward James Olmos took a moment right after the host closed the panel to add a thanks to everyone that showed up and the fandom for giving them a chance to reunite together because it hasn’t happened in decades so its a great memory for them as well. Its pretty nice to see an actor to show appreciation because I haven’t actually had any panels have their guests do it so it was quite nice to hear.

Advanced Screening: The Fanatic

With John Travolta being one of the headliners of this year’s Fan Expo and having his panel on Sunday (which we had to miss), they got the advanced screening of The Fanatic to show at the expo as an ending showing on Saturday evening. While it wasn’t anything like a theatre and had a lot of maneuvering around to see the screen throughout and there was some technical difficulty with the movie’s ending, it eventually all got worked out and we saw the whole movie in completion. I had pondered whether to review it as I have some pretty straight forward thoughts on it but nothing for a full review however, I’ll still give it go and have the review go up later this week (hopefully before it hits theatres on August 30th).

SUNDAY

Sunday was one of those added days for ourselves because the headliner we wanted to see was only there. It was also a shorter day in general for the last day of the Fan Expo and we ended up leaving fairly earlier while still catching two panels.

Panel: Jeff Goldblum

Jeff Golblum changed up  his panel and took out all the Q&A portions and it was unscripted sort of deal for 20 minutes or so. He is a charming man to say the very least and it was a lot of fun as he played a movie game with the audience and opened the panel with singing O Canada  with the audience. Its a nice touch but then his line-up was crazy long and for the wait time and meeting him, it did feel like meeting royalty and less of a fan interaction thing. However, it still had some laughs and entertainment. Unique execution of a panel.

Panel: The Goonies
Sean Astin, Ke Huy Quan, Corey Feldman

Last panel of Fan Expo before we headed back on the road back to Montreal (my husband and I..Drew stayed later for the John Travolta panel) as we checked out The Goonies which had Sean Astin, Ke Huy Quan and Corey Feldman. It was a great way to end the Fan Expo for ourselves since this panel was a ton of fun and because all of them were kids when it was being filmed, there was a lot of chatter about the different props and sets and anecdotes and moments which was entertaining to listen to it and a lot of times pretty funny as well. They talked about different scenes and the stars that dropped by the set during filming of The Goonies. Sean Astin got questions about Lord of the Rings while Corey Feldman got questions about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. However, most of the topics did stay within The Goonies which was great.

OVERALL…

The first Fan Expo Canada that we went to was pretty well. We talked about going again if there were guests that we’d liked that came but staying longer so that we can check out the show floor. The expo is separated into two building and the biggest issue and time wasting element was going from one building to the next and time management which pretty much was a decision of where the panels were and how feasible it was to go to the South Building where the big exhibition floor was.  In the end, my husband and I did end up missing out on Artist Alley and exhibition floor stuff over on that side but checked out a ton of the gaming stuff. Luckily, we had time to check out the North Building retailers so at least that worked out.

Organization was fairly alright and it had a lot of presence whether inside or outside to make sure people knew where they were going and that’s pretty good. There was a whole picking up your pass and then having to activate which felt a bit crazy but in the end, the process was fairly quick. Fan Expo Canada is a tad pricey but they did give out a ton of free t-shirts before all the panels so lucky people did end up getting it. It had screenings and panels for certain topics and the guest list was pretty good despite the fact that there were a good few last minute cancellations which disappointed a lot of fans. Its all part of the risk, I suppose.

Despite some little things, its a nice venue and a good event. Hopefully, we’ll be heading back again in the coming years. It is a pricier one, so we’ll see how it all goes. We chose to go for Fan Expo 25 so being a milestone year, it probably did have its own perks.