Anybody who describes the ComicCon experience in any negative light gets my vote, and so Jesse Eisenberg is Hollywood Elsewhere’s New Best Friend. I got it when he said it was “horrifying” to be “shouted at by thousands of people,” but I didn’t understand his comparing it to “some kind of genocide.” What Eisenberg should have said is that the Hall H experience is some kind of banal. Can we just say he doesn’t like big, emotionally animated crowds and let it go at that?

I know that the people putting Eisenberg down for these remarks need to understand that not all of the filmmakers and actors who come down to San Diego and wave and shout “ComicCon, we love you!” are being 100% sincere. They like the applause, of course, and the fact that fanboy love has always been a bountiful box-office factor, but deep down many of them are circumspect or even sardonic about the experience. It’s a gig for them, an act, a thing they need to do. 

“Yeah, it’s a mob,” Eisenberg reportedly said during an interview for End of the Tour. “They were one torch away from burning me. I’m a normal person with like normal reactions to things, so of course it’s going to be terrifying. If you like that kind of thing and feed off of it in some way, you must have a miserable life.”

Eisenberg also said he’s thankful for the fans who made their way out to the annual event. “You know, but it’s such an honor to be a part of the film [i.e., Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice]. I mean everybody liked the movie. That was the important thing.” The trailer, he meant. Everybody liked the trailer.