New York Comic Con, the younger, smaller sibling to the massive nerd congregation that takes place out in San Diego every July, went off pretty much without a hitch this past weekend and the movie business was well-represented. Almost every major Hollywood studio lined up at least one big, main-hall presentation, with filmmakers and cast members in tow to plug their upcoming blockbusters in front of the large crowds of eager movie fans. Some studios even arranged special events just for the press and later this week we'll be bringing you coverage of the Con press junkets for The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian and The X-Files: I Want to Believe. First, though, we're giving you a blow-by-blow account of how this year's public presentations stacked up.

Wall*E Courtesy of Pixar/Walt Disney

The Hits:

Wall*E
Pixar's presentation for Wall*E was classy and impressive. Instead of talking in riddles like many of the spoiler-shy presenters this weekend, the Pixar representative took the stage and gave the crowd a lengthy and detailed description of Wall*E's plot while also delivering several long clips from the film, the first of which may have been the best piece of footage screened at this year's Con. Wall*E is a small, sentient robot — he looks like a cross between Johnny Five and those little tanks that bomb squads deploy to inspect suspicious backpacks — and when the movie opens he's roving around alone on Earth at some point in the distant future, after the last human has disappeared. In the first clip, Wall*E's endless idling around the ruins of civilization is interrupted by the arrival of a magnificent spaceship of unknown origin. After touching down, the ship deploys a mysterious alien robot that looks like an angelic, floating salt-shaker with fiery blue eyes which then goes about quietly scanning the landscape, collecting information while Wall*E nervously hides behind some rubble.

The subsequent clips didn't quite live up to the subtle beauty of that one, and in fairness, the more footage that was shown the more it seemed like we might be in for a somewhat straight-forward robot love story, but I don't want to give too much away. Based on the first clip alone, Wall*E moves up several notches on the scale of movies to watch in 2008. Extra tidbit: it was also revealed that, as rumored, Sigourney Weaver provides the voice of the robot computer that controls the big alien spaceship, in a cheeky nod to Alien. Following the Wall*E presentation, Disney trotted out the cast for The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian for a lukewarm panel discussion and rolled a muddled, very generic sword-and-creature trailer for the film that doesn't even attempt to convey an idea of the plot. Reaction from the audience was mixed, at best.

Selma Blair and Ron Perlman in Hellboy II Click here to see more photos from Hellboy II. Courtesy of Universal Pictures

Hellboy II: The Golden Army
If Universal could have Guillermo del Toro travel the country and warm up the crowds about to watch his new film, they'd have a $500 million box-office haul. The mad Mexican was in rare form at Saturday's Hellboy II: The Golden Army panel, which also included Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones and others. Approximately 90 percent of the audience questions were lobbed directly at him and he gobbled them up, speaking at hyper-speed about his various career goals, his future projects — it's all down to the paperwork for The Hobbit, he says — and his tussles with the studio big-shots over budgets and other issues. "F**k you, f**k you, f**k you!" is how he responds to studio input on his small passion projects, he said. He also congratulated a 15 year-old questioner on getting "pubes," threw out his e-mail address to the crowd, dangled the possibility of internships to the rabid young fans and encouraged them to follow their dreams.

Somewhere in there, del Toro also found the time to introduce an extended, trailer-style clip of the film, which was a substantial improvement over the theatrical trailer — more coherent, more dramatically compelling and a better showcase for the effects. In fact, it was enough of an improvement to suggest that Universal should send their people back into the cutting room to make a second trailer, pronto. It's still unclear how the exotic, somewhat impersonal comic book tone of the footage shown so far will translate in the final product, but what was shown on Saturday was certainly the best thing seen so far. When the clip ended and the house lights were brought back up, the main stage, which had been bare except for the panel table, was full of giant, live creature-puppets from del Toro's movies. The crowd gasped and cheered and ate it up.

James McAvoy in Wanted Click here to see more photos from Wanted. Courtesy of Universal Pictures

Wanted
The audience was hoping for Angelina Jolie, but they ended up settling for a grumpy Russian director with poor English. Timur Bekmambetov, the incredible visual maverick behind the sci-fi epics Day Watch and Night Watch, was on hand to debut an extended chase scene from Wanted, his new action film opening in June. The film follows an ordinary young man (played by James McAvoy) who learns, much like in The Matrix, that he is possessed of essentially magic powers and is destined for great things. One of the things he can do is "curve bullets," which means shooting a gun and causing the bullet to change its trajectory mid-flight and go to a different target. In the trailer, Jolie stands directly in front of McAvoy while he demonstrates this, shooting at her and landing the bullet behind her. (Note to Universal: the kids in the audience seemed to love this. Start preparing your legal defense fund now.)

Based on the footage shown, Wanted may be in line for a special effects Oscar come February. Bekmambetov's already legendary action chops were firing on all cylinders in the reality-defying chase, which has cars and humans doing things previously only possible in animation. The clip played well enough to merit thunderous applause from the crowd when the lights went back up. Extra tidbit: Bekmambetov told a questioner that he has no real plans to make Dusk Watch, the long-awaited trilogy capper to his first two films.

The X-Files: I Want to Believe
Neither Duchovny nor his redheaded partner were anywhere in sight during Friday night's panel. The only ones who did manage to make it were Chris Carter, series creator and the film's director, and Frank Spotnitz, writer and producer. To say that the duo were shy about revealing details of the film is a drastic understatement. The panel began with the debut of the film's trailer — no introduction, no set-up, just the trailer rolled unannounced, in order to up the "Hey, I missed it!" factor. Those who missed it didn't miss much — the trailer is an ugly hodgepodge of random shots, chopped and spliced to the nines in order to prevent the audience from making any sense of the thing. The only semi-relatable moment comes when Mulder is heard saying "I need you with me on this one, Scully," to which she responds "That's what scares me."

In spite of the ultra-secrecy shtick, there was still a warm vibe emanating from the crowd that night and during the Q&A session scores of passionate X-Files fans got up and had some good interaction with the two stiffs up on stage. Spotnitz eventually talked at length about his views on the enduring themes of the series and the two parried questions from the crowd about specific episodes from the old series and where they hope the franchise goes from here. Their lawyerly demeanor never waned, but they did seem to enjoy themselves.

NEXT: The Dark Knight, The Incredible Hulk, The Spirit, Star Wars