Winona Ryder’s Wednesday Season 3 Casting Reunites Tim Burton With His Greatest Muse
From his early days at Walt Disney Animation to his work producing and directing episodes of Wednesday, Tim Burton has had his own distinctive qualities. He loves jagged checkerboard patterns, straight out of German impressionist films. He sympathizes with monsters and weirdos, especially when contrasting their sincerity to 1950s kitsch. And he loves his leading ladies, frequently collaborating with Lisa Marie, Helena Bonham Carter, and Eva Green.
For Wednesday‘s third season, Burton gets to reunite with the actress with whom he’s done some of his best work. Winona Ryder joins the cast as “Tabitha.” Who is Tabitha? We have no idea, but we can be pretty confident that Ryder and Burton can bring out the best in one another.
Ryder made her film debut in the 1986 football drama Lucas, but it was her first collaboration with Burton that made her a star. Playing the strange and unusual Lydia Deetz in 1988’s Beetlejuice established Ryder as the preeminent goth girl of the era, someone both too sensitive and snarky to fit into polite society. Even in decidedly different types of movies, such as Martin Scorsese‘s The Age of Innocence (1993) or the inexplicable Alien: Resurrection (1997), Ryder retained the same otherworldliness that she developed working on Beetlejuice and especially 1990’s Edward Scissorhands.
After the duo’s second collaboration, Ryder and Burton did not work together again until the 2024 sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, in which Wednesday star Jenna Ortega played Lydia’s daughter Astrid. In the meantime, Burton moved on to collaborate with Carter, Green, and others, often to great effect. But there’s no question that Burton’s latest output fails to match his best work, with 2007’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (starring his more frequent collaborator, Johnny Depp) as the filmmaker’s last well-received movie.
For her part, Ryder could use a creative charge as well. Although she was part of the pop culture phenomenon that was Stranger Things, few would place oft-harried mother Joyce Byers among her best work. Even her previous Burton reunion, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, failed to find enough interesting notes for her to play.
Will Wednesday turn things around for Ryder? It’s hard to say, and not just because we don’t know anything about her character Tabitha. It’s also because Wednesday may be in line with Burton’s aesthetic, which in turn matches the original The Addams Family cartoons by Charles Addams, but it is created by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar. The duo reimagined Wednesday as a YA protagonist, which has proven to be massively popular with audiences, but may perhaps be out of Ryder’s wheelhouse.
Can Ryder and Burton rediscover their old magic? Or will Wednesday leave us nostalgic for the ’80s? We’ll find out when Tabitha takes the screen, whoever she may be.
Wednesday seasons 1 and 2 are now streaming on Netflix.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: House Beesbury Is REALLY Committed to the Bit
This article contains spoilers for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms episode 6.
One of the more charming aspects of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is the way it depicts the Westeros that exists beyond the big Houses that most Game of Thronesfans are already familiar with. Sure, there are Targaryens and Baratheons and even a Tully or Hightower or two involved, but many of the show’s major players hail from smaller, lesser-known families we’ve never really heard of before, like House Ashford, House Hardying, and House Fossoway. (Team Raymun for life!) But none of them are as hilariously bizarre as House Beesbury, who are really invested in the theme that gives their family its name.
Ser Humfrey Beesbury is introduced in A Knight of the Seven Kingdom’s fourth episode, as one of the knights who agrees to fight for Dunk during his trial of seven. He’s generally nondescript in terms of the show itself, the brother by marriage of Ser Humfrey Hardying, whose leg was broken when Aerion Targaryen killed his horse while the pair were jousting. Beesbury doesn’t really get any attention (and barely any lines) in life, but what happens after his death is wildly memorable. Killed during the trial’s first charge, he gets a raucous wake in his honor during the season finale, where his coffin is displayed prominently for all the mourners to honor. It is also positively covered with bees.
The visual is cool enough in and of itself, so much so that Ser Raymun actually asks if there is some sort of “bee magic” at work. It isn’t; the effect is apparently achieved by someone slipping a queen bee into Humfrey’s coffin and causing the rest of the insects to treat it essentially as a replacement beehive. But it’s just one more example of how fully committed this family is to the creature that gives them their name and livelihood.
House Beesbury, a minor noble house from the Reach, and bees are pretty much their entire personality. Technically sworn to the Hightowers, their family seat is named Honeyholt, located next to the Honeywine river. (We can all probably guess what this area’s main export is.) Their colors are black and yellow, their sigil features three yellow beehives set vertically on a black and yellow field, and while their House motto doesn’t technically appear in George R.R. Martin’s books, several semi-canon ancillary sources insist that it is “Beware Our Sting.” Even Beesbury’s armor has beehives on it, and he’s dyed his moustache to match. Truly a baller move.
But while this all seems fairly ridiculous on the surface, House Beesbury was probably quite right to take pride in their family’s beehives. If only because it undoubtedly made them fairly rich. Much of George R.R. Martin’s vision of Westeros cribbed details from the real-life history of medieval England. And beekeeping was one of the most profitable ventures of that time period, as honey was a primary food sweetener and beeswax was one of the only (and certainly most pleasant) options available for making candles. Yes, yes, Sansa Stark’s canonical love of frosted lemon cakes hints that cane sugar somehow exists in this universe, but let’s not kid ourselves. The Beesburys were most likely doing just fine. And more families could probably stand to get on their level.
Venom Animated Movie Can Reestablish the Marvel Monster’s Horror Roots
To the average superhero fan, Venom is Eddie Brock’s goofy buddy, a lethal protector who will occasionally munch on a baddie’s brain, but would just as easily enjoy some chocolates. Even to those who read Marvel Comics, Venom is a tortured anti-hero, the symbiotic partner of the genuinely good, if flawed, Eddie. That’s a far cry from the menacing monster who tried to kill Spider-Man in the 1980s.
But if the creators of Final Destination: Bloodlines have their way, Venom could be a scary monster once again. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Bloodlines directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein will direct an animated Venom film. No cast or writers have been announced yet, so we don’t know for sure what the direction will be. But given the gory glee that Lipovsky and Stein brought to Final Destination, the Venom movie could take a horror direction.
Venom’s horror bonafides are established in 1988’s Amazing Spider-Man #300, by writer David Michelinie and artist Todd McFarlane, the issue in which he first fully appeared. The story opens with Mary Jane cowering in terror at some shadowy figure approaching her. Even though its revealed that the figure is just her husband Peter Parker in a cloth version of his black costume, the pages set the tone for the rest of the story. Venom hunts down Spider-Man and tries to execute him, killing off a civilian in the process.
Even the lead-up to Amazing Spider-Man #300 has a horror tinge. Spider-Man picked up his black costume while off-planet during the original Secret Wars storyline in 1984. As in most adaptations of the Venom storyline, such as Sam Raimi‘s Spider-Man 3, the black suit initially brings out the best in Peter, but it eventually starts to corrupt him. However, the comic storylines have more of the suit itself acting like a shadowy wraith, stalking after Peter in the night and pushing away Mary Jane.
After realizing that the suit was a living symbiote, Peter discarded it, and it bonded with Eddie Brock, a disgraced journalist who blames Peter for his problems. Together, they become Venom, initially just a bigger, stronger version of Spider-Man. But eventually, Venom gained a more grotesque appearance, with razor teeth, a tendril-like tongue, and lots of green slime slobber.
However, Venom soon proved incredibly popular and with antiheroes such as Punisher and Ghost Rider all the rage in the 1990s, he launched his own miniseries in 1993. Although that comic established him as a lethal protector who would kill his enemies, Venom also had a more clearly heroic goal. Since then, Venom has only moved farther away from his horror roots, especially as recent stories have made him the Earth’s best defense against the eldritch monster Knull or, in the current series, replaced Eddie Brock with Mary Jane as the monster’s host.
Fun as those stories are, there’s no question that Venom has lost something over the years. If Lipovsky and Stein can bring some of the nastiness they brought to Final Destination, while retaining that movie’s heart and playfulness, Venom could be scary and cool once again.
The Venom animated movie is now in pre-production.
Interstellar Turd Prank Left Timothée Chalamet Feeling Disrespected
Timothée Chalamet has had complex feelings about his work on Interstellar since its 2014 release. Previously, he shared that he felt like a “fraud” after attending an early screening of Christopher Nolan’s beloved sci-fi flick and then “wept for an hour” afterwards because he thought his role would be bigger than it was. Still, Chalamet says Interstellar remains his favorite project that he’s worked on.
The film marked one of Chalamet’s first major roles. Just 17 at the time, he played the younger version of Tom Cooper, the son of former NASA pilot Joseph Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), who struggles with his father’s departure on a high-risk space mission.
At the time, the now A-list actor was at a career crossroads, and believed that McConaughey considered him “aimless but motivated.” In a conversation with his Interstellar co-star filmed at the University of Texas at Austin’s Moody College of Communication, McConaughey admits he thought Chalamet was “figuring some stuff out,” but that it seemed obvious to him that “no matter what you were dealing with, you were going to make your way.”
There seemed to be good vibes between the pair during their chat, with Chalamet noting McConaughey’s warmth and guidance towards him as they worked on the movie together. However, a “souvenir” left by the older actor in Chalamet’s Interstellar trailer left him reeling.
“I gotta say, my last day on Interstellar, I was sad to be leaving,” Chalamet recalled. “In my trailer, I went to the bathroom, and there was a huge turd in my toilet. I felt so disrespected. Like, ‘I know I’m not the star of this movie, but who’s coming in here?’ So I went around to all the grips, these big guys, and I said, ‘Hey, one of you let it loose in my trailer.’ They said no. I went up to Nolan, and he pointed to Matthew, and Matthew had this devilish grin on his face. I said, ‘Why’d you do that?’ You said, ‘In Texas, it’s a coming of age, baby.'”
More than a decade on from the Interstellar prank, Chalamet is doing just fine, as he’s in the running for a Best Actor Oscar at this year’s Academy Awards for his performance in Marty Supreme. He also has Dune: Part Three coming out later this year.
Scrubs: How a Real-Life Friendship Shapes J.D. ‘At the Tail-End of His Career’
To this day, television maestro Bill Lawrence and Dr. Jonathan Doris remain old buddies. That their friendship goes back nearly four decades to when they were in school together at the College of William & Mary is heartwarming to anyone, but doubly so for fans of a particular era of millennial humor that Lawrence created. After all, this is the connection that gave the world Scrubs back in 2001, complete with its own tight friendship between the fictionalized medical intern, John “J.D.” Dorian (Zach Braff), and budding surgeon Christopher Turk (Donald Faison). And, as it turns out, the real thing is still shaping the landscape of television comedy, including J.D. and Turk, 25 years on.
“We’re both in our mid 50s, so we play a lot of pickleball because it’s the law,” Lawrence smiles about himself and the cardiologist sometimes called the real J.D. “And recently while watching him, even as he’s beloved by all his students because he’s a teacher and in a position everyone loves and looks up to, here is this guy who’s been beaten up and has trouble surviving in the system. It takes a lot out of you. So just seeing him head toward the tail-end of his career and going, ‘I don’t know how many years I can still do it, it’s just really hard emotionally and mentally,’ let me know there’s still a great story to tell.”
And that story, like the original Scrubs, seeks to carve its path with humor and grace, as well as the wary resignation that comes with aging in an ageless field.
Picking up where Scrubs ended in 2009, this year’s revival finds Braff’s J.D. returning to Sacred Heart initially as a visitor. His former mentor and Sacred Heart’s now cranky chief of medicine, Dr. Cox (John C. McGinley), holds court over a new generation of medical interns and residents, but the years wear on him, as they do for other familiar faces like Turk, Dr. Elliot Reid (Sarah Chalke), and Nurse Carla Espinosa (Judy Reyes).
The new series is a crossroads between the new and the old. This includes behind the camera, too, where writer Aseem Batra, who got her start on Scrubs both as a scribe and an actress playing a background intern, takes over showrunner duties. One thing Batra kept, though, was Dr. Doris’ role as medical advisor on the next generation of Scrubs.
“He set up amazing interviews for us with young interns and residents so we could find out how the landscape has changed,” Batra says. “And basically it hasn’t other than the huge amount of technology. They use AI for so much, and the interns and the residents are treated better now than in his day, but there is still burnout, and it’s incredibly hard to do their jobs. When you hear them talk about it, you can understand it’s kind of what we show in the pilot of physician burnout, and even intern/resident burnout. It’s still very high because of how intense it is to be in that field.”
Treating the interns better is also a source of humor given how so much of Scrubs’ early years were defined by Dr. Cox’s aggressive “tough love” approach to mentoring J.D., complete with a deluge of nicknames. Internet lore has it that actor McGinley improvised many of those phrases from “newbie” down the line, however when we catch up with the performer, he’s quick to set the record straight.
“I didn’t improvise those,” McGinley chuckles. “Billy wrote them. But I cross-gendered him a couple of times… I called him girls names, which may or may not be acceptable in 2026.” With that said, he admits Dr. Cox still does it “a little” in the new series, because old habits die hard. Which might just be the thesis of the show.
“[He’s] a hundred percent burned out because the new crop of students he has are also an exercise in mediocrity, the characters, not the actors,” McGinley observes. “So he’s now charged with trying to teach them, and it’s an ongoing frustration, so he has tools to deal with the frustration and it’s usually pretty aggressively gruff.”
Dealing with that stuff appears to be the M.O. of all returning favorites, including Carla. Actress Judy Reyes notes Carla has grown into the de facto matriarch of Sacred Heart as the head nurse in the hospital, but her relationship with the interns is changing.
“She’s a bit of a leader,” says Reyes, “that’s why she’s still there, it’s why she still runs the house. She’s passionate about it. But she will have to confront, dare I say it, aging in the world of being a nurse in this environment. And I’m grateful that the show is going to be tackling that down the line… because it gets to you. We’re aging and the world is different, and what you want to do differently is bring what you learned and bring it to the interns, who are there to learn.”
Yet the appeal is to continue to do it with pluck and good humor. As Lawrence points out, the idea of Scrubs originally came from conversations he had with the real Doris about the grave solemnity of shows like ER back in the 1990s.
“He lived in that world and he would say, ‘The only way to survive was with gallows humor and finding the joys in small moments and goofing around with your friends and forming community,’” Lawrence recalls. The new era of Scrubs will be much the same. Already in the first episode, there is a tip of the hat to The Pitt, a series that Lawrence tells us he considers the best show on television. “It’s ER if they put a little humor into it.”
And Scrubs will continue to live and adapt to that TV landscape. In addition to a wink toward The Pitt, Lawrence teases we’ll soon see “J.D. and Turk talking about the value of Bridgerton, because we love Shonda [Rhimes]. So they definitely live in the same pop culture they used to. The things that matter to all of us matter to them.”
Scrubs itself seems like something that matters to folks too, including those who made it.
“Once we all got together and did that table read, it all felt like coming home for Thanksgiving or for Christmas,” Reyes says. “Like you’re with the people that you know and it all fell into place and it got really exciting. “
But then, that’s always been the appeal of Sacred Heart and the daydream that created it.
Says Lawrence, “The one thing [Doris] always makes us use as canon is to remind us that the stereotype of wanting your son or daughter to get into medicine so they can be rich and golf, and marry a doctor, that’s gone. Everybody who goes into this business is there because they want to be of service, especially at a teaching hospital. So we really held onto that.”
Scrubs returns on Wednesday, Feb. 25 at 8pm on ABC.
Sopranos Star Says the Show’s Themes Might Be Different Today
Michael Imperioli, still best known for his Emmy-winning performance as Christopher Moltisanti on The Sopranos, has recently offered his take on how the iconic HBO drama’s characters might fit into today’s political landscape. The actor told The Independentthat if the series were set in the current United States and characters’ political views were part of the story, “a lot” of them would likely align with Donald Trump’s politics.
Imperioli pointed to the show’s central theme of the American Dream through the eyes of immigrants, which helped make The Sopranos one of television’s most influential dramas. He said that while the Sopranos gang were Italians whose families came over from Europe, their values might surprisingly skew toward Trump’s worldview if they were around right now.
“I think that would be one of the big themes if it was made today: the current climate in the U.S. and what they’re doing to immigrants,” Imperioli said. “The fact is that these characters are all immigrants, but I think a lot of them would probably be Trump supporters, oddly enough. So how do they reconcile those things? When Italians came over – and people forget this, or they don’t want to see it – a lot of them were undocumented.”
Sopranos creator David Chase has previously shared his thoughts on whether Tony Soprano himself would have been charmed by Trump, telling The New York Times that Tony would think Trump was “full of shit.”
Along with Steve Schirripa, who played Bobby Baccalieri on Chase’s acclaimed series, Imperioli has been out promoting the U.K. tour of the Talking Sopranos rewatch podcast, with both recalling fond memories of working with their late co-star, James Gandolfini. Imperioli says that Gandolfini laughed off the idea of a Sopranos prequel after the show ended, remarking that, given the actors’ ages, it would have been a stretch. “I remember Jim was like, ‘What are we gonna do? Wear wigs and girdles like Star Trek?’”
The 10 Best Sony Animation Movies, Ranked: KPop Demon Hunters, Spider-Verse, and More
When one thinks of the great cartoon houses, names such as Studio Ghibli, Pixar, and Walt Disney leap to mind. In fact, most would have to go pretty deep before they got to Sony Pictures Animation, and not just because it officially opened its doors in 2002. Rather, it’s because SPA turned out a lot of bad movies. You can’t make Peter Rabbit, The Emoji Movie, or multiple Open Season flicks and keep your reputation intact.
However, lately, things have changed for SPA. Critical and commercial hits like KPop Demon Hunters and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse have prompted a re-evaluation of the studio. And with audiences giving SPA a second look, they’ve discovered some gems that transcend its disposable early products. So let’s take a look at the best that Sony has to offer, from its rough beginnings to its current era of excellence.
10. Vivo (2021)
As anyone who has watched Moana back-to-back with Moana 2 knows, Lin-Manuel Miranda is a master at making songs for animated musicals. The very fact that he did the songs for Vivo is enough to put it on this list… but just barely.
Directed by Kirk DeMicco, who co-wrote the screenplay with Quiara Alegría Hudes, Vivo stars Miranda as the titular kinkajou, who goes on a mission from his native Cuba to Key West, Florida to deliver a song by his deceased owner. In addition to Miranda, the film has big names such as Zoe Saldaña, Brian Tyree Henry, and Michael Rooker. But the by-the-numbers script, bland character design, and—worst of all—substandard songs make the whole thing feel like a Miranda B-side, far short of his best work.
9. Wish Dragon (2021)
For the most part, SPA’s partnership with Netflix has been a good thing. But Netflix is still Netflix and sometimes even good movies get buried under the sheer amount of “content” the stream pushes out every day. Such is the case with Wish Dragon, a pretty good movie with some fantastic visuals that deserves to be seen.
Wish Dragon is the directoral debut of Chris Appelhans, a veteran of great movies such as Coraline, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and The Princess and the Frog. The movie stars Jimmy Wong as college student Din, who seeks to reconnect with his rich childhood friend Li Na Wang (Natasha Liu Bordizzo). To help him achieve his goal, Din calls upon the help of the wish dragon Long, voiced by John Cho. As that synopsis reveals, Wish Dragon travels some well-tread paths for children’s entertainment. But it has a visual pop that puts it well above the usual Netflix slop.
8. GOAT (2026)
As this list shows, SPA put out a lot of terrible, forgettable movies before finding its footing over recent years. The studio’s latest project, GOAT, is definitely a step down from its last few offerings, but it’s still heads and tails better than SPA’s bottom tier work.
GOAT takes place in the world of roarball, a basketball-like sport played by anthropomorphic animals. Young goat Will Harris (Caleb McLaughlin of Stranger Things) hopes to make his mark, and he gets his break (literally) when an accidental outcome against a famous player (Aaron Pierre) brings him national fame. The use of social media updates the standard kids movie tropes about following your dream, and director Tyree Dillihay crafts some dynamic sequences. But the script by Teddy Riley veers a little too often into tired sports clichés, keeping GOAT from achieving the greatness it desires.
7. The Pirates: Band of Misfits (2012)
The short pairing of venerable stop-motion studio Aardman Animations with Sony did not produce the best work from either house. But it wasn’t all terrible, thanks to the existence of The Pirates: Band of Misfits, or The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!, to use the much better UK title. Where the other feature from the collaboration, Arthur Christmas, lets studio glass sand away Aardman’s charm, The Pirates is a delightful, if minor, outing in the classic style of Wallace & Gromit.
Aardman co-founder Peter Lord directs The Pirates from a screenplay by Gideon Defoe, adapting his own book. It follows the misadventures of a group of spirited, but ineffective pirates, voiced by reliable folks such as Hugh Grant, Martin Freeman, and David Tennant as Charles Darwin. The Pirates is a delightful time and definitely one of SPA’s better outings, even if it’s minor Aardman.
6. Hotel Transylvania (2012)
To the average moviegoer in 2012, Hotel Transylvania‘s voice cast was more interesting than the movie itself. After all, it featured a still red-hot Adam Sandler along with regular Happy Madison players such as Kevin James and Steve Buscemi, as well as Selena Gomez and Andy Samberg. The plot—about a vampire who runs a resort for fellow monsters and whose daughter plans to marry a human—doesn’t capture the crowds in the same way.
However, those who actually saw the movie found something more wonderful than the usual dreck that happens when a big studio invests in big names. In particular, Hotel Transylvania comes from legendary animator Genndy Tartakovsky, creator of Dexter’s Lab, Samurai Jack, and Primal. Tartakovsky’s storytelling instincts give Hotel Transylvania some outstanding sequences, which take full advantage of animation as a medium.
5. The Mitchells vs. the Machines (2021)
The overwhelming majority of movies for kids have the exact same theme: believe in yourself. The Mitchells vs. the Machines, directed by Mike Rianda from a screenplay he wrote with Jeff Rowe, is no different. Abbi Jacobson voices Kate Mitchell, a teen from rural Michigan who has big plans to make movies and knows that technology will help her achieve them. Her father Rick (Danny McBride) hates technology, but wants to support his daughter, so he gathers up the family for a cross-country trip to bring her to school in California. No sooner do they get started than AI takes over, sending legions of robots to attack humanity.
The Mitchells vs. the Machines isn’t immune from the problems of the modern kid movie. In particular, celebs such as Chrissy Teigen, John Legend, and Conan O’Brien seem to have been cast because adults know their names, not because their acting serves the story. Moreover, the flashy water-color style animation pioneered for Into the Spider-Verse makes for an awkward fit here. But the story has so much heart, and Jacobson and McBride give such committed performances that The Mitchells vs. the Machines overcomes these missteps.
4. Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (2009)
In most cases, taking a classic, simple children’s book and adapting it into a high-tech Hollywood blockbuster results in nothing but disaster (see: The Polar Express). Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs from Phil Lord and Christopher Miller is the exception to the rule. Yes, the movie only retains the barest concept from the 1978 original written by Judi Miller and illustrated by Ron Miller. And yes, its voice cast includes everyone from Bill Hader and Anna Faris to Mr. T and Bruce Campbell. And yes, it works an Eraserhead reference into a kids movie.
Despite all of that, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs works, thanks to Lord and Miller’s ability to bring genuine pathos to hyper pop art aesthetics. We genuinely feel for inventor Flint Lockwood (Hader), cheering for him when his invention is a hit that earns the affections of meteorologist Sam Sparks (Faris), and sympathizing with him when things go haywire and when he disappoints his traditionalist, fisherman father (James Caan). Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs may feel flashy and new, but it has tried and true storytelling chops.
Sony Pictures
3. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse felt like a miracle, something that succeeded but should have never been attempted again. And yet, Across the Spider-Verse went even bigger and pulled it off again… mostly. New directing team Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson bring in new Spider-people, adapt new visual styles, and new avenues to explore with Miles Morales and Gwen Stacy, without ever losing the emotional stakes.
Even though Across the Spider-Verse begins and ends with Gwen (Hailee Steinfeld), it remains a movie about Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), whose imposter syndrome intensifies when he learns about a multiversal team led by Miguel O’Hara (Oscar Isaac). Worse, a loser called the Spot (Jason Schwartzman) is gaining power to become the arch-enemy he wants to be, and Miles cannot stop him while stranded in another universe. Unfortunately, Across the Spider-Verse doesn’t show us how Miles deals with those problems, as the movie just kind of stops and makes us wait for a (still forthcoming) conclusion.
2. KPop Demon Hunters (2025)
For a few days after KPop Demon Hunters hit Netflix in June 2025, various users took to social media to complain about substandard movies being shoved down our throats. Yet, as anyone who has found themselves mindlessly humming “Golden” or “Breakdown” can attest, KPop Demon Hunters doesn’t need to use artificial methods to stick with the audience. It’s good enough to stand on its own. Directors Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans, working from a screenplay they wrote with Danya Jimenez and Hannah McMechan, somehow manage to maintain the emotional stakes of their story without sacrificing any of the spectacular pop star sequences or the mystical fight scenes.
Their success stems from the decision to focus on Huntrix frontwoman Rumi (Arden Cho), who also hunts demons with her bandmates Mira (May Hong) and Zooey (Ji-young Yoo). As she struggles to hide from her friends that fact that she is in fact half-demon, Rumi must also deal with romantic feelings for Jinu (Ahn Hyo-seop), a human-turned-demon who leads rival group, the Saja Boys. Rumi’s struggle grounds the over-the-top drama and action KPop Demon Hunters, as do the genuinely funny gags. The extremely catchy songs don’t hurt either.
1. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Everybody knows who Spider-Man is. Everyone knows that he’s a kid named Peter Parker, that he loves Aunt May and Mary Jane, and that he’s a street-level hero who exists in just one universe. But Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse asks, “What if Spider-Man was a kid named Miles Morales, who has two loving parents, and meets a bunch of other Spider-people from alternate realities? And one of them was a pig?”
That premise should have been a disaster, yet directors Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman, working from a screenplay by Rothman and Phil Lord, dodge all the problems with an elegance that matches Spider-Man himself. In fact, Into the Spider-Verse uses the audience’s knowledge of Spider-lore to show how themes of great power and great responsibility can apply to different people, enriching the central concepts. That alone would be enough to make for a great movie, but the fact that it also features incredible visuals and cutting-edge animation makes Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse not just the best film from Sony Pictures Animation, but one of the greatest animated movies of all time.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Episode 6 Review: The Morrow
The following contains spoilers for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms episode 6.
A true knight always finishes a story. So says Ser Arlan of Pennytree at one point during the A Knight of the Seven Kingdomsseason finale, and that’s essentially the guiding tenet of this installment, which wrestles with the bleak aftermath of the Ashford Tourney and the Trial of Seven that changed the future of Westeros forever. It is an episode that is both an ending and a beginning, and it’s a perfect cap to a remarkable season of television that has reminded many of us why we love this fictional universe so much.
Baelor Targaryen is dead, and with him, not just the hope of a dynasty but a future — most likely a better future — that Westeros will never know. This episode focuses primarily on the immediacy of it all: Valarr Targaryen’s loss of his father, Maekar’s self-recrimination over his brother’s death by his hand, the general sense of shock amongst the smallfolk, a reminder that even the greatest of dragons can fall. And Dunk’s heartfelt sense of responsibility and guilt, as he asks himself whether his life could ever possibly be worth trading Baelor’s for.
Whether it will is a question that only future seasons of this show (or a quick search through the A Song of Ice and Fire Wiki) can answer, but there’s no doubt that Baelor’s death is a defining moment for Dunk, as both a knight and a man. It’s what drives him back to the roads he trod with Ser Arlan rather than accept a position in service to Maekar. What makes him genuinely mourn Baelor, rather than sniff at his hubris the way Lyonel does. He turns down the chance at everything he’s supposed to want — a permanent lord, a fixed future, a squire to shape in his own image — not because he doesn’tdesire those things, but because he can’t accept them on the Targaryens’ terms.
Peter Claffey makes playing Dunk’s simple, moral strength appear so effortless that it almost does the true quality of his performance a disservice. Making the idea of goodness — a good character, a good man — feel compelling onscreen is something our pop culture has long struggled with, and that goes double in a fictional universe where dragons, betrayals, and war crimes are commonplace. It can often seem so much more interesting to depict a character like Aerion Targaryen, who embraces his worst self without shame, or to code morally minded characters as weak or lesser in some way. (Particularly in such an aggressively cynical and self-serving world.)
But Claffey quietly turns Dunk’s goodness into a superpower. Sure, he’s not the smartest or even the strongest man in Westeros. But, as we’ve seen repeatedly this season, those things don’t necessarily make you a good person. They’re not supposed to. Goodness, after all, isn’t a thing you are. It’s a thing you do. It, like love, like belief, like faith, is an active verb, a thing that requires you to choose it repeatedly. There’s effort involved. That Dunk’s choices throughout this episode are just that, choices he makes and reaffirms, paths he deliberately decides to walk down. He doesn’t want to serve in Summerhall, but he also rejects Lyonel’s offer of bro-ing out in Storm’s End. He ends the season by nailing a penny to a tree as his mentor once did and carving his own path, one alongside a young boy who’s decided to do the exact same thing.
It’s not an accident that this episode is also the first in which we’ve spent any significant time with Maekar Targaryen. Sure, part of that is because Baelor’s younger brother didn’t have much of a purpose in Dunk’s story until the trial. But the other reason is that this moment marks a turning for him too—a choice, of sorts. Who will he be in a world without Baelor? How will he be changed by what he (however inadvertently) did? He’s shipping Aerion off to the Free Cities in the hopes he’ll learn how to become a better person. (Narrator voice: He will not.) He’s willing to bring Dunk on to train Aegon, despite not really wanting to do so. There’s growth here, albeit of a difficult and rough-edged kind, but maybe that’s the only way a man like Maekar ever learns. (He is not Baelor, by any stretch, but Maekar is not a bad man.) In George R.R. Martin’s original novella, Maekar agrees to let Egg go with Dunk. Here, in the show, he sneaks out, leaving his father to discover his absence only once it’s already too late. I sort of prefer the original, if only because it allows Maekar to purposefully put Aegon’s needs first in a way that it doesn’t seem he often has previously.
The season ends as it probably always had to, with Dunk and Egg on the road together, looking toward adventure unknown. (Dunk even gets Sweetfoot back! Before giving her up to Raymun.) A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms could, in theory, end here, in this moment of humor and hope, with the world spread in front of them and everything still possible and only one dead prince instead of the dozens we’re regularly served on House of the Dragon or Game of Thrones itself. A hedge knight and a Targaryen heir, offbeat weirdos in their own ways, off to Dorne or any other of the seven (nine) kingdoms, is one of the most hopeful images this franchise has ever given us, and there’s so much possibility in that.
I wonder what the morrow will bring.
All six episodes of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms are available to stream on HBO Max now.
AKOTSK: Why Does the Seven Kingdoms Have Nine Kingdoms?
This article contains spoilers for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms episode 6.
After all the violence and heartbreak of the once-in-a-century trial of seven, Dunk (Peter Claffey) and Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell) ride off onto their next adventure. But where will they go? As Dunk muses that there are still so many places he hasn’t seen in the Seven Kingdoms, Egg immediately corrects him with “Nine.”
“What?” “There are nine kingdoms, ser.” “Of what?” “The realm.” “Are you mad?” “Is that relevant?” “There are seven kingdoms of the realm, boy, everyone knows that.” “Then everyone is wrong.”
Wait… what is that little bald-headed runt on about? Aren’t there, you know, seven kingdoms in the geopolitical entity known as the Seven Kingdoms? The short answer to that is no. The longer answer to that is “it’s complicated.” Truthfully, there is only one “kingdom” on the continent of Westeros and it just so happens to be called the singular “Seven Kingdoms.” That name is akin to collective country titles like the United States of America or the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
But while the U.S. and U.K. don’t contain numbers in their names, the Seven Kingdoms does and it has now outgrown that initial number. Here is how that happened and why the Seven Kingdoms could more accurately be described as “One Kingdom Consisting of Nine Regions.”
There Were Seven Independent Kingdoms Before Aegon’s Conquest
Before Aegon Targaryen, his sisters, and their dragons landed on the shores of Westeros, the continent was divided into seven independent kingdoms. These kingdoms were:
The Kingdom of the North, ruled by House Stark in Winterfell The Kingdom of the Mountain and the Vale, ruled by House Arryn in the Eyrie The Kingdom of the Isles and Rivers, ruled by House Hoare in Harrenhal The Kingdom of the Rock, ruled by House Lannister in Casterly Rock The Kingdom of the Reach, ruled by House Gardener in Highgarden The Kingdom of the Storm, ruled by House Durrandon in Storm’s End Dorne, ruled by House Nymeros Martell (which styles themselves as princes, not kings) in Sunspear
While everyone else saw seven independent kingdoms, Aegon saw just one landmass ripe for the taking. So he set out from his seat on the island of Dragonstone and took it! Some kingdoms (including the North, the Vale, and the Rock) understood they couldn’t win a fight against three dragons and laid down their arms. The ruling houses there were subsequently awarded positions as “wardens” of their respective regions – swearing fealty to King Aegon I as the one true king of all seven kingdoms while maintaining some power and autonomy of their own. Others foolishly tried to fight and had their whole lines extinguished (including House Hoare of the Iron Islands and Riverlands, House Gardener of the Reach, and House Durrandon of the Stormlands).
Only Dorne and its favorable geography proved successful in repelling the dragon threat, remaining independent until King Daeron II brought them into the realm via marriage later on. Still, despite not having actual control of Dorne, King Aegon I styled himself as the “Lord of the Seven Kingdoms” to establish his dominion over the continent. The name “Seven Kingdoms” stuck throughout the years even though there was but one king and one kingdom, give or take a Dorne.
There Are Now Nine “Regions” in the Seven Kingdoms
Egg doesn’t expect Dunk to just take him at his word that there are really nine kingdoms in the seven kingdoms, he goes ahead and lists them out: “Crownlands, Westerlands, Stormlands, Riverlands, the Iron Islands, the North, the Reach, the Vale of Arryn, and Dorne.” Egg’s list makes it pretty clear how seven kingdoms became nine regions. Simply put: one region was added and one other kingdom was split into two regions.
The added region is the Crownlands, which resides along Westeros’ eastern coast by Blackwater Bay. Once disputed territory between the Storm King and several petty kings, the Crownlands became Aegon’s new home upon his landing. In fact, he built a city there you might be familiar with called King’s Landing. Nowadays, the Crownlands operates like the District of Columbia in the United States: all of the vassal lords there pay their tithes directly to the Iron Throne and are ruled by the Lord of the Seven Kingdoms.
Meanwhile the Kingdom of the Isles and Rivers became the Iron Islands and the Riverlands. Throughout Westeros’ long history, riverlanders rarely had a kingdom of their own and instead were often exploited by their more powerful neighbors. The neighbor who just happened to be holding the Riverlands hot potato when Aegon arrived was an Iron Islander known as “Black” Harren of House Hoare. Just about everyone loathed Black Harren, most of all the riverlanders. So after Aegon roasted Harren’s whole line to ashes in Harrenhal, he then graciously handed his allies in Riverrun the Riverlands by naming Edmyn Tully as Lord Paramount of the Trident.
Recognizing that the Iron Islands now needed some local governance as well, Aegon allowed the ironborn to choose a new lord amongst themselves as long as they relinquished all claims to the Riverlands. New wardens House Greyjoy repaid this magnanimity by occasionally raiding and pillaging the Westerosi mainland for 300 years.
There you have it. That’s how A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms briefly became A Knight of the Nine Kingdoms.
All six episodes of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms are available to stream on HBO Max now.
The Saddest Episodes of Scrubs
Scrubs is technically a sitcom. It certainly has enough goofy storylines, fantasy sequences, and gags to be classified as a sitcom, anyway. But fans of the show know that it also delivers serious emotional punches, band-for-band. For every upbeat bit of nonsense, Scrubs consistently used its hospital setting to explore themes of grief and death right up to the end.
With the show returning to our screens soon, we’re looking back at some of the episodes in the original run that brought deeper meaning to the stories inside Sacred Heart Hospital.
“My Old Lady”
Season 1 Episode 4
J.D. (Zach Braff) provides statistics for Sacred Heart: one in three patients will die. So, when J.D., Turk (Donald Faison), and Elliot (Sarah Chalke) each get patients who need various treatments, we suspect that one of them will kick the bucket. Turk’s patient seems like he’ll be ok, as he’s there for a simple hernia surgery. Elliot’s patient has shortness of breath, which puts her at risk. Meanwhile, J.D. is trying to convince a patient in her 70s that she needs dialysis to prolong her life, but the patient isn’t interested, saying she’s lived an amazing life and doesn’t have anything left to do.
This very early episode proved that Scrubs wasn’t just here to joke around. All three patients die. J.D.’s patient passes away after refusing treatment, Turk’s dies on the operating table, and Elliot’s doesn’t respond to anything she tries. Yes, these deaths teach the young doctors a thing or two about themselves (Turk starts getting to know his patients instead of wheeling them through like cars, etc.), but they also show us that Scrubs will not always be trotting out slapstick and happy endings. There will be episodes that hurt.
“My Philosophy”
Season 2 Episode 13
In “My Philosophy,” Dr. Cox (John C. McGinley) diagnoses a heavily pregnant woman with a heart valve defect. Though he and J.D. suspect that the woman’s husband will have to choose between saving his wife’s life and their baby’s, both end up surviving the procedure. Meanwhile, J.D.’s favorite patient, Elaine, is back at the hospital in need of a heart transplant, and the two end up getting existential about the balance of life at Sacred Heart. The balance, it turns out, isn’t between choosing to save the pregnant woman or her unborn child – it’s Elaine who doesn’t make it.
This all leads to a genuinely sad and touching moment between Dr. Cox and J.D., who is clearly taking Elaine’s death badly. Cox, typically dismissive of J.D.’s thoughts and feelings on literally any matter, takes a moment to reach out and ask if he’s okay (he isn’t). Tissues at the ready.
“My Screw Up”
Season 3 Episode 14
Weew, well. This is the one. The one. Arguably, the saddest ever episode of Scrubs. Feel free to skip to the next entry if you don’t want to relive it!
Dr. Cox and Jordan (Christa Miller) are planning a birthday shindig for their son, Jack, but there’s a lot going on at Sacred Heart. Jordan’s wonderful brother Ben (Brendan Fraser) has returned, having successfully beaten his cancer back into remission, but Cox wants to perform some tests to check that he’s really okay. Cox leaves J.D. in charge of both Ben’s tests and caring for another patient while he steps out for half an hour to deal with a party juggler. When he returns, J.D. has been swamped and delivers the news that the patient has unfortunately died. Cox goes ballistic, dismissing J.D. from the hospital.
Later, we see that Cox is in a terrible state, but Ben calms him down for the party and helps him apologize to J.D., who had been doing his best in a difficult situation. As Ben and Cox take a stroll outside, Cox discusses his guilt over the patient’s death while he was away and tells Ben that he doesn’t want to go to the party. When J.D. arrives, he hears Cox talking only to himself. In a devastating twist, it’s revealed that Ben was the one who died that day, and they’re actually attending his funeral.
If you’re not hearing “Where do you think we are?” in your head right now, you’ve probably never sat through “My Screw Up.”
“My Last Chance”
Season 4 Episode 8
Another Dr. Cox-centric tearjerker pops up unexpectedly in season 4 when, thanks to Kelso, he’s forced to do 24 hours of community service in an ambulance. Riding along with EMT Denise Lemmon (Molly Shannon), it feels to Cox like she’s been created specifically to annoy him, and he realizes he will have to endure her incessant babbling for two 12-hour shifts without losing his mind or his temper.
Hearing that Cox has a young son, Denise talks happily about her own throughout the first shift, showing Cox a picture of him and, later, his favorite Ken Griffey Jr. baseball card, suggesting that her son never goes anywhere without it. When Cox and Denise get into an accident, she breaks her collarbone and Cox uses the opportunity to get Denise to sign off on his community service.
Finally free of Denise, he launches into a tirade, telling her just how annoying she is. Leaving the room in triumph, a nurse hands him the baseball card from the wrecked ambulance. It’s then that Cox realizes Denise’s son died long ago. He returns to Denise, quietly listens to her story, then brings his son to visit her in the hospital. I’m literally crying as I’m writing this! Dang it, Scrubs!
“My Lunch”
Season 5 Episode 20
Look, a lot of the saddest Scrubs episodes revolve around Dr. Cox for a reason. He’s an absolutely brutal character who often makes the younger doctors in the hospital feel terrible for no other reason than it simply delights him. So, when bad things happen to Cox and we see there’s a vulnerable person under all his bullshit, it hits like a sledgehammer.
After J.D. and Dr. Cox run into a cheery former patient, Jill, who’s been stood up on a date, they’re surprised when she appears to die by suicide several days later. Cox tells J.D. he shouldn’t blame himself for not seeing signs of depression in Jill, and they manage to find a positive angle to her death, as they can now use her organs to save three other patients’ lives. Unfortunately, Jill actually died from rabies, and the decision to implant her organs in the three patients leads to their deaths from the same disease.
“My Lunch” becomes one of the darkest and most tragic episodes of the show when Cox can’t take his own advice to not blame himself. He spirals hard until he completely breaks, behavior that J.D. struggles to witness from his mentor.
“My Fallen Idol”
Season 5 Episode 21
J.D. realizes just how flawed and traumatized Dr. Cox is in this episode covering the fallout from “My Lunch.” It starts with Cox showing up to work drunk, and J.D. is absolutely appalled. Everyone then takes turns trying to pull Cox out of his depression except J.D., who eventually admits to Cox that he’s found it hard to see his mentor’s superheroic image crumble, but that he now understands that it’s his issue to deal with, not Cox’s.
J.D.’s support helps Cox back from the brink after he assures Cox that he still thinks of him as a role model. “I guess I came over here to tell you how proud of you I am,” J.D. says. “Not because you did the best you could for those patients… but because after 20 years of being a doctor, when things go badly, you still take it this hard. And I gotta tell you, man, I mean, that’s the kind of doctor I want to be.”
Sniff.
“My Long Goodbye”
Season 6 Episode 14
As a longtime supporting character in the show, it’s extremely hard to say goodbye to the deadpan Nurse Laverne Roberts. Carla is all of us, in denial that Laverne won’t pull through after she falls into a coma after a car accident. Even as everyone says their final farewells to Laverne, Carla resists until the last minute when she realizes that if she refuses to let go of Laverne and misses her chance to say goodbye, she won’t get another one.
An episode like “My Long Goodbye” would simply be too sad without a B-plot that brings us all a little levity, so Laverne’s heartbreaking death is accompanied by the actions of a reliably selfish Jordan, who doesn’t understand why no one is congratulating her and showering her with gifts after the birth of her daughter. Unbeknownst to Jordan, Dr. Cox hasn’t told anyone that their baby was even born because he doesn’t want to take any attention away from Laverne’s passing. A raging, attention-seeking Jordan decides to do the one thing she can think of that will piss Cox off the most: name their daughter J.D..
“My Last Words”
Season 8 Episode 2
There’s very little that besties J.D. and Turk love more than their annual Steak Night, so they’re both excited to wrap up their shifts and start slopping ‘em up. Nothing about this scenario seems to indicate that we’re about to experience a really heavy episode about mortality, but we certainly are!
As they prepare for a night of meat sweats, J.D. is reminded that young doctor Denise Mahoney (Eliza Coupe) has a terrible bedside manner. He encourages her to work on it, but J.D. and Turk are also asked to check on one of her patients, since he’s dying and the abrupt Denise might not be cut out to deal with his final hours.
The two swing by George’s room and make him comfortable. They honor his request for one last beer. They also assure him that his family will be there soon. However, when they find out that George hasn’t got any family, they abandon Steak Night and stay by his side until he dies, admitting that they’re both still afraid of death even though they see it every day.
Do any other episodes of Scrubs have you sobbing your guts out? Let us know in the comments!
Scrubs season 10 premieres Wednesday, February 25 on ABC.
Andor Creator Lays Out the Show’s Politics For Those Who Still Refuse to See Them
We live in a period of not-so-great media literacy. Bruce Springsteen and Rage Against the Machine fans decry their one-time favorites for criticizing Trump. People go to message boards to complain that Star Trek is woke, decades after Kirk reprimanded Stiles for his bigotry. Marvel readers boycott Captain America for being mean to Nazis, despite the fact the guy debuted punching Hitler in the face.
Gilroy drew those connections when asked about the similarities between the events on the show and real life events such as ICE agents murdering citizens in Minneapolis. “The simplest answer to the strange synchronicity of all of this is really on them, the outside forces,” Gilroy explained. “We were pretty much doing a story about authoritarianism and fascism, and the Empire is very clearly a great example of that. It’s a great place to deal with those issues, and as we’ve discussed many times before, we had this wide open canvas to deal with it.”
Further, Gilroy rejects the idea that Andor was prescient, simply because real-world reactionary forces are so obvious. “You get out your Fascism for Dummies book for the 15 things you do, and we tried to include as many of them as we could [in Andor] in the most artful way possible. How were we supposed to know that this clown car in Washington was going to basically use the same book that we used?” Rather than credit himself with special insight, Gilroy blames “the sad familiarity of fascism and the karaoke menu of things that you go through to do it.”
Part of Andor‘s power came from the way Gilroy and his co-creators, including brother Dan Gilroy, turned the greatest weakness of a prequel into a strength. Audiences know that the Empire will exert its will on the citizens, that the rebellion will not win until Luke Skywalker convinces Darth Vader to join him.
But the characters in Andor do not know that, and thus their reluctance to join the resistance mirrors the refusal of some Americans to accept the obvious. Cassian Andor, Mon Mothma, and others realize that Luthen Rael, the cold-hearted spymaster played by Stellan Skarsgård is right, but only slowly and reluctantly.
Gilroy believes so firmly that the show’s themes are obvious that he even agreed to Disney’s request that he and star Diego Luna avoid making obvious parallels to the present. “We came up with a legit historical model, and it’s a version of what I’m telling you now,” he pointed out. “That was a very, very safe and legitimate place for us to sell the show without ever having to say what I’m free to say now.”
Legitimate as it may have been, some people still didn’t get the point. Will Gilroy’s blunt talk be enough to get some folks to see that the Empire is like real fascists? That seems more unrealistic than anything in the Star Wars universe.
Mike Colter Wants Luke Cage for a Classic Daredevil Story
The explosive first season of Daredevil: Born Again has a lot in common with the Marvel Comics story Devil’s Reign. In both tales, Wilson Fisk becomes mayor of New York City and wages war against his enemies, especially Daredevil. At the end of the comic story, Luke Cage becomes the new mayor, which has raised hopes that Mike Colter would be reprising the character he played on Netflix.
As of yet, there’s been no news about Mike Colter reprising his role as Luke Cage for Born Again or any other Marvel show. However, Colter is already pitching ideas for a return, and he’s drawing from a Daredevil story that isn’t Devil’s Reign. “I definitely would want to see him find out what it’s like to have the power and complete control of the neighborhood,” Colter told The Direct; “and see if he can do the right thing and at the same time, keep his hands from getting dirty.” That premise makes a lot of sense for Cage, especially the version that Colter played for two seasons on Netflix. But it also sounds a lot like two classic Daredevil storylines, one beloved and the other remembered, but not fondly.
In the final pages of 2003’s Daredevil #50, by Brian Michael Bendis, Alex Maleev, and a host of guest artists, Daredevil throws the battered body of Wilson Fisk onto the floor of Josie’s Bar. “This is your Kingpin!” he shouts to the assembled thugs, before declaring his new position. “I am here to say: if you people so badly need some sort of Kingpin, someone to lord over you—well, from now on, it’s me.”
The issues that followed saw Matt experiencing initial success, keeping Hell’s Kitchen safe by becoming the new Kingpin. However, even before things began to unravel and Fisk plotted his return, his friends expressed concern about the dirty way that Daredevil brought order. A group of other heroes arrive to confront Matt, including Spider-Man, Mister Fantastic, Doctor Strange, and, yes, Luke Cage. They warn Daredevil that his methods will compromise his morals, and although he rejects them at first, they turn out to be right.
And yet, seven years later, Matt Murdock makes the same mistake, with far more uneven results. In the 2010 storyline Shadowland by Andy Diggle and Billy Tan, Daredevil becomes the leader of the mystical ninja clan known as the Hand. He establishes Hell’s Kitchen as a new base of operations, kills his arch-nemesis Bullseye, and eventually realizes that he’s being corrupted by supernatural forces. But not before other heroes confront him over his methods, a group of heroes that once again includes Cage.
Despite his character’s misgivings about such behavior, Colter wants to see Cage take control of his neighborhood. And it makes a lot of sense. Cage’s Harlem is not the same as Daredevil’s Hell’s Kitchen, particularly in its relationship to law and order. Many of Matt’s troubles come from his extraordinarily bad choices and his unshakeable Catholic guilt, while Cage knows first hand how the law enforces systemic racism. The stakes of his power grab would be very different than those of Daredevil, as would the heroes’ response.
Will Colter get the chance to play a morally complex Cage? “I have been talking to Marvel, and Jessica’s back, and there’s a lot of story left to tell, and I just think that it’d be a shame for me not to pop back up,” he told The Direct. Will that story left to tell send Luke down the same path as Matt? We’ll have to wait to find out.
Daredevil: Born Again season 2 arrives on Disney+ on March 24, 2026.
Eric Dane Perfectly Captured a Fan-Favorite X-Men Character With a Single Line
X-Men: The Last Standdeserves almost no praise. Not only did it replace the franchise’s gross first director with an equally gross new director, but it utterly fumbled the Dark Phoenix Saga, one of the greatest X-Men stories of all time. Moreover, it filled the screen with all manner of deep-cut characters from the comics, with little to no relation to their four-color predecessors.
Yet, there is one exception to The Last Stand‘s mishandling of Marvel’s Merry Mutants. Jamie Madrox the Multiple Man has only one notable scene, but he’s a perfect adaptation of the B-list mutant. And all of the credit belongs to the actor who played him, the late Eric Dane.
Created by Len Wein for 1975’s Giant-Size Fantastic Four #4, Jamie Madrox is the rare mutant who has had his powers since birth, instead of manifesting them at adolescence. When his doctor slapped him on his butt start his breathing, Madrox split into two clones, revealing his ability to use kinetic energy to create dupes. As an adult, Madrox took the name Multiple Man and served as a very minor character in the X-Men milieu until the 1991 relaunch of X-Factor by writer Peter David. David reimagined Madrox as the sad clown of the superhero set, a guy whose sarcasm and cool reserve mask a deep, and ironic, loneliness.
Under David’s guidance, Multiple Man became a fan favorite. Madrox fronted the third incarnation of X-Factor, acting as the noir-ish lead detective of a private investigation firm, and in 2018 got his own time-bending, wacky miniseries, from Matthew Rosenberg and Andy MacDonald.
Madrox is exactly the type of character who should show up for a bit part in an X-Men movie, a guy with a cool power and name recognition, but who doesn’t have a Wolverine or Storm-level fan base to justify an A-plot. The Last Stand gives Madrox two scenes, and allows Dane exactly one line in each of them. And the Grey’s Anatomy star nails it.
The first is Madrox’s introduction, when Magneto rescues Mystique from a truck carrying kidnapped mutants. Before freeing Juggernaut, a great X-Men character who gets totally mishandled by the movie and is miscast as Vinnie Jones, Magneto opens a door and out walks seven Madrox duplicates. “I can use a man of your talents,” sneers Magneto, to which Multiple Man shrugs, “I’m in.”
Even better is the second scene, which mostly stays in the perspective of the war room operated by mutant hunting military man Bolivar Trask (played here by Bill Duke, and played by Peter Dinklage in X-Men: Days of Future Past, because this franchise is nuts). Through infrared satellite images, we see Trask’s soldiers descending upon a secret camp filled with mutants. But as the soldiers get closer, the people all disappear, leaving one behind. We cut to the camp, where we see that everyone there was a Multiple Man duplicate, all of whom reabsorb into Madrox Prime.
“Okay,” he says with a snarky grin and his hands raised. “I give up!”
Everything about Madrox in that scene feels like it came right out of a Peter David comic. It’s not just his costuming, the green and yellow shirt peaking out from under a leather jacket. It’s the absolutely smug way Dane delivers the line, the grin that would make you absolutely hate him if he wasn’t so darn handsome.
Nearly every other character in The Last Stand strays far from their comic book roots. Hugh Jackman plays Wolverine as a soft-hearted romantic, while Famke Janssen’s Phoenix is a generic 2000s horror monster. Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen have enough presence to make even poorly-written Professor X and Magneto work, but nearly everyone who isn’t Kelsey Grammer as Beast acts nothing like the mutants we know from the pages of Marvel.
Not so with Dane’s take on Jamie Madrox. With just a shrug and a smirk and a spot-on line reading, Eric Dane did right by Multiple Man fans.
Superman: Man of Tomorrow’s Braniac Offers Sweet Thoughts on Casting
In Man of Tomorrow, the upcoming sequel to Superman, German actor Lars Eidinger will play Brainiac. An intergalactic collector from the planet Colu, Brainiac’s cold, computer brain strips him of all emotion. He simply travels from planet to planet, shrinking cities he finds interesting and bringing them into his ship, with no regard of the lives he’s ruined.
In real life, Lars Eidinger seems like a big sweetheart. At least that’s the impression one gets from a new interview, in which he discusses his casting in the James Gunn picture. “It’s a true miracle that it happened,” Eidinger said. “I would venture to say that every actor, every actress in Germany, there is a secret hope that one day to receive a phone call from Hollywood. And I always thought, I’m 50 now, I thought okay, that’s it, and it suddenly happened. And it all went relatively quickly, didn’t it? And me? Yes, I really can hardly believe it, honestly.”
On one hand, Eidinger certainly isn’t a big name like several of the others that Gunn has cast in the DCU. But he’s not a newcomer either. Just last year, Eidinger had a brief but memorable role in Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly, having worked with the director previously in the Don DeLillo adaptation White Noise. Moreover, Eidinger has worked with French filmmaker Olivier Assayas, appearing in Clouds of Sils Maria and Personal Shopper.
More importantly, Eidinger is no more an unknown than the star of Man of Tomorrow, David Corenswet. Although the actor had a reoccurring role in Ryan Murphy‘s The Politician and the HBO series We Own This City, he was best known to moviegoers as the ill-fated projectionist in Ti West‘s Pearl. As a relatively fresh face, Corenswet was able to disappear into the role of Superman, allowing us to see the icon before the actor.
Such a disappearance may be even more important for Eidinger. Brainiac may not be a household name like Lex Luthor or even Bizarro, but he is one of Superman’s most intimidating foes. His intelligence exceeds that of Luthor, and unlike Lex, Brainiac has no emotion or ego to get in the way. You won’t see him nearly crying because Superman makes him feel small.
Brainiac first appeared in 1958’s Action Comics #242 by writer Otto Binder and artist Al Plastino. Even by early silver age standards, Brainaic was a menacing villain, a chilly collector of worlds whose force field blocked Superman’s attacks. Over the years, he’s only become more frightening. Whether as a skeletal robot or as a massive brute with purple tendrils, Brainiac always poses a challenge to the Man of Steel.
Maybe that’s why Eidinger so easily shrugged off the first question the reporter asked him. Before going into his warmhearted observations about his late-in-life big break, Eidinger was asked if he’s scared of Superman. “No,” the actor responded, without even pausing for a beat. That’s exactly the type of chilly, uncomplicated response Brainiac should have to a question about Superman.
Man of Tomorrow is set to release on July 9, 2027.
House of the Dragon Season 3 Trailer Feels Huge After Dunk and Egg’s Smaller Tale
The first teaser for House of the Dragon season 3 is positively bursting with dragons. At least five of the giant creatures are keeping it one hundred on the land, the sea, and the sky – breathing fire and striking fear into the hearts of all who see them.
Given the name of the show, this shouldn’t be as surprising as it feels. But after spending five weeks in Dunk and Egg’s more wholesome corner of Westeros on A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, where simple concerns and smallfolk rule the day, the return of House Targaryen’s greatest weapon lands like a thunderclap. No more questions of duty or what makes a true knight, it’s time for some of the worst people in the realm’s history to take the reins again, plunging us all right back into the kingdom’s darkest hour. And no one is having a good time.
House of the Dragonhas received its fair share of criticism for slow-walking some of the bigger, more violent clashes at the heart of the infamous Dance of the Dragons Targaryen civil war. To be fair, the show had its reasons for those choices, particularly during a second season that was undoubtedly impacted by the writers’ and actors’ strikes of 2023. But that hurry up-and-wait philosophy seems to be fully out the window now, as the teaser promises several major confrontations that mean Rhaenyra Targaryen’s hopes for a swift victory with the help of Allicent Hightower are very unlikely to come to pass.
The clip’s scale is positively enormous, featuring everything from marching armies and dragons burning onlookers to a crisp to naval battles and aerial attacks. We see several shots from what is clearly the infamous Battle of the Gullet, the big fight that was teased throughout the final episodes of season 2 but that had yet to come to pass. (And it’s one fans have been waiting for since the show started.) A naval face-off that’s one of the bloodiest battles in all of Westeros’s history, the Battle of the Gullet sees the Triarchy take on House Velaryon’s naval blockade, which is backed up by Jacaerys Velaryon and several of Team Black’s newly-minted Dragonseeds. And it’s as horrifying as you’d expect anything that involves giant creatures that breathe fire and boats made of wood can be.
Elsewhere, a glimpse of blue dragon Tessarion hints that Prince Daeron Targaryen’s onscreen debut is imminent, and a shot of Otto Hightower (James Norton) amid a field of soldiers ready for war means that it’s a good chance we’ll also be seeing the Butcher’s Ball on this season’s dance card of major conflicts. Daemon is shown repeatedly in armor and swinging a sword. And, Aemond is preparing for Rhaenyra to try to take King’s Landing, with a badly injured King Aegon II still in hiding. All while the sounds of dragons fill the air.
Seeing the inevitable death and destruction looming on the horizon is a big adjustment after the more lighthearted take on George R.R. Martin’s world in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. In fact, it makes it all feel like even more of a tragedy. This family is ripping itself apart for nothing, for a world that will barely respect their house after their magical beasts fall. In A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, just one good Targaryen dies and the world is forever altered. How many are about to perish here?
House of the Dragon season 3 is set to premiere this June on HBO and HBO Max.
Toy Story 5 Trailer Confronts An Existential Threat to All Toys
For objects of children’s entertainment, Buzz and Woody have been through a lot. In the first Toy Story movie from 1995, the cowboy Woody had to face potential replacement by the flashier space man Buzz Lightyear. Since then, they’ve been kidnapped by Wayne Knight, sabotaged by a rogue antique, and, uh… almost sent to Hell.
The latest trailer for Toy Story 5 brings the toys back to their roots, with a threat of replacement that goes deeper than Woody’s worry that Andy has outgrown him. The toys’ new kid, Bonnie, has been given a tablet called Lilypad (Greta Lee), and Lilypad can keep Bonnie’s attention—for better or for worse. To mount a rescue mission, Jessie has to call in some backup, bringing Woody and all of the original toys back together again.
As that summary suggests, Toy Story 5 faces a unique challenge. As Pixar‘s flagship franchise, Toy Story carries a level of prestige on top of the nostalgia it invokes, especially as the movie’s first audience has now grown up and many have their own children. Andy may also be an adult, and Buzz and Woody may have matured beyond their initial conflicts, but the series cannot completely abandon those characters.
On the other hand, what more is to be said about characters deeply indebted to the childhoods of Baby Boomers? It’s not just today’s kids who didn’t grow up with Buck Rogers and Howdy Doody, some of the inspirations for Buzz and Woody—the concepts are just as unfamiliar to their parents and, in some cases, their parents’ parents. How can Toy Story 5 be as relevant as the four movies that precede it?
The new trailer gives some hints about the movie’s approach. First of all, there’s the emphasis on Jessie, who has been a dynamic supporting character since her introduction in Toy Story 2, but who has never received the attention she deserves. Then, there’s Bonnie’s family, which did play a background role in Toy Story 4. However, that film took the family on the road, giving us less time to see their full milieu.
Most importantly, there’s Lilypad. More than just a new character, Lilypad gets at the central issue of the Toy Story franchise. These movies have always told us that toys care about their owners and bring out the best in their owners. Clearly, Lilypad can connect with Bonnie, but the trailer also shows us that it’s making her inert and uncreative.
In other words, Lilypad threatens to replace Buzz and Woody just like Woody threatened to replace Buzz. But where Woody found a way to be second best to his space-age pal, the toys likely cannot co-exist with Lilypad, a device that threatens to make Bonnie dull and lazy. Will that switch be enough to animate Toy Story for a new generation? We’ll find out this summer.
Toy Story 5 arrives in theaters on June 19, 2026.
A Guide to the Comics That Have Inspired James Gunn’s DC Universe
Even though he and Peter Safran have only been the co-chairs of DC Studios since 2022, James Gunn has already made the shared storytelling universe his own. The three projects released since then—Superman, Creature Commandos, and Peacemaker season 2—have all born his trademark, as do the upcoming movies Supergirl and Clayface and the series Lanterns.
But as much as James Gunn has an idiosyncratic style, and as much as he tends to avoid directly adapting storylines, it’s clear that certain runs and eras of DC stand out as inspirations. Based on Gunn’s comments and the types of stories he likes to tell, here are the DC Comics runs that seem most important to Gunn and his vision of the DCU.
The Saga of the Swamp Thing (1984–1987)
Shortly after taking the top job at DC Studios, Gunn shared on social media some comics that he recommends. That list included The Saga of the Swamp Thing, the groundbreaking horror comic that brought Alan Moore to the attention of the average reader. Just a few weeks ago, Gunn once again shared an image from the series, reminding us that he really likes Swamp Thing, even though there are currently no projects with the character in development.
It’s not hard to see the appeal of Swamp Thing for Gunn. The story of scientist Alec Holland who transforms into a plant monster—or of a plant monster who thinks he’s Alec Holland—Swamp Thing isn’t just a mix of superheroes and horror, it’s also a deeply romantic story. We don’t often see much of Alan Moore’s high-concept storytelling in Gunn’s work, but anyone who loves DC Comics at least has a respect for Moore’s work.
Man of Steel (1986)
Leading up to the release of Superman, Gunn made plenty of references to Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s All-Star Superman. And to be sure, elements of that comic do show up, with crazy concepts like the kaiju attack and portraying Lex Luthor as a straightforward, immoral villain. But some of the best parts of the movie came from another, very different Superman comic.
Released around the time of the Crisis on Infinite Earths reboot, the miniseries Man of Steel served to reimagine Superman for the modern age. Writer and artist John Byrne did away with some of the more outlandish parts of Clark Kent’s history, including over-the-top powers like super-ventriloquism or the existence of Superboy, and gave us a more grounded, realistic Superman. All-Star Superman may be the exact opposite of the character from Man of Steel, but when Clark Kent and Lois Lane have their argument about Superman’s role in international relations, that’s more Byrne than it is Morrison.
Suicide Squad (1987–1992)
Really, it all starts with Suicide Squad, and not just because Gunn’s first DC project was The Suicide Squad, released before he even rose to the top of DC Studios. Rather, it seems like the DC Comics of the late 1980s and early 1990s are most important to Gunn and shaped his perceptions of these characters, particularly when done by writer John Ostrander and artist Luke McDonnell.
Launched in 1987, Suicide Squad introduced some of Gunn’s favorite characters, including Rick Flagg, Amanda Waller, and John Economos. It also gave plenty of attention to the sort of goofy Z-listers that Gunn adores, such as Captain Boomerang and Javelin. The highlight of Ostrander’s run was the Janus Directive crossover, which involved other Gunn favorites Checkmate, Peacemaker, and Vigilante.
Justice League International (1987–1989)
Gunn’s favorite version of the Suicide Squad debuted in Legends, the company-wide crossover that followed up on Crisis on Infinite Earths with a story about the public doubting its heroes. The end of that series saw the launch of a new version of the Justice League, the flagship team of the DC Universe.
However, this incarnation, dubbed Justice League International (JLI), was unlike any superteam that came before, or would come again. Created by writers Keith Giffen and J. M. DeMatteis and artist Kevin Maguire, the JLI was like a sitcom version of a superhero team, in which big guns like Batman and the Martian Manhunter rubbed shoulders with scrubs such as Blue Beetle, Booster Gold, and, of course, the bad attitude Green Lantern, Guy Gardner.
Captain Atom (1987–1991)
Where most comic fans know the characters that DC bought from long-defunct publisher Charlton Comics as little more than the inspiration for Watchmen, Gunn clearly has affection for the heroes as they were integrated into the mainline universe after the Crisis. He’s already put Peacemaker and Judomaster on screen, and if rumors about Creature Commandos season 2 are to be believed, Captain Atom, the guy who inspired Doctor Manhattan, will be coming soon.
Captain Atom is a strange character, but one who fits the Gunn approach. On the surface, Nathaniel Adam is a straightforward military man, a guy willing to do his duty for his country. But when an experiment gives him nuclear powers, he finds himself coming closer to godhood than he had ever wanted or imagined. Famously, DC intended to turn Captain Atom into the Monarch, a villain from the future, and while a clunky, last-minute rewrite spared the hero from that fate, he’s always had a cloud hanging over him. That dark cloud, combined with themes of the government’s involvement with superheroes, makes Captain Atom an ideal Gunn character.
Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn (1989–1990)
The HBO series Lanterns releases later this year, but if you wouldn’t know it from WB’s marketing. In contrast to the full push given to Supergirl, the show about Green Lanterns Hal Jordan and John Stewart has just a still featuring stars Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre, a quick clip, and a logo. Moreover, there has been a surprising lack of green in this show about Green Lanterns, as we still haven’t seen the heroes in costume and even the logo is pretty monochrome.
While that might worry those expecting lots of weird aliens in a show about space cops, the dour aesthetic does have a comic book precedent. The 1989 miniseries Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn by writers Christopher Priest, Keith Giffen, and Gerard Jones and artists M.D. Bright and Romeo Tanghal retold the origin of Hal Jordan, imagining him as an guilt-riddled alcoholic who has heroism thrust upon him. The success of that series spawned a sequel and a relaunched regular series, which featured a greying Jordan hanging around the California desert, and looking a lot like Chandler in the few bits we’ve seen from Lanterns.
Lobo (1990–1992)
Given Gunn’s origins as a writer with gross-out indie moviemakers Troma Entertainment, it’s almost surprising that we’ve had to wait until Supergirl for the Main Man Lobo to show up. While Keith Giffen may have introduced him as a generic antagonist in 1983’s Omega Men #3, he and his co-creators Alan Grant and Simon Bisley soon turned Lobo into an over-the-top satire of the edgy comics that became all the rage in the 1990s.
Nowhere is that more clear than in the 1990 Lobo miniseries and its 1992 sequel Lobo’s Back, the latter of which proudly showed Lobo’s back and his bare backside on its first issue cover. The series establishes Lobo’s ridiculous backstory, revealing that he killed everyone on his planet because an elementary teacher gave him a bad grade but also showing how much he loves space dolphins. Lobo is exactly the type of extreme humor and surprising sweetness that Gunn loves, so there’s no doubt that he read these comics.
Top 10 (1999–2001)
Even more than Swamp Thing, the most surprising comic run mentioned in Gunn’s early batch of recommended DC works is Top 10, by Alan Moore and artists Gene Ha and Zander Cannon. Unsurprisingly, given Moore’s involvement, Top 10 is a superhero deconstruction. However, unlike his most famous works, there’s an optimism and playfulness to Moore’s approach, which reveals a love for the genre.
Top 10 takes place in a megacity where everyone—men, women, kids, pets, and everything in between—has superpowers and wears crazy costumes. The series focuses on the police officers who patrol this city, marrying the banal realism of an Ed McBain novel to capes and cowls. As an imprint done for WildStorm Comics before DC acquired the latter (much to Moore’s chagrin), Top 10 exists outside of mainline continuity, so it’s hard to see how exactly Gunn would use the material for the DCU.
The Authority (1999–2002)
Like Top 10, The Authority was a WildStorm book disconnected from the DC Universe, and it’s easy to see why. Created by Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch, The Authority is a realpolitik take on the Justice League. Where Superman and Batman try to inspire people to be better and respond to villain threats, Midnighter, Apollo, and their other ultra-powerful heroes take it upon themselves to build a better world.
The combination of big screen visuals and amorality made The Authority electric in its original run, and it only grew more relevant in the years of America’s War on Terror. Yet, the series’ tendency to be mean-spirited, especially when writer Mark Millar took over with artist Frank Quitely, has not aged well. That said, The Authority has found new life after being integrated into mainline DC, and Gunn has cited an adaptation as one of the first things he wants to tackle in his DCU.
DC: The New Frontier (2004)
As with many of the books on this list, DC: The New Frontier will likely never be directly adapted, but it does inform Gunn’s approach to the characters. Written and drawn by Darwyn Cooke, New Frontier retells the dawn of the Silver Age as a single, coherent story. While all of the Silver Age heroes make appearances, it focuses mostly on Green Lantern Hal Jordan, Martian Manhunter, and Superman.
Through those characters, Cooke approaches real-world problems like PTSD from the Korean War, McCarthyism, and expanding American interventions in foreign countries. But Cooke’s retrofuturist stylings retain an optimistic gleam, especially as the heroes come together to form the Justice League. New Frontier’s combination of sadness and hope perfectly captures James Gunn’s view on superheroes.
Infinite Crisis (2005–2006)
Infinite Crisis doesn’t seem like the type of series that would have a life beyond comic books. Released for the 20th anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths, Infinite Crisis was both an homage and scapegoating of that famous multiverse story. Writer Geoff Johns, working with a team of artists, brought back several concepts from the original, including the big bad the Anti-Monitor, as well as some of the survivors from the multiverse collapse, including the Golden Age Superman and Superboy-Prime.
However, Johns also suggested that the darkness and violence of the modern DC Comics stemmed from a loss of innocence that followed the Crisis, instead of, you know, the dark and violent comics that Johns wrote. Still, between big weird concepts like Captain Marvel villain Mister Mind becoming a giant moth that restarts the multiverse and the introduction of Sanctuary, the planet that will be the focus of the Superman sequel Man of Tomorrow, it seems that Infinite Crisis was a favorite of Gunn’s.
Checkmate (2006–2009)
In the final episode of Peacemaker‘s second season, Chris Smith and the 11th Street Kids rebrand themselves as a private superhero agency called Checkmate. Even though this version of Checkmate has little to do with the global intelligence group in DC Comics, Gunn has said that he’s drawn inspiration from that organization for other parts of the DCU.
In particular, Gunn points to the 2006 incarnation of Checkmate, a series written by the great Greg Rucka. This version leans heavily into espionage drama, reimaginging characters such as the original Green Lantern Alan Scott into spymasters who mistrust even their fellow Checkmate agents. Gunn has already integrated Sasha Bordeaux from this run into his Peacemaker series. Surely, more elements are not far behind.
Batman by Grant Morrison (2006–2013)
When he initially announced his Superman film, Gunn used several images from Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s All-Star Superman. And yet, when Superman finally hit theaters, it included no images or scenes from that comic, but still felt very much like a proper adaptation of that comic.
One has to wonder if the same will be true of The Brave and the Bold, which Gunn has promoted with images from Batman and Son, a pivotal storyline from Morrison’s Batman run. In addition to introducing the Damian Wayne version of Robin, the son of Bruce Wayne who is a ninja assassin and also the world’s snottiest thirteen-year-old, Morrison’s Batman run imagined the Dark Knight as a jet-setting adventurer in the vein of James Bond. If Gunn draws from these comics for the DCU, then we will get a clear departure from the grounded Caped Crusader in Matt Reeves’s The Batman.
Mister Miracle (2017–2019)
Thus far, Gunn has avoided direct adaptations of comic books. Even Supergirl, which appears to draw fairly heavily from Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow has its revisions, such as a dustier color palette and the inclusion of Lobo. However, if there’s one series that seems to be more or less following the source material, it’s the upcoming Mister Miracle animated series.
Which makes sense, because the series was written by Tom King, and King is a member of Gunn’s DCU writers room. Mister Miracle takes the vast New Gods mythology that Jack Kirby devised in the 1970s and turns it into a study on depression. Overbearing as that may sound to some, King and artist Mitch Gerads—whose distinctive style will hopefully be recreated (and he will be compensated) for the show—find moments of humor, such as a sequence involving the ultimate evil Darkseid and a veggie platter.
As he told us at Den of Geek, Gunn’s favorite DC character is Bat-Mite, a troublesome imp who loves Batman. Although he’s managed to work imps into both Peacemaker and Superman, he still hasn’t figured out how to bring in Bat-Mite.
The most obvious avenue would be following the path that Grant Morrison set in their Batman run, in which Bat-Mite was a hallucination that Bruce Wayne built into his psyche should his mind be compromised. But we can’t help but hope that Gunn goes way back to the character’s origin in 1959, when he was just a superfan who arrived from another dimension to annoy the Caped Crusader.
Glen Powell: Murder Can Have ‘An American Quality’ in How to Make a Killing
Not until the day we sit down has Glen Powell fully appreciated his knack for playing charming, winsome, and morally flexible protagonists capable of getting away with murder. Granted, he co-wrote one such bloke in Hit Man, the beguiling romantic comedy he made with Richard Linklater a few years back that (SPOILERS) ends with his character and the object of his desire discovering how to commit to marriage over the death and cover-up of a bully.
That’s bush leagues though when compared to Powell’s newest dark comedy courtesy of A24, How to Make a Killing. The latest film from writer-director John Patton Ford (Emily the Criminal) sees Powell’s Becket Redfellow learn that the easiest way to get ahead on Wall Street is by offing the estranged and dynastic family line he was ostracized from before birth—but never so fully disowned by that he can’t inherit their billions once they die. It’s a gallows humor premise which Powell savored from the jump.
“It’s something that not until today I really unpacked, so you’re catching me at a weird time where, obviously, I’m going to have to talk to somebody about all this,” Powell quips. “[But] true crime is such an interesting thing, our fascination with the darker sides of ourselves, and I was always intrigued by how John viewed this movie as just American ambition. It’s a going-into-business movie about a young scrappy kid making it in the world, yet he’s stepping over the bodies of his own blood to get there.”
There is indeed something acutely all-American, perhaps even more so in the 21st century, about the setup. As Powell muses, “It’s a very American quality, just the lengths that we go in hustle culture—the lengths that you would go to become what you need to be.”
This facet is also intriguing since How to Make a Killing is ostensibly a film noir throwback as well, complete with its own femme fatale (Margaret Qualley) and a root in 1940s cinema, albeit of the British variety since it is loosely inspired by the 1949 English comedy, Kind Hearts and Coronets.
“It’s funny how the original is so deeply entrenched in British classism, yet how incredibly John has made it feel so American,” observes Jessica Henwick, who plays Ruth, a woman Becket is also drawn to despite her lacking the cutthroat ambition of a Wall Street bro.
And the actor who plays the man between her and Becket, Zach Woods as the Redfellow ne’er-do-well Noah, even points out that the Global Social Mobility Index of 2020 ranked the UK as having a higher degree of class mobility than the U.S. (although both are, notably, not even ranked among the top 20 these days).
Says Woods, “There’s less barriers to socioeconomic advancement in a place where you can grow up three hundred yards from a place and have a totally different accent than your neighbor, yet still even there it’s easier to get ahead.”
Given both How to Make a Killing’s own lineage and stereotypes about UK culture versus the U.S., it’s a topic director Ford has a lot of fun with. But then, the whole movie features a curious joie de vivre despite offing new characters left and right. One such target includes Topher Grace in the delicious role of a Redfellow who’s gone into Christian rock evangelizing, and has the mega-church cult following to prove it.
“I’ve always been fascinated, even before I got the role, with not only religious leaders but also self-help gurus,” Grace reveals. “Basically it’s under the banner of anyone who gets up in front of the rest of the world and says, ‘I can show you how to lead a better life.’ I always thought that was hilarious, and then on top of it, there were a couple real specific people that I watched closely, and to me it’s endlessly hilarious because it’s so ironic.”
The appeal of doing this is playing marks whom the audience is willing to root against while we follow heroes of dubious ethics. It’s been a staple of cinema from at least the early days of noir to modern favorites. For example, Henwick is quick to point out how great Park Chan-wook’s recent Korean dark comedy of similar terrain, No Other Choice, can be. Grace, meanwhile, notes that some of his favorite movies are the Martin Scorsese films like Taxi Driver or Goodfellas. And for his part, Woods darkly suggests he always rooted for Man in Walt Disney’s Bambi (1942).
“He’s got to eat!” Woods insists with a twinkle in his eye. “And they’re overpopulated in this region! It’s a cult, goddammit!” And culling the cult might just be the most American thing you can do.
How to Make a Killing goes into business only in theaters on Friday, Feb. 20.
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy – Bella Shepard Discusses How Fear Drives Genesis Lythe
The following contains spoilers for Star Trek: Starfleet Academy episode 7.
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is, as its name implies, the story of an institution. But it’s also the story of the cadets who make that institution worthwhile, and its sprawling cast is full of a wide variety of characters from different backgrounds, cultures, and life experiences. From humans and Klingons to Betazoids and holograms, the series has explored traditional coming-of-age themes through a wide variety of character perspectives. But, somehow, despite everything that’s happened so far in the series’ first season, we still know relatively little about overachieving Dar-Sha cadet Genesis Lythe. Seventh episode, “Ko’Zeine,” attempts to change that, with a story that takes a dive into the pressures and fears that motivate her behavior.
“This episode really uncovered so much about Genesis,” Bella Shepard tells Den of Geek. “I almost felt like I got to step outside of her a little bit and have a new perspective on her. I wasn’t given much to work with for the character as a whole when I first booked the project, so getting the script for episode 7, I was like, “Yes, finally.” Before that, it’s like I got little easter eggs about who she is and where she comes from.”
An hour that explores questions of duty, expectation, and self, “Ko’Zeine” reveals that Genesis isn’t exactly the perfect student we’ve all been led to believe. She altered her Starfleet Academy recommendations during the application process and removed the criticisms they contained to ensure she was accepted as a student. To a one, her recommendations all noted that while Genesis is incredibly driven, her drive comes from a place of fear, from an inability to accept her own successes or trust her own ability.
“She’s afraid of failure,” she says. “But that’s such a big umbrella: failure to uphold your image, failure to achieve what you want, or failure to love somebody the way they deserve to be loved. She thinks her value comes from her achievements, because that’s really what she’s known her whole life. So to have something other than achievements, which could be love or friendship, those don’t mean as much to her because she thinks that that’s not what people want from her or want to see from her. Her fear is really driven by not being who she thinks people want her to be.”
Ostensibly, her dream is to follow in the footsteps of her famous father, a Starfleet admiral who sounds as if he’s not exactly in the running for Dad of the Year when it comes to being present as a parent. But “Ko’Zeine” gives us plenty of reasons to question whether this path is one she truly wants.
“I think it’s so easy to do something familiar, and, obviously, her father being in a high position within the Federation, that’s familiar to her. Pressure’s familiar, and authority is very familiar to her. Because she’s afraid to step out of her comfort zone too much, she’s stuck with what’s familiar. Following in his footsteps, that’s what’s comfortable for her. If he’d been something really boring, like a librarian, she probably would’ve just worked at the library, but she would have been the best librarian. She would’ve had all the books in order perfectly and they would’ve been dusted and cleaned. Again, I think, it’s her being afraid of failure. And she talks about how, ‘Oh, I’m hoping that people don’t correlate my achievements to my father’s,’ but really, she set that system up herself. She needed the security of her father’s position to be able to fall back on and be like, ‘Well, that’s the guy I’m learning from. So if I’m doing it wrong, it’s because I’m just learning from him.’”
Thankfully, Starfleet Academy is allowing Genesis to open herself up to lots of new people and experiences, which often challenge her own perceptions of herself. In “Ko’Zeine,” she finds herself spending a holiday weekend sequestered in the Academy with Caleb, and though she’s technically using him to commit some mild crimes to help her break into her own records, their friendship is a genuine one.
“I think what Genesis and Caleb see in each other are both things that they lack,” Shepard says. “Genesis sees Caleb’s ability to just be free. He always says what’s on his mind. He does what he wants. He doesn’t follow the rules, and he doesn’t have any kind of structure in his life. He never has. That for him is his comfort zone, and for Genesis, her comfort zone is structure. It’s rules, it’s following things by a book. It’s almost like they both have something that the other wants, and I like to think they vibed right off the bat because they saw that reflection in each other. They’re so similar in so many ways, but they got there through opposite paths.”
“I like to think of them as platonic soulmates in a way,” Shepard continues. “They can finish each other’s sentences. I like to imagine them being on the same bridge one day and sharing a captain’s chair because they think so much alike, and they’re so good at problem-solving, and what one lacks, the other one makes up for. It makes a lot of sense to me why they feel so connected to each other, because it’s almost like, ‘I’ll be your crutch if you’ll be mine.’”
Shepard is not only spending Starfleet Academy’s first season introducing a new character, but an entirely new alien species as well. She’s the first actor to play a member of the Dar-Sha, a humanoid species characterized by thin ridges above her eyes instead of eyebrows.
“Knowing the impact that this franchise has had on the world and then being able to come in and — I’m not playing a human, of course, but all of these characters are human at heart. They all have real, true humanity. And to be able to develop something from scratch was just so liberating as an actor, because it was like…I can’t really do anything wrong here. I can have fun with this. And even down to little details. I got to work with the costume department on her jewelry, and we’ve created this whole backstory on where and how she gets it.”
While we haven’t learned that much about the Dar-Sha onscreen, one has to assume an episode about this is coming in the not-too-distant future, if only because they’re a new species that could be or do pretty much anything. But Shepard herself has clearly thought about it a lot.
“The Dar-Sha being nomadic and not having really a home planet, I like to imagine that they’re just overly resourceful. Like they just gather everything from every culture, because they’re constantly moving through space,” she says. “They’re meeting people of different cultures and different species, so I like to just pull from everything that I can research in this real physical life and put that into, “Ooh, I like this piece of culture, I feel like we can integrate that into the space, into the future version for the Dar-Sha story,” and it’s just been so fun. My job is to play pretend, and now I get to do it to the fullest extent.”
The question of what Genesis’s Academy career will look like going forward is one only the rest of the season (and series, to be honest) can answer. But to hear Shepard tell it, “Ko’Zeine” is just the beginning.
“The thing about Starfleet [Academy] is this is a great opportunity for all the characters to really discover themselves, and they’re all so young. It’s a great opportunity for them all to learn the hard lessons and to fall and get up again. And we get to see Genesis discover more of her flaws later in the story and use a lot of her strengths again. She’s such a good team leader because she’s able to utilize other people’s strengths And I think for myself personally, I’ve been told as a child that I’m very bossy, or I’m too confrontational and I’ve integrated a lot of that into Genesis. I want to speak my mind, and I want to lift my friends up and tell them how they can keep going through life. And I think Genesis does a lot of that through her story, and we get to see more of her in-depth in season 2, which I’m so excited for people to see. I can’t wait for everyone else to follow on her journey.”
New episodes of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy premiere Thursdays on Paramount+, culminating with the finale on March 12.
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Episode 7 Review — Ko’Zeine
The following contains spoilers for Star Trek: Starfleet Academy episode 7.
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy slows things down this week, a move that probably shouldn’t surprise anyone given the high-stakes events that unfolded in “Come, Let’s Away.” And, to be fair, “Ko’Zeine” isn’t a bad hour. In fact, it offers some much-needed insight into two of the show’s most underserved characters. But after a string of three truly excellent episodes, it’s jarring to settle for one that feels… just okay.
As the spring semester holiday looms, everyone’s basically just trying to hold it together. Caleb’s fretting about whether to contact Tarima, now relocated home to Betazed to recover from removing her implant and melting a squad of menacing aliens with her mind. (At least she’s seemingly out of her coma? Yay?) Sam’s still a bit glitchy — literally – as a result of her injuries. And everyone’s still in mourning, not just for the death of War College cadet B’Avi, but the sort of consequence-free cocoon they’d all been living in up to this point. Nus Braka’s scheme forced them all to grow up in sudden and uncomfortable ways, to confront the idea that this path they’ve chosen has real and occasionally deadly risks. But other than a few throwaway comments here and there, “Ko’Zeine” doesn’t really deal with much of the fallout directly.
Part of the reason for that is that there’s been a time jump. Roughly a month has gone by since the events of “Come, Let’s Away,” so we’ve missed out on their immediate aftermath. We didn’t get the information dumps that would have provided more detail about what, precisely, Braka stole or how he might intend to use it. We didn’t see the Federation’s initial response in terms of trying to hunt him down. Even the immediate shock of grief has passed. Tarima’s already woken up and returned home. Everyone’s trying to get on with things because that’s what people do, even and especially in the face of tragedy. It’s All Worlds Day — the most hilariously bland-sounding of holidays — and there are celebrations to be had. Obligations to be met. Families to be visited. So that’s what everyone does. Mostly. Which, yeah, makes sense, but still kind of feels like we missed a step somewhere.
The episode follows a pair of dual storylines. The first sees Darem hauled back to the Khonian Realm to celebrate his sealing, the fulfillment of an engagement we’ve never heard about before to a woman we’ve never met. Jay-Den gets carried along for the ride after incorrectly assuming his classmate was being kidnapped. What follows is an introduction to both Khonian culture and a side of Darem we’ve never seen before — he’s… surprisingly nice and accommodating? — as Jay-Den is suddenly forced to serve in the role of his “Ko’Zeine,” a.k.a. Best Man.
This is all fraught in a typically young-adult-fiction sort of way, as Darem and Jay-Den’s scenes continue to crackle with the kind of chemistry that’s certain to be problematic when one of them has an alleged fiancé waiting to marry them and the other’s got a boyfriend back home. But once again, Karim Diané and George Hawkins are great together, as Jay-Den serves as Darem’s sounding board and cheerleader, stepping up to give a top-tier best man speech about the way that his classmate — and friend — not only helped him find his own voice, but has become a self-assured leader amongst their Academy crew.
Elsewhere, the episode also follows Caleb and Genesis, who have both, for very different reasons, opted to stay behind in the locked-down Academy rather than journey elsewhere. Caleb turned up his nose at the host family Ake found for him to stay with and Genesis is so obviously lying when she says her father had a last-minute obligation come up that it’s almost commendable how long the episode commits to the bit that she’s just down for a weekend of random competitive rulebreaking hinjinks with her favorite no consequences classmate who also happens to be the school’s best hacker. What a coincidence!
Seven episodes in, Genesis is still the member of our core crew that we know least about, and “Ko’Zein” gives us something that feels almost like a reason for it: She doesn’t technically belong at the Academy. She altered her recommendations to land a place in this cadet class, and really isn’t sure that she’s capable of being the person that her father so clearly wants her to become. Ake wants to submit Genesis for the Academy’s pre-command track, a sort of pre-med style crash course in captain’s training for those who’ve displayed particular skills.
As part of this, the committee will re-review all of her initial application materials and speak with her references, which all seems innocuous enough… at least until Genesis freaks out about it, and concocts an elaborate plan involving Caleb, Ake’s captain’s chair, and a cloned key to try and cover up the fact that she altered the originals. Her crime is, in the grand scheme of things, hardly the worst thing in the world, particularly given how eminently capable she’s already proven herself to be as a student and a leader. But maintaining her can-do, ready for anything, constantly striving image comes at a very real personal cost, and this is the first we’re really seeing of how her fear of failure has shaped her.
Much like in “Vitus Reflux,” Genesis and Darem’s stories are used as mirrors for each other, as each wrestles with the pressures of expectation, fear, and self-doubt in different ways. Are either of them on paths of their own choosing? Are they making themselves smaller or lesser to fit into preconceptions of who they’re meant to be? What do they each really want out of their lives, and how does their Starfleet Academy experience help them figure out what that is? These are, of course, precisely the kinds of questions that college is meant to force you to face, and it’s nice to see that’s still true even hundreds of years in the future. The episode ends with Darem annulling his new marriage and abdicating his throne, while Genesis is removed from the captain’s track. It’s a failure on a technical level, for both of them, or at least a man like Genesis’s father would probably say so. But it’s also a fresh start, and there’s something awfully promising in that.
New episodes of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy premiere Thursdays on Paramount+, culminating with the finale on March 12.
A Sonic the Hedgehog Character Is About to Sound Like Princess Anna
As befitting a video game franchise that has somehow spanned fan art featuring main characters doing everything from experiencing religious conversions to birthing babies (just google it; or better yet, don’t), the Sonic the Hedgehog movie series has had a strange evolution. What began as a ’90s style adaptation that downplayed game elements in favor of a human/animal adventure set on Earth has grown increasingly faithful to the Sega Genesis games and the expansive lore that followed.
So when the post-credit sequence of Sonic the Hedgehog 3 introduced both Metal Sonic and the hedgehog Amy Rose, fans demanded to know who would be voicing the latter. Paramount has heard those demands and said, “Let it go,” as they’ve announced that Kristen Bellwill be voicing Amy Rose for Sonic the Hedgehog 4.
To those who don’t know Sonic the Hedgehog, or to those who love Frozen, it might sound like Bell’s taking on a role far below her station. After all, Bell has been a pop culture mainstay for as long as Sonic has been around. As a young actress, Bell worked on the stage and popped up for upsetting stories in Deadwood and The Shield before breaking out as teen detective Veronica Mars. Veronica Mars made Bell a star, which she’s parlayed into films such as Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Frozen and another hit series in The Good Place.
But to those who love Sonic, it’s Bell who’s lucky to get the part. Amy Rose first appeared, alongside the robot Metal Sonic, in the 1993 Sega CD game Sonic CD. Originally, Amy barely transcended the old Ms. Pac-Man trope of “male character, but a girl,” as she was a pink hedgehog whose only defining features were her love for Sonic and her weapon, the Piko Piko Hammer. However, over several games, cartoons, and comics have turned Amy into a three-dimensional character with her own distinctive interests and motivations.
Those motivations will certainly be part of Sonic the Hedgehog 4, the latest entry in what has been a series that manages to get better and do better at the box office the more that it embraces the weird parts of the game series.
Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the Sonic movies also have a cast of big names. In addition to Jim Carrey, who recovers the manic energy that made him such a hit in the early ’90s, the movies feature voice vocal performances from Ben Schwartz as Sonic, Idris Elba as Knuckles, and Keanu Reeves as Shadow.
By adding Bell’s star power, Sonic the Hedgehog 4 has license to delve even deeper into the video game weirdness that fans love. Or, at least, Bell can bring in fans not prepared for just how strange the world of Sonic truly is.
Sonic the Hedgehog 4 plays in theaters on March 19, 2027.
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy Makes Ancient Egypt Spooky Kid Scary
Is there a classic monster more outdated than the Mummy? Sure, it’s scary to be covered in bandages and buried alive. But as the Orientalism that made the idea of a mummy’s curse so scary to Westerners fades (or at least mutates), it’s harder and harder to sell a beastie that’s essentially a zombie covered in gauze. If you can’t go the adventure route used for the Brendan Fraser movies, how do you make the mummy interesting to modern audiences?
If you’re Lee Cronin, you use that most cutting edge of horror tropes: scary, probably dead, kids. Spooky youngin’s are all over the latest trailer for Lee Cronin’s The Mummy, which introduces us to two loving parents played by Jack Reynor and Laia Costa, who learn that their missing daughter has been found. It turns out that Katie has been gone for eight years, and she was discovered within an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus. Worse, she looks less like a darling little girl and more like, well, like someone who has spent eight years inside an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus.
Where the classic Universal Mummy was a romantic whose love transcended the bounds of death, and where Fraser’s Rick O’Connell battled a supervillain version of the mummy, Cronin is drawing inspiration from his most recent film, Evil Dead Rise. The trailer is filled with not just the types of audacious split diopter shots that Sam Raimi would love, but also with icky bits like gooey bandages, bloody teeth, and limbs that creak as they twist into unnatural configurations.
Most of all, the trailer for Lee Cronin’s The Mummy features kids being dead and/or scary. Creepy kids and child endangerment aren’t exactly new to cinemas: after all, Frankenstein’s Monster tossed a little girl into a lake in 1931 and eight-year-old Rhoda Penmark terrified her mother in The Bad Seed in 1956.
But lately, moviegoers have taken a renewed interest in seeing kids come to terrible ends on screen, and sometimes return to do new terrible things. The It franchise and its TV spinoff Welcome to Derry, the Terrifier series with its exploding child bits and creepy Art the Clown girl, the tykes with mutilated faces in Talk to Me and Bring Her Back, and the midnight runners of Weapons have ignored all taboos to enjoy critical acclaim and/or big box office returns.
One might feel that Cronin is jumping on a bandwagon for his kid-centric take on the mummy, if the concept didn’t seem like something that fits the premise. As outrageous as the imagery gets, the trailer promises to ground the horror in emotional fears of the parents. That very real anxiety gives Cronin and other filmmakers room to go a little harder with the horror.
And if Evil Dead Rise is any indication, Cronin certainly will go hard with The Mummy, reanimating the tired old monster and making him something all too terrifying.
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy arrives in theaters on April 17, 2026.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day Book Announcement Reveals First Plot Details
When we last saw Peter Parker, nobody knew who he was. The end of Spider-Man: No Way Home brought Peter (Tom Holland) to what seemed to be his lowest point. His Aunt May had died, he lost access to both his Avengers allies and Tony Stark‘s money, and he spent his time sewing a suit in a crappy NYC apartment. Since then, we’ve been waiting on bated breath to see how much worse things would get in the follow-up, Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
“Four years have gone by since we last caught up with our friendly neighborhood hero. Peter Parker is no more, but Spider-Man is at the top of his game keeping New York City safe,” the blurb declares. “Things are going well for our anonymous hero until an unusual trail of crimes pulls him into a web of mystery larger than he’s ever faced before. In order to take on what’s ahead, Spider-Man not only needs to be at the top of his physical and mental game, but he must also be prepared to face the repercussions of his past!”
Okay, that’s not the richest thing in the world, but it does contain some surprises. Most notably, the blurb tells us that things aren’t so bad for our friendly neighborhood wall crawler. That’s actually a refreshing change for the MCU version of Spider-Man. In the comics, Spider-Man may be the Charlie Brown of the superhero set, but he does occasionally have things go his way. I mean, the guy was married to a supermodel for years.
The MCU Spidey may have had instant access to Tony Stark’s billions, but he’s never been respected as a superhero. If he’s the one keeping New York City safe, then that must earn him some respect, even if nobody remembers that it’s Peter Parker behind the mask.
Of course, the blurb also mentions “an unusual trail of crimes” and a “web of mystery,” which probably refers to the host of guest stars set to appear in Brand New Day. We know the film will feature minor baddies such as Boomerang, Tarantula, Scorpion, and Tombstone—the last of whom is rumored to be the ultimate villain of the movie—as well as fellow heroes Hulk and the Punisher.
Then there’s Stranger Thingsstar Sadie Sink, whose role is still undisclosed. If she is, as many hope, playing Jean Grey of the X-Men, then the arrival of feared and hated mutants in the MCU will certainly be a web of mystery unusual for Spider-Man. And Spider-Man may know a thing or two about webs, but that’s going to make life much, much worse for Peter.
Oh well, at least it sounds like Peter will have a few good months.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day swings into theaters on July 31, 2026.
Tom Noonan Gave the Scariest Performance in Any Hannibal Lecter Movie
Writer Thomas Harris gave the world Hannibal Lecter, one of the greatest on-screen monsters in cinema history. In novels such as The Silence of the Lambs and Red Dragon, the erudite psychiatrist-turned-cannibal terrified audiences, even more so when brought to the screen by Anthony Hopkins. Yet, Hopkins wasn’t the first person to play Lecter in live action, as he was preceded by Brian Cox in Manhunter. Moreover, Manhunter featured the scariest moment in any adaptation of a Harris work.
Directed by Michael Mann and based on the 1981 novel Red Dragon, Manhunter follows FBI agent Will Graham (William Petersen) as he tries to find Francis Dolarhyde, a murderer dubbed “the Tooth Fairy.” Played by Tom Noonan, who passed away on February 14 at the age of 74, gives a chilling performance, one that outdoes even Hopkins’ work as Harris’s most famous creation.
Released in 1986, Manhunter marries Mann’s cool, neon aesthetic to Harris’ overheated form of psychological horror. Most of the film focuses on Graham, an incredibly empathetic profiler who has retired from the FBI after capturing Hannibal Lecktor (as the name is spelled in this film). However, Graham’s desperate superior, Jack Crawford (Dennis Farina), convinces him to investigate a series of murders carried out by the Tooth Fairy, the soft-spoken man Francis Dolarhyde.
Rendered deeply self-conscious by the abuse his mother heaped on him and concerns about his physical appearance, Dolarhyde witnesses perfect families in the film he develops and then murders them. After each killing, he leaves bite marks on the women, earning his Tooth Fairy nickname, and replaces their eyes with mirrors.
Despite these over-the-top elements from the source material, Mann emphasizes the gumshoe, workaday nature of the FBI, which restricts even Dolarhyde from being too outrageous. It’s a difficult assignment, yet somehow Noonan pulled it off. A hulking man who stood 6’5″, Noonan cut an intimidating presence, which also led to him being cast as Frankenstein’s Monster in The Monster Squad. However, he balanced his intimidating physique with a gentleness, accentuated by his soft tone of voice and warm eyes.
In his best roles, Noonan played those two elements off one another to create a complex figure. He emphasized the gentleness of Frankenstein’s monster and made the Satanist Mr. Ulmer in The House of the Devil someone the main character would believably trust. He used his size to make actor Sammy Barnathan in Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York all the more pathetic when he gets vulnerable.
But his best moment came as Francis Dolarhyde in Manhunter. Noonan gets us to feel sorry for Dolarhyde as Graham and Lecktor uncover the trauma that made him into a killer, and we’re even moved by his romance with a blind coworker played by Joan Allen. None of those feelings go away when Dolarhyde first reveals his diabolical nature. Rather, Noonan uses them to accentuate the horror.
Midway through Manhunter, a botched operation results in Dolarhyde capturing the tabloid reporter Freddie Lounds (Stephen Lang). With Lounds bound to a chair, Dolarhyde reveals himself in his person as the Red Dragon, Satan as imagined in the poetry and etchings of William Blake. He monologues to the captive Lounds about his power, about how Lounds owes him not fear but “awe.” At the beginning of the monologue, Dolarhyde shows Lounds images of Blake’s drawings and photographs of victims, punctuating each image with the question, “Do you see?”
In the Harris novel Red Dragon, and the later substandard adaptation by Melania director Brett Ratner, Dolarhyde uses this moment to reveal his muscular body, prosthetic sharp teeth, and large dragon tattoo. But Mann chooses a more conventional approach, dressing Dolarhyde in regular street clothes. In this version, he wears a nylon stocking over the top half of his head and does not put in the teeth until the final moments.
However, the scene still chills because of the subtle way Noonan plays Dolarhyde as both imperious and nervous. He remains calm throughout his speech, only slightly raising his voice when Lounds’s eyes close. While the calm could be interpreted as confidence, especially as Noonan towers over the seated Lang, it instead reads as reverence. Dolarhyde truly believes that he has transcended the body that he hates, that he’s become a vessel of the Red Dragon. Noonan never overplays it, never gets into the campiness that sometimes overtakes Hopkins’s work as Lecter. He plays it gentle, human, and utterly horrifying.
In that one scene, Tom Noonan’s ability to be both powerful and gentle brings a unique terror to a Hannibal film, a terror unmatched by any other Harris adaptation.
