Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! This weekend my wife Anne and I attended the fourth edition of Fan Expo Chicago at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in the suburb of Rosemont, Illinois. In 2022 they arose from the ashes of the late Wizard World Chicago, which we attended eleven times, and have expended tremendous efforts to maintain the previous showrunners’ geek-marketed traditions to keep luring in longtime fans and newcomers alike…

…and for us it meant another round of photo ops with actors from movies and TV shows we’ve enjoyed. Longtime MCC readers know jazz hands are our thing, if we feel it’s worth a shot to ask, and if the stars are amenable. Sometimes they don’t, and that’s fine! They’re adults, we’re adults, and we accept it — their image, their choice. But it’s a lot cooler when they do.

This year’s edition had its complications. The guest list featured six huge names that the showrunners correctly predicted would draw massive attendance. Of those six, we’d already met young Sith Lord Hayden Christensen and TV’s Flash himself, Grant Gustin. I was a little tempted by Academy Award Winner Brendan Fraser, but I was more tempted by John Cena even though I don’t follow wrestling. I’ve seen him in quite a few things (most recently the pretty wild action-comedy Heads of State, and of course there’s Peacemaker), but he was a Saturday-only guest with such an enormous worldwide following that I correctly predicted that paying for so much as a glimpse of him would be an all-day affair. If the entire guest list had been just him and, say, the complete cast of The Big Bang Theory, then yeah, I would’ve issued a household proclamation declaring Saturday as John Cena Day. But two other headliners ranked higher on our bucket lists. Also, while we were waffling over all this, Cena’s photo ops sold out anyway — eighteen groups’ worth of ’em in all.

Friday was a short opening day, with the exhibit hall officially opening at 4 p.m. We paid an upcharge for “Ultimate Fan” badges whose perks included early Friday entrance at 2:00. Once unleashed, we sped directly to the Autograph Area, where we had to redeem our pre-purchased QR codes for those two headliners’ signatures in exchange for physical timed tickets. The chaps in question wouldn’t be appearing till Saturday, but the earlier we fetched our tickets, the earlier signing times we’d get.

After ticket pickup and a sweep of Artists Alley (which we’ll come back to in Part 3), the rest of Friday didn’t go quite as expected. The centerpiece of that time block was actress Mae Whitman, whom I’d seen in such works as Independence Day, most importantly Scott Pilgrim Saves the World, and also importantly the animated follow-up Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, which pretends to be a reboot until it reveals it’s secretly an amazing direct sequel to the movie, with a completely different chain of events. Whitman’s character Roxy Richter was my favorite among its seven antagonists, whose fate takes a surprisingly complicated turn in the miniseries.

As a Scott Pilgrim fan (who’s still heartbroken that the advance movie screening I attended had the worst turnout of any such screening I’ve ever been to), I decided to get her autograph and photo op. We prepaid for both to do Friday. The photo op was the easy part.

The autograph, on the other hand…okay, so here’s the thing: I follow more than my share of pop culture, but I can’t follow, read, watch, listen to, and memorize all the things. My son and some of my online friends have recommended Avatar: The Last Airbender, which is consequently on my watch-someday list, but it’s kind of a long list. So I hadn’t really taken a deep dive into Airbender‘s particulars yet…until we casually sauntered from Artists Alley back to the Autograph Area only to notice her booth was nestled among a line of booths for anime voice actors who all had Airbender icons on their booth banners. Her booth had the longest line even though she wasn’t there yet.

“Oh, no,” said a tiny, panicky voice in my head.

And then:

• 3:15: We join Whitman’s autograph line, correctly predicting it wouldn’t get any shorter. I hurriedly looked her up and learned she was #2 on Airbender‘s call sheet. From a voice-actor perspective, she’s kind of a big deal. “Hence the line, you middle-aged idiot,” said the head-voice.
• 5:07: Whitman arrived. To be fair, she was not publicly promised or obligated to be there at any certain time prior. She began signing really quickly; everyone in line was asked not to chitchat, because…
• 5:40: …her photo op was scheduled at this very minute. The less we each talked to her, the more fans could get their stuff signed before she had to take off.
• 5:45-ish: They finally peeled her away from her table and sent her off to the Photo Ops booths. I was maybe three or four fans away from her table. Everyone left hanging in line was handed a ticket, which we could bring back later for a guaranteed spot in line when she returned. Then we all ran to the Photo Ops area on the opposite end of the exhibit hall.
• 6:00: With my happy photo-op hard copy in hand, we walked the hall’s length back to her booth. A volunteer told us they didn’t want everyone lining up again till at least 6:45 and gently shooed us away. We trudged over to the food court and grabbed Mediterranean dishes from Pita & Co. and a pair of chairs. This was the first time I’d sat down since we got out of the car at 12:30.
• 6:45: The Airbender cast had a 45-minute panel.
• 7:00: We were permitted to rejoin her autograph line, where at least a dozen ticketed fans were already waiting.
• 7:35-ish: Whitman returned! This time, with fewer time constraints, chitchat with her was permitted.
• 8:25-ish: My turn! We talked about the neat turn that Roxy’s arc took; she signed my copy of the film and added a quote, which I hadn’t paid extra for or expected. I was exhausted but elated.
• Sometime after 9:00: An equally exhausted Anne, who doesn’t remember her strongly from Independence Day or otherwise connect with her except they’re the same height, eventually forgave me for all this once we’d checked into our hotel and fell over in separate comas.

..so there was a tradeoff. In all we’d spent, cumulatively, a little under four hours at Whitman’s booth. I’m treasuring the happy parts in hindsight, but our initial plan for Friday to be one long leisurely stroll was shot to pieces.

We checked into our hotel over in Schiller Park and rode the single working elevator up with a pack of Cubs fans who’d just gotten in from Wrigley Field. After we told them a little about the con, the guys told us all about how they got to see Hayden Christensen’s big day at the game — tossing out the opening pitch, singing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game”, and wearing a #66 jersey in honor of the Imperial order that got all the Jedi murdered. That would’ve been a fantastic sight to see. The ballgame, I mean, not the murdering.

Somehow our Saturday went much better, despite the festivities for the Big Four. While Fraser and Gustin would have booths and photo ops in the same places as all the other guests, the other four would have their own, far more spacious autograph sections, and a shared photo-op area for just the four of them, upstairs in Hall G, which wasn’t even included in the con’s official map. We hoped that would help with the overcrowding that’s made past cons a laborious slog at times.

We joined the entrance line shortly before 8:20, which already extended well outside the Stephens Center’s outdoor atrium and was extending south toward Balmoral Avenue when they began letting everyone inside literally a minute after we joined. Fans with 10:45 John Cena photo ops were sorted out from the main entrance line ahead of time, in an effort to get an early start on his activities. The exhibit hall was supposed to at 10; they let everyone in — not just VIPs — around 9:40. We worked our way up to Hall G and joined the queues for the man in our lead photo, Ewan McGregor.

About that guy: Anne has been dying to meet him ever since she saw The Phantom Menace ten times in theaters and he became what she calls a “celebrity crush”, which I of course witnessed back when we were just best friends. That story isn’t totally mine to tell, but suffice it to say the chance to meet McGregor at last was an unrealistic dream that she’d made peace with never happening. Next thing we knew, McGregor began showing up at cons. Eventually he came to the Midwest.

So to Anne, this year’s Fan Expo Chicago was A REALLY BIG DEAL.

(Anne eventually downgraded him from “celebrity crush” status, and has been extremely disappointed in him ever since he left his first wife for Mary Elizabeth Winstead, a.k.a. Ramona Flowers from Scott Pilgrim.)

For my part, I enjoyed chatting with another fan in line who remembered us from our past jazz-hands photos. (Hey, Josiah!) No one ever mentions MCC to me in person, and I rarely mention my blog to other people because I hate hate hate self-promotion, so this was an extremely rare moment. Oh, and meeting McGregor was cool. He was in high enough spirits that Anne praised Moulin Rouge and got a couple of sentences out of him, which sent her flying over the moon. Or over the Death Star, whichever.

Best of all, McGregor was like an autographing machine. He and multiple helpers worked in a well-oiled assembly line to ensure the fastest possible experience without him having to sign heads-down and pretend the fans weren’t there. (Sadly, we understand several hundred Fraser fans weren’t quite so lucky.) Our McGregor signing ticket was for 10:00; we were out at 10:17. This was way better than the time we didn’t get to meet Christensen till forty minutes after closing time.

We immediately ran over to the autograph line for the fourth member of the Big Four: Orlando Bloom! You might remember him from the Lord of the Rings trilogy, two of the Hobbit films, and the Pirates of the Caribbean movies back when you were keeping up with those. We weren’t even sure he’d be there considering he’d canceled his appearance at Fan Expo Boston earlier this month. We’d been given an 11:00 ticket for him the day before. The volunteer at the end of his line made sure we were okay with the extra wait. She seemed surprised that we were. If you’re at a con, waiting is what you do.

By 11:30 McGregor’s line next door was totally empty. At 11:40 came our turn with Bloom, who cosigned my copy of the extended edition of The Fellowship of the Ring, which I’d gotten signed by John Rhys-Davies last year. So now I had Legolas and Gimli, the best team from the Tolkien movie series, together on my favorite film from said series.

Curiously, Bloom was the least energetic actor we met all weekend. I’m not sure whether he’s just extremely low-key by nature, was laid low by jet lag, had a hangover, still suffered the pangs of heartbreak from the whole Katy Perry thing, or what. We’ve met some celebs who were clearly not into the whole comic-con thing, and some who’d clearly had a rough night. If he’d simply hated being there, he could’ve gotten away with just scribbling “O.B.” and chucking the set back at me. All I know for sure is his autograph was personalized, had a one-word message and included “Legolas” at the end — none of which I’d asked for. That isn’t the level of effort you get from a celeb who’s just there to take the money and run…unless he noticed Rhys-Davies’ rather flourished autograph and felt he had to compete? That’d be a pretty Legolas move.

So that was half the Big Four experiences done, the only half that concerned us. John Cena’s infinite photo-op line continued, and Christensen had a line of his own. I’ve no idea how things went on his end, though.

At 1:40 came our next photo-op appointment: Candice Patton! I’ve been slowly meeting the stars of The CW’s The Flash over the years (including the aforementioned Gustin), but this was her first time appearing within our range. As Iris West-Allen, love interest and eventual wife of our hero Barry Allen, Patton was only one of three actors (along with Gustin and Danielle Panabaker) to remain main cast members through all nine seasons. From my biased perspective, the show’s early attempts to make Iris a crusading blogger were, um…well, it’s great that they did better by Patton as the series continued.

Fun thing here: ahead of me in line were a father and tiny daughter. When it was their turn, Dad stepped aside and Tiny Daughter stepped up shyly to Patton, who crouched down and chatted with her for a minute. Then she stood up, they posed, and the hearts of everyone in the booth just melted into so much happy goo. Then it was my turn, riding that feelgood tsunami in the moment. Anne and I agree this is our best photo of the entire weekend.

Back on the main show floor, we skipped over to the Autograph Area for yet another big name: Jennifer Beals! Gen-X knows her from such films as Flashdance, Vampire’s Kiss, or maybe The Bride (that time Sting was in a Frankenstein flick). Other folks might bring up The L Word or the underrated The Book of Eli. Fan Expo, being who they are, really really really hoped attendees super-loved her turn as a Twi’lek in The Book of Boba Fett. Some of their promotional materials pretended this was the only thing she’s ever done with her life that really mattered.

As for me? I have the Criterion edition of Carl Franklin’s overlooked 1995 noir based on the Walter Mosley novel Devil in a Blue Dress, in which she plays a missing woman in 1940s L.A. that Denzel Washington’s WWII veteran Easy Rawlins agrees to locate even though he isn’t a detective (yet). It’s exceedingly rare for comic-con guest lists to intersect with the Criterion Collection.

At 2:30 we returned upstairs to Hall G for our next photo op, only to find the morning’s organized efficiency had dissolved and given way to typical comic-con afternoon pandemonium. It felt a lot like that scene in Airplane II where Julie Hagerty informs the passengers they’re out of coffee, or that famous Community .gif with Troy bringing pizza into the apartment after everything’s been set afire. The photo-op area was hundreds of fans deep on both sides of the gate. By my count approximately 650,000 John Cena fans were now occupying his autograph zone — not so much lined up, more like herded there.

So our afternoon photo ops took longer than the morning autographs had. Bloom’s was scheduled at 3:00, and ran pretty close to on-time.

…and you’ve already seen our 4:00 McGregor op as our lead photo, which didn’t happen till 4:45 or so because he was wrapping up yet another autograph group, which I suspect ran behind because his Jedi Duo photo-ops with Christensen ran even farther behind. Nevertheless, Anne’s expression says it all. He greeted every fan with a handshake, he called her “luv”, and — in what might be the first time she’s ever broken strict photo-op protocols in all our decades of conventioning — after the shot, McGregor reached out to her for one more handshake, somehow signals were mixed and they ended up in a quick hug instead. I ran away before security could tackle us.

(Midlife Crisis Crossover management would like to apologize for any breaches of convention etiquette and any resulting inconveniences imposed by, or negative role-modeling displayed by, our unpaid staff during their participation in this event. We extend our gratitude to Fan Expo Chicago for not releasing the hounds on us.)

Anyway, we were done and back downstairs before 5. As for whatever happened up there in Hall G’s chaos after we left…forget it, Jake. It’s Cenatown.

Sunday, as we’d hoped, was the calmest day of the weekend. We had exactly one (1) prepaid activity scheduled, which we hadn’t even bothered trying to squeeze in Saturday. Once again they let everyone into the exhibit hall at 9:40, but there was nowhere we had to be. It was a great feeling, despite the aches and pains that extra sleep and ibuprofen hadn’t yet cured. We didn’t have a lot to do, either — at that moment the only guest at their autograph table was Vacation costar Dana Barron.

Shortly after 10:00 our ambling took us to the booth of comedian Paul Reiser. The star of such long-running sitcoms as My Two Dads and Mad About You, or from the Beverly Hills Cop series. Geeks with short memories know him as greedy company man Carter Burke from James Cameron’s sci-fi/horror classic Aliens, and liked his more recent turn in Stranger Things. Among his other works, I remember reading his first book Couplehood long ago, before every comedian was legally obligated to write at least one book. I also recall his stand-up specials from times past, one of which had a joke that still haunts me to this day.

Our celeb to-do list was a bit longer than usual and made it awkward to fit any panels into our schedule. With a single time slot available Sunday, we headed upstairs to the Main Theater for our only panel of the entire weekend: a Q&A with the cast of the National Lampoon’s Vacation series, by which I mean the original Vacation, which I loved as a kid in both its edited-for-TV version and the original R-rated version that I wasn’t supposed to see yet; and Christmas Vacation, which is most people’s favorite but which I haven’t rewatched since its 1989 theatrical run. For purposes of this panel, the second and fourth films, Cousin Eddie’s solo spinoff-sequel, and the Ed Helms sequel did not exist.

Volunteers didn’t begin letting VIPs into the theater till after 11:10 or so. By the time they started letting in the rest of us, our host Victor Dandridge Jr. had already begun the panel with guest introductions, so I’ve no idea how much we missed. More awkwardness, I presume, which was the general demeanor on stage throughout.

I don’t normally attend events that suspect might become trainwrecks. Nevertheless, we had free time, I had familiarity with the works, and they had plenty of open seats.

We’ve seen Dandridge host quite a few panels with aplomb at various cons throughout the years. He tried his best to keep all six actors engaged, though all roads tended to lead back to the same participant in the middle.

A few warm thoughts were offered when Dandridge brought up Chicago’s beloved son, Vacation creator/writer John Hughes. When prompted for comment, Chase said loudly, “HE’S DEAD.” Sometimes it could be hard to tell when Chase was playing a parody of a curmudgeon for ironic laughs and when he wasn’t playing.

It was interesting to learn Vacation‘s original ending — i.e., everything at Walley World onward — was technically a reshoot after the original ending tested poorly, filmed months later after Hall had hit puberty and grown several extra inches. It was less interesting when Quaid began prodding at Chase’s claims about how much of the films were “written” by Chase himself, to which Chase replied, “That’s because I’m the star, ya big fairy!”

The crowd’s happiest moment came when Dandridge tried to ask Hall a question, but Chase kept trying to answer it for him. Hall protested; Chase protested back and wondered why he couldn’t answer anyway. Hall said, “Because I’m Anthony Michael Hall and you’re not!” (Cue laughter and applause from old-time SNL fans.)

Dandridge’s last question was to Chase: if they were to reunite for further adventures, where would Chase want the Griswolds to go next? Chase paused before responding: “I don’t need them!” He laughed, paused again, and then confirmed that was his whole answer. Self-parody again, or no? Either way, Dandridge thanked us for coming and we all fled.

So as a fan of NBC’s Community, I can say that went just about as I’d imagined.

At long last came our 12:30 appointment: last but not least, a photo op with Pom Klementieff! Most know her as Mantis from the Guardians of the Galaxy (three movies, two Avengers crossovers, and the holiday special!), and she was a welcome addition to the last two Mission: Impossible films, as a lethal minion in Dead Reckoning who switches sides for The Final Reckoning.

By then it was impossible to disguise our fatigue, but I think we ignored it just enough to nail this one last pose. We were out the door by 1:00 and shuffled off to lunch with a big batch of shiny new memories, new names to add to our master list of people we’ve met, more folks to add to our jazz-hands Pinterest board, and a desperate craving for more ibuprofen.

To be concluded! Other chapters in this very special MCC miniseries:

Part 1: Cosplay!
Part 3: Comics and More!

[UPDATED 8/18/2025, 6:55 p.m.: Corrections made to three misremembered sequences according to Anne, who remembers most things better than I do. My mortification at the photo-op hug remains on record.]