If the screaming during every cameo, the clapping during Team Piz and Team Logan scenes, and the laughter during every other scene of the film is any indication, the Veronica Mars movie does not disappoint. For lifers, director/show creator Rob Thomas' magnum opus is chock full of Easter eggs sure to get the cult following GIF-ing and meme-ing and dissecting every other still. For new viewers, it's a sweet (and not intimidating) introduction to the crime dramedy that places them right into the action while making sure every plot question is answered.
The film continues ten years from where audiences last saw Veronica Mars (Kristen Bell). Now, she's out of Neptune, Calif. and making it big in New York, where she's living the sweet life with her boyfriend Piz (Chris Lowell) and thisclose to starting a new gig a top law firm. However, a call from her past threatens to ruin her new life. Former flame Logan Echolls (Jason Dohring) turns to her for help when he becomes the prime suspect in the murder of his celebrity girlfriend. What follows is Mars getting back to what she does best: sleuthing and solving mysteries.
In addition to Thomas, Bell, Dohring, and Lowell, co-stars Tina Majorino, Percy Daggs, Ryan Hansen, Enrico Colantoni, Amanda Noret, and Francis Capra were all in attendance for the premiere. Once they all hit the stage, the applause was deafening. In fact, one fan, so pumped after the long-awaited movie, rushed to the stage and dropped down a dollar, proclaiming it the first donation to Veronica Mars 2. The cast relished in the praise and toyed around with their fans, with a highlight being on-screen father and daughter Colantoni and Bell giving each other a loving hug on stage.
If you're bummed you missed it, we've got you covered. Below are the highlights from the post-screening Q&A.
Written by Tara Aquino (@t_akino)
On the cast reuniting after so many years apart:
Rob Thomas: There are so many ways to shoot a six million dollar film, and this is not it. Four locations, and eight actors, and not hundreds of extras, but we bit off a huge movie. Sixty speaking roles and action pieces. The only way we could make that work was to give the actors three takes per scene, or occasionally one. We had to fall right back into it...It felt great on a personal level.
They often say that a writer's protagonist is his alter ego and I think I speak for all of us when I say that, Rob, we're so grateful that your alter ego is a teenage girl. —Kristen Bell
Chris Lowell: I'm just shocked that I'm even on the stage or the film. I thought I was gonna have to be the $10,000 backer to have a speaking role in the movie. [Audience laughs.]
Kristen Bell: We love each other and a lot of us have kept in touch mostly via email because of busy schedules, so to get to spend 24 straight days with these knuckleheads has been a real treat. I'd like to ask a question: Did anyone have to change their panties during the film? [Points to Jason Dohring.]
On what inspired the Veronica Mars character:
Thomas: I was a high school journalism advisor so I advised the newspaper and the yearbook. When you advise a yearbook class, it's mostly girls in yearbook class...They're working before school and after school and on weekends. I became like wallpaper to them. They forgot I was there. I felt like for five years I got a crash course on how teenage girls think and talk.
To me, the best thing about Veronica, the thing that made that character special, in listening to those girls—it's a time period of being self-conscious...Other girls on television like Buffy or [Alias' Sydney Bristow], they can literally kick ass. I felt like Veronica's super power should be that she just doesn't give a shit.
Bell: They often say that a writer's protagonist is his alter ego and I think I speak for all of us when I say that Rob we're so grateful that your alter ego is a teenage girl.
Ryan Hansen[Steps up unprompted.]: For me, I felt like Dick chose me. [Audience laughs.]
On the inspiration for the movie's storyline:
Thomas: Over the years, I've had many versions of the movie in my head...As Kristen Bell grew older, so did they ideas in my head.
Bell[Cuts in.]: We get it. We get. We get it. [Audience laughs.]
Thomas: When it became a fan-funded movie—everyone up here has fans who love these characters on the show—I couldn't find a way to do an FBI one that rolled all these characters into the show, so I landed on the idea of Veronica going back to Neptune and putting the 10-year reunion as a set piece in the middle of it because I wanted to give the people what they wanted.
On revisiting the Veronica Mars character:
Bell: Veronica felt 100% present to me [during the filming the series]. It had been years since doing her and I was worried that I couldn't find her as easily...I was pleasantly surprised after the first 10 minutes of nervewrackingly working with this hunk o' hunk [Points to Jason Dohring.] and realizing that sometimes characters just exist inside your body and you can just pull them up again.
On how the father/daughter relationship between Keith and Veronica Mars has changed over the years:
Enrico Colantoni: Any parent will tell you, no matter how old they get, I'll look at her like she was this big. [Lowers his hand by his hip; Bell and Colantoni hug.]
On what happened to Backup the dog:
Thomas: I did the math on big dogs. It wasn't pretty. I did consider having a Backup photo that Veronica would look wistfully at. [Audience laughs.]
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