SAN DIEGO — “How many of you have ever wanted to go to another planet?” shouted the filmmaker James Cameron, addressing 6,500 fans here on Thursday.
Comic-Con fans in 3-D glasses enjoyed a preview of the Disney film, “Alice in Wonderland.”
Fans waited in line for free items near a poster for the movie "Avatar" at Comic-Con.
With those words, the future came to Comic-Con — and it was wearing funny glasses.
For the first time, the giant annual convention for fans of comics, movies, superheroes, science fiction and video games that has become a major event on Hollywood’s calendar — now in its 40th year — devoted almost an entire day to presenting films in 3-D, culminating with a 25-minute glimpse of “Avatar,” the eagerly anticipated science-fiction thriller due in December from Mr. Cameron and 20th Century Fox.
“I’m not going to waste your time, because I know you’re here to see stuff,” said Mr. Cameron, who spoke only a few words before showing pieces of his film.
The scenes portrayed the adventures of a human experiencing a new world, the planet Pandora, through the body of an alien. And they were delivered with a startling verisimilitude that seemed to plant flying insects and waving ferns on the heads of people in the next row — and had Comic-Con fans roaring with approval.
The “Avatar” presentation cleared a crucial test for Fox, which has invested more than $200 million in the movie, the most conspicuous example of a recent spate of expensive 3-D efforts from the major studios that will roll out over the next few years.
Mr. Cameron’s devotion to next-generation 3-D methods has raised enormous expectations around a film made with technology that some people predict could have an impact on movies comparable to the introduction of sound.
It was a measure of the movie’s importance that Tom Rothman, co-chief of Fox Filmed Entertainment, personally introduced Mr. Cameron.
“Moments like these are rare in the life of a movie company,” Mr. Rothman said. Mr. Cameron’s last feature film was the box-office juggernaut “Titanic,” well over a decade ago.
Actually, it had been Disney executives who led the push to use 3-D promotions at Comic-Con, where projection technology had previously been unequal to such large-scale presentations.
No small problem was the distribution of Dolby 3-D glasses by the thousands, with repeated pleas that they eventually be returned, though many were left broken on the floor.
Even as the first trailers were screened, hours before Mr. Cameron’s presentation, doubts lingered about whether the big 3-D day would work.
“Some of the 3-D effects aren’t going to look absolutely perfect,” said Patton Oswalt, the comedian and voice actor who moderated a presentation of Disney’s forthcoming “A Christmas Carol,” “Alice in Wonderland” and “Tron: Legacy.” Mr. Oswalt asked attendees not to blog about effects being “quite subpar.”
But the fans “oohed” and “aaahed” over the displays of technical virtuosity, starting with motion-capture film from Robert Zemeckis’s “A Christmas Carol,” featuring Jim Carrey.
Sony Pictures followed with its “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs,” and New Line weighed in with a 3-D sequel to the horror film “Final Destination.”
But if technology ruled the day, it took flesh-and-blood movie stars to bring down the house. A surprise appearance by Johnny Depp — who showed up beside the director Tim Burton in support of his Mad Hatter’s role in “Alice” — caused a near riot, with fans rushing the stage for pictures.
A couple of hours later, the cast of Summit Entertainment’s “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” provided the day’s emotional pop. Teenage girls started lining up on the street to see snippets from the second movie in the series. Many wore cardboard Burger King crowns emblazoned with “Team Edward,” referring to Edward, the nonbloodsucking vampire at the franchise’s center.
Media attention on the Summit Entertainment franchise is so enormous that the studio opted to hold a news conference at the nearby Hilton Hotel on Thursday in place of the normal press panels after the big Hall H presentation. (“It is for the personal safety of our stars,” said a Summit staff member.)
The “New Moon” trio — Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner — took the stage in the Hilton ballroom looking as if the intense scrutiny was starting to wear on them. A disheveled-looking Ms. Stewart nervously took questions in front of about 30 television and video cameras. She described the greatly anticipated film as “seriously emotional” and coming from an “empty, completely dark place.”
In a lighter moment, a television news reporter asked the young stars what questions they were tired of being asked, and Mr. Lautner said, “Fans ask me to growl for them and I really don’t enjoy doing that.” Ms. Stewart said people could ask her anything they liked. But a Summit executive cut off a question about off-screen chemistry between cast members.
The trade-show floor and the streets surrounding the convention center presented the usual array of Comic-Con curiosities. Two men in “Star Wars” Stormtrooper uniforms mingled with women dressed as Alice in Wonderland. Vampires and grim reapers were in abundance. The cable network A&E staged a mock funeral to promote “Chris Angel Mindfreak” — complete with coffins carried by men wearing black lipstick — in the middle of a main walkway. Women on roller skates zigzagged through the crowds, apparently to promote Drew Barrymore’s roller-derby movie, “Whip It.”
Only a couple of months ago, those who run the convention said they doubted that 3-D could be properly displayed in the huge hall where Hollywood studios have become accustomed to introducing prospective blockbusters like “Watchmen” and “X-Men Origins: Wolverine. “We’re about to find out,” David Glanzer, the convention’s director of marketing, said just before the day’s session began.
Two years ago, Paramount Pictures screened a piece of “Beowulf” in 3-D here. But that occurred only in a small, preconvention preview.
This time, 3-D was the main event. Asked if he intended ever again to make a conventional, two-dimensional live action film, Mr. Zemeckis could only muster a maybe.
“Never say never,” he said.
But, he added: “Right now, I’m dedicated to sending these forms into the world. I love the control these art forms give the director.”
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