Netflix has shared the first trailer for Shadow and Bone, its live-action adaptation of Leigh Bardugo’s best-selling fantasy novel series. The clip introduces us to protagonist Alina Starkov, played here by Jessie Mei Li, as she sets off on a journey...
Character themes do a lot of heavy lifting, whether it's Danny Elfman's dark Batman theme, the mournful Binary Sunset from Star Wars, or a classic sitcom intro, they tell us a lot about a character in just a few seconds. One of the best and funniest character tracks, which debuted in WandaVision Episode 7 last week, is now available on Spotify.
Spoilers follow for WandaVision Episode 7.
While Wanda's emotional arc is certainly about her coping with the death of her robot boyfriend, Vision, there's more going on behind the scenes. It turns out that one Agatha Harkness has been pulling strings behind the scenes all along.
Disney+ has officially revealed a May 4 premiere date for Star Wars: The Bad Batch, an all-new animated series from Lucasfilm.
During the Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour on Wednesday, Disney+ paneled some of its upcoming series and officially announced the release date for Star Wars: The Bad Batch. The Clone Wars spinoff series will debut on the streaming service on May 4, also known as Star Wars Day, a recurring holiday that celebrates the long-spanning intergalactic franchise.
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Star Wars: The Bad Batch follows the elite and experimental clones of the Bad Batch as they find their way through a rapidly changing galaxy in the immediate aftermath of the Clone Wars. Members of Bad Batch — a unique squad of clones who vary genetically from their brothers in the Clone Army — each possess a singular exceptional skill that makes them extraordinarily effective soldiers and a formidable crew.
The troopers, formally known as the Clone Force 99 squad, were first introduced in the opening storyline of The Clone Wars: Season 7. Acting as both a sequel and a spinoff to the beloved CG-animated series, The Bad Batch series will pick up shortly after the end of the war, exploring the team's new existence as mercenaries and their struggle to find a purpose.
The upcoming series is helmed by a number of Star Wars veterans, including executive producers Dave Filoni, Athena Portillo, Brad Rau, and Jennifer Corbett, together with co-executive producer Carrie Beck and producer Josh Rimes. Rau is also credited as the supervising director of the series, while Corbett is head writer. Both previously worked on Star Wars Resistance together.
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The Bad Batch is just the latest Star Wars series to be slotted into the Disney+ schedule, following two seasons of The Mandalorian. Fans can also look forward to a Rogue One prequel series focused on Diego Luna's Cassian Andor, an Obi-Wan Kenobi series starring Ewan McGregor, and a mysterious female-led series from Russian Doll's Leslye Headland.
For even more from the galaxy far, far away, read our roundup of Star Wars TV shows, video games, comics, and everything else coming out of the franchise this year.
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Adele Ankers is a Freelance Entertainment Journalist. You can reach her on Twitter.
Disney+ has officially revealed the premiere date for Marvel's upcoming Loki series starring Tom Hiddleston – and it's been pushed back from May to June 11.
During the Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour on Wednesday, Disney+ paneled some of its upcoming series and presented a Q&A with Marvel Studios President and Chief Creative Officer Kevin Feige. At the event, the streaming service unveiled the release date for Marvel's Loki, scheduling the series for a Disney+ premiere on June 11, 2021 — which is slightly later than the May release window that was announced at Disney's annual Investor Day event last year.
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Loki features the God of Mischief as he steps out of his brother's shadow in a new series that takes place after the events of 2012's Avengers: Endgame. Hiddleston is returning as the title character, joined by Owen Wilson, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Sophia Di Martino, Wunmi Mosaku, and Richard E. Grant. Kate Herron is the series' director, and Michael Waldron is the head writer.
Herron previously revealed that Loki would be going to "an entirely new part of the MCU," as the mischievous character is expected to pop up at various points throughout human history, influencing historical events. The series is said to tie into the events of Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, which is currently penciled in for a release on March 25, 2022.
Very few details are known about Loki's connection to the MCU movie, but we do know that the Doctor Strange sequel is also going to tie into the events of Spider-Man 3 and WandaVision. Elizabeth Olsen's Wanda Maximoff will appear alongside Benedict Cumberbatch's Steven Strange, and Feige has teased that the Multiverse will be a running theme throughout Phase Four and beyond.
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If you would like to know more about Marvel's future slate of projects and releases, check out our roundup of the biggest and most noteworthy developments in the MCU, on Disney+, and in comics this year. For more about Loki specifically, watch the first trailer for the MCU series and then have a read through our Time Variance Authority explainer and full trailer breakdown.
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Adele Ankers is a Freelance Entertainment Journalist. You can reach her on Twitter.
After a series of teases from the film's cast, including Tom Holland, Jacob Batalon, and Zendaya, Spider-Man director Jon Watts kind of set the record straight and revealed the new Spidey sequel will be titled Spider-Man: No Way Home.
The stars of the film revealed the title in a new video, as the stars discussed the fake titles they received and whether they can be trusted with these Marvel secrets after leaving Watts' office.
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Just yesterday, the three main stars jokingly each revealed separate names for the film, including Phone Home, Home-Wrecker, and Home Slice. The video above teases out some of the many, many considered names, all involving the word home to follow in the footsteps of Homecoming and Far From Home, before the team settled on No Way Home.
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Spider-Man 3 is scheduled is currently set for a December 17, 2021 release date, and although there have been reports that Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield would be returning for this new film,Tom Holland denied those rumors, having said he's read the whole script and that it would be a big secret to keep from Spider-Man himself.
For more on Spider-Man 3, check out Holland's comments on how this film will be the "most ambitious standalone superhero movie ever made" and all the details on Doctor Strange's appearance in the sequel to Far From Home.
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Marvel also revealed this week that the Disney+ series Loki is set for a June release, following after the soon-to-be-wrapped WandaVision and Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which will begin airing in March.
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Jonathon Dornbush is IGN's Senior News Editor, host of Podcast Beyond!, and PlayStation lead. Talk to him on Twitter @jmdornbush.
Netflix has announced The Irregulars, a new series "that follows a gang of troubled street teens who are manipulated into solving crimes" for Dr. Watson and Sherlock Holmes. The eight-part drama is slated to hit the streaming service on March 26. Check out the first official teaser for the series below.
The verb "manipulated" in that synopsis above is intriguing, as it suggests some reimagining of both the characters of Holmes and Watson (or at least just Watson). However, it's hard to glean any insight into what's going on with Watson and his perhaps devious intentions. What instead is clear is these "misfit" kids collaborate with the famous detective duo on investigating "crimes [that] take on a horrifying supernatural edge." The Irregulars is based on the Baker Street Irregulars gang from the original books by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Animal cloning might just become a valuable tool in preserving species that might otherwise go extinct. BBC News says US Fish and Wildlife Service has successfully cloned a black-footed ferret — the first genetic copy of a North American endangered s...
Twitch is more than a little jittery about copyright, and that's having an effect even for events where you'd think it would be safe. Metal Injection and Variety report that Twitch abruptly cut off and dubbed over Metallica's BlizzCon 202...
Stan Lee is arguably the most famous figure in the history of comics. That’s not to say his long career was free from controversy. For decades, he was dogged by allegations that he took too much credit for work he created with others, and shared too little of the spotlight. For most of his long life, however, Lee’s superpower was the ability to avoid taking too many hits to his reputation. That will likely change with the release of the new book, True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee, by Abraham Riesman. It offers an illuminating and often harsh look at the life of this American icon, who died in 2018 at age 95, and calls into question many of the key elements of his legacy.
Seasoned comics fans are familiar with the long controversy over rightfully assigned credit for the creation of the characters that launched the Marvel Age. As the face of Marvel since the 1960s, Lee has received the bulk of that credit, due to a combination of lazy journalism and his own significant self-promotional skills. There’s no denying Lee’s acumen for public relations. In many ways, his affability was an essential ingredient to Marvel’s success. His talent too was undeniable. His witty, inventive dialogue gave the Marvel line (he scripted most of the comics in the early days) a unique voice that made the books stand apart. That personable touch also helped him establish a connection with Marvel readers through casually charming letters columns and, later, his Bullpen Bulletins. Lee was also largely responsible for the then-novel idea of an inter-connected comics universe -- the continuity that allowed Spider-Man to appear in the pages of the Avengers or the Fantastic Four.
“He made [comics] hip. He made it something that the Village Voice would do a piece about or Rolling Stone would have a cover story about,” Riesman tells IGN. “And that's enormously important for the history of comics.”
With Great Power
But his knack for making himself the center of every story written about Marvel came at the expense of co-creators such as Steve Ditko and especially Jack Kirby. Lee constantly shortchanged his creative partners and in many ways helped create the impression the Marvel Age was a virtual one-man operation. True Believer establishes a consistent pattern of wildly inconsistent explanations in Lee’s stories over the years regarding how the company’s stable of heroes, from Spider-Man to Thor, were actually invented.
No matter where you stand on the issue of “Who did what?” at Marvel -- and the Marvel Method of comics creation makes it hard to find the definitive answer -- it’s hard to defend Lee’s refusal for decades to give proper due to the artists who helped him create countless characters.
Even the origin of the most famous phrase in Lee’s career -- and perhaps in the Marvel canon -- is called into question in Riesman’s book. “With great power there must also come -- great responsibility!” is the defining tenet in Peter Parker’s life, immortalized at the end of the character’s origin story in Amazing Fantasy #15. Since its publication in 1962, it’s been taken at face value that Lee coined the phrase. But Riesman cites examples that include a 1906 quote from a young Winston Churchill as well as a speech by Franklin Delano Roosevelt that contain very similar versions of Spidey’s signature message. Could Lee have simply come up with that phrase on his own? Could he have been influenced subconsciously by something he had read years earlier? Perhaps. But Lee’s track record for misrepresenting the truth and claiming unearned credit practically demanded a closer look.
“That [phrase] was a minor point. I didn't want to hammer that too much, but it is something where you just have to go… there might've been antecedents to this and that's not a crime,” Riesman says. “It's fine. But we have this [idea] that that quotation emerged like Athena from the head of Zeus; this brilliant observation [by Stan] that no one else had ever made before.”
Despite all the accolades and notoriety that Marvel’s breakout success had brought him, by the mid-1970s Lee was desperate to leave comics behind. He moved out to California to reinvent himself as a producer. Most books written about Lee spend little time covering this era from the late ’70s to the late ’90s, and yet it was a time that saw some of his most humbling failures and painful losses. True Believer spends significant time detailing this time period, showing how his attempts to get Hollywood to see the value in Marvel’s library mostly flopped. Lee could get a meeting with executives who grew up reading comics with “Stan Lee Presents” at the top of the page-one splash. But the industry didn’t take him all that seriously as a producer, even when his ideas had potential.
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TV animation executive Margaret Loesch, who ran Marvel Productions in the 1980s, recalls going to a meeting with Lee to pitch a television network on adapting a bizarre Japanese program. According to Loesch, the meeting was a disaster. Years later, Saban Entertainment would turn that Japanese show, Super Sentai, into the global sensation The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.
“Stan had ideas in that period that would later come to fruition,” Riesman says. “The other classic one being Ant-Man. He really thought an Ant-Man TV show or movie would be a hit. And everybody laughed him out of the room. But in 2015 you got an Ant-Man movie that makes half a billion dollars. So they weren't all terrible ideas, but a lot of them just didn't go anywhere.”
Family Matters
For Riesman, providing fresh insight on his subject was an inherent challenge when writing about someone who was as famous for as long as Lee was. The author took a deep dive into Lee’s family history, going all the way back to its roots in Eastern Romania. His parents arrived in New York City around the start of the 20th century, and like many of the creators from comics’ Golden Age, Lee was Jewish. However, unlike Jack Kirby, Will Eisner, or Joe Kubert, Lee rarely made mention of his faith or made allusions to it in his work. Through his research, Riesman discovered a man frustrated with his family and, in particular, with his father.
“Stan very rarely talked about his father, but on the occasions when he did, he would say that his father didn't think much of him,” he says. “And I would imagine that a lot of his desire to get away from Jewishness had to do with his desire to get away from his family.”
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Lee’s ambition and desire to leave the life he was born into would become a driving force for much of his adult life. “He wanted to be bigger than the average human,” Riesman continues. “And sometimes that, in your mind, can lead you to think, ‘Well, I have to leave behind the people who started it out for me.’”
Larry Lieber is interviewed for the book, and his strangely distant relationship with his more renowned older brother is one of the saddest and most bewildering aspects of Lee’s long life. Lieber, who spent years working at Marvel and co-created such characters as Thor, Ant-Man, and Iron Man, and even drew for decades the Amazing Spider-Man newspaper strip that Lee wrote, is unable to offer any explanation as to why his brother kept him at arm’s length for much of their adult lives. It was as if Lee was trying to leave any aspect of Stanley Lieber (Stan’s birth name) in his past, including his only sibling.
“Stan never said, ‘Hey, check out my brother, Larry Lieber. He's great,’” Riesman says. “It just didn't come up. He didn't refer to him as his brother in any kind of proactive way. And Larry will be the first to tell you that he and Stan had a very strained relationship. Stan didn't really want [or] have anything to do with him.”
Lieber mentions how hurt he was one year when Lee had come to Manhattan to appear at New York Comic Con and hadn’t even bothered to let his brother know. He also tells the author that his older brother never once told him he loved him. “He and Larry just didn't really have much of a relationship,” Riesman says. “There wasn't some incident that happened as far as I know that caused [the rift]. It was just for whatever reason. Maybe it had to do with [Stan’s wife] Joan or there's any number of motivations that might've been there, but it's somewhat sad to read about.”
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While Stan and Joan’s long marriage may have seemed to be perfect, in truth the Lee family was constantly in turmoil. According to people interviewed for the book, a good amount of that stress could be traced to Stan and Joan’s volatile and hard-spending daughter, JC. Money would be a constant concern for Lee up until his final days, which is remarkable considering he had earned millions during his career. Lee also remained vexed by the fact that no matter what he tried or what deal he made, he could never come close to replicating any of the success he had making comics at Marvel in the 1960s. That desperation to rediscover lightning in a bottle would seem to explain much of Lee’s late-career decision-making.
There Are No Superheroes
The book makes mention of many of Lee’s high-profile flops… the Mighty 7, The Governator (with then-California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger), a concert series, and even, incredibly, a Stan Lee cologne. We also get new details of his most devastating failure, the dotcom foray Stan Lee Media. If there’s one thing we learn from all these misfires, it’s that Lee was a terrible judge of character and was an easy mark for con men. He was constantly surrounded by people who viewed him as a cash cow. They would attach him to all kinds of half-baked projects to trade on the Stan Lee name, and use his still-strong media appeal for quick publicity. Reading the book, the clear and sad conclusion one comes to is that, without the cameos in the MCU films that introduced him to an entirely new generation of fans, Lee’s final couple of decades of life would have been marked largely by failure and endless appearances at comic conventions.
“Once you start really pulling at those threads and talking to the players, Stan's final years become a horror show and no one would deny that. There was so much abuse,” Riesman says, referencing the elder abuse allegations that arose after Joan’s death in 2017. “There was so much grifting and theft, and whatever you think of Stan’s flaws or mistakes or failings, nobody deserves to be 95 and be abused. It was a really sad ending to that story.”
One of the most notorious people in Stan’s latter-day orbit was Keya Morgan, his former business manager who was arrested in 2019 on charges of elder abuse. (Morgan would plead not guilty.) Morgan was interviewed for the book, and subsequently played for Riesman some disturbing recordings he had made that, as recounted in the book, capture Lee making offensive remarks.
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“On a number of occasions, I heard Stan making racist, homophobic, and misogynist remarks either to or in discussion of JC,” Riesman writes in the book of the recordings. “‘I think you’re the dumbest white woman I’ve ever known!’ [Lee] screams at her in one (to which she replies, ‘Fuck you, Stan’). In another, Stan talks to Morgan about JC and says she’s ‘supposed to be an attractive lady,’ but instead she’s ‘like the worst lesbian you can imagine.’ At one point, JC tells Stan she’s going to adopt an African American baby (something that others in the inner circle say became a brief obsession for her), and Stan grunts back at her, ‘The hell you want a black baby for?’”
Riesman also notes that the files Morgan played for him were edited together and that “the recordings contain no context.” Even though he says he was never the type of fan who held Lee in the reverence that many others did, the author admits listening to those recordings was incredibly disappointing. “Once you start hearing someone who's this beloved, a charming icon who is known as this great booster of liberal causes and fighting racism and all of that,” he says, “And you hear recordings of him saying racist and homophobic comments, you go, ‘Well, there are no superheroes.’ That's the message of this book. If there's nothing else, it’s there are no superheroes, there are only humans.”
There will be some who question the need to put Lee’s career under a microscope and to reopen decades-old arguments about who truly deserves credit for the Marvel heroes. Some will question whether the story of Lee’s life needed to include such revelations as those disturbing audio recordings. Riesman argues that Lee’s own contribution to elevating comics as an art form demands to be examined.
“I mean if you're a young person and you're going to all these MCU movies and seeing all the [Stan] cameos, and you read on the internet that Stan Lee's the guy who came up with all these ideas; he's the Steve Jobs of Marvel,” he says. “Because his account of events has been taken as gospel for decades upon decades. And he lied about a lot or distorted or said things that are dubious.
“I'm not saying Stan was the most evil guy in the world. I'm saying he's like you or me. We all make compromises. We all smooth out the truth. We all think we can get away with things. It’s sad on some level but I also think it’s very healthy to have that splash of cold water on your face.”
Vice is reporting on a new police hack: playing copyrighted music when being filmed by citizens, trying to provoke social media sites into taking the videos down and maybe even banning the filmers:
In a separate part of the video, which Devermont says was filmed later that same afternoon, Devermont approaches [BHPD Sgt. Billy] Fair outside. The interaction plays out almost exactly like it did in the department — when Devermont starts asking questions, Fair turns on the music.
Devermont backs away, and asks him to stop playing music. Fair says “I can’t hear you” — again, despite holding a phone that is blasting tunes.
Later, Fair starts berating Devermont’s livestreaming account, saying “I read the comments [on your account], they talk about how fake you are.” He then holds out his phone, which is still on full blast, and walks toward Devermont, saying “Listen to the music”.
In a statement emailed to VICE News, Beverly Hills PD said that “the playing of music while accepting a complaint or answering questions is not a procedure that has been recommended by Beverly Hills Police command staff,” and that the videos of Fair were “currently under review.”
However, this is not the first time that a Beverly Hills police officer has done this, nor is Fair the only one.
In an archived clip from a livestream shared privately to VICE Media that Devermont has not publicly reposted but he says was taken weeks ago, another officer can be seen quickly swiping through his phone as Devermont approaches. By the time Devermont is close enough to speak to him, the officer’s phone is already blasting “In My Life” by the Beatles — a group whose rightsholders have notoriously sued Apple numerous times. If you want to get someone in trouble for copyright infringement, the Beatles are quite possibly your best bet.
As Devermont asks about the music, the officer points the phone at him, asking, “Do you like it?”
Clever, really, and an illustration of the problem with context-free copyright enforcement.
This week's episode of WandaVision was by far the creepiest of the series, with no shortage of majorly uncanny moments to show the sitcom structure beginning to fray at the edges. And the artifice of the whole thing isn't the only thing fraying--Wanda's mental state does not seem to be improving. And on top of their reality literally starting to feel like a poorly rehearsed play, Wanda and Vision are also struggling to keep up with their new twin sons who are displaying some disconcerting abilities of their own.
Meanwhile, outside the Westview anomaly, SWORD and their contracted experts Jimmy Woo and Darcy Lewis are doing their best to figure out the best way to breach the bubble and rescue the civilians trapped inside--but there are some major differences of opinion among the ranks when the question of how Wanda should be handled comes up.
We’ve seen plenty of developments in wireless charging over the last couple of years. The OnePlus 8T could offer 65W wireless replenishment, while Apple’s proprietary MagSafe tech has a ton of potential.
However, as good as these solutions are becoming, they still have one major drawback; they require your phone to be connected to a surface to do the job. Xiaomi wants to change all that with a truly wireless charging solution.
In a blog post, the company has introduced the Mi Air Charge technology, a future-thinking concept which it says will remotely charge devices from elsewhere in the room.
The new tech uses a base station containing 144 antennas, which can transfer energy to the phone using a “extremely narrow millimetre-wide beam” capable of transmitting continuous 5W charging (within a few metres) to a compatible smartphone.
Xiaomi says the system will eventually support multiple devices including smartphones and speakers – even smartwatches while you’re wearing them. You’ll also be able to charge on the move, when gaming, or even when there’s objects impeding the direct line of sight.
Xiaomi explains: “The core technology of Xiaomi’s remote charging lies in space positioning and energy transmission. Xiaomi’s self-developed isolated charging pile has five phase interference antennas built in, which can accurately detect the location of the smartphone. A phase control array composed of 144 antennas transmits millimeter-wide waves directly to the phone through beamforming.”
The company goes onto say: “Soon our living room devices, including speakers, desk lamps and other small smart home products, will all be built upon a wireless power supply design, completely free of wires, making our living rooms truly wireless.”
Xiaomi says the concept is based on technology rather than science fiction, but there’s no indication of when the tech might by introduced as a consumer product. We’re not too sure about a device with 144 antennas in our living rooms at all times, from a safety perspective, but we’ll reserve judgement until Xiaomi unveils the product in full.
Billionaire Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has responded to the conspiracy theories about him involving COVID-19, saying in a new interview that such theories are "crazy" and "evil."
Speaking to Reuters, Gates said the wild conspiracies about himself and US infectious disease leader Anthony Fauci have been driven in part by social media. He wondered if people actually believe the wild accusations or if they're just trying to have fun and get a rise.
"Nobody would have predicted that I and Dr. Fauci would be so prominent in these really evil theories," he said. "I'm very surprised by that. I hope it goes away."
Netflix has confirmed that Lupin, starring Omar Sy, will be returning to the streaming platform this summer for Part 2.
Alongside a new poster for the French mystery thriller series, the streaming giant announced that Lupin would be making its return in Summer 2021, with a five-episode second part. The show consists of ten episodes altogether, five of which have already been released on the platform, packaged as "Part 1" of the series, on January 8, 2021. An exact premiere date for Part 2 has not been provided as of yet.
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Created by George Kay in collaboration with François Uzan, the story takes inspiration from the adventures of Arsène Lupin, the early 20th-century French literary character created by Maurice Leblanc. The series follows the exploits of Assane Diop (Omar Sy), a gentleman thief and master of disguise, who sets out on a mission to avenge his father for an injustice inflicted by a wealthy family.
Sy will slink back onto our screens as the show's protagonist for the now-scheduled second part of the series, which will also feature Hervé Pierre's Hubert Pellegrini, Nicole Garcia's Madame Anne Pellegrini, Clotilde Hesme's Juliette Pellegrini, Ludivine Sagnier's Claire, Antoine Gouy's Benjamin Ferel, Shirine Boutella's Lieutenant Sofia Belkacem, and Soufiane Guerrab's Youssef Guedira.
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Louis Leterrier and Marcela Said helmed the first part of the series, which quickly became a worldwide phenomenon after appearing in the Number 1 spot in Netflix's Top 10 in more than ten countries, but they will not be returning for Part 2 of Lupin. Instead, Ludovic Bernard will be taking over the director's chair for episodes 6 and 7, whilst Hugo Gélin takes the reins on episodes 8, 9, and 10.
In our review of Lupin: Part 1, we commended the show for managing "to have fun even with an antiquated premise while adding just enough new spin on the concept to feel refreshing," resulting in "a slick, cleverly-plotted twist on a classic character" who carried an "alluring presence," which ultimately made "Assane Diop feel like a worthy successor to Arsène Lupin."
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Adele Ankers is a Freelance Entertainment Journalist. You can reach her on Twitter.
Europe is slowly reducing its dependancy on fossil fuels. A report co-published by Ember and Agora Energiewende, two think tanks focused on clean energy, has revealed that the continent generated more electricity from renewables than fossil fuels in...
Amazon's sublime period dramedy The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel has reportedly begun production on Season 4 in New York. According to Deadline, production began on Wednesday, with the entire series cast returning--and everyone following COVID safety protocols. Series star Rachel Brosnahan recently posted a peek at her costume for the upcoming season on Instagram, wearing a dress, big floppy hat, and a COVID mask. No release date for this season has yet been announced.
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel began in 2017 and is the story of Miriam "Midge" Maisel's quest to push against gender norms of the 1950s to become a stand-up comedian. This act of following her heart precipitates a divorce and further inspires those around her--especially her family and in-laws--to question if they're living the lives they really want to.
There's a new President of the United States and it's got us thinking about the long line of fictional presidents we've seen over the years, whether it's in our favorite movies, TV shows, or video games. After all, the role of president has popped up in so many stories over the years, that some actors have even played more than one version of the leader.
Whether you prefer the more comedic presidents, the stoic ones that stand up for all that is good and right, or even the ones that are--at their core--badass action heroes, there's a POTUS for everyone. So come along as we look at our 15 favorite commanders in chief, including a couple that might surprise you.
Did your favorite fictional president not make the cut? Sound off in the comments and let us know who we missed. Then, let's all go watch Air Force One together.
1. President James Marshall (Air Force One)
Played by: Harrison Ford
We're listing him first because there's no way this list could exist without him. Harrison Ford's James Marshall made the resident of the United States an action hero that beat up hijackers on his own airplane in one of the best and most ridiculous movies of all time. Who hasn't looked at themselves in a mirror and grumbled, "Get off my plane!" just like Ford did to the terrorist played by Gary Oldman?
2. President Josiah "Jed" Bartlet (The West Wing)
Played by: Martin Sheen
The two-term presidency of Jed Bartlet sits at the heart of Aaron Sorkin's The West Wing, which is surprising given Sheen was originally only signed to appear in four episodes of the series. Like many of the best portrayals, Bartlet was strong in his beliefs and stood up for what he believed was right. He wasn't perfect, though, which brought a nice dose of humanity to the role.
3. President Thomas J. Whitmore (Independence Day)
Played by: Bill Pullman
Who could ever forget President Whitmore's iconic speech in Independence Day? He's the kind of president you'd hope to have when aliens invade the planet. Not only can he lead people, but he also happens to be an accomplished fighter pilot ready to suit up in a flight suit and jump back into action.
4. President David Palmer (24)
Played by: Dennis Haysbert
President Palmer was, for all intents and purposes, the conscience of 24 in its first couple of seasons. In a world of double agents, traitors, and the untrustworthy, he served as an example of truth and honesty, of sticking to your beliefs, and of standing tall in the face of adversity. And when he, himself, compromises his integrity, he steps away from office without seeking reelection. It's hard to want much more from a president.
5. President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho (Idiocracy)
Played by: Terry Crews
While he may not have figured out that water from the toilet makes plants grow, he was a man who was open to reason. Sure, he was impatient and decided to rehabilitate Not Sure before realizing it takes time for plants to sprout, but President Camacho was a man of passion who wanted the best for his nation. Terry Crews made this role his own, scro, as he cracked open beers with one hand, fired automatic rifles into the air, and whisked his fingers through his glorious hair. More than anything, Camacho inspired hope, even if he's the dumbest President of all time.
6. President Benjamin Asher (Olympus Has Fallen & London has Fallen)
Played by: Aaron Eckhart
This might be a surprising addition to the list, but what's not to love about President Asher, the guy Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) was constantly trying to save in the first two Has Fallen movies? Somehow, regardless of what happened, Asher always seemed surprised something much terrible was happening. It's as if he never quite figured out all of the bad guys wanted to take him out. Even still he never relented and proved himself to be a great friend to Banning, as the two ultimately save each other.
7. President Allan Trumbull (Angel Has Fallen)
Played by: Morgan Freeman
You can't talk about Asher without talking about his vice president-turned-successor Allan Trumbull. Trumbull was a constant presence as VO in the first two films, before becoming president in Angel Has Fallen. He was always portrayed as a smart and caring man who wouldn't bow down to pressure--whether from inside the government or outside forces. What's more, it's Morgan Freeman in the role. He did seem a little too giddy about that drone strike at the end of London Has Fallen, though.
8. President Andrew Shepherd (The American President)
Played by: Michael Douglas
A presidential rom-com? You might be surprised to learn this movie has one of the best portrayals of a president. After losing his wife, Shepherd loses himself as he seeks reelection. As he gets his life priorities in order, though, he makes some very important changes for the country, attempting to reform climate and weapons laws, while also managing to find love again. That's quite a bit to get done for a president.
9. President Lindberg (The Fifth Element)
Played by: Tom Lister Jr.
We don't get a ton of insight into Lindberg in the movie, but the late Tim Lister Jr.'s portrayal of the president in the Fifth Element is fun to watch. In the midst of how over-the-top that movie is, he remains incredibly calm as he's doling out instructions to his military personnel. It's a very different energy from when he wrestled as Zeus in WWE.
10. President Laura Roslin (Battlestar Galactica)
Played by: Mary McDonnell
Out of everyone else on this list, Laura Roslin was put in the worst situation. The planet had been destroyed and the 43rd in line for the office as the President, as the Secretary of Education, she had to fill the role of the new leader of humanity. Battling breast cancer as this is going on, she clashed with Commander Adama on many policies. But humanity is contained on a fleet of ships with secret cyborgs living among the people. This was a new era, and it's hard to know who to trust, especially when you're a former school teacher who was thrust into this leadership position. But Roslin sure did her best.
11. President Mays Gilliam (Head of State)
Played by: Chris Rock
While the movie Head of State is all about a young alderman being hand-selected by a political party to lose the Presidential election to the sitting Vice President, Mays Gilliam does the unthinkable by actually winning--at the end of the movie (spoiler!). Head of State is a comedy and spends a lot of time making fun of the two-party system in America, along with the election news cycle, but the heart of the film lies within Gilliam, a true man of the people, who will stand up for them at whatever cost. Wouldn't it be great if someone who knew what it was like to have a working-class job and struggle to make ends meet have power in Washington? Also, this movie has a lot of Nate Dogg (RIP), which we still appreciate to this day.
12. President Charlene "Charlie" Roan (The Purge: Election Year)
Played by: Elizabeth Mitchell
This one feels like a cheat due to her spending most of the movie as a presidential candidate, rather than an actual president. However, Charlie was the president the world of The Purge needed. Her anti-Purge platform took her to the nation's highest office and, most importantly, it seems to have worked. There's yet to be a sequel to Election Year. Instead, we have a prequel (The First Purge) and whatever Purge 5 is going to be. What's more, she survived a Purge night where seemingly she was everyone's target.
13. President Selina Meyer (Veep)
Played by: Julie Louis-Dreyfus
Obviously, Meyer is best known as the Veep in Veep. She ascended to the president on the series twice, though. Granted, they were both rough terms for her, but what else would you expect from a political satire? We're not saying we necessarily want Selina as the president, watching her do it is pretty entertaining, though.
14. President Howard T. Ackerman (Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3)
Played by: JK Simmons
This one's pretty simple. Who doesn't want JK Simmons delivering presidential speeches like this? His role as President Ackerman in Red Alert 3 is pretty perfect and, honestly, more video games should cast him in that part.
(Welcome to The Quarantine Stream, a new series where the /Film team shares what they’ve been watching while social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic.)
The Series: Lupin
Where You Can Stream It: Netflix
The Pitch: Assane Diop (Omar Sy) is a dashing thief who is inspired to take on a life of crime by the exploits of fictional gentleman thief Arsène Lupin, and by the arrest and suicide of his wrongfully convicted father after he was framed for the theft of a precious necklace. When the necklace resurfaces 25 years later, Assane vows to prove his father’s innocence and to find the people responsible for his death.
Why It’s Essential Viewing: You may have noticed an odd French series taking one of the top 10 spots on Netflix last weekend — the first French-language series earn one of those spots in the U.S. You might have thought, what’s the deal with Lupin? Is it that good? Well, I’m here to tell you: it is.
Lupin has a bit of a confused legacy in pop culture. First there’s Arsène Lupin, the gentleman thief created by French novelist Maurice Leblanc in 1905, who starred in a series of novels that would go on to inspire several crime films through the 1940s. Then there’s Lupin the III, the character created by manga author Monkey Punch in 1967 which would introduce a new master thief descended from the first one (he’s Arsène Lupin’s grandson), and would become a Japanese icon through various anime series and, most famously, the star of Hayao Miyazaki’s directorial debut.
And now we have Assane Diop, played with dazzling wit and charisma by Omar Sy (finally well-served by a role after his breakout turn in The Intouchables), a character who isn’t really related to Arsène Lupin at all. Instead, in a clever meta-fictional twist that allows Lupin to bring the gentleman thief into the modern age, he’s only inspired by Lupin, basing some of his best heists and gotchas off the fictional exploits of the literary character. But all that backstory isn’t necessary to enjoy Lupin (I certainly came into it from a weird direction, having only heard of Arsène Lupin through Miyazaki’s Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro).
The first episode, directed by The Transporter filmmaker Louis Leterrier, drops you right in the middle of the action, as Assane is readying to steal a priceless necklace from the Louvre, with the help of an unwitting team of low-level criminals. In flashbacks, we learn that Assane was the son of a Senegalese immigrant who worked as a valet for the Pellegrinis, a wealthy family that owned the necklace before it disappeared and Assane’s father was imprisoned for its theft — but not before he left Assane with a copy of Arsène Lupin. Now the necklace is back in the public eye, and Assane, who has based his life around emulating the exploits of the gentleman thief, wants answers about his father’s unjust conviction. Each episode brings us a little closer to the answer, with a new frothy, absurd adventure taking center stage in each hour of the five-part series.
You know the big third-act reveal of every Ocean’s Eleven movie that leaves your jaw on the floor and your mind trying to figure out “how did they do that?!” Well, they manage to do that with every episode of Lupin, ending with a tantalizing tease of how Assane is getting one step closer to his revenge. And with the added element of Assane’s immigrant background, it makes Lupin far deeper and more interesting than a typical heist story.
Lupin is a nimble and delightful charmer of a caper series that will be sure to feed anyone’s craving for a sleek Ocean’s Eleven-style heist, anchored by a electric performance by Sy, who plays the role with a twinkle in his eye and a spring in his step —part Sherlock Holmes intellect, part Idris Elba gravitas. He’s the smartest, most prepared person in the room and you just can’t wait to see how he finds his way out of the next conundrum.
The Boys has never shied away from bloodspatter and gore, but how will it deal with the raunchiest storyline to come out of Gareth Ennis and Darick Robertson’s comics series? By diving into it head-on, with a whole episode titled after the infamous (and pretty self-explanatory) storyline, “Herogasm.”
The Boys showrunner Eric Kripke offered a peek at the script cover for episode 6 of The Boys season 3, titled “Herogasm,” which was written by Jessica Chou.
“From day one, everyone dared me to make this episode,” Kripke wrote on Twitter. “CHALLENGE MET MOTHERFUCKERS.”
What could “Herogasm” refer to? Well, as you expect, it’s the title of the very R-rated, very raunchy comics storyline about a superhero orgy. Specifically, the story arc follows the Boys as they infiltrate Vought’s secret annual party known only as “Herogasm,” where it turns out the Seven — including Homelander and other Vought superheroes — have retreated while under the cover mission of leaving Earth to fight alien threats. The superheroes instead go to an island resort for a weekend filled with sex, drugs, and every kind of debauchery imaginable. Butcher and the Boys naturally follow them in order to gain evidence on the evils of Vought.
The Boys have tested the limits of its TV-MA rating before, but this may break that barrier, considering the images from this comic storyline are too NSFW to even share on a blog post. The storyline is popular, though it’s faced some criticism for being extreme for extreme’s sake, a common criticism of the original comics that Kripke and co. have managed to gracefully avoid in their much more palatable and intelligent (though still deliriously gory) adaptation of the anti-superhero story.
The Boys was created by Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen and Kripke. Season 1 and season 2 are available for streaming on Amazon Prime Video. No premiere date has yet been set for The Boys season 3.
Superheroes are often as popular as celebrities, as influential as politicians, and sometimes even as revered as gods. But that’s when they’re using their powers for good. What happens when the heroes go rogue and start abusing their powers? When it’s the powerless against the super powerful, the Boys head out on a heroic quest to expose the truth about the Seven and Vought, the multibillion-dollar conglomerate that manages the superheroes and covers up their dirty secrets. Based on the comic book series of the same name.
Version 88 of the Google Chrome web browser is out in the wild and is historically significant as the first to arrive without the doomed Adobe Flash plug-in.
Adobe finally announced that Flash, which powered many of the early gaming and video (oh and lots of ads) in the early era of the web, would be shutdown for good on December 31 2020. The software giant also said from January 12, Flash Player would no longer run videos and animations.
The new version of Chrome is the first to reflect that absence, with research suggesting the use of Flash has plummeted to under 2.2% of websites containing any of the plug-in’s code. ZDNet says that figure was 28.5% a decade ago.
Elsewhere, Google has also removed support for FTP URLs in Chrome 88 (for example ftp:// addresses), which have long been used for easy file transfers online. The company says the feature isn’t widely used (probably given the prominence of cloud platforms) and says there’s still plenty of dedicated options if folks want to exchange files in this manner.
“Usage of FTP in the browser is sufficiently low that it is no longer viable to invest in improving the existing FTP client. In addition, more capable FTP clients are available on all affected platforms,” Google writes on its Chrome development site.
Google also says it is blocking mixed, insecure downloads. For example, if you’re trying to download from a https:// secure website, but the download source starts with http:// (insecure), Google won’t allow it.
Also gone is support for Mac OS Yosemite, with OS X 10.11 required with all new versions from now on. There’s better news for Windows 10 users with an improved dark theme that now applies to scroll bars, the settings, new tab page and more.
Chrome 88 can be downloaded now on the usual platforms.
The Marvel drought is over. With no MCU movies released since 2019's Spider-Man: Far From Home, Marvel Studios' cinematic universe has reopened with its first TV show on the Disney+ streaming service. WandaVision picks up some time after Avengers: Endgame and finds the characters of Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) living their lives in a sitcom world, with different episodes highlighting different eras of the genre.
In the three episodes provided for review, the show recreates the feeling of sitcoms from the '50s, '60s, and '70s on the surface, while something more sinister is brewing underneath. WandaVision wants you to relish in these classic eras of TV, while also asking why the characters are there, how it happened, how it connects to the larger Marvel universe, and--most importantly--how long it will be before the characters themselves figure out what is happening.
After redefining what superhero franchises are over the last 12 years, Marvel Studios is stepping into something of a new genre of storytelling with WandaVision. Taking two of the MCU's heroes, who happen to also be locked in a tragic love story, and dropping them into a vintage comedy is a risky move. Thankfully, though, it works like a charm.
We won't achieve herd immunity without vaccines. (Navy Medicine/)
Immunity is a wildly complicated area, but for the past nine months or so it’s been all anyone wants to hear about. Everyone has been hanging their hope on small bits of evidence that immunity to COVID-19 will be robust and long-lasting. Recent evidence has been promising: A study in Science from early January suggests immunity might last at least eight months, and a new study from Public Health England, a government agency that’s part of the UK’s Department of Health, this week suggests at least five months.
These studies do suggest that COVID immunity probably lasts longer than the few months some experts were worried about initially. Though the Public Health England (PHE) study hasn’t been peer-reviewed yet, it’s in line with other findings that show infection with SARS-CoV-2 provides long-term protection from getting sick again. What we don’t know is exactly what kind of protection it offers.
There’s pretty solid evidence at this point that once you get COVID-19, you’re unlikely to get a severe case of it again. Though some people have seemed to get reinfected and be seriously ill, these cases appear to be the rare exception to the rule. And that makes sense given what we know about immunity generally: that your body is quite good at learning what a virus looks like and fending it off in the future. But to stop a pandemic, you also need to reduce transmission and it’s possible to be a carrier for a virus and not get any symptoms or have a widespread infection. In fact, the recent PHE study found that some individuals who had been infected still carried high levels of SARS-CoV-2, which suggests they could still spread the virus to others. Its also currently unknown whether people who have been vaccinated can still carry and transmit the virus to other and just not get sick themselves.
Perhaps the biggest challenge for understanding COVID-19 immunity is that we simply haven’t had much time to study it. The Science study looked over a period of eight months, which means all it can really attest to is whether immunity lasts for eight months. Most of the rest of the research so far has been over even shorter time periods. An October study in the New England Journal of Medicinefound that antibodies for SARS-CoV-2 lasted at least four months without much decline, while another study from November in the journal Immunity found antibodies detectable after five to seven months.
Alessandro Sette, the immunologist who led that research, told PopSci that “we don’t know how long will it last beyond the eight months, but it looks like things are fairly stable, so I would not be surprised if the immune response would last for years.” People infected with SARS, the coronavirus that spread rapidly back in 2002, still have T-cells that recognize that virus some 17 years later. This is all promising news for achieving herd immunity for COVID-19.
But it doesn’t mean that once you’re infected, that you’re home free. In the PHE study, there were still 44 new infections amongst the 6,614 people who had already been infected once. That’s an 83 percent protection rate, which is excellent—it’s just not 100 percent (in fact, immunity is rarely ever 100 percent).. Though drug companies Moderna and Pfizer didn’t robustly study the effects of a single dose of their mRNA-based COVID vaccines, preliminary evidence from their late-stage trials suggests one dose of Moderna’s shot gives an 80 percent efficacy and Pfizer’s, a 52.4 percent efficacy after one shot.
In the Science study, Sette and his colleagues found that some 90 percent of people had a “robust immune response at the six to eight months level.” Again, excellent. Just not 100 percent. To be clear, no immunologists were ever expecting a 100 percent immunity level. But when we talk about “immunity” as a concept, it’s easy to think of it as a binary thing—either you’re immune or you’re not. And that’s not how immunity works.
It may be that infection or a vaccine offers good protection against re-infection and even against infecting others for years at a time. It might also be that we need an annual shot, just like for the flu. We don’t know yet.
For now, even once you’ve been infected or had a vaccine, you’ll need to keep wearing a mask. Someday COVID-19 may become more like a common cold or the flu—something that takes its annual toll, but is so widespread that it doesn’t pose an imminent threat. But we are not there yet. Keep wearing your masks, washing your hands, and keeping your distance. We’re almost out of the woods—let’s make sure we get as many people out alive as possible.
The CS-1 computing system from Cerebras recently demonstrated the capacity to perform certain simulations 200 times more quickly than one of the fastest supercomputers in the world.
In order to show the possible uses for the CS-1, Cerebras’ researchers ran a simulation of combustion in a power plant. The complex equations for fluid dynamics take into account over a million variables, including flow velocity, pressure, and density. The likely performance for the system was 200 times faster than the Joule Supercomputer, which is one of the 100 fastest supercomputers in the world.
"This means the CS-1 for this work is the fastest machine ever built, and it's faster than any combination of clustering of other processors," CEO Andrew Feldman told ZDNet. If you start the CS-1’s simulation at the same time as the reaction begins in the power plant’s core, the simulation will finish first. The results of the simulation, from Cerebras researcher Kamil Rocki and others from the National Energy Technology Laboratory, were published in a paper, which has not undergone peer review. Cerebras presented them at the recent SC20 supercomputing conference.
The CS-1 uses the company’s chip that takes up an entire silicon wafer. Chipmakers like Intel and Nvidia take a block of silicon and cut it into hundreds of chips, each smaller than a postage stamp. The Cerebras wafer-scale engine (WSE) is closer to the width of a piece of paper in diameter, and it’s one big chip. While a recent Nvidia supercomputer chip has 54 billion transistors, the WSE has 1.2 trillion. Transistors are the electronic switches that control electron flow, a bit like the tap on a faucet that determines the amount of water that pours out. The computers are already being used in artificial-intelligence training.
The WSE’s size and design were key in how it performed compared to the Joule supercomputer. In the same test, it was also faster than Intel’s Xeon server chip. Though Xeon cores – individual computing units – have more memory than Cerebras’, Rocki posits that the Cerebras cores are more efficient and aren’t competing for shared RAM memory the way Xeon’s are. The WSE has around 380,000 cores. The next version will have 850,000.
While the Cerebras paper speculated about some of the fluid-dynamics problems the CS-1 could help solve – like landing a helicopter on a windy day or providing equipment failure prediction – the company’s CEO wants to go further. "We need to apply this to problems beyond computational fluid dynamics," he told ZDNet.
Warning: This article contains spoilers for the first two seasons of Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy and The Umbrella Academy comic book series.
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Netflix has renewed The Umbrella Academy for a third 10-episode season, which seems like an obvious choice considering that the show’s second season was hugely popular. Production will begin in February with the main cast being joined by a (mostly) new group of actors who will be playing the Sparrow Academy. This nasty gang are the students of Sir Reginald Hargreeves in the alternate present our heroes will find themselves in during Season 3.
The extremely dysfunctional superpowered family has spent the past two seasons trying to stop apocalyptic events of their own making, so the question is what the future — or alt-present as — has in store. The comics by Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba that the show is based on likely have some answers, so let’s dig into some possibilities.
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An Extended Family
Season 2 ended with the Hargreeves siblings having successfully stopped nuclear war from breaking out in 1963 and time traveling back to 2019. Unfortunately their time in the past seems to have significantly affected the future.
Though in Season 1 their adoptive father Sir Reginald Hargreeves had killed himself in 2019 in a bid to reunite the Umbrella Academy in the hopes that they would prevent the end of the world, apparently in this timeline he’s still alive and found a new group of superpowered kids to turn into a superhero team. Also, it seems he’s a pretty horrible father in both timelines.
At the end of Season 2, when the Hargreeves siblings return from 1963 to their home in 2019, they discover it’s now the base of the Sparrow Academy, a group led by their dead sibling Ben (Justin H. Min), who also apparently didn’t die in this new timeline. Posing behind him, with their faces obscured so that the actors and characters could be revealed later, are the members of this entirely different squad. Presumably they’re made up of members of the strange group of 43 children who were born on the same day in 1989, just like the Umbrella Academy gang.
[caption id="attachment_2460331" align="aligncenter" width="1280"] The Sparrow Academy as glimpsed in the Season 2 finale.[/caption]
The Sparrow Academy in the Comics
The Sparrow Academy does feature significantly in the third collection of the comics, Hotel Oblivion. Vanya is left seriously injured by her fight with the rest of the Umbrella Academy and spends much of the time after that incident trying to recover physically and mentally. In Hotel Oblivion, her robotic mother, who didn’t die in the comics as she did in the show’s first season, takes her to meet a friend named Deever who once worked with Reginald Hargreeves. It’s likely that he was involved in the same project to locate and train the 43 children.
After Deever grills Vanya for 20 minutes, her mother (called Grace in the show but just Mom in the comics) takes her to Paris where she meets a woman wearing a red jacket with a sparrow pin similar to the umbrella logo members of the Umbrella Academy sport. The woman tells Vanya that she’s “coming home” and leads her to a remote facility in Norway where she says Vanya will find family. Later, seven members of the Sparrows bail out the Umbrella Academy during a big fight. Their Number One greets Luther as a brother, further reinforcing the idea that they’re all from the same group of children.
That’s the very last scene in Hotel Oblivion, but more is coming. Gerard Way is currently working on a spinoff prequel centering on fan favorite character Klaus, but he’s announced that Volume 4 of the main series will be called Sparrow Academy and likely center on this new group. There’s no announced date for the comic, so it’s possible that the show will start answering these questions even before the comics.
[caption id="attachment_2460332" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] The Sparrow Academy from the comics.[/caption]
Who’s in the Sparrow Academy?
One big departure in the show is that Ben is alive and part of the Sparrow Academy. But beyond him, the comics don’t provide a ton of info about the Sparrows beyond a hint as to their powers. Vanya is in a wheelchair when she first meets a member of the Sparrow Academy and insists that she can’t walk. When the woman says “I don’t believe you,” Vanya discovers to her surprise that she can actually walk. When she asks how that’s possible, the woman responds “I said so.” That strongly hints that she might have the sort of extremely powerful mind controlling and reality warping powers of Allison Hargreeves, who can make something true just by saying “I heard a rumor…”
All of the members of the Sparrow Academy seem to be able to fly, though it’s unclear if they each individually have that power, if one character gives the others the power, or if they’re using technology. The powers demonstrated by the members of the Sparrow Academy in the comics are:
Dark energy eye blasts
Transforming into a flock of birds
A human voodoo doll who can hurt themselves to damage enemies
Super strength
The ability to make Vanya walk again
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Netflix has revealed what to expect from the Sparrows in the show. They will include:
Marcus, a.k.a. Sparrow No. 1, will be played by Justin Cornwell and is apparently the group’s leader. "Graceful but lethal, calculated but compassionate, he is as smart as he is strong," says Netflix.
Justin H. Min returns as Ben, Sparrow No. 2. This alternate Ben is described as "a Machiavellian tactician, wrapped up in a pretty boy body with a rumbling inner-squid." He’s "vicious, pragmatic, and hyper-vigilant" and wants to become the leader of the group.
Fei, Sparrow No. 3, will be played by Britne Oldford. She "sees the world in a special way" and "comes across as a misanthrope who would rather be alone than spend even a second with you."
Alphonso, Sparrow No. 4, is played by Jake Epstein as a person whose face and body are scarred with "countless visual reminders of his battles" from his years of crime-fighting.
Sloane, Sparrow No. 5, is played by Genesis Rodriguez and is described as "a romantic and a dreamer who feels a higher cosmic calling leaving her eager to see the world and experience a life beyond her upbringing."
Jayme, Sparrow No. 6, is played by Cazzie David and is "a loner hidden under a hoodie."
Christopher, Sparrow No. 7, is “a telekinetic cube of unknown origin," per Netflix. "He can turn the room freezing cold and induce paralyzing fear. He acts as the Sparrows' consulted oracle who hands out incredible advice and serves as the family mediator.”
With the Handler dead, the Temps Commission in friendly hands, and Vanya rehabilitated, the Umbrella Academy is going to need a new villain. It’s possible that the season’s main antagonist will be Reginald, especially since last season revealed that he’s an alien in disguise — something shown in the comic’s first issue. But Hotel Oblivion also offers plenty of other options.
The titular location in Hotel Oblivion is a pocket dimension where Hargreeves sent all the supervillains that the Umbrella Academy defeated over the years, kind of like a more disturbing version of the Phantom Zone. Much of the story follows the Murder Magician, who doesn’t really live up to his name, having only “killed the physical manifestation of a lie in human form” which was apparently a version of Allison created through her powers.
He’s been in Hotel Oblivion for some time after a fight with the Umbrella Academy that killed his assistant. He has a baby with another prisoner, a mentally unstable shapeshifter who carries around a broken Magic 8-Ball. Trying to protect the baby from her, he hatches an escape plan with Obscura, a much more wicked gangster with a camera attached to his head. As weird as the Netflix adaptation is, the comics are much, much weirder.
The escapees arrive in the basement of the Perseus Corporation, a powerful company that has somehow acquired the teleportation device Reginald used to access his prison. John Perseus’ father, John Perseus the Ninth, was a supervillain defeated by the Umbrella Academy and condemned to Hotel Oblivion. When Perseus the Tenth realizes what he’s got, he goes to Hotel Oblivion to bust him out but finds that his father has committed suicide. He decides to take on his mantle with the help of Medusa, a floating robotic head. Then he releases all the still-living prisoners and causes absolute havoc.
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Some of the former inmates include the Scientific Man, an extremely powerful villain with the ability to disintegrate people, who often kills other prisoners. He seems to be modeled after Doctor Manhattan. Doctor Terminal is seemingly based on Galactus and can absorb anything into his stomach to grow more powerful. The Peppermint Scarves is a gang inspired by a band that Gerard Way made up for Christmas cards. And there are a bunch of other very strange bad guys like the Sequin Skull, a giant eyeball on a human body that shoots lasers, and someone in a suit with a black widow spider for a head.
Any of these characters are up for grabs in Season 3, though it’s also possible that the show’s writers will just create new foes for the gang to face (as they did with Lila in Season 2).
Eldritch Terrors
When Luther and Diego go to Hotel Oblivion, the sky rips open and reveals a squidlike monstrosity that reaches down a tentacle to touch Luther on the forehead and give him a sequence of strange visions. It then shrieks and flees. Doctor Zoo, a friend of Reginald, realizes that the hotel was designed to be a cosmic trap for that entity, with the prisoners serving as bait.
Later in the comic, Klaus is suffering from a drug overdose where he is confronted by Ben’s ghost, who appears with a hole in his stomach. Ben’s ability was to summon eldritch tentacles from his abdomen and it’s never really explained how he died. His headstone reads "May the darkness within you find peace in the light," which could imply he suffered from mental illness or that his own strange power killed him.
Ben gives Klaus the cryptic message “It’s coming. You better be ready.” That could be a further reference to the strange entity Hotel Oblivion was meant to trap. Reginald is seen escaping a dying planet for Earth in Season 1, so it’s possible that this cosmic threat was to blame for his previous home’s destruction and that it’s caught up with him. With Ben alive again in the show, we could learn more about how his powers work and how they’re connected to this threat.
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Whatever material from the comics the new season does integrate, we’re just hoping that it maintains the show’s zany humor mixed with some good family drama. If you have any theories or characters you’d like to see, let us know in the comments!
Among so many things that are horrific about last week’s deadly attack on the Capitol building was the fact that it was planned for weeks. In the open. With that in mind, we are left wondering about the cybersecurity questions raised in the aftermath...
It wouldn’t be CES unless there were some futuristic Jonny 5 style robots on show and Samsung is obliging on the first day of this year’s all-virtual expo.
The new Samsung Bot Handy is like a robotic housekeeper, who’ll help you with chores around the home and even poor you a beer if you’re so inclined.
Available “in a not too distant future” Samsung showcased the Bot Handy’s ability to recognise and grab household objects. Using AI to recognise items, it can help you clear away the dishes after dinner, set the table, put dirty laundry in the basket, put away groceries and, yes poor you a drink at the end of a long day.
In a press release, the company says: “Samsung Bot Handy will be able to tell the difference between the material composition of various objects, utilising the appropriate amount of force to grab and move around household items and objects, working as your trusted partner to help with house chores like cleaning up messy rooms or sorting out the dishes after a meal.”
A second robot, called Bot Care is designed to look out for you “by recognising and understanding your behaviours”. It’ll tell you if you’ve been working on your laptop too long and recommend you take a break to stretch. It’ll remind you when you’ve got a video call due and then bring up a display to allow you to take it.
You can check out both robots in the video below:
Elsewhere during the press conference, Samsung debuted the JetBot 90 AI+ cleaning robot, which will be available in the US in the first half of 2021. The robotic vacuum cleaner packs similar object recognition technology to identify a better cleaning path.
It users LiDAR and 3D sensors in the op of avoiding cables and small objects. It also has SmartThings integration to assist with home monitoring. It looks perfect if you have a pupper who’s a real bad boy, like the one below.
Ghost of Tsushima fans helped contribute to the restoration of a real-life Torii gate on the Japanese island of Tsushima.
As reported by Siliconera, the crowdfunding project to restore the gate at Watatsumi Shrine ended on January 10, amassing over 27 million yen. According to an article from Famitsu, many Ghost of Tsushima fans rallied behind the funding drive, and in the end, it managed to achieve 542% of the initial 5 million yen target.
The Watatsumi Shrine gate had been partially destroyed by a typhoon in September 2020, and repairs should begin in April 2021, although pandemic-related delays could slow that process. The project's creator thanked fans of the game for their contributions in one of the activity reports as the campaign progressed, and a commemmorative stone will include the names of all those who pledged more than 10,000 yen (approximately $95 USD / £71 / $125 AUD).
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Torii gates are typically used to mark the entrance to a Shinto temple, and even helped inspire the creation of Star Fox. The Watatsumi Shrine is based in Toyotama, one of the three regions featured in Ghost of Tsushima.
In other Ghost of Tsushima news, the PlayStation exclusive recently beat The Last of Us II and Hades to score the Player's Voice award at The Game Awards 2020.
We reviewed Ghost of Tsushima back in July of 2020, scoring it a 9 and calling it "an excellent action game". If you're making your way through the game right now on PlayStation 4 or PlayStation 5, check out our complete Ghost of Tsushima walkthrough to make sure you find all of the collectables and pick up every upgrade.
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Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.
Ever since LG displayed its first rollable OLED TV at CES 2019, and perhaps even before then, the vision of these flexible displays was that they could encompass any curved surface to provide a display with a vivid color profile in line with state-of-the-art OLED technology. At the time, this meant watches and other such wearables, but as LG has promoted these flexible displays a lot for TV, it made sense that at some point they would come up with a curved display for gaming. The trick is to make it work for both TV and gaming.
One of the first announcements for this year’s remote CES show is that LG’s latest flexible display is a 48-inch model that can be used flat for regular TV viewing, or as a 1000R curved display for gaming. This means that in both viewing modes, the display aims to offer a uniform viewing distance with comparable depth and quality, even with a curvature radius of 1000mm. This is a tighter curvature than a lot of gaming displays currently on the market, such as 1200R to 2000R models, and those only serve the curved display gaming community. LG doesn’t state what the resolution is, however they do confirm that the display has a variable refresh rate range from 40 Hz to 120 Hz, along with a supposed 0.1 millisecond response time.
Combined with this, the display implements LG’s CSO technology, which enables the display to vibrate to create sound, rather than have external speakers. This is down to a new thin film ‘exciter’ (the bit that actually vibrates), which LG states that they’ve managed to reduce down from a thickness of 9mm to 0.6mm. The display also has a low-blue-light mode to reduce eye strain.
As often with these promotions for CES, we expect LG to be around 3-9 months from actually launching the product commercially. LG did not go into detail about how the display transitions from curved to flat, for example, and nor did they mention price. Leading edge features like this will likely come at a premium.
Interested in more of the latest industry news? Check out our CES 2021 trade show landing page!
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No matter where you stand on the issue of “Who did what?” at Marvel -- and the Marvel Method of comics creation makes it hard to find the definitive answer -- it’s hard to defend Lee’s refusal for decades to give proper due to the artists who helped him create countless characters.
Even the origin of the most famous phrase in Lee’s career -- and perhaps in the Marvel canon -- is called into question in Riesman’s book. “With great power there must also come -- great responsibility!” is the defining tenet in Peter Parker’s life, immortalized at the end of the character’s origin story in Amazing Fantasy #15. Since its publication in 1962, it’s been taken at face value that Lee coined the phrase. But Riesman cites examples that include a 1906 quote from a young Winston Churchill as well as a speech by Franklin Delano Roosevelt that contain very similar versions of Spidey’s signature message. Could Lee have simply come up with that phrase on his own? Could he have been influenced subconsciously by something he had read years earlier? Perhaps. But Lee’s track record for misrepresenting the truth and claiming unearned credit practically demanded a closer look.
“That [phrase] was a minor point. I didn't want to hammer that too much, but it is something where you just have to go… there might've been antecedents to this and that's not a crime,” Riesman says. “It's fine. But we have this [idea] that that quotation emerged like Athena from the head of Zeus; this brilliant observation [by Stan] that no one else had ever made before.”
Despite all the accolades and notoriety that Marvel’s breakout success had brought him, by the mid-1970s Lee was desperate to leave comics behind. He moved out to California to reinvent himself as a producer. Most books written about Lee spend little time covering this era from the late ’70s to the late ’90s, and yet it was a time that saw some of his most humbling failures and painful losses. True Believer spends significant time detailing this time period, showing how his attempts to get Hollywood to see the value in Marvel’s library mostly flopped. Lee could get a meeting with executives who grew up reading comics with “Stan Lee Presents” at the top of the page-one splash. But the industry didn’t take him all that seriously as a producer, even when his ideas had potential.
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TV animation executive Margaret Loesch, who ran Marvel Productions in the 1980s, recalls going to a meeting with Lee to pitch a television network on adapting a bizarre Japanese program. According to Loesch, the meeting was a disaster. Years later, Saban Entertainment would turn that Japanese show, Super Sentai, into the global sensation The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.
“Stan had ideas in that period that would later come to fruition,” Riesman says. “The other classic one being Ant-Man. He really thought an Ant-Man TV show or movie would be a hit. And everybody laughed him out of the room. But in 2015 you got an Ant-Man movie that makes half a billion dollars. So they weren't all terrible ideas, but a lot of them just didn't go anywhere.”
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Created by George Kay in collaboration with François Uzan, the story takes inspiration from the adventures of Arsène Lupin, the early 20th-century French literary character created by Maurice Leblanc. The series follows the exploits of Assane Diop (Omar Sy), a gentleman thief and master of disguise, who sets out on a mission to avenge his father for an injustice inflicted by a wealthy family.
Sy will slink back onto our screens as the show's protagonist for the now-scheduled second part of the series, which will also feature Hervé Pierre's Hubert Pellegrini, Nicole Garcia's Madame Anne Pellegrini, Clotilde Hesme's Juliette Pellegrini, Ludivine Sagnier's Claire, Antoine Gouy's Benjamin Ferel, Shirine Boutella's Lieutenant Sofia Belkacem, and Soufiane Guerrab's Youssef Guedira.
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Louis Leterrier and Marcela Said helmed the first part of the series, which quickly became a worldwide phenomenon after appearing in the Number 1 spot in Netflix's Top 10 in more than ten countries, but they will not be returning for Part 2 of Lupin. Instead, Ludovic Bernard will be taking over the director's chair for episodes 6 and 7, whilst Hugo Gélin takes the reins on episodes 8, 9, and 10.
In our review of Lupin: Part 1, we commended the show for managing "to have fun even with an antiquated premise while adding just enough new spin on the concept to feel refreshing," resulting in "a slick, cleverly-plotted twist on a classic character" who carried an "alluring presence," which ultimately made "Assane Diop feel like a worthy successor to Arsène Lupin."
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Adele Ankers is a Freelance Entertainment Journalist. You can reach her on Twitter.
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The Sparrow Academy as glimpsed in the Season 2 finale.[/caption]
The Sparrow Academy from the comics.[/caption]
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