Hardspace: Shipbreaker was one of our favourite games from 2020, and after several years in early access it has now reached 1.0. Today saw the release of the spaceship salvage sim's third and final act, along with a full game re-balance and hundreds of bug fixes.
There are a lot of ways to pack your carry-on bag, but sometimes the “what” is more important than the “how.” To be blunt, traveling on an airplane can be both gross and boring. When I’m flying the friendly skies, I have a personal checklist of items that are “must-haves” for my carry-on bag, in my attempt to feel a…
Researchers have spotted fake proof-of-concept (PoC) exploits that appear to have been created by threat actors in an effort to deliver malware to members of the cybersecurity community.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe currently seems to be moving at a mile a minute and now fans are hoping for a Thor Love and Thunder Loki appearance.
The past 12 months or so have seen a vast array of releases across TV and Cinema, including the likes of Wandavision, Loki, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Spider-Man: No Way home and so much more. Following these, the next in the line of the MCU’s silver-screen adaptations is now on the horizon, Thor: Love and Thunder.
Directed by Taika Waititi, the movie looks set to follow Thor: Ragnarok with a slightly more lighthearted, humorous take on the often-dark movies, while still maintaining many of those features its predecessors contain.
The movie, which is set for release in July, received its first major trailer today and a small feature, which was easily missed has left fans yearning for an appearance of one of the MCU’s greatest anti-heroes, Loki.
In a blink and you miss it moment, Loki’s signature helmet appears in the Thor Love and Thunder trailer.
At the end of the trailer, a funny scene depicts Zeus (played by Russel Crowe) telling Thor to take off his disguise, before completely disrobing him.
Completely naked, the camera pans around Thor, showing off a giant tattoo on the God’s back. The tattoo is of Loki’s helm, with the words RIP Loki above it.
IL TATUAGGIO DI LOKI NON MI RIPRENDO PIÙ #ThorLoveAndThunder pic.twitter.com/Pl4MPtil2c
— chia; MoM phase? (@IsDempeo) May 24, 2022
As you’d expect. The trailer and its Loki hint have left fans speculating. And wanting more.
Twitter was awash this morning with plenty of theories of how the God of Mischief could appear in the movie, as well as those expressing their wishes for that appearance to happen.
if loki makes an appearance i will pass away
— preston (@stay_prest) May 24, 2022
loki's gotta come back now just so thor got that back piece for nothing
— mcr era grace ?? they/them (@epcot_enby) May 24, 2022
and when loki shows up in love and thunder during credits scene where he says “did you miss me brother” to thor and they prove that loki was able to change his fate- pic.twitter.com/mGXzpVUAmw
— ????'? ????. ? (@UZUIITENGEN) May 24, 2022
WARNING: SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME AND DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS SPOILERS AHEAD
We’re now in the era of the Multiverse, so anything is possible!
Of course, Loki is presumed dead by his brother, hence the massive tattoo on his back, however, as we know from the recent Disney Plus series, the God of Mischief is far from it.
There are infinite different variants of Loki floating around and with the MCU fully embracing the Multiverse, a Loki appearance is more than plausible.
We’ve had major Multiverse-related cameos in the previous two installations of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Men (Spider-Mans?) appeared in No Way Home and we had Mister Fantastic, Professor X, Captain Carter and more in Doctor Strange.
With all of this considered, a Thor Love and Thunder Loki cameo is possible but not guaranteed. The prevailing theory is, that if Thor’s brother is to appear, it will be in one of Marvel’s signature post-credit scenes. Here’s hoping.
Would a Thor Love and Thunder Loki cameo excite you? Let us know in the comments below.
The post Thor Love and Thunder Loki Trailer Hint Leaves Fans Wanting Appearance appeared first on ForeverGeek.
No one ever expects to be in a road accident, but the fact is that they happen all too often. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reported this month that traffic accidents caused 42,915 deaths in 2021. That is the highest in 16 years. It is crucial for everyone to be prepared. This article will outline how you can protect yourself to minimize the risk of road accidents and what you must do if ever you are involved in one.
Two things you must do to protect yourself are to learn how to drive safely and to get adequate auto insurance.
The best way to protect yourself against road accidents is to be a defensive driver. That means you must drive in a way that anticipates the actions of other drivers and be prepared to react accordingly. You must allow enough distance between your vehicle and others to give you leeway in reacting.
Defensive driving also means obeying all traffic laws and avoiding distractions while driving. You must not use your mobile phone, eat, drink, or do anything else. In addition, always wear your seat belt and drive within speed limits. Distracted driving, not wearing a seat belt, and speeding are the most common bad driving habits that make the roads dangerous.
Finally, make sure your vehicle is properly maintained. Check it before driving. Ensure that you have a dashboard camera installed. That will provide valuable information in case of an accident. Ensure that you have a powerful lamp that is always fully charged in case you need it by the roadside at night. These are all simple steps that can greatly reduce your risk of being involved in a road accident.
It is crucial to get auto insurance before driving. It will protect you financially if ever you are involved in an accident. Your insurance will cover damages to your vehicle, your medical expenses, as well as your liabilities to other parties.
There are different types of auto insurance, so make sure to get the one that best suits your needs. For example, liability insurance covers damages to other people and their property if you are at fault in an accident. You must have this type of insurance in most states.
Other types of auto insurance include:
It is best to get as much insurance coverage as you can.
Take note that when something happens and you need to claim insurance, many insurance companies will try to low-ball you. Do not let this happen. Hire a bad faith insurance lawyer if the insurance company refuses to pay you what you are owed or delays payment. Your lawyer will help you get the full compensation you are entitled to. Have the contact information of your lawyer with you always.
If you, unfortunately, find yourself in a road accident, these are the things you must do.
First, stay calm. Check if you have injuries. If you are not injured, check if others are injured. If anyone is injured, call 911 and the police immediately.
If your vehicle is obstructing the road, take photos immediately before moving it. Ensure that you take photos from all sides and angles. Then, if you can move your vehicle, drive it to the roadside and turn on your hazard lights.
Call your lawyer and give your location. Exchange insurance information with the other driver but refrain from discussing who was at fault. Do not admit fault or sign anything until you have consulted with your lawyer.
Do not leave the scene until the police have arrived and have released you. If you leave without permission you may later be charged with a hit-and-run.
File a police report and notify your insurance company as soon as possible. If you are hurt, take photos of your injuries and gather all medical records and bills. You will need these to claim insurance against your insurer or the other party’s insurer.
Road accidents are unfortunately all too common. It is a very stressful event. But if you take the proper precautions and know what to do, it does not have to be a nightmare.
Drive safely, get auto insurance, and if ever you are involved in an accident, follow the steps outlined above. With a little preparation, you can minimize the risk of being involved in a road accident and maximize your chances of coming out of one unscathed.
The post Prior Protection and What You Must Do in a Road Accident appeared first on Joe Martin.
Snacking is crucial. I need a wide variety of snacks to keep me happy and functioning every day. Nothing wild—popcorn, gummy bears, hummus and crackers, maybe a yogurt, definitely a cookie. Normally, a few of these will satisfy my hangry-pangs. But recently, my snack world has been turned upside down by discovering a…
I love hearing people's answers to the desert island game. If you aren't familiar with the concept, you ask someone what three items they would be marooned with on a desert island. Depending on what perimeters you set, the question can encompass any object or veer towards something more specific. — Read the rest
Most portable solar panels deliver 100W to 200W max. While you can find 300W panels, the EcoFlow seems to be the only portable solar panel that reaches 400W. But are those claims accurate, and is it worth its price tag? Let's unfold this panel to find out.
The following article contains spoilers of media across the "Star Wars" universe, including the prequel trilogy, "The Clone Wars," "Rebels," and more. Discretion is advised.
There are few rivalries in the "Star Wars" universe that are as long and winding as that between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Maul. The famed Jedi Master and bloodthirsty Sith Lord battled on and off again for 30 years, making it one of the longest-running arcs across the entire "Star Wars" media landscape. Despite being on opposite sides of the Force, these two highly skilled combatants may have more in common than you think. From their first encounter in "Episode I – The Phantom Menace" until their final showdown in "Star Wars: Rebels," they are both ultimately a product of common motifs found throughout the galaxy far, far away: revenge, loss, and deep isolation.
As "Obi-Wan Kenobi" approaches Disney+ at lightspeed, now is a perfect time to revisit this formative relationship for the titular, fan-favorite character. Though Maul is not set to return, their history does provide key insight into the exiled Jedi's withered state at the start of Deborah Chow's series, and it also takes place just a few years before the climax of their bitter feud. His final battle with Maul sees Obi-Wan as the wise recluse we know and love from "Episode IV – A New Hope," but first we need to know how he got there.
The two have a lot in common. They're both force-sensitive and began their careers at a very young age after being separated from their families on opposite ends of the galaxy.
According to the "Star Wars" encyclopedias "Ultimate Star Wars, New Edition" and "Star Wars: Geektionary: The Galaxy from A to Z," Obi-Wan's parents gave him away to the Jedi when he was a baby. They brought him to Coruscant, where he studied Force techniques, lightsaber combat, and meditation as a youngling, eventually chosen by Master Qui-Gon Jinn to be his padawan. Though initially rebellious and hungry for action, Kenobi learned to exercise restraint under Qui-Gon. During the events of the novel "Master and Apprentice," Obi-Wan's obedience to the Jedi Council and their way of life would surpass even that of his master, adamant about foreseeing all logical possibilities and not allowing feelings to cloud his judgment.
In Season 2, Episode 13 of "The Clone Wars," entitled "Voyage of Temptation," it is revealed that Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan were sent to the planet Mandalore to protect Duchess Satine Kryze during the Mandalorian Civil War. During his time there, Obi-Wan fell in love with Satine and was willing to leave the Jedi Order to be with her. However, he chose to uphold the Jedi Code, which forbids romantic relationships, returning to Coruscant and leaving her to rebuild Mandalore after the war. This will be relevant later, so I hope you're taking notes!
Darth Maul had no such entanglements. As shown in the comic book miniseries "Star Wars: Darth Maul – Son of Dathomir," Maul was born on the Outer Rim planet of Dathomir. Even in his early years, the young Nightbrother wrestled with deep anger, often ignored by his mother, Talzin. She led the higher-class Nightsisters, a band of witches turned assassins who used dark magic to manipulate the Force despite not being born force-sensitive; in E.K. Johnston's novel "Queen's Peril," Maul admits to himself that, as someone who did have a connection to the Force, he was resentful of this.
This anger attracted the attention of the Sith, specifically Sith Lord Dark Sidious. As portrayed in the short story "An Unwilling Apprentice" by George Mann, Sidious went to Dathomir searching for a Sith apprentice. Though he originally planned on making Talzin his apprentice, he sensed the strength in Maul's then-uncontrolled anger and chose him instead.
Bestowed with the title of Darth Maul, Sidious trained his new padawan in martial arts and lightsaber combat, particularly honing his skills using the now iconic double-bladed lightsaber. More importantly, Sidious ingrained in Maul a deep hatred for the Jedi for their destruction of the Sith. As highlighted in "Queen's Peril," Maul felt abandoned by the Jedi who left him on his home planet despite being force-sensitive, which fueled his anger.
After the events of the comic miniseries "Star Wars: Darth Maul," Maul was ready to play a role in Sidious' master plan to defeat the Jedi once and for all, the moment we all remember from "The Phantom Menace." As the Trade Federation stages a coup on Naboo (hey, that rhymes!), Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan protect Queen Padmé Amidala while simultaneously fighting against the Federation's droid forces. However, they are confronted by Maul, all three swinging their sabers in a fierce battle, scaling the palace's generator shaft. After Maul knocks Qui-Gon down to a significantly lower level, Obi-Wan is forced to watch Maul kill his master behind an activated laser wall.
Obi-Wan goes on the offensive, impassioned over the loss of his dear friend and mentor. Maul force-pushes Kenobi over the chasm's edge, grabbing onto a small protrusion in the wall for dear life. However, by utilizing the focus and patience imparted by his master, Obi-Wan uses the Force to pull Qui-Gon's lightsaber to him. He leaps over Maul and slashes him through the waist, splitting him into two pieces as he falls backward down the generator shaft to his demise.
In his final moments, Qui-Gon makes Obi-Wan promise to train Anakin Skywalker, a young boy Qui-Gon discovered on Tatooine. Quin-Gon believes he is the Chosen One, prophesied to bring balance to the Force. Despite doubting his master's judgment initially, Obi-Wan agrees to train Anakin.
Fans thought Maul was done for, but "The Clone Wars" resurrected the beloved character and greatly expanded his story and Obi-Wan's story by association.
After Sidious took child Maul, Talzin has a third son: Savage Oppress. Twelve years following Maul's assumed death, Savage has been selected to serve Asajj Ventress, a Nightsister and former Sith padawan. However, after being betrayed by Ventress and discovered by the Jedi, Oppress is forced to return to Dathomir wounded and hopeless. Mother Talzin informs Savage that she knows of someone who can further train him: his long-lost brother Maul, a brother he never knew, who is alive somewhere in the galaxy's far reaches.
Throughout Season 4, Episode 21, entitled "Brothers," Savage scours the Outer Rim searching for Maul. He ends up on the junk planet Lotho Minor and, after some searching, discovers his brother has taken refuge underground with robotic spider-legs as his new bottom half. Somehow, through the dark side's ability to sustain life through intense focus on overwhelming hatred, not to mention a little dark magic, Maul was able to survive being slaughtered on Naboo. Dumped on a far-out planet, he was brought back to the solitude of his childhood and began to lose all sense of time and memory. As he succumbed to complete madness, this sobbing, sniveling spider-Sith fostered a lust for vengeance against not only Obi-Wan Kenobi but also Darth Sidious for leaving him to rot.
In the following episode, "Revenge," Savage takes Maul back to Dathomir, where Mother Talzin restores Maul's memory and sanity while providing two tall robotic legs. Back to his former glory and then some, Maul joins forces with Savage and immediately seeks revenge on Obi-Wan Kenobi, who Yoda informs of Maul's return. Maul grabs the Jedi Council's attention by killing and oppressing the innocent civilians of Raydonia, luring Obi-Wan to the planet. The Jedi Master finds himself in double trouble as the two brothers overwhelm, capture, and torture him aboard their ship. However, he is surprisingly aided by Ventress, who has come to seek a bounty placed on Oppress' head.
The four of them duke it out, but with the reemergence of Maul comes the reemergence of Obi-Wan's trauma over the loss of his master, Qui-Gon Jinn. Brought to fury as Maul taunts him about his past, Obi-Wan realizes he is no match for Maul in his current state and escapes with Ventress in an escape pod. After an additional but brief skirmish with a pirate colony in the Season 5 premiere, "Revival," Maul and Savage are left drifting in space. Senator Palpatine decides that Maul and Savage can no longer be classified as a Republic concern; seeing it as a personal matter for Obi-Wan, he is unwilling to expend further Republic resources. Amidst the multi-faceted conflict of the Clone Wars, the Dathomirian brothers are put on the backburner.
In a Season 5 episode titled "Eminence," the brothers are saved when their pod is discovered by a group of rebel Mandalorians named the Death Watch. Led by Pre Viszla, former governor of Mandalore, the group was formed in opposition to Duchess Satine Kryze's pacifist leadership. The group believed it was against Mandalorian warrior tradition, leading to the Mandalorian Civil War (told ya it would maybe become relevant again).
Vizsla decides to bring the two back to their base on Zanbar against the skepticism of his lieutenant Bo-Katan. He nurtures Maul and Savage back to life, and after gaining consciousness, Maul explains his story to Vizsla and Bo-Katan and insists he and his brother are Sith but do not serve any Sith Lord. Recognizing that they have a common enemy in the Jedi, Maul and the Night Watch agree to join forces. Recognizing they need more resources, Maul forms the Shadow Collective, an alliance with multiple crime families, including the Black Sun, the Pyke Syndicate, and the Hutts.
In the following episode, "Shades of Reason," Pre Vizsla and his team overtake Mandalore and imprison the Duchess. However, upon their victory, Vizsla betrays Maul and Savage, imprisoning them. After breaking them out, Maul challenges Viszla to a deathmatch, using Mandalorian tradition against him, and wins. Unable to accept an outsider ruling Mandalore, Bo-Katan and a group of deniers forsake the Death Watch and escape, leaving Maul to begin his rule over Mandalore.
Things come to a head in the following episode, "The Lawless." In a last-ditch effort, Duchess Satine Kryze sends a message to her beloved Obi-Wan Kenobi in hopes he will help her on Mandalore. Due to Mandalore's neutral stance amidst the Clone Wars, Obi-Wan goes alone, just as Darth Maul gleefully anticipates. Obi-Wan rescues the Duchess but fails to escape Mandalore, left to be captured by Maul and his army. In his throne room, Maul insists Obi-Wan is weak against the powers of the dark side, while Obi-Wan contends that the Nightsisters subconsciously influenced Maul's decision to join the Dark Side in the first place. Maul is appalled (more rhyming!) at this claim, speaking to his inner resentments during his childhood.
Maul reminds Kenobi of the suffering he experienced on Lotho Minor, all because of him, and now knows the perfect way to make him share his pain: he stabs Satine through the chest. Obi-Wan holds her as she takes her final breath, reminding him that she always loved him. Stricken with profound grief, Maul is satisfied. He sends Obi-Wan away to be imprisoned, but on his way down, he is saved by Bo-Katan and her defected squad of Mandalorians. Before he leaves, Obi-Wan correctly suspects Bo-Katan is Satine's sister and shares condolences on her death. Aside from a brief encounter shortly after this, shown in "Son of Dathomir," the two rivals would not see each other again for 15 years.
Darth Maul may have provided two major losses in Obi-Wan's life, but a third wholly separate loss hits him the hardest.
In a tragic turn of events in contradiction to the prophecy, Anakin succumbs to the Dark Side and pledges allegiance to Darth Sidious. In "Episode II – Attack of the Clones," he disobeys the Jedi Code and engages in a romantic relationship with Padmé; in "Episode III – Revenge of the Sith," Padmé becomes pregnant. However, after seeing visions of Padmé dying during childbirth, Palpatine, revealing himself to be a Sith Lord, informs Anakin that the Sith can sustain life, even in death. I mean, we've seen it once before...
Obi-Wan, horrified at this sudden confluence of events, tries to inform Padmé of her husband's turn. She denies these accusations and goes to meet Anakin on Mustafar. Though Obi-Wan is initially hesitant to have to fight his fallen apprentice, he secretly stows himself on Padmé's ship, knowing he must. When he arrives on Mustafar, Obi-Wan expresses disappointment in his padawan for forsaking the prophecy and joining the enemy. Anakin insists the Sith are not their enemy and that the Jedi have brainwashed Obi-Wan. As Anakin and Obi-Wan duel across Mustafar's volcanic landscape, Anakin is filled with inconsolable rage against his former master. Knowing he is beyond reform, Obi-Wan dismembers his brother in arms using his lightsaber and leaves him for dead, burnt and charred from Mustafar's lava rivers.
Following his duel on Mustafar, Obi-Wan brings Padmé to safety on the planet of Polis Massa, where she gives birth to twins named Luke and Leia. However, as Anakin predicted, she dies immediately following their birth. Knowing that they must be kept secret, Obi-Wan separates the twins; he leaves Leia with Senator Bail Organa of Alderaan, a trusted ally, and delivers Luke to his Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru on Tatooine. After Obi-Wan explains what has happened, Owen insists that Obi-Wan is not to interact or interfere with Luke's upbringing; he has no interest in seeing Luke be trained in the ways of the Jedi, like his brother before him. Obi-Wan agrees and goes into exile on the desert planet, watching over young Luke Skywalker from afar. This period is the one in which we will meet Obi-Wan in the upcoming Disney+ series, taking place ten years into his exile.
Meanwhile, Maul attempts to defeat Sidious and expand the Shadow Collective's control over the entire galaxy. However, he fails to defeat his former master, and his rule over Mandalore is brought to a swift halt when Bo-Katan returns with reinforcements. Despite escaping, he is left with nothing, forced to rebuild from the ground up. Knowing Obi-Wan may be dead following the events of Order 66 and the Great Jedi Purge, Maul relinquishes his rivalry (for now) and sets his sights on something more significant.
Maul's journey continues in "Rebels," several years after the events of the Clone Wars. Maul is now searching for a Sith Holocron that can provide access to an ancient Sith temple and superweapon. He is led to the planet Malachor, where he discovers the Holocron but cannot enter the temple and, due to a wrecked ship, is stranded there.
In the episode "Twilight," Maul encounters Ezra Bridger, a refugee Jedi apprentice also seeking the Holocron in an attempt to end the Sith once and for all. Bridger befriends Maul, unaware of his dark past with the Sith. Maul helps Bridger get in touch with his passion and anger as they bond. They both retrieve the Holocron, only for Maul to betray Ezra so he can take the Holocron for himself. However, with the help of fellow Jedi Kanan Jarrus, Maul is driven out of Malachor without the Holocron.
In "The Holocrons of Fate," Maul returns and takes many of Ezra and Kanan's fellow rebels hostage a few months later. In exchange for their lives, Maul demands to be given the Sith Holocron, along with a Jedi Holocron he knows they have in their possession. Ezra and Maul combine the Holocrons, and the latter discovers what he was secretly hoping: Obi-Wan Kenobi is alive. Before Ezra can fully interpret the "twin suns" he sees in the Holocron, Kanan convinces Ezra to close his eyes, shutting off both Holocrons in a sizable explosion.
Later in the season, in "Visions and Voices," Maul escapes the rebels and attempts to search for Obi-Wan, but because Ezra failed to ultimately see his vision, Maul does not know enough information for him. However, the Holocrons implanted a mental link between the two, allowing Maul to manipulate Ezra and his connection to the dark side. Ezra insists they reunite to finish what they started and rid themselves of the link. Through the ritual, Maul and Ezra finally see that the "twin suns" were, in fact, a vision of Tatooine, confirming Obi-Wan's location.
This brings us to one of the most beloved episodes of "Star Wars" animation, "Twins Suns."
Maul, desperate for revenge against his nemesis, begins his desperate search across the dunes of the desert planet. However, now knowing Obi-Wan is the key to defeating the Sith, Ezra decides to race against Maul and track Obi-Wan himself. Upon arriving on the desert planet, Ezra discovers a fragment of the Sith Holocron, but before he can discern what this means, he is attacked by Tusken Raiders. With his ship destroyed, Ezra is left stranded searching for the lost Jedi Master, eventually passing out from the heat.
Ezra wakes up around a campfire built by none other than Obi-Wan Kenobi himself, telling him that the Holocrons led him here to search for an end to the Sith. However, Obi-Wan surmises that Maul and the Sith Holocron manipulated Ezra. In the end, Maul is led to the campfire, but Obi-Wan sends Ezra toward North on his trusty dewback, where he says he will find his way home.
Maul sees Obi-Wan's current living situation as potentially worse than death, while Obi-Wan insists Maul's life of revenge leaves him with little in comparison. Maul further surmises that Obi-Wan is not on Tatooine merely in exile but rather to protect someone. Seeing this as a threat to young Skywalker, Obi-Wan activates his lightsaber.
Maul brings out his double-bladed saber and charges at Obi-Wan. He attempts to use the same move that stunned Qui-Gon before his death, aiming his hilt at Obi-Wan's face. However, Obi-Wan slashes into Maul's chest within three loaded strikes, mortally wounding him. Obi-Wan holds Maul as he falls to the ground. In his final moments, Maul asks Obi-Wan if he is protecting the Chosen One, to which Obi-Wan admits. Taking comfort in knowing the Chosen One will avenge them both in his destiny to defeat the Empire, Darth Maul dies in Obi-Wan's arms. Obi-Wan closes his adversary's eyes and builds him a funeral pyre in a final moment of respect. Their rivalry has officially come to an end.
Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Maul may have been ideological opposites, but, as Maul soberly points out before his death, their pain and suffering are both linked to Darth Sidious. Sidious instilled revenge in Maul from a young age, which would only grow as the Sith Lord imposed the Rule of Two and dismissed Maul as a lost apprentice and potential rival. Furthermore, Sidious's creation lost Obi-Wan his master, lover, and padawan. They both have a common enemy and, as the saying goes, the enemy of your enemy is your friend. However, Maul was so caught up in his quest for vengeance that it ultimately blinded him.
The two characters also had many shared experiences: they both watched loved ones be slain before their very eyes, they both were forced into exile by the actions of others, and they both lost an opportunity to train and mentor a uniquely attuned apprentice. However, for everything they shared, two vastly different people were molded. Despite shattering loss and immense challenge, Maul persisted in his lust for power and revenge, which brought about his own demise. Though his tragedies were not as severe, Obi-Wan's wise understanding of the Force allowed him to preserve his emotional intellect. He rose above it all, eventually becoming the revered Jedi Master we all know and love today.
Read this next: The 20 Best Clone Wars Episodes Ranked
The post Obi-Wan and Darth Maul's Relationship Explained: They're More Alike Than You Think appeared first on /Film.
With E3 dead and buried for this year, it's all about Geoff Keighley's Summer Game Fest 2022, and whatever scattered streams decide to casually show up around it. Thankfully, there might be less of the latter in 2022.
Speaking on Twitter Spaces (as reported by VGC), Keighley does what he does best: hype up his Summer Game Fest event. But this time he provides cold hard facts that actually highlight what this year's festival could look like, and things seem good in terms of making it actually feel E3-esque in 2022. Point blank, he explains:
"There were a lot of shows last year where everyone was disappointed when they weren’t really press conferences, right? Like Take-Two, Capcom, Square Enix and things like that...I think [they] have learned that if you’re going to do a press conference, you kind of need to have 30 minutes-plus of stuff, and sometimes they only have one or two great games to show, which may not be enough to do a full event around. So I think that’s going to be a bit of a shift. I have a pretty good sense of what’s coming in the next month, and I think people will be hyped about games in general."
It's kind of a bold statement in a way — noting that Summer Game Fest is bigger than, say, a Square Enix conference — but he's absolutely right about people being disappointed in general by smaller showcases; a reaction even companies like EA aren't immune to.
Now, we could still get a billion streams anyway, despite this claim. But this has me hopeful that at the very least, several publishers will "fold" into a bigger event, if only because they realized they can't cut it on their own in the past.
The post Geoff Keighley says 2022’s Summer Game Fest will be more killer, less filler appeared first on Destructoid.
As new HBO crime drama "We Own This City"grips audiences, with /Film's Josh Spiegel calling it "vast and existentially bleak," many are revisiting series creator David Simon's prior projects, notably the early-aughts drama "The Wire." Not only does the Baltimore-based series have some cast overlap, they both share an intense engagement with a wide moral spectrum of characters, and none of whom are what they seem.
One of the more compelling characters (hard to say when nearly all of them are) on "The Wire" is known as "Snoop," played by Baltimore native Felicia Pearson. One of the most feared enforcers of drug kingpin Marlo Stanfield, Snoop racked up a high body count, and in tandem with fellow street soldier Chris Partlow, hid more than a few quicklime-dusted bodies in the city's many vacant buildings.
Pearson wasn't a trained actor when she got her role on the series, and her role wasn't a speaking one when she was brought on board. As she tells VladTV in a 2016 interview, the "Grace After Midnight" co-author had another star of the show to thank for interrupting her self-professed hustling and launching her entertainment career: the late Michael K. Williams, who played the formidable stick-up artist and street legend Omar Little. Approaching her in a Baltimore nightclub, Williams invited Pearson to meet with Simon and the show's producers, despite the fact that she "paid no mind" to the show and hadn't watched it. What started as an initial role as an extra blossomed into more chewable screen time. As part of an across-the-board casting campaign filling the series with then-unknowns, including "Creed" star Michael B. Jordan, the move paid off in an ingrained sprawl of tangible characters telling the story of the dissolution of an American city in the failed war on drugs.
Pearson doesn't hide who she is or where she came from. Borne of addiction, raised in foster care and given little chance to survive, Pearson hails from what David Simon refers to as "the other America," vulnerable to the broken, ever-churning American systems that insist that nothing is broken and if it is, it's the fault of the underclass. Dealing drugs in her teens and serving a prison term for second-degree murder, Pearson's life changed when she was written into "The Wire" as a character reflective of herself — even in name — for three seasons.
Now, Pearson and "The Wire" writer/co-creator Ed Burns are developing a series based on Pearson's experiences, with Burns executive producing alongside Philip Michelson of Moondog Films. "A.K.A. Snoop" will be a television miniseries that looks into the hard knocks Pearson endured and overcame in Baltimore. But the show is currently un-attached to any network or streamer.
Following "The Wire," Pearson flourished in a series of notable acting roles, including two Spike Lee films ("Da Sweet Blood of Jesus" and "Chi-Raq") and an array of music video appearances with hip-hop artists like Rick Ross and A$AP Ferg. Her latest project is Stephen Everson's crime feature "Scott Free," currently in post-production.
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The post How The Wire's Felicia Pearson Went From Extra to Star On the Show appeared first on /Film.
Andy Muschietti's "IT" franchise might have left fans with some unanswered questions, though there's no denying it set the horror world ablaze with its cosmic weirdness and killer clown. As fans speculate about the series' next directions, currently poised to be an HBO Max miniseries, they're like to find a giant, Pennywise-shaped hole in their heart. "It: Chapter 2" was a divisive entry, and both fans and casual audiences are likely looking for something to satiate their horror appetites, at least until the fourth season of "Stranger Things" premieres.
"It: Chapter 1" and "2" adroitly encapsulated the eighties fever dominating the film and television landscape at the time. With a mixture of full-borne horror and coming-of-age sensibilities, the "It" franchise was cinema's answer to "Stranger Things" and the remunerative nature of nostalgia. Adapting a classic text and shifting it to a classic decade worked like gangbusters. Perfectly balancing comedy and cosmic horror, "It" left its mark. These 15 movies, in some capacity or another, embody the dastardly spirit of Pennywise and are certain to make the wait for more "It" that much more bearable.
"Summer of 84" is distinct insofar as it had not just one or two directors but three. François Simard, Anouk Whissell, and Yoann-Karl Whissell all worked together on their '80s-set iteration of "Rear Window" meets "Stranger Things," though it would be impossible to tell from the finished product, given how assured and resonant it ended up being. In the decade preceding the summer of 1984, over a dozen young boys have gone missing in Cape May, Oregon, though no one seems all that interested in connecting the dots.
Enter Davey Armstrong (Graham Verchere), a young paperboy who is unusually suspicious of his police officer neighbor, Wayne Mackey (Rich Sommer). After Wayne spots a missing boy entering Wayne's house, he and his friends — in classic synth fashion — endeavor to prove to their town that Mackey is the "Cape May Slayer." "Summer of 84" starts as a cruder riff on "Stranger Things," though its third act sets it apart considerably. "Summer of 84" gets dark, going to places most genre properties shy away from. It's a disorienting tonal shift that works in the movie's favor, helping to distinguish itself from sundry other nostalgic horror rides.
Directing duo Radio Silence (Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett) accomplished the impossible with their sequel to the late Wes Craven's long-running meta-slasher franchise. A pitch-perfect balance of carving out a new identity and honoring the past, the fifth entry in the "Scream" franchise feels akin to an impossible achievement. It not only works but also feels right at home alongside the four preceding entries. In other words, it's a movie Wes Craven would have been proud of.
Tapping into the burgeoning "requel" trend whereby studios resurrect old properties with legacy players and new stories, "Scream" is a caustic and consistently hilarious skewering of the current state of filmmaking. It taps into the adolescent interplay that made "IT" so successful without sacrificing genuine scares and tension in the process. It's the best entry in the series since the second and proves, like Andy Muschietti did with "IT," how effective new blood is at making something old feel fresh again.
Rob Reiner's "Stand by Me," adapted from Stephen King's novella, "The Body," is perhaps "IT's" second most conspicuous influence outside of "Stranger Things." King himself might as well have included Pennywise alongside the young cast since in doing so, little would have changed. That isn't a bad thing, either. While it lacks "IT's" bonafide scares, "Stand by Me" more than makes up for it with genuine pathos and a whirlwind of sensational adolescent performances from Wil Wheaton, Jerry O'Connell, Corey Feldman, and the late River Phoenix.
Trapped in a perennial state of childhood ennui, Wheaton's Gordie and company embark into the woods one summer afternoon to see if they can track down a dead body. It's the kind of lark only young boys know, a day's long excursion to see a dead guy. Nothing more, nothing less. A troubling, dour heart beats beneath the surface, though, with Reiner successfully tapping into the nuance of King's writing to convey the hidden pain and grief these young boys have internalized. "Stand by Me" is "IT" without the killer clown, and it remains a coming-of-age touchstone for good reason.
Everything audiences need to know about Kevin Phillips' "Super Dark Times" is in the title. Ostensibly a character study that distinctly trades in the iconography of the 1990s, "Super Dark Times" is secretly a horror movie. Phillips slowly unfurls his crafty narrative web throughout the runtime, culminating in a third-act twist that completely upends expectations in the best possible way.
Zach (Owen Campbell) and Josh (Charlie Tahan) are two best friends living in Upstate New York in the 1990s. One day, they decide to screw around with a sword, and their acquaintance, Daryl (Max Talisman), is accidentally killed by Josh. Rather than reporting it, the boys decide to hide Daryl's body. Consequently, they're racked with grief and paranoia, especially Zach. Strangest of all, however, is just how little Josh seems to care. As Josh pilfers his brother's marijuana stash and grows in popularity, he swaggers around like someone who hasn't just accidentally killed another person. No spoilers here, but trust that "Super Dark Times" is very much a horror movie that plays the same nostalgic fiddle as "IT." However, the monsters in "Super Dark Times" are very much human.
John R. Leonetti's 2014 "Annabelle" is a better movie than most might give it credit for, though it is an objectively odd way to introduce the titular Annabelle doll (first featured in James Wan's "The Conjuring") to her own quasi-franchise. One of the core problems is Mia, portrayed by Annabelle Wallis. Wallis is great, but a movie about a possessed doll almost demands an adolescent perspective. It's strange to see so many adults grapple with a haunted porcelain Annabelle in the first place.
Director David F. Sandberg, fresh off the success of "Lights Out," seems to have understood this. A prequel, "Annabelle: Creation" traces the origins of the titular doll, flanking her with a group of orphans and their new accommodations at a rural ranch. The shift in perspective imbues "Creation" with a vibe not quite unlike "IT," with bullies, the power of friendship, and relative strangers banding together to combat an unstoppable evil. It helps, too, that "Annabelle: Creation" is seriously scary, delivering some of the best jolts the expansive "Conjuring" universe has ever seen.
"Closet Monster" is one of the last decade's most underrated indie debuts. A body horror movie with coming-of-age sensibilities, "Closet Monster" is never especially scary, though Stephen Dunn's script could easily be attributed to the likes of Stephen King on account of how tenderly conveyed its central metaphor is. Oscar Madly (Connor Jessup) is 18 and closeted, living with his explicitly homophobic father after his parents divorced a decade prior. He is haunted by severe stomach pain and hallucinations, reminders of a violent homophobic attack he witnessed growing up.
Oscar grapples with a new crush, adolescent ennui, and even the care of his pet hamster, Buffy, who he imagines can talk. It's wildly creative, with the body horror elements most pronounced when Oscar tries to explore his sexuality. Given how much "IT: Chapter 2" stumbles with its queer representation, "Closet Monster" could serve as something of a palate cleanser, with Dunn adroitly merging genuine representation with effective horror elements.
This isn't the 2019 Lupita Nyong'o zombie movie, though that one is also very good and worth seeing. No, this is Richard Alan Greenberg's "Little Monsters," the 1989 kid-friendly comedy-horror movie starring none other than Fred Savage. Fred Savage was everywhere in the 1980s and 1990s. He was in "The Princess Bride," "The Wonder Years," and even cameoed as himself on "Seinfeld."
He stars as Brian Stevenson, a young boy who traps a monster named Maurice (Howie Mandel) in his brother's room and discovers a world of monsters living beneath. All former children, these monsters have access to beds around the world. In the dark of night, they sneak into bedrooms to pull pranks and cause general mischief. Though fun at first, Brian develops a growing awareness that the monsters sometimes take it too far, and worse still, the longer he stays there, the closer he comes to transforming into a monster. It's all kid-friendly fare, but it has a genuine heart, especially as the central kids team up to (of course) combat the big monster baddie. A family-friendly "IT," "Little Monsters" is mandatory Halloween viewing.
Fresh off the success of "A Quiet Place," writers Scott Beck and Bryan Woods helmed "Haunt," a Halloween slasher that did more to revitalize a waning subgenre than most other 2019 releases. A back-to-basics template that prioritized scares and playful misdirection over subversive twists and seismic formula shifts, "Haunt" captivated audiences.
Katie Stevens stars as Harper. On Halloween night, she and several friends visit an off-the-path haunted house, ostensibly of the extreme variety, that asks them to sign liability waivers and surrender their cell phones. As haunts themselves have swelled in popularity, it's a grounded, believable set-up to isolate the core group of young adults, leaving them to the mercy of the haunt's proprietors. Of course, the danger inside is real, and Harper and her friends are left to contend with a variety of masked maniacs. Balancing Andy Muschietti's wit with some bonafide scares, "Haunt" is an indelible throwback to the subgenre's heyday.
Director Joe Dante of "Gremlins" and "Small Soldiers" fame has all but retired from directing features (although he has several projects in the works), with his last, "Burying the Ex," released in 2014. It was five years before that when he directed "The Hole." Once the apotheosis of devilishly dangerous kid fare, Dante's presence might have waned, but his sensationally fun wit, as evidenced in "The Hole," remains a core part of his filmmaking style.
Conspicuously working with fewer resources, "The Hole" still entices with its giddy, throwback charm. Dane and Lucas Thompson (Chris Massoglia and Nathan Gamble) are brothers who discover a large bottomless hole in their basement. Alongside new crush, Julie (Haley Bennett), they endeavor to unravel the mystery of what the hole might be. With cosmic horror elements and an accessible family-friendly verve, "The Hole" harkens back to the horror of the 1980s in the best possible way. It's scary, it's fun, and it's perfect for audiences who want the feeling of "IT" without all the gore.
Speaking of holes, Tibor Takács' "The Gate" also deals liberally in the horrors of random, bottomless holes. Middle schoolers Glen (Stephen Dorff) and Terry (Louis Tripp) discover a large hole and a geode in Glen's backyard after the completion of some construction work. Not wanting to leave well enough alone, they break open the geode, read some incantations, and accidentally unleash a horde of demons from within the ground.
Not just a regular hole, it's actually a gateway to a domain of evil gods. With Glen's parents out of town, it's up to him, his sister Al (Christa Denton), and Terry to stop the evil. A mixture of "Gremlins" and "IT," "The Gate" is darker than most kid-centric offerings, but it's still the perfect horror gateway for young fans. With the adolescent banter and accessibility of "IT," "The Gate" is a wonderful springboard for burgeoning horror fans.
"Stitches" features a death scene set to Cutting Crew's 1986 hit "(I Just) Died in Your Arms Tonight." If that's not enough to sell an audience, there's no telling what is. Conor McMahon's horror comedy follows the clown Stitches (Ross Noble) after he returns from the dead to seek revenge on the teenagers who caused his death years prior in a prank gone awry. As the teens party, drink, and smoke, Stitches lurks, picking them off one by one.
The killer clown subgenre might seem like a given, especially on the heels of Andy Muschietti's "IT," but it's considerably smaller than most audiences might realize. Worse still, even those few entries it does have rarely register as something worth watching. "Stitches" thankfully leans hard into its comedy roots, delivering heaps of gross-out gore, sensational gags, and a terrific performance from Noble as the undead killer clown. Fun, funny, and craftier than it needs to be, "Stitches" leaves its audience in ... stitches.
"Night of the Creeps" taps into such a specific vein of nostalgia, that it's almost impossible to resist. Director Fred Dekker's feature debut adroitly captures the minutiae of the freshman experience, first love, and the follies in trying to make sense of the world as a young adult. It's so tender and finely tuned that "Night of the Creeps" would have arguably worked even without the parasitic slugs turning everyone into zombies.
Jason Lively stars as Chris Romero, a fraternity pledge caught in the middle of what amounts to an alien invasion from a horde of nasty, slimy slugs. With elements of 1950s B-movies, George A. Romero's "Night of the Living Dead," and slasher flicks thrown in to round it out, "Night of the Creeps" is a hodgepodge of horror subgenres that never feels anything less than deliberate. It matches "IT" in terms of balancing scares, gore, and humor. And like Stephen King's works, it has an endearing, beating heart at its core. Horror rarely gets better than this.
McG's directorial style isn't for everyone. It's so frenetic, flashy, and replete with quick cuts and stylistic flourishes that it's as liable to produce nausea as it is enjoyment. While "Rim of the World" features his quasi-juvenile impulses at their worst, "The Babysitter," distributed by Netflix, shows how much promise his manic energy can yield. That "The Babysitter" works at all despite its broad humor and childish gags is attributable to stars Samara Weaving and Judah Lewis.
Lewis stars as Cole, a bullied young kid whose babysitter, Bee (Weaving) happens to be the hottest girl in town. She's a geek's fantasies incarnate. She knows comics and sci-fi, likes classic rock, and even lets her charges have a drink or two — a secret shared just between them. Unfortunately, Bee is also a cultist, and she and her other high school friends have planned to sacrifice Cole to the devil. "The Babysitter's" tongue is planted firmly in cheek, and supporting players Robbie Amell, Bella Thorn, and Hana Mae Lee work wonders to make the material more palatable. It's a sweet, uber-violent coming-of-age parable in the vein of "IT," and it marks one of Netflix's best original horror offerings in years.
A core component of Pennywise's modus operandi is his capacity to embody his victims' greatest fears. Whether werewolves, geysers of blood, or germ-ridden lepers, Pennywise knows exactly what form to inhabit to continue his cosmic workings. Anthony Hickox's "Waxwork" works similarly, trapping six teens in a mysterious wax museum with the curious capacity to transport their bodies into the stock horror displays. "Waxwork" leans hard into the diversity of horror that helped make Pennywise so successful as a horror villain, ensuring its scares and monsters never wear out their welcome.
Led by Zach Galligan of "Gremlins" fame, the hapless teens contend with werewolves, vampires, the Phantom of the Opera, a mummy, and several other hallmarks of horror iconography. Like "IT," the film deftly balances genuine scares with smatterings of adolescent humor, paying homage to an entire genre in one wonderfully crafted slasher with a setting Vincent Price would be proud of.
André Øvredal's "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" should not have worked. A long-gestating adaptation of Alvin Schwartz's children's book series of the same name, fans have long acknowledged that it's Stephen Gammell's charcoal and ink artwork that made the series a generational touchstone. That's no slight against Schwartz, a writer who successfully translated centuries of folklore and urban legends for a younger audience, but Gammell's illustrations were so provocative and subversive that without them, a movie would never stand a chance.
Luckily, Øvredal and producer Guillermo del Toro preserved the best of Gammell's work when streamlining the three-book series to film. Rather than being told in episodic or anthology form, writers Dan and Kevin Hageman created a new central narrative around a cursed book whose stories come to life. With its period setting, boundary-pushing scares, and sensational villains, "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" might be best thought of as the PG-13 alternative to "IT."
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The post Movies Like the IT Franchise You Should Watch Next appeared first on /Film.
Want to know how to respec in Elden Ring? Tinkering with your stat distribution is crucial if you're eager to switch from a dual-wielding melee maestro to a spell-slinging wizard on the fly, but accessing it isn't as simple as opening a menu. Aside from a full walkthrough to respec, we've also included how to respec during the Sellen quest when the person you need to meet suddenly disappears. Don't panic, things aren't as bad as you think.
One of the great things about FromSoftware's soulslike game is that it doesn’t lock you into your chosen Elden Ring build. Changing your stats to effectively experiment with different Elden Ring classes is perfectly possible, provided you have some Larval Tears. One strategy could be to respec your character depending on what Elden Ring bosses you're stuck on, if you fancy getting real meta in one of the best PC games in recent years.
HBO's "The Wire" spearheaded a new kind of drama television upon its 2002 debut, earning heaps of praise for its patient, cumulative writing and talented cast of lesser-known (at the time) actors. When series creator David Simon pitched the show to HBO's miniseries division, he envisioned a television version of The Great American Novel, writ large over a sprawling season depicting the dissolution of an American city — in this case, Baltimore, where Simon spent a year deposited with the city's homicide unit for a year leading to his Edgar Award-winning novel, "Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets." The show is only vaguely a cop drama; its principals include law enforcement, drug dealers, politicians, stevedores at the docks, and addicts, all illustrating (over five seasons) the colossal failure of the government-initiated war on drugs.
Far more than a simple "cops and robbers" template, "The Wire" expressed an unprecedented level of interest in its players, none of whom are exactly what they seem. One of the series' most compelling examples of this was Reginald "Bubbles" Cousins (so-named for the spit bubbles made when he's in a heroin-fueled trance), played by Andre Royo. A recovering addict, Bubbles begins the show as the sort of onscreen junkie you'd come to expect from a cop drama, but quickly reveals himself to be resourceful and empathetic with far more complexity than the old tv caricatures would previously allow. That didn't make it any easier for Royo to slip into the role, which was as taxing as it was fulfilling. Brett Martin's book "Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution" surveys the trajectory and impact of the series, and Royo gets a few words in about his experience as Bubbles.
Royo's audition for the role of Reginald Cousins was the "Fringe" star's first chance to make an impression. Cast interviews in the Season 5 DVD extras reveal that Royo showed up to his audition only to see that everyone else was chewing gum, presumably for bubble-blowing purposes. He threw his gum out to stand out, and eventually got the part. "Difficult Men" reports that while he and much of the cast were hailed as "local heroes" whenever they went off to Baltimore clubs, the on-set experience was at times a draining one:
"I'd look at Idris? Nothing but bitches outside his trailer. Dom West? Nothing but bitches. Sonja? Dudes and bitches. Me? I'd have junkies out there. They fell in love with Bubbles. I'd go into my trailer and clean my shit off and come out and they'd look at me like, 'You're not one of us. F*** you.' And then when I had the Bubbles garb back on, it'd be, 'Hey! What's up? Welcome back!' That's a head trip, man. That shit eats at you. [By the third season,] I was drinking. I was depressed. I'd look at scripts like, 'What am I doing today? Getting high or pushing that f***ing cart?'"
Separating one's self from the complex men they portray day in and day out is a difficulty stars have voiced from the late James Gandolfini in "The Sopranos" to Nate Fisher (Peter Krause) of "Six Feet Under." The intimate connections between cast and character is, if nothing else, a testament to the top-down creative compact with the narrative and the people that fuel it, part of the show's lasting power.
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The post Living A Double Life As Bubbles Wasn't Easy For The Wire's Andre Royo appeared first on /Film.
Before the Shaw Brothers burst onto the Hong Kong film scene with "Come Drink With Me" in 1966, there wasn't a lot of leeway through which martial arts could be portrayed on film. The most popular films in the genre up to that point leaned heavily on melodrama and the superhuman feats of their heroes, often with the help of special effects or animation. They were certainly fun, but they lacked the gravity to carry the genre into the modern age.
All that changed, however, with "Come Drink With Me." The film, which marked the legendary King Hu's second time in the director's chair, was both a celebration and a subversion of everything that the genre had become synonymous with. Hu chose to focus more on the capabilities of his cast, swapping visual effects for tactile stunts and fight choreography. He also dialed the textbook melodrama way down, focusing instead on the inner lives of his protagonists.
Hu's holistic approach to the martial arts film completely modernized the genre — but he couldn't do it alone. "Come Drink With Me" wouldn't be what it is without the help of its star, martial arts legend Cheng Pei-Pei, who helped King Hu achieve a new sense of style, as well as a new sense of rhythm.
Cheng Pei-Pei might be one of the most well-known stars of martial arts cinema, but before she appeared in "Come Drink With Me," she was first an accomplished dancer. Cheng studied ballet from the ripe age of eight, and it's a skill that served her well when she first began her career as an actor. "I've always felt dance and martial arts are very similar," Cheng told Film Freak Central in 2002. "There's something that's complementary about the disciplines."
Cheng's background in dance caught the eye of the Shaw Brothers in the '60s, and helped her make a "natural" transition from musicals to martial arts films. It also made her a perfect match for King Hu, who grew up with a deep love for Chinese opera. When the director first shared his ideas for "Come Drink With Me," it was clear that he wanted to avoid the traditions of the wuxia genre wherever possible — but especially when it came to pacing.
Before "Come Drink With Me," martial arts films — and the combat therein — adhered to a specific, even rhythm. "Martial arts were portrayed as boom-boom-boom-boom," Cheng explained. But "Come Drink With Me" itself would move in a completely different direction. "King Hu wanted b-boom ... b-boom b-boom — an arrhythmic pattern of gathering strength, contemplative pause, then sudden action."
Hu wanted "Come Drink With Me" to flow more like jazz than a rigidly-structured ballet. Fortunately, Cheng saw the merits in approaching the film from that perspective too. It helped that Cheng had studied jazz and modern dance in addition to ballet. "I was able to not be so rigid in my training," Cheng said. "I approached it from the perspective not of purity of the form — dance or martial art — but of trying to understand how one informed the other."
Cheng and her castmates also had "absolute faith" in her director and his vision. Hu "knew exactly what he wanted" when it came to the film, from fight choreography and stunts, even down to the final edit — and Cheng believes that this helped the film to really stand out. "He used each of the 24 frames to convey some action or philosophy that might not be visible to the naked eye, but was important for the feeling of the film," Cheng recalled. "We were bolstered by the strength of his vision."
Cheng wouldn't have the chance to work with King Hu again for many years, but "Come Drink With Me" left an indelible mark on each of their careers. The film was one of the highest grossing films under the Shaw Brothers banner. It catapulted Cheng to stardom in Hong Kong — she's appeared in over 100 projects since — and though King Hu's more popular films have since eclipsed "Come Drink With Me," it's still a landmark addition to the martial arts genre.
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The post Come Drink With Me Was a Major Step For the Martial Arts Genre appeared first on /Film.
IO Interactive has just released the Ray Tracing patch for the PC version of Hitman 3, and boy do these RT effects require a high-end GPU. As we’ve already reported, IO Interactive has used Ray Tracing in order to enhance the game’s reflections and shadows. And, from what we can see, even an NVIDIA RTX3080 … Continue reading NVIDIA RTX3080 can’t run Hitman 3’s Ray Tracing effects smoothly even at 1440p with DLSS Performance [UPDATE: DLSS Glitch/Bug] →
The post NVIDIA RTX3080 can’t run Hitman 3’s Ray Tracing effects smoothly even at 1440p with DLSS Performance [UPDATE: DLSS Glitch/Bug] appeared first on DSOGaming.
We were recently treated to a new, full-length trailer for "Thor: Love and Thunder" which, as that somewhat silly title implies, looks pretty wild. Director Taika Waititi is back for a follow-up to his much-beloved "Ragnarok" and this time, he's bringing Natalie Portman's Jane Foster back to the Marvel Cinematic Universe to take up the mantle as The Mighty Thor. But does that mean this movie is going to pass the torch to her for the future of the franchise?
In a recent interview with Total Film (via GamesRadar), the filmmaker weighed in on that very question. And while you might expect a director to be cagey at this point in time, Waititi gave a surprisingly straightforward answer.
"We stick pretty closely to Jane's storyline, and what happened to Jane ... because that was such an influence on the film. We're trying to take the best parts of that. And also, it's really fun, the idea that Thor [has] got Stormbreaker, that big axe, and now his hammer's back and it's in the hands of someone else. It's no longer his hammer. It's the idea that someone's taking his place. I think a lot of fans are gonna potentially assume, 'Oh, OK, this is the passing on of the torch'... I'm not privy to any plans Marvel has for the future, but I don't think that's the case."
Now, not to get into anything that could be perceived as a spoiler here, but the run Waititi is talking about is Jason Aaron's run in the pages of "Thor" for Marvel Comics. It appears as though they are going to try and stick close to the source material in some ways and, given that Aaron's run is highly-acclaimed, that can only be a good thing.
This answer does, however, leave us with questions about the future of the franchise. Chris Hemsworth has been playing the character since 2011. Most of his early MCU counterparts such as Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man), Chris Evans (Captain America), and Scarlett Johansson (Black Widow) have all moved on. Might Hemsworth also be getting ready to say goodbye to the God of Thunder? One might think. And if he is, then who shall carry the hammer in the future? The obvious answer at this time would seem to be Portman's Jane Foster. I suppose we'll just have to wait and see what Waititi has cooked up for us.
The cast also includes Tessa Thompson, Russell Crowe, and Christian Bale as the villain Gorr the God Butcher.
"Thor: Love and Thunder" is set to hit theaters on July 8, 2022.
The film finds Thor (Chris Hemsworth) on a journey unlike anything he's ever faced — a search for self-discovery. But his retirement is interrupted by a galactic killer known as Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale), who seeks the extinction of the gods. To combat the threat, Thor enlists the help of King Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), Korg (Taika Waititi), and ex-girlfriend Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), who — to Thor's surprise — inexplicably wields his magical hammer, Mjolnir, as the Mighty Thor. Together, they embark upon a harrowing cosmic adventure to uncover the mystery of the God Butcher's vengeance and stop him before it's too late.
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The post Will Thor: Love and Thunder Officially Pass the Torch to Natalie Portman? appeared first on /Film.
It’s no secret that Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Cloud Gaming are enjoying a period of success, but Microsoft is typically cagey over actual numbers. Especially for the cloud portion, with no sign of real data in the company’s most recent earnings report. But at Build, Microsoft’s annual developer conference, company CEO, Satya Nadella, casually declared over 10 million people are playing Xbox Cloud Gaming.
Cloud gaming is still very much in its infancy and Microsoft has been there since the early days. But with over 10 million players in 26 countries, the product formerly known as xCloud is clearly doing very well.
Part of that is likely down to the marketing, with Xbox Cloud Gaming built into certain tiers of the Xbox Game Pass subscription plan. Game Pass is extremely good value with day one releases for first-party Xbox titles that also usually includes the cloud. It also brings the latest generation of games and hardware to basically any device, with the recent upgrade to Xbox Series X-based server blades.
Indeed, the cloud meant that owners of the Xbox One could enjoy Microsoft Flight Simulator, something which otherwise wouldn’t have been possible. And they can play it on their older consoles at the same quality as those who have an Xbox Series X.
The cloud library is constantly growing, too, and those who want to play on mobile devices can now enjoy a range of those titles with custom touch controls. The latest of those is Fortnite, which doesn’t even require an Xbox Game Pass subscription to play, it’s free to all. Nadella re-confirmed Xbox’s intention to add more titles in this vein to Xbox Cloud Gaming in the future. It would be good to see access to the cloud also continue to expand, given its popularity and Microsoft’s prowess in cloud computing.
The post Xbox Cloud Gaming now has over 10 million players appeared first on XDA.
Substituting ingredients in culturally specific dishes is a tricky business. Some people are food pioneers, ready to throw in something new and risk a whole dish in the hopes of achieving terrific results. Others are recipe purists who will sooner rename your dish than accept the swap—especially when it comes to a…
When traveling to a new country, many of us buy a SIM card as soon as we land—but it often turns into a frustrating experience. You have to find the kiosk, provide the right documents, pay, and then wait for activation. What if you could skip the whole charade and get an instant local connection, and reasonable rates,…
When "Blade Runner" was released in June of 1982, the response of both audiences and critics was less than adoring. Despite garnering $6 million on its opening weekend, the film eventually fell off the map, thanks in part to scathing reviews like this one from Roger Ebert: "I suspect my blender and toaster oven would just love it." It also didn't help that Steven Spielberg's "E.T." had also been released just two weeks prior, causing fans to compare the family-friendly tale of an alien trying to get home with a confusing dystopian adaptation about something called "replicants." It wouldn't be until the '90s that "Blade Runner" would enjoy a revival, inspiring a future generation of filmmakers like Christopher Nolan and Denis Villeneuve.
As for the reason for its initial flop, the answer changes depending on who you ask. Ask director Ridley Scott, and he'll point out that the theatrical cut of the film was never his intended vision (something remedied with his 1992 director's cut). But if you ask actor Harrison Ford, who plays Rick Deckard in both the original and in Villeneuve's sequel "Blade Runner 2049," you'll get a slightly different answer: One that expresses his eternal distaste for not just his voiceovers (which appeared in the theatrical release), but also the inclusion of a happy ending that was incongruous with the rest of the film.
When Scott first saw his original cut of the film, he seemed to sense its indiscernible nature. "I think it's marvelous," he reportedly told editor Terry Rawlings according to Vanity Fair, before asking: "But what the f*** does it mean?" This cut of the film (sans voiceovers and happy ending) was screened in Denver and Dallas to audiences who reflected Scott's inquiry in a less enthusiastic way. After the lukewarm reactions due to confusion over the plot, a decision was made to insert all voiceovers into the movie. Although clearly a nod to the noir genre that helped inspire and inform Scott's film, Ford found the lines in those voiceovers less than ideal, calling them "awkward and uninspired." In an interview with Playboy in 2002, the actor elaborated further:
"I was compelled by my contract to do the narration. When I first agreed to do the film, I told Ridley there was too much information given to the audience in narration. I said, 'Let's take it out and put it into scenes and let the audience acquire this information in a narrative fashion, without being told it.' And he said it was a good idea. We sat around the kitchen table and we did it. When we got done, the studio said nobody will understand this f***ing movie. We have to create a narrative."
In a beautiful turn of irony, once the executives actually saw a cut of "Blade Runner" with the voiceovers, they realized just how big of a mistake it was to have put them back in the movie. Vice got ahold of a transcript of notes from an early screening, which includes a description of the voiceovers as "monotone and dry." Anyone who's watched the theatrical cut knows that's a pretty accurate description of Ford's delivery (though that's not a slight against the actor, just the writing). It's not surprising that in the aftermath, rumors circulated that the actor had intentionally tried to undermine the lines because of his disdain for them.
But Ford, who recorded the lines before he'd even seen a script, simply believed they'd never be used. According to an interview with Empire Magazine in 1999, even as he "contested [the voiceovers] mightily" and thought they were "not an organic part of the film," he was still bound contractually to do them. He told Playboy the unabridged version of his recording experience:
"Finally, I show up to do it for the last time and there's this old Hollywood writer sitting there, pipe sticking out of his mouth, pounding away at this portable typewriter in one of the studios. I had never seen this guy before, so I stuck my head in and said, 'Hi, I'm Harrison Ford.' He kind of waves me off. He came to hand me his pages. To this day, I still don't remember who he was, and so I said, 'Look, I've done this five times before. I'm not going to argue with you about anything. I've argued and I've never won, so I'm just going to read this 10 times, and you guys do with it what you will.' I did that. Did I deliberately do it badly? No. I delivered it to the best of my ability given that I had no input. I never thought they'd use it. But I didn't try and sandbag it. It was simply bad narration."
Ford's anecdote encompasses a lot of what he hated about the voiceovers: It's not just that he didn't think the lines were good or that they fit his character, but that as an actor, he was expected to contribute without giving his own input. That made him feel incredibly disconnected from the material, which obviously led audiences to feel the same way. "I had no chance to participate in it, so I simply read it," Ford told Empire. "I was very, very unhappy with their choices and with the quality of the material."
To this day, it's also still a mystery who it was that actually typed up the much-despised voiceovers. Evidently, Scott agreed with Ford because he removed them from his director's cut of "Blade Runner." But even that version of the film is marred in the actor's eyes. "They haven't put anything in, so it's still this exercise in design, which I think is spectacular, yet doesn't move me...at all," the actor told Empire again in its November 2000 issue. Though that's not the only reason Ford's view of the film soured over the decades.
So this one actually is kind of Scott's fault. After the dismal reaction of those first two viewings of "Blade Runner," the director started to rethink the ending. Originally, and later in his approved director's cut, the film closed on a note of uncertainty as Deckard and Rachael (Sean Young) disappeared behind the closing elevator doors. But after audiences reacted poorly to test screenings, Scott was shaken enough to try and put together a last-minute scene that would give some closure regarding the fates of Deckard and Rachael.
"I wasn't keen on the idea," Ford revealed when Scott requested he and Young accompany him into the San Bernardino Mountains to film the new ending. But the director was able to win him over with the promise of good weather -- after a dark, rain-drenched shoot, Ford was "delighted that we were shooting something during the day." Scott was even able to get Stanley Kubrick to lend him some unused helicopter footage from "The Shining." But that's about all the happy ending has going for it. And if Ford wasn't keen on the idea beforehand, he definitely didn't care for it after the fact.
Ford had a similar issue with this hastily-shot happy ending as he did with the voiceovers: Mainly that it explicitly said or showed far more than what audiences needed to hear or see. The happy ending is probably the more egregious of the two since every aspect of it –- its tone, visuals, and even the inclusion of one final insipid voiceover –- feels drastically different from the entire film that precedes it. Ford might've been glad to have some sunlight, but nothing feels more incredibly out of place that those golden rays. Seeing Deckard and Rachael driving into a picturesque mountain forest almost feels suspiciously like a deus ex machina, with a lush woodland paradise seemingly manifested out of thin air and completely sweeping away the final impression of Scott's dreary urban sprawl. The message of the theatrical ending invalidates the dangers of a world still fixated on the violent dichotomy between humans and replicants, not to mention its environmental problems (hence the need for off-world colonies).
Of course, the main reason for the drastic switch in tone is that Scott decided to shoot the scene long after principal photography had wrapped, so he couldn't simply recreate the dystopia for that tacked-on scene. And crucially, the theatrical cut also lacked the revelatory unicorn dream sequence, a scene that casts a slightly optimistic light on Deckard's spotting of the unicorn origami figurine in the hallway. Without it, one can maybe understand why Scott felt the need to scramble to add something more conclusive. But a sunshine road trip that looks like the ending of a romantic comedy and not a dystopian sci-fi movie wasn't the way to go. All the director had to do was add the dream scene back in the film and stick to his adequately ambiguous ending -- which, of course, is exactly what he did when he released his director's cut in 1992.
Read this next: 14 Remakes That Are Better Than The Original
The post Blade Runner's Ending Wasn't The Only Reason Harrison Ford Hated His Voiceovers appeared first on /Film.
NVIDIA DLSS took up the lion's share of the company's Computex 2022 keynote when it comes to gaming. NVIDIA announced twelve games that recently added or will soon add support for NVIDIA DLSS, boosting frame rates in the process.
The most renowned addition is undoubtedly HITMAN 3, which is getting ray tracing with a patch due later today. According to NVIDIA, with all graphics options maxed (including ray traced reflections and shadows), DLSS can boost frame rates by more than 2X at 4K.
Then there's F1 22, coming soon with a slew of ray traced features such as opaque reflections, transparent reflections, ambient occlusion, and shadows. NVIDIA DLSS is sure to be needed at high resolution with all those ray traced effects enabled.
Deep Rock Galactic also recently got NVIDIA DLSS (and AMD FSR) support. According to NVIDIA, frame rates in the game can be boosted by up to 60% in 4K Performance Mode.
Additionally, the game also received NVIDIA DLAA support for those who don't need the extra frames but prefer higher quality anti-aliasing instead.
Another game that launched earlier this month with NVIDIA DLSS support is Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong. NVIDIA says it can boost performance by more than twice at 4K Performance Mode.
Then there's a bunch of games that launched a while ago but are just now receiving NVIDIA DLSS, starting with Raji: An Ancient Epic. Originally launched in 2020, the action/adventure game set in ancient India and inspired by Hindu and Balinese mythology will get an Enhanced Edition featuring various improvements and brand new ray traced effects (reflections, ambient occlusion, and shadows). According to NVIDIA, DLSS boosts performance by up to 3X at 4K.
Propnight is FNTASTIC's asymmetrical multiplayer game currently on Steam Early Access. With DLSS Performance Mode, performance can be up to 85% higher at 4K.
NetEase's eleven-year-old Chinese MMO Ghost is also adding DLSS for up to 70% improved performance at 4K.
Indie sandbox mining and base building game Hydroneer can get up to 50% higher frame rates with Deep Learning Super Sampling, due to be added in the 2.0 update.
Warstride Challenges, the shooter game that's all about getting the highest scores, recently debut with NVIDIA DLSS and NVIDIA Reflex support. According to NVIDIA, the former guarantees more than 2X improved performance at 4K, while the latter lowers system latency by up to 53%.
Finally, a trio of new games on the horizon has been confirmed to be adding NVIDIA's Deep Learning Super Sampling technology. The nearest to release is Blue Isle Studio's LEAP, a fast-paced multiplayer shooter launching next week on Steam Early Access. DLSS more than doubles performance at 4K in Performance Mode.
This summer, fans of action platformer games with roguelite elements will be able to enjoy Loopmancer with ray traced reflections while NVIDIA DLSS more than doubles performance at 4K.
Lastly, action racing game Turbo Sloths will also launch this summer with ray-traced reflections and ray-traced shadows. Once again, NVIDIA DLSS helps boost performance by more than 2X at 4K.
Beyond all this NVIDIA DLSS goodness, a few games are also about to receive NVIDIA Reflex support, including Icarus, My Time at Sandrock, and Soda Crisis.
The post NVIDIA DLSS Gets 12 New Games; HITMAN 3 Boosted by More Than 2X at 4K by Alessio Palumbo appeared first on Wccftech.
