Ronald.phillips

Reply from biomecanoid, 24.04.2023, 23:41:

Hello

Managed to run dosbox from inside freedos on a Acer Aspire ONE but no sound
What can I do now ?

From the first two articles (here, and here) on this topic arises the obvious question...so what? Not
validating findings has worked well for many, to the point that the lack of validation is not recognized. After all, who notices that findings were not verified? The peer review process? The manager? The customer? Given just the fact how pervasive training materials and processes are that focus solely on single artifacts in isolation should give us a clear understanding that validating findings is not a common practice. That is, if the need for validation is not pervasive in our industry literature, and if someone isn't asking the question, "...but how do you know?", then what leads us to assume that validation is part of what we do?

The hierarchy of power in the DC Universe is actually changing. James Gunn and Peter Safran are moving closer and closer to unleashing their brand-new take on DC's movie and TV properties, and there is a lot to be excited about. At long last, we're getting a modern "Swamp Thing" movie, Superman is returning to his dorky form, there will be new animated shows, and so much more.

Arguably the most thrilling part of this new DC Universe has to do with Batman. Now, to be fair, we've only just gotten an excellent Batman movie courtesy of Matt Reeves and we've never really stopped seeing Batman in TV and film, so it's understandably hard to argue that yet another Batman is the coolest part of a brand-new universe — especially when there will also be a "Booster Gold" TV show. And yet, the upcoming "The Brave and the Bold" has something no other Batman movie has had since Joel Schumacher was running the franchise — Robin. Moreover, the film is set to finally going to bring back a hugely important part of the movies we've only seen in live-action once before: the Bat-family.

This is what separates Batman from other heroes and there is no best way to introduce the Bat-family than with Damian Wayne. Damian is of the coolest characters DC has introduced in the last couple of decades. But if you haven't read the multi-year comic book epic he debuted in, or watched the many animated movies he was a part of, then it's hard to be excited just by the mention of his name. This is why we're breaking down what you need to know about Damian Wayne ahead of "The Brave and the Bold."

Batman And Son

Originally, the idea of Bruce Wayne having a son was introduced in Mike Barr and Jerry Bingham's 1987 graphic novel "Batman: Son of the Demon," wherein Batman romances Talia al Ghul, who becomes pregnant with his child. It wasn't until Grant Morrison took over the "Batman" comic book title in the early '00s that the child was brought into canon, as Damian Wayne (also known as Damian al Ghul).

Damian's existence was long kept hidden from Bruce. He was raised as a full-blown member of the League of Assassins and was already an excellent martial artist and assassin by the time he became a teenager. Although he was originally trained to kill and replace his father, Talia eventually decided to reveal her son's existence to Bruce Wayne and left Damian in his custody — presumably because she knew there is no bigger threat to Batman than having to care for a child.

Originally, Grant Morrison's plan was to kill Damian as soon as he was introduced. As the author told IGN, "I planned to have Damian learn his lessons quickly before dying nobly at the end of that first arc." Thankfully, they changed their mind, and we got one of the coolest characters in comics, who is now as integral to the character of Bruce Wayne as Alfred. Plus, as Robin, he stands out as something completely unique, starting with the fact that as hyper-violent, bratty, and obnoxious as Damian is, he is also a kid who loves animals so much he becomes a vegetarian. Among his many pets are the Bat-dog his father gifted him and the greatest sidekick in DC, Bat-cow, who is literally just a cow.

The Dynamic Duo Together At Last

From his introduction, Damian's bratty personality was a great contrast to Bruce's and those of the other Robins, which made him hugely entertaining. To paraphrase Grant Morrison, giving a stoic billionaire playboy like Bruce Wayne a volatile aristocratic ninja jerk of a son made him cooler and more complex.

However, it was only when Bruce Wayne briefly died during "Final Crisis" that we got the best Damian stories. In "Batman" #657, he finally became Robin after almost killing the previous Robin, Tim Drake, and paired up with Dick Grayson, who had just become Batman. The result was one of the best things to happen to the Caped Crusader, as we got a reversal in dynamic — Batman became a happy-go-lucky guy who smiled a lot, while Robin was the grim and angry edge-lord. It is unlikely we will see Dick Grayson take the mantle in the DC Universe's "The Brave and the Bold," but hopefully, this relationship will be explored in the DCU at some point.

Sure, Batman growing by taking care of a kid and realizing the mistakes he made with his previous wards is cool and emotional, but a fun Batman constantly fighting with his younger brother is hilarious — and we could use a funny Batman on the big screen.

Whatever Damian's role is in the new DC Universe, let's not forget one of the biggest reasons Morrison had for creating the character. "Part of my approach included reminding readers that Batman does get laid, and his partners are some of the most beautiful exotic women in the world," Morrison told IGN. At the time, Batman was portrayed as a noble and pure crusader, or as Morrison called him, a "fundamentally sexless tight-ass, in the face of the printed evidence of decades of stories."

Read this next: Every Batman Movie And The Real-World Fears They Highlight

The post The Origin of Batman's Son: How Damian Wayne Entered the DC Universe appeared first on /Film.

The success of Ridley Scott's 2000 battle epic "Gladiator" might be seen as a little baffling. The film was nominated for 12 Academy Awards in the early months of 2001, and would win Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Costumes, Best Sound, and Best Visual Effects. This was in spite of the film receiving only vaguely positive reviews from most critics (it currently holds an 80% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes). Stephen Hunter, in his review in the Washington Post, called the film a disappointment, and the L.A. Weekly's Manhola Dargis called it "ultimately pointless." Roger Ebert gave the film a mere two stars. Overall, "Gladiator" is something of a slog, featuring a dishwater-dull color palette and a perfunctory story that offers little drama and no surprises. These days, "Gladiator" occasionally pops up on lists of the worst Best Picture winners. 

"Gladiator" was, however, a massive hit, so it clearly tapped into a pulpy pop sensibility that a mass audience enjoyed. It would ultimately earn half a billion dollars worldwide. Because of this, ideas for sequels have floated through Hollywood for the last two decades, despite the lead character Maximus (Russell Crowe) dying at the end. In 2006, one might have heard the rumors that Nick Cave had written a follow-up wherein Maximus was resurrected to kill Jesus Christ (!), and would henceforth be cursed to eternal life. That film would have ended in the modern day. In 2001, Timur Bekmambetov directed a low-budget peplum film called "The Arena" which was released as "Gladiator 2" overseas. It was not official. 

Crowe himself seemed wary of "Gladiator." It netted him an Oscar and made millions, but he recalls, back in 2000, being baffled and put off by the film's script. He expressed his entire thoughts in a video interview with Variety.  

'What The F*** Is All This?'

Crowe begins the video interview very positively about "Gladiator," however. While he may have had trepidation, he recalls his first time seeing the film with a big crowd and recalling their excitement, as well as their outrage when his character was killed at the end. He knew it was going to be a big hit. 

But during production, Crowe was not so thrilled. Mostly because the screenplay, credited to John Logan, David Franzoni, and William Nicholson, simply wasn't very good. He knew he was able to headline a major studio release, but he recognized that the dialogue was terrible. In his words: 

"I was confident about my abilities as a leading man. What I wasn't confident about with 'Gladiator' was the world that was surrounding me. At the core of what we were doing was a great concept but the script, it was rubbish, absolute rubbish. And it had all these sorts of strange sequences."

He recalls a scene wherein chariot racers were depicted riding vehicles emblazoned with then-modern product placement logos, like olive oil manufacturers. It may have been accurate to the film's A.D. 180 timeframe, but Crowe thought it would look too contemporary for audiences in 2000. It took Scott to talk Crowe out of abandoning the film altogether. Crowe said:

"That's all true but it's just not going to ring right to a modern audience. They're going to go, 'What the f*** is all this?' The energy around what we were doing was very fractured. I did think a couple times, 'Maybe my best option is just to get on a plane and get out of here.' It was my continued conversations with Ridley that sort of gave me faith."

Rewriting On The Fly

As happens with many major Hollywood productions, "Gladiator" underwent massive re-writes while shooting was already underway. When production began, Crowe felt that only a small portion of the final script was poised to make a good film. The rest had to be reworked, using ideas from various screenwriters, the director, and the star. It seems, evevtually, they reached a point where Crowe was comfortable. Scott was a savvy enough director to allow for massive changes, and seemed nimble to pivot. Crowe said:

"[Scott] said to me at one point in time, 'Mate, we're not committing anything to camera that you don't believe in 100%.' So when we actually started that film, we had 21 pages of script that we agreed on. A script is usually between 103 or four or 110 pages. So we had a long way to go and we basically used up those pages in the first section of the movie. So by the time we got to our second location, which was Morocco, we were sort of catching up."

The final film may not have been as widely embraced by critics as it might have been, but when Crowe heard those cheers with his first crowd, all seemed to fall into place. Once finished, both Crowe and Scott immediately ran off to other projects. Crowe was in "Proof of Life," "A Beautiful Mind," and "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World" within the next three years, and Scott directed both "Hannibal" and "Black Hawk Down" in 2001 alone. That "Gladiator" was a massive success and an Oscar darling seems to have been a lucky happenstance for two filmmakers who were constantly on the move.

Read this next: The 18 Best Action Movie Actors Ranked

The post Russell Crowe Thought The Original Gladiator Script Was 'Absolute Rubbish' appeared first on /Film.

QEMU v8.0 is released. QEMU is a generic and open source machine emulator and virtualizer.When used as a machine emulator, QEMU can run OSes and programs made for one machine (e.g. an ARM board) on a different machine (e.g. your own PC). By using dynamic translation, it achieves very good performances.When used as a virtualizer, QEMU achieves near native performances by executing the guest code directly on the host CPU. A host driver called the QEMU accelerator (also known as KQEMU) is needed in this case. The virtualizer mode requires that both the host and guest machine use x86 compatible processors....More

Mother's Day is coming up quick. If you're still trying to figure out a good gift, we have some ideas. Here at Engadget, our minds reflexively focus on tech. While it's true an electronic gadget might not be the “traditional” Mother’s Day gift — just about every mom we know would prefer a cool new piece of tech over a short-lived bouquet of flowers and box of chocolates. A number of us collaborated on this guide, filling it with gadgets and services we've tested, used, or even given to the moms in our own lives. Thanks to speedy shipping times (particularly from Amazon), many of these gifts should arrive by Sunday. There are also a couple of subscriptions that you can buy truly last minute if your gifting process comes down to the wire. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-best-last-minute-mothers-day-gifts-17-gadgets-and-subscriptions-that-should-arrive-by-sunday-131533688.html?src=rss

Threat actors are employing a previously undocumented "defense evasion tool" dubbed AuKill that's designed to disable endpoint detection and response (EDR) software by means of a Bring Your Own Vulnerable Driver (BYOVD) attack. "The AuKill tool abuses an outdated version of the driver used by version 16.32 of the Microsoft utility, Process Explorer, to disable EDR processes before deploying

The U.S. Supreme Court, exploring free speech rights in the social media era, on Monday agreed to consider whether the Constitution's First Amendment bars government officials from blocking their critics on platforms like Facebook and Twitter. From a report: The justices took up an appeal by two members of a public school board from the city of Poway in Southern California of a lower court's ruling in favor of school parents who sued after being blocked from Facebook pages and a Twitter account maintained by the officials. The justices also took up an appeal by a Michigan man of a lower court's ruling against him after he sued a city official in Port Huron who blocked him on Facebook following critical posts made by the plaintiff about the local government's COVID-19 response. At issue is whether a public official's social media activity can amount to governmental action bound by First Amendment limits on government regulation of speech.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

On March 20, 2023, Microsoft announced the successful completion of the Cloud Data Management Capabilities (CDMC) certification. As a proponent of wider industry standards, I was fortunate to be part of Microsoft’s executive team working to achieve this important milestone. Beginning in 2020, we collaborated with more than 300 executives from across the financial, technology, and services sectors—a total of 45,000 hours—to complete the CDMC framework in 2021.¹ Working with these firms gave us the opportunity to come together as an industry and define the key components needed to effectively protect sensitive data in the cloud and enable trust for data consumers. It also helped us better understand business needs for data management and define best practices for a hybrid-cloud world.

Because data privacy laws and regulations differ by country and industry, organizations have lacked an all-encompassing standard for protecting data. For example, the European Union has its General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), while in the United States, there’s a mix of privacy laws, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), and many more. There’s also the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS 239) that governs data controls for large banks worldwide.

As a result, many of Microsoft’s customers have had to maintain sensitive data in inefficient siloes, often with conflicting security requirements. An underlying framework was needed to maintain data security across a constantly changing regulatory environment. The CDMC assessment fills that function, helping to remove systemic risk by providing 14 key cloud data controls and automations, thus empowering your organization to move data to the cloud with confidence. In this blog post, we’ll look at how CDMC certification can provide a standard for data governance at scale while speeding your organization’s cloud journey.

It accelerates cloud adoption

Microsoft’s CDMC certification empowers customers with the confidence to accelerate their own adoption of cloud and hybrid-cloud strategies, knowing their data is protected. By establishing a common framework for cloud data security, CDMC certification also facilitates greater trust and collaboration within an organization. The rigorous certification process lasts four to six weeks, during which evaluators work with stakeholders on both the business and IT teams to review the organization’s cloud data solution against the CDMC framework. Customers can opt for a readiness assessment before a formal certification assessment. With this two-phase approach, organizations identify gaps with the CDMC-provided checklist, formulate a remediation plan, allocate resources to act on the plan, and ultimately provide the evidence for formal CDMC certification.

This assessment helps to communicate the business case for investing in cloud data management to the CEO and board of directors, driving the value proposition of cloud adoption. Having key controls and automations in place empowers your organization to spend less time on compliance management, and more time deriving value from your data. Once the assessment is passed, your organization can obtain the EDM Council’s official certification—a symbol of trust to let your customers know their data is in good hands.¹  

It provides a checklist for regulators and auditors

Organizations need confidence that their sensitive data is properly protected, no matter where it resides. However, too many businesses have to contend with the lack of a common language for discussing requirements for cloud data management—the CDMC framework provides this. Certification allows organizations to balance data sovereignty controls with generating business value from their data, wherever it resides. Most importantly, certification assures regulators that privacy laws are being followed for data such as:

• Personally Identifiable Information.
• Personal Health Information.
• Company- or client-identifiable information.
• Material Non-public Information.
• Information with sensitivity classifications, such as “Highly Restricted” or “Confidential.”
• Critical data elements used for business processes.
• Licensed data.

For Microsoft Purview users, your business can also benefit from out-of-the-box compliance reporting and customization. In addition, Microsoft Purview builds on the CDMC framework across all 14 key controls and automations:

Governance and accountability

1. Data control compliance must be monitored for all data assets containing sensitive data through metrics and automated notifications. With Microsoft Purview, data control compliance can be assessed for each data asset across all CDMC controls using a Python script to check compliance, then update assets with compliance scores through Microsoft Purview’s API.

2. Ownership fields in a data catalog must be populated for all sensitive data or otherwise reported to a defined workflow. Each asset in Microsoft Purview’s Data Catalog has an Ownership attribute that is linked to the organization’s active directory and can be searched in the Catalog user interface (UI). Changes to the catalog can trigger a notification workflow for further action.

3. Authoritative data sources and provisioning points must be populated in a register for all data assets containing sensitive data. Each asset can have a certified flag in Microsoft Purview that can be used to identify Authoritative Data Sources through search from the Catalog UI.

4. Data sovereignty and cross-border movement of sensitive data must be recorded, auditable, and controlled according to defined policy. Cross-Border Movement can be tracked using Microsoft Purview’s API and Lineage flows, provided the location data is captured as metadata. Any violations can be audited using a Python Script.

Cataloging and classification

5. Cataloging must be automated for all data at the point of creation or ingestion, with consistency across all environments. Cataloging is automated using Microsoft Purview’s pre-built connectors for user-defined scans. Other services offer native integration to “push” metadata. The API allows for the creation of custom integration scripts.

6. Classification must be automated for all data at the point of creation or ingestion and must always be on. Classification can be triggered through automated scans at the point of ingestion. Assets and classification results are visible in Microsoft Purview’s Data Catalog and the Data Estate Insights view.

Accessibility and usage

7. Entitlements and access for sensitive data must default to the creator and owner, and access must be tracked for all sensitive data. Broad Usage Rights can be captured as Managed Attributes in Microsoft Purview, which are searchable via the Data Catalog UI. Specific User Entitlements and access control can be created through access Policies.

8. Data consumption purpose must be provided for all Data Sharing Agreements involving sensitive data. Data consumption purpose can be documented as part of standard metadata in Microsoft Purview, such as “description” or as customer-managed attributes.

Protection and privacy

9. Appropriate security controls must be enabled for sensitive data and evidence must be recorded. Security Controls can be applied at source and recorded in Microsoft Purview using specific properties depending on asset type; for example, “isMasked” attribute for a SQL Server column. Classifications and sensitivity labels can also be applied to identify sensitive data.

10. Data privacy impact assessments must be automatically triggered for all personal data according to its jurisdiction. Data Privacy Impact Assessments can be automated using classifications, which can be used to set privacy assessments and can be discovered through catalog search or Data Estate Insights. Data assets can be linked to privacy-sensitive projects using the metamodel to understand impacted business areas.

Data lifecycle

11. Data quality measurement must be enabled for sensitive data with metrics distributed when available. Data Quality Assessments can be run based on user-defined rules at the asset level to produce data quality scores. Resulting scores can be monitored over time for changes, with threshold-based alerts defined as appropriate.

12. Data retention, archiving, and purging must be managed according to a defined retention schedule. Data Retention, Archiving, and Purging policies are applied directly at the source, such as within Microsoft Azure storage accounts. Policy documents and assets can be augmented at the source with additional metadata, which can be scanned into Microsoft Purview. This metadata is available through the UI or API search.

Data and technical architecture

13. Data lineage information must be available for all sensitive data. Data Lineage can be viewed against each asset in the catalog and updated automatically each time a data processing pipeline is executed (for example, when a file is produced or updated through a Data Factory operation).

14. Cost metrics directly associated with data use, storage, and movement must be available in the catalog. Cost Metrics are available throughout Microsoft Azure and would generally be tracked at the source. For data movement costs, the Lineage view can be used to identify which processes (for example, Data Factory) are used in the movement of data, then drill through to the source to see specific costs.

It monitors the maturity of your cloud migration program

Every organization is at a different point in its cloud journey. Undergoing a CDMC assessment offers an easy entry point, providing a standard for data governance and controls for smart data management at scale. Your organization can leverage the CDMC framework to build your own roadmap for multicloud enablement alongside it, moving forward with confidence that the 14 key controls will help protect your sensitive data across jurisdictions while speeding up your own CDMC certification.

Learn more

Jumpstart your organization’s cloud journey with your own CDMC assessment. Learn about best practices for cloud data management from the EDM Council’s CDMC framework, including a free download. Also, read about Microsoft’s data transformation journey and how our data governance solutions can help your organization move data to the cloud with confidence.

Learn more about Microsoft Purview.

To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us on LinkedIn (Microsoft Security) and Twitter (@MSFTSecurity) for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.

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¹Cloud Data—CDMC frameworks, EDM Council. April 2023.

The post Getting started with the CDMC framework—Microsoft’s guide to cloud data management appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

Activision Blizzard has received a new lawsuit from NetEase after their... Less than amicable licensing split that left Chinese players without access to games like World of Warcraft and Overwatch. According to recent reports, the company is seeking ¥300 million Yuan (roughly $43.5 million USD) to cover refunds for discontinued games and services alongside compensation for unsold merchandise inventory on undeveloped games.

The Chinese media conglomerate Sina Technology was the first to report this lawsuit. According to it, Blizzard violated several licensing agreements. NetEase is also calling several "unequal provisions favoring Blizzard Entertainment" in the licensing agreements between the two companies, such as bet-on agreements and even large deposits from NetEase to insulate Activision Blizzard from the risk.

According to the report, the primary reason for NetEase to sue Blizzard is that Blizzard refused to assume the obligation of refunding players in the China service and refused to pay NetEase the prepaid commission fee related to the Chinese service refund, involving an amount of nearly 100 million RMB. NetEase has already paid over 1.12 million players in full to refund applications for Blizzard games in China.

In addition, the lawsuit involves a "one-side clause" signed between Blizzard and NetEase. This clause includes the requirement that NetEase delivers a large deposit for several games from Blizzard in advance. As you might expect, Blizzard did not refund the relevant deposit when the relevant games were not developed, even after the partnership between the two fell through.

As we all know, the tensions between NetEase and Activision Blizzard had been escalating before the deal's expiration. According to a New York Times report, simmering tensions between the long-term partners over a license renewal came to a head during a conference call last October. A senior figure at NetEase talked about the reasons behind the lack of an extension of the deal a few months ago. The President of Global Investment and Partnership, Simon Zhu, explained that the reason behind the partnership breaking was due to the actions of a "jerk" behind the scenes.

Chromebooks have always been a popular option for schools due to the relatively cheap prices, but they exploded in popularity during the Covid pandemic as kids did their schoolwork from home. However, they may not be such a good deal after all, according to a new report called Chromebook Churn from the US Public Interest Research Group (PIRG). They found that many Chromebooks purchased just three years ago are already breaking, creating electronic waste and costing taxpayers money. 

Chromebooks in schools typically see rough use, and repairability is a key issue, due to a lack of parts and expensive repairs. For instance, 14 out of 29 keyboard replacements for Acer Chromebooks were found to be out of stock, and 10 of the 29 cost $90 each — nearly half the price of some models. "These high costs may make schools reconsider Chromebooks as a cost-saving strategy," the report states. In another instance, HP only stocked power cords and AC adapters for one model, but no other parts.

The devices also have built in "death dates," the report reads, after which software updates end. "Once laptops have 'expired,' they don’t receive updates and can’t access secure websites." Google does provide eight years of software updates for Chromebooks, but that's only from the date of release. Since many schools buy Chromebooks released several years before, support can expire in half that time. 

Chromebooks aren’t built to last. Professional repair techs tell me they’re often forced to chuck good Chromebook hardware with years of life left due to aggressive software expiration dates.

"Chromebooks aren’t built to last. Professional repair techs tell me they’re often forced to chuck good Chromebook hardware with years of life left due to aggressive software expiration dates," iFixit's director of sustainability Elizabeth Chamberlain told PIRG. Those expiration dates also make it a challenge for schools to resell their devices. PCs and Macs may have a higher purchase price, but they can easily be resold after a couple of years and can get updates for longer periods of time.

The organization said that doubling the lifespan of the Chromebooks sold in 2020 (some 31.8 million) "could cut emissions by 4.6 million tons of CO2e, equivalent to taking 900,000 cars off the road for a year. To do that, they recommend that Google eliminate update expirations and that its manufacturing partners production a 10 percent overstock of replacement parts, and that those parts be more standardized across models. They also say that consumers should be allowed to install alternative operating systems like Linux.

In a statement to Ars Technica, Google said: "Regular Chromebook software updates add new features and improve device security every four weeks, allowing us to continuously iterate on the software experience while ensuring that older devices continue to function in a secure and reliable manner until their hardware limitations make it extremely difficult to provide updates." 

It added that it's "always working with our device manufacturing partners to increasingly build devices across segments with post-consumer recycled and certified materials that are more repairable, and over time use manufacturing processes that reduce emissions."

Google needs to do better, though, according to the group. "The least we can do for students who rely on their laptops is ensure these devices are durable and repairable—not part of a constant churn," said PIRG's Lucas Rockett Gutterman. "With more tech in our lives and classrooms, if Google wants to be a trusted source for tens of millions of students, they need to make laptops that families and school districts can count on."

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/chromebooks-short-lifespans-are-creating-piles-of-electronic-waste-063314306.html?src=rss

Who doesn't love a good Viking movie? Nearly a full millennium after the Vikings' heyday, stories of the Scandinavian seafarers and warriors who rampaged their way through Europe and around the world in the 8th through 11th centuries still fascinate us — enough to inspire an entire subgenre of historical fiction that spans various media. Film in particular has returned to the Viking world repeatedly since the silent era, with productions that hail from Iceland, America, Norway, Britain, Denmark, and more.

A quick scan of the most notorious Viking-themed films reveals that these movies have never been just one thing; it's a milieu that lends itself to comedy, romance, horror, superhero-style action, and, of course, the gruesome war sagas it's most commonly associated with. Here, then, are 14 essential Viking movies that should cover a wide range of cinematic tastes and proclivities, while still satisfying anyone who's just looking for a grand, bloody, swashbuckling ol' time.

The Long Ships (1964)

There was a period during Hollywood's transitional mid-century, post-Golden Age period in which its obsession du jour with historical epics and cross-cultural spectacles translated to a brief wave of Viking films. Jack Cardiff's "The Long Ships" is undoubtedly one of the most memorable of that crop.

Based (very loosely) on the eponymous novel by Swedish author Frans G. Bengtsson, the film tells the story of Moorish king Aly Mansuh (Sidney Poitier) and Norse explorer Rolfe (Richard Widmark), who are forced to join efforts and crews to track down the legendary Mother of Voices, a mythical golden bell supposedly hidden somewhere in the vicinity of the Mediterranean. Although somewhat goofy and sophomoric from a technical standpoint, the film is still a consolidated genre classic due to the charm of its lighthearted adventure, its earnest tone, and its visually rich sets and costumes.

The Viking (1928)

One of the earliest Viking-themed features, Roy William Neill's "The Viking," is also the most notable (albeit highly fictionalized) cinematic adaptation of the story of Leif Ericsson, the Norse voyager known as the first European to set foot in North America. Starring Donald Crisp, "The Viking" interweaves Leif's world-changing journey with a plot focused on the romantic rivalry between Leif and his captured slave-turned-friend Alwin of Northumbria (LeRoy Mason), both of whom are vying for the affection of Leif's protegé, Helga (Pauline Starke).

That classic epic-adventure setup is conducted in typically satisfying Golden-Age Hollywood fashion. However, the plot is but one, and arguably the least important, of the film's attractions: In addition to its historical importance to Viking cinema, "The Viking" was also the first soundtracked Technicolor film ever released, making it a crucial time capsule of what's arguably cinema's most momentous transitional period. 

Interestingly, "The Viking" still essentially qualifies as a silent film, as the synchronized sound amounts entirely to music and sound effects while the dialogue is still delivered in intertitles. The surreal, time-traveling effect that soundscape creates would be reason enough to give the film a watch, but, for Viking enthusiasts, the lush production design and costumes, rendered in unique and gorgeously strange colors by the early two-strip Technicolor process (which only captured shades of green and red), should be even more enticing.

Beowulf (2007)

Although not a stricto sensu Viking film, seeing as it's set several centuries prior to the social organization of Norse raiders to which the word refers, Robert Zemeckis' "Beowulf" nonetheless captures the essential spirit of Viking cinema by following the historical precursors of the Vikings and by bringing Scandinavian myth and heroic legend to life.

The film, arguably the most high-profile of the numerous cinematic takes on "Beowulf," follows the epic poem's tale of a Geatish warrior (Ray Winstone) on a mission to slay the fearsome creature Grendel (Crispin Glover) more faithfully than most adaptations — although it still takes its share of dramatic liberties, courtesy of the illustrious screenwriter duo of Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary. Like almost every Zemeckis feature, "Beowulf," the director's immediate follow up to "The Polar Express," also doubles as a bold formal experiment: Fully animated with the most cutting-edge motion capture technology available at the time, the film attempts to visualize what a "serious" action-adventure film might look and move like if rendered entirely in ultra-photorealistic CGI.

That technical gambit proved controversial even at the time; the film received mixed reviews and underperformed at the box office. Nowadays, its once-pristine VFX look a tad dated. Yet Zemeckis' indefatigable eye for spectacle comes through even more clearly in the face of all that temporal distance; stripped of the pressure to look convincing, "Beowulf" is revealed as one of the best-constructed and most imaginative epic fantasy sagas of the 2000s.

Erik The Viking (1989)

As a filmmaker, Terry Jones is primarily remembered for the three masterpieces of absurdity he helmed and co-helmed as Monty Python's resident director of big-screen ventures: "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," "Life of Brian," and "The Meaning of Life." Yet Jones' directorial career wasn't limited to his work with the legendary British comedy troupe. Six years after the Pythons ended their official collaborative run (not counting reunions) with "The Meaning of Life," Jones could still be found on the historical comedy beat thanks to "Erik the Viking."

While not quite as supernaturally hilarious and visionary as Jones' previous satires of medieval historical epics — it would be much closer to the top of this ranking if that were the case — "Erik the Viking" still retains all the wit, irreverence, and goofy charm of the director's best work. It also boasts some features that mark it as decidedly non-Pythonesque: namely, a varied international ensemble cast that includes Tim Robbins, Eartha Kitt, and Mickey Rooney, and a fully sincere and straightforward narrative.

The film, an adaptation of a children's book authored by Jones himself, follows Erik (Jones), a young Viking who can't seem to fall in with his people's pillaging and acts of violence. However, he gets a chance to prove himself by leading an expedition to Valhalla in order to ask the gods to end the Age of Ragnarok. Comedy and adventure of the highest order ensue — and without undermining each other, as in certain recent Norse-themed superhero films.

The White Viking (1991)

Icelandic director Hrafn Gunnlaugsson is one of the most notorious figures in the history of his country's cinema, and of all the movies on his three-decade-spanning filmography, he is perhaps best remembered for the run of classic Viking features he released between 1984 and 1991. All three films, which are collectively known as his "Raven Trilogy" or "Viking Trilogy," are very much worth watching, including the last one, 1991's "The White Viking" — also sometimes called "Embla," after its principal female character.

Loosely inspired by the real-life historical record, "The White Viking" is set during the reign of Olaf I of Norway, who ruled over the kingdom during its transition from the Old Norse faith to Christianity. King Olaf (Egill Ólafsson), a fanatical Christian, is in the process of consolidating his rule by eradicating paganism and the land ownership of Earls. He finally manages to defeat Earl Godbrandur (Þorsteinn Hannesson) and capture his daughter Embla (Maria Bonnevie), who is held captive in a convent. To save her, Embla's husband, Askur (Gotti Sigurdarson), the son of a powerful Icelandic lawspeaker, is ordered to travel to his home country and christen its people.

The most lavish, assured, and visually accomplished of Gunnlaugsson's Viking films, "The White Viking" exists in multiple versions; if you can, go with the 2007 director's cut, which most closely approximates the director's original vision by putting a greater emphasis on Bonnevie's character.

The 13th Warrior (1999)

Here's a film that would've earned an even higher spot on this list if it hadn't been mangled by production circumstances. Directed by John McTiernan and based on Michael Crichton's novel "Eaters of the Dead," which liberally melds "Beowulf" with the history of the Varangian Vikings as recounted by Ahmad ibn Fadlan, "The 13th Warrior" could have been one of the great historical epics of the 1990s. However, the film got stuck in the dreaded post-production hell of endless reshoots and re-edits following poor test screenings; ultimately, Disney replaced McTiernan with Chrichton, who cut much of the "Die Hard" director's work from the final product.

Even so, what remains of McTiernan's film is enough to get the blood pumping. Antonio Banderas stars as the film's fictionalized Ahmad ibn Fadlan, the 10th-century Muslim poet and traveler famous for his detailed accounts of the Viking world. "The 13th Warrior" positions Ibn Fadlan as an audience surrogate in the Varangians' "Beowulf"-like quest to slay a deadly, ancient creature, and while it's inevitably messy, the end result provides almost everything you could want from a sturdy, lushly-made Viking flick.

Erik The Conqueror (1961)

Mario Bava is primarily remembered for helping make the gruesome Italian horror cinema of the 1960s and 1970s into a worldwide phenomenon. But Bava's mastery as a filmmaker and writer wasn't limited to horror; among his many other ventures, he also had a kind of a side gig as the director of Viking-themed swashbuckling pictures, the best and most celebrated of which is "Erik the Conqueror."

Directed by Bava from a screenplay by him and fellow Italian cinema luminaries Oreste Biancoli and Piero Pierott and loosely based on Richard Fleischer's "The Vikings," "Erik the Conqueror" is an epic about estranged brothers on opposing sides of a bloody war in the 9th century. Eron (Cameron Mitchell) and Erik (George Ardisson) are born in Scandinavia and separated early in life during strife between the Vikings and the English; Erik is raised as an Englishman, while Eron is brought back home. 

Twenty years later, a war erupts between the two peoples, leading the brothers to meet again under the most charged circumstances. If you don't think Bava's incantatory, expressionistic style would suit the particular demands of a historical epic, you'd be wrong: "Erik the Conqueror" brilliantly locates the nugget of Greek tragedy in Erik and Eron's story, and emphasizes it with the same aesthetic and emotional fervor that the director routinely applied to his horror tales.

Valhalla (1986)

A must-see for fans of Viking movies and European animation enthusiasts alike, "Valhalla" is also a universal cultural reference for any Dane who grew up in the 1980s. Directed by Disney veteran Jeffrey J. Varab alongside Danish cartoonist and illustrator Peter Madsen, the film adapts three volumes of the popular Danish comic series of the same name, which tells whimsical, humorous stories set in the world of Scandinavian mythology.

"Valhalla" concerns two Midgardian siblings, the peasants Tjalvi and Röskva, who cross paths with Thor and Loki and, through a series of circumstances, find themselves whisked away to Asgard as Thor's new servants. They soon embark on a series of magical adventures. As a family-friendly take on the world of Norse gods like Thor and Loki with beautiful, expressive, and detailed cel animation, the film taps into a primal sense of wonder and discovery that makes it a particularly crucial entry in the Viking cinema canon.

Valhalla Rising (2009)

Shortly after Nicolas Winding Refn introduced himself to English-speaking audiences with "Bronson" and right before he became a household name with "Drive," and when Mads Mikkelsen had just introduced himself to English-speaking audiences with "Casino Royale" and was right on the verge of achieving A-list status via "Hannibal," the two superstars of Danish cinema made a film that stands out in both their filmography as roundly well-liked yet strangely underdiscussed: "Valhalla Rising."

As pure and bare-knuckled a Viking film as they come, Refn's genre exercise is set largely in the Scottish Highlands, telling the story of a mute, one-eyed thrall (Mikkelsen) who manages to kill his chieftain (Alexander Morton) and escape captivity with the help of a young boy (Maarten Stevenson). The man and the boy, unnamed like every other character in the film (though the boy eventually nicknames Mikkelsen's character "One-Eye"), end up joining a band of Christian Norse Crusaders on their way to the Holy Land. The journey soon turns dark, mystical, and — typically for Refn — astonishingly violent. It's a film of such elemental force that, were it not for the entirely English-language dialogue, you could almost mistake it for a trek through time straight into the middle of the Viking world.

How To Train Your Dragon (2010)

"How to Train Your Dragon" may well be the out-and-out best film on this list. The only reason it's not ranked higher is that, as these things go, it's not quite as representative of the "Viking film" subgenre as the next few entries. Although the tenets of cinematic "Viking culture" figure significantly into the plot, and are lovingly parodied in DreamWorks Animation's typical deconstructionist style, this is really more of a contemporary-style boy-and-his-dog — oops, boy-and-his-dragon — story that happens to be set in the Viking world.

Be that as it may, what a picture. Arguably the best family-oriented fantasy adventure saga Hollywood has released in the 21st century, animated or not, "How to Train Your Dragon" still packs as mighty of a punch as it did back in 2010, even after two sequels, three TV series, and one live-action reboot announcement. The sheer beauty of the evolving friendship and slowly-developing mutual trust between Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) and Toothless, the most endearing 26-foot beast ever conceived by a character design team, is enough to land this film on any half-serious list of great Viking movies.

When The Raven Flies (1984)

Like "The White Viking," Hrafn Gunnlaugsson's earlier "When the Raven Flies" is a must-see. True to the endless intertextuality of the period's genre cinema, it could be described as a Viking riff on "Yojimbo" by way of spaghetti westerns, with a plot about an Irish man (Jakob Þór Einarsson) who travels to Iceland to get revenge for the raid that took his parents' life when he was a boy.

Really, the whole Viking Trilogy is worth a watch for fans of the genre, but "When the Raven Flies" stands out as its defining achievement. Raw, angry, sweaty, endlessly resourceful despite a limited budget, and representative of the '80s in the best way — it comes complete with a propulsive Icelandic-folk-meets-synth-machines score by Hans-Erik Philip and Harry Manfredini — it's a film that inspired everything that came after it in the realm of Viking-related storytelling, and is routinely cited as one of the greatest Icelandic films of all time.

The Northman (2022)

It's not too soon to call it: With "The Northman," Robert Eggers has succeeded in crafting one of the defining Viking movies. In fact, "The Northman" often feels rather like a purposeful, fully aware summation of a century of Viking film iconography, a stab at epitomizing the genre that's as dogged and intrepid in its feverish ambition as the very warriors it tells of.

Starting with the hand-picked cast of superstars including Alexander Skarsgård, Nicole Kidman, Anya Taylor-Joy, Willem Dafoe, and — yes — Björk, everything about the film feels grand, imposing, and statement-like in a way that very few Hollywood blockbusters allow themselves to anymore. With its "Hamlet"-like tale of a warrior prince (Skarsgård) on a quest to avenge his father's murder, the film is both dramatically hefty and formally overwhelming — the biggest, most immersive, and most darkly exuberant work yet from one of the leading American filmmakers of his generation.

Hagbard And Signe (1967)

To a significantly greater degree than many of the other Viking films on this list, the criminally little-known "Hagbard and Signe" (also sometimes called "The Red Mantle") is soulful, meditative, poetic, and taken with themes of romance and eroticism — which makes sense, seeing as it's directed by the same Gabriel Axel of the culinary drama classic "Babette's Feast."

Although violence still exists at the center of the narrative — which centers on a flimsy truce between two warring clans, ultimately broken due to jealousy and deceit — the primary focus of "Hagbard and Signe" is the bond between the two titular star-crossed lovers (played by Oleg Vidov and Gitte Hænning), who endeavor to be together even as war threatens to pull them apart.

It's a different speed and a different look for a Viking story, but that's what makes the film's exploration of its milieu so enchanting. Its evocation of doomed, obstinate love against a backdrop of tragedy and chaos gives it an almost Gothic sweep, yet remains unmistakably planted in the Norse folkloric tradition.

The Vikings (1958)

When it comes to strengthening the contemporary notion of Vikings in the public imagination and establishing a standard lexicon of their audiovisual depictions, it's impossible to overstate the importance and influence of "The Vikings." Outside of Europe, it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that Richard Fleischer's film effectively introduced Vikings as a tangible idea to millions of viewers the world over, and that alone might well make it worthy of the top spot on this list. However, in addition to its cultural impact, "The Vikings" also happens to be a fantastic, endlessly exciting old-school adventure flick.

With a star-studded cast that includes Kirk Douglas, Janet Leigh, Tony Curtis, and Ernest Borgnine, "The Vikings" tells the story of King Ragnar Lodbrok (Borgnine) and his warring sons, which would later become the basis for the popular (and very different) History Channel series "Vikings." Largely shot on location in Norway and graced with the kind of Homeric production scale that made Hollywood epics of the '50s feel almost like brushes with the divine, this is a capital-S Spectacle that matches its sense of grandeur to an equally keen eye for pure, high-spirited fun.

Read this next: The 15 Best Historical Epic Movies Ranked

The post The 14 Best Viking Movies Ever Made appeared first on /Film.

This article contains spoilers for season 3 of "The Boys." 

Eric Kripke's Prime Video series "The Boys" has always been brutal, but season 3 was especially violent, killing off major characters or wounding them permanently. That's saying something when you take into account the fact that many of the characters are superhuman and incredibly tough to kill, but season 3 saw a whole lot of them kick the bucket. 

Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligott), in particular, went through hell in the finale, losing an eye in the battle with Homelander (Antony Starr) and losing her powers in the battle with Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles). It looked like she died, but she miraculously survived, albeit as a normal, non-superpowered human with some pretty nasty injuries. This was a change from the character's fate in the comics, but it made a lot of sense given the changes to the character in general and her impressive arc over the three seasons. Maeve went from being selfish and apathetic to nearly sacrificing herself for others, and she deserves a happy ending as much as anyone does in the cynical, nihilistic world of "The Boys." 

It looked like Maeve was going to get a chance to walk off into the sunset at the end of season 3. As far as the world knew, she had died in the fight with Soldier Boy, and she could finally go live happily ever after with her girlfriend Elena (Nicola Correia-Damude). Then again, Ashley (Colby Minifie) at Vought knows that Maeve's not dead, and that means she's not totally safe. In an interview with Variety, Kripke shared his thoughts about the future for Brave Maeve, and it sounds like we're going to see her again before the series ends. 

Taking Away Annie's Support System

In the comics, Maeve dies, but Kripke and the writing team didn't want to fall into the "bury your gays" trope and thought Maeve deserved better. However, Annie (Erin Moriarty) needs to learn to stand on her own. Annie is the show's true hero, and in order for her to grow, Maeve had to disappear for a bit. Thankfully, it sounds like Kripke doesn't plan on making that absence permanent:

"I don't think 'The Boys' will end without Maeve showing up again... We needed a way to sort of gracefully get Maeve out of the show, let her head for the exit. Obviously, we didn't want to kill her and fall into the tropes of gay characters and bisexual characters in shows getting killed. We wanted to do the opposite of that and send her off and give her a happy ending with Elena. The best way to do that was, well, take away her powers, and she's not useful in the fight anymore. And we did that because Annie can't really grow into her own until all the characters that are around to protect her are gone. It was important for her next step for her mentor characters and her protector characters to go away. And so it's only up to Annie. There's no one left but Annie. So what is she going to do?"

At the end of season 3, Annie had left the Seven and was finally officially joining forces with The Boys and her boyfriend Hughie (Jack Quaid), but she's not exactly friendly with Butcher (Karl Urban), and Hughie's allegiance is clearly divided. She really is on her own, but maybe Maeve will return?

The Potential For Maeve's Return

While it would be lovely for Maeve to live the rest of her life in relative peace and quiet, this is "The Boys" and no one gets a happy ending. Besides, Maeve has become one of the series' strongest characters, and she deserves another shot at putting Homelander six feet under. Sure, she lost her powers on account of being hit with Soldier Boy's freaky beam, but she could always get them back the same way Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) did, by injecting herself with Compound V once more. It's not a sure thing and there's always a chance the V could just kill her outright, but based on what happened with Kimiko and Maeve's general resilience, I'm guessing she'll be back with a vengeance. Maybe she'll even have a super cool eye-patch and a new costume that's not tied to her abuse at the hands of Vought. 

In a dream world, Maeve, Annie, and Kimiko get to start their own superhero team actually based on doing good, after taking out Homelander and the rest of the awful remaining members of the Seven. There aren't too many left, and Homelander's the only one that's a real threat (on land, anyway). What happens next in season 4 is anyone's best guess, but I'm looking forward to maybe seeing Maeve again. 

"The Boys" is available to stream on Prime Video. 

Read this next: The 14 Best Sci-Fi Shows On Amazon Prime

The post The Boys' Eric Kripke Hasn't Forgotten About Queen Maeve appeared first on /Film.

This post contains spoilers for "Barry" season 4, episode 3.

"Barry" has returned for a fourth and final season, and according to /Film's review, "things have grown increasingly bleak [in the final season]. And if the bleakness doesn't get you, the feverish levels of anxiety will do the trick. And yet, despite all this, "Barry" is funny. But it's also so much more than the comedy it began as."

Much like "Atlanta," "Barry" is based on a very specific and singular creative vision, and it is unafraid to take wild swings, both tonally and narratively. Perhaps the biggest legacy of the show is that it served as Bill Hader's calling card as not just a great writer, but a fantastic performer and director. Still, it seems even the success of "Barry" isn't enough to avoid Hader getting teased by fellow filmmakers.

One of the biggest guest stars in season 4 of "Barry" is Academy Award-winning director Guillermo del Toro, who appears in the third episode of the season. Speaking to Deadline, Hader explained how he got del Toro on the show, and more importantly, how the director reacted to being given instructions.

"He was f***ing with me a little bit," Hader recalled. "He was like, 'Are you really going to block it like this?' [Laughs] I was like, 'Yeah, I am.' And he's like, 'Really? That's it? Okay...' No, he was really funny, and we're all friends."

It's All Fun And Games Until Someone Calls Noho Hank

Turns out, del Toro wasn't even the only director to get in on the fun of messing with the new guy. "I'm friends with [del Toro]," Hader continued. "And I'm friends with Alfonso Cuarón, and Alfonso was texting me, "Guillermo says you don't know how to direct." [Laughs] They were just f***ing with me while I'm shooting with him. And I'm like, "Oh my god." Guillermo was like, "I never said that. No, no, no. He's being an a**hole."

Of course, this isn't the first time del Toro has popped up in a supporting role in a show he loves. He previously played "Pappy" McPoyle in "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," appearing in episodes in 2012 and 2016. 

Bill Hader has certainly made a name for himself as a director worth paying attention to. Throughout "Barry," he's shown a keen eye for balancing action, tension, and comedy, pushing one over the other at the right time. Even if season 4 is less stressful than the previous season, it is much darker, but no less funny. Though he had very pragmatic reasons to take on directing duties for the entire final season of the show, Hader continues to prove he was more than up for the task, and if del Toro was comfortable enough teasing Hader, it is because he recognizes a fellow talent in the actor-turned-director. The final season of "Barry" will unfold over the next six weeks, and we can't wait to see what Hader directs next.

Read this next: The 10 Best Guillermo Del Toro Characters Ranked

The post Barry Season 4's Incredible Director Cameo Gave Bill Hader Some Playful Grief On Set appeared first on /Film.

For almost two decades, MSKey Readme¹ has heralded the defeat of Windows XP's product activation, not via mere circumvention, but by cracking the encryption algorithm itself.

Based on the even earlier Inside Windows Product Activation: A Fully Licensed Paper², WindowsXPKg³ launched on Microsoft's GitHub platform four years ago (see update #3 below). While it can generate product keys, the program relies on an external, third-party server to return the Confirmation ID.

In a post last year on the Windows XP subreddit (Windows XP web activation is finally dead…), retroreviewyt shared xp_activate32.exe⁴, which calculates the Installation ID then generates and optionally applies the corresponding Confirmation ID to activate Windows XP, all offline. Wiping the system and reinstalling Windows XP results in the same Installation ID being assigned by Windows (assuming no change in hardware or product key), thus the same Confirmation ID obtains even in msoobe's standard telephone activation window.

Long considered out of reach, this development bodes well for salvaging old systems even after Microsoft shuts down the activation servers. Given their curious tolerance (even use!) of MAS (hosted on their own platform!), which impacts all modern versions of Windows, perhaps Microsoft will see fit to release an official XP activation tool for posterity.

Footnotes

1. The apparently oldest extant copy, dated January 18, 2005, is signed "yag". A few months later, it was posted to Tool_Delphi2005 by Alexandre Trevizoli. By 2007, Kevin Hatfield was hosting it, and he claimed copyright by 2008, thereby becoming associated with the document in later years.  

2. In fact, the paper was released in July 2001, before even Windows XP was released to manufacturing. However, it was kept "a little vague at some points in order not to facilitate the task of an attacker attempting to circumvent the license enforcement supplied by the activation mechanism". 

3. Elliptic Curve Key Tool is a similar app that does not require recompiling for each combination. 

4. 18432 bytes with a SHA-256 hash of 5a4bcac5a50eb5113dd6a2f88c35ebdb709c4df8a792c71ad03ea347afaced52 (first seen by VirusTotal on 2020-10-16).

Updates

1. Neo-Desktop has forked WindowsXPKg to include a fix for compiling and running properly under Linux. They are also at work on disassembling xp_activate32.exe.

2. The purported source code for xp_activate32.exe has been posted to MDL (since deleted) by diamondggg, who referenced such a tool in 2021. See this thread for more information.

3. On the provenance of WindowsXPKg, Endermanch stated: "This repository is not the original source for the Windows XP Keygen. The original was uploaded to PlanetWPA as part of MSKey 4-in-1 algorithm sources back in early 2000s and was made by z22." The comment has been updated with additional details and, along with his XPKeygen README, is sine qua non for understanding the history and mathematics behind this story.

The gargantuan artificial construct enveloping your local star is going to be rather difficult to miss, even from a few light years away. And given the literally astronomical costs of resources needed to construct such a device — the still-theoretical-for-humans Dyson Sphere — having one in your solar system will also serve as a stark warning of your technological capacity to ETs that comes sniffing around. 

Or at least that's how 20th century astronomers like Nikolai Kardashev and Carl Sagan envisioned our potential Sol-spanning distant future going. Turns out, a whole lot of how we predict intelligences from outside our planet will behave is heavily influenced by humanity's own cultural and historical biases. In The Possibility of Life, science journalist Jaime Green examines humanity's intriguing history of looking to the stars and finding ourselves reflected in them.

Harper Collins Publishing

Excerpted from The Possibility of Life by Jaime Green, Copyright © 2023 by Jaime Green. Published by Hanover Square Press.

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On a Scale of One to Three

The way we imagine human progress — technology, advancement — seems inextricable from human culture. Superiority is marked by fast ships, colonial spread, or the acquisition of knowledge that fuels mastery of the physical world. Even in Star Trek, the post-poverty, post-conflict Earth is rarely the setting. Instead we spend our time on a ship speeding faster than light, sometimes solving philosophical quandaries, but often enough defeating foes. The future is bigger, faster, stronger — and in space.

Astronomer Nikolai Kardashev led the USSR’s first SETI initiatives in the early 1960s, and he believed that the galaxy might be home to civilizations billions of years more advanced than ours. Imagining these civilizations was part of the project of searching for them. So in 1964, Kardashev came up with a system for classifying a civilization’s level of technological advancement.

The Kardashev scale, as it’s called, is pretty simple: a Type I civilization makes use of all the energy available on or from its planet. A Type II civilization uses all the energy from its star. A Type III civilization harnesses the energy of its entire galaxy.

What’s less simple is how a civilization gets to any of those milestones. These leaps, in case it’s not clear, are massive. On Earth we’re currently grappling with how dangerous it is to try to use all the energy sources on our planet, especially those that burn. (So we’re not even a Type I civilization, more like a Type Three-quarters.) A careful journey toward Type I would involve taking advantage of all the sunlight falling on a planet from its star, but that’s just one billionth or so of a star’s total energy output. A Type II civilization would be harnessing all of it.

It’s not just that a Type II civilization would have to be massive enough to make use of all that energy, they’d also have to figure out how to capture it. The most common imagining for this is called a Dyson sphere, a massive shell or swarm of satellites surrounding the star to capture and convert all its energy. If you wanted enough material to build such a thing, you’d essentially have to disassemble a planet, and not just a small one — more like Jupiter. And then a Type III civilization would be doing that, too, but for all the stars in its galaxy (and maybe doing some fancy stuff to suck energy off the black hole at the galaxy’s core).

On the one hand, these imaginings are about as close to culturally agnostic as we can get: they require no alien personalities, no sociology, just the consumption of progressively more power, to be put to use however the aliens might like. But the Kardashev scale still rests on assumptions that are baked into so many of our visions of advanced aliens (and Earth’s own future as well). This view conflates advancement not only with technology but with growth, with always needing more power and more space, just the churning and churning of engines. Astrophysicist Adam Frank identifies the Kardashev scale as a product of the midcentury “techno-utopian vision of the future.” At the point when Kardashev was writing, humanity hadn’t yet been forced to face the sensitive feedback systems our energy consumption triggers. “Planets, stars, and galaxies,” Frank writes, “would all simply be brought to heel.”

Even in the Western scientific tradition, alternatives to Kardashev’s scale have been offered. Aerospace engineer Robert Zubrin proposed one scale that measures planetary mastery and another that measured colonizing spread. Carl Sagan offered one that accounts for the information available to a civilization. Cosmologist John D. Barrow proposed microscopic manipulation, going from Type I–minus, where people can manipulate objects of their own scale, down through the parts of living things, molecules, atoms, atomic nuclei, subatomic particles, to the very fabric of space and time. Frank proposed looking not at energy consumption but transformation, noting that a sophisticated civilization does more than bring a planet to heel, it must learn to find balance between resource use and long-term survival.

Of these — again, all white American or European men — only Sagan offers a measure of advancement that isn’t necessarily acquisitive. Even the manipulation of atoms, which may seem so small and delicate, requires massive amounts of energy in the form of particle accelerators, not to mention that this kind of tinkering has also unleashed humanity’s greatest destructive force. But Sagan’s super-advanced civilization could be nothing more than a massive, massive library, filled with scholars and philosophers, expanding and exploring mentally but with no dominion over their planet or star. (Yet, one has to ask: What is powering those libraries? The internet is ephemeral, but it is not free.)

Implicit in any vision of vast progress is not just longevity but continuity. The assumption of the ever upward-sloping line is bold to say the least. In the novella A Man of the People, Ursula K. Le Guin writes of one world, Hain, where civilization has existed for three million years. But just as the last few thousand years on Earth have seen empires rise and fall, and cultures collapse and displace one another, so it is on Hain at larger scale. Le Guin writes, “There had been…billions of lives lived in millions of countries…infinite wars and times of peace, incessant discoveries and forgettings…an endless repetition of unceasing novelty.” To hope for more than that is perhaps more optimistic than to imagine we might domesticate a star. Perhaps it’s also shortsighted, extrapolating out eons of future from just the last few centuries of life on two continents, rather than a wider view of many millennia on our whole world.

All of these scales of progress are built on human assumptions, specifically the colonizing, dominating, fossil-fuel-burning history of Europe and the United States. But scientists don’t see much use in thinking about the super-advanced alien philosophers and artists and dolphins, brilliant as they might be, because it would be basically impossible for us to find them.

The scientific quest for advanced aliens is about trying to imagine not just who might be out there but how we might find them. Which is how we end up at Dyson spheres.

Dyson spheres are named for Freeman Dyson, the physicist, mathematician, and general polymath. While most SETI scientists in the early 1960s were looking for extraterrestrial beacons, Dyson thought “one ought to be looking at the uncooperative society.” Not obstinate, just not actively trying to help us. “The idea of searching for radio signals was a fine idea,” he said in a 1981 interview, “but it only works if you have some cooperation at the other end. So I was always thinking about what to do if you were looking just for evidence of intelligent activities without anything in the nature of a message.” And you might as well start with the easiest technology to detect — the biggest or brightest. So the massive spheres Dyson popularized in his 1960 paper were the result of him asking What is the largest feasible technology?

In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Relics,” the Enterprise finds itself caught in a massive gravitational field, even though there are no stars nearby. The source, on the view screen, is a matte, dark gray sphere. Riker says its diameter is almost as wide as the Earth’s orbit.

Picard asks, with hushed wonder, “Mr. Data, could this be a Dyson sphere?”

Data replies, “The object does fit the parameters of Dyson’s theory.”

Commander Riker isn’t familiar with the concept, but Picard doesn’t give him any trouble for that. “It’s a very old theory, Number One. I’m not surprised that you haven’t heard of it.” He tells him that a twentieth century physicist, Freeman Dyson, had proposed that a massive, hollow sphere built around a star could capture all the star’s radiating energy for use. “A population living on the interior surface would have virtually inexhaustible sources of power.”

Riker asks, with some skepticism, if Picard thinks there are people living in the sphere.

“Possibly a great number of people, Commander,” Data says. “The interior surface area of a sphere this size is the equivalent of more than two hundred and fifty million Class M [Earthlike] planets.”

In Dyson’s thinking, the goal wasn’t living space but energy — how would a civilization reach Type II? And Dyson’s writing was clearly speculative. In the paper, he wrote, “I do not argue that this is what will happen in our system; I only say that this is what may have happened in other systems.” Decades later, astrophysicist Jason Wright took up the search.

One of the great benefits to this approach, Wright told me, is that “nature doesn’t make Dyson spheres.” Wright is a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State, where he is director of the Penn State Extraterrestrial Intelligence Center. But while the best known version of SETI is listening for radio signals (more on that in the next chapter), Wright focuses on looking for technosignatures — evidence of technology out among the stars. Technosignatures allow you to find those uncooperative aliens Dyson thought would make the best targets. We don’t even need to find the aliens, in this case, just proof they once existed. That could be a stargate, or a distant planet covered in elemental silicon (geologically unlikely, but technologically great for solar panels), or it could be a Dyson sphere.

Wright’s first big search for Dyson spheres was called Glimpsing Heat from Alien Technologies, or G-HAT. Or, even better, Gˆ (because that’s a G with a little hat on it). The premise was simple: Dyson spheres don’t just absorb energy, they transform it, inevitably radiating some waste as heat which we can see as infrared radiation. So, from 2012 to 2015, Wright and his team looked at about a million galaxies, searching for a Type II civilization on its way to Type III, having ensconced enough of a galaxy’s stars in Dyson spheres that the galaxy might glow unusually bright in infrared. (They surveyed galaxies rather than individual stars because, as Wright writes, “A technological species that could build a Dyson sphere could also presumably spread to nearby star systems,” so it’s fair to think a galaxy with one Dyson sphere may have several, and several would be easier to find than just one. Might as well start there.) None were found, but you know that because you would’ve surely heard about it if Wright’s search had succeeded.

Wright prides himself on the agnosticism of this approach. He doesn’t need aliens to be looking for us or to have any certain sociological impulses. They just need technology. “Technology uses energy,” he told me. “That’s kind of what makes it technology. Just like life uses energy.” That view makes demolishing a Jupiter-sized planet to build a star-encompassing megastructure seem almost comically simple, but Wright doesn’t even see the existence of a Dyson sphere as requiring massive coordination or forethought on the aliens’ part. It is truly, in his view, a low-intensity ask. He compared it to Manhattan, a fair example of a human “megastructure,” a massive, interconnected, artificial system. “It was planned to some degree, but no one was ever like, ‘Hey, let’s build a huge city here.’ It’s just every generation made it a little bigger.” He thinks a Dyson sphere or swarm could accumulate in a similar manner. “If the energy is out there to take and it’s just gonna fly away to space anyway, then why wouldn’t someone take it?”

Wright knows the objections: that this imagines a capitalist orientation, a drive to “dominate nature” that is by no means universal, not even among human societies. But for his research to work, this drive doesn’t need to be universal among the stars. It just has to have happened sometimes, enough for us to see the results. As he put it, “There’s nothing that drives all life on Earth to be large. In fact, most life is small. But some life is large.” And if an alien were to come to Earth, they wouldn’t need to see all the small life to know the planet was inhabited. A single elephant would do the trick.

Some hypothetical alien technosignatures might be less definitive. In 2017, astronomers detected a roughly quarter-mile-long rocky object slingshotting through the solar system. They realized that this object, called ‘Oumuamua, came from outside the system — because of its speed and the path it took. It was the first interstellar object ever detected in our system. While hopes or fears that it was an alien probe were not realized, it was a reminder that alien technology could be found closer to home, lurking around our own sun.

“We don’t know that there’s not technology here because we’ve never really checked,” Wright said. “I mean, I guess if they had cities on Mars, we would notice—if they were on the surface, anyway.” But, he pointed out, much of the Earth’s surface doesn’t have active, visible technology. The same could go for the solar system beyond Earth, too. There could be alien probes or debris, like ‘Oumuamua but constructed, moving so fast or so dark that we don’t see them. Maybe there’s an alien base on the dwarf planet Ceres, or buried under the surface of Mars. The lunar monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Wright reminded me, was buried just under the surface of the moon. All those ancient interstellar gates sci-fi is fond of have to be found before they can be used. Don’t forget, until 2015, our best image of Pluto was a blurry blob. So much of what we know about even our own solar system is inference and assumption.

Skeptics love to ask Okay, so where is everyone? But we don’t know for sure that they aren’t — or haven’t been — here.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/hitting-the-books-the-possibility-of-life-jaime-greene-hanover-square-press-113047089.html?src=rss

Following NVIDIA's open source release of the RTX Remix runtime, the modding community renewed its already admirable efforts to remaster classic PC games using the tool. While they had been working with the files included in Portal RTX (which was made by RTX Remix by NVIDIA's Lightspeed Studios), the full release of the runtime has improved game compatibility and introduced some much-needed fixes. It's not the full RTX Remix toolset yet, with the Creator Kit due to be available in early access soon, but it's more than enough to get a sneak peek at how great classic PC games will look.

Modder Adam Pasek, for example, focused on implementing RTX Remix into the first Torchlight game, originally released in 2009 by Runic Games. While top-down games are generally not believed to be best suited to showcasing ray tracing technologies, Torchlight RTX is a good example that's not always the case, as the result is rather lovely and doesn't clash with the stylized visuals at all.

Another surprisingly good showcase of RTX Remix was shared by YouTuber ALG46, who tested 2008's Mount & Blade, the strategy action RPG that put TaleWorlds Entertainment on everyone's map. Mount & Blade also works very well in the interiors and the castle's inner court, though the same cannot be said about the open area due to missing textures and other bugs. It's definitely still early days, as similar issues are encountered in The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, which looks great indoors but barely even works when going outdoors.

The current issues haven't stopped modders in their endeavor to remaster even older games, like 2002's third-person squad-based shooter game The Thing. In the below footage from YouTuber C311, the over-20-year-old title shows off the remastered dynamic lighting that now originates from the flares dropped by the player.

RTX Remix is composed of a bridge that sits between the original game's 32-bit process and the new 64-bit process. The D3D9 fixed function API is then converted into Vulkan thanks to DXVK, allowing access to the path traced renderer designed by NVIDIA with support for RTX Direct Illumination, ReSTIR GI, DLSS (both Super Resolution and Frame Generation), Reflex,  NRD, OMM, SER, and more. RTX Remix can also capture assets, converting them into the USD standard that can then be modified and upscaled to improve the quality of textures across the board (though this feature will only be available with the Creator Kit).

Right now, compatibility is limited to DX8/DX9 games with fixed function (no shaders), but NVIDIA is looking to add OpenGL support in the near future.

We're reunited and talking about some games! Games like Dead Island 2, which, it turns out, is a real game that exists and that people can play! And we did! This week's music:  Muna - One That Got Away

"I See You" defies expectations. What begins as a typical crime thriller mutates into something more intricate and profound. Devon Graye penned the script, blending together social commentary on child abuse, infidelity, police corruption, and homelessness. At the heart of the film is the concept of phrogging -- when a person or persons secretly squat inside someone else's home. Director Adam Randall elevates the film with long static shots, emotional character close-ups, and methodical dolly glides. The camera work here takes on a life all its own. But let's not forget the film's chill-inducing score, courtesy of composer William Arcane, which punctuates the film's vital and mouth-dropping moments.

Initially, "I See You" arrived in theaters in late 2019 and grossed just over $1 million at the box office. But when the film hit Netflix, it went viral -- scoring top slots in the streamer's daily Top 10 list. As we revisit this harrowing movie, we're tackling its most disturbing moments, ranging from strange occurrences around the home to that mind-blowing third-act twist.

6. Phrogger Antics

Midway through the film, we learn two Phroggers are living in the guest room and attic space of the Harper residence. After the Harper family leaves for the day, Mindy (Libe Barer) and Alec (Owen Teague) sneak into their garage and wander around their home, awing at the luxury and gorgeous bay window view. Mindy confesses she wants to record how to Phrog, including things like picking the right home and the necessary steps to live undetected. She invites Alec along for the ride but he seems to have more covert intentions.

Perhaps the most disturbing moment occurs when Alec pulls back Greg's (Jon Tenney) bedding and urinates on him. But that's not the only strange happening. Alec also steals photographs from picture frames, misplaces silverware in the dryer, locks Greg inside Connor's (Judah Lewis) closet, and puts Jackie's (Helen Hunt) favorite flower mug on their roof. Alec argues with Mindy, claiming that the point of their phrogging should be to make homeowners question their sanity. Mindy disagrees, but ultimately she can't control her friend's behavior. As the film progresses, Alec's shenanigans get wilder, entangling himself with the family. He's nothing if not a total loose cannon.

5. Todd's Fate

Jackie has an affair with Todd (Sam Trammell), who makes an unwanted house call and admits he is truly, madly, deeply in love with her. While on the patio, Jackie's flower mug topples down from overhead and smacks Todd in the noggin. Head bleeding, he's led to the garage, where Jackie tends to his wound.

Since she needs to take her son to school, Jackie leaves Todd unattended in the garage. Moments later, an unseen assailant hits Todd's head with a wooden bat. He's knocked unconscious and dies on the floor. After the audience revisits the moment through Mindy's eyes, we learn who the culprit is: Greg. When Jackie returns home, Greg confronts her about what happened. They cook up a plan to bury Todd's body in the woods. At this point, Jackie believes her son Connor threw the mug, so they have no other choice but to dispose of Todd's body.

This twist is one of many in a film that yanks the rug from underneath the viewer. Greg, also a detective, feels hurt by his wife's infidelity, so you become empathetic to his plight and might even root for him. When the truth becomes exposed, it's hard to believe what you're seeing. In the cold light of day, Greg is a ruthless psychopath, unafraid of killing to get what he wants.

4. Bathtime

Home alone, Connor receives a cryptic text asking him if he knows what phrogging means. He replies in all caps: "TELL ME WHO THIS IS." But this fails to get a response. As Connor hunkers over his computer, a mysterious figure appears behind him wearing a frog mask. The person creeps closer and closer until they pounce. When Jackie and Greg return home from burying Todd's body, they find their son gagged and bound in the upstairs bathtub. Near his feet, they discover a green army knife, a trademark of the child abductor the police force is currently investigating. Of course, this makes it seem like Connor is their newest target.

Without further context, this moment is disturbing enough. The person in the frog mask knew Connor's phone number and easily slipped into the residence without setting off alarms. We learn that the phrogger in the frog mask is Alec, whose insidious actions can't be quenched. He devolves further, sinking his fangs into the Harper family's everyday life. With Connor's kidnapping, you wonder if Alec is the child abductor. The film works overtime here to tinker with perceptions -- misdirecting the viewer often. At this moment, Alec makes our skin crawl. He's not to be trusted.

3. Greg Reveals His True Nature

Eventually, we learn Greg is the child abductor -- charming his way into the lives of children before kidnapping them. In many cases, he kills the kids after holding them hostage inside an airstream in the woods. When Mindy discovers the location, she attempts to free two children. However, Greg jumps her before she can. He suffocates her and then loads her body into his car.

But he doesn't stop there! He takes Mindy back to his home where he shoots her. "You don't have to do this," Mindy pleads. "I do," Greg replies before shooting her. Greg is a chameleon, wearing different faces for each situation. In one moment, he's the wounded family man trying to do right by his son and learning to forgive his wife. But the next moment he's a cold-blooded killer with a total disregard for the sanctity of life. Terrifyingly, he can and will shoot you the first chance he gets. He never shies away from what he believes needs to be done.

2. The Missing Kid's Jersey

Before Mindy's death, she awakens in the back of Greg's car. Soon she realizes where she is and riffles through a duffel bag that was left in the car. In the bag, she discovers a bloody baseball bat, a jersey belonging to a missing kid (Justin Whitter), and a bag of green army knives. All these belongings undeniably link Greg to the crimes of child abduction and murder. 

While she realizes Greg's connection to the crimes, Greg continues driving out to his secret airstream. At this point in the runtime, you don't expect Mindy to become integral in exposing the truth about Greg. Despite her questionable phrogging practices, she shows a strong sense of morals amidst grave matters. With Justin's whereabouts still unknown, the revelation is downright chilling -- especially considering Greg is one of two officers on the missing person case. His closeness to the victim makes it far more than disturbing and unhinged.

1. The Twist Ending

"I See You" packs in the twists! By its third act, you think all the reveals are done. However, the film tosses in one final curveball. We learn that Alec is one of the young boys previously captured by Greg but he escaped. The reveal locks his weird demeanor into crystal-clear focus. Once Greg realizes someone has been living inside their walls, he returns to the house, unpacks his gun, and searches for the unknown culprit. Alec slinks up the hallway and attempts to wield an axe into Greg's back.

The two tussle and Greg knocks Alec to the ground. Greg grabs a knife and injures himself to frame Alec and Mindy. But then Alec is gone. Alec then appears out of the darkness with a handgun raised. "I know what you are," Alec says. Greg tries to convince him that what he did was because of his past. But Alec doesn't care -- and he shouldn't. What Greg did to him was reprehensible. Alec fires the gun, and Greg hits the hardwood. The "I See You" finale holds no prisoners -- keeping you guessing until its final moment. "I See You" manages to retool familiar conventions of home invasion elements to tell a uniquely disturbing story. No wonder why it was a hit on Netflix. From its tight script to potent camera work, "I See You" delivers a masterclass in storytelling.

Read this next: Horror Movies You Don't Want To Miss In 2023

The post The Most Disturbing Moments in I See You, Ranked appeared first on /Film.

Voice and motion capture performer Troy Baker has played many roles in seminal video game franchises. Having played characters like Booker DeWitt in "Bioshock Infinite" and Sam Drake in the "Uncharted" franchise, Baker is best known for his role as Joel Miller in "The Last of Us." No one could play Joel as Baker did in Naughty Dog's survival horror video game — Baker imbued the character with the perfect amount of nuance and complexity, painting Joel as a morally-grey protagonist capable of both cruelty and compassion. For someone like Baker to be so intimately involved with "The Last of Us," and to be a part of a franchise that evolved and gained immense popularity over the course of a decade, a live-action series adaptation was bound to evoke complicated feelings.

Although Baker did not reprise his role as Joel (Pedro Pascal reinvented the character in beautiful, interesting ways), he was deeply involved with Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin's HBO adaptation from the get-go. Baker is the host of the show's official companion podcast, where he sits down for a post-episodic discussion with the creators to grant greater insight into behind-the-scenes stories and tidbits. Fans of the video game were also delighted when Baker appeared in the penultimate episode of the first season, where he played the role of "buddy boy" James, a reluctant follower in David's (Scott Shepherd) cannibalism cult.

While Baker couldn't be happier about "The Last of Us" series at the moment, he was initially unsure about Druckmann's decision to make a live-action adaptation when he first heard about it, according to an interview with Deadline. Here's what Baker had to say about his initial misgivings.

A Story Worth Repeating

When Baker was first involved with the "The Last of Us" game, he knew he was a part of something special. "You never know if [a project] will be as good as you're hoping for it to be, but it was, and then it gets out in the world, and it just blows up and becomes this phenomenon," Baker told Deadline, in relation to his expectations of audience reception for the video game. It is one thing to hope for a strong, positive response, but to actually achieve it in a way that surpasses expectations is undoubtedly a special feeling, one Baker cherishes deeply given how invested he is in the world of "The Last of Us."

As a result, when Druckmann decided to make an adaptation, Baker was, in his own words, "against the idea of the show," as he was unsure whether it could match up to the critical acclaim that the game enjoyed. When he asked Druckmann why the game warranted a series at all, the latter said the following:

"Because I believe this story is good enough to get out to people who will never pick up a controller, and we need to bring this story to them."

Druckmann was right. As a first-person gaming experience, "The Last of Us" is uplifting, heartbreaking, beautiful, and harrowing all at once. There's something universal about a story centered on a hardened survivor tasked to protect a young girl who might be the key to human survival, wherein his reluctance gradually morphs into a fiercely protective brand of fatherhood with grave repercussions. The cordyceps-infected world feels especially poignant in the post-pandemic era and Druckmann recognized the potential of such a poignant tale as an emotionally resonant, high-stakes television series with a wider audience appeal. 

An Adaptation That Stays True To Its Roots

Baker has been open about his initial guardedness towards the adaptation in several interviews, but it's endearing to see how much he's grown to love and respect the series in its own right. Baker's misgivings were, however, not completely unfounded — there is no dearth of video game adaptations that have completely misunderstood their source material, leading to lackluster renditions that seem completely unrecognizable when compared to their roots. However, "The Last of Us" series has always been in good hands, as Druckmann's personal involvement ensured that the adaptation did not stray away from the essence of the games, while Mazin's creative ingenuity allowed the story to branch into new, but worthwhile directions.

In this interview with HBO Max, Baker explained how the relationship between the games and the series is not mutually exclusive, as both can be enjoyed as separate, yet shared experiences that enrich the world of "The Last of Us." He acknowledged that while the two are "retellings of the same story," there is beauty to exploring the games and the series separately, although the show does not actually require any foreknowledge of the games. This allows newcomers to discover a rich, layered post-apocalyptic world, and if they're willing to expand this experience as a gamer, they are welcome to. Conversely, fans of the video game can always have their playthroughs, but the series can be a source of newfound wonder for those who would love to see their favorite characters come to life in a different way.

Ultimately, Baker came to the conclusion that the HBO series "is the most accurate, truthful adaptation" of the original, while also saying that Pascal's Joel taught him truths about the character he had previously missed. Now, that's all the endorsement that matters. 

Read this next: How Ellie's Room Decor In The Last Of Us Points To The Larger Story

The post The Last of Us Actor Troy Baker Didn't Want The Game Turned Into A Series appeared first on /Film.

It must be intimidating for any actor to enter the fold of "Star Trek." In addition to the risk of being pigeonholed (Brent Spiner has spoken at length about that phenomenon), there is a lot to know beforehand. Given the franchise's vast history, and the hundreds of hours of drama it has already produced, it seems that some homework might be required just to have some context of whatever scene you might be acting in. 

The former aspect was a bugaboo for Ed Speleers, the actor cast as Jack Crusher in the third season of "Star Trek: Picard." Jack Crusher wasn't some mere ensign written to sit at a starship's helm and read lines about diverting power from life support to the shields or whatever. Jack Crusher was the son of Dr. Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden) and Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart), two of the main characters of "Star Trek: The Next Generation." Additionally, the character's brain had been altered by a mysterious, inherited gene, giving him psychic superpowers. It would be revealed at the end of the series that it was a Borg gene. The gene would transform Jack briefly into a puppet of the season's true villain, a Borg Queen that Picard once knew. [Musical sting]

All of that was based on events of past "Star Trek" episodes. The Borg plot hearkens back to "The Best of Both Worlds" and the 1996 movie "Star Trek: First Contact." The brain gene is a reference to "All Good Things..." The mythology is dense. 

In the most recent issue of SFX Magazine, Speleers talked about what specific "Star Trek" homework he was given to fill in his character's backstory. No, it seems the 2002 film "Star Trek: Nemesis" was not included. 

Giving Up Acting

Speleers was frustrated by his casting of Jack. He said to SFX that his difficulties finding a handle on the character brought nothing but stress and had him questioning his craft altogether. He said that he was: 

"... almost being in tears because I couldn't quite find my way in with the part. [...] I was just incredibly frustrated. I nearly gave up. I think I had a big, melodramatic hissy fit moment where I was like, right, that's it, I'm giving up acting and giving up all of it!"

It was then that showrunner Terry Matalas gave Speleers a great deal of "Star Trek" homework to put him on track. Matalas compiled a list of pertinent "Star Trek" episodes and movies that would be vital to the construction of Jack. The e-mail, according to SFX, was called "Star Trek University." Speleers did not show the list to his interviewers, sadly, so Trekkies cannot peruse it, stroking their chins, quietly judging Matalas' choices. Speleers said:

"It was an extensive list of Star Trek episodes all the way up from TNG, then films going all the way back to 'The Wrath Of Khan' all the way through to 'First Contact.' They obviously left out 'Nemesis.' Don't look at that."

Stuart Baird's 2002 film "Star Trek: Nemesis" is one of the less beloved movies in the long-running "Star Trek" series, having made less money than any of the others, even accounting for inflation. Speleers was clearly goofing on the film's bad reputation. Whether or not Matalas actually warned the actor away from "Nemesis" much remain academic. 

Our List

It seems that Star Trek University made Speleers something of an expert, if not a Trekkie, as he said: 

"I can't say I'm a 'Star Trek' aficionado, but I feel now, having been put through my paces by Terry and everybody else — and also just being embraced by that cast and crew — I'm hook, line, and sinker a fully-fledged member of the 'Star Trek' fandom."

Since Speleers didn't say which episodes he was asked to watch, it might be a fun exercise to posit which episodes and movies would be best for explaining a character like Jack Crusher. 

"Next Generation" episodes that depict the romance/relationship between Jean-Luc Picard and Dr. Crusher will be key. "The Naked Now," "Allegiance," "Violations," "Attached," and "All Good Things..." all relate either to Dr. Crusher's late husband Jack (after which the new Jack Crusher is named) or the will-they-or-won't-they romantic moments between the captain and the doctor. "All Good Things..." also sets up Picard's Irumodic Syndrome, the brain drift that Jack inherited. 

Picard's background with the Borg is vital, of course, and watching "The Best of Both Worlds" was likely important, as was the 1996 film "Star Trek: First Contact," as Speleers said. As for tone, the third season of "Picard" is clearly yet another "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" retread, so that would be a good piece of homework to communicate a general vibe. "Khan" would also establish the Constitution-class starship that Jack said he was a fan of.

As for the Changelings pursuing Jack, Speleers might not need to know about them, nor the massive war they fought on "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine." It's possible that there was no actual DS9 on Speleers' syllabus. If he's interested, though, I could recommend some good ones. 

Read this next: Every Star Trek Series Ranked From Worst To Best

The post Picard Star Ed Speleers Was Given Star Trek Homework (Nemesis Was Not Included) appeared first on /Film.

It has previously been written in the pages of /Film that Dr. Beverly Crusher, played by actor Gates McFadden on "Star Trek: The Next Generation," rarely got her due. Apart from a scant few episodes where she served as the protagonist, her arc as a character was disappointingly flat, leaving her nowhere to grow and no dramatic struggles to face. The reasons for this are clear: Dr. Crusher had her s*** together. She was adult, mature, capable, and complete. From day one, her personal ethics were well-formed and she was staunchly unwilling to compromise. Writers, it seems, didn't know how to construct stories for someone who was more or less complete from the start, so they often relegated Dr. Crusher to a supporting player in other characters' dramas. 

The best ongoing arc Dr. Crusher was granted was her constant near-miss romance with Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart). The two were clearly attracted to one another, but professional propriety often kept them apart. Each of them had other romances along the way, but many Trekkies figured they would end up together. Also, early in the series, Dr. Crusher talked about her relationship with her teenage son, Wesley, but her parenting of him pretty much ended when he was old enough to ship off to Starfleet Academy. It was rare that Dr. Crusher was permitted to talk about her career, her personal interests, go on vacation, attend medical lectures, or impress her crewmates with a new medical invention. 

McFadden herself has expressed her disappointment in the treatment of her character. In a recent interview with Variety, she addressed her character's lack of things to do in the four "Next Generation" feature films, and how little history "Trek" writers felt they could explore with her.

Four Movies, No Doctor Story

By the time David Carson's "Star Trek: Generations" arrived in theaters in 1994, it seemed that Dr. Crusher was poised to explore some of her own history. The final episode of "Next Generation," called "All Good Things...," aired only a few months previous, and Dr. Crusher kissed Captain Picard. In a flash-forward, it was established that Dr. Crusher would marry Picard, divorce him, and become a starship captain. There was so much to explore. 

As it happened, the four movies are all about Picard and/or Data. The rest of the ensemble didn't really get big character moments, nor were any of their personal pasts much discussed. Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton) might have received an upgrade to his eyes, but he never had a moment when he gets to talk about how he came to choose the procedure or how he felt about it. Crusher was ... just a doctor. When asked about this by Variety, Gates McFadden was frustrated. She said: 

"So much of the history of the character -- you didn't even see it. [...] Jean-Luc Picard could have this brand new love interest every time, and it was as if he and Crusher had nothing between them, or ever did. That was a huge part of the character that was just put away." 

McFadden knew she was part of an ensemble, and was happy to fill her role in that regard, but that didn't mean it wasn't galling for her as an actor. She said: 

"Well, it's no surprise to hear that [the movies were] very disappointing. It's always tricky when you're the actor. You want your role to be as wonderful as possible. But you're also not stupid, and you're very happy that the franchise is doing well."

Not Even A Love Interest

In "Generations," Picard is swept up by a bizarre spatial phenomenon called the Nexus, which is a thundering energy ribbon that floats freely throughout the galaxy. If any people become caught in it, they are transported into a dream dimension where time has no meaning and their deepest wishes are fulfilled. It was kind of like Heaven. When Picard is inside, he pictures his ideal future as a family man, where he's married to ... some lady. Not Dr. Crusher nor any of the people he had previously known, but some new person. In "Star Trek: First Contact," there is some sexual tension between Picard and the evil Borg Queen, I suppose. In "Star Trek: Insurrection," Picard has a lot of romantic chemistry with Anij (Donna Murphy), and there is no romance in "Star Trek: Nemesis." 

Dr. Crusher is left out of this equation. Gates McFadden liked some of the movies, but didn't care for her lack of role in them. She said: 

"'First Contact' was just an amazingly written film. My only sadness was that there had to be new female love interests. But then, that's Hollywood. So you just accept it and do the best you can do with what you're given. I mean, that's the job." 

By the time we see Dr. Crusher in the third season of "Picard," however, she has finally grown. She is a gun-toting badass who owns her own ship and made a business delivering black-market medicine to non-Federation worlds, all with the help of her adult son. It seems she was eventually granted a story worthy of the character. 

Read this next: 11 Reasons Why The Next Generation Is The Best Star Trek Show

The post Like Fans, Gates McFadden Was Disappointed How Star Trek Handled Beverly Crusher appeared first on /Film.

The OWC Thunderbolt Go Dock supports all the latest ports and connections, but its biggest selling point puts it above the competition.

This article contains spoilers for the first season of "The Last of Us" and "The Last of Us Part 2."

They always say that if there's a question mark in a headline then the answer to whatever that question is "No." So let's get that out of the way right up front. Will the original voice and performance capture actor from "The Last of Us Part 2" video play the main antagonist, Abby, in "The Last of Us" season 2? I can pretty confidently say no.

Laura Bailey performed Abby Anderson in the video game and did a hell of a job, I must say. Abby is a complicated character, full of determined rage and surprising depth and Bailey absolutely captured that in her performance, but there's a slight complication in that she doesn't really embody the character and her unique physicality in the real world. 

In the same way that Ashley Johnson and Troy Baker are the perfect Ellie and Joel for the video game, Bailey likely wouldn't represent the best choice for Abby in live-action despite absolutely crushing it for the Naughty Dog game. Now, that doesn't mean we won't see Bailey pop up in "The Last of Us" season 2 in some other role. In fact, eagle-eyed fans already know she cameoed in the season 1 finale as one of the nurses about to dig into Ellie's brain to try to cure mankind.

Abby Or Not, Here She Comes

If you're looking at the image above, that's her! And luckily enough for Bailey, since this cameo covered her whole face, she can still be brought in just about any capacity in the coming seasons of the HBO show. You don't have to take my word for it, co-showrunner and video game creator Neil Druckmann told reporters just that, saying "She's got a mask on, so we can make her anything we want in the next season." 

Craig Mazin and Druckmann were very respectful in folding in much of the video game cast into the live-action series, with Ashley Johnson having a great moment as Ellie's mom, Troy Baker playing the despicable David's right-hand man, James, and Jeffrey Pierce (the original performer of Tommy, Joel's brother) getting to play Melanie Lynskey's top lieutenant, Perry. 

The only person who got to reprise their role from the video game was Merle Dandridge who played Firefly boss Marlene and I think that was mainly because her look was pretty much the model for the character anyway and the actress had actually aged into the role. 

But there is a precedent for the key voice actors from the game being brought in for substantial roles and it wouldn't surprise me at all if Laura Bailey found herself as a new character in the coming season, a possibility made even more likely that her brief cameo at the end of season 1 was more of an Easter egg for the game's fans (especially considering that scene's importance to the events of the next story) and not a full-on character.

Playing Abby Will Be A Double Edged Sword

Whoever ends up playing Abby is going to have to brace themselves for some vocal fan reaction. She's an incredible character and will be the role of a lifetime for whoever gets it because most villains don't get fleshed out to the extent that Abby Anderson does. There's so much to explore for a performer taking on this role and if Druckmann and Mazin stick to their guns with the character, it'll be one that will challenge the audience's perception of what makes a character good and what makes a character evil.

Without getting into too many spoilers of things (possibly) to come, the genius of the character is that she not only constantly reframes the audience's feelings towards her as the story goes on, but she also forces the viewer to reframe their thoughts on the protagonists of the story. 

Druckmann has said that the theme of "The Last of Us" is love. Sounds simple, but love inspires all sorts of behavior, from the noblest and pure to the most violent and angry. What Abby represents in all of her yoked-up glory is the same righteous anger that we've come to love about Joel and Ellie in the first game and first season of the adaptation.

This divided many gamers who were not only furious with her actions in the game but were even more upset that the game then makes you empathize with her by putting you in her shoes. You see she's not just a comic book villain with paper-thin motivations. From a certain point of view, she's just as heroic as Ellie and Joel, and boy howdy did a whole lot of gamers resent that.

Craig Mazin And Neil Druckmann's Biggest Challenge For Season 2 Is Casting Abby

But the thing that made "The Last of Us Part 2" so divisive is also what makes it a masterpiece. It's not every post-apocalyptic story that forces empathy for even the most hated characters.

The Abby of the game was a mixture of Bailey's performance and Jocelyn Mettler's face mixed together and brought to life by the talented designers and programmers at Naughty Dog. There have been calls from fans to have Mettler cast in the role and some other fans have suggested actresses Mary Krantz, Shannon Berry ("The Wilds"), and Katy O'Brien (who co-starred with Pedro Pascal in "The Mandalorian").

But ultimately, Mazin and Druckmann will have to find the best performer for the part, someone who can capture the nuance and soul of Abby as well as the look. They know what they'll need from their actor and they also know that if there's one crucial piece of casting for "The Last of Us" season 2, it's Abby Anderson. They can't get away with someone just "kinda" right for the role, they're going to have to find someone who is the perfect live-action embodiment of this character, just like they did with Bella Ramsey, Pedro Pascal, and Gabriel Luna in the first season.

If I was a betting man, I'd say you'll be seeing more of Laura Bailey in the coming season, but she won't be playing her video game counterpart. Maybe they'll expand on her nurse cameo and jump off from there or maybe they'll cook up something even juicier for her, but I'm sure we'll see her again.

And the winner for funniest text of all time goes to @LauraBaileyVO for sending me this gem! pic.twitter.com/p3sfrLyNfn

— Neil Druckmann (@Neil_Druckmann) March 13, 2023

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The post The Last of Us Season 2: Could Laura Bailey Return to Play Abby? Creators Weigh In appeared first on /Film.

This article contains mild spoilers for "Evil Dead Rise.""Evil Dead Rise," the latest installment in the now 40-odd-year-old "Evil Dead" franchise, is filled to the brim with evidence of writer/director Lee Cronin's bonafides toward being a fan of the series. While the film isn't merely a work of fan service, the movie is suffused with references to the earlier "Evil Dead" films, from Deadites screaming "Dead by dawn!" to a very particular clock being seen at a cabin in the film's opening sequence.

Yet Cronin isn't content with paying homage to just the "Evil Dead" series — in addition to multiple references to Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining," "Evil Dead Rise" contains some latent homages to numerous other horror films, including Lamberto Bava's similar demons-loose-in-a-high-rise splatter opus, "Demons 2." Most surprisingly, however, "Evil Dead Rise" appears to have a good deal in common with another Sam Raimi film, one that the director has all but disowned over the years: 1985's "Crimewave." While Cronin may or may not have intentionally threaded in references to that much-maligned film, it speaks to the movie's quintessential Raimi-ness that "Crimewave" and "Evil Dead Rise" seem to share some DNA.

Crimewave Is Demented, Bizarre, And Underrated

Raimi, co-star/producer Bruce Campbell, and producer Rob Tapert have made no secret about their feelings for "Crimewave" over the years. As recently as the SXSW panel for the premiere of "Evil Dead Rise," Campbell explained that the failure of the movie taught them to develop a "Crimewave meter" that allows them to say no to projects they can see going south.

It's most likely due to the bad vibes the Michigan-raised filmmaking trio has given the film over the years since its botched release and poor reception that the movie hasn't undergone a major reappraisal, because "Crimewave" isn't just a Raimi film, but an early Coen Brothers work as well, as the movie was co-written by Joel and Ethan Coen along with Raimi.

With a pedigree like that, it's nearly impossible for the movie to be dull or uninteresting, two things it decidedly isn't. "Crimewave" is indeed a demented slice of cinema, a combination of '40s film noir, Warner Bros. cartoons, and "Three Stooges"-style slapstick. The plot revolves around a dorky sap, Victor Ajax (Reed Birney), an employee of Trend-Odegard Security. His boss, Ernest Trend (Edward R. Pressman), arranges to have his business partner Donald Odegard (Hamid Dana) whacked upon discovering that Odegard plans to sell the business to Renaldo "The Heel" (Campbell) behind his back. The two killers Trend hires, Faron (Paul L. Smith) and Arthur (Brion James), are equal parts vicious and inept and end up killing both Odegard and Trend by accident. When Trend's nosy wife, Helene (Louise Lasser, apparently wearing her exact same wardrobe from the infamous Thanksgiving slasher flick "Blood Rage") witnesses the hit and the building's other residents (including Victor and his love interest) get mistakenly caught up in the proceedings, "Crimewave" goes enjoyably off the rails.

High-Rise Havoc

Although it's only really for the middle section of the film, "Crimewave" has a setting acutely in common with "Evil Dead Rise." During that section, a lot of overlap occurs with "Rise," which itself is set (save an opening sequence) inside a Los Angeles apartment building. In "Rise," the building is beset by a violent earthquake, while in "Crimewave," the night's events are exacerbated by a violent storm ("Storm! City in Chaos" reads a newspaper headline). In "Rise," Beth (Lily Sullivan) and the other residents of the cursed building can't make use of the main elevator once the demonic presence takes it over, while Arthur in "Crimewave" finds himself nearly captured by the police thanks to a precocious young boy insisting that the elevator stops at every floor.

Being made in between "The Evil Dead" and "Evil Dead II," "Crimewave" also contains large traces of Raimi's penchant for menace, including moments where Helene sees Faron threaten her via the building's security cameras in a very similar fashion to the possessed Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland) berating her family through the apartment door's peephole in "Rise." As Victor and Nancy (Sheree J. Wilson) attempt to escape the exterminators, they find dead bodies suddenly blocking their path, a hazard that Beth and Kassie (Nell Fisher) also must contend with when attempting to escape their apartment building.

Finally, the building in "Crimewave" is filled with eccentric neighbors, one of whom happens to fortuitously own a pack of attack Dobermans, while in "Rise," Mr. Fonda (Mark Mitchinson) is a very handy fellow who not only owns a shotgun, but keeps a wood chipper and a chainsaw in the building's basement, something Beth makes good use of.

Crimewave Is In The Evil Dead Universe

Sure, all of these similarities may be mere coincidences rather than deliberate homage. Still, there's a good reason why "Crimewave" belongs in the discussion of the "Evil Dead" franchise, and it's not simply to do with Raimi, Campbell, and Tapert's involvement — it's that, canonically, "Crimewave" exists within the "Evil Dead" universe.

In the same faux issue of the Detroit Free Press that announces the storm in "Crimewave," there is another headline on the front page that exclaims "Military seal off Tennessee murder site. Time-space disturbance discovered." "The Evil Dead" was shot in Morristown, Tennessee, and although the series "Ash vs Evil Dead" retconned the fateful cabin to be located somewhere in Michigan, the original film and "Evil Dead II" kept Tennessee as the primary setting.

So, whether by intention or happenstance, "Crimewave" and "Evil Dead Rise" are at least tangentially connected. After seeing "Evil Dead Rise" this weekend, why not give "Crimewave" a try? At the very least, they'd make a killer double feature.

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This post contains spoilers for the "Star Trek: Picard" series finale.

"Star Trek: Picard" has officially come to an end, closing out with a warm and wonderful scene of Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, Michael Dorn, Marin Sirtis, Gates McFadden, LeVar Burton, and Brent Spiner hanging out in a bar, playing poker, and shooting the breeze. This was their moment of reunion and relaxation after an elaborate scheme involving Changelings, the Borg, and mysterious X-Men-like brain powers that Picard passed on to his son Jack (Ed Speleers), a son he didn't know about for the past 20 years. After all was said and done, Picard (Stewart) accepted that he was Jack's father, and he and Dr. Crusher (McFadden) seemed to have worked out their long-standing personal acrimony.

A long-standing drama with Jean-Luc Picard has been his solitude. He wasn't lonely, necessarily, but his professional station as a starship captain prevented him from fostering any kind of close personal relationships. He had been burned by a few romances gone awry in the past, and seemed content to remain unattached the rest of his life. In "Star Trek: Generations," the captain revealed that, since he had a brother, the family would at least continue without his input. When his brother and nephew died in a fire, he became distraught. In "Picard," audiences learned that he and Dr. Crusher, after many false starts, attempted a proper romance, had a single awkward tryst, and then split up seemingly for good. The tryst, however, resulted in Jack. Whether or not Picard wanted to start a family, he had one now.

In an interview with Variety, Stewart talked about Picard's personal relationships, as well as a secondary, alternate ending to the "Picard" series that no one will ever see.

Jean-Luc And Beverly

It's worth noting that Jean-Luc Picard was established throughout "Star Trek: The Next Generation" as hating children. He was uncomfortable with the teenage Wesley Crusher (Wil Wheaton) on his bridge and was loath to take a small group of under-10s on a tour of the Enterprise. Being a father was never on his radar, so the appearance of Jack in his life allowed Patrick Stewart to explore a new facet of his character. He found himself finally facing Dr. Crusher in a more meaningful way. Stewart explained:

"I think that the relationship between Dr. Crusher and Picard was what mattered most in this. I read several accounts of parents who only learned that they were parents when the child was quite adult. What it produced in Jean-Luc was fury [...] with Dr. Crusher, because she had not told him. He had not pursued family life as an essential part of his own life; nevertheless, when the thing happened, he was cut out of it. He was isolated."

Stewart commented on the fact that Picard's life expanded in many new career directions as he aged, and how, when he discovered he was a father, those things immediately began to feel insignificant. Picard was finally forced to approach something personally:

"I think that was the toughest thing for him to swallow, that there had been 20-odd years in the life of his only son, and he had not known about it at all. Those 20 years were the years in which he had wandered through being promoted to an admiral, the desk job he had, retiring, becoming a lecturer and a winemaker -- all of these things became irrelevant as he dealt with the critical situation that was building up around the people he cared about so deeply."

The Question Mark

Throughout "Next Generation," Jean-Luc and Beverly often approached romance, but never actually committed. In the final episode of the series, Beverly kissed Picard, implying that a romance was still possible. In the following four movies, however, the romance was never mentioned. When asked about the lack of romantic subplots in the movies, Patrick Stewart merely shrugged, saying that he suspected the films' writers preferred question marks around the issue. He also pointed out that an early draft of the final episode of "Picard" ended with a relationship mystery. In his words:

"We'd had one idea for ending 'Picard,' which I think now would have been a mistake. But it would have ended the show with a huge question mark. I liked that in terms of how it could have sent our viewers minds racing and questioning and puzzling about what was this question mark exactly and what did it mean? We didn't do it." 

Of course, he was asked what the mystery was, but Stewart was sworn to secrecy, saying:

"I can't talk about it. I said I wouldn't talk about it, because it was a complicated situation. I went with what the producers wanted. I was not comfortable with it, but watching the final episode the other night, I realized that what they had persuaded me we should do was absolutely the best thing that could have happened."

Was Jack revealed not to be Picard's son after all? Was Jack actually Wesley in disguise? Perhaps the time-drift reincarnation of the original Jack Crusher, Beverly's first husband (and how weird was it that Beverly named her second son after her late husband)? Did Jean-Luc and Beverly get married? Was Beverly pregnant with another child? Was Jack a Q baby? Was he a Changeling? 

We'll never know.

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The post Patrick Stewart Teases an Alternate Picard Season 3 Ending He's Not Allowed to Talk About appeared first on /Film.

At the beginning of the third season of "Star Trek: Picard," the title character (Patrick Stewart) was seen in his French château, packing suitcases of old trinkets and keepsakes, hoping to give them away. He once felt sentimental about such objects, but was determined to leave the past behind. He said out loud that he was not interested in having a legacy, preferring to enter the world and have further adventures. At that point, Picard was over a century old. 

Later, Captain Riker (Jonathan Frakes) was enjoying a drink in Guinan's Bar, admiring the trinkets the bartender was selling -- or, I suppose, giving away, as "Star Trek" takes place in a post-capitalist society. Bar denizens could take home palm-sized scale models of various famous Starfleet vessels. (Incidentally, the ships on camera are real-life collectibles that one can purchase through the newly launched Master Replicas toy line.) Riker notices Guinan still has multiple models of the Enterprise-D, the ship on which he used to serve. When he asks the bartender why, she tells him it's their least popular model. No one, it seems, wants "the fat ones." 

Later still, Riker and Picard tour the U.S.S. Titan-A, a ship once under Riker's command but which had been almost wholly rebuilt. The brusque Captain Shaw (Todd Stashwick) mentions that when he took command, he found Riker's old jazz collection on the ship's computers. Hating jazz, Shaw deleted the entire thing. Shaw then sends Picard and Riker to sleep on uncomfortable bunks typically reserved for younger officers. No one cares, old man.

Moving Back Into The Past

"Picard" season 3 seemed to be setting up a world where nostalgia didn't exist and no one felt especially sentimental about the past. Instead, it was about moving forward, finding the adventure, and -- as it would turn out -- relitigating the things that once made Picard happy. Most notably, Picard's relationship with Dr. Crusher (Gates McFadden) was enormously strained. The NextGen crew may reunite eventually, but they wouldn't necessarily like one another.

My above presumptions about the running theme "Picard" is derived from my knowledge of the classic "Star Trek: The Next Generation" writing structure. In many episodes, the show would cold-open with a vignette or scenario unrelated to the main plot. That cold-open would, however, connect in a thematic way to the eventual main thrust of the episode. If, for instance, the episode was about the movement of time, the opening conversation would be about how time seems to move differently when you're bored. 

If "Picard" spent so much time establishing that it was to be about the shedding of legacy and the lack of sentimentality about the past, then surely that would be the eventual theme of the season at large. "Star Trek" had seemingly reached a refreshing "let the past die" moment.

But the opposite proved to be true this time. 

Star Trek ❤ Legacy

One of the final scenes in the last episode of "Picard," called "The Last Generation," saw Jack Crusher (Ed Speleers) wearing a Starfleet uniform, bearing the newly earned rank of ensign. Jack is the son of Admiral Picard and Dr. Crusher, and Jack himself is already a symbol of Picard's personal legacy, this time as a parent, continuing in a Starfleet trajectory. He mentions he was able to become an ensign after only just one year of Starfleet Academy, a program that usually takes at least four, and thanks nepotism for his expedited graduation. Picard's legacy helped him along.

Jack's first assignment is back on board the U.S.S. Titan-A, the central ship of the series. Only now, for unclear reasons, it has been rechristened. Jack will serve on board the U.S.S. Enterprise-G.

Quite the opposite of eschewing legacy, it seems that "Picard" is wholly obsessed with it.

Indeed, in a post-credits stinger at the end of "The Last Generation," the presumed-dead trickster god Q (John de Lancie) appears to Jack and tells him he will have to take on the brunt of Q's playful trial of humanity's worthiness, a mantle previously held by Picard. That was the premise of the pilot of "Star Trek: The Next Generation." Jack is not just taking on the legacy of in-universe lore, but the legacy of "Star Trek" writers' old ideas. With "Picard," history begins to cycle through itself again.  

Hanging The Plaque

It's also notable that a great deal of action in the third season of "Star Trek: Picard" is centered on a starship museum. Relics of the past are put on display, and the characters spend a great deal of time wistfully looking over well-known vehicles from old Trek shows and movies. Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) ganders at the U.S.S. Voyager. The "Deep Space Nine" theme song plays when they look at the U.S.S. Defiant. Later, it's revealed that Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton) has been secretly reconstructing the Enterprise-D for decades. It is used as the central attack vehicle in the season's climax. Previously established as unpopular and dismissed as "the fat one," the Enterprise-D also wants to reclaim its legacy. So much for letting go of the past. "Picard" is keen on letting it calcify.

Additionally, it seems the newer generations cannot be trusted. For a great deal of the third season, Jack slowly develops mysterious psychic powers that make him a badass fighting machine, and also allow him to insert his consciousness into the bodies of others.

It was said that Jack's abilities might have been genetically passed on to him from Picard, himself afflicted with a brain ailment, previously thought to be a fatal disease. It turns out, the disease was a Borg gene that didn't assimilate Picard, but left his son vulnerable. Thanks to the machinations of the plot, said Borg gene was spread to anyone under the age of 25. It was only older people on ancient ships that would be permitted to save the day. 

The Kids Aren't All Right

Moving past legacy and letting a younger generation take the reins and define themselves is not permitted in "Picard." The young are untrustworthy, vulnerable to corruption, and the people pulling the trigger. It is only by asserting one's established legacy that one can triumph. There is little in the way of balance on "Picard." All the younger people and ships seem to share names with older things. There are three characters named La Forge, and two named Crusher. When Crusher is assimilated by the Borg, he is not given the exact same name as Locutus, Picard's onetime Borg identity, but is instead called Võx, a similar, voice-related name. Even the Borg push forward the notion of legacy. The central battle seems to be who gets to leave their name behind, and not inventing new ones.

Notions of celebrity, of course, have long been a standing element of Star Trek, and tapping into old legacies happens frequently. Heck, look at the 1994 film "Star Trek: Generations," a film that invents multiple strange sci-fi conceits in an effort to get Captain Picard and Captain Kirk (William Shatner) -- two characters separated by 80-some years of history -- in the same room together. The crew of the Enterprise-D once met Scotty (James Doohan) in an episode appropriately titled "Relics." The characters on Star Trek have studied the history of Star Trek, and recognize the franchise's more popular characters. 

But "Picard" is far more direct. In "Picard," the present doesn't just draw from the wisdom and powers of the past, but -- for better and for worse -- renames itself to match. It seems we'd better make damn sure history doesn't soon forget the name Enterprise. 

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The post Picard Series Finale Ending Explained: Names Mean Almost Everything appeared first on /Film.

This post contains spoilers for the series finale of "Star Trek: Picard."

In the last episode of "Star Trek: Picard," called "The Last Generation," Jack Crusher (Ed Speleers) has given himself over to the evil Borg Queen (voice of Alice Krige) who has assimilated him into the Borg collective. He is outfitted with a wicked, black robot costume and has a metal prosthesis is bolted to his face. His mind is more or less erased, and the Queen begins using his powerful psychic brain to control a massive fleet of distant starships by remote. 

Rather than merely blow him up and stop the attack, the cast of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" elect to fly the Enterprise-D into the heart of the Borg ship and rescue him. They hope to reason with the Borg Queen and appeal to Jack's seemingly erased humanity. Picard (Patrick Stewart), having once been assimilated before, is able to stand face-to-face with Jack, plug a wire into the back of his neck, and have a psychic conversation with him. Technically, he is uniquely qualified to pull Jack's consciousness out of the machine.

Jack, it should be noted, is Picard's son, a child he fathered some 20 years before with Dr. Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden). Dr. Crusher has been raising Jack alone, never having told Picard that he had a child. She did this because Picard is constantly in danger and his child would likely be at risk. Hence why he is named Jack Crusher and not Jacques Picard. 

It seemed a little unfair to Beverly, then, that Picard should be the one who is uniquely qualified to rescue Jack. Why dad and not mom?

Showrunner Terry Matalas, in a recent roundtable interview attended by /Film's Vanessa Armstrong, also sensed the injustice and declared that Jack, in keeping his mother's name, was doing the correct and logical thing.

Jack Crusher

While the show is called "Star Trek: Picard," and the title character should play a major part in a series finale, it did feel a little ... off ... to have Picard be the one to rescue Jack from the Borg Queen. Picard previously only had a relationship with the villainess, and it might be fitting that he confronts her after decades of animosity. But he had only met Jack a few days prior. The two had spoken a lot, and Picard had come to terms with the fact that he had an adult son, but their relationship wasn't particularly deep or even all that warm. Indeed, Jack had been told since he was a child that Picard was kind of a heel, being cold and neglectful. It would have made more sense that Jack resent Picard, returning to Dr. Crusher at the first available opportunity. 

Matalas spoke a great deal about how names -- and, by extension, legacies -- are a vital part of the third season of "Star Trek: Picard." What people call themselves, and what they insist others call them, speaks a great deal to their identities. In retaining the name Crusher, Jack was ultimately his mother's child and not his father's. Here's how Matalas answered when asked about how names come into play in the season finale:

"I have to sit back and meditate on that for quite a bit because it does ask a lot of questions about family. Picard and ... it makes me think about things, like I am glad that Jack never took the name Picard at the end, that he keeps his mother's name, and I think that that's super important."

Legacy

The first half of the third season of "Picard" was pointedly anti-legacy. Picard spent his first few scenes packing up all his old trinkets into boxes and shipping them out of his home. He and Riker (Jonathan Frakes) were not treated with rarified respect. Even the Enterprise-D is badmouthed in dialogue. Eventually, however, the themes did a 180, and legacy became incredibly important. Old characters reunited, references to the past piled up, and the Enterprise-D was rebuilt. Terry Matalas acknowledged this by saying Jack Crusher's line, "Names mean almost everything," reflected this shift. "First, it was really a nod to nepotism," he said, "because we knew we were flashing forward to the fact that Jack Crusher was going to be accelerated through Starfleet. You have to call it what it is. And so that started that." 

Matalas went on to say that legacy is everything for these characters, in both big and small ways. The name Enterprise is important for everyone in "Star Trek," of course, and he was careful to place it in the hands of a familiar, deserving character. In his words: 

"But it was also about the importance of the name Enterprise, and what that particular legacy was, for not only Starfleet, but for the fans. And in a lot of ways that was the last character missing from the scene. It was the final character added to the ensemble when we brought back the Enterprise-D, and the final character given to Seven of Nine. That was super important for us, for Seven and Raffi to be at the forefront of that legacy, of the Enterprise legacy."

Someone clearly wants to make a show called "Star Trek: Legacy."

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

The post Picard Showrunner is Glad Jack Crusher Kept his Mother's Name appeared first on /Film.

The benefits of community solar are grabbing the public's attention. On Thursday, the US Department of Energy, or DOE, announced efforts to expand the network of community solar projects across the nation and increase access to renewable clean energy for more people, including renters, as part of the Biden administration's Investing in America agenda.

This post contains spoilers for season 1 of "Perry Mason"

For a long time, John Lithgow had a rule about not doing episodic TV. Before he accepted what is arguably his most memorable role to date — Dick Solomon in "3rd Rock from the Sun" — the two-time Oscar nominee was committed to film and stage work. But since he found major success with his '90s sitcom he's been showing up in all manner of projects, and in the age of prestige TV, Lithgow is cropping up all over the small screen. From "Dexter" to "The Crown," the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art grad has now fully embraced TV, and for a brief moment, blessed the grim, pulpy first season of HBO's "Perry Mason."

Playing lawyer and mentor to Matthew Rhys' Mason, Elias Birchard "E.B." Jonathan, Lithgow only lasts four episodes before his character dies by suicide. But in those four episodes, the actor was given a lot to work with, playing a man who suddenly finds himself at the tail end of a successful career and not quite ready to leave his wonder years behind. E.B. is the man tasked with defending Emily Dodson, the woman accused of conspiracy leading to the kidnapping and death of her infant son — I told you it was grim. But as the pressure mounts, he is threatened by the Los Angeles district attorney with false claims of larceny and facing disbarment, and having lost funding for Emily's defense, urges his defendant to fight her case in court, before ending his own life.

In other words, E.B. Jonathan was a man with a lot on his mind, and for John Lithgow, not only did that provide with him with a compelling character to try to deconstruct, but it also provided a way of empathizing with him.

'The Fear And Panic Of Growing Old'

Throughout his career, John Lithgow has consistently taken unpredictable roles, to the point that it's become somewhat of a calling card. From starring in "3rd Rock," replacing Christopher Walken as the maniac villain in, "Cliffhanger," portraying Winston Churchill in "The Crown" and his numerous roles in Shakespeare productions, Lithgow has never pigeonholed himself. And, in the late stages of his career, his four episode-run in "Perry Mason" allowed him to articulate many of his own thoughts and fears about his particular place in life.

In an interview with Mumtaj Begum, the 77-year-old reflected on his recent roles being "old men" and how that's forced him to explore, "variations on age and the fear of age and the fear of growing old and losing your viability." But whereas you might think an actor with such a diverse career would find that kind of thing limiting, he actually finds it to be the opposite, saying his, "career is more interesting now than it's ever been." He added:

"E.B Jonathan is a man who used to be on top of the world. He used to have all these connections, he used to win cases, he used to get people off, and he hasn't for years. He desperately needs this [Dodson] case and when it turns into a big case he feels like he's landed a big one. And then when it starts going wrong, and when he realizes he can't even get the simplest thing for his clients, his despair and his panic is another fascinating thing to play. It's just it's very, very rich [...] it's the very, very high emotions of the fear and panic of growing old. Unfortunately, I'm beginning to have access to that fear myself, so why not put it to good use."

Lithgow Isn't Slowing Down

E.B. Jonathan is a tragic character, unable to reconcile his own opinion of himself as a perfectly capable lawyer with the unwelcome fact that he's clearly overwhelmed by his latest case. That's a great tension for any actor to play, but to see someone like Lithgow portray it is one of the best parts of "Perry Mason" season 1. For the few episodes that Lithgow is around, he plays E.B.'s internal struggle as believably and sensitively as you would expect from an actor of his caliber and experience.

That said, it's odd to hear that the actor found such a personal connection to his "Perry Mason" character, only in the sense that there's absolutely nothing to suggest that Lithgow is past his prime. The man is on an unprecedented run, coming off "The Crown" and going straight into "Perry Mason" before taking a starring role opposite Jeff Bridges in Fox's "The Old Man." As the actor told GQ recently, "You get to be my age and you finally get to work with a lot of people you've been waiting to work with for a long, long time. And the payoff is simply wonderful. And in this past year, it's been Jeff [Bridges] and De Niro and DiCaprio and Julianne Moore." Hardly someone who's struggling in his career.

Still, playing a character who's reflecting on a long and successful career clearly had major parallels with Lithgow. Thankfully, he's keeping a lot busier than E.B. Jonathan and shows no signs of being overwhelmed by it any time soon.

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The post John Lithgow Has a Very Personal Connection to His Perry Mason Character appeared first on /Film.