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"Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" feels like a miracle. It's a "Star Trek" series in the age of streaming that not only appeals to fans of the franchise, but has caused a whole new generation of fans to fall in love with the adventures of the USS Enterprise. The series is both a delightful throwback and something new, mixing the things that made "The Original Series" shine with bigger budgets, sharper special effects, and a perfectly picked cast. The first season of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" is potentially the best first season of any series in the franchise, with the highest score of them all on Rotten Tomatoes, and it already has a rabid fanbase, myself included. It almost seems like magic, bringing characters from the 1960s television series back to life with new actors and new stories set before the show that started it all, but it turns out that sometimes magic starts with a very simple idea. 

The new series was honored recently with a special award from the Hollywood Critics Association, and executive producer and co-showrunner Henry Alonso Myers was on hand to accept the award. He shared some details about how the "Strange New Worlds" team managed to show their love and respect to the rest of the franchise without becoming pure fan-service or nostalgia-bait. 

'What If We Just Did Star Trek?'

"Strange New Worlds" took home the HCA Legacy award for being a "respectful tribute to the past while modernizing [the franchise] in a fun and meaningful way," and Myers shared the origins of the series and the importance of staying true to "Star Trek" creator Gene Rodenberry's vision:

"This award belongs to all of them, but it also belongs to Gene Roddenberry because it's his legacy that this award is really all about, as well as the legacy of the many talented people who worked with him, like Nichelle Nichols, who we lost just a couple of weeks ago. In the first pitch document that we sent to the network ... we opened with a question asking, 'What if we just did "Star Trek?"' And they said, 'Okay.' Every day in the writers' room, we try to imagine how would Gene Roddenberry and his team make 'The Original Series' if they were doing it today? They would use state-of-the-art visual effects. They would ask questions that deal with the politics of today. They would approach character thoughtfully like we expect from the best dramas. But most importantly, they would tell stories about the future that give us hope that there will be a future like this to look forward to."

While "What if we just did 'Star Trek'?" doesn't seem that groundbreaking, it's actually an incredible return to form for the franchise. The other streaming shows are all fairly removed from "The Original Series," whether it's the constant chaos and catastrophe of "Star Trek: Discovery" or the cartoon antics of "Star Trek: Lower Decks." "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" is optimistic. It's earnest. The episodes are almost entirely self-contained, moving away from the serialization that's become the norm in the era of binge-watching. It feels like "Star Trek."

The Star Trek We Need Right Now

When "Star Trek: The Original Series" debuted in 1966, American society was in upheaval. Between the violent clashes in response to the Civil Rights movement, the horrors of the Vietnam War, and the fallout of the paranoid McCarthyism of the 1950s, things looked pretty bleak. The adventures of Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) and the crew of the starship Enterprise were not only an escape from the brutality of reality, but they were a way for people to process some of the hardest parts of life through the stories. "Star Trek" has always been heavy on allegory and progressive messaging, and if there was ever a time when we needed a "Star Trek" that promotes radical empathy and Roddenberry's idealism, it's now. 

Thank goodness for Myers and the rest of the "Strange New Worlds" team for making the old new again in a way that actually matters. It just goes to show that sometimes simpler is just better. 

"Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" season 1 is streaming on Paramount+. 

Read this next: Every Star Trek Show And Movie In Chronological Order

The post The Pitch for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Was a Thing of Simple Beauty appeared first on /Film.

Major spoilers for the final episode of "Better Call Saul" follow.

This might be a controversial opinion, but the series finale of "Breaking Bad," appropriately titled "Felina," has one major flaw. While it certainly gave closure to the story of Walter White (Bryan Cranston), egregious fanservice helped pave that way. The involvement of Badger (Matt Jones) and Skinny Pete (Charles Baker) in his final act of revenge against the Schwartzs (Adam Godley and Jessica Hecht) always felt a bit contrived, like the point of the scene was to shoehorn in these characters first in order to clumsily tie up loose ends. It's a bit of a tedious scene in an episode that is otherwise wonderfully paced and executed.

"Better Call Saul's" finale, "Saul Gone," did have its fair share of cameos and surprise appearances, but it didn't fall into that same fanservice trap as "Felina" did. The appearances of both expected and unexpected characters felt more organic than any other cameo in both the original series and its law-based spinoff because they felt like they stood for something deeper. They served their unique purposes that ultimately led to the final decision Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk) makes, rather than just something fans of both series can point at on their television screens. Without these appearances, it is likely that the series could have ended on a very different note.

Mike And Jimmy's Individual Descent Into Crime

In the opening scene of "Saul Gone," viewers get a flashback to the events of the season five episode, "Bagman," where Jimmy is tasked with transporting $7 million from the desert back to bail Lalo Salamanca (Tony Dalton) out of jail. Along on this journey is Mike (Jonathan Banks), who he rests with when the duo finds a well of water.

As they sit in the New Mexico heat, Jimmy asks Mike what he would do with a time machine. It's a question that seems out of place at first but makes more sense when you hear what the older man has to say. He explains that he would go back to the year 1984, as that was the year he took his first bribe. While he doesn't say what he'd do, it's more than likely that Mike would want to reverse that decision and not take it at all. He also explains that he'd go forward in time "to check up on some people," presumably meaning his daughter-in-law Stacey (Kerry Condon) and his granddaughter Kaylee (Faith Healey, Abigail Zoe Lewis, and Juliet Donenfeld).

This question and Mike's subsequent answers showcase the former police officer as someone who doesn't want to be doing what he's doing. He likely took the bribe while on the force, sending him down a rabbit hole of further crimes before eventually ending up where he was at that point. This isn't too dissimilar to how Jimmy ended up in the hands of the cartel, showcasing how both men wish they could have avoided all of this altogether.

Marie And The Consequences Of Jimmy's Actions

Unfortunately, Jimmy did not ignore the signs that he was heading toward a dangerous path. Instead, he persisted down this path until there was utter destruction in his wake. One of those whose lives he was destroyed, albeit indirectly, was Marie Schrader (Betsy Brandt), the widow of DEA agent and brewmaster extraordinaire Mike Schrader (Dean Norris).

She made a significant appearance during Jimmy's pre-trial negotiations, starting off with the damning sentence "they told me they found you in the dumpster." She then described how much his selfish actions ruined the lives of herself and so many others. The kicker is that she isn't wrong; while he didn't directly kill Hank, he certainly had no problem covering it up and pretending like it was a noble thing to do. His complacency makes him just as culpable for the murders of Hank and his partner, Steven Gomez (Steven Michael Quezada). Considering that Walter is now dead and his lab partner, Jesse (Aaron Paul), is on the run, the next logical person to punish is Jimmy.

At the end of the day, Jimmy knows that he has never always been a good person. He has done some truly horrible things, and Marie symbolizes everyone that he has ever hurt along the way. She represents all of the people he has scammed over the years and the lives that were lost because he helped to progress the Heisenberg operation.

Walter And What Jimmy Could Become

Let's make this very clear; Walter White is an evil, irredeemable man. While he's developed this reputation as a male character worshipped by dudebros, there is no denying that he deserved almost every awful thing that happened to him throughout "Breaking Bad." He only cared about himself and not really about his family or business partners.

This is exactly why that flashback to after the events of "Ozymandias" from the fifth season of "Breaking Bad" was so important. In their safe house, Jimmy asks Walter the same question he asked Mike; what would you do with a time machine? Walter's first response is to berate him for asking, saying that time travel is a logistical and scientific fallacy that is impossible to achieve. However, when Jimmy rephrases the question so that, theoretically, it could be possible, the former science teacher says that he would get some sort of revenge on the Schwartzs (Adam Godley and Jessica Hecht) for forcing him out of Gray Matter, the company he helped create with them. He then goes back to berating Jimmy when he says that he should've told the lawyer so that a lawsuit of some kind could be filed.

The further Jimmy went without any real consequences, the more selfish and disconnected from humanity he became. Unlike Walter, he knew that he couldn't be able to live with himself knowing about all the awful things he had done. If Jimmy hadn't run away and eventually confessed his crimes in that courtroom, he could have easily become distant, cold, and evil like Walter did.

Chuck And What Jimmy Left Behind

Finally, the most heartbreaking cameo of them all, as well as the most resonant, is where the time machine motif came from. In a scene set before any of the events of "Better Call Saul," Jimmy is seen visiting his brother, Chuck (Michael McKean), and dropping off groceries. As many fans of the show know, he wasn't supportive of his younger brother's decision to go into law, especially given his history as a scam artist.

This was something reiterated to Jimmy during this flashback, albeit a bit kinder than the sentiments would eventually become. Chuck tells his brother that it is more than fine if he decides that law isn't something he wants to do. He can go back and change his path any time he wants, and he wouldn't be upset with him. Jimmy maintains that he genuinely does want to be a lawyer, but understands what Chuck is trying to tell him, presumably keeping it in the back of his mind for the duration of the series. As he leaves his brother's house, we see that a copy of H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine," which was seen in his own home at the beginning of season six, lays on Chuck's dining room table.

Jimmy regrets everything that he put Chuck through, even if he had his own personal flaws to deal with. While on the stand at his arrangement, he confesses that his actions inadvertently led him to commit suicide. Chuck is the most concrete symbol of the life that Jimmy used to live, a successful and loving life where he genuinely was trying to be a good person. In order to try and achieve that life again, he confessed to everything on that stand, the EXIT sign buzzing all the while.

Read this next: 14 Most Memorable Kim Wexler Moments In Better Call Saul

The post The Better Call Saul Finale Featured the Show's Most Effective Cameos appeared first on /Film.

The teen sex comedy craze kicked into overdrive in the spring of 1982 when Bob Clark's semi-autobiographical raunch-fest "Porky's" stunned the industry by racking up $105 million for distributor 20th Century Fox at the U.S. box office. The nation's critics shredded it, but the film's target audience didn't care. They identified with the characters' unabashedly juvenile antics, and kept going back for more.

You'd think rival studios, which rushed their own hormonally addled high-school comedies into production, would've been fine with this critical/commercial trade-off, but Universal had serious misgivings about their August 1982 release, "Fast Times at Ridgemont High." In fact, according to director Amy Heckerling and star Judge Reinhold, they nearly shelved it.

Too Hot For Theatrical?

In a 40th anniversary article for The Hollywood Reporter, Reinhold, who plays the wincingly overconfident Ridgemont senior Brad Hamilton, alleges that executive resistance to the material was fierce. "We were really heartsick," he says, "Because somebody high up said, 'This is pornography, and there's no way that Universal's going to release this movie.'"

While the film does not lack for horned-up hijinks (indeed, Reinhnold's Hamilton is involved in one of the most embarrassing bathroom walk-ins in film history), it is largely a grounded account of a chaotic year at a Southern California high school (as initially chronicled by screenwriter Cameron Crowe in his book of the same name). Heckerling, who made her feature filmmaking debut on "Fast Times," was equally dismayed by Universal's lack of confidence. As she tells THR:

"They were going to put it on the shelf because they didn't see how it would make any money. They decided they would just open it in a few theaters on the West Coast, and they did that, and people kept coming back and knew all the dialogue. So then they quickly put it out in the rest of the country. There was no advertising beforehand — I was bummed out."

The Uncomfortable Truth Of Being A Teenager

Though the film never played on more than 713 screens (as opposed to "Porky's," which opened on over 1,000 screens and held onto them for three months), "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" was a constant presence in the top five of the U.S. box office until mid-October. Its final gross of $27 million qualified it as a hit relative to cost, and the film's fandom exploded once it hit the home entertainment market.

Most importantly, Heckerling's movie still speaks to the vicissitudes of being a teenager in America, where it feels like your entire future hinges on how well you do in school and who you date. And then there are the unseen calamities, which are depicted with a brutal honesty that is rare for this genre. It wouldn't surprise me if it was the latter quality that turned off Universal executives. "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" allows real life to crash the party on occasion, which is why it is in many ways the anti-"Porky's."

Read this next: The 15 Best '80s Comedies Ranked

The post Fast Times At Ridgemont High Was Almost Scrapped By Execs For Being Pornographic appeared first on /Film.

Feast on this, Motherfucker

[Update: Literal minutes after this story went live, Saber Interactive officially revealed that Mia Allen will arrive in Evil Dead: The Game next month as part of the season one DLC pass.]

Very exciting news for fans of Evil Dead: The Game, as developer Saber Interactive appears to be teasing the arrival of a brand new DLC character. And it appears to be none of than Mia Allen, the gore-covered, deadite-smashing, skin-peeling star of the stellar 2013 reboot of Sam Raimi's 1981 horror classic.

Helmed and co-written by Fede Álvarez in his directorial debut, Evil Dead reimagines the unholy tale of the absolute nightmare that besieges a group of friends staying at an isolated log cabin. With the goal of supporting Mia as she attempts to go "cold turkey" on her heroin addiction, the group instead finds themselves terrorized by an ancient evil as utterly malevolent as it is completely unstoppable.

https://twitter.com/EvilDeadTheGame/status/1559233389097541633?s=20&t=fXvnL1dA8dOAzbOAC6hiuw

Mia, in particular, becomes the target of the demonic entities, and soon finds herself possessed by its will, leading her own friends to horrifying ends. While on paper "Evil Dead Remake" sounds like a disaster waiting to happen, Álvarez's film surprised many fans with its brilliantly vulgar photography, shameless, extreme violence, and suffocating sense of persistent hopelessness. Actor Jane Levy also put herself through the wringer playing the tortured Mia, in one of those leave-nothing-on-the-table performances that don't get quite the industry acclaim they deserve "because horror movie."

Evil Dead: The Game is an asymmetrical multiplayer title that pits a squad of heroes — pulled from various films across the series — against a single player controlling the forces of the demonic Kandarian army, unleashed once again from The Book of The Dead. Launching back in June, Saber Interactive has since updated the title with new content pulled from 1992's Army of Darkness. Hopefully, the next update will not only include Mia, but perhaps some representations of the demons featured in the 2013 release.

Ash and Mia... together at last... battling side by side. While we are still left waiting for such an occurrence within a cinematic realm, I will quite gladly take it in the digital one.

Evil Dead: The Game is available now on PlayStation, PC, and Xbox platforms. A Nintendo Switch edition is in the works, though updates on this port have been quiet for some time now.

The post Mia Allen, blood splattered star of the 2013 movie, is coming to Evil Dead: The Game appeared first on Destructoid.

Recent studies find all rainwater may be unsafe to drink, according to the latest health advisories for levels of PFAS, also known as "forever chemicals."

This is Backlog Roulette, a series in which I randomly pick an unplayed game from my backlog and play it. This particular entry is also part of the History Lessons series. As always, you may click on images to view larger versions.

About a year ago, I picked an unplayed game at random from my terrifyingly organized spreadsheet containing all the games I own. The random number generators selected Wild Metal Country, an oddity from 1999 that I found surprisingly calming for a game about tank battles. Now, I decided to roll the digital dice again, officially making Backlog Roulette a series of sorts. But this time the dice popped up a far more recognizable game: The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition. I acquired this some time ago, intending to write a History Lessons post about it eventually, so… here it is.

I missed a lot of the classic adventure games as a kid. I wrote a bit about the history of the genre in my first post about Broken Age, so I won’t repeat all that here. In that post, I discussed the two biggest developers of adventure games in the 1980s and 1990s: Sierra and LucasArts. But I didn’t say much about the different styles of games they made. I mostly encountered Sierra games as a kid, so I was familiar with their eagerness to spring traps on the player. Making the wrong move in a Sierra game typically resulted in a swift death, followed by reloading a saved game. There was actually a kind of perverse pleasure in these moments, however, since deaths often came with unique animations, and players tended to want to see them all. Sure, I would try to solve the puzzles and move the game forward. But I’d also poke around at dangerous things on purpose just to see what would happen.

Detractors, however, bemoaned the capricious nature of Sierra games, and they had a point. It was often possible to create unwinnable situations by losing important items or missing key clues along the way, so it’s not a surprise that I never managed to finish any of the Sierra games I played. Rivals LucasArts took a different approach with their games, and their style is more fondly remembered and most often seen in adventure games released today. LucasArts games never put players into situations they could not recover from, letting them fail puzzle solutions as many times as needed as they worked out what to do. This does not mean their games were easier, necessarily, but they certainly felt more fair. They also tended to be quite funny, in contrast to Sierra games which usually played things straight.

The Secret of Monkey Island, released by LucasArts in 1990, was designed by Ron Gilbert, along with Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman, and is a perfect example of the LucasArts school. It’s a beloved title that spawned an enduring series, and in fact Ron Gilbert recently announced he is developing a new Monkey Island game, spurring much excitement among fans (and also some horrible backlash, because people are awful). The games are all set in the Caribbean during the Age of Sail, and put players in the shoes of Guybrush Threepwood, a hapless young man who is really very excited about becoming a pirate. The series offers a silly and irreverent version of this era, poking fun at tropes and never taking things too seriously. Which goes a long way towards avoiding thorny issues of colonialism.

I should stress that I actually played the Special Edition of The Secret of Monkey Island, which appeared in 2009. This is an interesting beast, featuring completely redone high resolution artwork, musical score, voice acting (there were no voices in the 1990 original), and a new user interface. Yet, with the press of a key, players can switch to the classic version of the game, with its original art, MIDI music, and classic interface. Before playing, I was skeptical as to how faithful this classic version could be, given it can seamlessly transition to the new version at any time. But I was pleasantly surprised to find that it really did seem to be the original game, in all its glory, running perfectly. Excellent.

If you want to know how the new art and voice acting is, I can’t tell you, because I didn’t use them. I was interested in the history of the game, so I stuck to the original version throughout. The Secret of Monkey Island runs on LucasArts’ now legendary SCUMM engine, originally developed for Maniac Mansion (that’s what the “MM” stands for at the end) but used for many of their games, including Loom and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. The early SCUMM games, including The Secret of Monkey Island, tended to feature a set of clickable verbs on the screen that could then be used to interact with the world. For example, if players want to open a door, they can click on the “open” verb, then click on the door in question. Things work similarly for pushing or pulling things, or talking to people. There are nine verbs in total, making for more options than I was used to. Later adventure games tended to remove the on-screen verbs so the scene could fill the entire screen, and use context-sensitive actions or a summonable interaction wheel or similar system to let players choose whether they wanted to look at something versus kick it, or whatever. These never had nine interaction options, though. Maybe four or five, tops.

To be honest, for most of The Secret of Monkey Island, I was using just a subset of the verbs too. “Walk”, “Look at” and “Pick up” saw the most use, but “Talk to” and “Give” got some love as well. “Push”, “Pull”, “Open” and “Close” felt much more specialized, but ended up being key for certain puzzles just when I least suspected it. Adventure games are known for their “adventure game logic” which requires weird lateral thinking and often leads to bizarre solutions. This could really hamper some games; see for example the infamous cat hair mustache puzzle from Gabriel Knight 3. That’s a Sierra game, though, aiming to be more of a supernatural thriller but shooting itself in the foot with absurd puzzles. In LucasArts games, adventure game logic is far more fitting, because the games are already silly. Of course a puzzle solution is actually just a pun, that’s the joke. Perhaps I need a certain item, but can’t find it anywhere. Then I realize I have something else I could use instead, not because it actually makes sense, but because it’s vaguely similar in some meaningless way. It’s just stupid enough to work.

To be fair, a lot of puzzles in The Secret of Monkey Island make actual sense. But those that don’t… still kind of make sense, given the weird world of the game. Guybrush doesn’t start his adventure on Monkey Island, but rather on Mêlée Island; both, however, are always written with a trademark symbol. His wide eyed enthusiasm for the trappings of piracy is particularly amusing given that Mêlée Island is very focused on tourism, with cheap trinkets for sale everywhere, and most inhabitants quite jaded about the whole piracy thing. It’s the kind of place where you have to make reservations to get into a looting, or obtain a pirate ship by making a deal at Stan’s Previously Owned Vessels. One key item Guybrush finds is a rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle, and when I tried to give it to people I discovered that everyone already had one. Mass produced garbage, apparently.

Generally, it’s this satirical tone that permeates everything about The Secret of Monkey Island. The game is rarely laugh out loud funny, but it did make me smile a lot. Stan’s exaggerated gesticulating as tries his best to sell Guybrush a ship he can’t afford is a highlight, but nearly every conversation is clever and well written. When Guybrush falls hard for Elaine Marley, the governor of Mêlée Island, I feared a sexist depiction of her character, as was so common for games at the time (and, sadly, still today). But I was pleasantly surprised in this regard. The depiction of an aboriginal tribe on Monkey Island is more problematic, but the fact that they, too, are mostly worried about how to sell junk to tourists is amusing. I suspect that fans nostalgic for the classic adventure game days miss this humor and silliness as much as anything else.

I played The Secret of Monkey Island once before, but didn’t get very far. Or so I thought at the time. Recognizing the place where I got stuck back then, I realized I’d made it about halfway through the game. Up to that point, I’d been able to work out solutions myself and felt great doing it (then and now). On Mêlée Island, Guybrush has several clear objectives that can be pursued independently, so there are other things to do if players are stumped at a specific point. I found myself making progress across all three, with several “aha!” moments strewn in there. My only real complaint about this section is that it takes a while to travel around the island, so I’d sometimes waste a bit of time testing an idea that didn’t work, before having to trudge back to town again.

On Monkey Island, however, things get more confusing. Both islands feature zoomed out birds eye view maps that let Guybrush travel between various points of interest, but only on Monkey Island did I actually miss a few of these locations completely. This despite the fact that they are highlighted when moving the mouse cursor over them, and my scouring each map screen for hot spots. In addition, goals are less clear, and I eventually got stuck in the worst possible way: not only unsure of how to solve certain puzzles, but not knowing what I was even supposed to be doing in general. Getting stuck like this is something that doesn’t really happen in games anymore. With so many games available now, it’s far too easy to just start playing something else and abandon a game when stuck, so developers strive to ensure players always know what to do next. That can lead to some obnoxious hand-holding, up to and including on-screen arrows literally pointing out where to go, and has been a source of annoyance for players who prefer to figure out some things themselves.

But the truth is that both games and players have changed. My massive backlog of unplayed games, which inspired this series, is testament to the fact that I have more games to play than I have time to play them, but the opposite was true in 1990. With far fewer games available, every one was precious, and I would have spent a lot time just wandering around Monkey Island and poking at things, slowly working out how to proceed. These classic adventures were, in some sense, designed around getting stuck. It was expected. It sets the desired slow pacing. Today, of course, it’s all too easy to just look up the solutions online, so that experience of semi-aimless experimentation is lost. When I finally looked up a walkthrough, I intended to just get the first hint I needed, and then go back to solving things myself. But I found it was a slippery slope that had me looking up solutions again every time I hit a snag. I managed to go back to my own devices for the finale of the game, but for much of the third act I was using the walkthrough too often.

Sometimes I felt I was justified, like when I’d actually thought of the correct solution but didn’t realize some unnecessarily specific way it must be executed. Other times, however, I found the game to be surprisingly adaptable. There are several puzzles with multiple solutions, something I didn’t even realize until I looked at earlier sections of the walkthrough and noticed that the solutions it gave were not the same as the ones I’d come up with myself. I wish that was true of more of the puzzles, because there are a few that are a bit too obtuse or fiddly. But overall, I really enjoyed The Secret of Monkey Island. I’m not sure I’ve ever played another game with quite the same tone. It’s silly but not wacky, with enough grounding to make players care about the characters even as they navigate ridiculous situations. It’s easy to see why it’s so beloved.

I should probably try the rest of the series at some point, too. The sequel, Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge, was also made by Ron Gilbert and the same core team (and received Special Edition treatment along with this one), but later entries saw new development teams take the helm. While fans seem to like those games too, there’s a lot of excitement over Ron Gilbert’s upcoming entry, which will be a direct sequel to Monkey Island 2. I’d like to say that I’ll play the rest in time for the new one, but honestly I don’t know when I’ll get to these. But they’re in my (very big) list of games to play now, at least.

If you want to try The Secret of Monkey Island yourself, the Special Edition is definitely the way to go. It’s sold from most digital storefronts, including GOG which is where I got it. I feel like I should have some nautical phrase about hoisting sails or something here to end this post, but I can’t think of one. Some pirate speak, maybe? Avast, ye scurvy dogs? Yarrr? Eh, close enough kid, you’ll be fine.

Whatever happened to the erotic thriller? There’s something of a bell curve to the distribution of the sexy programmer, rising with the relaxing of the production code in the late 1960s, topping out in the ‘80s with prestige fare like Fatal Attraction, and tailing off by the mid-2000s, and the dominance of franchise…

Read more...

Dan Trachtenberg's "Prey" is not only the best-reviewed "Predator" film on Rotten Tomatoes, but in three days of its release gained more viewer hours than any Hulu television or movie to date. That's an incredible feat for a sci-fi thriller and proof that horror fans are craving more Indigenous-made films. Producer Jhane Myers, a member of the Comanche and Blackfeet Nations, anchors the film's setting, characters, and perspective to craft the first-ever fully Nʉmʉnʉʉ (Comanche language) dubbed film. 

In "Prey," the young hunter Naru (Amber Midthunder) embarks on Kuhtaamia, a hero's rite of passage, when a Predator lands on Earth lands on Earth for the first time to hunt. Of course, a bloody battle of brawn and wits ensues. When asked about how she approached bringing a film set 300 years ago on Comanche land to life, Myers told Bloody Disgusting, "I was excited because it dealt with my culture. I was born in Comanche land, with 19,000 other Comanches ... It wasn't hard for me because I could bring that authenticity. I could reach back out to my community. Because this is set 300 years back, we needed some older words. I would call my grandpas. They're not my blood grandpas but my traditional grandpas ... One guy was like, 'I'm outside fixing my mailbox.' I said, 'Well, how do you say this? What did your grandpa call this?'" 

In celebration of this critically-acclaimed film, here's a list of Indigenous-crafted and Indigenous-starring movies that use sci-fi elements to tell a moving story.

Night Raiders

Executive produced by Taika Waititi, "Night Raiders" tells a moving and brutal mother-daughter story that tackles the intergenerational trauma of Indigenous displacement through a sci-fi lens. In the war-torn world of 2043, children are not safe. Once the government locates a child — thanks to its unending drone surveillance — they are brought into a state-run institution called the Academy. Militant teachers brainwash children to become soldiers, forcing them to leave behind their families' customs, religion, language, and names. Despite Niska's (Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers) relentless protection of her daughter, Waseese (Brooklyn Letexier-Hart), the government still manages to kidnap her. The film follows Niska's quest to save her daughter. She joins a group called the Night Raiders, who vow to bring every Cree child back to their community and in turn, discover the hopeful power of kinship.

Saskatchewan-born, Cree-Métis filmmaker Danis Goulet uses her film in part to depict the horror of Canada's residential school system that ran from the 1880s through the 1990s, splintering families, abusing children, and destroying Indigenous cultures in its wake. However, like "Prey," this dystopic film lands on an optimistic note. Naru and Niska are saved by their culture. Their passed-down knowledge of medicinal practices, tracking, and access to their community not only makes survival possible but showcases them outwitting predatory forces that underestimated their collective power. 

If you or someone you know may be the victim of child abuse, please contact the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child (1-800-422-4453) or contact their live chat services.

The Rocket Boy

Diné filmmaker Donavan Seschillie's short film "The Rocket Boy" premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2011. Shot on a $600 budget, this story focuses on a young First Nations boy named Kalvin who dreams of building a spaceship in hopes it'll help him find his father. At the start of this quietly moving short, Kalvin's father leaves him. While the audience doesn't know why his father left, it seems related to fiscal pressure. In Kalvin's father's words, "I can't give you the life you deserve." While Seschillie's work is full of melancholy, there's a hopeful determination in Kalvin's belief in reconnection that pulls at the heartstrings. Although Kalvin's mother begs him to stop looking for his father, he continues his work. Set to a somber score, it's hard not to root for Kalvin's dream to become reality.

Like "Prey," this short film focuses on the perspective of a younger Indigenous character. Kalvin, like Naru, believes in his convictions, even if his elder discourages him as Akura tries to dissuade Naru from her hunting adventures. The two are aware of the risk (even if fighting an alien isn't quite the same as building a spaceship), but they let their imaginations take the wheel and create the change they want to see in their lives.

File Under Miscellaneous

Written, directed, and edited by Mi'kmaq filmmaker Jeff Barnaby (who also composed the score), "File Under Miscellaneous" is a harrowing short sci-fi film about the horrors of Indigenous assimilation into settler-colonizer culture. Told from the perspective of a Mi'kmaq man, the story follows his decision to rid himself of his skin and tongue to fit into an all-white society. 

However, the shedding of skin isn't just a metaphor for how it feels to have one's culture stripped away to gain access to things like systemic support. The audience also sees flayed skin skinned hanging at the doctor's office. In this hellscape of a metropolis, undergoing this procedure is one of the only ways left for Indigenous people to survive (Choice is a relative term when global systems are built to exclude Indigenous cultures). This film chillingly echoes the real-world violence, displacement, and economic hardships forced on Indigenous cultures in North America. For more information, read Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Call to Action.

While "Prey" mostly focuses on Naru's battle against the Predator, it also explores similar themes of Indigenous survival among colonizers. Naru almost dies at the hands of French fur traders due to their belief that she and her people are worth less than theirs. She's locked in a cage and treated like an animal because of her culture. "File Under Miscellaneous" shows this idea through the lens of dystopic body horror and is an equally cautionary tale. In a future in which everyone assimilates, all is pale and lifeless.

Delivery From Earth

Similar to "Prey," "Delivery From Earth" isn't a film directed or written by an Indigenous creator. Nevertheless, both productions rely heavily on Indigenous producers to deepen their connections to the cultures they depict. Produced by filmmaker George Burdeau of the Blackfeet Nation, "Delivery From Earth" is set in the Navajo-Diné Nation and has a primarily Diné cast. The short film is a sweet tale about a young Diné boy who wants to see footage of his mother giving birth to Mars' first baby with his former-physicist grandpa. Notably, "Delivery From Earth" has a cameo from "Dark Winds" star Ryan Begay, as the film was shot in his hometown.

What works best about this short film is how it embraces a sense of wonder about what the future can hold for Indigenous cultures. Like all great sci-fi, "Delivery From Earth" asks the viewer to embrace radical imagination. What have humans learned about colonizing thus far? How would that translate to the skies? How would humanity change if travel to Mars was a reality? The film doesn't delve too deeply into these questions, but it provides an intriguing launch pad for what the next Indigenous short film tackles.

The 6th World

Written and directed by Diné filmmaker Nanobah Becker, "The 6th World" takes place in a distant future where the colonization of Mars is possible. Diné musician Jeneda Benally portrays Tazbah Redhouse, identified in the film as Navajo, an astronaut helping to grow corn aboard a spaceship. To arrive on Mars without running out of air, the ship must convert corn into oxygen. Tazbah's shipmate, Dr. Smith (Luis Antonio Aldana), chooses to use genetically modified corn instead of her nation's corn since he believes his GMO corn is superior. Corn in Diné culture is sacred, as it symbolically represents life. Diné ancestors often used corn grinding and cooking with corn as community gatherings to connect, sing, and support one another. In that light, rejecting the Diné corn offering in the film holds a lot of metaphorical weight, showcasing how the Diné culture and their ancestral knowledge of tending crops are dismissed even in a distant sci-fi future.

Becker's work brings to mind the moments in "Prey" in which we see Naru making medicinal balms on the fly. The "Predator" film does a great job of subtly showing how Naru uses a variety of herbs, flowers, and plants to craft treatments that can stem heavy bleeding, sedate, and ease those in pain. Calling direct to that skill set is important in keeping the history of these practices alive.

Biidaaban (The Dawn Comes)

Directed by Métis animator and filmmaker Amanda Strong, "Biidaaban" is a beautiful stop-motion animated short film that spans time to reimagine Leanne Betasamosake Simpson's writing. Seemingly, this short blends more dreamy fantasy into its story than sci-fi. "Biidaaban" follows a non-binary Anishinaabe artist of the same name, living in Ontario. During the dark of night, they travel to reclaim the ceremonial ritual of harvesting sap from maple trees. They're helped by a 10,000-year-old shapeshifter named Sabe, a creature in Indigenous oral history linked to living truthfully. Sadly, the trees that belonged to their ancestors are now all on private property, so they have to proceed secretly. Lush, masterfully detailed, and visually stirring, "Biidaaban" is gorgeous.

As in "Prey," "Biidaaban" finds help in animal companionship. This short also deepens the exploration of displacement, something "Prey" doesn't address too much. The reason why Naru is scouting the land in "Prey" is to report back where it's safe to hunt, forage, and travel. The Comanche nation in the film is relatively stable, but the viewer knows what happens next in history. Since "Biidaaban" is set in the present day, the film is able to explore current pressures about Indigenous people's lack of land access and how that affects their connection to identity, ancestors, spirits, and cultural rituals.

Hoverboard

Before she directed episodes of "Reservation Dogs" and "Rutherford Falls," Diné filmmaker Sydney Freeland crafted "Hoverboard," a sweet, all-ages short film about a young girl named Max and her love of "Back to the Future Part II." After being told by her father (Ryan Begay) that she can't watch the comedy sci-fi film again because she's watched it too many times, Max decides she'll craft her own hoverboard. However, it proves to be more difficult than it looks, so instead, she sets her sights on making a DeLorean time machine for her stuffed animal. The short is as delightful as its premise sounds and is a ton of fun to watch.

A lot of the films on this list depict heavy issues, but it feels equally important to draw attention to Indigenous-made family-friendly comedies, too. Although brief, this short is a great example of Freeland's eye for comedic storytelling. While there aren't any plans for a "Hoverboard" full-length film, fans of her work can next watch her upcoming film "Rez Ball," which will follow a Native American high school basketball team's underdog story.

Parallel Minds

Directed by Métis filmmaker Benjamin Ross Hayden, "Parallel Minds" is more of a hard and grimy sci-fi tale than others on this list. "Prey" star Michelle Thrush portrays Elise, a scientist working on a technology called Red Eye that will help people store and recall memories. However, she dies right before a big breakthrough in her work. Her mentee, Margo Elson (Tommie-Amber Pirie), thinks something nefarious happened, so she investigates the mysterious death with the help of detective Thomas Elliot (Greg Bryk). Traumatic memories weave their way throughout the story as the mystery-thriller aspects give way eventually to a dangerous cyber-monster attack. Although the film juggles a lot of storylines, its ambition doesn't take away from its compelling concepts.

"Prey" fans craving more monster attacks will likely enjoy the film's A.I. plotline that ends up bringing psychic powers into the mix as well. This is one of those films that would translate better to a miniseries or television series format, but it's still an enjoyable watch overall.

Wakening

Before Saskatchewan-born and Cree-Métis filmmaker Danis Goulet delved into the sci-fi world of "Night Raiders," she directed a fantastical short film about Canada's near-future dystopia that reimagines one of Cree's cultural heroes, Weesageechak. "Wakening" envisions a war-torn era in which militant occupiers have taken over and destroyed the land. "Resident Alien" and "Reservoir Dogs" star Sarah Podemski portrays a Cree warrior named Wesakechak, a shape-shifter destined to confront the Weetigo. Wesakechak quests through the war zone to find the Weetigo (Gail Maurice), asking the monster to help her fight the occupiers. 

While "Prey" shows Naru fighting off an alien that's stalking her people's land, there's something more moving about seeing an Indigenous woman fighting alongside a Cree creature and against an enemy that embodies the Cree's historically painful past with Canada. Although Goulet's short reaches a satisfying end, it's hard not to wonder what Goulet's film could have looked like on a feature scale with the financial support of a major studio like "Prey" had.

Not only does this film put Cree cultural characters at the forefront, but it also taps into a theme that plays across all the films on this list. Wesakechak tells the Weetigo that it's no longer feared, as it's forgotten. Her unleashing it onto the world symbolically brings hope that Indigenous cultures will persist through the power of stories like these. 

The Path Without End

Something surprising about "Prey" is that there weren't any scenes between Naru and her mother Aruka (Michelle Thrush) telling stories to one another. As "Biidaaban" director Amanda Strong says best, "Our oral histories are our truths." Stories are a way to keep the traditions, lessons, and cultures of the Indigenous alive — despite centuries of displacement, genocide, and white oppression.

"The Path Without End" uses animation, textiles, and music to share the Anishinaabe's oral stories of the Moon People. Directed by Irish-Anishinaabe-Métis filmmaker Elizabeth Aileen LaPensée with music by Cree cellist Cris Derksen, the short film follows the Moon People's trip to Earth from the stars. 

Inspired by Indigenousfuturism, LaPensée uses this work to reexamine the stories told about Indigenous ancestors. "As much as 'The Path' is about the traditional stories, it is also about acknowledging Truth and history by tracing stories that peoples traveled back and forth between what we now call the Americas and Europe," says LaPensée. "We often limit ourselves and discredit our ancestors by thinking they didn't possibly have the technology to travel when in fact they did have canoes and other forms of ships. To me, this is how we represent ourselves in steampunk, which is otherwise a very colonialist genre that stems from the Victorian mindset. We do and did have technology, but since we use(d) biodegradable materials, and thus 'evidence has faded with nature."

Rhymes For Young Ghouls

Miꞌkmaq filmmaker Jeff Barnaby's "Rhymes for Young Ghouls" opens in 1969, focusing on a financially struggling Miꞌkmaq family living on the Red Crow Reservation. The film's setting, introduction, and plot point to the real-life economic hardships that the Miꞌkmaq people dealt with at this time. In 1969, Canada passed the White Paper policy (an act Indigenous cultures never agreed to), which argued it's the "right of Indian people to [have] full and equal participation in the cultural, social, economic and political life of Canada." However, this "equal" act also meant taking away Canada's responsibility to fulfill previously promised financial support to Indigenous nations, privatizing reservation land, and stripping away Indigenous sovereignty. This happened while Canada's residential school system — another key part of this film —was in place, which forced Indigenous children into an abusive penal-school-prison system. Failure to send a child would result in imprisonment.

"Rhymes for Young Ghouls" explores these events through three generations of Native women. Like "Prey," it focuses on the change Indigenous women can create for their community but amps up its frightful elements. Hands down, it has the most chilling and tragic opening sequence on this list. There's also a dystopic steampunk-fueled animation sequence in the film that utilizes Miꞌkmaq storytelling to examine capitalism's cannibalistic nature. The tactics white "Indian agents" use for self-gain in this film is its horror, but Miika Whiskeyjack's Aila never ceases to fight for her nation's survival — something Naru would applaud.

If you or someone you know may be the victim of child abuse, please contact the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child (1-800-422-4453) or contact their live chat services.

If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).

Blood Quantum

"Blood Quantum" is a zombie-horror film, but there's an argument to be made for its sci-fi elements too. Sci-fi stories revolve around current and possible realities based on available and potential tools, technology, and systems. Yes, sometimes this means space travel, but other times, like in dystopia-focused tales, stories focus more on how the inequitable distribution of wealth, land, and food force individuals to create new systems to live. In this light, "Blood Quantum" is totally sci-fi, as it examines the threat of zombie settlers.

Miꞌkmaq filmmaker Jeff Barnaby uses "Blood Quantum" to explore how the world would change if a zombie outbreak happened but only Indigenous people were immune. Traylor (Michael Greyeyes), the reservation's sheriff, and his ex, Joss (Elle-Maija Tailfeathers), a nurse, anchor the film with stunning performances as they defend their community against ravenous zombies. As with Naru in "Prey," this film gives Joss the courage and knowledge to protect and heal her community. Personal interests take a backseat to the community.

Barnaby excels at using his films to explore Native issues. On June 11, 1981, 500 police officers stormed Listuguj's docks, violently confiscating the nets of Native fishermen. Barnaby grew up on Listuguj, so the film is not only set there but salmon are the first to be infected in "Blood Quantum," a callback to that traumatic time. Additionally, the movie's premise subverts the anxiety of using blood quantum as a metric to determine Native citizenship. Any Indigenous blood in someone qualifies them for survival.

Read this next: The 20 Best Dystopian Movies Of All Time

The post The Best Sci-Fi Films By Indigenous Filmmakers to Watch After Prey appeared first on /Film.

Jaume Collet-Serra's "Orphan" is one of my all-time favorite horror movies, and damn it, I am not ashamed to admit it! Collet-Serra took what was an admittedly silly premise and worked it into a stylish, amusing, creepy little slice of fun. The filmmaker, responsible for titles like "The Shallows," "Non-Stop," and the upcoming "Black Adam," is adept at a style I like to call art-trash — he blends artistic flourishes with pulpy, trashy premises to great effect. In Collet-Serra's hands, "Orphan" worked, and worked exceedingly well. The film focused on a little girl named Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman) adopted by a nice Connecticut couple (Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard). On the outside, Esther seemed sweet and almost unbelievably polite. But she was actually a murderous psychopath! 

Killer kids are a dime a dozen in the horror genre, but "Orphan" threw in a whopper of a twist: Esther wasn't a child at all. Instead, she was an adult woman named Leena Klammer. Leena has hypopituitarism, a hormonal disorder that causes proportional dwarfism, and she's prone to posing as a child, being adopted by a family, and then ruining (and taking) their lives (usually while seducing the father, just to make things extra icky). 

"Orphan" ended with Esther/Leena meeting her demise, which made a sequel unlikely. But how about a prequel? And what if original Esther Isabelle Fuhrman reprised her now-iconic (yeah I said it!) role? That may seem odd to anyone familiar with "Orphan," since Fuhrman was around 12 when she shot the first film and is now 25. Can she still convincingly play a child? The answer: sort of! There's an extra layer of meta irony in "Orphan: First Kill" — Furhman was a child playing an adult pretending to be a child in the first movie, and now she's an adult playing an adult posing as a child. Rather than digitally de-age Furhman, director William Brent Bell instead uses camera trickery to make her look like a pint-sized killer. For wide shots that don't show Esther's face, a child stand-in is used. But all other shots feature Furhman, usually crouching down or on her knees when she's standing around adult characters (or the adults are elevated in some way on off-screen). Is it always convincing? Not entirely. But that doesn't mean "Orphan: First Kill" doesn't have plenty of whacked-out fun to enjoy. 

There's Something Wrong With Esther ... Again

In "First Kill," we first meet Leena when she's locked away in an Estonian mental hospital, confusing (and scaring) a new employee who mistakes her for an actual child. After a blood-soaked escape, Leena decides it's time to get the hell out of the country. Her plan: look up missing kids and pose as one of them. This idea isn't entirely novel to Esther or "Orphan: First Kill" — it was, in fact, the subject of the fascinating documentary "The Imposter," in which adult con artist Frédéric Bourdin posed as a missing American child and was brought to live with that child's family until they learned the truth. 

Leena takes on the identity of Esther, a little girl who has been missing for four years. After some wrangling, Leena, as Esther, comes home to live with the real Esther's family — mother Tricia (Julia Stiles), father Allan (Rossif Sutherland), and teen son Gunnar (Matthew Finlan). The family is understandably excited to see their long-lost child, but others are quick to note that something seems off. For one thing, Esther has an accent now — although that could be chalked up to her time overseas. She also doesn't seem to remember things she should, but perhaps that's explained away by trauma. And shouldn't the real Esther's family realize that this isn't the Esther they knew? Well ... maybe. Maybe not. 

Having seen "Orphan" many, many times, I thought I knew what to expect from "First Kill." I assumed that this would be more or less a remake (or rehash, if you want to be mean) of the first film, with Esther terrorizing yet another hapless family. But David Coggeshall's script has more than a few tricks up its sleeve, including some jaw-dropping twists that I will confess I did not see coming. It makes sense — the first film had a jaw-dropping twist too, after all. The twist feels fresh and exciting here, and changes the entire film in a way that's wickedly enjoyable.

Twists, Turns, And A Murky Visual Style

Fuhrman gets to have the most fun here. Now played by an actual adult, Esther can take her wicked ways even further, including a laugh-out-loud hilarious moment where she steals a car, slips on some sunglasses, and fires up a cigarette as she speeds away. The role of Esther still fits her like a glove, and while some of the shots of her clearly kneeling down to appear as a child look a bit clumsy, we mostly buy that this is the same kid-sized Esther we remember from the first movie. At times, having the adult Fuhrman pose as a child makes "First Kill" feel like a horror movie parody of "Dear Evan Hanson," but Ben Platt has nothing on Isabelle Furhman, let me tell you. In addition to Fuhrman, Styles performs quite well, especially since her role ends up being a bit more complicated than we first thought. 

For all of the gory, gruesome fun built into "Orphan: First Kill," the film suffers from the lack of Collet-Serra. While this is the best thing Bell has directed, he's nowhere near the amazing stylist that Collet-Serra is, and this is a film that is very much in need of that touch. Worse, Bell and cinematographer Karim Hussain decide to bathe the entire movie in a sickly, murky, ugly haze; it often looks like everyone off camera was smoking gigantic novelty cigars right before Bell yelled "Action!" Is this a stylistic choice, or something Bell and company did to better disguise Furhman's real age, the way they used to smear Vaseline over the camera lens to help aging movie stars? Whatever the reason, it's distracting every step of the way, making one think they've suddenly developed cataracts. 

This ugly visual style frustrated me, but I also guess I'm too much of an "Orphan" simp to let it ruin my fun. If you, like me, are itching for further bloody adventures of Esther the Orphan, then you're in for a sweet, bloody treat. Despite its foggy look, "Orphan: First Kill" is a surprising, amusing, and welcomed return for everyone's favorite mini-murderer. 

/Film Rating: 6 out of 10

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Space horror is a weird subgenre to pull off effectively. Sure, many might think that it's easy to just place a typical horror movie, conventions and all, into a space setting — but it's a lot more complex than that. If you are going to make a horror movie set in space, you are going to have to embrace the nothingness and existentialism that the setting offers; after all, as "Alien" first said back in 1979, in space, no one can hear you scream.

However, if we are to look at the subgenre on a critical level, there might not be a movie that pulls off its trademarks more uniquely than Paul W.S. Anderson's 1997 film, "Event Horizon." While not a direct Lovecraft adaptation, it is arguably the best example of the terror of the incomprehensible and bizarre, using the vastness of space as its backdrop. At the same time, though, it is apparent that the movie audiences received was not the one Anderson had in mind; it was a film that had its ideas reduced to mere concepts instead of concrete fear.

This is the ultimate legacy that "Event Horizon" carries; an ambitious, thought-provoking tale about the horrors of the mind that was recut so much, that only a small portion of its grander story made it to the screen. However, even in this incomplete state, it is a movie that has few contemporaries in terms of scope and story, making it a truly unique experience to watch even 25 years after its initial release.

Have You Ever Seen Fire In Zero Gravity?

Before we go any further, it is important to note that the Directors Guild of America, the Hollywood union for directors, mandates for the completed director's cut of a movie to be fully edited within ten weeks of completing principal photography. According to the "Directors' Minimum Conditions" article of the Guild's mandates, this cut of the movie is meant "for presentation to the individual Producer and to the person designated in the Director's deal memo as having final cutting authority [...] over the motion picture." When on a normally-scheduled project, ten weeks is perhaps plenty of time to assemble the best possible version of a movie.

However, "Event Horizon" was not a normally-scheduled project. Due to the highly-publicized delay of James Cameron's historical epic "Titanic," rushed photography and pressure from Paramount resulted in Anderson's cut being made in only one month (via The Ringer). That still wasn't enough, though, as the original 130-minute cut got slashed to 96 minutes after receiving poor test screening results. That's a ton of footage thrown out, and the hectic schedule to get the movie into theaters meant that the unused footage wasn't kept in ideal conditions. When Shout Factory announced their Blu-ray release of the film back in 2021, the company said on its Facebook page that most of this unused footage was now lost forever.

This Place Is A Tomb

So, what was kept in the theatrical release? In the year 2047, the crew of the Lewis and Clark spacecraft receives a strange distress signal from the Event Horizon, a ship that seemingly disappeared seven years prior. The crew, headed by the skeptical and level-headed Captain Miller (Laurence Fishburne), are then tasked to recover any survivors or evidence as to what caused the ship to seemingly disappear. Initially, it's a plot not unlike other space horrors that came before it; a strange transmission being received by a ragtag crew, who then go investigate it.

However, the Event Horizon is no ordinary ship. According to the ship's mysterious engineer, Dr. Weir (Sam Neill), it actually has the ability to create a wormhole in order to move from place to place. As Lieutenant Starck (Joely Richardson) says, it should be impossible, but Weir was somehow able to pull it off.

This herein lies one of the film's most prevailing themes: some aspects of the universe are not to be questioned nor changed, as attempting to do so could result in unimaginable consequences. By being able to travel through an impenetrable entity like the space-time continuum, the Event Horizon was able to unleash something incomprehensible to the human mind. That evil now haunts the abandoned spaceship. It infiltrates the minds of the Lewis and Clark crew and causes them to experience visions of their most traumatic moments until they eventually succumb to the madness.

Hell Is Only A Word

Admittedly, you don't get to know much about these characters. They are actually fairly one-dimensional in terms of characterization, resembling archetypes more than real people. The storyline of med tech Peters (Kathleen Quinlan) revolves solely around being what she considers a bad mother, while rescue tech Cooper (Richard T. Jones) is saddled with some pretty cringey and dated dialogue. On this front, the writing certainly could be better.

Despite this, it's hard not to feel horrible for these characters, late '90s writing and all, as it's clear that dying at the hands of the ship's evil is a fate that shouldn't be wished upon anyone. The few scenes that were preserved of the team's crew restrained and screaming in the fires of eternity are haunting, especially given the way they are frantically cut together. They are essentially condemned to an eternity of suffering.

Or maybe it's an eternity of awakening? At least, that's what Weir believes. Instead of sadness, the architect has dove headfirst into madness, becoming the human vessel of the evil haunting the ship. Unfortunately, it's fitting — after all, why wouldn't the creator be the one who arguably receives the most gruesome fate?

It is this evil, this promise of eternal damnation in a place that can only be described as hellish that makes "Event Horizon" remain an important part of the sci-fi genre. While many movies have attempted to dabble in more abstract ideas, few have been able to condense them in such an accessible but still haunting way.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Can there ever be a movie like "Event Horizon" in today's landscape, despite its full vision never being able to materialize? Maybe, but that suggests that mainstream Hollywood movies are interested in exploring these ideas right now. Even though the movie we received was only around half of its deeper story, it is arguably still far richer in ideas and themes than the blockbusters of today. The only movies that have come just a tiny bit close to exploring the same ideas are more independently-funded movies, such as "High Life," but even then, the two aren't exactly comparable.

"Event Horizon" was the right movie that came out at the wrong time. While the themes of existentialist dread and the meddling of the unthinkable likely resonated with some audiences back in 1997, they are now more poignant than ever, yet not being taken advantage of in mainstream Hollywood. We are living in a time where centuries-old diseases are returning and former presidents are being investigated by the FBI. It's hard not to feel like we're living in a purgatorial state of suffering.

It is not a perfect movie by any means, but it is a shame that we will never be able to see Anderson's true vision of the movie. Perhaps it could have fleshed out the more one-note characters or established its core evil forces a bit more. However, even in this incomplete state, "Event Horizon" is still effective in creating a space horror that can't be easily described or placed into one category of thought. There really is nothing like it being made today, despite its retrospective cult reverence, and maybe there will never be anything like it ever again. ​​Liberate tutemet ex inferis.

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One does not simply walk into Mordor, and it turns out that some of the shooting locations for Peter Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings" films weren't an easy stroll away, either. Jackson's trilogy was shot in New Zealand, using the beautiful landscape to create the world of Middle-earth instead of just throwing it together digitally later. The result is stunning and won multiple Academy Awards, but for one performer, the journey was almost too much. In a Zoom get-together that reunited the cast of "The Fellowship of the Ring" to chat for charity, Sean Bean's fear of flying and dedication to his craft were brought up by co-star Orlando Bloom. Apparently, Bean hated flying so much that he would get up early and scale the mountains where they were shooting in order to get to the actual shooting location. The rest of the cast and crew took helicopters, but Bean wasn't about to trust the whirlybirds and opted to climb sheer cliffs in his full Boromir getup instead. That's certainly a choice, but hey, at least it made his costume look appropriately lived-in!

The Son Of Gondor Prevails

Orlando Bloom, who played the elven archer Legolas, explained that Bean was terrified of flying, and the helicopter rides weren't exactly smooth or easy:

"We had to take a helicopter to get to work, and I remember sitting next to Sean in this helicopter going up over the – we had to go up over the Remarkables, remember, to get to Queenstown, and his hand on my knee I will never forget. It was like a white knuckle, it was like a proper bony white knuckling ride."

Picturing Bean's rugged fingers digging into Bloom's leg is both comical and the stuff of slash fan-fiction, but it really does show just how terrified the actor was of flying around in a helicopter. So, instead of taking a little flight, Bean opted to do things his way and climb to set. It's not exactly Method acting, but there's something to be said for Bean putting in his steps. 

A Hike Fit For Hobbits

This story isn't brand-new to "Lord of the Rings" fans, who might remember a short clip about Bean's hellish hikes in the extra features on the "Fellowship of the Ring" Blu-ray, but it is funny to hear it brought up again. After all, Bean has become best known for both playing tough guys and dying a lot. Having a fear of flying feels a little pedestrian for the man who played 006 in "Goldeneye," but hey, we're all only human. Jackson looked back on the memory fondly, reminiscing about when Bean came to him asking for permission to walk to set: 

"Within a week or so we had a scene that we all had to be helicoptered up to this lake, and it was quite high in the mountains, and Sean just said, 'Look, I can't do it. I'll come very,very early, I'll get all my gear, all my Boromir gear, and I'll start to climb, just on foot.' So we're flying up and I look down and there's this vast, vast cliff in the mountain, and I could see Sean like a human fly climbing up a nearly-vertical rock face."

Even if he looked a little silly doing it, Bean managed to make it up the mountain and put in a career-best performance, bringing humanity and charisma to Boromir and filling the complex and sometimes controversial character with life. Long live the son of Gondor. 

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As electric vehicles take over from the gasoline engine, this will put significant pressure on the world's lithium supplies.

We're experiencing a "Predator" renaissance, and it's all thanks to "Prey." The latest entry in the 35-year-old franchise takes us back in time and features the first female protagonist to kick a Predator's butt. "Prey" is already the best-reviewed film in the entire series, thanks largely to the central performances by Amber Midthunder and Dakota Beavers, a script that takes the "Predator" story back to basics, Dan Trachtenberg's eye for grounded action, and a very good dog. 

At this point, we've seen Predators (or Yautja) face off against human warriors many times across the decades. Between the main "Predator" films, the crossover "Alien vs. Predator" spinoffs, and expanded canon from the comics and novels, we've learned that the Yautja are a species utterly obsessed with the thrill and prestige of the hunt, and in particular with hunting species that can hunt them back. 

So, the fact that humans have defeated Predators numerous times over the years hasn't taught these aliens to steer clear of Earth. In fact, it's only made us all the more interesting to them.

The Comics

Back in 1989, Dark Horse Comics made many a horror fan's dreams come true when they began publishing an "Aliens vs. Predator" comic series, which eventually led to a criminally underrated crossover film.

Issue #0 of the comic, which serves as a prelude to the main story. It starts with a conversation between two men on a space mining ship arguing about whether humans have become too dependent on technology. As one man tells the other that we stopped using tools as means to an end and instead have turned them into the end itself, we see images of Yautja preparing their arsenal of advanced hunting tools. When the dialogue states that we have lost our connection to our primal nature, we see the aliens fighting to the death over some small disagreement.

The implication is that the Predators are what humans ought to aspire to -- at least, in the eyes of that one, very violent, man. They have technology, sure, but they don't depend on it. They are advanced, but still seem to resolve conflicts via feats of strength. They are both futuristic and rather primitive.

A Fair Fight

The comic suggests that the Predators hunt us down to prove to themselves that they have not forgotten their roots and become dependent on their weapons. Even on the verge of victory they will pause to allow humans to pick up weapons and don't kill them when they are unarmed, as there is no sport in killing prey that doesn't fight back (something that Dutch notes in the very first "Predator" film).

Indeed, whenever we've seen Predators encounter humans in the films, there is at least one scene where the Predator chooses not to use their weapons and fight humans by hand. This seems to be the aliens trying to prove that their advanced technology has not made them sedentary and dependent on tools, that they are still strong enough to kill us with their bare hands. Of course, their boasting of their power tends to be their undoing, but that's just good news for whatever human they face off against.

"Prey" in particular sees the Feral Predator responding in kind to whatever weapons are wielded against it. After humans attempt to trap it with a net, it deploys a net of its own (with a lethal twist). When humans fight with projectile weapons, the Predator responds with a less advanced version of the Plasmacaster that fires bolts instead of energy blasts. But when it fights animals, it tends to stick to only its wristblades and brute strength. There's no sport in sniping a wolf from the treetops.

Collecting Upgrades

2018's "The Predator" revealed how far the Yautja are willing to go to become the galaxy's greatest predator. In that movie, humans learn that the Predators have taken to splicing their own DNA with that of other species in an attempt to improve themselves. "The Predator" introduced two Yautja who had both been enhanced with human DNA, making them even deadlier than before.

Perhaps they got this idea from their other favorite prey: the Xenomorph. "Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem" featured a Xenomorph that spawned from a Yautja, creating a hybrid of the two species. The aptly named Predalien (pictured above) combines two creatures with very ugly mouths to create the ugliest mouth in cinema, accomplishing what simply must be the Yautja's true goal. 

That's right. If you can't beat them, and you won't join them, steal their genetic material to try and capture what makes them special. Of course, in a bit of delicious irony, the human soldiers in "The Predator" pull a similar feat and use Predator weapons to fight back and kill a Yautja. That film even ends with a human soldier intending to pilot a "Predator killer" suit that can even the field in future fights. 

The Novels

The "Predator" books, however, focus on our dependence on technology as the reason why Predators hunt us. In the novelization for the first "Predator" movie, writer Paul Monette introduces the titular alien hunter as he is stalking and studying a group of soldiers, focusing on their camouflage and heavy weapons. According to the book, it was the sight of a creature that modified and trained itself specifically to kill that interested the Predator and made it want to hunt soldiers. "A kindred spirit at least, a reason to exist," Monette wrote.

Even if they know they are more advanced than us, the Yautja think of us as worthy prey or even opponents because we are willing to use tools to help us kill and rule over other creatures. There is perhaps no better example of this than a little crossover comic titled "Batman Versus Predator." In that comic, a Yautja lands on Gotham City looking for worthy prey, but isn't really satisfied until it meets the Caped Crusader. Truly, if you want an adversary that pushes itself and modifies itself in order to be a better warrior, who better than Batman? In that comic alone, Batman uses a sonar exoskeleton suit to increase his strength, as well as several new gadgets like a wide-spectrum tranquilizer to beat the Predator.

Likewise, the "Aliens vs. Predator: Prey" novelization of the comic book series states that the Predators hate humans for their cunning and craftiness. They even turned us into bedtime stories to scare Yautja children! This strikes at the core of the franchise, which has always been about the advanced alien hunter underestimating their prey.

"Prey" is now streaming on Hulu.

Read this next: Sci-Fi Movie Deaths No One Saw Coming

The post Why the Predators Hunt Humans, According to (Mostly) Canon Sources appeared first on /Film.

Marvel Studios has created a film and television franchise unlike any other. Intricately stitching together stories that reference and introduce one another, each Marvel Cinematic Universe character and project feels like it's a fully realized world. Despite containing over twenty films and numerous television shows, Kevin Feige, talented producers, and filmmakers have worked together for over a decade to forge a complex yet coherent series that fans and critics adore. Marvel Studios' penchant for planning projects in advance has led to plot seeds growing into overarching and fruitful storylines.

Despite Marvel Studios' attention to the MCU's continuity, there have been a few lapses in logic sneaking into its ongoing saga. It's best not to be too picky about the occasional lapse in narrative logic: after all, this is a universe that involves aliens, alternate dimensions, and superpowers. Pointing out things that don't make sense is about as productive as pointing out that the oceans have some water. Considering how outré the movies are, overall, Marvel Studios has done a terrific job of weaving together multiple characters and stories into a fairly cohesive whole.

Still, several inconsistencies in the ever-expanding Marvel Cinematic Universe have arisen over the years, some of which create some glaring story problems. Let's look at some of the MCU's most frustrating plot holes.

Spider-Man's Vlog Contradicts The Events Of Captain America: Civil War

Near the beginning of "Spider-Man: Homecoming," there's footage Peter Parker shot of himself before, during, and after the big superhero brawl at the Leipzig-Halle Airport. The audience sees his point of view when he's first introduced as Spider-Man to Captain America and his team just before the massive showdown. Peter continues recording himself with some teenage color commentary throughout the melee. When Ant-Man grows to the size of a building, the excited Peter turns around and says, "What the hell? He's big now! I gotta go! Hang on!" 

However, that's not how the scene played out in "Captain America: Civil War." In that film, when Ant-Man reluctantly uses his suit to become a giant, Spider-Man is clearly shocked at the new development and exclaims, "Holy s***!" There's no sign of him recording himself or the fight.

This inconsistency doesn't present major narrative distractions in the MCU. Still, it's a little confusing. But it's clear that the filmmakers behind "Spiderman: Homecoming" closely watched "Civil War" to depict the clash of heroes from an eager Peter's perspective. Comparatively, the scenes from each film match up pretty well. However, let's give Peter Parker some credit for toning down the profanity for his first solo outing.

Why Did Thanos Give The Mind Stone To Loki?

The first scene of "The Avengers" depicts Thanos' right-hand man, The Other, narrating their plan to take over the Earth and retrieve the Tesseract. Loki leads the charge with his scepter, which has powers like energy projection and mind control. However, Loki's efforts to invade the planet with the Chitauri army fail thanks to the Avengers. Loki and the Tesseract go into Asgardian custody, and Loki's scepter falls into Hydra's possession. Later, "Avengers: Age of Ultron" revealed that Loki's scepter houses the Mind Stone, one of the six fabled Infinity Stones. In "Avengers: Infinity War," the Tesseract is a housing for the Space Stone.

But in Thanos' years-long quest to acquire all Infinity Stones, it's unclear why he gave one of them to Loki. As a mighty space tyrant, Thanos surely would have access to other powerful weapons to loan to the God of Mischief fueled by something of which there are only six in the universe. Thanos sent Loki to Earth to retrieve the Tesseract. But Loki's failure resulted in Thanos not only missing his chance to obtain the Infinity Stone, but also losing a Mind Stone. After Ronan failed him in "Guardians of the Galaxy," Thanos ultimately learned his lesson: when conquering the universe, don't outsource to freelancers.

Why Was Doctor Strange Considered A Threat To Hydra?

"Captain America: The Winter Solider" shows Steve Rogers and Natasha Romanoff recruiting Sam Wilson in their quest to expose Hydra. The trio head to Washington D.C. to confront S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and Hydra mole Jasper Sitwell. While reluctant to talk at first, Sam threatens to drop Jasper from a great height with the help of his wingsuit. Jasper then reveals that Arnim Zola, who survived for decades by uploading his consciousness into a series of computer memory banks, created an algorithm that could determine if a person would have the potential to get in Hydra's way. Hydra utilized the helicarriers S.H.I.E.L.D. created for Project Insight to eliminate these individuals. Jasper then listed people Hydra regarded as threats, including Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, and Stephen Strange.

This MCU moment delighted fans as the Master of the Mystic Arts' MCU debut was still several years away. However, at the beginning of "Doctor Strange," Stephen Strange is still a prominent surgeon. He hadn't undertaken combat training, mystical adventures, or pledged himself to protect the Earth from otherworldly dangers. Compared to heavy hitters like Stark and Banner, he doesn't seem like someone Hydra would be worried about or put on a hit list.

Howard Stark's Overly Complicated Yet Oddly Convenient Plan For Tony Stark

"Iron Man 2" saw Tony Stark deal with the problems caused by his arc reactor. While Tony's arc reactor keeps metal shrapnel from entering his heart and killing him, it's giving him palladium poisoning. Nick Fury and Natasha Romanoff meet with Tony and provide him with his father's research. They believe Howard Stark was onto something big, but he didn't have the technology to finalize it. His research may be the key to saving Tony's life. Tony puts together a scale model of the 1974 Stark Expo, which he deduces is the layout for an element that doesn't yet exist. After this realization, Tony rewires his home to power a particle accelerator to create a new element. He then uses its power in his latest arc reactor, freeing him from palladium poisoning.

Geez, there are so many questions to ask about this plot point! It makes sense that Howard was researching something the technology of the time couldn't develop, so he passed it on to his son to complete. But why did he hide clues in a diorama of the 1974 Stark Expo? Why did S.H.I.E.L.D. wait so long to give this information to Tony? How did they know that it would solve Tony's palladium poisoning?

Gamora's Inconsistent Backstory

In "Guardians of the Galaxy," Gamora is apprehended by the Nova Corps along with Rocket Raccoon, Groot, and Star-Lord. During their lineup, each has their background information displayed. Gamora's information states that she is the last surviving member of the Zehoberei people. Corpsman Rhomann Dey then reveals that she is the adopted daughter of Thanos. Her lineage is elaborated further in "Avengers: Infinity War," which features a flashback of Thanos wiping out the Zehoberei people, with the exception of a young Gamora. He decides to adopt her because of her courage to fight him. After Thanos kidnaps Gamora from Knowhere, he shares his plan with her. By having half of their population annihilated, there were enough resources for the surviving half to live fruitful lives.

This minor discrepancy is one of the handfuls of times that a detail presented in an MCU movie is forgotten about in another MCU project years later. Still, Gamora being the last surviving member of her species gave her a bit of pathos, making her more complex than just an assassin for an intergalactic titan. This plot hole raises some additional questions. Why did the Nova Corp believe that Gamora was the last survivor of the Zehoberei people? If Gamora knew half of her people's population was still alive, why didn't she return to her planet?

Why Does Red Guardian Claim He Fought Captain America?

Alexei Alanovich Shostakov, aka Red Guardian, was Russia's answer to America's Captain America. They gave Alexei a version of the Super Soldier serum, and he went on many missions for the Soviet Armed Forces before being imprisoned by General Dreykov. Wallowing in regret and self-pity in prison, Alexei regaled his fellow inmates with stories of his 1980s bout with Captain America. He bragged about beating America's premier super soldier. However, Ursa Major pointed out to Alexei that his fight with Captain America couldn't have happened. During that time, Cap was frozen in the ocean. Of course, Alexei doesn't take this well and breaks Ursa's arm.

With the risk of incurring Alexei's wrath, it's a fair point. In MCU continuity, Steve Rogers is revived sometime before "The Avengers," which takes place in 2012. Alexei is likely lying about his fight with Captain America, but there's a chance the story is partially true. "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" revealed Isaiah Bradley was a part of America's Super Soldier program. He went on several missions before being imprisoned and experimented on, suggesting that Isaiah could have previously fought Red Guardian. Or perhaps Red Guardian fought Steve Rogers when he went back in time to restore the Infinity Stones?

The Inconsistent Story Of The Celestials

In MCU's lore, the Celestials are incredibly ancient and powerful beings responsible for creating the spark that spawned existence. They were introduced in "Guardians of the Galaxy" when Star-Lord, Gamora, Rocket Raccoon, and Groot deliver the Orb to the Collector on Knowhere (which is the head of a long-dead Celestial). The Collector explains that the Orb contains the Power Stone, one of the six Infinity Stones, and gives its owner immeasurable power. He shows the Guardians a display of one of the Celestials using it to destroy an entire planet. 

The next mention of Celestials came in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2," which introduced Star-Lord's father Ego as a member of the age-old race. The film calls Ego the last existing Celestial. But then "Eternals" established that Arishem the Judge is alive, and even has another Celestial Tiamut, napping inside the Earth. What's the deal, Marvel Studios?

This discrepancy is most likely due to Marvel Studios giving two talented directors -- James Gunn and Chloé Zhao -- creative freedom to use the Celestials as they saw fit. Unfortunately, this results in conflicting backstories for the ancient race. So far, the Celestials are mostly background characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which gives the studio future leeway to fully explain their origin later.

Tony Stark Destroyed His Iron Man Armors, Only To Replace Them Right After

"Iron Man 3" took place shortly after the events of "The Avengers." Most of this MCU film dealt with Tony Stark's panic attacks and insomnia following his experience with the Chitauri attack on New York City. He contends with these feelings by constantly building newer suits. However, this creates tension with his girlfriend, Pepper Potts, who's grown increasingly worried about his obsession. After defeating Aldrich Killian and his group of Extremis-enhanced soldiers, Iron-Man's identity crisis seems resolved. He destroys his remaining Iron Man suits to prove his dedication to Pepper. However, Tony slips right back into his old ways in "Captain America: Civil War," where he reveals he's back to building Iron Man suits, and his relationship with Pepper is on hold -- likely due to his return to form.

There's no doubt that Tony Stark was born to build. Likely, Marvel Studios thought it was too early for him to hang up his suits. But since he returned to his obsession, wouldn't it be safe to assume that his PTSD from the events of "The Avengers" also returned? Sure, he got to air his feelings to a sleeping Bruce Banner (as seen in the post-credits scene of "Iron Man 3"), so that probably helped. However, the film dismissed his struggle with a couple of throwaway lines like: "It was no big deal."

If you or someone you know needs help with mental health, please contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website.

Doctor Strange's Spell In Spider-Man: No Way Home

When the world learns that Spider-Man is Peter Parker, he feels responsible for how his exposed identity ruins the lives of those he cares most about. To remedy the situation, Peter turns to Doctor Strange, who proposes that he cast a spell to make everyone forget who Spider-Man is. However, as Strange is performing the ritual, the eager Peter keeps interrupting to request that individuals -- like Aunt May, Ned Leeds, and MJ -- be allowed to know his secret, ruining the spell. Later, Peter learns through a confrontation with Doctor Octopus and Green Goblin from Sam Raimi's Tobey Maguire-starring "Spider-Man" movies that his interjections resulted in pulling individuals from other universes who knew Spider-Man's secret identity into his universe.

It can sound extra nerdy to poke holes in the logic of a magical spell, but this spell raises some logistical questions. While Strange claimed this magic only worked on people's memories, would that be enough to solve Peter's problem? Considering J. Jonah Jameson already released his Spidey evidence to the world, all someone would have to do is rewatch the footage, and they'd instantly know that Peter was Spider-Man. Also, Strange stated that his spell brought those who knew about Spider-Man's secret identity into the Tom Holland-starring Spider-Man universe and those who were fated to die in their respective timelines. However, the Lizard and the Sandman survived in their universes. Get the story straight, Strange!

Why Does Odin Have A Fake Infinity Gauntlet?

In the first three phases of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Infinity Gauntlet's purpose and its role were explained and teased over numerous films before eventually becoming the main plotline of "Avengers: Infinity War" and "Avengers: Endgame."

There's an early Infinity Gauntlet tease in 2011's "Thor." When Thor is about to be crowned prince of Asgard, several Frost Giants break into Odin's trophy room to steal the Casket of Ancient Winters. In the background, there's a shot of an Infinity Gauntlet -- and it's fully loaded, too. However, look a little closer, and it's easy to see its design is for a right hand. The Infinity Gauntlet Thanos uses in "Avengers: Infinity War" is for his left hand. Years later, "Thor: Ragnarok" confirmed Thor's gauntlet was a fake creation made by Hela, who casually knocks it over in the film, declaring that most of Odin's trophies are fake.

So what is Odin doing with not only a fake Infinity Gauntlet, but also fake Infinity Stones? Was Odin lying to everyone about owning something as universally (in the literal sense) sought? The most likely scenario is that Marvel Studios had already planned out the Infinity Saga in 2011, and their team snuck the right-handed gauntlet into Odin's trophy room as a fun little nod to the comics. Later, the creative teams added that scene with Hela to cover their tracks. Nice try, Marvel.

How Thor Only Sometimes Needs Heimdall To Travel Across The Universe

In "Thor," it's established that the primary means for Asgardians to travel across the universe is through the Bifrost, which Heimdall controls. However, in Thor's climactic battle with Loki, he destroys the Rainbow Bridge. The Bifrost falls into space, preventing any Asgardians from leaving. Thor appears again in "The Avengers," wherein Loki surmises that Odin had to summon Dark Energy to send Thor to Earth. By the time "Thor: The Dark World" takes place, a new Bifrost has been built. 

However, there are some inconsistencies in how Thor gets around the cosmos. At the end of "Avengers: Age of Ultron," Thor aims Mjolnir at the sky and teleports to Asgard. But in "Thor: Ragnarok," Thor is trapped in Muspelheim fighting off Surtur's legions as Heimdall's substitute, Skurge, is too busy entertaining women to notice Thor's call.

It makes more sense for Thor being able to travel across the universe after getting Stormbreaker. Based on how comic book magic works, Stormbreaker likely comes with all kinds of wacky powers that don't require exposition. However, the MCU firmly established Thor could only travel between Earth and Asgard through the Bifrost. Is there a stash of Dark Energy he can use during peak Bifrost hours?

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The post The Most Frustrating Plot Holes In The MCU appeared first on /Film.

The Joss Whedon TV series "Firefly" ran for a single season on Fox. It never really had a chance for a successful run on network television; the episodes were run out of order, and three were left unaired. Despite this, enough people loved the show and bought the DVD box set that Universal Pictures gave a green light to a follow-up film, "Serenity." 

"Firefly" is set hundreds of years in the future, in a world where humans had to leave Earth and colonize space. Powerful people run the more advanced planets, but those who wanted their freedom, fought (and lost) a war over it. Those rebels are now scattered through the wilderness of space, settling into a sort of wild west existence. The series tells the tale of a small band of people including two former military fighters-turned-smugglers, a pilot, a criminal, a Shepard (a religious figure like a pastor), a Companion (a sex worker in the vein of a well-connected courtesan), a young woman who had her brain altered to keep government secrets, and her brother, a doctor who tries his best to protect her. 

Fan devotion aside, "Firefly" wasn't a hit on Fox, and the film sequel was never going to get a huge budget. That meant the actors had to do a lot of their own fighting, as they couldn't afford to digitally create these scenes with so little money for VFX. In an interview with How Stuff Works, Whedon and some of the cast members talked about the training, and what it was like to do a lot of their own fight scenes. 

'I Can Kill You With My Brain'

Summer Glau plays River Tam, the young woman with an altered brain who has unnatural mental and physical powers. River's fight scenes are epic, and Glau had to do most of them herself.

Luckily, Glau was already athletic, having been a dancer since childhood. In fact, before "Firefly," Glau appeared in an episode of another Whedon series, "Angel," where she played a prima ballerina. In the interview, Whedon spoke about how important that was in terms of her fight scenes, saying, "What Summer Glau can do with her feet, money can't buy." 

However, ballet and fight scenes aren't the same things and training was required. Glau had the muscles, but this was different than a pas de deux or a regular workout. She said, "I was used to training and going to the gym, but this is completely differently muscle memory. I had to completely retrain my body, and it took three months, all day, every day. But the swords and blade work, the guns and the daggers, I did myself. I felt every punch and kick." The site points out that she did all but two fight sequences herself. 

Her co-star Nathan Fillion, who plays Serenity Captain Malcolm Reynolds, said that the whole cast trained, but not as much as Glau did. He joked that he called the training the "Fight Like a Girl Club," and that he'd finish for the day, and she'd still be there, "fighting against nine guys." A lot of the plot of "Serenity" focuses on River, what's happened to her, and why, so she did carry a lot more on her shoulders than the rest of the cast in terms of physical prowess. 

'I Hit It Every Time'

Revisiting the film, you can see how much Glau took on. The other cast members had a lot to contend with as well though, as people who trained as actors and not stunt performers. Even more difficult to deal with is that they didn't know who would be using which weapons early on, according to Sean Maher who plays River's brother, Dr. Simon Tam. He said that all the actors had to be familiar with any weapon they might end up fighting with. 

One of the weapons they trained on was a huge gun, which Jewel Staite who plays the ship mechanic Kaylee Frye had issues with. She said, "This one gun was so heavy that every time I shot, it would ricochet and I'd get burns all over my legs." Morena Baccarin, who plays Companion Inara Serra had to take on archery. From what she says, it appears that no one trusted Baccarin's acquired prowess with the bow and arrows, despite how well she did. "Everyone put on goggles and hard hats. but they gave me an X to hit, and I hit it every time." 

So many films use CGI to make the actors look like they're doing more than they are, but in "Serenity," you can feel how much physical work the actors are putting in. Though the work of creator Joss Whedon is being re-examined because of recent revelations, and changes in the cultural landscape, "Firefly" and "Serenity" are still beloved by fans. Knowing how much work was put in by the actors is just one more reason to appreciate this futuristic tale. 

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Like most hardcore horror fans, Guillermo del Toro loves a good anthology series. From "The Twilight Zone" to "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark," which del Toro produced, the notion of getting a completely different tale of terror each week is too tantalizing to resist. So genre fans should be giddily anticipating the October 25, 2022, Netflix premiere of "Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities," which boasts eight episodes of spine-tingling fright from some of the most talented horror directors working today.

In the newly released teaser, del Toro promises, "Each of the episodes has a whole world." Though he is presenting the series, he has given all eight directors free rein to tell their stories on their own creative terms. Perhaps the most exciting element of the series is its focus on the construction of "beautiful, practical creatures." In an industry where CG dominates, it's an absolute joy to hear that we'll be getting to see new, tactile monsters who might haunt our nightmares for years to come.

As we await whatever unnerving delights del Toro and his team of filmmakers intend to inflict on us, let's take a look at the creative teams (and their inspirations) behind each episode, and whip up a list of viewing and reading material that might prepare us for these strange visions.

Dreams In The Witch House

First up is Catherine Hardwicke's adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's short story about a young Miskatonic student who unwisely rents an attic room in Arkham, Massachusett's cursed "Witch House." Written by "Origin" creator Mika Watkins, and featuring the eclectic likes of Rupert Grint, Ismael Cruz Cordova, Nia Vardalos, Tenika Davis, and DJ freakin' Qualls, this ultra-creepy yarn serves as a nifty introduction to Lovecraft's eldritch strain of otherworldly horror. It's all about how you visualize incomprehensibly grotesque monsters that drive people mad.

To get a sense of the challenge before Hardwicke, you should absolutely read the story, and, provided that hooks you (which it will), check out "Curse of the Crimson Altar," a loose 1968 film adaptation starring Christopher Lee and Boris Karloff. After that, you've got Stuart Gordon's 2005 "Masters of Horror" episode, which doesn't approach the gruesome Lovecraftian heights of the director's "Re-Animator" and "From Beyond," but is still well worth your time.

Graveyard Rats

You're probably going to require a strong stomach for this repulsive tale of a grave robber (David Hewlett) who declares war on a colony of mutant rats that are feasting on newly buried corpses before he can harvest them. It's incredibly gnarly stuff. Vincenzo Natali wrote and directed this episode, which is based on a short story by early 20th-century horror maestro Henry Kuttner. Obviously, you should read Kuttner's story, but if you're looking for a fiercely underrated man vs. rat movie, you can do no better than George Pan Cosmatos' "Of Unknown Origin" starring the great Peter Weller.

Lot 36

All we know about this installment is that it's directed by del Toro's longtime cinematographer, Guillermo Navarro, written by Regina Corrado (best known for her work on "Deadwood" and "The Strain") and features a dynamite cast headlined by the great Tim Blake Nelson. The title seems to allude to a piece of auctioned property, which could be anything from an ancient relic to a collection of old Time magazines. I'm going to guess del Toro is a tad more interested in the former, which means this is an excellent excuse to fire up Peter Hyams's goofily gory monster flick "The Relic," wherein a mythical South American beast goes on a murderous rampage in a Chicago museum.

Pickman's Model

"The Vigil" and "Firestarter" director Keith Thomas takes on one of Lovecraft's most chilling stories, and he's cast Crispin Glover as the deeply disturbed artist of the title. Written by Lee Patterson, this is the second live-action take on the tale of a painter whose work, while brilliant, grows ever more hideous as his career wears on. The first version aired on Rod Serling's "Night Gallery" in 1972, and starred Bradford Dillman in a decidedly toned-down take on the stark-raving-mad character. Sadly, that episode, and "Night Gallery" in general, is unavailable to stream at the moment, but you can certainly track down Lovecraft's story. For a film about an artist driven to murderous extremes by his work, Roger Corman's darkly funny "A Bucket of Blood" starring Dick Miller is as good and nasty as it gets.

The Autopsy

Michael Shea's "The Autopsy" is one of the best horror short stories to never go before cameras, so it is, tentatively, cause for celebration that "The Empty Man" director David Prior is giving the underrated writer his due with an adaptation written by David S. Goyer and starring the formidable duo of F. Murray Abraham and Glynn Turman. If you've never read "The Autopsy," wait until it's dark out, put on a pot of coffee, and dive in. Why coffee at such a late hour? You won't be sleeping once you've finished this taut work of terror. While you're awake, throw on James L. Conway's preposterously entertaining "The Boogens," which features a different kind of mine-borne monster.

The Murmuring

Writer-director Jennifer Kent reteaming with her "The Babadook" star Essie Davis? That's all anyone should need to be hyped for this installment, which is based on a story by del Toro. Precious little has been disclosed about "The Murmuring," so what you need to do in the meantime is catch up with Kent's 2018 triumph, "The Nightingale," wherein a young Australian widow seeks revenge for the murder of her husband and infant. It's a startling departure from "The Babadook," but every bit as rewarding. Kent is a top-tier filmmaker and deserves moviegoers' fervent support for fearlessly taking on such emotionally bruising material. I can't wait to see what she's done with whatever the heck this is.

The Outside

"A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night" filmmaker Ana Lily Amirpour teams with "Brand New Cherry Flavor" writer Hannah Z. Boston for this episode based on a short story by Eisner-winning comic book author Emily Caroll. Garfunkel and Oates' Kate Micucci and "Silicon Valley" star Martin Starr head up this mysterious entry. If you want to get a taste for Carroll's fiendishly fractured fairy tales, snap up her graphic novel compilation "Through the Woods." You've probably seen "A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night," but you might've skipped her bizarro, cannibal-romance follow-up "The Bad Batch" starring Jason Momoa, Keanu Reeves, and Jim Carrey. Amirpour possesses a bracingly original voice that defies categorization. Given the stark contrast between her first two movies, it's impossible to predict what she'll do with her installment.

The Viewing

Panos Cosmatos has made two features over his, thus far, 12-year career, and they are acid-soaked nightmares that you can never, ever shake. "Beyond the Black Rainbow" is a surreal odyssey that prioritizes its trippy aesthetic over narrative coherence. "Mandy" is a heavy-metal revenge epic that equips a grief-stricken Nicolas Cage with the most righteously ridiculous battle axe ever glimpsed in cinema. Cosmatos has reteamed with his "Mandy" co-writer Aaron Stewart-Ahn for an original vision starring Peter Weller, Eric André, Sofia Boutella, and Charlene Yi. This reeks of unpredictability, which means you need to get with the psychedelic unpredictability of "Beyond the Black Rainbow" and crack open a heavily used copy of William S. Burrough's "Naked Lunch" previously owned by a person of unsound mind.

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The post What You Need to Watch (and Read) Before Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities appeared first on /Film.

The bigger that the Marvel Cinematic Universe becomes, the more stumbling points we seem to find. The early phases still get the brunt of our criticisms, which makes sense, because that was when the franchise was still finding its way. Just look at the evolution of Thor Odinson. The most "out there" of the initial Avengers, Thor's MCU incarnation started out as a cool alien, with Asgard's gilded technology passing for magic. It wasn't until Taika Waititi's "Thor: Ragnarok" that he received a soft reboot and became the God of Thunder that comic fans know and love.

As it's gone on, the MCU's architects have become more confident that casual fans will accept the comics' weirder bits. However, with that confidence comes big changes, and a different kind of trouble: When a lot of people love something, it's not hard to find new sources of friction. While the MCU grows more fan-friendly with every new installment, these are the issues that we're still frustrated with. Thankfully, Marvel is in it for the long haul, and there's still tons of room for the MCU to grow beyond these infuriating moments.

Sylvie And Loki's Kiss

In its first season, "Loki" gave us a naked God of Mischief, a zaddy Owen Wilson, Wunmi Mosaku in uniform, the rise of Kang the Conqueror, and our new king, Alligator Loki. However, it's the Loki variant Sylvie (Sophie di Martino) who caused the biggest stir. As much the protagonist of "Loki" as the title character (played once more, of course, by Tom Hiddleston), Sylvie is a Loki at heart, although she also borrows a number of character traits from a version of Amora the Enchantress known as Sylvie Lushton.

Sylvie is troubled and determined, and the trust between her and Loki slowly builds over the first season, eventually becoming a love that's as much about self-acceptance as it is romance. However, this relationship set off a flashpoint among the MCU fandom, with the faction that argued against it dredging up the fictional concept of "selfcest" to shut down other fans. By the time that Loki and Sylvie actually kissed, you could roast s'mores over Twitter. All of this, however, misses the point that Sylvie is a fantastic addition to the Marvel multiverse, and we're glad that she's returning for season two.

Chatty Celestials

Marvel's Celestials are bipedal eldritch abominations with few recognizably human features. In the comic books, they don't communicate much, either. They don't deign to talk to their mortal creations, and their primary method of communicating with the Eternals is via silent telepathy. That said, they can talk, and one, appropriately known as Tiamut the Communicator, presented itself as virtually human in a 2013 "Age of Apocalypse" event.

However, the moments when the Celestials talk are so rare that, when they occur, they're immensely powerful — what a Celestial has to say can change the course of an entire story. In "Eternals," though, Arishem the Judge is downright chatty. He never hesitates to speak to Sersi, and he has no issue scaring the pants off all of Earth and monologuing about his judgment to the whole galaxy. It makes sense in the context of the film, but for fans of the comics' cryptic, silently terrifying Celestials, it's a bit of a downgrade.

Thor's Quick Change Act

"Thor: Ragnarok" reshaped Thor Odinson. No longer "just" an advanced alien, he's now wearing the title of God of Thunder loud and proud. First, he loses Mjolnir, which lets him realize that he already contains all the power he needs. Next, he loses an eyeball, only to see that the future of Asgard is his responsibility.

Five months after "Ragnarok" opened in theaters, Thor got a new eye and a new hammer during his paltry 14 minutes of screen time in "Avengers: Infinity War." By the time that 2022's "Thor: Love and Thunder" rolled around, he was back to craving Mjolnir. It's not that these are bad moves, plot-wise. It's that, by being rushed, they undo much of Thor's well-earned growth. It's okay for Thor to grieve for Mjolnir, but it's a development that comes out of left field. If there had been some dialogue that made Mjolnir a stand-in for everything that Thor has lost, that might've helped. Instead, these abrupt changes made "Love and Thunder" feel as divisive as "The Dark World."

Natasha's No Monster

There's a lot to unpack about that scene between Bruce Banner and Natasha Romanoff in "Avengers: Age of Ultron." It's nice that their budding relationship is treated like something that's happened naturally offscreen, but their romantic dynamic, as presented, works better when the people involved live ordinary lives. An assassin and a green rage monster, dating? We have questions. Do they get bagel breakfasts? Can Nat still borrow her boyfriend's hoodie when it's been stretched out to size 12XL?

We will never get these answers. Meanwhile, fans are still fuming about the ugliest part of this scene: an exchange that fumbles Natasha's true feelings, and makes her call herself a monster because she can't have children. "Age of Ultron" Writer-director Joss Whedon explained in a Tumblr Q&A (via The A.V. Club) that Natasha's dialogue was meant to refer to the "murdery" part of being a Black Widow, but in the same sentence he says her infertility made her feel "unnatural." That's not better, sir. Years later, Joss' '90s-era brand of strong girl feminism continues to rot like a ham sandwich dropped on Arizona asphalt.

The Maximoff Whitewash

Marvel Studios hadn't reacquired the film rights to the X-Men when "Age of Ultron" was in production, so it was understandable that the studio was initially cagey about Wanda and Pietro's origins. The twins are adopted, so their background is something that can always be retconned, and on the surface, the pair are recognizable as the characters from the comics. However, some big things are missing from their backstory, and their omission is a loss for diverse representation.

As the children of Magneto, Wanda and Pietro are Jewish and Romani by birth. There's no reason they can't be so in the MCU, too, as Eastern European countries, even fictional ones, contain thousands of post-war diaspora families. However, in "Civil War," Wanda has a Christian cross necklace hanging on her wall, and there's no sign that either Judaism or her Romani background matter at all in her life. As Romani viewers commented, this was made worse by "WandaVision," which reduced her comic-accurate Halloween costume to a cultural stereotype. On the bright side, these mistakes highlight the importance of the inclusivity seen in "Moon Knight" and "Ms. Marvel" and with the "X-Men" coming home, there's a chance we'll see Wanda's heritage revised.

Star-Lord's Mistake Matters

The loudest members of a fanbase aren't always the correct ones. When Tony Stark's plan to get the Infinity Gauntlet goes sideways in "Avengers: Infinity War," it's because Peter Quill bungles it. Frenzied by the revelation that Gamora is dead, Quill begins bashing Thanos so hard that it breaks Mantis' emotional control over the Mad Titan. Yes, this is the moment that puts Thanos back on course to victory. Yes, it was a bad decision on Quill's part. But mistakes aren't bad storytelling — they're important pieces of character development.

Peter Quill is a flawed guy with a big heart, and he'd long since given a slice of it to Gamora. He also isn't the most level-headed of dudes as it is — remember, he straight-up shot Ego the moment he found out some ugly truths. Yet, Quill's in-character mistake was blown out of proportion by fans who decreed him the worst and took to Chris Pratt's social media feeds to blame him for Thanos' victory. There is no circumstance that justifies harassing actors for the things their characters do. From a character perspective, Quill's actions make complete sense. Deal with it.

The Marvel Creative Committee's Meddling

The early phases of the MCU were largely shaped by the Marvel Creative Committee. Long since disbanded, the group, which consisted of Marvel Comics creators and executives and answered to controversial Marvel CEO Ike Perlmutter, meddled in the movies so much that it led to a real civil war. Before it got to that point, however, the committee did major long-term damage to the franchise. Its most egregious sin? Sidelining characters like Black Widow and Gamora because Perlmutter believes that female action figures don't sell. Yes, to this guy, it's all about the merch.

But the committee's antics didn't go mainstream until talk started emerging about trouble over "Captain America: Civil War." From Perlmutter's agitating over the ballooning budget to a fight over an alternate ending that lost the emotional drama between Cap and Iron Man, this is ultimately when the architect of the MCU, Kevin Feige, went to Disney management and demanded to be freed from the committee's — and Perlmetter's — decrees. Fortunately for MCU fans, Feige won, and the MCU's only gotten better since.

The Calamitous Ancient One

The Ancient One, the Tibetan sorcerer who served as Doctor Strange's mentor, was introduced by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko in the July 1963 issue of "Strange Tales." With him came a grab bag of Orientalist stereotypes, including being the mystic Asian mentor to a white dude and his appearance, which included a racist eye design and flowy white facial hair. It's not great. 

Marvel Studios had a chance to upgrade the depiction of the Ancient One with the premiere of "Doctor Strange." Unfortunately, the result is barely a sidegrade. Any performance by Tilda Swinton is a good one, of course, but reimagining the troubled Ancient One as an ageless white woman upset pretty much everyone. Tibetans lost a chance for nuanced on-screen representation. China was put in the crosshairs due to C. Robert Cargill's allegations that the changes were made so that the film could be marketed in that country. Fans were confused and upset, with some engaging in their usual crying about diversity. On the bright side, these mistakes paved the way for "Shang-Chi" and its fantastic new version of Wenwu (Tony Leung).

James Gunn Is Fired

Despite being the ones who most often cry about cancel culture, it was the extreme right-wingers who dredged up the worst of Troma veteran James Gunn's social media posts, retaliating against the filmmaker for his anti-Trump rehetoric. There's no question that Gunn said some very offensive things, but he'd already apologized for his remarks. Still, within days of the old tweets going viral, Disney fired the director without bringing Kevin Feige into the discussions.

That left the third "Guardians of the Galaxy" film in limbo, with an unhappy cast and upset fans calling Disney to task for immediately caving to a politically-motivated echo chamber without considering the surrounding context. Good news quickly followed, however. Gunn signed on to reinvigorate the DC universe with "The Suicide Squad" and "Peacemaker," which may not be Marvel, but are still unmissable hits. Further, in 2019, joint meetings between Gunn, Feige, and Disney president Alan Horn saw Gunn returnto the Marvel Cinematic Universe to wrap up his "Guardians" saga. It was an ugly situation, but at least we got some great films and TV shows in its wake.

Losing Patty Jenkins

Everyone ranks the Marvel movies a little differently, but almost everybody agrees that "Thor: The Dark World" sits right near the bottom. It's not a terrible movie, but it's not exactly good, either. Loki and Thor's angsty sibling rivalry is perfect, and Stellan Skarsgard's Dr. Selvig takes an enjoyable eccentric turn, but Malekith (Christopher Eccleston) is a waste of a villain, the plot is a muddle, and it's easy to get the vibe that Natalie Portman wasn't having a good time.

As it turns out, Portman was mad for a good reason. While director Alan Taylor ("Game of Thrones") does a competent job, "The Dark World" was meant for Patty Jenkins, a director Portman was eager to work with. Officially, Jenkins left the film over creative differences and remains on good terms with Marvel, but some reports indicate that the split wasn't as amicable as it appears. Jenkins' "Wonder Woman" shows that she has the vision to craft a fine Asgardian adventure, although that ship has probably sailed; for her part, Portman would depart the MCU until Taika Waititi convinced her to return for "Love and Thunder."

That's Not Shuma-Gorath?

Early trailers for "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" showed off a huge, tentacled beast wrecking the streets of New York. Accordingly, fans of Stephen Strange went wild, hoping that this was going to be the debut of Strange's longtime nemesis Shuma-Gorath, an eldritch horror inspired by Lovecraft. But then, leaked merchandise like T-shirts and LEGO kits started calling this gross cutie Gargantos. What was going on?

Gargantos is a minor Marvel character who looks suspiciously like Shuma-Gorath, and who's really only appeared in a couple of "Namor" comics. However, unlike Shuma-Gorath, his name isn't tangled in a web of licensing rights. See, Shuma is not Strange's problem alone. He's been in Capcom fighting games and comic books based on Robert E. Howard's "Conan the Barbarian" universe, and that seems to be where the problem lies. The "Conan" rights belong to a subsidiary of the video game company Funcom, which means that Shuma-Gorath was a legal no-go on the big screen. At least we can still pretend the multiversal tentacles seen in the first season of "What If...?" are attached to the big guy, at least until proven otherwise.

Sharon Carter, Baddie?

Sharon Carter has a powerful legacy. Niece and heir to SHIELD's founding director, Peggy Carter, Sharon's a talented secret agent with an honorable streak that matches Steve Rogers' own. But Sharon's world falls apart after "Captain America: Civil War"; she's branded an enemy by the nation she's dedicated her life to simply because she helped Steve. Later, "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" puts the titular pair on the tail of a rebellious super-soldier outfit funded by the mysterious and anonymous Power Broker. Any guesses who she really is?

The reveal that the Power Broker is Sharon Carter belongs to the audience alone. The "Falcon and the Winter Soldier" finale sees Sharon welcomed back to America, even while she prepares to sell the government's secrets. It's a twist that didn't sit well with many viewers. Sharon has every right to be angry about her treatment, but making her a traitor is a nasty subversion of who the Carter family is, and why they mean so much to Marvel fans. That said, with "Secret Invasion" on the horizon, maybe the Power Broker is actually a Skrull and the real Sharon Carter can be redeemed. Here's hoping.

Marvel's Villains Keep Dying

The MCU keeps killing off its villains before they get a chance to shine. There are only two exceptions to this rule: Thanos and Loki, both of whom grew into nuanced characters and undeniable fan-favorites. All the rest get cut down, and with their deaths we also lose potential storylines that could've given these characters the same kind of complexity, ultimately deepening the Marvel Universe.

Killmonger, who had a point in his critique of Wakanda? Dead. Ultron, a recurring comic villain who's nearly as feared as Thanos? A one-and-done. Malekith, Kaecilious, the Black Order, and Ronan the Accuser, all classic comic mainstays? Tossed to the side. At least Wenwu, played by the incomparable Tony Leung, got an emotional sendoff. 

What the hell is Marvel thinking? At least "What If...?" brought Michael B. Jordan back to revisit Killmonger, and gave Ultron the chance to nearly claim victory over all that our Watcher surveyed. With the multiverse torn open, there's a chance that some of these villains might return to the spotlight. That would be a good thing — many of them deserve another look.

The Night Nurse In Everything But Name

The Christine Palmer who we meet in "Doctor Strange" is a terrific character, played with depth and care by Rachel McAdams, but her comic book counterpart, the Night Nurse, gets more to do. In the comics, the Nurse is a discreet medic who exclusively treats injured superheroes. In the MCU, the character who's actually doing this job is Claire Temple (Rosario Dawson), and she doesn't get the credit she deserves for it.

It's a change that happened on purpose. In 2017, "Daredevil" showrunner Steven DeKnight explained that Rosario Dawson had, in fact, been cast as the Night Nurse. However, Marvel Studios said no, and the Night Nurse became Claire Temple, a minor "Luke Cage" character who served as the Defenders' de facto secret medic. With the Defenders returning and Rosario Dawson now a mainstay on Disney+, it's time to give Temple the respect she deserves.

The Agents Of SHIELD Travel Through Time And Lose Their Way

Arguments about the canonicity of "Agents of SHIELD" aren't winnable. The series entered the multiverse before the MCU did, leaving countless doors open for its team's return, but the real problem with "Agents of SHIELD" is, arguably, how the series lost its way after season 4. That's the season that introduced Robbie Reyes (Gabriel Luna) as Ghost Rider, and then saw the agents locked in the nightmarish AI-controlled virtual reality known as the Framework. After that, the SHIELD agents are flung into an alternate future, where they're both the destroyers and heroes of a new Kree-controlled colony.

That's when everything changes. From that point on, the series sputters and never recovers, trapped in a tangled mess of time travel stories focused on the cryptic Chronicoms, the intergalactic Confederacy, and the multiple deaths and resurrections of Phil Coulson. While these stories are intriguing enough, these events turn a relatable outfit of mostly ordinary people into another generic superhero team, and abandon everything that made the series so quietly special.

Agent Carter Canceled

From 2015 to 2016, ABC aired 18 episodes of "Agent Carter," a light post-war period thriller starring Hayley Atwell, and then canceled the whole thing, despite the second season ending on a cliffhanger. We're on the verge of discovering what happened to a presumed-dead Carter sibling when the show simply cuts to black forever. The only balm is the return of supporting cast member Daniel Souza (Enver Gjokal) in the final season of "Agents of SHIELD" and the rise of Captain Carter.

It's great that Atwell is still a recurring feature in the MCU, but "Agent Carter" was a terrific television program that was cut down in its prime. It's a show that tackled the hardships that single women, no matter their credentials, faced in the '40s. It addressed racial tensions. It could have done even more, but low viewership led to its demise, and Netflix, already the home of the Defenders, declined to rescue it. Today, "Agent Carter" is available to stream on Disney+, but we still don't know what actually happened to Michael Carter, and that sucks.

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The post MCU franchise moments that still make us angry appeared first on /Film.

Hello Games has released a brand new patch for No Man’s Sky. According to the release notes, the Endurance 3.99 Update adds a glass version of the freighter stairs to research and construct. Moreover, it fixes a number of issues that plagued the game. As always, Steam will download this patch the next time you … Continue reading No Man’s Sky Endurance Update 3.99 released, full patch notes →

The post No Man’s Sky Endurance Update 3.99 released, full patch notes appeared first on DSOGaming.

When it debuted in 2021, "Kevin Can F*** Himself" turned some heads. It put the phenomenal Annie Murphy center stage fresh off an award-winning six-season run on "Schitt's Creek," and the premise felt unlike anything we've seen on television before. Alluding to the controversial way CBS sitcom "Kevin Can Wait" treated the wife of Kevin James' titular man-child character on that show, this AMC dramedy presented how an unfulfilling marriage to an insensitive, childish partner can be a light and airy sitcom for one party and a tough drama for the other by actually presenting both sides as such. Yes, we got both a stereotypical multi-cam sitcom and a dark single-camera drama in one show.

With the first season receiving critical acclaim, the audience has been anxious to get back into the story, especially considering that season 1 ended with a massive cliffhanger. After Murphy's Allison McRoberts and her neighbor Patti O'Connor (played by Mary Hollis Inboden) fail to murder Kevin in order to be rid of him once and for all, Patti's brother and Kevin's best friend Neil (Alex Bonifer) overhears their plans. After he attacks Allison, Patti clocks him with a bottle and the eighth episode ends with Neil bleeding on the kitchen floor.

That's where the second and final season opens. We pick up right where we left off a little over a year ago to see what kind of shenanigans Allison and Patti get up to next. And interestingly enough, their plans take a few pretty big turns from where it seemed like they were going.

As Seen On TV  

Part of what makes "Kevin Can F*** Himself" season 2 work so well is the characters. When we first met Allison, Kevin, and the whole gang, they fit nicely into the classic archetypes we'd typically find in sitcoms. The killjoy wife, the goofy husband, his best friend, the jealous partner, and the nosy neighbor are all characters we've seen before, so we know how one-dimensional they can be. However, series creator Valerie Armstrong and her writers' room crafted such interesting arcs for these characters in this series that they're compelling, complex, engaging — and unpredictable. They really dissect these stock characters and realistically look at what makes them tick or how they would be perceived in the real world.

Due to the nature of this show, we're slowly seeing how the fantasy sitcom world that Kevin lives in starts fading from those around him. The whole conceit is that he's not the likable lead he perceives himself to be. So as more and more people figure this out, little things start changing. Instead of being the more loving and supporting wife from "King of Queens" or "The Honeymooners," Allison gets more aggressive and fed up with Kevin's antics almost in a "Married... With Children" or "Home Improvement" sort of way. Allison is more prepared to come back with more pointed responses to Kevin and his actions. In the same vein, Patti is expanding from her role as one of the guys and Detective Tammy Ridgeway is breaking the tough cop exterior to show that all of these women are capable of much more than Kevin thinks.

Broadcast Standards And Practices

As much as Murphy's performance continues to be awesome in the second season, along with the work of Inboden and Candice Coke, it's Bonifer's Neil that really comes a long way. While the deconstruction of the sitcom wife dominates season 1, it feels like the writers sought to do the same thing for the goofball sidekick in season 2. After that shot to the head that thrust him into "reality," it turns out that Neil actually is a lot more intelligent than people give him credit for. He's also more manipulative than he lets on and he has some serious issues with boundaries, alcohol, and trauma. There are definitely points in the new season where you really feel for Neil. Without getting into spoiler territory, I'll say that his struggles weren't something that I was totally expecting in this half of the story.

Although, this wasn't the only unexpected element of the story that we encounter in "Kevin Can F*** Himself" season 2. Thanks to consuming sitcoms (or stories in general) for such a long time, you sort of expect things to go a certain way. But the writers have some interesting swerves thrown in to spice things up. For example, it really looked like Sam, Allison's high school friend and the owner of Bev's Diner, played by Raymond Lee, would have a much bigger part in this season by getting more involved in Allison's plans. It's uncertain whether his recent role in the upcoming "Quantum Leap" revival contributed to a decreased presence on this show, but it's also not like his absence didn't make sense in the story they were telling. Everything made sense, but Lee is an excellent performer with an interesting character, so I wish we saw more of him in these final chapters.

Roll Credits

Ultimately, "Kevin Can F*** Himself" comes to a very satisfying end. It really is a shame that the series isn't continuing past season 2, but the story that Armstrong and company set out to tell has been told and we're better off for it. This show has been so fascinating from a creative standpoint. It has been a wild character study, but also an exercise in nuance. 

Maybe I'm overthinking parts of this, but there's great rewatch value to this show thanks to little details like when the scene switches back and forth between single and multi-cam, which characters appear more frequently in which style, and the level of delusion the character indulges in so they could remain a part of the fantasy. In fact, after the flashback to the first time Allison and Kevin meet, there's even a minute where it seems like our heroine may be falling back into old habits. But the way she comes out of it by reframing her situation really makes for dynamic and darkly funny television. I honestly feel that future screenwriting students will study parts of this show to make their sitcoms and dramas better.

At the end of the day, the best thing to take away from the final season of "Kevin Can F*** Himself" and the series as a whole is the importance of friendship. Through major life changes, terrible relationships, and intense trauma, things can be much easier when you have the support system of a good friend to stand by your side and pick you up when you're down, even if that means you're alone together.

The eight-episode second and final season of "Kevin Can F*** Himself" premieres on Monday, August 22, 2022 on AMC+.

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The post Kevin Can F*** Himself Season 2 Review: The Anti-Sitcom Comes to a Satisfying End appeared first on /Film.

Intel's Arc GPUs were designed to support modern APIs such as DX12 and Vulkan APIs but in doing so, they left out native support for legacy APIs such as DX9.

Intel's Arc & Xe GPUs Don't Feature Native DX9 Support But Can Be Emulated On DX12

On its support page, Intel states that its 12th Generation CPUs with Xe GPUs and Arc discrete GPUs don't support DX9 natively. This means that while there's no native support on a hardware level, these chips can still run applications and games based on the DX9 API by emulating it on DX12 via the D3D9On12 interface.

The post Intel Arc GPUs Don’t Feature Native DX9 Support, Has To Be Emulated on DX12 by Hassan Mujtaba appeared first on Wccftech.

When "Little Miss Sunshine" arrived on the scene in 2006, nabbing both Academy Awards and the hearts of American audiences, it captured an era of mid-aughts indie filmmaking that was defined by quirky comedic dysfunction. From "Garden State" and "Napoleon Dynamite" before it, to "Juno" and "500 Days of Summer" after, the road trip movie seems like the center point of a very specific movie trend.

Surprisingly, though, "Little Miss Sunshine" didn't mean to follow in the footsteps of the offbeat 2000s dramedy, but wanted to captured the essence of a different type of film that came decades earlier. In an interview with the Orlando Sentinel around the time of the movie's release, co-director Jonathan Dayton says he and his wife Valerie Faris took inspiration from "An American Family," a 1973 PBS docuseries directed by Craig Gilbert that's widely credited with ushering in the advent of reality television. It's an odd comparison, but the closer you look at both projects, the more accurate it seems.

The First Reality TV Show

"Everybody in this can be reduced to a cliché," Dayton told the outlet of "Little Miss Sunshine," yet "if they portray these characters honestly, you'll lose those preconceived notions of who you think they are." The same could be said about the Loud family, whose now-historic story begins with what appears to be a typical all-American family and ends with parents Pat and Bill Loud divorced. Along the way, viewers spent 12 hours with the family, getting to know what they were like during their most dramatic moments, but also their most mundane.

Dayton draws a connection between the two narratives, saying that "An American Family" is "another story of horrible characters you wind up rooting for." It's true that the Loud family, which in addition to Bill and Pat included five teen and young adult kids, didn't always come across well. Little in the series would be considered scandalous by today's standards, but it was all groundbreaking at the time, when private disagreements caught on film seemed incredibly novel. In addition to becoming the public face of divorce for millions of viewers who turned in weekly, the Loud family also brought LGBTQ+ representation into American homes in a real way years before other shows would catch up. Lance, the family's eldest son, was an openly gay man.

The series stirred up controversy while viewers tried to understand this new type of entertainment and suss out which parts, if any, may have been more performed than authentic. "As with all "cinéma vérité" efforts, it is impossible to evaluate the influence of the cameras on the participants," a New York Times article about the series said in 1973, adding that "the family's, particularly Mrs. Loud's, enormous self‐control in the most potentially emotional of situations does become curiously suspect."

'Everyone Just Pretend To Be Normal'

While "An American Family" is most-known for kicking off a genre that would enrapture audiences (and continue evolving) for decades to come, Dayton's comparison gets at an angle of the series that isn't as often discussed. "We may not be able to identify with a gay Proust scholar," Dayton told the Orlando Sentinel in reference to Steve Carrell's character in "Little Miss Sunshine," "but what you can always relate to is someone who has passion in their life."

The same is true for "An American Family." Not everyone has four siblings or a bustling nightlife or -- as the New York Times review points out -- a recording studio in their home, but everyone can relate to the longings, insecurities, and even love that Gilbert and his crew's cameras can't help but capture when they look at the Loud family. Viewers managed to relate to the Louds despite themselves, just as decades later they'd relate to Abigail Breslin's beauty pageant dreamer, Paul Dano's silent would-be fighter pilot, and, yes, Steve Carrell's depressed gay Proust scholar.

One of the taglines for "Little Miss Sunshine" was "Everyone just pretend to be normal," and that pretty much sums up the collective false image of domestic perfection that "An American Family" helped to shatter. For audiences who showed up en masse to watch the Hoover family's cross country quest to get Olive to her pageant, the fact that most families are just pretending turned out to be as captivating a realization in 2006 as it was in 1973.

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The post The Controversial '70s TV Hit That Inspired Little Miss Sunshine appeared first on /Film.

We're back and talking about games! Games like The Long Drive, Turbo Golf Racing, Axiom Verge 2, Rumbleverse, and more, plus we talk about Netflix's new vampire movie Day Shift and read some of your emails.  This week's music:  A Day to Remember - Miracle

I've had the Steam Deck for a few weeks now and really love having a portable PC gaming machine in my hands. One of the key things I got it for was offline gaming on the go. When traveling you can't be guaranteed an Internet connection so being able to load up single player games is something I really wanted.

There does seem to be an issue with Offline mode on the Steam Deck though. If you are connected and go into Offline Mode via Settings/Internet, you're able to load up most single player games that don't rely on a third party launcher (although some Rockstar games worked) just fine. I tested this with games like Mechwarrior 5, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, L.A. Noire, and Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered to name a few.

But if your Steam Deck happens to reboot while in Offline mode and you are nowhere near an Internet connection, none of the games that worked in Offline mode will work. Once you press on the Play button, it'll zoom out and zoom back in to the game's Steam page screen. Side loaded items like emulators work though as I was able to load up RetroDECK without any issues.

If you try to load the game, still in Offline mode, using the Desktop version of Steam, you'll see the message that it can't load with the error "compatibility tool configuration failed".

Needless to say, this would make an awful traveling experience should you want to sit on a long flight hoping to get some nice PC gaming in on the Steam Deck.

Luckily, there seems to be a work around right now. And remember, this only happens if you're already in Offline mode and things were working and you had to reboot the Steam Deck for some reason.

Thanks to reddit user u/MysticalKittyHerder for pointing to me a work around.

What you need to do is go into any game, press right on the D_pad twice which should select the gears, press the A button, and click on Properties from the menu. Alternatively, you can just use the touchscreen and touch the gears and touch Properties.

Scroll down one to Compatibility where you'll see a checkbox that will let you force it to use a specific Steam Play compatibility tool. All you have to do is check it and uncheck it. Then back out and you should be able to load the game. You only need to do this once and it'll let you load any other game that wasn't loading. When I did this, every game that I was unable to load that should have worked, worked.

This looks like some sort of Steam OS bug that hopefully can be easily resolved. Until then, this should get you by for those who can't load up a single player game in Offline mode that you can load before.

There is a thin line between the mockumentary and the pseudo-documentary. While both categories warp the concept of non-fiction filmmaking, mockumentaries are satirical and often comedic, while pseudo-documentaries exist in the horror space. Think "Best in Show" versus "Cannibal Holocaust". The pseudo-documentary uses the idea of the truth to weaponize our fear. The more real the film seems, the scarier it is to the viewer. Yes, it's only a movie, but a good pseudo-documentary will worm its way into the back of your brain, asking, "But what if it is real?"

This category of film is often included in discussions of found footage films in general, as both try to convince the viewer what they're watching is real. Found footage is typically footage that is, well, found and is presented as unedited evidence of a crime, haunting, creature, or anything terrifying, but, with the pseudo-documentary, the filmmakers utilize interviews and seemingly archival interviews to follow the formal structure of the documentary. It's very obviously edited, with various sources of footage used to create deeper context and a more detailed world. It's harder to deny the reality of a film when there's seeming news footage about what happened. This blurs the boundaries of what's real even more than the typical found footage movie.

So whether you're new to the subgenre or a seasoned pro, we've rounded up and ranked the 15 best horror pseudo-documentaries below!

Howard's Mill

This recent pseudo-documentary release is more in the vein of "Lake Mungo" in how it builds a story about grief around the potential existence of other dimensions. After the mysterious disappearance of his fiance, Wayne Richie (Jeremy Childs) contacts a documentary crew to help him find her. When I say strange, I mean she seemingly vanished off the face of the earth. They were walking through Howard's Mill when one minute she was there, and the next she was not. Wayne doesn't understand and wants to find answers. As the team digs into the property's history, they realize it's been the site of several disappearances over 40 years. 

This film more closely follows the typical documentary format, as there's no "found footage" at its core. Instead, it's a crew of investigators trying to find answers. There isn't a monster or demon chasing our characters, but a sense of dread hangs over the film. It's oppressive, sad, and proof that the subgenre is still alive and well.

Digging Up The Marrow

Adam Green's "Digging Up the Marrow" seems like an actual documentary about monsters and their role in horror films. Green even interviews horror icons such as Kane Hodder about the genre, but the "documentary" swerves into bizarre territory when a man named William Dekker (Ray Wise) contacts Green and says he can prove the actual existence of monsters. Intrigued, Green contacts Dekker who tells him about a place called the Marrow where monsters live. Dekker takes Green to the entrance, and he captures something on camera. 

The monsters, designed by artist Alex Pardee, are shocking, twisted mounds of flesh that screech when exposed to the light. While Green thinks he's being tricked by Dekker, he slowly realizes that this may just be true. Monster movies are hard to pull off in found footage due to the DIY and low-budget nature of the subgenre, but Green and Pardee work to create effective monsters that work well with the format. That is technically impressive alone, but with Wise's performance and a compelling story, "Digging Up the Marrow" is both hilarious and downright scary.

The Conspiracy

"The Conspiracy" is a look at documentaries about conspiracy theories and the people that believe them. Filmmakers Aaron and Jim (Aaron Poole and James Gilbert) watch a video of a local conspiracy theorist named Terrence (Alan Peterson) online and decide he's the subject of their next movie. As they interview him, he spews theories about 9/11 and World War I, connecting them all to something called the Tarsus Club. It's supposedly a cult-like organization that has influenced history for over a century.

While Jim remains skeptical, Aaron is more sympathetic and buys into Terrence's claims. When Terrence disappears, the filmmakers become more convinced that something truly strange is going on with his research. The more they dig into the evidence Terrence left behind, the deeper the two men spiral into a conspiracy theory that's more than just tenuous threads collected by a crazed man on the internet. As expected, the Tarsus Club doesn't take kindly to investigative journalists.

Incident At Loch Ness

Did you know that Werner Herzog made a found footage movie? Well, now you do! The acclaimed (and strange) German director co-wrote and starred in "Incident at Loch Ness," which was directed by Zak Penn. Herzog stars as a director who wants to make a documentary about the myth around the Loch Ness monster. He doesn't believe it's real and wants to document how it's grabbed the public's imagination. 

However, his producer also hires another documentary team to film Herzog and show just how difficult it is to work with the director. Then, on top of that, Herzog's disbelief is challenged as the crews traverse that vast loch. Herzog has a sense of humor and isn't just the snobbish auteur he appears to be. I mean, he co-wrote and acts in a found footage cryptid creature feature. There's no doubting that he has incredible range as a filmmaker. Of course, Herzog sprinkles in his brand of strangeness and ambiguity, leaving his mark on "Incident at Loch Ness".

Butterfly Kisses

"Butterfly Kisses" is a pseudo-documentary about a documentary about a documentary. Yes, you read that correctly. The initial documentary is by two students who are making a final project about an urban legend called "Peeping Tom". If you stand at one end of a tunnel and watch it unblinking for 60 minutes, he'll appear and get closer and closer to you every time you blink. 

A desperate filmmaker finds their footage and wants to see if that legend is real. His investigation is intercut with footage that he's actively discovering while doing research. As the filmmaker begins to break down, so do the students, as they realize that the legend is very real. It sounds complex — and it is — but director Erik Kristopher Myers, who sadly died in 2021, handles the subject matter carefully, balancing it all to create a creepy piece of urban legend horror. The way "Butterfly Kisses" handles these multiple narratives earns it a place on this list.

Hell House LLC

While it may not seem like "Hell House LLC" is a pseudo-documentary, it's framed as one before and after diving into the discovered footage of the doomed haunt crew. A documentary crew sets up the stakes with cell phone footage from a couple that attended the haunt on that fateful night.

News clips and interviews with local historians provide the context for what happened as well as the history of the cursed Abaddon Hotel. This hotel is where a desperate group of haunt builders choose to build their next experience in hopes of recouping their money from a previous haunt. However, the hotel wants souls and they're next up on the list. "Hell House LLC" doesn't dive right into the footage but instead takes its time to build tension through documentary techniques. Plus, it has some of the scariest found footage imagery, thanks to the strategic use of horrific clown dolls.

Behind The Mask: The Rise Of Leslie Vernon

Of the films on this list, "Behind The Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon" is the closest to a mockumentary. It's much funnier than the rest of the entries and serves as a parody of the slasher genre. Leslie Vernon (Nathan Baesel) is an aspiring serial killer who enlists a documentary crew to follow him as he trains for his upcoming killing spree. 

However, Leslie Vernon doesn't want to be just another run-of-the-mill murderer. He wants to be a slasher villain who inspires an entire horror movie franchise. His goal is to be immortalized for his crimes. He even has a mentor who helps him work through his backstory and "legend." Meanwhile, the team is complicit in his crimes as they watch and ask questions about his process. While much of the film is footage of Vernon's training, there are also talking head interviews with previous slasher villains and horror movie actors (including Zelda Rubinstein!) that make the film feel all the more real. It's a unique take on meta-horror and invasive journalistic practices.

The Tunnel

This 2011 Australian pseudo-documentary is incredibly overlooked and contains one of the scariest found footage monsters. "The Tunnel" is centered on a film crew investigating a series of strange tunnels running underneath Sydney. Along with this footage, the surviving crew members recount what happened down there and provide further context around the disturbing video.

As the crew descends into the city's depths, they discover that the government wasn't so truthful with why these tunnels are closed off. There's a moment when the creature lurking in the shadows picks up the camera and films our protagonists, which is a terrifying inversion of what we expect in found footage. No longer are we seeing through a person's eyes, but a monster's. We are aligned with its POV, which disorients our position and implicates us in whatever it does next. It's deeply unnerving, and paired with the amount of gore on screen, "The Tunnel" cements itself as one of the best pseudo-documentaries out there.

The Last Broadcast

Released in 1998, a whole year before "The Blair Witch Project," "The Last Broadcast" is another example of early found footage horror. The film is framed as a documentary about the disappearance of a film crew in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey. This is the supposed home of the cryptid known as the Jersey Devil. The crew is barebones, made up of just two hosts of a public access show and their cameraman. They're trying to do one of their first-ever live broadcasts from the field as they investigate the Jersey Devil.

"The Last Broadcast" isn't just scary. It's a fascinating look at the early influences of the internet on both film and people in general. Cameraman Jim (Jim Seward) is accused of murdering the hosts, but filmmaker David Leigh (David Baker) isn't so sure. As he investigates what could've truly happened that night, secrets are revealed that call into question the intent of the film. It's not perfect, but it's another crucial piece of found footage history, particularly in the development of the pseudo-documentary.

Savageland

"Savageland" is a unique pseudo-documentary because it doesn't revolve around video footage. Instead, the "found footage" is a series of increasingly disturbing photographs that reveal the horrors that unfolded in a small town in Arizona near the Mexican border. In a single night, the entire town is massacred, except for Carlos (J.C. Carlos), a Mexican immigrant who loves to take photos. At first, he's arrested and convicted of committing this mass slaughter, but as the case unfolds, his photos reveal that something much stranger happened that night.

Not only is the film downright chilling in its implications, but it's also a surprisingly poignant look at immigration and the prevalent racist attitudes towards Mexican immigrants. Simply because he is undocumented and not white, he's immediately labeled dangerous. News clips and interviews are intercut with these photos, building a story that's bigger than just that of the strange monsters Carlos caught on camera. This use of photographs hadn't happened before. "Savageland" expands the notion of what pseudo-documentaries can be.

Cannibal Holocaust

Considered the first found footage movie, the 1980 film "Cannibal Holocaust" was so convincing that director Ruggero Deodato was arrested and charged for the murders of the characters. He had to explain that those people weren't documentary subjects, just actors. This speaks to how closely Deodato follows the documentary format as well as how revolutionary the format was for a narrative film in the 1980s. 

"Cannibal Holocaust" begins with a rescue mission to the Amazon to find a missing documentary crew. What the team finds is a film of the crew, that captures their final days. The footage reveals a cannibalistic tribe that tortures and feasts on the filmmakers. Due to the graphic violence and actual slaughter of animals in the film, it was banned in several countries. Found footage films are known for garnering such a reputation. Between that and its status as the progenitor of the found footage subgenre, "Cannibal Holocaust" deserves a place high on this list.

The Poughkeepsie Tapes

Are you looking for a movie that will leave you feeling empty and pretty damn upset as the credits roll? Then John Erick Dowdle's "The Poughkeepsie Tapes" is the one for you. While the film is known for its harrowing depiction of a killer and his victims, the footage is framed with interviews about the discovery and viewing of the tapes. The tapes were discovered at the crime scene of a prolific serial killer. Hundreds of tapes were left for law enforcement to find, neatly labeled and ready to be viewed. 

The contents of the tapes are deeply upsetting as the footage reveals a killer's evolution into a depraved stalker who records his hunts as theatrical trophies for his exploits. Talking head interviews explain the extremely disturbing nature of the footage, providing context for how dangerous this killer is. It's by far the hardest film on this list to watch, and it feels dangerous, almost as if this is something we shouldn't be watching at all. Yet, that's what makes "The Poughkeepsie Tapes" so important. It pushes the boundaries of what we're able to stomach.

Ghostwatch

The story behind "Ghostwatch" is just as important as the broadcast itself, as the British made-for-TV special was marketed as a live documentary about of a real haunting. All of the news broadcasters in the film were actual well-known hosts and journalists in England, so they lent a massive air of credibility to the film. 

The special follows Sarah Greene (playing herself) as she goes to the home of a single mother of two young daughters who believe their house is haunted. It's a play on the tale of the Enfield Poltergeist, one of the most famous hauntings in England. As the investigation progresses, "viewers" (actually actors) call in to say they see evidence of paranormal activity, essentially helping build the terror of the story. As the haunting seemingly spreads to the news studio, real viewers across the country, to put it simply put, lost their damn minds. People thought the haunting was real and they were becoming possessed. It caused a massive stir, which makes this pseudo-documentary such an important piece of horror film history.

Noroi: The Curse

Japanese filmmaker Koji Shiraishi has a penchant for found footage horror. Perhaps his most well-known and successful film is 2005's "Noroi: The Curse," and like "Lake Mungo," it's an overall terrifying horror film. The film begins with renowned paranormal investigator Kobayashi (Jin Muraki) looking into a client's report of strange noises. As he falls deeper into a supernatural rabbit hole, that single report of weird sounds turns into something much larger than Kobayashi could've ever guessed. 

This pseudo-documentary utilizes Kobayashi's footage along with clips from Japanese gameshows and surveillance footage from a young woman's bedroom to build a story that exists on a massive scale. The fictional filmmakers piece together a complex and haunting mystery that centers on a bizarre cult with some rather upsetting practices. "Noroi: The Curse" is an early example of the pseudo-documentary that demonstrates how ghosts and monsters can be created in the subgenre. It doesn't have to be quick glimpses of ghosts or shadows – there are many ways to "capture" monsters.

Lake Mungo

Director Joel Anderson's 2008 film "Lake Mungo" is one of the saddest horror movies ever made and one of the most terrifying. This pseudo-documentary follows the Palmer family after the drowning of their daughter Alice (Talia Zucker). At first, it seems like a run-of-the-mill spoof of a ghost-hunting show as the family describes a supposed haunting, but as the film progresses, more devastating secrets are revealed about Alice's death.

"Lake Mungo" becomes an almost cosmic horror story mixed with a story of sexual abuse. Ultimately, it's a film about the isolating and individual experience of grief and its many manifestations. Plus, Anderson doesn't try to make his characters completely likable. Each family member is complicated and doing their best to keep their heads above water. However, that doesn't mean they don't make mistakes as they each process their loss. It's utterly heartbreaking and a testament to the power of both the horror genre and how well a pseudo-documentary can imitate reality. "Lake Mungo" is the gold standard of the subgenre.

Read this next: Horror Movies That Even Horror Fans Could Hardly Finish

The post The 15 Best Pseudo Documentaries, Ranked appeared first on /Film.

Tom Hardy's "Peaky Blinders" character has been through a lot over the course of the series' six seasons. Most notably, in the fourth season finale his character Alfie Solomons got shot in the face by on-and-off ally Tommy (Cillian Murphy), only to apparently live to reconcile with the show's antihero another day. Hardy returned in the fifth season, one eye blinded and his face scarred by the injury, yet still walking and talking and ready to knock some skulls as needed.

Except, what ever happened to the cancer that Alfie told Tommy he had just before he got shot? And what about his unexplained skin condition, which gets progressively worse throughout the series before being mostly replaced by his gunshot scars in season 5? Was his coarse and discolored skin a hint at the cancer diagnosis, or something else entirely? Surprisingly, the answer might tie in to the key "Peaky Blinders" character's ultimate fate.

A Collaboration In The Makeup Chair

Though Alfie himself seems to ignore the state of his skin, which starts off perfectly fine but appears intermittently scaly and textured throughout the show, makeup artist and hairstylist Loz Schiavo has gone on record to explain his appearance. "I decided from the beginning to give him psoriasis, making his skin red and blotchy around the neck, beard and hairline," she told Chap Magazine in 2018. The artist explained to Artefact Magazine that she and Hardy worked together to build the look of the chronic skin condition, which is still common today but was likely not as easily managed back in the 1920s.

Schiavo says that the look was meant to reflect the rough work environment distillery owner Alfie spends time in, one that isn't exactly conducive to establishing a regular skincare routine. She told Artefact:

"We worked together on his overall look and decided to create psoriasis all over his face to imitate what the conditions from being down in the cellar in his rum production company would have done to his skin."

The makeup artist used the thickener Attagel, theatrical makeup concentrate Blue Marble, and colored makeup to turn the actor's normally smooth face into one that was plagued by a rash-like disease. "He loved the idea of creating psoriasis to add to his character and tell his story using make-up," Schiavo told the outlet.

A Complicating Diagnosis

Since neither Alfie nor any other characters draw attention to his psoriasis, it makes sense that fans would question it and, later, speculate that it was actually a clue to his health all along. In the fourth season finale, Tommy confronts Alfie on a beach, and when the crime lord asks the gang leader if he's armed, Alfie replies, "No, don't be daft. The only thing I got on me is f****** cancer, mate." He drops the bomb while Tommy has a gun in his hand, seeming more resigned than upset. Alfie says he's "riddled with it," and that a doctor told him he might have contracted the illness from gas exposure in France during World War I.

Though Alfie doesn't say what type of cancer he has, Schiavo tells Chap that the "Peaky Blinders" team did have a specific kind in mind. "From season 1, Solomon has lung cancer," she says while explaining the addition of psoriasis, "but we wanted something else that showed physically on the exterior. Obviously psoriasis isn't a sign of lung cancer, but it's not a sign of good health either." So while the two aren't technically related, one could still be taken as an omen of the other -- a physical way to make viewers start questioning the health of the fan favorite character.

Alfie's Surprise Return

All of this is complicated somewhat by the fact that Alfie doesn't die in "Peaky Blinders" season 4, but reappears in seasons 5 and 6, never mentioning the cancer again. He says he was in a hospital for months after his gunshot wound, but makes no mention of the illness he was previously "riddled with." And while he now sports a gnarly scar from the bullet he took to the face, he's not visibly ill, either.

While the sudden disappearance of Alfie's health issues may seem like a plot hole, there could be more to it. On the surface, it would make sense for Alfie to lie to Tommy in order to give his sometimes-friend the courage to do what had to be done in killing him. This is a popular fan theory, but it wouldn't explain Schiavo's comments about the character having lung cancer.

Another theory is even more unexpected. In BBC's "Obsessed With..." podcast, director Anthony Byrne spoke about Alfie's season 5 return, and cast doubt over his status in the story. When discussing scenes in which Tommy imagines he's speaking with his dead wife, Byrne let slip that he also sees the Alfie scene as something less than real life. "I always said that it's not real," Byrne shares. "It's something that just sort of existed somewhere else, that it is in limbo. But everything is just played for real because you're dealing with somebody's mental health."

Could Alfie Actually Be Dead?

While the idea that Alfie may be appearing as a figment of Tommy's subconscious may first seem outlandish, there's some evidence to it. Hardy only appears in three episodes across the last two seasons, and in the most recent one, he sits alone with Tommy in a shadowy bar. "As for death," he says at one point, "speaking for someone who has been dead for a number of years, I can only heartily recommend it." Presumably, he's talking about faking his own death, but Alfie's words seem more mysterious and loaded since his return: in the fifth season finale, he also describes an ominous dream about Tommy that comes true.

In pop culture, "he was dead the whole time" theories tend to be plentiful, irritating, and usually easily disproven, but the fact that someone involved in the show has expressed some support for this one makes it genuinely intriguing. Plus, there's also the fact that a doctor in season 6 tells Tommy that he has an inoperable brain tumor. If that is the case, Alfie's presence post-season 4 could be the crime saga's answer to the infamous "Grey's Anatomy" ghost-Denny plot, only much cooler and not cringe-inducingly terrible.

From psoriasis to cancer to a gunshot wound and beyond, Alfie's face has always told his story, with makeup artist Loz Schiavo helping to bring it to life. He remains one of the most interesting characters in "Peaky Blinders," and he's almost certain to play a part in the story's feature film endgame -- whether in corporeal form or not. "Shall we go, and witness the final act?" Tommy asks his associate in that shadowy bar in the series finale. We're ready for it when he is.

Read this next: The 15 Best Anthology TV Series Ranked

The post Tom Hardy's Skin Might Just Be Peaky Blinders' Biggest Mystery appeared first on /Film.

"Apple is set to expand ads to new areas of your iPhone and iPad in search of its next big revenue driver," reports Bloomberg. The Verge writes that Apple "could eventually bring ads to more of the apps that come pre-installed on your iPhone and other Apple devices, including Maps, Books, and Podcasts." According to a report from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple has internally tested search ads in Maps, which could display recommendations when you search for restaurants, stores, or other nearby businesses. Apple already implements a similar advertising model on the App Store, as developers can pay to have their app promoted on a search page for a particular query, like "puzzle games" or "photo editor." As noted by Gurman, ads on Maps could work in the same way, with businesses paying to appear at the top of search results when users enter certain search terms. Gurman believes that Apple could introduce ads to its native Podcasts and Books apps as well. [Gurman describes this as "likely".] This could potentially allow publishers to place ads in areas within each app, or pay to get their content placed higher in search results. Just like Maps, Podcasts and Books are currently ad-free.... Gurman mentions the potential for advertising on Apple TV Plus, too, and says the company could opt to create a lower-priced ad-supported tier, something both Netflix and Disney Plus plan on doing by the end of this year. Bloomberg points out that Apple is already displaying ads inside its News app — where some of the money actually goes back to news publishers. ("Apple also lets publishers advertise within their stories and keep the vast majority of that money.") And while you can disable ad personalization — which 78% of iOS users have done — Bloomberg notes that "Another ironic detail here is that the company's advertising system uses data from its other services and your Apple account to decide which ads to serve. That doesn't feel like a privacy-first policy." Bloomberg's conclusion? "Now the only question is whether the customers of Apple — a champion of privacy and clean interfaces — are ready to live with a lot more ads."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Whether as an actor, stuntman, or director, David Leitch has been the architect behind some of the most captivating recent fight scenes in film. His catalog of work spans some of the biggest action movies of the last twenty years, including the last two films in "The Matrix Trilogy," "300," and "Deadpool 2."Although it was in Leitch's directorial debut, "John Wick," where he developed his signature for boldly executed action sequences that both captivate and drive the plot forward, he perfected his process on his second project, "Atomic Blonde." 

One scene stands out in particular: the brutal 10-minute stairwell fight Charlize Theron's character, MI6 agent Lorraine Broughton, engages in near the end of the film. Inspired by the stitched-together long takes of Alfonso Cuarón's "Children of Men," Leitch admitted in a GQ interview he'd long had the idea to do something similar, but had never been able to implement it.

After Theron bought the rights to the graphic novel "Atomic Blonde" would be based on, the actress approached Leitch to direct. He realized this was his chance to finally nab the white whale of his career. But filming the stairwell fight sequence would prove to be exceptionally demanding. For Leitch and those responsible for editing, there were logistical hurdles to be overcome while Theron and the stunt actors needed to give realistically gritty and visceral performances without getting too injured.

Charlize Theron Surpassed Leitch's Expectations

Theron as Broughton is of course the linchpin of the entire stairwell fight — which means not only did she need to be able to do a lot of those stunts herself, she had to memorize the complicated choreography. Speaking with Vanity Fair, Leitch explained that she underwent an intense six weeks of training, four to five days a week to prepare for the role of Broughton.

It wasn't long before the director realized he'd struck gold with Theron as his lead. He told Business Insider that he started getting "remote videos from L.A." and with every update on her training, he realized he'd finally found an actor who might be able to pull off the kind of extended take he'd always dreamed of doing. It also helped that Theron had been a trained dancer in her youth. "Fight choreography has far more in common with dance choreography than it does with actual martial arts," Leitch told GQ. "You learn martial arts techniques but those are just the movements for the choreography," he said. "You're working with a partner in choreography. You're working on timing. Having the dance background was invaluable."

Of course, successfully getting Theron and the stunt actors to nail the choreography was one thing. Doing it all without anyone getting seriously injured, or worse yet, putting your lead out of commission, was another challenge entirely.

Dodging Injuries And Knowing When To Use Stunt Doubles

With Leitch's abundance of experience filming and being a part of scenes like the stairwell fight, he recognized injuries are inevitable -- but they can be greatly mitigated. The director went into detail with GQ about all the things that can go wrong at any moment that might lead to some kind of injury:

"You're doing all these reactions with your neck and your neck is thrown out of wack. You're blocking the stunt performers and there are bruises on your forearm. You are missing a punch and you hit the matte box of the camera. She did bend her fingers back and there are bruises on her forearm. She knee slides and misses her knee pad and then you've got swelling on your knee. Even when you're being safe, eight hours of choreography makes you look like you've been through a war. It's hard. It's like playing hockey for eight hours."

Because of the grueling toll, Leitch strategically chose when to use Theron's stunt double Monique Ganderton. Take for instance the moment Broughton is thrown down the stairs near the beginning of the fight. That's actually Ganderton doing the roll, but Theron who gets slammed into the wall — so even when she had a double she was still taking hits. "She would do both," Leitch admits. "But you had to keep shooting and you couldn't risk that type of injury."

So instead they just used the motion blur of Ganderton's fall to hide the switch to Theron. After all, there's really no point in risking your actor for stunts that audiences can't even tell it's them for. Which makes sense given there's so much in the 10-minute sequence that benefits from us seeing Theron herself fighting.

Creating The Scene's Progressive Special Effects

Leitch's whole purpose for wanting to shoot the stairwell scene was to see if he could forward the film's plot throughout all the action. A small but vitally important piece of that meant that if this was going to be 10-minutes of real-time fighting, there needed to be a way to illustrate the effect on each character.

Leitch told GQ that Theron gave a mandate for all the action in the film to be "real and have consequences." The director continued:

"I wanted to show consequential action. You fight long, you get tired. You get hit in the face, you get a black eye. There's blood in your mouth. Special effects make-up would come in and we had it all broken out, the different levels of damage for each stitch. We were constantly adding as we progressed. We shot the fight in continuity."

In a lot of ways, the entire stairwell action scene is a battle of attrition between Broughton and her attackers. As she fights, she takes blows that start to degrade her ability to defend herself and attack. But the same happens to her assailants — albeit far more quickly and fatally than for Broughton. The upside to this attention to detail is a potent sense of realism that also heightens the stakes. Not only do you hear every blow that Theron's character takes but you also can see it: the blood, the glass, the way she struggles to get her balance, and her increased reliance on anything she can get her hands on to use as a weapon. And as the desperation of Theron and her attackers grow the anxiety keeps you glued to the edge of your seat.

Leitch Got Crafty With The Edits And Hidden Cuts

The final piece of the puzzle for Leitch after the choreography and special effects was figuring out how to edit and slyly cut the stairwell scene. His plan was to use hidden cuts that would allow them to stitch the scenes together, creating the illusion of a continuous shot. Luckily Leitch had the same talented editor who worked with him on "John Wick" and his latest film "Bullet Traim," Elísabet Ronaldsdóttir.

In that same Vanity Fair video, the director even points out each of the hidden cuts. But don't go thinking this somehow made the whole ordeal easier — it just made logistical sense. "It involved using a lot of old-school camera tricks — pans, wipes, body-crossings — that allowed us editorially to have breaks, to choose between takes, but so it would never feel like we cut out," he explained to GQ. "But the pieces we stitched together were really long, some as long as two minutes."

And even then the actors had to do multiple takes of each stitch, which were shot chronologically over four days. When you watch the full sequence though it's pretty much impossible to find any sort of hiccup with the cuts seamless as they are. It's a perfect example of just how much editing can affect the way we experience a scene — especially one as kinetic and dynamic as the "Atomic Blonde" stairwell fight.

Read this next: 12 Awesome Action Movies That Never Got Sequels

The post How Atomic Blonde's Amazing Stairwell Fight Came Together appeared first on /Film.

That's a good question.

You go into work every day, sit down at your desk, log in...but who actually "owns" the systems and network that you're using? Is it you, your employer...or someone else?

Anyone who's been involve in this industry for even a short time has either seen or heard how threat actors will modify an infrastructure to meet their needs, enabling or disabling functionality (as the case may be) to cover their tracks, make it harder for responders to track them, or to simply open new doors for follow-on activity.

Cisco (yes, *that* Cisco) was compromised in May 2022, and following their investigation, provided a thorough write-up of what occurred. From their write-up:

"Once the attacker had obtained initial access, they enrolled a series of new devices for MFA and authenticated successfully to the Cisco VPN." (emphasis added)

Throughout the course of the engagement, the threat actor apparently added a user, modified the Windows firewall, cleared Windows Event Logs, etc. Then, later in the Cisco write-up, we see that the threat actor modified the Windows Registry to allow for unauthenticated SYSTEM-level access back into systems by setting StickyKeys. What this means is that if Cisco goes about their remediation steps, including changing passwords, but misses this one, the threat actor can return, hit a key combination, and gain SYSTEM-level access back into the infrastructure without having to enter a password. There's no malware involved...this based on functionality provided by Microsoft.

Remember..the Cisco write-up states that the activity is attributed to an IAB, which means that this activity was likely intended to gain and provide access to a follow-on threat actor. As a result of response actions taken by the Cisco team, that follow-on access has been obviated.

On 11 Aug 2022, the SANS Internet Storm Center included this write-up regarding the use of a publicly available tool called nsudo. There's a screen capture in the middle of the write-up that shows a number of modifications the threat actor makes to the system, the first five of which are clearly Registry modifications via reg add. Later there's the use of the Powershell Mp-Preference module to enable Windows Defender exclusions, but I don't know if those will even take effect if the preceding commands to stop and delete Windows Defender succeeded. Either way, it's clear that the threat actor in this case is taking steps to modify the infrastructure to meet their needs.

It doesn't stop there; there is a great deal of native functionality that threat actors can leverage to modify systems to meet their needs. For example, it's one thing to clear Windows Event Logs or delete web server log files; as we saw with NotPetya in 2017, those logs can still be recovered. To take this a step further, I've seen threat actors use appcmd.exe to disable IIS logging; if the logs are never written, they can't be recovered. We've seen threat actors install remote access tools, and install virtual machines or hard drives from which to run their malicious software, because (a) the VMs are not identified as malicious by AV software, and (b) AV software doesn't "look inside" the VMs.

So what? What does all this mean?

What this means is that these modifications can be detected and responded to early in the attack cycle, inhibiting or even obviating follow-on activity (ransomware deployment?). When I was researching web shells, for example, I kept running into trouble with Windows Defender; no matter how "esoteric" the web shell, if I didn't disable Defender before downloading it, Defender would quite literally eat the web shell! Other tools do a great job of detecting and quarantining web shells, and even more identify them. That's a means of initial access, so detecting and quarantining the web shell means you've obviated the rest of the attack and forced the threat actor to look for another means, AND you know someone's knocking at your door!

"Samurai Jack" gave me something I didn't know I wanted as a kid, which was violence. At the climax of the show's "Premiere Movie," Jack defends a pack of hapless dogs from an army of mechanical beetles commanded by the demon Aku. The beetles are impaled, decapitated, blasted by rocket fire. As Jack slices them in half, oil spurts from their severed pipes. Jack is bathed in this black filth. As a child I could not process what I was seeing. The sea of beetles swallowing the red hills, the repeated swing of Jack's sword, and the rictus of his face was like a nightmare. But that is why "Samurai Jack" succeeds, beyond its remarkable style. It delivers everything a kid could want — samurai, monsters, robots — at a level of intensity just outside of their comfort zone.

Jack's story was no nightmare for Genndy Tartakovsky, the creator of "Samurai Jack." "I had the same dream since I was 10," he said in an interview with The Verge, "about the world being destroyed and run by mutants. I'd find a samurai sword, pick up a girl I had a crush on, and we'd go through the land, surviving." Any pulp artist on autopilot can regurgitate these ideas, pretending they're channeling their inner child when the child of their memories died long ago. Tartakovsky's strength is he is never on autopilot. He always finds something to latch onto. Even in a movie like "Hotel Transylvania 2," saddled with a weak script and heavy producer interference, you can tell from the expressive designs and movement that you are watching a Tartakovsky production.

No Mortal Can Hurt The Great Aku

At 2020's Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo, Genndy Tartakovsky spoke at a panel about his early career. As a child in Soviet Russia, he grew up watching a cartoon called "Well Just You Wait!" Picture a very Russian "Tom and Jerry," starring an oblivious rabbit and a long-suffering wolf, and you just about have it. When Tartakovsky's family moved to the United States, he fell in love with "Looney Tunes" and "Popeye." He carried these influences with him to university, where he abandoned his career path as an advertiser to pursue animation full time. After a year at the California Institute of the Arts, a university famous for its animation school, he followed a winding road to Hanna-Barbera, Cartoon Network, and his first big success, "Dexter's Laboratory."

You might think the stylish violence of "Samurai Jack" is a world away from "Looney Tunes." But watch the climax of the "Premiere Movie," and think again. Jack's battle against the robot beetles is more or less a series of gags, a "Road Runner" cartoon reconstructed as an epic battle. The beetles come after Jack, they stumble into a trap and are dispatched in hilarious detail. Repeat until the ground is covered in motor oil. "Popeye," too, remains near and dear to Tartakovsky's heart. He directed "Hotel Transylvania" at Sony to earn a swing at the "Popeye" movie of his dreams, a take that would "elicit laughs from just movement" rather than the script-driven gags of so many modern animated movies. Tartakovsky's proposal was rejected by the studio, but an 87-minute animatic of the project was leaked in July 2022.

You May Have Beaten Me Now

In interviews, Genndy Tartakovsky insists his approach remains the same as it was when his team produced "Samurai Jack." When The Verge asked how the final season of "Samurai Jack" was made, he confessed "we just use Photoshop ... we would have made the same show 10 years ago." In an interview with Animation World about his recent series "Primal," a near-wordless prehistoric drama about a man and his dinosaur, Tartakovsky insists the series is "basically traditional animation done on a Cintiq in TVPaint." Retaining the feel of his early work is clearly important to him. But there is also a clear progression throughout his career, a whittling down of dialogue and extraneous detail to a core of wordless cinematic action. "Primal" is just the most extreme expression of an approach leading back to "Clone Wars," "Samurai Jack," and perhaps even Tartakovsky's contributions to "Powerpuff Girls."

"Samurai Jack" lacks the elaborate world building and character drama of other cult TV animation classics like "Gargoyles." It exists within the limitations of its medium, rather than rupturing them. But there's a confidence to the series, an aesthetic consistency, that captures the imagination of children regardless. Tartakovsky discusses this approach in the aforementioned Verge interview. It's "kind of pulpy, and very specific to its own world. It's something that the 12- or 14-year-old kid in me just loves." "Samurai Jack" may be recycled from the daydreams of 10-year-old Genndy Tartakovsky, but its delivery is fully committed to the integrity of its world even when that world is purely ridiculous.

But I Will Destroy You In The Future

When I rewatched the end of "Samurai Jack: The Premiere Movie" for this article, I was struck by the discrepancies in my memory compared to the actual work. I thought the eyes of the beetles were red, but they were blue, while the background was red. I remembered the intense violence, but I had forgotten the humor, and the way the series uses pans and repeated footage to suggest intensity while saving money on production. It had been so long since I had seen "Samurai Jack" that my dream of the series had replaced the real thing.

But perhaps that is to be expected. In that Verge interview, Tartakovsky suggests that as an artist or a storyteller, "you want to create an experience — comical, emotional, horror — that gives the viewer a reaction." As a 10 year old watching "Samurai Jack," a series dreamed by animators who were once 10 years old themselves, I was right where they wanted me. A "lasting memory" was created, a scar that would follow me into adulthood. That scar remained even as the details of "Samurai Jack" itself faded from my memory. Whether we're talking about fine art or pulp, there's nothing more powerful than that.

Read this next: Every Time Futurama Predicted The Future

The post How A 10-Year-Old Genndy Tartakovsky Came Up With Samurai Jack appeared first on /Film.

Australia's public broadcaster interviewed a virologist who "played a key role in mapping the evolution of COVID-19" (and was also "the first person to release the sequence of SARS-CoV-2 to the world.") But interestingly, this Australian virologist also visited the Wuhan market in 2014, "and recognised the risk of virus transmission between animals and humans and suggested taking some samples." "While I was there, I noticed there were these live wildlife for sale, particularly raccoon dogs and ... muskrats" he said. "I took the photographs because I thought to myself: 'God, that's, that's not quite right'." Raccoon dogs had been associated with the emergence of a different coronavirus outbreak, SARS-CoV-1, in 2002-04, which became known worldwide as the SARS virus. Even in 2014, Professor Holmes believed the market could become a site of virus transmission between animals and humans. The monitoring that Professor Holmes suggested never took place but, in the early days of COVID-19, he was still convinced that a market like the one in Wuhan was the logical origin of the virus. "They are the kind of engine room of [this sort] of disease emergence ... because what you're doing is you're putting humans and wildlife in close proximity to each other," he said. The professor also describes the theory that the virus some how leaked from a Chinese lab as "horrendous, blame-game finger-pointing," noting that the nearest lab is miles away. And he cites other reasons the market is where the virus originated: Aside from the geographic clustering, he also points to the fact that two different strands emerged almost simultaneously in humans, something that is much more likely if the virus had already been mutating in animals. "They're sufficiently far apart that they were probably independent jumps. "It means there was a pool of infected animals in the market and it's mutated amongst them before it jumped to humans." All of this has led Professor Holmes to conclude that the question of how COVID-19 emerged is settled. "I'm extremely confident that the virus is not from a laboratory. I think that's just a nonsensical theory," he said. Detailed mapping of where samples were detected inside the Huanan seafood wholesale market allowed Professor Holmes and his colleagues to even pinpoint to a few square metres where COVID-19 was likely to have jumped between humans and animals. "It's extraordinary," he said. "And I took a photo in 2014 of one of the stalls that was the most positively tested in the whole market."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.