Thousands of fans are expected at Auckland Armageddon Expo this weekend. Photo / Beyond Reality Media.
Thousands of fans are expected at Auckland Armageddon Expo this weekend. Photo / Beyond Reality Media.
The Armageddon Expo returns to Auckland, featuring stars like Temuera Morrison, Terminator 2′s Robert Patrick and John Barrowman.
Video game competitions and a Pokemon Go activation are highlights at this year’s event.
Pokemon voice actor Veronica Taylor also among the names attending.
Fans of Doctor Who, The Terminator, Rick and Morty and Pokémon will be well served at this weekend’s Armageddon Expo in Auckland.
The long-running pop culture convention returns to the Auckland Showgrounds for the fourth ‘Wintergeddon’ expo, offering fans in the country’s biggest city another chance to enjoy all things superhero, sci-fi, video game and anime.
This year’s convention will see video game competitions, arcade zones, a Pokemon Go activation, Virtual Reality Minecraft, and new board game and tabletop playzones.
And, of course, stars from some of the world’s biggest franchises will be attending for panels and meet-and-greet opportunities with fans. The lineup this year includes local Star Wars legend Temuera Morrison, The Terminator 2 villain Robert Patrick, voice actors from Rick and Morty, Pokemon and X-Men 97, and actor John Barrowman, best known as Captain Jack Harkness from the Doctor Who and Torchwood franchises.
Barrowman has been a regular guest at Armageddon in the past, but is back this year for the first time since Covid.
Speaking to the Herald from a hotel room in Sydney, fresh off attending conventions in Australia, he said that he is inspired to travel here because few other actors are willing to make the long trip.
“I think that’s really sad and unfortunate because there’s such a great fan base down here. And, apart from the fact that it’s great for one’s ego, they’re thirsty for people to come and to get involved. And [the fans] want to see you, they want to express how they feel about you and how they feel about the show.”
John Barrowman is best known for his role in the Doctor Who universe. Photo / Supplied.
Barrowman first portrayed Harkness in 2005 on Doctor Who, and remains surprised that he is still attending conventions nearly 20 years later.
“I remember listening to people like [former Doctor Who actors] Tom Baker and John Pertwee and also Sylvester McCoy. They all kind of said, ‘It’s the gift that keeps on giving’ and they’re absolutely right.
“I knew I would be doing conventions, but I never thought it would be lasting as long as it has. But that’s my job to then continue to make it entertaining for people.
That has been the same for voice actor Veronica Taylor, best known to many anime fans as the original voice of Ash Ketchum in the English dub of the Pokemon anime.
She has been a part of the lineup in Armageddon Expos in other cities in recent years, but Taylor told the Herald that this is her first time back in Auckland after visiting in 2002.
“That was the first big trip I had taken, I guess Pokemon related, and it was such an incredible, warm welcome,” Taylor said, who started voicing Ketchum in 1998. She described getting that first invite as a “huge turning point” for her and her family to discover that there was this interest in her and the franchise from so far afield.
And while Taylor stopped voicing Ketchum after eight seasons, the longevity of the anime and the wider franchise has seen her continuously booked in conventions. Auckland is just the latest stop on her travels, having just come from another convention in Manila.
Pokemon voice actor Veronica Taylor. Photo / Supplied.
Both stars said that they enjoy being able to connect with fans and see their joy and relationship with their favourite franchises.
“When I first came here, there was a long line of children, and now all those children are much taller and there’s still that line of people,” Taylor said.
“Because then they were just connecting to something that they were in the middle of and now people are reconnecting to something that makes them just feel comfortable and, nostalgic is overused, but it brings you back to that time when everything was possible.”
Barrowman said that he will be bringing cosplay to the panels, with a multi-layered costume that he hopes will bring a different experience across the panels he’s doing.
“The thing that’s great about my panels is I feed off the audience in the sense that when the questions are asked to me, I fire back different answers. So no one panel of mine is the same.
“The Saturday panel usually is raucous and fun and everybody’s game for a good time.”
There is one thing though that Barrowman hopes people don’t ask him.
“I don’t like favourite questions. If you say what’s your favourite episode or what’s your favourite scene, I don’t actually remember all of them,” he joked.
“I always think about people when, if I had that opportunity, I’m standing at that microphone and you can ask me anything you want, right? I am not shy of a question. I will give you the answer or I’ve done enough interviews in my life and hosted enough shows. I know how to dodge what I don’t want to talk about. But I am game to answer really any question that is out there”
Taylor said that she is equally fine with answering anything – even if it’s about favourites.
“It’s not really the question so much as it’s the person asking it. To ask a question at a panel takes a lot of guts. So it’s really about being able to just be able to focus on the one person and give them the answer that they need. I could answer ‘Who’s your favourite Pokemon?’ 10 times in the same panel, and it could be different each time, even with the same answer.”
John Barrowman and Veronica Taylor will be at Armageddon’s Wintergeddon expo at the Auckland Showgrounds, which kicks off tonight and runs until June 16.
