Mortal Kombat II Trailer Gives Johnny Cage His Hero Moment
When you think of the great characters in the Mortal Kombat franchise, who comes to mind? Warring ninjas Sub-Zero and Scorpion? Monsters such as Goro and Kitana? Or is it martial arts master Liu Kang or special forces soldier Sonya Blade? Well, if you’re B-movie action hero Johnny Cage, then the answer is obviously Johnny Cage. But as long as Mortal Kombat has jumped from video games to the big screen, Cage has been relegated to the background.
All that is about to change. The latest trailer for Mortal Kombat II puts Johnny Cage front and center. Played by reliable genre star Karl Urban, Cage begins the trailer fully washed up, sitting alone at a convention table that not even nerds want to visit. But that’s when he gets recruited for the titular tournament, Cage finally gets his chance to shine, even if it will kill him.
Cage’s addition to Mortal Kombat II is just one more example of the new franchise taking steps to please its audience. Today, fans have embraced the 1995 movie by Paul W.S. Anderson and its infamous 1997 sequel Mortal Kombat Annihilation. But for decades, they were an embarrassment to those who loved movies as much as games, something on the level of the first bizarre Super Mario Bros. film.
For the most part, 2021’s Mortal Kombat was a step in the right direction. Not only did it feature the expected regulars such as Sub-Zero and Scorpion, alongside lesser known folks like Reiko and Kabal, but it had an impressive cast, with Johannes Taslim and Hiroyuki Sanada as the aforementioned ninja. However, that film made the surprising decision to focus on a new character, MMA fighter Cole Young, played by Lewis Tan. And, most surprisingly of all, the movie follows the heroes preparing for an interdimensional tournament, but the movie ends before that tournament actually takes place.
Moratal Kombat II will give the fans what they want, and not just because it features the Mortal Kombat tournament. As seen in the trailer, returning director Simon McQuoid has crafted absurd and over-the-top two-on-two battles, and the use of the phrase “Finish Him!” promises more of the gory fatalities that made the series infamous.
However, the trailer also shows that Mortal Kombat II has more than blood and bone breaking on its mind. By tracing Cage’s journey from failed fake fighter to real life hero, the film will have real pathos, something that the goofy ’90s movies lacked. And few people are better suited than Karl Urban to make something special from otherwise one note character.
Most people coming to see Mortal Kombat II this summer will never had heard the name “Johnny Cage.” But when they leave, they’ll know that he’s a hero—perhaps even the hero that he is in his own mind.
Mortal Kombat II arrives in theaters on May 8, 2026.
I Saw the TV Glow Director Tackles ’80s Slashers in New Horror Trailer
Jane Schoenbrun makes horror movies. Exactly what type of horror movies? That’s hard to say. Their 2021 feature film debut We’re All Going to the World’s Fair and their 2024 breakout I Saw the TV Glowboth have something akin to monsters and tense sequences. But the horror comes from something deeper, something inexplicable.
In some ways, the teaser for Schoenbrun’s latest film signals a turn towards more traditional horror concepts. Seconds into the trailer for Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, a blade stabs through a frightened young woman. Later, a figure wearing what appears to be a television on their head stabs someone in a field, sending a geyser of blood into the air. Yet, these moments only come between lush shots of a filmmaker (played by comedian Hannah Einbinder) walking through a snowy field or Gillian Anderson emerging from the shadows and looking like Carmen Sandiego’s purple-clad cousin.
The trailer teaches almost nothing about the plot of Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, which is in keeping with Schoenbrun’s own comments about the movie. “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is my best attempt at the ‘sleepover classic,'” they told The Hollywood Reporter in May, 2025; “An insane yet cozy midnight odyssey that beckons to unsuspecting viewers from the horror section at the local video store.”
According to the few plot details released thus far, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma stars Einbinder as a queer director hired to make the latest installment in the long-running slasher series Camp Miasma. When she recruits the star of the original film to reprise her role, the director begins undergoing a series of hallucinations, which will certainly create a sense of existential emptiness and ineffable horror. Also, there will be great music and surprisingly funny jokes.
The former comes via a punk rocker called Little Death, played by TV Glow star Jack Haven. The latter involves the many comedy ringers in the cast. In addition to Einbinder from HBO’s Hacks, the film features Zach Cherry (Severance), Saturday Night Live‘s Sarah Sherman, and Kevin McDonald from The Kids in the Hall. A bit of that humor shows up in the trailer, especially the comically strange Southern accent that Anderson adopts.
However, the real draw to any Schoenbrun film is the way they play with established tropes and concepts. Like recent meta-slashers Bodies Bodies Bodies and In a Violent Nature, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma will play with concepts made famous by Friday the 13th, Sleepaway Camp, and other ’80s video store fare. But, as demonstrated by a fleshy VHS receptacle straight out of Videodrome and the repeated image of a face staring at a screen, Schoenbrun will also interrogate the viewers’ relationship to violent movies.
Although Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma will have elements of movies that came before, there’s no doubt that it will be something completely unique, the type of movie that only Jane Schoenbrun could make.
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma releases to theaters on August 7, 2026.
10 Best Picture Oscar Nominees from the ’80s That Should Have Won
You asked for it, and you’ve got it! Earlier this month, I looked back at all the great movies nominated for Best Picture at the 1990s Oscar ceremonies that should have won. It was an opinionated article about a very subjective thing, so naturally, you agreed with some of the movies I chose, disagreed with others, and a few of you even thought there should be more limitations on the concept itself (I’ll get to that in a bit).
However, one of the main requests I got was to travel further back in time, as it was suggested there were even more worthy Best Picture losers in the decade that spawned the NES, Tetris, and Prozac, so it’s time to fire up the flux capacitor, because it’s ’80s time, baby!
All That Jazz
We step out of our DeLorean at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, where the 1980 Academy Awards are about to go down. Squinting from the sunlight, we cast our eyes to the red carpet, where the stars are arriving to see who will win Best Picture. It’s a tense one, because Kramer vs. Kramer is tied with All That Jazz for nominations. It feels like it could go either way! In the end, it’s Robert Benton’s divorce drama that snatches the statue. Great movie! But so is All That Jazz, and in terms of cinematic daring, it could very well be considered a better movie.
Kramer vs. Kramer does a good job of capturing divorce culture and evolving gender roles at the last gasp of the ’70s, and its grounded realism soars thanks to incredible performances from Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep. Still, All That Jazz is just straight up visionary. A daring musical drama that interrogated Bob Fosse’s life while it was still happening, it blends rhythmic, jagged editing with innovative Broadway sequences and themes that filmmakers are still “paying homage” to with their own meta movies about unraveling artists. Black Swan and the Best Picture-winning Birdman owe a lot to All That Jazz.
Apocalypse Now
Remember about 40 seconds ago when I mentioned those “limitations” on the ’90s list? Well, some of you thought that only one movie per year should be in contention for Best Picture in this theoretical list of losers that should have won. That’s fair, but why? In these alternate realities, anything is possible, and when you’ve got All That Jazz up for Best Picture in the same year as Apocalypse Now, they’re both viable choices!
Honestly, Francis Ford Coppola’s psychological epic was probably never in with a chance of winning. It may have redefined the war film, but it’s messy and abstract. An unhinged descent into madness with no clean morality to cling to. It’s also a masterpiece. If it were released today, it would stand a much better chance of wowing Academy voters, but they weren’t quite ready for this kind of fever dream about the American psyche back then (their kids are gonna love it.)
The Elephant Man
Ol’ Bobby Redford hit it out of the park at the awards in 1981, netting Best Picture and Best Director for his directorial debut, Ordinary People, another emotional familial drama that had Academy voters saying, “Spectacular. Gimme 14 of ’em right now.” And, once again, great movie! I’m not here to slate any of the Best Picture winners; they made the shortlist for a reason. But is it wild to suggest that the late, great David Lynch should have won a Best Picture Oscar at some point in his incredible career? Is it also wild to suggest that, aside from The Straight Story, The Elephant Man might have been his best possible shot at doing so, given that so many of his other movies were considered too “weird” to make the cut?
Featuring a truly unforgettable performance by John Hurt, Lynch’s black-and-white movie refuses to sensationalize its exploration of Joseph Merrick’s suffering and instead concentrates on being a masterclass in human empathy. Forty-plus years later, people are still talking about Merrick’s heartbreaking story and Lynch’s vision. Are they still talking about Ordinary People as much? Probably not, but The Elephant Man wasn’t the only black-and-white classic that lost out to Redford’s film that year.
Raging Bull
Here we are in another love triangle because Raging Bull was also up for Best Picture in 1981. Featuring jaw-dropping cinematography from Michael Chapman that perfectly captures both the brutality of the boxing ring and the bleakness of Jake LaMotta’s personal life, Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull is “absolute cinema” of the non-linear and impressionistic variety.
Today, many critics consider Raging Bull one of the greatest films ever made, yet the Academy played it rather safe that year with Ordinary People, and Scorsese had to settle for knowing he had made a movie with an enduring cultural legacy that impacted not only his own later films but also those of Steven Spielberg and David Fincher, to name just a couple. So hey, don’t be too sad for Scorsese. He got a Best Picture award later on for The Departed, and I see him smiling happily on TikTok all the time. He’s fine!
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Moving swiftly on to the 55th Academy Awards in 1982, where Chariots of Fire, Reds, Atlantic City, On Golden Pond, and Raiders of the Lost Ark were gunning for the gold. All terrific pictures, I’m sure. I’m gonna be real with you: I have never seen Atlantic City, so if the Atlantic City hive rises up in the comments to take me down over this, I’ll take it on the chin.
I have, however, seen the others. One of them more than once. One of them about a hundred times, because it’s an absolute banger that has never lost its appeal. Raiders of the Lost Ark is a meticulously crafted, culturally iconic action-adventure that still feels fresh and thrilling today. I know The Last Crusade is a favorite for many Indiana Jones fans, but to my mind, Raiders is still the GOAT, with Spielberg, George Lucas, John Williams, Lawrence Kasdan, Douglas Slocombe, Michael Kahn, Karen Allen, and Harrison Ford teaming up to deliver a spectacular ride, along with some seriously eternal wisdom: punching Nazis is good.
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
The Best Picture winner in 1983, Gandhi, was a proper worthy one from Richard Attenborough, and you can’t get much further away from Gandhi than E.T. for flip’s sake. It makes sense that Attenborough’s sprawling, historically and politically significant biopic dominated the awards over Spielberg’s lil alien dude waddling around saying “phone home,” but this type of snub is still enough to make you want to replace your gun with a walkie-talkie on some level.
E.T. changed the landscape of family films. It was a massive hit that influenced storytelling for decades. They’re still doing retrospective screenings of it at theaters everywhere. J.J. Abrams would be out here doing lens flares in the privacy of his living room without E.T.. Stranger Things wouldn’t exist without E.T.. Neither would Mac and Me! Er, forget that last one, actually. Never mind. Let’s go with “Paul Rudd wouldn’t end up showing the same clip from Mac and Me on Conan without E.T..” That’s better somehow.
The Right Stuff
This is gonna come as a shock, but in 1984, the Academy picked a moving, intimate family drama over a box office bomb that chronicled the early U.S. space program and Mercury astronauts. I know! Tough to see that one coming, huh? But unless I’ve just picked up enough tissues and eye-depuffing cream from Costco to last a lifetime, The Right Stuff is probably going to be the movie I’ll choose to rewatch over Terms of Endearment on any given day.
Juggling a huge ensemble cast, multiple storylines, and a buttload of complex historical events, The Right Stuff could have certainly been awarded the big one for its ambition and narrative daring. The sequences recreating test flights and rocket launches are as tense as they’ve ever been and set the template for later space epics that chose to embrace human storytelling, like Apollo 13 and even Damien Chazelle’s underseen First Man. This one’s got the right stuff. It’s not just a clever name!
The Color Purple
The Color Purple was no match for the glacially-paced Out of Africa in 1986, unfortunately. It might seem genuinely wild that a lazy colonial melodrama would ever get the nod over a powerful depiction of Black women’s lives in early 20th-century America, unless you know literally anything about America, I guess. Then, it’s sadly predictable.
In fact, The Color Purple was nominated for a staggering 11 Oscars and won exactly zero of them. Based on the 1982 novel by Alice Walker, it saw Steven Spielberg swerving away from a string of blockbusters to try something different. He softened some of the book’s radical themes and leaned into his own brand of sentimentality – this is Spielberg we’re talking about – but powerhouse performances from Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey went a long way toward making up for at least some of that. It remains an inspiring if somewhat controversial movie that is still about a quadrillion times better than Out of Africa. I know I said I wasn’t going to slate any of the real Best Picture winners, but in this case, I’ll make an exception. It’s pretty bad, folks.
Fatal Attraction
Whatever aspects of Fatal Attraction have aged like milk, 1988’s winner, The Last Emperor, can likely match with its own problems (I won’t get into them here but feel free to google that movie along with “historical accuracy.”) Admittedly, I could quite happily go the rest of my life without hearing another perfectly sane woman called “a bunny boiler,” but I definitely miss more erotic thrillers popping up at the multiplex. These days, they’re largely consigned to streaming and don’t tend to have much of an edge, whereas Fatal Attraction had so much of an edge that it sparked a national conversation on a rather taboo topic.
The story, about a man cheating on his wife and ending up with a homicidal stalker, has been done to death since, but Fatal Attraction wasn’t afraid to go there during an era where the anxieties of infidelity were being sidelined. This was also a career-defining performance from Glenn Close as the movie’s spurned lover – her final jolt back to life pulled “the killer coming back for one last scare” trope into the mainstream from its roots in the horror genre. The movie really excelled at blending those kinds of horror conventions into a marital drama and was perhaps the best to ever do it.
Moonstruck
Is this a more controversial alternate choice for Best Picture in ’88? Maybe. This could potentially be considered a “hear me out” situation, unless you’ve already seen and love Moonstruck, a genuinely sweet picture about a widow who falls in love with her fiancé’s older brother.
It’s certainly a smaller movie – not a grand epic like Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor. Blending comedy, drama, and romance seamlessly, it nevertheless features some of the decade’s most memorable dialogue. Playwright-turned-screenwriter John Patrick Shanley’s script sparkles, so the stacked cast, which includes Cher, Nicolas Cage, Olympia Dukakis and Vincent Gardenia, gets to deliver lines like “I’ll say no more.” “You haven’t said anything!” “And that’s all I’ll say.” or “In time you’ll drop dead, and I’ll come to your funeral in a red dress.”
At the end of the day, I reckon that a comedy with the intelligence and heart of Moonstruck is just as worthy of Best Picture recognition as a sweeping historical drama. And that’s all I’ll say.
Scream’s Genius Was Always its Final Girls
At the end of Scream 4, Sidney Prescott learns too late that her cousin Jill, played by Emma Roberts, is a Ghostface killer. Jill has grown up in Sidney’s shadow, forever jealous of the attention and fame that the older woman has received since surviving the first Woodsboro Murders from the original film. Jill bemoans and belittles everything about Sidney, calling her too slow, too out-of-date, and frames herself as the remake.
But before Jill can finish her off, Sidney (Neve Campbell) launches a counter-attack, frying her cousin with a nearby defibrillator. “You forgot the first rule of remakes, Jill,” Sid spits. “Don’t fuck with the original!”
That scene certainly works as a statement about Scream‘s position in the horror landscape, a rejection of the remakes of A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13ththat came out just before Scream 4 released in 2011. However, the scene also works when played straight, showing how women are constantly forced to deal with weight of the generations before them and the expectations of the generations after them. More than its fun metatextual moments, that attention to final girls has always been the power of the Scream franchise.
Your Favorite Scary Movie Survivor
In one of the most memorable parts of the first Scream, Randy Meeks (Jamie Kennedy) lays out the rules for surviving a horror movie. “You can never have sex,” he declares to a disappointed, disbelieving crowd. “Number two: never drink or do drugs,” he continues, once again incurring the wrath of his friends. It’s no accident that those two points come up while Randy and his friends watch 1978’s Halloween, the movie that features Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode, a paradigmatic final girl.
Women survivors have been part of horror cinema from the beginning, going back to Mary Fuller as Elizabeth in Thomas Edison’s Frankenstein (1910) or Greta Schröder as Ellen Hutter in Nosferatu (1922). But in her 1987 article “Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film,” academic Carol J. Clover identified a particular type of female survivor in a horror movie, the final girl.
Where previous survivors such as Lila Crane (Vera Miles) in Psycho had to be saved by a man, the final girl fought back herself, survived on her own merits and defeated the killer. In addition to Laurie Strode, women such as Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns) from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) from Alien used their own wits and strength to defeat the killer.
Without question, the figure of the final girl has deepened our appreciation of horror in general and slashers in particular, a subgenre often dismissed as disposable and crass. But as Randy’s monologue underscores, final girls were often understood to be pure and virginal—even if that wasn’t what we saw on screen, as demonstrated by Laurie’s pot smoking and her plans for Ben Tramer.
In short, final girls needed to be revamped. And that’s when Sidney Prescott picked up the phone.
Hello, Sidney
On the surface, Sidney Prescott could be read as a classic final girl. She defeats both Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulirch) and Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard) through her determination and wits. She’s downright boring compared to victims Casey Becker (Drew Barrymore) and Tatum (Rose McGowan), both of whom die by Ghostface’s blade. And she even rebuffs the sexual advances of her boyfriend Billy, at least at first.
However, where Laurie, Sally, and Ripley were victims of circumstance, being at the wrong place at the wrong time, Sidney is deliberately targeted. People have opinions about her behavior, or the behavior of her mother Maureen, and they want Sidney to pay for it.
Before Jill blames Sidney for being old and out of date, Billy Loomis tries to kill her because Maureen had an affair with his father and drove away his mother. Billy’s mother returns in Scream 2, masquerading under the name Debbie Salt (Laurie Metcalf) and hoping to end the destruction that began with Maureen by killing Sidney. Even Scream 3, which adds a convoluted backstory for Maureen, introducing her son Roman (Scott Foley), the product of her sexual assault, still ends up with Sidney being held responsible for what her mother did.
Although she receives more help from Deputy Dewey (David Arquette) than Clover would allow, Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) certainly has beaten up enough Ghostfaces to qualify as a final girl. The films don’t always ask viewers to approve of Gale’s unapologetic career climbing, but they never suggest that her rudeness or success make her a viable candidate for murder. Instead, they present her individualism, her no-nonsense attitude as cause for celebration, especially when she gets to punch someone in a Ghostface mask.
However, the most interesting revision came in the two reboot films, Scream (2022) and Scream VI (2023). Both of those movies tie their Ghostfaces to the franchise’s central meta conceit, as Amber (Mikey Madison) and Richie (Jack Quaid) are superfans of the Stab franchise who dislike the direction of the recent movies and want to inspire a better film with a new set of murders. Richie’s family, led by father Wyatt (Dermot Mulroney), become Ghostfaces to get revenge for their boy’s death, using Stab iconography as a tribute to his passions.
However, the real tension in the movies comes from the relationship that new final girls Sam and Tara Carpenter (Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega) have with their father, Billy Loomis. Throughout the franchise, Sam sees hallucinations of Billy, urging her to take up the family business and become a killer herself. The elaborate deception that Wayne and his children embark on in Scream VI inadvertently becomes a manifestation of those hallucinations, driving Sam and Tara closer to acting like the father—a plot point that surely would have been addressed in the now canceled third reboot entry.
In each of these cases, women endure the expectations of men. And in each case, they overcome and survive.
No More Rules
Obnoxious as he is, Randy Meeks is right. The classic final girls lived by rules. Even before they became targets, Laurie took on a babysitting job, Sally told her friends to lay off the hitchiker, and Ripley enforced quarantine protocols. They did the right thing, and they got to live to the end of the movie.
For Sidney, Gale, Sam, and Tara, the rules don’t matter. Ghostface tries to kill them because of what their mother did, who their father was, or just because they aren’t polite. And yet, they survive each time, beating the killers not because of their moral virtue, but because of who they are.
Absolute Green Arrow Will Be a Superhero Horror Comic For Our Time
Even though it’s barely over a year old, DC Comics‘s Absolute Universe has had its share of shocking moments. One of the best occurred in Absolute Evil #1 from October 2025, which introduced this universe’s take on Oliver Queen a.k.a. Green Arrow, only to kill him off a few pages later. The scene upset readers not just because it saw the immediate end of a much anticipated take on a beloved character, but because he died at the hands of Hawkman, one of Green Arrow’s (uneasy) allies in the mainline universe.
However, it turns out that death is just as permanent in the Absolute Universe as it is in the main DC Universe. “Oliver Queen may be dead. The Green Arrow is not dead,” DC executive editor Chris Conroy said at the ComicsPRO Annual Meeting 2026 (via Popverse). The upcoming series Absolute Green Arrow, written by Pornsak Pichetshote and penciled by Rafael Albuquerque will feature an undead Green Arrow, dubbed the Longbow Hunter by the press, killing the billionaires who sent Hawkman to kill Oliver Queen. “This is a slasher horror series,” teased Conroy. “This is Scream, Halloween, meets Green Arrow.”
As any CW fan knows, this isn’t the first time that Green Arrow has been called something other than Green Arrow by observers. But the term “Longbow Hunter” carries particular significance, as it refers to a well-regarded 1987 miniseries by Mike Grell. A pre-Vertigo Mature Readers tale, The Longbow Hunters separated Ollie from his superhero pals such as Green Lantern and turned him into a modern day Robin Hood on the streets of Seattle, where a serial killer has been terrorizing sex workers.
Although The Longbow Hunters broke from previous Green Arrow adventures, it retained a core aspect of Oliver Queen’s personality. Green Arrow is the loudmouthed liberal of the superhero set, willing to berate Green Lantern and the Flash for being cops and more interested in fighting fat cat landlords than he is petty looters.
Ollie retained his left-leaning politics when he appeared in Absolute Evil, marking a distinctive change from his other heroes. An alternate reality created by the New Gods big bad Darkseid, the Absolute Universe is a darker world, which strips its heroes of some of their most important qualities. Aboslute Batman fights without a fortune to aid him. Absolute Superman came to Earth as a young adult who remembers the destruction Krypton. Absolute Wonder Woman was raised in Hell, far from her fellow Amazons on Paradise Island.
Yet, when Oliver Queen showed up in Absolute Evil, he had all of his usual trademarks. He wore all green, sported a Van Dyke beard, and was pals with Roy Harper. More importantly, he had a passion for social justice, complaining to Roy about a secret island that billionaires visit via private flights to terrorize children. “I gotta do something… Somebody’s gotta do something,” Oliver insists, just pages before Hawkman presents his battered corpse to those who represent those billionaires.
The proximity between the Absolute Universe and the horrors of our real world supercharges Absolute Green Arrow. The miniseries may be about an undead superhero in a universe created by an evil god, but it channels the anger and helplessness we all feel when we read the news and see unspeakable crimes going unpunished. The series will help us deal with the things that shock us every day, at least until real heroes start doing something about it.
Absolute Green Arrow hits comic book shops on May 20, 2026.
Sony Reveals the Wild Reason Spider-Man: No Way Home Wasn’t Released in China
Spider-Man: No Way Home’s climactic battle wowed audiences (almost) everywhere at the multiplex when three different Sony-Marvel Spider-Men teamed up to battle some of their greatest foes. Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield both reprised their roles as Peters Parker alongside the latest incarnation of the eternally popular Marvel character, portrayed by Tom Holland, as the likes of the Green Goblin and Electro sought to bring the web-slinger to his knees in a Statue of Liberty-set showdown for the ages.
The film did phenomenally well at the global box office, so you’d imagine that Tom Rothman, CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment’s Motion Picture Group, would be happy with its $1.9 billion haul – but not quite. During an appearance on Matt Belloni’s The Town podcast this week, Rothman seemed a little irked that the movie didn’t crack $2 billion instead, after being locked out of a theatrical release in China.
It turns out that China did engage with Sony about the possibility of releasing No Way Home there, but the edit they asked for was a bit of a stretch.
“They just [said] small thing,” Rothman revealed. “They said, ‘No problem. Just cut out the Statue of Liberty,’ which is where the climax takes place. That was the request.”
When Rothman was reminded that the Statue of Liberty is very much present in the last 20 minutes of No Way Home, he added, “Yeah, there was that. And also, I really didn’t look forward to standing up, sitting in there in front of Congress, telling them why I cut the Statue of Liberty out at the request of the Chinese Communist Party.”
A no doubt highly unrelated piece of information followed this revelation: the Statue of Liberty will not appear in this summer’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Maybe they’ll get that $2 billion this time.
Elsewhere in the conversation, Rothman also confirmed that Sony plans to reboot the SPUMC (stuff like Venom, Kraven the Hunter, and Madame Web) with new people. So, that’s something to look forward to…?
More Than Just Static Shock: Unpacking the Depth of Dwayne McDuffie’s Milestone Comics
In 1993 a shift happened in the comic book industry with the launch of Milestone comics. Founded by Dwayne McDuffie, Denys Cowan, Michael Davis, Christopher Priest, and Derek T. Dingle, these Black entrepreneurs aimed to fill a void by telling complex stories with a diverse array of creatives. The Milestone superhero universe is set in the fictional locales of Dakota City and Paris Island with a range of colorful and fun characters. Milestone’s run deserves to be celebrated for its innovative approach to storytelling, lasting impact on the world of comics, and their newest appearance merging into the DC universe.
Here are some of the brand’s most lasting titles.
Blood Syndicate
Written by Ivan Velez Jr., Blood Syndicate was ahead of its time, featuring morally ambiguous characters, complex team dynamics, and innovative story arcs. At the core of the original crew are Tech-9, Wise Son, Brickhouse, Third Rail, Flashback, Masquerade, Holocaust, Fade, and DMZ, along with Tech-9’s loyal talking canine, Dogg. Velez Jr. crafted a grounded and intense dynamic through the interpersonal relationships among members of the Blood Syndicate. They have groups within the group; they hook up, argue, and fight even to lethal means, but at the end of the day, all they have is each other and they make the most of it. The team dynamic showcases varying degrees of heroism as each member grapples with their newfound powers and the reality of their environment. Violent gang culture is ever-present, and the interactions between each member are seeped in tension.
At the epicenter of this world is the Big Bang, an incident that occurred at the Paris Island docks as a gang war erupted. Acting on orders from someone well above their pay grade, the police deployed an experimental gas they barely understood.
Within moments of the gas hitting the air, people in the vicinity, including the police force, started transforming in mind-boggling ways—melting, evaporating, elongating—an abomination of a scene. The majority of the people caught within this gas brutally died, but the rest were forever changed into what the public dubbed “Bang Babies.” The Big Bang challenges the reader to inspect how those above leave all below to suffer, who the real victims, are and how far is too far.
Hardware
Hardware, also known as Curtis Metcalf, is a super genius and former child prodigy who breaks the mold of the typical highly intelligent, tech-based hero. His unique background and origin, combined with his fighting style—a blend of high-tech weaponry with a brawler’s approach—set him apart. From hand cannons to a chained scythe and plasma whip, Hardware’s arsenal is both stacked and readily employed. His story begins in emotional turmoil, triggered by a profound personal betrayal leading him into a moral conflict that adds layers to his character arc.
Denys Cowan’s artwork significantly enhances Hardware’s badass factor. Intricate wiring and circuitry detail his suit, complemented by the metallic chrome finish on the armor and the sleek obsidian shell underneath. The contrast in stature between Curtis and Hardware is striking, as the hefty armor and obsidian shell gives him a statuesque and almost mythological presence. What stands out about Hardware are his inventive combat choices during battle while delivering classic superhero action at an action movie pace.
Static
Known as the titular character of the WB cartoon Static Shock, Static a.k.a. Virgil Hawkins is a witty teenager attending Ernest Hemingway High School with a love for science, pop culture and electromagnetic powers. Dwayne McDuffie’s physics background shines in these stories as Virgil grows, exploring the scientific innovation needed to realize his powers’ full potential. Virgil’s humor and nerdy personality shine at all times, whether in his own stories or in his appearances across other titles in the universe.
One of statics greatest attributes is his cool factor, Virgil’s style embodies ‘90s swagger, including an “X” hat and yellow trench coat over dark blue lightning-patterned spandex. Virgil’s style, abilities, constant quips, and scientific curiosity make him a timeless teen hero that is always a refreshing read.
Icon & Rocket
Written by Dwayne McDuffie; Icon and Rocket are an extraordinary duo formed by an unusual encounter. Raquel a.k.a. Rocket grounds Augustus a.k.a. Icon in the perspective of everyday people, while he steps into a mentor role.
Their relationship offers commentary on generational and socioeconomic divides, with Augustus being an out-of-touch millionaire and Raquel a high school kid from an impoverished area of Paris Island within Dakota City. Icon’s abilities derive from his natural physiology, including enhanced strength, flight, and energy manipulation. Raquel’s abilities stem from the inertia belt Augustus gives her, granting flight, force fields, and inertia manipulation. Those powers lend themselves to Noelle Giddings’ vibrant colors and M. D. Bright’s grand, operatic artwork.
Milestone Heads to the DC Universe
Although publications officially ended in 1997, Milestone has had small appearances of their characters across DC mass media, most notably Statics’s WB series Static Shock. Now Milestone is set to return properly with DC announcing “New History of the DC Universe: The Dakota Incident” a story written by seasoned creatives Joseph Illidge, Stephanie Williams, Morgan Hampton, and Nikolas Draper-Ivey.
This one-shot is an addition to the Mark Waid written “New history of the DC universe,” a four-issue miniseries that chronicles the DC universe from the golden age to present day. Don’t miss out on DC officially folding Milestone into main continuity on February 25th. Don’t forget to show love to the original stories too through the Milestone Compendium. And though Dwayne Mcduffie passed away in 2011, his legacy lives on through his awe-inspiring work with Milestone and so much more.
DC Writer Urges James Gunn to Consider Heated Rivalry Star for Nightwing Role
As far as we’re aware, there’s no live-action Nightwing movie in development in James Gunn’s new DC Universe, but if there were, Heated Rivalry star Hudson Williams would like to be in the running for the role of Dick Grayson.
Williams posted an image of himself holding a copy of Nightwing: Year One to his Instagram story last December, tagging Gunn with the caption “let’s grab a coffee,” but Year One writer Scott Beatty has only just learned of the actor’s campaign – and he thinks Gunn should give Williams a shot.
Beatty cited the “fair amount of buzz” surrounding Williams’ performance in Crave’s queer ice hockey series, which has taken the world by storm, adding, “James, I think you should give Hudson your active consideration when casting the new DC film universe’s Dick Grayson… And I would be more than okay if you adapted Nightwing: Year One as the former Boy Wonder’s feature film debut.”
If this sounds like a lot of pie-in-the-sky nonsense, we hear ya, but let’s not forget that similar shenanigans prefaced Simu Liu getting the part of Shang-Chi in the MCU. On December 3, 2018, Liu tweeted, “OK @Marvel, are we gonna talk or what #ShangChi” to Marvel Studios before casting for Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings even began. Though Marvel boss Kevin Feige has since claimed the tweet had nothing to do with Liu snagging the role, it sure made for a fun coincidence. And, like Williams, Liu was also starring in a hit Canadian TV show at the time, Kim’s Convenience. This kind of Canadian moxie is well documented. Who can forget Ryan Reynolds’ aggressive campaigning for the return of Deadpool? Three blockbuster movies later, no one is questioning it.
DC fans have yearned for a Nightwing movie since the character became popular enough to lead his own ongoing title in the mid‑1990s. He’s also been in plenty of major comic arcs, leading the Teen Titans and working with the Bat‑family. In the past, he’s even briefly become Batman. He’s also canonically known for his terrific butt. This appears to align nicely with Williams, who recently took Vogue through his bespoke butt workout amid plans to show the world his improved glutes in Heated Rivalry season 2.
Mamma Mia 3 Is a Terrible Idea, Which Is Why They Should Do It
It’s a great idea to make a musical based on the work of ABBA. Sure, they’re cheesy and wear space boots, but the Swedish quartet is responsible for some of the most persistent earworms in pop culture history. Having some of those songs be sung by Pierce Brosnan, a man whose seemingly unending attractiveness finds its limit in his vocal abilities, is a terrible idea. And yet, every time he belts out a line in his ungodly talk/sing hybrid, Mamma Mia! feels magical.
In short, Mamma Mia! operates according to its own rules. So in any other case, news that a studio head will do whatever it takes to get a beloved actor to return to a franchise that she’s left, cinephiles would cringe in horror. But since it’s Universal Pictures Chairwoman Donna Langley telling Deadline Hollywood (via EW) that she will “we will find a way” to bring back Meryl Streep for Mamma Mia 3, we can’t wait to see the wonderful mess that will follow.
Based on the jukebox musical by Catherine Johnson, the 2008 film Mamma Mia! starred Streep as Donna Sheridan, mother of bride-to-be Sophie (Amanda Seyfried). In advance of her nuptials, Sophie invites three men from her mother’s past to the Greek island where the ceremony takes place, hoping that one of them will reveal themselves to be her father. The men include upscale architect Sam Carmichael (Brosnan), free-spirit sailor Bill Anderson (Stellan Skarsgård), and tightly-wound banker Harry Bright (Colin Firth).
Singing of varying quality and lots of hijinks ensue, to be sure, but so does genuine emotional depth, thanks largely to Streep’s ability to ground Donna as she recalls her relationship with each man. She never overdoes it, never overwhelms the silliness of the story, but gives it the right amount of heft.
So integral was Streep to the success of the first movie, that the idea of a sequel without her seemed completely foolish. And yet, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again came to theaters in June 2018 with only a Streep cameo, and still managed to delight viewers. The film used a flashback structure borrowed from The Godfather: Part II to contrast Sophie in the present to Donna in 1979, where she was portrayed by Lily James.
Unwise? Yes. Incredible fun? Absolutely.
That should be the prime lesson as we look forward to a third Mamma Mia! film, nearly a full decade after Here We Go Again. Clearly, Streep has moved on from the series. Moreover, a now 40-year-old Seyfried would have to play a Sophie with very different problems than her wide-eyed newlywed. Could a musical as frothy as Mamma Mia! be able to handle heavy issues such as the movement into middle age and the weight of death?
To that question, I respond with one of my own: “Can Pierce Brosnan sing?”
The answer to both is obviously, “No.” But Mamma Mia! has never concerned itself with good taste before, and we’re all the better for it.
Mamma Mia 3 isn’t happening yet. But it should.
New A24 Horror Backrooms Looks Like Cube in an Ikea
In 2017, A24 started distributing trailers for a movie that appeared to be about a family being menaced by a spooky little girl. Of course, when people actually saw Hereditary the next year, they were horrified at what happened to that little girl, but they were also thrilled with A24’s ability to sell a film without ever really telling anyone what it was about.
That audience response has made room for trailers such as the one for Backrooms, the upcoming release from Kane Parsons, better known to some as the YouTuber Kane Pixels. The trailer consists of nothing but a camera panning downward through a building filled with yellow/beige rooms, several of which have a decrepit easy chair within them. In voice over, we hear a man describe to a woman a place that he discovered, filled with rooms that “remember.” At the end of the teaser, the camera stops at an empty space that resembles an office building, with the man saying, “The more times it remembers something, the less it does.”
What does that mean? I have no idea, and that’s the scary part. Like most horrifying things, Backrooms traces its roots back to 4chan, where users shared posts of “liminal spaces,” rooms and areas that seemed to exist at the borders of reality. In 2022, Parsons began releasing short films about a research institute called Async, which investigates a place called the Complex, which seems to be involved with missing persons cases.
The films have been a hit among younger users. But for older viewers, the trailer for Backrooms brings to mind to Swedish home store Ikea, with its streamlined designs. And the concept of scary rooms stacked upon one another recalls Cube, the Canadian indie horror film that did torture porn before the term “torture porn” annoyed everyone as the term “elevated horror” annoys everyone.
Released in 1997 and directed by Vincenzo Natali, Cube followed a group of survivors who find themselves in a single, empty room, with doors on each wall. After solving numeric puzzles on the doors, they exit and find themselves in another room, often with a death trap inside.
Even though it spawned two sequels, including the fabulously titled Cube 2: Hypercube, Cube‘s shoddy acting and extremely outdated portrayal of autism has aged poorly. Yet, the film stands as a testament to barebones filmmaking, as Natali and his co-creators were able to construct an entire feature by just redressing the same space in different ways.
That indie spirit is carried on by Backrooms. Sure, the phone Parsons carries in his pocket has more post-production abilities than anything available to the people making Cube. Furthermore, Parsons has a strong cast for his debut, including Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, and mumblecore mainstay Mark Duplass. But the principle is the same: he’s got a scary idea and the ability to bring it to life.
Or so we hope. The trailer for Backrooms doesn’t give us enough to go one way or another. But when it’s an A24 picture, that’s a promise, not a warning.
Backrooms comes to theaters on May 29, 2026.
Tom Hanks Is About to Play His Most Heartbreaking Role Yet
Tom Hanks is America’s dad. For that reason, there’s something particularly moving about watching Tom Hanks play a sad character, as demonstrated by the utter shambles we were all in by the ending of Captain Phillips. For his next project, Hanks will play one of the most famous American dads, in one of the most moving stories in recent memory.
Hanks has joined the cast of Lincoln in the Bardo, the adaptation of the 2017 George Saunders novel by director Duke Johnson. Johnson will combine the approaches of his two previous features, the completely stop-motion Charlie Kaufman collaboration Anomalisa and last year’s live-action mystery film The Actor. Lincoln in the Bardo will be both live action and stop motion, as befitting the surreal story.
Lincoln in the Bardo follows three narrators who spend one evening in the bardo, the space between death and the afterlife. Each of the three narrators has themselves died, and each are at different points of acceptance regarding their fate. The printer Hans Vollmer refuses to believe that he has died, and repeatedly refers to his coffin as a “sick box.” Roger Bevins III died as a closeted gay man and his spirit transforms into a mass of eyes and ears and limbs, seeking all the sensory pleasures denied him in life. Reverend Everly Thomas acknowledges that he has died, but refuses to pass onto the afterlife, fearing that he will not receive the just reward about which he preached.
The only thing distracting the trio from their own situations is the young man who has come to join them, the eleven-year-old Willie Lincoln. Willie died of typhoid fever just one year after his father’s inauguration, one of several tragedies marking the legendary American president’s administration.
Although Lincoln in the Bardo is Saunders’s first full-length novel, it contains several hallmarks of the short story writing that have made him one of the best American authors of our time. The liminal state of the characters allows Saunders to indulge his absurdist side, finding both beauty and comedy in the strange situations. And while Saunders invites us to laugh at Vollmer’s stubbornness and to sympathize with Bevins’s loss, the book’s real power comes from its depiction of a father breaking down at his son’s grave.
Saunders brings the scene to life by melding prose with newspaper reports, mixing media and literary styles. Duke will do the same by combining stop-motion with live action, using puppets to underscore the uncanny nature of the scene. He’s already demonstrated that he can wring extreme pathos out of puppets in Anomalisa, so there’s little doubt he’ll be able to do it again here.
However, Duke’s greatest asset will be Hanks himself. The actor doesn’t resemble traditional images of Lincoln, certainly not as much as Rex Harrison or Daniel Day-Lewis. But Lincoln in the Bardo calls for Honest Abe to be a sad dad, which makes Hanks the best possible choice.
Lincoln in the Bardo is now in preproduction.
For All Mankind Season 5 Trailer Makes Earth the Villain
For All Mankind will be back with a fresh season on Apple TV at the end of March, and the low cadence of the beloved sci-fi show’s original vibe is firmly in the rearview during an action-packed trailer for season 5, where we find some very familiar (and not so familiar) Martians dealing with a new enemy: Earth.
Following the incredible Goldilocks asteroid heist at the end of season 4, Happy Valley is now a colony that thousands of people call home in the show’s alternate version of the 2010s. It’s also a place where some of the best scientists can plan exciting new excursions into our solar system, but back on Earth, the powers that be want more control over Mars and its residents. With friction building between the planets, a revolution begins on Mars to fight Earth’s encroaching threat.
Watch the new trailer below…
Joel Kinnaman has returned to reprise the role of Ed Baldwin in season 5. The character is canonically around 81 here, so Kinnaman is covered in plenty of makeup effects. The elderly Ed seems to have plenty of advice for his now-grown grandson, Alex. The last time we saw Alex, he was just a little boy, but now he’s being played by The Summer I Turned Pretty star Sean Kaufman as we zip forward in time to 2012.
Toby Kebbell, Edi Gathegi, Cynthy Wu, Coral Peña, and Wrenn Schmidt are also sporting aging effects as their returning characters, while there’s new blood in Ruby Cruz as Kebbell’s daughter, Lily Dale, and Mireille Enos (Kinnaman’s The Killing co-star) as a mysterious security officer.
It will be interesting to see whether Mars can rule itself and become self-sufficient if it manages to wrestle control away from Earth, but with Gathegi’s scheming entrepreneur Dev Ayesa moving some chess pieces behind the scenes, our intrepid explorers might stand a better chance against Earth than they think.
For All Mankind season 5 will get underway on Apple TV on March 27.
BBC Boss Won’t Rule Out HBO Doctor Who Deal Following Disney Split
After the BBC struck a deal with Disney+ in 2022 to increase Doctor Who’s chances of becoming a global streaming hit, the future looked bright for the long-running sci-fi show. But just three years and two seasons later, the deal was effectively dissolved, and Disney+ was no longer riding shotgun in the TARDIS.
So, what next for the eternally regenerating Doctor? The BBC’s Director of Drama may have some idea. In a new interview with Deadline, Lindsay Salt has been discussing the current TV landscape and where things could be heading, saying that Doctor Who will continue despite its current predicament.
“There are different ways of setting up a show,” Salt explained. “We just need to make sure we do it in the right way and make sure we take the right time to do it. Ultimately it’s one of the BBC’s most treasured brands, so it’s not going anywhere.”
Losing a massive amount of Disney cash to make Doctor Who also won’t be a problem, it seems. Salt added, “I managed to walk into this job when the co-pro market imploded, and I’ve learned a lot about the tenacity of producers and writers to make things at all budget levels. Things are getting funded in so many different ways now.”
There may also be a different solution that brings back some of Doctor Who’s bigger budget. With the Beeb currently partnering with HBO Max on several new high-profile TV projects ahead of its U.K. launch, Salt won’t rule out a shiny new deal that might work in the Doctor’s favor.
“We’ll wait and see how we figure it out,” Salt said. “HBO have been great partners creatively. There’s a lot of stuff that is changing out there.”
In the meantime, Doctor Who will be back with a Christmas special this year, written by showrunner Russell T Davies, but although Ncuti Gatwa’s spin on the Doctor regenerated into one of their former assistants, Rose Tyler, in the finale of the last season, it has not yet been confirmed if returning star Billie Piper will indeed play the 16th Doctor.
Star Wars: Anthony Daniels Recalls Nightmarish First Encounter with C-3PO Costume
Anthony Daniels has been playing C-3PO for almost 50 years now, but he still remembers the first time he wore the iconic droid’s golden costume, describing it as “a nightmare.”
Speaking with Nacelle’s Icons Unearthed, Daniels recalled that although it had previously been agreed that he’d get time to rehearse while wearing the C-3PO costume, he was only given around 10 minutes to try it on during the initial fitting for 1977’s Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope at Elstree Studios in London. The actor ended up wobbling around in it like a bull in a china shop, his vision obscured.
“They put it on me, piece by piece by piece, and gradually, I really kind of felt I was losing my humanity,” Daniels said. “I was clamped into this. And then they did have a camera turning. And for about 10 minutes or so, I wobbled around this workshop, crashing into things, smashing things. And then they took it off.”
Daniels added, “It was a relief, you know? Ten minutes, 15 minutes, felt like a lifetime, a nightmare. I couldn’t see anything. It’s no wonder I crashed into stuff.”
Expressing a desire to keep the costume so he could get used to moving around while wearing all the gold pieces, he was then told that it had to be shipped to Tunisia for the looming Tatooine shoot, so this would be his only chance to explore what his performance would be like until the cameras were rolling for real.
“I’d only ever been in theater and television and radio before this, and in all of those things you tend to rehearse stuff, and you get it right, and you make it work,” Daniels explained. “You work out new things, you experiment. Not so much with 3PO.”
Daniels said the crew did their best when he was finally taped and bolted back into the etiquette and protocol droid’s costume over in the hot Tunisia desert, but it was a long and tricky process, with the head alone taking two people half an hour to put on. “Nobody had ever done this before,” Daniels said. “And for good reason!”
Though Daniels had a rough start with C-3PO all those years ago, he has reprised the role numerous times since, and even wrote a memoir about his experiences playing the Star Wars character in 2019 called I Am C-3PO: The Inside Story.
Gilmore Girls Star Has a Surprisingly Chill Answer to the Team Dean Debate
The eternal debate rages on in the Gilmore Girls fan camp: who was Rory’s best boyfriend? Decades of Team Jess, Team Dean, and Team Logan battles have solved nothing, and neither did Netflix’s revival of the iconic series, which ended with Rory pregnant and no father in the picture, although she ran into all three of her exes along the way.
Milo Ventimiglia, who played Jess Mariano for several seasons on the show, now has a daughter of his own and says he’d understand if she turned out to be Team Dean instead of Team Jess.
“I’d be way okay if my daughter eventually watched the show and she was team Dean,” Ventimiglia told People. “I get it because I’m team Jared [Padalecki], so I get it.”
Supernatural star Padalecki started out on TV in the first season of Gilmore Girls back in 2000 as Dean Forester, Rory’s first love. He was a grounded, stable guy who truly loved Rory, but she started to outgrow him intellectually, so when the smart but rebellious Jess entered the picture, it was only a matter of time before a love triangle developed. After Jess didn’t work out, Rory moved on to Logan (Matt Czuchry), a rich playboy who wasn’t ready to settle down.
It’s surprising yet heartwarming to hear that Ventimiglia is chill with a Team Dean outcome for his daughter, but he notes that all three of the actors who portrayed Rory’s paramours have remained solid friends since the show wrapped.
“I know that Logan and Jess and Dean were kind of very spread apart in who they were as characters, but Matt Czuchry and Jared Padalecki couldn’t be … I mean, they’re the best guys,” Ventimiglia explained. “They couldn’t be any lovelier as human beings, and I think it’s nice that more than 20-plus years later we all still can talk about this show we were growing up on and come together as grown men just to recognize that and still have loving words for one another.”
Ventimiglia might be Team Jared these days, but Padalecki says he’s firmly Team Jess, while Czuchry thinks Logan could still be an option if he sorted his life out. Still, if you ask Scott Patterson, who played Jess’s uncle and one of Rory’s default father figures on Gilmore Girls, she should forget the lot of them.
“I’ve been in either camp one time or another in the past, but now I’d like to see her have a completely new experience,” he said last year. “None of these relationships worked out, and there’s a reason for that because they weren’t meant to.”
Ten Years Ago, The Witch Gave Us the Best Cinematic Satan
Butter and a pretty dress. Apparently, that’s all it took for young Puritan Thomasin to sell her soul to the devil. Even if we just isolated the scene of Black Phillip’s arrival from the rest of Robert Eggers‘ 2016 debut The Witch and read it just at face value, it would be powerful. The combination of vulnerability and desire that Anya Taylor-Joy plays as Thomasin, the sound design that sends Black Phillip’s whispered echoes across the room, thick shadows that fill the screen: all of that would be enough to make The Witch a memorable film.
But within the context of the rest of the movie, Thomasin’s encounter with Black Phillip transcends the merely spooky and becomes sublimely terrifying. In the 10 years since Eggers released his movie, no other filmmaker has matched his depiction of the devil. Furthermore, no movie released in the more than 100 years of motion pictures that preceded The Witch had a more terrifying or more tempting look at Lucifer.
The Eyes of Black Phillip
Thomasin conjures the devil 84 minutes into The Witch, with only nine minutes of runtime remaining. But Black Phillip makes his presence known throughout the entirety of the film. Most obviously, Black Phillip is the name of the ebony goat that lives on the farm with Thomasin and her family: father William (Ralph Ineson), mother Katherine (Kate Dickie), younger brother Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw), twins Mercy (Ellie Grainger) and Jonas (Lucas Dawson), and the newborn Samuel. Banished for somehow being more judgmental than their Puritan peers, Thomasin’s family must settle outside of the community, at the edge of the woods in 1630s New England.
The goat Black Phillip stalks about the family camp and the twins taunt their sister about her name appearing in his book. But it’s the way the family treats one another that truly embodies the spirit of Satan, literally “the accuser.” Whether it’s Samuel’s disappearance at the start of the movie or the lust that Caleb feels when looking at his sister, Thomasin gets charged with all manner of wrong doing. As things grow worse, the family intensifies its blame towards Thomasin, claiming that she is a witch in league with Satan, and therefore she—not the arrogance of William and Katherine that got them expelled from the village—is the source of all their problems.
Thus, when Thomas finally breaks and walks into the barn to summon Black Phillip, he is a welcome presence in her life. And that’s what sets Black Phillip apart from other cinematic Satans.
Hell in Hollywood
The devil is certainly nothing new to cinema. Even before the popularization of synchronized sound, Satan appeared in the 1922 psuedo-documentary Häxan and in F. W. Murnau’s adaptation of Faust. The devil has manifested as everything from the folksy Mr. Scratch in 1941’s The Devil and Daniel Webster to primordial space ooze in John Carpenter‘s inexplicable Prince of Darkness (1987) to an exhausted Peter Stormare in Constantine (2005).
In most cases, movies portray the devil as some ultimate, almost impersonal evil. Such is the case with the winged figure that ascends in the “Night on Bald Mountain Segment” from Fantasia (1940) or the unconvincing CGI that Al Simmons faces at the climax of Spawn (1997). However, the devil is most interesting when he appears as a tempting trickster, something that wants to enter into a bargain with the protagonist. Robert De Niro and Al Pacino played sweaty versions of this Satan in Angel Heart (1987) and The Devil’s Advocate (1997), respectively, and Max von Sydow puts a playful spin on it for 1993’s Needful Things.
Perhaps the most well-known cinematic Satan combines both of these qualities. Jack Nicholson portrays Daryl Van Horne in George Miller‘s 1987 comedy The Witches of Eastwick. Miller and screenwriter Michael Cristofer amp up the sensuality and Protestant guilt of the John Updike novel, making Nicholson’s devil into a crazed schmoozer who injects some excitement into the lives of three banal women. In fact, it was that very banality, the fact that these very ordinary women would join up with Satan that made The Witches of Eastwick compelling, even if the combination of Nicholson, Miller, and Updike proved to be less than the sum of its parts.
While all of these depictions have their strong points, none of them are as insidious as Black Philip in The Witch.
Many Hands Doing the Devil’s Work
The arrival of Black Phillip (Daniel Malik as a human, Charlie as a goat) is marked not by fire or brimstone or anything so dramatic. Rather, it is marked by questions. “What dost thou want?” he asks first, before offering two suggestions: “Wouldst thou like the taste of butter? A pretty dress?” And then he sums up all his offers with the final question, “Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?”
To a certain degree, anyone who has sold their souls to Satan onscreen has done so for a delicious life. Faust gains youth, the Eastwick women an ideal man, Tommy Johnson of O Brother Where Art Thou? learns to play guitar. Next to these rewards, butter seems boring.
But that’s the point. Black Phillip offers Thomasin not things, but something deeper, something that she’s been lacking throughout the entire film. For the first time, her desires and actions receive acknowledgment. For the first time, she feels as if she has a choice in a matter. And if the devil is the one person who will accept her choices, then she’ll take the devil.
Of course, Black Phillip didn’t put Thomasin in this position. It was her mother and father, her siblings, everyone else who told Thomasin that she was evil. They did the devil’s work by denouncing her from the start of the film.
But that’s the power of Eggers’s depiction. Black Phillip isn’t just a single big bad who must be resisted. Rather, he’s only the manifestation of a hatefulness running all through the family. The evil spreads wider and deeper than any one person or thing could contain. It lives inside each of Thomasin’s family members, it lives inside the goat that watches her on the farm, and it lives inside of Thomasin herself, waiting for when the accusations and mistrust finally break her. Then, the devil is ready with butter, a pretty dress, and so much more.
Ryan Coogler’s X-Files Reboot Is Officially Happening… With the Right Star Attached
Fans of The X-Files want to believe that a reboot could work. And believing has just gotten a lot easier, as The Hollywood Reporter revealed that Danielle Deadwyler will be one of the show’s two co-leads. Furthermore, Ryan Coogler will officially write and direct the pilot.
At this point, it’s still unclear how the new show will relate to the original series created by Chris Carter, about FBI agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) investigating the unexplainable. We only know that the new series will follow the original show’s model of focusing on two agents, one of whom will be played by Deadwyler.
Danielle Deadwyler made her debut in the 2012 drama A Cross to Bear, and soon had supporting turns in Atlanta, Watchmen, and P-Valley before breaking out as Cuffee in the 2021 Netflix western The Harder They Fall. With her intense stare and piercing eyes, Deadwyler has strong screen presence, which has translated into critical praise for her parts in Till, I Saw the TV Glow, and The Piano Lesson. Befitting The X-Files, Deadwyler has also done genre work, appearing in the Jaume Collet-Serra films Carry-On and The Woman in the Yard, and she has done TV, playing Syd’s cousin Chantel in The Bear.
That screen presence will serve Deadwyler well in The X-Files, whether she’s taking the Mulder part as a true believer or taking Scully’s skeptical position.
Ryan Coogler needs no introduction, certainly not during this Oscars season. His film Sinners, with its own X-Files-style premise involving vampires at a Mississippi juke joint, has earned a record-breaking 16 Oscars.
Fans have no reason to doubt the creatives behind the new X-Files series. However, they may wonder about the wisdom of doing an X-Files show at all. As much as we all love the original series, which first ran from 1993 to 2002 on Fox, it was very much a product of its time. The End of History optimism that marked the close of the 20th century made the conspiracy theories that drove the show a pleasing pastime, something to distract us from the real world. However, as made uncomfortably clear by the two revival seasons released in 2016 and 2018, the current era of destabilization makes Mudler’s interests less charming and more dangerous.
Even though we don’t know much about his approach to the new series, Coogler seems uniquely suited to avoid those problems. Black Panther and its sequel delivered all the superhero action that one wants from a Marvel movie, but was also frank in its depiction of Western nations’ plundering of Africa. Sinners is a thrilling vampire romp with great musical set pieces, but it wastes no words in addressing American racism. If anyone can manage to make a new X-Files both a lot of fun and politically relevant, all while avoiding the missteps of the revival series, it’s Ryan Coogler. And with Danielle Deadwyler in the lead, the series is sure to be dynamic and dramatically rich.
At least, that’s what we want to believe.
The X-Files is now in preproduction.
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.
