Ever since former pro wrestler Dave Bautista started acting in 2006, his roles have been scrutinized by fans. While he had trouble being seen as a serious actor, Bautista took the risk and it paid off when his acting career skyrocketed after he was cast as Drax the Destroyer in Marvel's "Guardians of the Galaxy" in 2014. He might be retiring that character soon, but Bautista has a lot up his sleeve, regularly lining up interesting projects. This includes his role in Denis Villeneuve's science-fiction movie "Dune."
The adaptation of the 1965 sci-fi epic novel by Frank Herbert came out in 2021 after several delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Fans were eager to discover the characters they had read about and seen in other adaptations come to life with Villeneuve's particular vision. They were not disappointed: "Dune" delivered an eye-popping spectacle, rich storytelling, and set pieces of impressive scale, which let the audience rediscover the Atreides' story anew. After starring in "Blade Runner 2049," Bautista got the chance to work with Villeneuve again for "Dune," transforming into the character of Glossu "Beast" Rabban, a menacing and brutal character.
Who Is Glossu Rabban?
Glossu Rabban is part of the Great House Harkonnen. As the nephew of Baron Harkonnen, he is tasked with governing the planet of Arrakis and managing the harvesting and production of spice for the Empire, at least until his brother and favored nephew Feyd-Rautha can take over. He takes on that role twice, once during the House's initial fiefdom of the planet, as well as their violent occupation shortly after the takeover by House Atreides.
In Frank Herbert's novels, Glossu Rabban is often depicted as a brute, the dumber and uglier version of his younger brother, who is described as charismatic, intelligent, and even good-looking. He is a sadistic and tyrannical ruler who lacks the scheming qualities that his family is known for. The Baron is using Rabban, scheming to be seen as a savior when his true heir, Feyd-Rautha, takes over the planet after the ruthless rule of his brother.
House Harkonnen
The Harkonnen family is a Great House in the world of "Dune," led by Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård). The family comes from a planet called Geidi Prime, where industrialization and capitalism have taken over. The Harkonnens have made their fortunes by taking advantage of the population with increased production rates and unethical practices. Those values are at work on Arrakis, on which they received custody from the Emperor to manage the production of spice as they oppress the indigenous population of the planet.
The Baron is an impressive and horrifying individual, based on outdated tropes by Frank Herbert. His greed, and his body, are immense, and in Herbert's novels, he is described as needing anti-gravity devices attached to his belt to help him stand up and move about. Denis Villeneuve cleverly reimagined the character, giving him the ability to levitate instead. Something else Villeneuve does away with for his version of the Baron is the monologues the character is known for; Skarsgård's depiction is more brooding and sinister.
Why Is He Nicknamed Beast Rabban?
The character of Glossu Rabban is known by many names, including Mudir Nahya (or Demon Ruler, in Fremen native tongue), and King Cobra. While he has several nicknames, he is most often called Beast Rabban. He earned that last nickname after murdering his father, Abulurd Harkonnen. Brother to Vladimir, Abulurd was a principled and peaceful man who distanced himself from his family, the cunning and cruel Great House Harkonnen.
As previously stated, Rabban lives up to the nickname "Beast." He is without a doubt a violent brute, showing his savagery in many ways in Frank Herbert's novels. To consider him stupid, though, may not be the best interpretation of the character. He still shows he understands Arrakis and its native people, the Fremen, better than the rest of his family. He warns them not to underestimate the latter before the Siege of Arrakeen, when they occupied the capital and took the planet back from House Atreides.
How Was Dave Bautista Cast?
The wrestler-turned-actor Dave Bautista had a rough start in Hollywood, but ever since being cast in Marvel's "Guardians of the Galaxy," he's fared well enough for himself. As for "Dune," Bautista knew about the project and was keeping an eye on it, as he says in an interview with Collider. He was especially surprised when Denis Villeneuve himself called him to offer him the role of Glossu Rabban after the two collaborated on the "Blade Runner" sequel, "Blade Runner 2049."
In a video interview with Digital Spy, he recalls the phone call and being brought to tears by the offer. Apparently, he'd been passing up on other offers to remain available in case anything came up for "Dune." When it came time to read the script, Bautista was blown away by it, impressed by the scope of Villeneuve's imagination, which he likened to James Gunn's (and even hinted at his own directorial hopes).
Reunited With Denis Villeneuve
As previously mentioned, "Dune" is not the first time Dave Bautista and Denis Villeneuve have worked together. The filmmaker cast the ex-wrestler in 2017's sci-fi drama "Blade Runner 2049," in the role of Sapper Morton. While the director initially thought Bautista was too young for the role, they got along very well, and the studio, as well as the actor, were eager for the casting. After a few screen tests — and with the help of make-up artist Donald Mowat — the role was Bautista's, and the rest is history.
Bautista has said that the role of Morton in "Blade Runner 2049" opened a lot of doors for him, and credits Villeneuve with helping him further his acting career. He loved working with the Canadian director, whom he described as devoted to his performance as Morton. His detail-oriented approach helped the actor understand the character better and elevate his performance, and he was thrilled to be able to work with him again for "Dune."
What The Role Means To Dave Bautista
Other than being reunited with Denis Villeneuve, Dave Bautista was very excited and grateful for the role of Rabban in "Dune" as it cemented his place in Hollywood, in his eyes. As he told Collider: "Moments like that really gauge how far I've come, as an actor. There's a lot of pride in it for me that a director like Denis would call like that and offer me a role in a film that I know is going to be enormous. Because people have been waiting for this for years and years and years. And people are so passionate about the novels. So for him to offer me such an integral part of this film, for me, it was a personal statement."
While Bautista will forever be grateful for getting the breakout role of Drax in "Guardians of the Galaxy," he was also afraid of being typecast as a muscle man or not perceived as a serious actor because of sillier roles. The role of Beast Rabban in "Dune" became another step for Bautista in showing off his acting chops in a new way. The sinister villain role isn't one we had really seen from him yet, and he is happy to distance himself from his action-movie persona (via ConnectRadio).
Reactions To Bautista's Casting
There was a lot of anticipation for Denis Villeneuve's adaptation of "Dune," with every new casting announcement being talked about profusely in the media. Bautista's casting as Beast Rabban was well-received (in the sense that it was reported on and there was no pushback from fans), and his name was added to an already star-studded list including Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, and Jason Momoa, to name a few. The casting news that made the most waves was not that of Bautista, but rather the casting of Shanon Duncan-Brewster, a Black woman, in the canonically white male role of Fremen scientist Dr. Liet Kynes.
There were a lot of excited reactions to the trailers, however, and the reveal of the characters' appearance and costumes. James Gunn, who directed Bautista in "Guardians of the Galaxy," was one of the actor's proud supporters and cheerfully retweeted the first trailer when it was released.
Transforming Into Beast Rabban
Thanks to his long career as a wrestler in the WWE, Dave Bautista already boasts an impressive physique (standing tall at 6'4" and wide with rippling muscles), which certainly helped him to embody the character of Beast Rabban. Aged 53 years old at the time of publication, Bautista's condition is stunning, but he does say he doesn't train as he once did during his wrestling career. Training is now therapeutic for him and not a conscious effort to look a specific way.
As far as preparing for the character of Beast Rabban, Bautista kept it to a minimum because he knew Denis Villeneuve would give him a lot of direction for his performance and wanted to keep it as fresh and collaborative as possible. They talked about the character for the first time during the makeup and costume fittings, and Villeneuve reportedly told Bautista to give him some time to dream about it.
Special Mention To The Makeup And Costume Design Teams
The makeup and costume design teams for "Dune" played a big part in Dave Bautista's transformation into Beast Rabban, as well as in Stellan Skarsgård's transformation into the Baron. Those two departments were even nominated for Academy Awards, but they, unfortunately, didn't win them, much to our disappointment. Beast Rabban sports stark white skin and a heavy black spacesuit, which Denis Villeneuve explained is because of where they come from (via Entertainment Weekly):
"Geidi Prime, the Harkonnen planet, is one where the sun is obscured most of the time by heavy clouds of pollution. It's an artificial world, it's a world made out of plastic and cut off from nature. Their skin is not used to sun, so they have to protect themselves from sunlight when they go on Arrakis. Their armor is almost closer to an astronaut suit than anything else. I tried, for each tribe coming from different planets, to see how they would use their technology to try and adapt. The Harkonnens are brutal colonizers, brutal invaders, but they are still vulnerable to the environment."
Becoming A Villain
As Dave Bautista puts it, "If you always try to play a character who's trying to be terrifying, then he's never terrifying." His performance as Beast Rabban is understated and somehow human despite playing a despotic and cruel character. As he explains, villains don't usually believe they're the villains in their story. Their self-righteousness and greed, and their deep-rooted belief in their ideas, are ultimately what make the Harkonnens so terrifying — we can recognize them in humanity's flaws.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Bautista said that it was easy to dive into the character because the script was concise and not overwritten. The actor also talked about the concept of evil: "Evil exists. There are people that are this evil, that are this greedy, that feel hunger for power this much, that are willing to do things this bad. It's about showing the worst in humanity, and portraying that in a way that is believable. People can connect to this, and recognize these evil people. It's nothing to overstate."
Fangirling Over Stellan Skarsgård
Even hulking, tall men like Dave Bautista get intimidated and star-struck sometimes. In an interview with The A.V. Club, he revealed that he was giddy to work with the Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård, who plays his uncle, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. Thankfully, his excitement over his co-star doesn't show in Bautista's performance, as he delivers a terrifying take on Beast Rabban.
"Those days in the steam baths, [laughs,] those were like some of my first days, and I was on set—I'm supposed to be this big, menacing, ominous character—and I'm literally s---ting myself. [Laughs.] I'm like, 'That's Stellan Skarsgård!' And I was next to my buddy thinking this is all so surreal, like, 'how the hell did I get from a professional wrestling ring to here? This is crazy!' I was dying on the inside. My heart was beating fast, and I was just so excited, but, at the same time, just trying to be terrifying. So, terrifying on the outside, inside I was like a little fan-boy."
Previous On-Screen Depictions Of Glossu Rabban
"Dune" was previously adapted for both the big and small screen: In 1984, David Lynch directed his feature-length adaptation, and a Sci-Fi Channel miniseries aired in 2000. In Lynch's version, Beast Rabban is played by actor Paul L. Smith, sporting bright ginger hair (as do the rest of the Harkonnen characters) and a black spacesuit that is not too dissimilar from the one Dave Bautista wears. The way he acts, though, is very different; Smith's Rabban is less a beast than a buffoon, and he overplays the dumb qualities of the character. His interpretation ends up being cartoonish, a ridiculous and repulsive villain instead of a scary one.
In The Sci-Fi channel three-part miniseries, the character is played by Swiss actor László I. Kish. Beast Rabban sports red hair in this adaptation as well, and is far less of a villainous caricature. His performance is described as fine, although he admittedly doesn't have a lot of screentime in that adaptation.
How Is Bautista's Beast Rabban Different?
Both the physical appearance and the demeanor of the character in Denis Villeneuve's version of "Dune" sets him apart from previous depictions. Villeneuve wanted to avoid the character, as well as that of the Baron, becoming cartoonish and overplayed like how Paul L. Smith and Kenneth McMillan as Baron Vladimir had portrayed the villains.
While the various adaptations' black spacesuits are similar, it feels like a lot more thought when into the conception of Villeneuve's version. He talks about the insectoid-like quality of the suit, and its helmet in particular, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times: "They are invaders and colonizers, so we really focused on this idea that they are like predators." Costume designer Jacqueline West added, "Insects have textures so I used a lot of molded black leather with insect designs carved into the leather. The references were from scorpions, spiders, and ants. Both the Baron and Rabban have this almost ant-head-like helmet."
What Can We Expect To See In Dune: Part Two?
The conflict between House Atreides and House Harkonnen in "Dune" is far from over by the time the credits roll. In an interview with Empire Magazine, director Denis Villeneuve confirmed Part Two would start filming in the summer of 2022 and hinted at more screen time for Dave Bautista's character, saying, "Second part, there will be much more Harkonnen stuff."
What does that mean? Besides seeing more of Bautista's Beast Rabban, we have yet to meet Rabban's younger brother, Feyd-Rautha, who was played by Sting in David Lynch's version. No official casting has been announced yet, but in March 2022 it was revealed that Austin Butler was reportedly in talks for the part. Otherwise, Beast Rabban still has a big role to play as the antagonist in the war between the two Houses. After taking back control of Arrakis, he will have to face off against Paul Atreides and the Fremen. Other, bigger reveals may come as part of that in the "Dune" sequel, depending on what Villeneuve decides to do with the source material.
There are movies so flawless in their construction that they appear to have been born, not made. Then there's "The Toxic Avenger." Released in 1984 by indie studio Troma, the film was a rickety mess compared to its Hollywood competition. But that's exactly what the studio set out to make. "Here was a movie with all the seams showing," said Troma co-founder Lloyd Kaufman, "which made it all the more approachable from an audience's point of view." Fans of the movie didn't just think, "That movie was bonkers," but, "I wonder if I can make a movie like that?" Kaufman and his co-founder Michael Herz hoped to leverage their newfound infamy to usurp the throne of Roger Corman, the reigning king of trash filmmaking. If Corman had opened the door to a new breed of director and actor in his movies, they thought, why couldn't Troma?
As of 2022, the studio has not yet achieved its ambitions. While its name retains cache among hardcore film buffs, Kaufman admits that Troma "hasn't made money in a decade." The studio also lacks the stable of former talent that came to define Corman's career as a director and producer. But there have been success stories. James Gunn rose from writing the script for Troma classic "Tromeo and Juliet," to directing fan-favorite horror movie "Slither" and then "Guardians of the Galaxy." Plus, "South Park" creators and professional edgelords Trey Parker and Matt Stone had their first film, "Cannibal! The Musical," distributed by Troma after everybody else turned them down. Then there was Jim Mallon, a director hailing from Minneapolis. Just a few years after directing the Troma film "Blood Hook," he would find himself on the ground floor of one of the most influential comedy series ever: "Mystery Science Theater 3000."
Muskie Madness
"Blood Hook" is a slasher movie with one key difference. While past killers had stalked their prey with knives, claws, guns and chainsaws, "Blood Hook" armed its murderer with a fishing rod. Whether sitting in a boat, swimming in the waters, or lying down on a dock, the hook would come for you. Victims are dragged into the water, strangled by fishing line and even have their ears torn off by the hook. It ends with a climactic, if rushed, fishing duel. Unfortunately the film was far too long in its original cut, running for nearly two hours. Troma cut thirty minutes for their release, but "Blood Hook" never won the notoriety enjoyed by studio classics like "Bloodsucking Freaks." When "Parks and Recreation" used footage from the film in an episode, they would call it "Death Canoe 4," not "Blood Hook."
"Blood Hook" may have been a footnote in the history of Troma, but it's also a major landmark on the road to "Mystery Science Theater 3000." Before directing the film, Mallon had met a man named Kevin Murphy while working at Madison's WHA-TV in Wisconsin. Mallon was in the single camera video department, while Murphy had a spot on the remote truck crew. Mallon hired Murphy for "Blood Hook" as key grip, the one responsible for managing the "grip crew" that positions film cameras. He would later hire him once again as a cinematographer at the Minneapolis television channel KTMA, where "Mystery Science Theater 3000" was born. Murphy served as a writer on the team for over a decade, and voiced the character Tom Servo for eight seasons (taking over from the initial voice actor, Josh Weinstein.) He's since collaborated with former "Mystery Science Theater 3000" talent like Michael Nelson and Bill Corbett on "RiffTrax."
Fishing For Trouble
Joel Hodgson, the original creative producer of "Mystery Science Theater 3000," also bears a connection to "Blood Hook." Mallon claims that he first encountered Hodgson in the warehouse right next to the one where they were editing the film. We can only guess at what Joel was doing in that warehouse. Perhaps he was at the t-shirt factory where he worked until he joined KTMA. Or perhaps he was, as he reflects in Wired's oral history of the show, "collaging robots out of objects I found at the Salvation Army." Mallon was not the only one on the team with an affinity for trash.
For many years, Mallon's legacy has been challenged by fans of "Mystery Science Theater 3000." When the show was created, Hodgson and Mallon split the rights 50/50. Hodgson would supervise the ideas, and Mallon would keep the program running smoothly behind the scenes. But Hodgson left the team in 1993. Years later, he would admit that his departure was not the amicable split he had claimed in interviews, but was instead born out of frustration with Mallon's lack of quality control. Mallon himself asserts that Hodgson failed to realize the show was a team project, rather than Hodgson's alone. Whoever you believe, it should be noted that staff members like Trace Beaulieu and Frank Conniff have gone on record saying that, as the original producer, Mallon continues to claim the full royalties from "Mystery Science Theater 3000" to this day. Rather than Hodgson, Murphy or Nelson, the man who now benefits the most from the show's existence is the director of "Blood Hook."
Hook, Line, And Sinker
I will give Mallon some credit. While Hodgson proposed the central gimmick of actors talking over bad movies, it was Mallon who figured out where those bad movies would come from. "KTMA had a tiny program budget and therefore had purchased some of the cheapest movie packages on the market," he said. Buried somewhere in the halls of mediocre footage, he hoped, was bad movie gold. As the director of "Blood Hook," Mallon had already received training in making art quickly and on the cheap. Hodgson himself had experienced the same, building puppets out of found objects. In creating "Mystery Science Theater 3000," the two of them sought to make something worthwhile out of imposingly tight constraints. They not only succeeded, but created a format durable enough to last even after founding members like Hodgson left the project.
Many of the cast and crew who participated in "Blood Hook" have never worked on another film. Their memories of the production may constitute the film's greatest legacy, rather than those of audiences who saw it in theaters or on video. But then, the same could have been said for the infamous "Manos: The Hands of Fate," a local experiment, swiftly forgotten, until Comedy Central got their hands on it and sent the film to the "Mystery Science" crew. Perhaps one day, "Blood Hook" will find its people, just like "The Toxic Avenger" once did. This day may come sooner rather than later. In the years following "Mystery Science Theater 3000," fans have sought out similarly hapless projects like "Fateful Findings" and "Troll 2." Similarly, Troma's influence can be felt in the programming selections of film festivals like Fantastic Fest. Big corporate blockbusters might rule the multiplexes, but the appreciation of sincere shlock has become well and truly democratized. We are all Tom Servo now.
Despite the tsunami of content over the last few years, it's rare to find a new, original television series that delivers right out of the gate. And yet, Amazon Studios' "Night Sky" achieves just that, surpassing all expectations for a humble, surprisingly heartfelt show. The eight-episode series is like nothing else on the market: it has a truly compelling and interesting mystery angle, offers a sci-fi story grounded in a Midwestern small-town setting, and it makes the best use of an excellent cast, telling a rich story that's more about relationships and aging than a fantastic, barely understood (possibly alien?) technology. It's a near-perfect debut; every episode has enough pathos and interpersonal drama to keep you invested, while the central mystery is slowly — and convincingly — unwound.
"Night Sky" stars renowned actors Sissy Spacek and J.K. Simmons as Irene and Franklin York, a retired couple living in rural Illinois. The two live seemingly mundane lives: Franklin, a former carpenter, putters around their large farmhouse and takes care of his wife, a retired schoolteacher suffering from various health issues. The first episode hits many of the familiar beats for stories about people at this stage of their lives: Franklin's memory is going, Irene's health — and as a consequence, her independence — is on the decline, and they are increasingly getting pressure to sell their large home and move into assisted living. But the Yorks have a secret: underneath their shed is a mysterious chamber — a transporter to another world. And they're not about to leave that behind.
Strong Writing — And An Even Stronger Cast
I was consistently delighted by the writing of "Night Sky." As a critic, I'm always looking for character inconsistencies, events that aren't adequately set up, unbelievable contrivances — basically, the kind of story issues that television shows, in particular, are vulnerable to since they often have various writers working at the same time. Overarching plot threads can dictate events that need to happen, even when that doesn't fit organically with how the episodic stories are forming (just think of the infamous final season of "Game of Thrones"). Thankfully, "Night Sky" is careful to balance its growing web of secrets with consistent characterization, motivation, and knowledge. The show keeps the audience aware of who knows what at any given time, using the threat of secrets being revealed as part of the suspense. This story comes across as the careful tapestry of an artist, rather than a growing mass, shaped by momentum — much like "Lost" or even "The X-Files," which often felt like the writers were making it up as they went along, rather than working with a master plan in mind. With "Night Sky," it's refreshing to watch a highly intelligent series that feels precise and intentional.
"Night Sky" shows an awareness of tropes in both sci-fi and late-life dramas, gesturing at them when appropriate, but repeatedly subverting the expected — offering fresh, intelligent twists that completely fit the story. Created by Holden Miller and Daniel C. Connolly, this is easily one of the most tightly written TV series I've had the pleasure to watch in a long time. Everything about "Night Sky" feels mature and fully formed. Here, the twists hit hard and resonate because the characters feel real. There are, admittedly, low points: I initially found a B plot set in Argentina not as interesting as the main story — but even then, it eventually all comes together, and by the end, I was rooting for Stella (Julieta Zylberberg) and her teenage daughter Toni (Rocío Hernández) as much as Franklin and Irene. A big part of that, though, comes down to the performances.
Simmons and Spacek are stunning in "Night Sky," showing off the depth of their acting talent. As characters, Franklin and Irene are fully developed — and completely relatable to anyone who grew up in this kind of community. The characters are the heart of the story. Their love, their grief, their resilience, and their defeat — it's intoxicating. Simmons has a knack for the unexpected; he can punctuate a scene with a burst of humor, or catch you off-guard with an abrupt moment of vulnerability. Spacek's Irene is unconventional. Her story, her choices, her fortitude — you can't help but admire her. This is the kind of role that women in their 70s rarely get to play, and Spacek demonstrates how tragic that is.
The supporting characters in "Night Sky" deserve mention as well. The series makes the wise choice to make Denise (Kiah McKirnan), the Yorks' granddaughter, Black; not only does it add some diversity to the cast in a believable way, but it also opens the door for (believable) conversations about race in the predominantly white town. McKirnan holds her own acting alongside industry icons — and she gets one of the show's strongest emotional scenes. The nosey and over-enthusiastic neighbor Byron (Adam Bartley) adds some welcome levity to the show, and his interactions with Franklin are highlights of the series (they're so funny together). Finally, Jude (Chai Hansen) adds another layer — I can't say much about his role without spoiling the show, but suffice to say, Hansen had me on the edge of my seat, more than once.
Night Sky Is Among The Year's Best New Shows
"Night Sky" defies sci-fi trappings, defies genre conventions, and defies expectations — and I am genuinely worried it won't find an audience. Even in this review, I'm struggling to sell the series without spoiling the plot. "Night Sky" is a brilliant show, and is one of the year's best hands down; however, it's also the kind of show that's really hard to market — precisely because it's so unique. It's a love story about an aging couple dealing with adversity. It's a mystery about an enigmatic chamber that uses technology that challenges our ideas about what's possible. It's a suspense thriller about various, underground groups that have competing interests.
I'm most strongly reminded of "Yellowjackets," which similarly broke away from conventions to tell a unique and interesting story. But Showtime released that show weekly, allowing the word of mouth to spread. Amazon Studios is dropping "Night Sky" all at once. This is a show best savored, rather than binged — but with the amount of drama and suspense, it's difficult to hold oneself back.
Hopefully, "Night Sky" finds its audience — and Amazon quickly orders a follow-up set of episodes. There are so many questions to answer.
/Film Rating: 9 out of 10"Night Sky" premieres May 20, 2022, with a full season drop on Amazon Prime Studios.
America's most messed-up superheroes will be back for another round this June, now with added Jenson Ackles. Ahead of its third season premiere, Prime Video's uber-violent series "The Boys" has unleashed a new trailer that promises the Seven are just as twisted as ever. It also finally gives us a good look at Ackles' character, Soldier Boy, who seems to be the show's demented answer to Captain America.
Along with the league of superpowered a-holes that includes "heroes" like Homelander (Antony Starr) and Starlight (Erin Moriarty), we also get a peek at what those titular hero-hating Boys are up to in the wake of the show's game-changing second season finale. Check it out below.
Let The Hype Begin
The new trailer follows an epic but less straightforward red band teaser that dropped in March, which featured a whole bunch of context-free moments from the new season set to Imagine Dragons' song "Bones." Now, the latest trailer offers a bit more clarity on where some of our heroes–and antiheroes–are at in the splatter-filled new season. This season has plenty to tackle, from the aftermath of Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) losing his wife for good to Starlight and A-Train (Jessie Usher) re-joining the Seven.
The official Twitter account for "The Boys" teased the trailer last week with a retro-looking poster that put Ackles' Soldier Boy front and center, with an array of chipper heroes around him. The poster is emblazoned with the title "Payback," and also tags recently added cast members Laurie Holden (Crimson Countess), Nick Wechsler (Blue Hawk), and Kristin Booth (one of the TNT twins, with Jack Doolan playing the other), plus Black Noir actor Nathan Mitchell.
The show has plenty of avenues left to explore, but its most notable new plot might be the one the past two seasons haven't dared touch on. Showrunner Eric Kripke has already revealed that season three will tackle the infamous "Herogasm" plot, an extensive and explicit orgy storyline from Garth Ennis' comics. Kripke seemed to hint at the continued onslaught of blood, sweat, and other bodily fluids when he hyped the new trailer with a Twitter post of his own, sharing the "Payback" poster and adding the caption:
TRAILER DROPS MONDAY. After that kick off, get ready for a 24/7 wet gush of HYPE in your face! Wait, that came out wrong. ITS HAPPENNNING. (Also, I have this poster in my office). – @therealKripke
Well, it's here, so let the wet gush of hype begin, I suppose. "The Boys" returns to Prime Video on June 3, 2022.
What if Russia beat the U.S. to the moon back in the 1960s? What if, in turn, that pivotal moment led to the Cold War heating up to the point of militarizing NASA in the 1980s and the threat of all-out nuclear disaster spilling over into space? And to keep this ripple in the time pond going, what if another decade went by and the frantic space race finally took the competing world powers all the way to the distant and dusty orb of Mars?
This thought experiment gone haywire is the focal point of "For All Mankind," the alternate-history take on America and the Soviet Union's space race to achieve dominance in the final frontier. The critically acclaimed series from Ronald D. Moore (of "Star Trek" and "Battlestar Galactica" fame), Matt Wolpert, and Ben Nedivi is returning for its third action-packed season, and now the next jump forward in the timeline promises to bring the setting to a vastly different locale altogether -- the cold, barren, and suddenly less-empty world of Mars.
We've known that the premiere date for season 3 had been slated for June of 2022, but now Apple TV+ has seen fit to give fans their most extensive look yet at what the next installment of the series has to offer. That involves, naturally, a three-way space race to Mars. Check out the new trailer below!
For All Mankind Season 3 Trailer
Us, simpletons: Obviously this trailer footage will be edited to the strains of Elton John's "Rocket Man" or David Bowie's "Starman." The much smarter and far less obvious creative minds behind "For All Mankind:" Have some "Black Hole Sun" by Soundgarden instead. Folks, this is why the experts are in charge and not us.
"For All Mankind" is back and grander than ever for its third season, with an added wrinkle or two. Rather than taking place on the sunbaked surface of the moon, the action has now jumped ahead another decade and moved to the distant, orange-tinged deserts of Mars. And something tells us Matt Damon won't be around to save the day this time, either. And in addition to the United States and the still-existing Soviet Union, a new rival headed by a thinly-veiled Jeff Bezos/Elon Musk-like figure by the name of Dev Ayesa (Edi Gathegi) has joined the stiff competition.
The 10-episode season will also star returning cast members Joel Kinnaman, Shantel VanSanten, Jodi Balfour, Sonya Walger, Krys Marshall, Cynthy Wu, Casey W. Johnson, Coral Peña, and Wrenn Schmidt. Ben Nedivi and Matt Wolpert serve as showrunners on the series, with its first two seasons available to stream on Apple TV+. Season 3 will debut on the streaming service June 10, 2022.
In season three, the Red Planet becomes the new frontier in the Space Race not only for the U.S. and the Soviet Union, but also an unexpected new entrant with a lot to prove and even more at stake. Our characters find themselves going head-to-head as their ambitions for Mars come into conflict and their loyalties are tested, creating a pressure cooker that builds to a climactic conclusion.
Americans spend a lot of time in their cars, so it’s not surprising the police pull over a lot of us—about 50,000 a day, and 20 million every year. If you’ve ever been pulled over (and based on those numbers, you probably have) you know how nerve-wracking the experience can be. Put simply, police have all the power…
One of the best things about "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" is the show's dedication to complex interpersonal relationships on board the space station. Throughout the series, there were a number of great pairings as different crew members realized that their friendships or work partnerships had turned into something else. Captain Sisko (Avery Brooks) fell in love with the fiery transport captain Kasidy Yates (Penny Johnson Jerald), Security Chief Odo (Rene Auberjonois) found a perfect partner in former terrorist and current second-in-command Kira Nerys (Nana Visitor), and Cardassian spy/tailor Garak (Andrew Robinson) and suave doctor Julian Bashir (Alexander Siddig) have a will they/won't they for the ages, even if it is a little queer-baity. But the most wonderful of all the "Deep Space Nine" romances is the one between joined Trill science officer Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell) and Klingon strategic operations officer Worf (Michael Dorn). The two are a beautiful example of an odd couple that make their differences work and push one another to be better people. They're an inspiration, proving that a pansexual goofball who can beat Ferengi at Tongo and a stoic warrior raised by Russians can somehow be a perfect pair.
It turns out that making Worf and Dax such a great couple wasn't difficult at all for Farrell and Dorn, who were good friends and relished the chance to get to spend more time together. They just didn't quite anticipate how close their characters would get.
Perfect Par'Mach'kai
In an interview with StarTrek.com, Farrell revealed that she and Dorn would often flirt with one another in-character because they thought it might encourage the writers to give them more scenes together. The writers definitely gave them more scenes, though it took a direction neither actor completely expected:
"Oh, we'd thought we were so clever flirting with each so we'd have more stuff to do together, just because we were friends. Ha! You'd think they had that planned the whole time because it all just went so easily. And I loved it because Michael and I were such good friends. We could just hit heads and really talk things out. At the time it could be really irritating because we were so tired all the time. But taking that out of the equation, I learned so much from working with Michael, as a person and as a performer. He's a very good friend. My husband reminds me of him in that they don't say that 'Enough is enough.' They're just constantly picking at stuff. It's like, "Enough already!" But it's that need to make it perfect."
It sounds like Dorn shares a bit of perfectionism with his character, which only makes the relationship between Jadzia and the stubborn Klingon feel more real. The performers being comfortable with one another helped them really embrace the couple's rough-and-tumble courtship starting in the season 5 episode "Looking for par'Mach in All the Wrong Places." Worf always pictured himself with a Klingon woman, while Jadzia clearly didn't have intentions on settling down. Their chemistry is undeniable, though, and their fierce flirtations turned into one of the franchise's most compelling love stories.
The Sparks Flew, And It Wasn't Just From Clashing Bat'leths
Worf was originally a character on "Star Trek: The Next Generation," but when that series ended, the creators decided to move the fan-favorite over to "Deep Space Nine." In an interview with TrekZone Network, Dorn explained that the ideas for Worf on "Deep Space Nine" weren't all that concrete, though once they saw him and Farrell onscreen, the Jadzia/Worf story-line was sealed:
"I think that they had a number of scripts. They had a number of things that they were thinking about. Also the Jadzia Dax/Worf thing may have been something that they were playing with. But they didn't really realize that it was going to be a big thing until she and I did our first scenes together. They went: oh my god, we've got to put these people together! I think they had it mapped out a little bit but when you get involved in it and see things happening you see the relationships going on. Then they take it from there."
Once the writers saw the undeniable chemistry between Dorn and Farrell, who turned the heat up with their flirting, they knew they had to put these two together. "Star Trek" has plenty of romances and lots of sex, but it's rarely felt this authentic or natural. The friendship between the actors allowed them to really go all-in on their onscreen romance, whether their characters were flirting or fighting (though for Klingon courtship, those are pretty much the same). The perfection of their relationship just makes Jadzia's death at the end of season 6 all the more painful, because a love this pure shouldn't have such a tragic ending. The symbiont Dax was able to find love again in new host Ezri (Nicole de Boer), but it still doesn't quite stack up to the Jadzia/Worf dynamic. Sorry, Han and Leia, but these two are my One True Pairing, now and forever, and Dorn and Farrell's friendship helped that happen.
About a month after several varieties Skippy peanut butter was recalled over concerns that the “chunks” in some of the company’s products were actually metal fragments, Mars Wrigley is now in a similar situation.
Few actors seemed to have quite as firm a grasp on John Hughes' approach to comedy as John Candy. The treasured Canadian funnyman could handle slapstick and sentiment with equal grace, which was the key to so many of Hughes' movies as a writer, director, and producer. It's this skill that allowed Candy to go from busting guts to breaking hearts in a film like 1987's "Planes, Trains and Automobiles," or even mix pathos with morbid humor during the brief scenes he shares with Catherine O'Hara in 1990's "Home Alone."
"Uncle Buck," the 1989 comedy written and directed by Hughes, stars Candy as Buck Russell, an irresponsible bachelor who gets a shot at proving he can play the role of father when he agrees to babysit his brother's kids during a family emergency. It's a movie that relies on the over-done comedy trope of having an immature man end up in a situation he's comically ill-suited to handle, forcing him to finally grow up. But Candy is the key to making it work as Buck, whether he's acting like a total slob, having very funny exchanges with his younger niece Maizy (Gaby Hoffmann) and nephew Miles (a pre-"Home Alone" Macaulay Culkin), or reckoning honestly with his flaws as a person.
Amy Madigan, who plays Buck's longtime girlfriend Chanice Kobolowski (who loves him but is rightly tired of his never-ending efforts to avoid responsibility of any kind), talked about her experience working with Candy on "Uncle Buck" with Vanity Fair in 2016. As she recalled:
"I had not met him before 'Uncle Buck.' Of course his reputation preceded him — all the hilarious stuff he'd done. We just kind of hit it off. We had a great time. He was the king of ad libs. He and John Hughes had worked together before, so they had a really neat shorthand. It was sometimes all I could do to keep a straight face since he was just so hilarious. You would be doing a closeup, so the other actors are off camera, and he would just throw this stuff at you to crack you up."
Candy And The Cast Were Always Improv-Ing
Buck's relationship with his teenaged niece, Tia Russell (Jean Louisa Kelly), forms much of the emotional core of "Uncle Buck." The latter, unlike her siblings, wants nothing to do with her uncle and frequently butts heads with him, not least of all when it comes to her spending time with her boyfriend (who Buck quickly recognizes as a jerk and predator). In time, of course, Tia comes to realize that Buck does, in fact, sincerely care for her and has a good heart beneath his crude exterior. This also helps her to re-examine her relationship with her parents, whom she's been at odds with since they moved away from their old home.
Kelly echoed what Amy Madigan said about John Candy and how making "Uncle Buck" was like a playground for the cast thanks to all the improv-ing John Hughes allowed during filming:
"I don't really remember the first time that I met [John Candy], but I do know that I felt very comfortable with him. He was obviously hilariously funny. He was a very warm person and the thing that lent itself to our chemistry was the fact that we were improv-ing quite a bit. Now I know how rare that is. John Hughes really just let John Candy take the ball and go with it through a lot of the movie. Particularly in the scene where we're in the bowling alley and we're sitting there talking to each other, he was sort of throwing stuff at me, and I was just responding to it like the unpleasant person that I was. [Laughs] I don't really know that you can write that stuff and get the same kind of organic authenticity that you would get when you're just responding with lines."
Reviews for "Uncle Buck" were fairly lukewarm compared to those for Hughes' most acclaimed live-action comedies, like "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and "Planes, Trains and Automobiles." Again, though, it's Candy who breathes life into the film's familiar setup, coupled with the playfulness of his interactions with his younger costars. There's also something to be said for "Uncle Buck" having aged better than some of Hughes' more beloved movies from the 1980s. Perhaps it's only right that Buck Russell should emerge as one of the classier protagonists in Hughes' body of work.
What are the best Elden Ring builds? The first 20 levels shape your entire class, so selecting your stats carefully is essential. While placing some stat points into faith as an Astrologer may be tempting, you’re probably better off committing to the full sorcery build to maximize your damage in the late game.
The builds in this guide are not only compatible with Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree, you can easily play through the entire expansion without ever swapping out any of your armor or weapons. If you’ve found that your build has been nerfed, never fear — grab a specific Elden Ring Great Rune. You’ll be able to unlock character respec, and you can simply create a new one!
(Welcome toTV, Interrupted, a series where the /Film team remembers, eulogizes, and makes a case for the revival of TV shows we loved that were canceled far too soon.)
Nobody likes to see their absolute favorite shows on earth being abruptly canceled (read: NBC's "Hannibal" and Netflix's "Mindhunter," which is currently "on indefinite hold," whatever that means). However, when a slow-burn found-footage horror with an intensely interesting storyline is felled before it is even allowed to bloom, hell hath no fury like a woman ... etc.
I'm talking about Netflix's "Archive 81," which was suddenly canceled after its one-season run. To make matters more infuriating, season 1 had ended on a massive cliffhanger, pointing towards life-changing repercussions for the central characters. "Archive 81" was a horror narrative that hinged on its soundscape and suspense as opposed to overt jumpscares or plot contrivances, assimilating everything I love within a horror setting: temporal mix-ups, ominous cults, an interdimensional demon, and two characters connecting on a genuinely humane level.
"Archive 81" opens with archivist Dan (Mamoudou Athie) being plagued by some sort of familial trauma, leading him to channel his feelings via a shady footage restoration project for an even shadier multinational corporation. His aim is to restore a string of camcorder tapes filmed by a woman named Melody Pendras (Dina Shihabi), who mysteriously went missing after a fire at the Visser building in 1994. What seems like a monotonous, secluded job turns out to be a portal to nightmarish conjurings, especially when Dan realizes that he and Melody are more closely connected than he thinks.
Before I delve into the nitty-gritties of my (extremely strong) feelings about the show and its eventual (and unfair) cancelation, here's a spoiler warning for what you're about to read.
Why Archive 81 Was Great
The reasons why "Archive 81" elicited great promise as a gritty horror show are multi-pronged: it incorporated some really cool mixed medium to propel its gripping storyline, allowed its characters to grow without hopping on immediately to the next big thing, and offered compelling lore about the mysterious demon, Kaelego. Now, I love a good demon storyline — the more bonkers, the better — and "Archive 81" managed to set up the right mix of dread and insurmountable anxiety, especially via the many cults devoted to the 14th-century deity, who is clearly up to no good.
Shihabi's Melody was a dynamic character worth rooting for — though the queer erasure in terms of her sexual identity within the context of the podcast "Archive 81" is based on was disappointing, to say the least. Nevertheless, Melody's arc, right from the moment she steps into the Visser and is subjected to the unsettling occurrences that dominate the building, is pure slow-burn horror, replete with genuinely disturbing sonic and visual elements, that added to the thrill of watching someone else's story play out on found footage.
This window to Melody's world was the heart of the show, and the moments during which Dan and Melody communicate in a limbo state are absolute standouts. Dan's jarring realizations in the present deepen the central mystery, while he needs to combat isolation and the prying eyes of his boss, Virgil Davenport (Martin Donovan), who harbors his own nefarious intentions. And oh, do not get me started about the Visser cult and the 1924 Vos Society — two storylines that meshed together perfectly, offering insight into the gullible nature of the human mind, and the innate desire to defy universal truths like grief, loss, and death.
Watching "Archive 81" for the first time evokes the constant emotion of "what the heck is happening?" in a solidly positive way, as the show mixes ancient mythology, real-life ritual practices, and the idea of an untrustworthy, interdimensional demon in a rather haunting manner. Small narrative details such as the otherworldly Kharonite, which induces madness and feverish creative expression in people who come in contact with it, added to the thrill of the show.
As for Dan's astounding cliffhanger towards the end, wherein he is accidentally transported back to 1994 as a survivor of the Visser fire, affecting temporal outcomes forever ... that storyline remains unresolved. Thanks, I hate it.
Why Archive 81 Was Canceled
Is there a practical reason behind the cancelation of Netflix's "Archive 81?" Not that we know of. The news of cancelation came as a surprise, for sure, as the show was positively received by both critics and audiences, with much excitement surrounding the potential plot for season 2. In fact, "Archive 81" secured the No.1 spot on the platform for U.S. viewers and even made it to Nielson's weekly Top 10 list after its release.
Showrunner Rebecca Sonnenshine had expressed her gratitude to viewers after the cancelation of the show on her official Twitter, revealing that they had "cool ... Kaelego-lore" planned for season 2:
"Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who watched Archive 81. Thank you to the reviewers who were so kind and thoughtful. We're surprised and disappointed that we won't be doing another season (we had cool new stories/found footage/Kaelego-lore planned). I hope you'll remember us well!"
The fact that a potential second season of "Archive 81" would have involved more found-footage and greater insight into Kaelego as a demonic entity is a constant source of disappointment for fans, especially keeping the ending in mind. Sonneshire's influences were multifold, ranging from "The X-Files" to "Rosemary's Baby," granting the show a unique tint in terms of tone and feel, while a narrative about dimension-hopping and time travel was being etched from a historic-mythological perspective.
Given Netflix's track record of canceling unique storylines even before they premiere on the platform, "Archive 81's" cancelation is not surprising — but it sure is frustrating.
Unfinished Business
Towards the end of "Archive 81," Melody's mother reveals that she and her daughter belong to the Baldung bloodline, making them integral to the rituals performed to invoke Kaelego and thin the veil between the Otherworld and our own. As Melody is trapped inside Kaelego's realm, Dan ventures in and extracts her out -- only to be surprised by a lurking Samuel (Evan Jonigkeit), who hurtles Melody to the present while Dan somehow ends up in 1994.
While Melody is reunited with her mother, she had been trapped inside a literal demon's realm for 25 years, which is bound to mess with her sense of reality and her direction in terms of what comes next. We never get to see how she might work out a way to rescue Dan, who remains stuck in the past for some reason.
Let's also talk about Samuel, the most cryptic, interesting character in "Archive 81." Jonigkeit is one of my favorite actors in horror, as he is known to play off-beat roles in horror gems like "The Night House" and "The Empty Man," and his presence in "Archive 81" adds to the heightened anxiety that the show aims to create. Samuel presents himself as a seer with a vision to "elevate" the human condition via communion with Kaelego's realm, however, his personal motivations remain as mysterious as ever. Why did Samuel separate Dan and Melody, and what was he doing inside the Otherworld all this time? How does his brother, Virgil, tie into the equation, and what does he eventually gain from all of this?
Apart from this, not enough is revealed about the Baldung coven, along with the details as to how they came to possess their abilities in the first place. Why is Baldung blood so special, and the only way to open the portal through the means of a ritualistic blood offering? Moreover, now that Melody had returned to the real world, she would inevitably have to dig deeper into her ancestral ties, and possibly her powers, and why Kaelego wanted to hold on to her grief so badly.
Will Archive 81 Ever Return?
While one should never say never, it seems like "Archive 81" will not return anytime soon, unless the show is picked up by another streaming service (Shudder would be a great platform for it, in my opinion). There has been no official word on season 2 so far, although Sonnenshine had revealed prior to the cancelation of "Archive 81" that the show was never meant to be an anthology series, as there were "more stories to tell" (via The Wrap):
"The idea is that we continue on with these characters into a new season, should we be so lucky to get a second season. It wasn't conceived as a one-season show. I think there are more stories to tell. I think we end on a good cliffhanger that needs to be addressed, and we introduce a lot of characters that surround Dan and Melody that have very rich and interesting lives to explore further. So yeah, we hope to keep going."
While this is a bummer, there's still plenty of content to be consumed when it comes to the world of "Archive 81." I'm talking about the original podcast the show is based on, created by Daniel Powell and Marc Sollinger, which currently has three seasons under its belt and offers a much more dynamic, creatively-fueled storyline than the show. The "Archive 81" podcast utilizes unique sound design to its advantage while evoking a cosmic horror-laden world in which grisly rituals are an everyday occurrence, and so are otherworldly entities.
At the very least, the podcast is more than enough to fill the "Archive-81"-shaped void in my heart, and I hope the series finds a way to return -- much like Kaelego showing up uninvited to our corporeal realm.
I never thought I would miss the 2000s, but here we are. During the era, the 2000s didn't feel like it had a specific flavor. Like, at least to me, the 90s had a distinct identity. The 2000s just felt like a trashier, shinier expansion pack for the previous decade. — Read the rest
This week we tear ourselves away from our Starfield delay hangover to talk about Loot River, Rogue Legacy 2, Strange Horticulture, Trek to Yomi, what the hell there is to look forward to game release-wise this year, and a lot more. This week's music: My Chemical Romance - The Foundations of Decay
By all accounts, Arkane Studios decided on the name Prey not because they wanted to reboot the old game, but just because the name was a good title for what their game was going for. You could argue the name “Psycho Shock” would be more appropriate overall, but that could have created some friction with Take Two. There still seems to be some shared DNA, like starting the game with the lead looking in a mirror, using a wrench as your melee weapon, and the use of mirrors to create impossible sights, facing down powerful aliens, but the real foundational stuff come from the classic System Shock games, down to anti-grav elevators and being stuck on a space station overrun with an inhuman menace that can even weaponize humans though mind control. It also has very, VERY similar gameplay, ultimately a sort of sci-fi dungeon crawler that rewards outside the box thinking.
You play as Morgan Yu (man or woman, your choice), a high ranking scientist for the TranStar corporation and a member of the company’s owning family. You wake up in your apartment and head to work, as your brother Alex has you do some tests first. They act as a basic tutorial but are also…strange. The scientists observing and instructing you are reacting to whatever you do oddly, and then everything goes off the rails as you see a ink black tentacle monster turn into a coffee cup and suck the life from the lead scientist as gas comes out to knock everyone out.
Then you wake up in your apartment. Everything seems the same, but items are moved around…and your email is warning you to get out – now. After getting a wrench from the now dead and disfigured repair woman in the hall, you break through a stuck glass door and find out you’ve been living in a simulation for a long time, and are not even on Earth. You are on a TranStar space station overrun with alien monsters called the typhon, and an artificial intelligence that you apparently made is trying to guide you to solving the problem. What happens from here is up to you.
It’s an incredible opening, well paced, teaches you the basics, and gives you one hell of a revelation to take in while dozens more are being laid out in emails and audio logs. The game never has a moment matching this until the ending, which is also incredible and a rare example of an immersive sim having a good ending, but makes up for it with the great gameplay loops. You can collect a variety of tools to help you, including two regular guns in the pistol and shotgun, and an invaluable stun gun. You also get weird stuff like the gloo gun, which can be used to create platforms on walls and slow down enemies, a nerf gun with a surprising amount of uses, and your grenades/traps do wild stuff like turn any mater in the immediate area into material cubes you can use to 3D print stuff. Oh, and you also have the Q-beam, which microwaves things from the inside out to explode them, which while impracticable, is very, very fun, and even useful for mimic mobs as they pop fast and explode around their buddies. Most all of these can be upgraded with weapon upgrade kits, which you can use more of with the proper amount of neuromods invested in your skills.
TranStar had been experimenting with the typhons (the aliens you’re fighting) to make neuromods, the game’s skill points, which can implant you with recorded skills and abilities. This includes expected stuff like more health or being better with guns, to stranger skills like hyper focus slo-mo. This can also give you typhon abilities too once you have the psychoscope, which lets you scan the buggers to learn more amount their strengths, weaknesses, and their unique powers. Too many makes the station turrets fire on you, but all of the abilities are useful and fun to mess with, including letting you control corpses, turn into objects, and fire energy blasts with your brain. These also aren’t evil powers, unlike what the game initially implies, as you can make use of them to help people on the station perfectly fine, though too many does cause some NPCs to react to you negatively in dialog. A refreshing change of pace from Dishonored‘s “HAVE FUN AND BAD ENDING” nonsense.
As an immersive sim, Prey leans heavily into approaching every situation as a problem to solve with knowledge of how you can use your tools. For example, you can wrench smack little mimic guys all day, but try that on a humanoid phantom and it will end badly for you. So, why not use the gloo gun to slow it down first, then do some damage with one of your guns, or lay a trap for it with a recycle charge trap and lead it in with a thrown item or nerf shot? Sure, you could fix an elevator or fight through the stairs, or you can just use your gloo gun to make a safe path to the top. Need a code to open a door? Is there a window nearby and does that door have a little unlock button? Nerf it! Works on computers too! Need to more a heavy object to get through a entrance? Spend neuromods to lift them with leverage, spend a precious recycle charge…or just throw stuff with some weight at the pile enough (if you have leverage II at least) that it knocks something loose and you can squeeze on by.
There is always another way to handle a problem, outside a few moments with entrances blocked by immovable planks that you need a mimic transformation to traverse, which makes the game constantly rewarding in the sorts of secrets and surprises you can find by just thinking creatively. No matter how bad things are, there’s a solution. The game also breaks itself up with zero gravity exploration segments outside the station and in broken up areas, having you move in all directions with a jet pack (which you can also use for hovering in the station). Zero-G fights aren’t the best, but it keeps things fresh and allows you to enter the station from a variety of air locks as shortcuts. There are even side quests and interactions with NPCs, which while not really changing the ending, does massively change up the main scenario, especially impressive on how much the game remembers in how characters act and how your objectives can change. It’s not obvious until the final stretch, though.
The story during this stretch of the game suffers a bit. You can feel some rush towards the finish line, from multiple NPCs populating rooms for the first time halfway through the game and talking over each other with broken audio levels, to how awkward doing some interactions can be. There’s one particularly dark moment undercut by having you cycle through about half a dozen empty flavor lines to get to it, and a lack of a dialog system makes your presence in these scenes feel strangely stilted. There is a reason for it, but it doesn’t feel like interactions were thought through enough to make it work in the core campaign.
There’s also a harsh difficulty curve early on due to the game not being designed like a traditional action game. Normally, enemies have tells for their attacks you can read and stick to one move or attack until finished. Not the case here. Phantoms, for example, can both do their teleport dash while charging and even firing their energy blasts, and you aren’t exactly an action hero in your agility, even at high levels. There’s also some feedback issues here and there, such as some AOE attacks being hard to read if you get hit by them. The first time you face a flaming phantom, you may not even realizing they’re summoning flames around you as their attack, and you’ll be encountering one early if you explore the medical area of the station hub.
The difficulty also completely drops off with enough neuromods, which are easy to get because you can make them early on. The game has a lot of looting, as you can recycle anything with recycle stations (and recycle charges) for material, then use that material at fabricators, usually placed next to or near by to recycle stations, to create items. As long as you have the schematics found through the station, you can make it. You get the neuromod schematic during a story beat, and can just outright made skill points (and also weapon upgrade kits) to get stronger even faster. Even without any typhon powers, the game can become very easy if you pump enough into upgrade abilities, crafting bonuses, and combat skills. Even nightmares, special mini-bosses that start spawning randomly in the station, can be decimated with a slo-mo onslaught of shotgun shells without it letting off an attack. Add in chips you can equip on your suit and psychoscope, some quite broken in their bonuses, and you effectively become a living god.
This is fun in its own way, though. The game is so unbalanced that it eventually becomes a delight to break, constant reward for good play and exploring the station thoroughly. You don’t see stuff like this from major releases often, it’s kind of refreshing, and also lends itself to replays, even if there’s only two endings (the third being a bad ending if you go straight for the escape pod). Unfortunately, Prey released in a messy, buggy state, enough that IGN initially gave the PC version a 4. The game undersold quite a bit, another immersive sim that bombed at launch, but it has finally been getting the love it deserves half a decade later as interest has rekindled with Arkane Studios’ Deathloop managing to become a hit.
It should also be noted the game has two DLC, and one of them is now a separate game…sort of? Mooncrash is proper DLC that is basically its own separate game, taking the foundation of the core game and turning it into a roguelike with a variety of stories to explore with a set of various characters. It’s an innovative experiment worth playing that explains a bit more of what happened in the main game. Typhon Hunter, on the other and, is a poorly balanced multiplayer suite originally released for free that was released again as a twenty dollar game with a new VR experience that is fairly underwhelming. Easily passed over, and the store listing on Steam is extremely confusing as to what it even is.
If there’s one thing that both Prey games share, it’s that they’re inventive, playful experiences that might be some of the most memorable times of their respective genres. They’re cult classics that deserve to be rediscovered by a new audience, and there’s definitely a lot to learn from both of them. Nobody has done what Prey 2006 did, and currently, nobody has managed to recapture the joy of the old System Shock experience like Prey 2017 with so many fresh tricks and ideas. Look up both of them and don’t let them become footnotes in the history of classic shooters and immersive sims, these are some of the best you’ll find in those fields, made by extremely creative people with a true love for the medium.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Securing the open-source software supply chain is a huge deal. Last year, the Biden administration issued an executive order to improve software supply chain security. This came after the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack shut down gas and oil deliveries throughout the southeast and the SolarWinds software supply chain attack. Securing software became a top priority. In response, The Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) and Linux Foundation rose to this security challenge. Now, they're calling for $150 million in funding over two years to fix ten major open-source security problems.
The government will not be paying the freight for these changes. $30 million has already been pledged by Amazon, Ericsson, Google, Intel, Microsoft, and VMWare. More is already on the way. Amazon Web Services (AWS) has already pledged an additional $10 million. At the White House press conference, OpenSSF general manager Brian Behlendorf said, "I want to be clear: We're not here to fundraise from the government. We did not anticipate needing to go directly to the government to get funding for anyone to be successful."
Here are the ten goals the open-source industry is committed to meeting:
1. Security Education: Deliver baseline secure software development education and certification to all.
2. Risk Assessment: Establish a public, vendor-neutral, objective-metrics-based risk assessment dashboard for the top 10,000 (or more) OSS components.
3. Digital Signatures: Accelerate the adoption of digital signatures on software releases.
4. Memory Safety: Eliminate root causes of many vulnerabilities through the replacement of non-memory-safe languages.
5. Incident Response: Establish the OpenSSF Open Source Security Incident Response Team, security experts who can step in to assist open source projects during critical times when responding to a vulnerability.
6. Better Scanning: Accelerate the discovery of new vulnerabilities by maintainers and experts through advanced security tools and expert guidance.
7. Code Audits: Conduct third-party code reviews (and any necessary remediation work) of up to 200 of the most-critical OSS components once per year.
8. Data Sharing: Coordinate industry-wide data sharing to improve the research that helps determine the most critical OSS components.
9. Software Bill of Materials (SBOMs): Everywhere Improve SBOM tooling and training to drive adoption.
10. Improved Supply Chains: Enhance the 10 most critical open-source software build systems, package managers, and distribution systems with better supply chain security tools and best practices.
"The Usual Suspects" is a movie with one of the great twist endings of all time, but not everyone was enamored of it back in 1995 when it first built up word-of-mouth buzz among filmgoers. Christopher McQuarrie's mystery-laden script won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, and the Writers Guild of America would go on to rank it one of the 101 best screenplays ever written. However, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Roger Ebert gave the crime thriller a 1.5-star review and wrote that its flashback-heavy narrative was "so complicated that [he] finally gave up trying to keep track of it." Even some viewers who like "The Usual Suspects" better than Ebert did may be left with questions after the movie ends, thanks to the nature of that twist ending, which we are obviously going to be discussing here with spoilers.
Watching "The Usual Suspects" now is also a different experience than it used to be due to real-life allegations against director Bryan Singer and star Kevin Spacey, both of whom saw their careers effectively end after they came to light during the #MeToo movement. Yet in a way, the shift in public perception toward them feeds directly into the poster tagline of "a world where nothing is what it seems." It has rendered "The Usual Suspects" a self-fulfilling cultural prophecy that testifies to the existence of a "devil" in more ways than one, as expressed by the famous movie quote, "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."
Although most people probably know that quote from the movie, it actually dates back to the 1800s, when writers like Charles Baudelaire voiced the same thought using slightly different words. In "The Usual Suspects," it's something Spacey's unreliable narrator, Verbal Kint, says during the frame story, while sitting in an office, telling U.S. Customs agent Dave Kujan (Chazz Palminteri) how he became one of the only two survivors of a fire and shootout on a pier where $91 million worth of drugs was supposedly in play.
Round Up The Usual Suspects
The title of "The Usual Suspects" was inspired by a magazine article referencing another famous "Casablanca" quote, "Round up the usual suspects." Over the course of the movie, we see how Verbal and a band of criminals who met in a police lineup became embroiled in the plans of one Keyser Söze, a legendary figure in the criminal underworld. Söze is repeatedly likened to the devil himself; his name cuts through the babble of foreign languages and seems to strike fear in all who hear it.
Verbal, meanwhile, is a much more unassuming figure who sits quietly offscreen at first, while his four tough-talking cellmates bicker and scheme. They are Keaton (Gabriel Byrne), McManus (Stephen Baldwin), Hockney (Kevin Pollak), and Fenster (Benicio del Toro). It's only when the camera pans to the side that we realize Verbal has been there with them the whole time. His real name is Roger, he claims, but people say he talks too much, and that earned him his nickname. This side of him comes out more in the present as he feeds Agent Kujan seemingly random anecdotes about how he spent time picking coffee beans in Guatemala and was in a barbershop quartet in Skokie, Illinois.
Early on, we learn Verbal has political connections, which have granted him total immunity from prosecution for anything other than a weapons charge, despite his involvement in an attack on a ship that left his accomplices and two dozen other men dead. He is due to post bail in "two hours tops" — just the right length for a movie. Dan Hedaya's police sergeant, Rabin, tells Agent Kujan, "This guy is protected from up on high by the prince of darkness."
"Söze," incidentally, is a Turkish word, and if you run it through Google Translate, the English equivalent comes out to "Verbal." That's one subtle hint that Verbal and Keyser Söze are one and the same, though of course, the average viewer can't be expected to know that offhand.
The Man With The Plan
Although McManus refers to Verbal as "the man with the plan," it's initially Keaton who is the focus for both Agent Kujan and the audience in "The Usual Suspects." Keaton has a criminal history, but he faked his own death and tried to go straight, only to get reluctantly drawn back into a job with McManus and the others. Agent Kujan has a grudge against Keaton, and he doesn't think much of Verbal, a "gimp" con artist with cerebral palsy, who can't even seem to work a cigarette lighter (an important misdirect, since Söze is seen using a gold lighter).
As he tries to get to the bottom of what happened on the pier, Agent Kujan even leans in and tells Verbal, "I'm smarter than you." These words will come back to bite Agent Kujan at the end when it becomes clear that Verbal has, in fact, outsmarted him, using reverse psychology on him and pretending to defend Keaton, all the while shifting blame onto him.
Unbeknownst to Keaton and his accomplices, they have all crossed paths with Söze in the past, stealing from some of the middlemen in his elaborate network. Söze's lawyer, Kobayashi (Pete Postlethwaite), acts as his chief go-between, explaining that he orchestrated the police lineup that brought the men together at the beginning of the movie. Kobayashi then threatens their loved ones and blackmails them into attacking the boat under the pretense of eliminating Söze's drug rivals.
In reality, this is just a ruse to get Verbal/Keyser onto the boat so he can personally kill Arturo Marquez (Cástulo Guerra), "a stool pigeon for the Justice Department" and one of the few people left living who can provide a facial ID on Söze. Agent Kujan delivers his own plot explanation when he says:
"There were no drugs on that boat. It was a hit. A suicide mission to whack out the one guy that could finger Keyser Söze. So Söze put some thieves to it. Men he knew he could march into certain death."
The Devil Is In The Details
Agent Kujan tells Verbal, "Convince me. Tell me every last detail." So that's what Verbal does, lifting names like "Redfoot" from the bulletin board and mixing lies with the truth, per the devil's M.O. The details obscure that Agent Kujan has Keyser Söze sitting right in front of him. Kujan thinks he's got it figured out, and to an extent, he does, but he's got the wrong man in mind. You'd need to take everything he says about Keaton being Söze and apply it to Verbal.
The reveal of Verbal's true identity, confirmed by fax with a police sketch, doesn't negate the events of "The Usual Suspects." It simply leaves the viewer to infer that maybe some or all of what Verbal describes did happen, but he downplayed his own role in it. In flashbacks, for instance, the camera pushes in on Verbal's hiding spot behind the rope coils on the pier, but there's no one there. Instead of being a passive observer, he was an active participant in what went down in and around the boat.
Verbal, in his guise as the boogeyman Söze, was the blinding, almost supernatural light who shot Hockney in the back and then stabbed McManus in the back. He killed Marquez and Keaton, tossed the cigarette that ignited the trail of gasoline on the boat, and later caught up with Keaton's girlfriend, Edie Finneran (Suzy Amis), killing her offscreen, too, because she was Marquez's extradition lawyer.
Although the movie depicts flashback scenes where Verbal is not present — such as the penultimate exchange between Keaton and McManus, where Keaton tells him there's no cocaine on the boat — these can perhaps be explained as visualizations of things characters told Verbal or things he imagined or invented for the sake of manipulating Agent Kujan. It's only after Verbal has collected his gold lighter and watch and left police headquarters in the present that we get a triple-take or stutter-cut, with Agent Kujan dropping his coffee cup and realizing even Kobayashi's name was taken from the bottom of it.
A Rumor's Not A Rumor That Doesn't Die
On the sidewalk, Verbal straightens out his limp and flexes his hand. Part of what makes the reveal of his masquerade work so well is the montage of voices and images that washes over the viewer, reminding them of everything they've learned, and how this builds on it and subverts it. Having the same crew member, John Ottman, handle both the music and editing, allowed "The Usual Suspects" to achieve a good synergy between the two disciplines.
A 2016 survey showed that Americans were statistically less likely to believe in the devil than God. "The Usual Suspects" takes viewers coast to coast, from New York to Los Angeles, and it has Keaton insisting there is no Keyser Söze. "This guy's a pipe dream," he says.
Verbal, too, recognizes Söze has become "a myth, a spook story that criminals tell their kids at night." He tells us, "Keaton always said, I don't believe in God, but I'm afraid of him. Well, I believe in God, and the only thing that scares me is Keyser Söze."
The mundane truth of Söze and banality of evil is that he's not some long-haired Turk who came walking out of the fire. He's just a guy with a widow's peak who no one takes seriously until it's too late. In a way, that's scarier than any horror movie because it's closer to some semblance of the real world.
At the turn of the millennium, Bryan Singer was still a respected superhero film pioneer for "X-Men," while Kevin Spacey had recently won two Academy Awards for "The Usual Suspects" and "American Beauty." The disturbing sexual assault allegations against them tarnished their reputations and made it look like they were real-life versions of Keyser Söze.
Since then, "The Usual Suspects" has taken on a whole new dimension. It's a movie that shows the devil is sometimes real and hiding in plain sight. As Agent Kujan puts it, "A rumor's not a rumor that doesn't die."
After a shopping mall in Chennai is hijacked by terrorists who hold the visitors as hostages, Veera Raghavan, a spy also trapped in the mall, decides to save the hostages by eliminating the terrorists.
"Security consultant Lance Vick recently acquired the expired domain used by the maintainer of a widely used NPM package," reports the Register, "to remind the JavaScript community that the NPM Registry still hasn't implemented adequate security."
"I just noticed 'foreach' on NPM is controlled by a single maintainer," wrote Vick in a Twitter post on Monday. "I also noticed they let their domain expire, so I bought it before someone else did. I now control 'foreach' on npm, and the 36,826 projects that depend on it."
That's not quite the full story — he probably could have taken control but didn't. Vick acquired the lapsed domain that had been used by the maintainer to create an NPM account and is associated with the "foreach" package on NPM. But he said he didn't follow through with resetting the password on the email account tied to the "foreach" package, which is fetched nearly six million times a week. In an email to the Register, Vick explained... "I did not log into the account, as again, that crosses a line. I just sent a password reset email and bailed.
"Regardless of how much control I have over this particular package, which is unclear, NPM admits this particular expired domain problem is a known issue, citing this 2021 [research paper] which says, 'We also found 2,818 maintainer email addresses associated with expired domains, allowing an attacker to hijack 8,494 packages by taking over the NPM accounts.' In other words, anyone poking around is going to find accounts easy to take over in this way. I was not lucky or special." His point, which he has been trying for several years to communicate to those overseeing NPM — a part of GitHub since March 2020 — is that taking over the NPM account of a popular project to conduct a software supply chain attack continues to be too easy.
Part of the problem is that JavaScript developers often use packages that implement simple functions that are either already built into the language, like forEach, or ought to be crafted manually to avoid yet another dependency, like left-pad (now built-in as padStart). These trivial packages get incorporated into other packages, which may in turn become dependencies in different packages, thereby making the compromise of something like "foreach" a potentially far-reaching security incident.
But Vick argues that with so many upstream attack vectors, "We are all just trusting strangers on the internet to give us good candy from their truck," according to the Register. Their article points out that on Tuesday GitHub launched a beta test of improved 2FA security for all its NPM accounts — which Vick calls "a huge win... [T]hat is the best way to protect accounts. We in the security community have been demanding this for years."
But he's still worried about the possibility of email addresses with weak two-factor authentication or compromised NPM employees, and would like to see NPM implement cryptographic signatures for code. "I am talking with a member of their team tomorrow and we will see where this goes."
Nearly 40 years after his role as Cameron in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," actor Alan Ruck has reentered the cultural zeitgeist with his role as Connor in HBO's "Succession" and Jay Rosen in Hulu's "The Dropout."
There are no big gaps in Ruck's resume — the actor spent decades bouncing between supporting parts in moderately successful television shows from "Spin City" to "Greek" — but Ruck had a hard time finding a project as exciting as "Ferris Bueller" to follow up his breakout role. A couple of bad career moves landed the actor down on his luck after the film was released, and people began recognizing the blockbuster star in the unlikeliest of places.
"Ferris Bueller" was a smash hit upon its release in 1986. Alan Ruck played the major supporting role of Cameron, Ferris' neurotic best friend with a head cold who is reluctantly brought along on his escapades. Despite the success of "Ferris Bueller," Ruck's paycheck was hardly enough to be life-changing. The movie made him no more than $40,000, he told Jimmy Kimmel, explaining that "it was my first big part in a movie, and they're gonna find any excuse not to pay you."
He Counted His Chickens Before They Hatched
By 1989, Alan Ruck was already in his 30s — he shot "Ferris Bueller" at age 29, his "swan song as a teen actor" — and had started a family in Chicago (via Rich Eisen). In pursuit of more work, the actor landed a pilot at NBC called "Morton's by the Bay," he told A.V. Club. Since his co-star had a deal with the network already, he felt confident that the show would be greenlit and moved his wife and kids out to Los Angeles, spending the last of his money. Sadly, the pilot totally bombed. "It turned out to be a nothing," he said. "It was just formless."
With no other work on the horizon and no way to make ends meet, Ruck was forced to seek assistance from employment services. Ruck "had no marketable skills," as he put it, so he was sent to the Sears warehouse. When people recognized the actor from "Ferris Bueller," which came out a few years earlier, he would pretend it wasn't him. He concealed his identity to shield himself from embarrassment, he explained:
"I thought that they'd probably go, 'You were in the movies and then you wound up here? We should just beat you for being stupid!' So it was very grim and very humbling."
From Sears To Succession
Luckily for Alan Ruck, his fortune would soon turn. While working at Sears, he landed a spot on a major network television series, an ABC sitcom called "Going Places." The stable income permitted him to buy a house and quit his minimum wage job, but it wasn't exactly the creative breakthrough he was hoping for. The show aired for 19 episodes, but Ruck claims that only one of the 19 is worth watching. "They did a very good job on that one episode ... but the show just didn't work, he told the A.V. Club.
The best part about the story is it has a happy ending. Ruck now stars in the ensemble cast of HBO's Emmy award-winning show "Succession," a groundbreaking drama about an exorbitantly wealthy family struggling for power over a media empire. If you feel that the series marks a watershed moment in Ruck's career, you aren't alone — the actor would agree with you. "I've been waiting for this for 30 years," he told Kimmel. We may not have known it, Alan, but so have we.
Team Pyjak has released a must-have unofficial bugfix patch for Mass Effect 2 Legendary Edition. This unofficial patch fixes numerous bugs and issues, and we highly recommend downloading it. This mod is fully localized in all officially supported LE languages, both audio and text. Additionally, it restores some cut content from the game. Since the … Continue reading Mass Effect 2 Legendary Edition gets a must-have Unofficial Patch →
IMDB Rating: 6.7/10 Genre: Action / Adventure / Comedy / Drama Size: 2.18 GB Runtime: 1hr 58 min
Cheyenne, a wealthy former rock star (Penn), now bored and jaded in his retirement embarks on a quest to find his father's persecutor, an ex-Nazi war criminal now hiding out in the U.S. Learning his father is close to death, he travels to New York in the hope of being reconciled with him during his final hours, only to arrive too late. Having been estranged for over 30 years, it is only now in death that he learns the true extent of his father's humiliation in Auschwitz at the hands of former SS Officer Aloise Lange - an event he is determined to avenge. So begins a life-altering journey across the heartland of America to track down and confront his father's nemesis. As his quest unfolds, Cheyenne is reawakened by the people he encounters and his journey is transformed into one of reconciliation and self discovery. As his date with destiny arrives and he tracks down Lange, Cheyenne must finally decide if it is redemption he seeks ....or revenge. Starring two time Academy Award winner Sean Penn and marking the much-anticipated English-language debut of acclaimed director Paolo Sorrentino, THIS MUST BE THE PLACE is a gripping examination of a man on the precipice of obsession.
Calling a man bald can now be classed as sexual harassment, a U.K. employment tribunal judge has ruled. From a report: Three members of the tribunal who decided on the ruling, and alluded to their own experience of hair loss, said that baldness was more prevalent in men than women. Therefore, they argued that the use of the word "bald" as an insult related to a "protected characteristic of sex." The tribunal compared calling a man bald to commenting on the size of woman's breasts, based on a 1995 case. The ruling, published Wednesday, was made on a case where the insult was alleged to have been used against Tony Finn, while he worked as an electrician for the British Bung Manufacturing Company. Finn had worked at the company, which manufactures wooden cask closures for the brewing industry, in Yorkshire in the northeast of England, for nearly 24 years. He was fired last year and the circumstances around his dismissal were also part of the case. Finn claimed that he was called a "bald c---" and was also threatened by his shift supervisor, Jamie King, in a dispute in July 2019.
(Superhero Bitsis a collection of stories, updates, and videos about anything and everything inspired by the comics of Marvel, DC, and more. For comic book movies, TV shows, merchandise, events, and whatever catches our eye, this is the place to find anything that falls through the cracks.)
In this edition of Superhero Bits:
Zack Snyder fans rigged the Oscars fan-favorite polls.
The "Moon Knight" producers are moving on to "Fantastic Four" next.
Sam Raimi won't direct Tom Holland's "Spider-Man 4."
"The Boys" season 3 gets a poster ahead of Monday's trailer.
All that and more!
The Ninja Turtles Get A Friday The 13th Mash-Up
The folks at Nickelodeon decided to have a little but of fun with the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" today, which just so happens to be Friday the 13th. As we can see in the above artwork, the heroes in a half-shell were given a bit of a horror treatment with Casey Jones looming large, clearly meant to call to mind Jason Voorhees, the machete-wielding killer from the "Friday the 13th" films. Well played, Nickelodeon social media team.
Is This Why Legends Of Tomorrow And Batwoman Were Canceled?
The CW recently decided to cancel a ton of shows, with "Legends of Tomorrow" and "Batwoman" amongst the many series that didn't make the cut for renewals. So, why did the network cancel these shows? Well, The Hollywood Reporter states that "the leases on the soundstages for both DC Comics dramas was up and producers Warner Bros. TV did not want to extend them." That certainly accounts for at least one piece of the puzzle -- but is it the whole puzzle? It seems hard to imagine that a sound stage lease was the only thing keeping two shows from returning to the air. But this at least sheds some light on the situation.
The Flash Season 8 Into The Still Force Promo
Here is the official promo for the 15th episode of the eighth season of "The Flash" on The CW:
The Flash (Grant Gustin) gets an assist from XS (guest star Jessica Parker Kennedy). Meanwhile, CCPD enlists Chester (Brandon McKnight) for help when a mysterious device is found at a crime scene.
Eric Wallace directed the episode, which was written by Lauren Barnett and Christina M. Walker.
Moon Knight Producers Are Doing Marvel's Fantastic Four Movie Next
Marvel Studios has an interesting way of doing things. A producer is assigned a single project to work on at one time, and they see that project through to the end. With that in mind, the folks at ComicBook.com have some interesting news as producers Grant Curtis and Nick Pepin are moving on from "Moon Knight" and right into the upcoming "Fantastic Four" reboot. The news was confirmed by series head writer Jeremy Slater.
"My execs on Moon Knight are the same guys who are running Fantastic Four, so we had a lot of talks about it. I was like, 'I'm not going to pitch you for anything, because honestly you don't need my stink on it.'"
This tells us that one, Marvel Studios has faith in Curtis and Pepin as producers and two, "Fantastic Four" is clearly a top priority with them shifting to work on the long-awaited reboot. Now the big question is, who is going to direct it now that Jon Watts has departed the project? We may know sooner rather than later with the pieces seemingly coming together on the chessboard.
Psylocke Figure From Sideshow Collectibles
The folks at Sideshow Collectibles have unveiled a new Marvel collaboration in the form of a premium format figure depicting the mutant Psylocke. General audiences will likely know her from Oliva Munn's portrayal in 2016's "X-Men: Apocalypse." But this figure is more rooted in the comics and, for those who are interested, it is available for pre-order now and retails for a cool $625. Interested parties can get full details or pre-order by clicking here.
Sam Raimi Won't Direct Tom Holland's Spider-Man 4 For A Charming Reason
Sam Raimi, director of the original "Spider-Man" trilogy, recently made his return to superhero filmmaking with "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness." But does he have a future with the franchise? Raimi recently spoke with The Los Angeles Times and the subject of him possibly directing Tom Holland's inevitable fourth "Spider-Man" film came up. Raimi, however, dismissed that idea, and it all has to do with Tobey Maguire.
"I love Spider-Man. And I love Tom Holland in the role. [But] if I made a Spider-Man movie, it would probably have to be with Tobey or he'd break my neck."
As tongue-in-cheek as this is, it's also quite charming. Maguire is Raimi's Spidey and since they never got to make their version of "Spider-Man 4," it might feel wrong of him to tackle the franchise with a different actor in the role. Here's hoping he and Maguire reunite elsewhere within the Spider-Verse.
Zack Snyder Fans Rigged The Oscars Fan Favorite And Cheer Moment Awards
This year's Oscars attempted to get some engagement from film fans who might not otherwise care about awards shows by including a couple of awards that were voted on by movie lovers on Twitter. This resulted in Zack Snyder's "Army of the Dead" winning the Fan Favorite award, whereas the Cheer Moment went to Flash entering the Speedforce from "Justice League."
However, a new report from The Wrap indicates that fans of Snyder used automated online bot accounts to help push the vote in favor of these films. For now, it remains unclear if any investigation will take place on The Academy's part though that seems unlikely. These awards didn't actually come with an Oscar, as they were merely included as part of the ceremony. Still, it colors a couple of strange moments from this year's ceremony, bathing them in an ugly light.
The Boys Season 3 Gets An Interesting Poster, Trailer Drops Monday
Lastly, "The Boys" season 3 has received a new poster but a unique one at that, as this appears to be for an in-universe thing titled "Payback." The caption provided states that this "may or may not" make more sense once the trailer drops on Monday. The big thing there is that fans can expect a trailer come Monday, so be on the lookout for that. As for the poster, Jensen Ackles' Soldier Boy is out front and center, and he figures to be a big part of the new season. We'll be sure to bring the trailer your way as soon as it drops on Monday but, for now, be sure to check out the new poster for yourself above.
