Revamped Version of the Classic Doctor Who Sea Devils Episode Coming in December
‘Tis the season for Sea Devils, apparently. Not only is The War Between the Land and the Sea, the Doctor Who spinoff that revolves around the classic monsters, finally set to premiere (at least in the U.K.), but the BBC is also set to release a special version of the original episodes that featured their debut.
The original story, “The Sea Devils,” was a Third Doctor adventure that first aired in 1972 and introduced the franchise to the amphibious creatures who once ruled the Earth before humanity wanted to reclaim it for themselves. It starred Jon Pertwee as the Doctor alongside Katy Manning as companion Jo Grant, and features an appearance by Roger Delgado as infamous villain The Master.
The plot is pretty basic: The Doctor’s investigating some random ship disappearances when he discovers that the Master has not only escaped from the maximum security island prison in which he was being held — just go with it; it’s kind of his thing — but has built a device that allows him to control the Sea Devils and use them as his own personal army to conquer Earth. This all goes haywire in predictable ways that involve the creatures turning on the Master, the Doctor being really clever, and the aversion of nuclear war. (Or at least a nuclear explosion.)
The original six-part serial has been re-edited into a new feature-length format, though whether or not we’re still actually allowed to refer to these creatures as Sea Devils remains to be seen. The new version will feature updated sound design by Mark Ayres and an enhanced score woven together with the original (admittedly, kind of weird) experimental electronic score by Malcolm Clarke.
The corporation has been testing the waters with updated versions of classic installments for some time. Still-existing audio recordings of some of the franchise’s infamous “lost episodes” have led to classic adventures being recreated in an animated format, and the Tales of the TARDIS BBC limited series saw former Doctors and companions explore some of the franchise’s most famous older episodes in depth. And Doctor Who has dabbled in these condensed versions before, dropping an updated take on The Daleks alongside the show’s 60th anniversary celebrations and Second Doctor saga The War Games last year.
“Fifty-two years after they first rose from the depths, it’s Sea Devil night across the BBC!” Doctor Who showrunner Russell T. Davies enthused when the program was announced. “ A great idea never dies, and viewers young and old can now heed the warning: watch the seas!”
Of course, your mileage may (and likely will) vary on whether these adaptations that cut stories originally told over multiple hours into manageable 90-ish minute chunks are a good idea or not. It’s true, some of the classic stories are a bit unwieldy, narratively speaking, and can drag in places. But, there’s also something inherently uncomfortable about cutting and/or shifting so much of the original content. We’ll just have to watch and judge for ourselves. Eventually. Maybe. With everything else going on behind the scenes in the Whoniverse at the moment, there’s no firm news about any sort of broader release plan for this new installment might be. (Or if one even exists) Americans might have to wait for the DVD.
The special version of The Sea Devils will air on BBC Four and BBC iPlayer on December 7 and will be followed by the double episode premiere of The War Between the Land and the Sea on iPlayer and BBC One.
The Wicked Ending’s Fundamental Flaw
This article contains spoilers for Wicked: For Good.
The Broadway fans tried to warn us. Ever since the news came down that the film adaptation of Wicked would break the megahit musical into two separate films, fans have warned that second act isn’t nearly as good as the first.
It’s not just that the story takes a darker turn, separating rivals-turned-friends Elphaba and Glinda (portrayed in the film by Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande) for most of the story, as the latter joins the Wizard’s authoritarian regime and the former becomes the scapegoat whose vilifying allows him to shore up power. It’s also that the songs aren’t as good, lacking anything close to the favorite “Popular” or the literal showstopper “Defying Gravity.”
Turns out, the fans were right. Wicked: For Good tries to justify itself as its own discrete film by adding new scenes and songs, but none match the power of the first half. Worse, the bond between the two women gets diluted by the year-long gap between Wicked‘s release in November 2024 and For Good‘s debut this weekend.
But the biggest problem by far with the Wicked split is the way the new movie tries for a happier ending than either the original 1995 novel or the Broadway musical imagined. Instead of being a victory and redemption for both women, Wicked: For Good ends with a milquetoast apology, a defense of authoritarianism, and an insult to the viewers.
For Worse
Wicked began life not as a musical, but as a cynical revisionist novel by Gregory Maguire. Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West used the world of Oz imagined by author Frank L. Baum as a platform to explore the nature of evil, reframing the Wicked Witch of the West Elphaba as a social outcast who gets pushed into evil-doing and Glinda the Good Witch as a fake social climber who betrays the bond they formed in school.
The musical by Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman finds self-afirmation in Elphaba’s story and leans into the friendship between the two women. It relegates most of the nastiness and political critique of Maguire’s novel to the second act, and even then it continues to underscore the connection between Elphaba and Glinda, as demonstrated by the reconciling number For Good. In the musical, Elphaba fakes her death and escapes Oz with Fiyero, leaving Glinda to rule as the Good Witch.
All of those elements from the musical make their way into Wicked: For Good, but the need to expand one act into a full movie means that they get even more attention. We spend more time with Elphaba as a beleaguered freedom fighter, as in the film’s superhero-inspired opening, and more time with Glinda as she seeks power and riches for herself. In one particularly jarring moment, the scene of Boq (Ethan Slater), now transformed into the Tin Man through a bit of body horror magic, leads a lynch mob to find and kill Elphaba is followed by a new song “Girl in a Bubble,” in which Glinda has a little pity party for the gilded cage she created by betraying her friend to the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum).
A similar problem occurs with the staging of the song “Wonderful,” performed by the Wizard in hopes of getting Elphaba to join him with Glinda. In the musical, the Wizard sings about how he’s a victim of people’s expectations, that he’s just a carnival barker from Kansas who was thrust into his position at the behest of Oz’s citizens. But director Jon M. Chu and the screenplay by Holzman and Dana Fox adds a preamble in which the Wizard muses upon epistemology. He rebuffs Elphaba’s insistence upon telling the truth by arguing that truth is just what people agree to believe.
By spending more time with the nihilistic and self-serving parts of the story, and separating those elements from the uplifting friendship in the first film, Wicked: For Good builds to a contemptible close.
The Wonderful Ruler of Oz
The ending of Wicked: For Good doesn’t recall so much The Wizard of Oz as it does The Dark Knight, the second of Christopher Nolan‘s Batman movies. Before she fakes her death and makes her escape with her beloved Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), now transformed into a particularly upsetting version of the Scarecrow, Elphaba shares one last moment with Glinda. Instead of allowing Glinda to join her in telling the truth about the her and the Wizard, Elphaba insists that she must be wicked, so that Glinda can be good.
In other words, she must embrace her role as public scapegoat so that Glinda can gain the credit for defeating her, and thus use the popularity she wins to gain power over the Wizard and become a good leader. The film presents the moment as tragic for both Elphaba and Glinda. Not only are they not able to live together, but they can’t tell anyone about it. In the most romantic of terms, their friendship becomes a secret only shared by one another.
But within the context of Wicked: For Good‘s political allegory, the ending feels cynical. Throughout the film, the people of Oz mostly exist as a chorus who reacts to what the major characters say. When the Wizard makes a declaration or when Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh) makes broadcast, Chu cuts to the hoi polloi screaming in affirmation. As the Wizard explained before “Wonderful,” people take as truth what their leader tells them.
Thanks to Elphaba’s sacrifice, Glinda can dispose the Wizard and Morrible. But when she takes power, she operates the same way that they did. She perpetuates the story about phow the Wicked Witch was bad and how she helped Dorothy Gale kill the witch, which legitimatizes her claim to rule Oz. Sure, she immediately orders the citizens of Oz to share the land with the animals that the Wizard tried to silence, but the fact that the citizens cheer with as much energy as they called for the animals’ capture suggests reveals the movie’s political viewpoint.
Regular people are idiots, the movie seems to be saying. They’re little piggies who deserve nothing.
New Witch, Same as the Old Witch
Obviously, that portrayal of moronic masses embracing autocrats could have real resonance right now, when much of the Western world is being run by demagogues with legions of unquestioning followers. Were the film trying to be as cynical as Maguire’s book, that point would be effective.
But for all of its changes, For Good wants to follow the lead of the musical. Moreover, it’s a big holiday release by Universal Pictures, a movie designed to get families to come to the cinema and then shop at Target. So the film ends by framing the rise of Glinda as a good thing, a setting to right what the Wizard did wrong. Or, put another way, the film asks audience to be happy that a good autocrat has taken the place of the bad autocrat. And as a good autocrat, Glinda puts forward the official record of the Witch’s downfall at the hands of Dorothy… which we viewers know as the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz.
So that’s how Wicked: For Good ends, by installing a benevolent dictator and comparing the audience who loves the 1939 to the mindless rabble who cheers at any lie their leaders tell them.
With its ending, Wicked: For Good doesn’t just fail to cover the problems of the musical’s second act. Instead, it heightens those problems, changing the story for the much, much worse.
Wicked: For Good is now playing in theaters worldwide.
Rian Johnson Crushes Our Muppet Knives Out Dreams
As the release date for the third Knives Out installment, Wake Up Dead Man, approaches, speculation has already started to ramp up for where the franchise goes from here. Director Rian Johnson has made it pretty clear that he’d like to continue telling stories in this universe, so the real question (outside of whether Netflix signs back up to distribute more films) is what sort of bizarre case Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc will solve next.
“Creatively, I feel energized after making this one,” he told The Hollywood Reporteron the red carpet at the Los Angeles premiere for Wake Up Dead Man. “Daniel and I are already starting to formulate… what could the next one be if we do another one?”
What that actually means at the moment is anyone’s guess. But what we do know is that Johnson’s not planning to take advantage of the internet’s favorite (and often repeated) suggestion, which is that Blanc’s next murder case should somehow involve the Muppets. This truly isn’t as weird as it sounds; folks online love speculating about adding the popular Jim Henson creatures to various franchises, and a potential version of Knives Out featuring Kermit or Miss Piggy has been a topic of discussion for some years.
Unfortunately, Johnson seems to have no plans to actually make one. During a recent appearance on THR’s Awards Chatter podcast, Johnson manages to crush all of our dreams by insisting that there’s no way that a crossover between Blanc’s world and that of the felt-made puppets could realistically work.
“On the internet, the notion of a Knives Out Muppet movie comes up a lot,” Johnson said. “I wanted to get you guys together here so that I could explain why that’s a bad idea.”
The director goes on to lay out his theory in some detail. “I love and respect Muppet movies too much. The reality is, if you put Muppets in a Benoit Blanc movie, it would feel totally wrong because they would be getting murdered,” he said. “The alternative is to just stick Benoit Blanc into a Muppet movie, which admittedly would be very fun, but would kind of break the reality of what Blanc is.”
But, look, I think we can all agree that despite Johnson being the literal inventor of Blanc and his world, he is very wrong about this. There are plenty of Muppet-based or adjacent crimes that Blanc could find a reason to investigate, some of which (The Great Muppet Caper) have already been proven to work without breaking any sort of human or puppet reality. Plus, let’s not forget, most of The Muppet Movie actually involves Kermit getting chased by a guy who literally wants to turn him into frog legs.
Surely, there’s room for a story in which Blanc has to prove Piggy didn’t commit a crime she’s falsely accused of, using the same sort of familiar mystery movie tropes and frankly ridiculous crime-solving scenarios that power the rest of the franchise. And I mean, if Michael Caine can make Muppets feel like believable parts of a Charles Dickens classic, there’s no reason to doubt that Craig would be able to do the same in a different genre.
Not everything is terrible, though. While Johnson insists a puppet-based KnivesOut is off the table, he’d apparently still really like to make a Muppet movie.
“I would just love to do a regular awesome Muppet movie… I’ll do the Muppet caper, or my Muppet musical. Get together with Frank Oz and cook something,” said. “That would be amazing.”
Marvel Contest of Champions Makes the Jump to PC Gaming
Ever since 2014, Marvel Contest of Champions has been thrilling fans worldwide, allowing them to pit a wide roster of heroes and villains from the Marvel Universe against one another in real-time combat. Over a decade later, Contest of Champions boasts a strong community bolstered by regular competitions updates, not only refining the gameplay and adding new characters, but new modes and in-game events. And all these years later, the game shows no signs of slowing down, with the mobile game making the leap to PCs and teasing even more ambitious updates in the months to come.
In November, Marvel Contest of Champions brought together fans of the game for the celebratory Summoners Fest at developer Kabam’s offices in Vancouver. Players from around the world competed for big prizes, with fans also streaming the competitions and announcements on Twitch. Den of Geek was invited to attend this year’s Summoners Fest and spoke to the developers behind the game about its legacy and what’s coming next.
Creating an Enduringly Popular Mobile Game
For any game to endure and remain a fan-favorite for over a decade, mobile or not, is an incredible feat and it’s one that Marvel Contest of Champions has maintained. Kabam CEO Simon Sim attributes this longevity to the team creating and refining a quality game, the title maintaining a strong community, and Kabam’s close relationship with Marvel in ensuring their iconic characters are well-represented in the game. Sim notes that the development team is not only proud of the game they’ve created but also enjoy playing it, appreciating its blend of RPG and fighting game elements that continues to improve upon its mechanics and gameplay depth.
“I believe all of us are strong Marvel fans. We really like our game. We hear the community’s voice and, at the same time, our voice. Whenever we apply new modes and content, we hear and adjust to that because the community is a strong reason for our success,” Sim observes in an interview with Den of Geek. “This unique skill-based RPG game that we created needs a lot of computer engineering and operational knowledge background. Year after year, we become stronger with that and a reason that we’ve maintained our game for 11 years.”
That sense of synergy with Marvel is something that’s existed in Contest of Champions since the beginning, with roster additions and in-game events reflecting major developments for Marvel’s other projects in film, television, and comic books. But the importance of the community built up around the game, constantly driving its renewed success with every update is something that its developers maintain clear sight of. If there’s any secret to why we’re still talking about and playing Contest of Champions more than the vast majority of other mobile games, it’s how big a role the community plays in the ongoing developments surrounding the game’s updates.
“The community itself is a game team member,” explains principal creative writer Tyler Nicol. “The fact that they are there is the reason why we can keep building, growing, and establishing this 11-year career of a game. It’s because they’re there cheering and helping with us. That hand-in-hand relationship is unique.”
A Thriving and Growing Community
Community really is the name of the game when it comes to Marvel Contest of Champions, and the robust and excited attendance at this year’s Summoners Fest is clear evidence of that. There is a familiarity and genuine friendship between many of the attendees and the developers, something that’s grown and deepened over time. Several people currently working at Kabam started out as Contest of Champions players and fans, including Sim who started playing the game when it first launched.
“I’ve worked in other companies and know many different industry people, but the actual community leaders come join our company and we work together,” Sim shares. “Me and the Kabam team value the community a lot. Even internally, we have daily community sentiments shared. Weekly, we review what the community sentiments are – is it getting better or worse, why it’s getting better or worse, which parts they like. This is one of our very important processes.”
More than just the chance to celebrate Contest of Champions, events like Summoners Fest also give the developers the chance to see the game in an in-depth perspective that playtesting could never quite provide. Seeing dedicated fans who have mastered the gameplay mechanics in inventive ways from hours upon hours of practice helps the developers see the nuances of the game in a new light. This helps the developers plan how to build new Champions for the roster and other refinements that, in turn, offer fresh surprises to longtime players.
“Our players have taught us so much about the game,” admits RPG designer Stuart Urquhart. “Our players are responsible for so many interactions that they’ve discovered and that we’ve codified into actual rules. As that’s gone on, we’ve learned how to make more fun Champions. We also realize that our existing Champions still feel great, so we’ll go make and revisit them.”
Bringing the Contest of Champions to PC
While Marvel Contest of Champions had historically been a mobile game for iOS and Android devices, the game made the leap to PCs this year, now available through Steam. For Kabam, the expansion from strictly mobile devices had been an ongoing development for years as the company mulled making the title a multiplatform experience for years. Developers noted that there was a vocal desire from PC users to have a version of the game available, with Kabam deciding to bring the title to the platform based on that demand.
“When you go back home and you’re sitting in front of a PC, you want to play with a controller on a bigger screen,” Sim observes. “We wanted a bigger screen and we decided it was time to try a PC expansion. It is a complicated and heavy investment. We already have more than 10 years of content to bring to the PC while maintaining its quality. It was not an easy journey, but if there’s a user demand, we need to provide our game.”
More than just a quick up-conversion, Kabam worked diligently to ensure Contest of Champions on PC retained the appeal and quality-level in its presentation for larger screens and button-mapping to keyboards or controllers. Fortunately, the game’s art style and impressive technical presentation for mobile devices translated to the PC experience, even with its longer lifespan. Though this still took considerable hard work, Kabam is proud of how the PC port of Contest of Champions looks and feels compared to its mobile counterpart.
“It took a ton of effort but we started out from some really great places. We already had a game that controlled incredibly well. We already had a game that looked amazing, especially given the time when it was created and the hardware that it was created with,” Urquhart adds. “We have that incredible advantage of having our game looking really good when you put it on a larger screen.”
The Future of Marvel Contest of Champions
Kabam has already teased what’s to come for the next several months of Contest of Champions, including the addition of the fan-favorite hero Blue Marvel to the roster. But beyond new playable characters, 2026 is already looking bright for the thriving mobile and PC game. The new year will see the release of the limited time event Dimensional Arcade: Concert of Champions to the mix, a rhythm game that has players control popular heroes as they battle incoming enemies on time to original music. Den of Geek was able to play an early build of Concert of Champions at Summoners Fest, and found it fun and accessible, taking down opponents as Dazzler to a genuinely catchy tune.
Between these new game modes, even more playable characters, and revamped progression system designed to welcome new players while rewarding established users, Marvel Contest of Champions definitely isn’t slowing down. And with the community playing such a key role in the game’s continued success and development, Kabam is making and refining a game for fans and by fans every step of the way.
Developed and published by Kabam, Marvel Contest of Champions is available on iOS and Android devices, as well PC through Steam.
Sansa and Jon Shippers, It Sounds Like The Dreadful is For You
It’s not a secret that Game of Thronesbasically encouraged us all to be complete weirdos, particularly in the romance department. Whether you were rooting for Jon Snow to hook up with his aunt Daenerys or hoping Tormund Giantsbane got the chance to shoot his shot with Brienne of Tarth, it’s a show that filled in the gaps around its epic battles and complex political machinations with all manner of complicated relationships, ranging from platonic to romantic and everything in between. In the world of Westeros, anything goes.
While Kit Harington and Sophie Turner played siblings for the entirety of the show’s eight-season run, that didn’t stop some fans from hoping their (allegedly) familial relationship might take a very different sort of turn, particularly once the truth of his Targaryen parentage was revealed. But although Jon and Sansa shippers may never have gotten a big romantic moment between the not-exactly-techinically siblings in Westeros, they’re finally going to get the chance to see the actors who portrayed them make out, albeit in very different circumstances.
The former Game of Thrones stars have reunited for the period Gothic horror film The Dreadful. Set during the 15th century, it follows the story of Anne (Turner), a young woman who lives on the fringes of society with her mother. But when a man from her past (Harington) returns, his arrival sets off a chain of events that upend her life. While that description is fairly basic, it certainly sounds as though the story will include all the twisted romantic dynamics one could ask for. Even if filming it sounds like it was something of an adjustment for the actors involved.
According to Harington, who spoke about the project while promoting his new film The Family Plan 2, kissing his former onscreen sibling was more than a bit “odd”.
“She was one that sent that movie [script] to me and somehow didn’t see what I saw in it,” Harington told E! News. “I was like, ‘These guys, these are lovers, right?’ I felt very odd about that. But it was a good chance to be with her again and work together. It was slightly embarrassing, having to get on an apple box to kiss her because she’s about a foot taller than me. But other than that, my dignity was pretty intact.”
Turner’s memory of the situation is a bit more colorful. Though she says she and Harington agreed the film has “such a good script” that they “kind of had to do it,” the initial kissing scenes were something of a… let’s just call it a challenge.
“We had put it out of our minds, and then we get on set and it’s the first kissing scene, and we are both retching,” Turner said during an appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers earlier this year. “Like, really, it is vile. It was the worst.”
But apparently, at the end of the day, what really matters is the Stark kids getting the chance to come back together again. The pack survives, and all that.
“What was lovely is that we got on set together and our friendship completely ignited again,” Harinton said. “It felt like being with family. It really did.”
Though The Dreadful has wrapped filming, it does not yet have a release date.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Is Already Rebooting
One would think that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are a pretty straightforward concept. You’ve got four brothers with distinct personalities, they’re ninjas and turtles. They like to party and they fight the Shredder. Rinse, repeat, cowabunga.
But for whatever reason, current rights holders Paramount, just like New Line Cinema and others before them, feel the need to keep reinventing the wheel when it comes to the heroes in a half-shell. So we really shouldn’t be surprise to hear that a new live-action Turtles movie is in the works, just two years after the animated hit Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem. And it’s all Sonic the Hedgehog‘s fault.
According to TheHollywood Reporter, “multiple sources say Paramount wants to “Sonic-fy” the TMNT franchise,” which is why the studio has hired Sonic the Hedgehog producer Neal H. Moritz to produce the Turtles movie. “If you want Sonic, you go to the guy who did Sonic,” said an unnamed source.
On one hand, it’s easy to see why Paramount would make this move. The Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, which currently consists of three films with a fourth on the way, has been incredibly succesful for the studio. And that’s with an IP that has had no movie presence before 2020.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have been a much more constant presence on the big screen. Their 1990 film was an indie hit and has only become more beloved over the decades, even if the two follow-ups failed to carry the same momentum. A 2007 animated film failed to revive the movie franchise, even if television series and video games kept the turtles alive in some form. The 2012 Michael Bay produced live-action movie made good money at the box office, but was reviled by fans and critics alike, so much so that the much better follow-up Out of the Shadows (2016) flopped.
All of which brings us to 2023’s Mutant Mayhem. Directed by Jeff Rowe, from a story that Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg wrote with Rowe and Brendan O’Brien, Mutant Mayhem gave us actual teenage turtles. Voiced by a cast of young adolescents, who recorded their lines together to give the movie an improvised and chaotic feel, Mutant Mayhem captured the teen energy that the franchise has always promised.
Mutant Mayhem received strong reviews from critics and earned $180.5 million on a budget of $70 million, spawning both a television spinoff Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and a sequel. But the new live-action movie announcement comes just after the cancelation of the series after its second season, which will debut on December 12, 2025. The sequel film is currently still in development, but one cannot help but wonder if the live-action movie will push it out of production.
All of which raises a question: what, exactly, does Paramount want from the Ninja Turtles? One gets the sense that not even they know. And as long as the Turtles themselves get to keep partying and eating pizza, they’re probably not too worried about it.
Movies to Put You in the Stranger Things Mood
Did you know that Back to the Future’s 1985 release is closer to the actual 1955 of shiny diner milkshakes and sock hops than it is to the first season of Stranger Things? That’s not necessarily an important factoid to your life, but one which highlights both how long ago the actual ‘80s were, as well as how immaterial that is when it comes to enjoying their eternal appeal.
The fashion, the hair, the music, and most especially the movies of that era have stuck in the pop culture zeitgeist so thoroughly that a streaming amalgamation of all of the above remains one of the most iconic television events of this century. It also begins its end this month after nine years of making us want to party like it’s, ahem, 1989.
Still, if you’re like us, you might think to yourself you don’t have 40 hours to devote this week to reliving the past four seasons of Stranger Things. Or maybe you already have, but your thirst for ‘80s entertainment, or films just as nostalgic as the Duffer Brothers series, remains unquenched? In which case, we’ve got you covered! Below is a list of most (though never all) of the films that influenced the tone, tenor, and cadence of Hawkins, Indiana and its run-ins with the Upside Down. Tubular.
E.T.: the Extra-Terrestrial
We begin with the reference point so obvious that the first season of Stranger Things happily reversed the famous image of a boy’s superpowered BFF making a bike fly. In the TV show, Eleven instead makes a van of government boogeymen chasing her and Mike go soaring into the air. It’s one of the highlights of season 1 and speaks to both the eternal appeal of E.T. and Stranger Things. Both are projects about lonely, ostracized children making due with distracted parents through the power of friendship; each features scary, nameless government-types who want to separate a child from his soulmate; and all of them feature a neighborhood call to adventure for the outcasts. Thankfully though, little Elliot and his alien bestie never kissed. – David Crow
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
To keep the Steven Spielberg theme going, we turn to his other iconic extraterrestrial movie, albeit one that came out a little before the ‘80s in 1978. If E.T. defined the children’s narrative for the first couple of seasons of Stranger Things, Close Encounters of the Third was the big influence for the adult perspective on Hawkins’ strange happenings. The most traumatic moment of Spielberg’s film is when a mother’s little boy is abducted by strange lights in the home.
Conversely, Joyce Byers uses mysterious glowing Christmas lights to communicate with her own lost child, Will (which also echoes the use of music as the great translator in Close Encounters). And though Will is saved at the end of the first season, his possession by the Mind Flayer in season 2 echoes another 1970s film about exorcisms that is too intense for children. However, the scene of the Mind Flayer coming to Will in a vision at the childhood home is straight out of this Spielberg classic. – DC
Jaws
We know we are beating the Spielbergian horse pretty hard right out of the gate, but it seems prudent given how the filmmaker’s touch as both a director and producer so thoroughly inspired early seasons of Stranger Things. And in the case of Big Jim Hopper, the lovably gruff bear of Hawkins’ police force, the touchstone is Roy Scheider’s slightly less haunted Chief Brody in Jaws. So boot this 50-year-old masterpiece up and get yourself another tale of a weary and worldly city cop finding purpose and hope when he defends his small town from a monster in the greatest shark attack movie ever made. – DC
Firestarter and Carrie
If one were to name the two overriding influences on Stranger Things writ large, it could be summed up as “Spielberg and King,” the latter referring of course to Stephen King. The prolific master of the macabre potboiler was inescapable at book stores in the 1980s, and that went for the multiplex too where his tales were adapted frequently.
His first published novel, Carrie, is definitely his best work about a telekinetic young girl who goes ham on those she perceives as her enemies. However, Brian De Palma’s dreamlike night terror adaptation from 1976 is far more horrific than anything Eleven gets up to in Stranger Things (though Angela and her other bullies in season 4 definitely mirror a young John Travolta and P.J. Soles here). So if you want to find the true inspiration for Eleven, check out the far trashier but mildly enjoyable Firestarter, a 1984 King adaptation about a telekinetic gal who goes rogue and escapes her cruel government handlers. Also to up the ‘80s nostalgia, she’s played by Drew Barrymore, E.T.’s little sister… So does that make Barrymore like Eleven’s godmother? – DC
Stand By Me
You guys wanna see a dead body? No? Well then, do you want to see a surprisingly sweet coming-of-age movie about a group of kids looking for a dead body? Based on a novella by (who else?) Stephen King, 1986’s Stand By Me captures the master horror writer’s elegiac tone of youth gone by, with none of the usual supernatural trappings.
The plot of the Rob Reiner-directed film is very simple. The year is 1959 and grade school friends Gordie Lachance (Wil Wheaton), Chris Chambers (River Phoenix), Teddy Duchamp (Corey Feldman), and Vern Tessio (Jerry O’Connell) embark on a journey outside of town where, rumor has it, they can come upon the dead body of a of a missing boy named Ray Brower. While that setup is certainly macabre, Stand By Me is really all about the strange rhythms of childhood – the grim curiosities it engenders, the unlikely friendships it nurtures, and the bittersweet memories it leaves behind.
Though they seek Mindflayers and Demogorgons rather than corpses, it’s not hard to see Will, Mike, Lucas, and Dustin in Stand By Me‘s central quartet. – Alec Bojalad
It Chapter One
Of all the Stephen King influences on Stranger Things, none may be more acute than his 1986 coming-of-age horror opus It. For evidence of this, look no further Andy Muschietti’s 2017 film adaptation It Chapter One. Younger viewers could be forgiven for thinking that this first part of an epic duology is riffing on Stranger Things, not vice versa.
Not only does the plot deal with a group of children confronting a monster in the 1980s (taking over from the novel’s 1950 setting), but Mike Wheeler himself is right there! Yes, Finn Wolfhard makes his film debut as Richie “Trashmouth” Tozier, the clown archetype of The Losers Club … though notably not the clown of the film. That distinction goes to another fellow.
Ghostbusters
One of the most charmingly shameless bits of nostalgia-mining in Stranger Things is when the four youngest heroes—Mike, Lucas, Dustin, and Will—dress up as the Ghostbusters for Halloween in season 2. They even made their costumes the centerpiece of the season’s marketing. There is probably a reason, then, that Sony Pictures cast Finn Wolfhard (who plays Mike) in their starry-eyed legacy sequel, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, four years later.
But if you haven’t revisited the original film in a good while, trust us it’s a lot funnier and more smart-assed than you might remember. Seeing it again might also remind you why the kids were so convinced everyone at school would think they’re cool for bringing proton packs to home room. Plus, the demodogs in season 2 are totally a riff on the Zuul hellhounds in Ghostbusters. – DC
Aliens
On the subject of demodogs, we might mention their other major ‘80s influence: 1986’s Aliens. While pop culture has swung back around in recent years toward celebrating Ridley Scott’s more cerebral and scary 1979 original, back in the ‘80s there were plenty who considered James Cameron’s Aliens the greatest action movie ever made. It’s relentlessly paced and with creature-feature monsters that just will not quit.
So the whole episode where Joyce, Hopper, and Mike are trapped in a building with monstrous Upside Down creatures feels like it was taken directly from the set pieces of this classic, including poor Bob Newby’s brutal death when the bug hunt goes wrong. And if you have never seen it, now’s your chance to find out why your parents were so distrusting of Paul Reiser as Dr. Owens… – DC
The Thing
Perhaps the strongest ‘80s monster movie influence on the look and aesthetic of Stranger Things is John Carpenter’s 1982 movie which did the rare thing: it became a remake that’s better than the original. The Duffer Brothers and their fellow writers even make this explicit when Lucas gets on a soap box in season 3 about how much better Carpenter’s remake is to 1951’s The Thing from Another World.
It is probably not coincidence either that season 3 was also the year where the kids had to deal with the Mind Flayer infecting and corrupting what seemed like a third of the town’s population, starting with poor Billy Hargrove. His transformation scene looks a bit like a nod to another ‘80s monster cult darling, An American Werewolf in London (1981), but the sequence where the kids try to “test” him in the sauna is straight out of Kurt Russell’s temperature checks in this definitive sci-fi portrait of paranoia. – DC
The Blob
Here’s one more ‘80s remake of a ‘50s classic that seems like it was a big influence on season 3 and (perhaps) season 5 of Stranger Things: the Blob. In the 1988 version of the story, a group of teenagers realize they’re being lied to by government authorities regarding a strange alien-like substance that is threatening to consume their town. The way the titular substance melts everyone’s bodies to mush definitely played a part in what happens to the infected folks in season 3.
Still, the setup of a group of wily teenagers knowing not to trust authorities that seek to quarantine their town appears as if it will be in direct conversation with the story of season 5. – DC
A Nightmare on Elm Street
If we are rattling off the scary movies that inform so much of the horror elements of Stranger Things, then we absolutely need to talk about the biggest influence on the show’s scariest season: Freddy Krueger. Old Dead Fred, the child murderer who after being killed by a lynch mob of angry parents comes back to haunt their teenage children as a dream demon, is basically season 4’s Vecna with jokes.
The Duffers are not shy about this fact. After all, they cast the man behind Freddy’s fedora, Robert Englund, as Victor Creel. Victor is the guy wrongfully accused of Vecna’s crimes in season 4. The authorities might have the wrong guy, but every time Vecna comes to one of his victims in “visions” that leave terrified teenagers in a dreamlike state that they cannot easily wake from, season 4 becomes the best Nightmare on Elm Street sequel since Dream Warriors in ‘87. If you haven’t seen the original 1984 flick, however, now’s your chance before Vecna’s return in season 5…
Also, FYI, Nancy is named after Heather Langenkamp’s all-time badass final girl from the 1984 original, and the cool bits of the demogorgan stretching its head through the wallpaper in season 1 is also taken from the Wes Craven original. – DC
Sixteen Candles
There’s a good chance that if you’re watching Stranger Things’ later seasons, you’re in it for the characters and youthful relationships more than the monster mash nonsense. In which case, John Hughes might be way more your jam than Freddy Krueger or John Carpenter. In which case, we might suggest starting with 1984’s Sixteen Candles. It’s not Hughes’ best teen film—that honor goes to The Breakfast Club or Ferris Bueller’s Day Off—but it is the one that most resembles the relatively carefree innocence of love triangles and unrequited crushing in Stranger Things.
In this one, Molly Ringwald plays a girl whose family is so absent-minded about her latchkey life that they forget her 16th birthday! Worse, she is in love with a way more popular high school senior while having to shake the attentions of a nerdy guy. She is in other words like what Nancy thinks her life is in season 1 of Stranger Things, albeit the teen soapiness has passed onto her younger co-stars these days now that Nancy is in full Linda Hamilton mode. – DC
Heathers
While also on the subject of ‘80s teen movies, we’d be derelict in our duties if we did not mention the teen movie that put Ms. Joyce Byers on the map. Well before she became the face of anxious motherhood, Winona Ryder was the definitive Gen X cool girl of the ‘80s and ‘90s, and it all began in Heathers (1988), a pitch black comedy wherein Ryder plays the only popular girl at her school not named Heather. She still runs with the rest of that clique though… at least until she is convinced to start murdering these bad influences by a worse one with a dreamy smile.
Basically Mean Girls made in a time where you could joke about this kind of thing—and written by Daniel Waters, whose brother directed Mean Girls—Heathers is notoriously a movie they could never make today. But if you can put yourselves in the heightened silliness of a sarcasm-drenched ‘80s comedy aimed at 18-year-olds ready to snark after graduation, you’ll have a blast. – DC
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
Perhaps the most important teen movie north star on Stranger Things, Fast Times at Ridgemont High is nominally of the raunchy R-rated sex comedy subgenre of teen movies that dominated this era. But it’s aged a lot better because it was written and directed with intelligence and authenticity by Amy Heckerling when she was only 10 years out of high school in 1982. Heckerling brings a wit and playful knowingness to the escapades of mall rats like Stacy (Jennifer Jason Leigh), space case Spicoli (Sean Penn), and ‘80s dream girl Linda (Phoebe Cates). Yes, the same Phoebe Cates that Dustin swears his girlfriend who lives in Utah is hotter than! He swears!
Obviously Phoebe Cates’ most famous scene is a running joke in Stranger Things 3, but the film’s depiction of teenage boredom and ingenuity at dead-end mall jobs is a bigger affectionate touchstone. – DC
Back to the Future
A prominently featured flick we catch some of the kids watching at the Starcourt Theater in ST3 is of course Back to the Future. The show even has some good fun when an involuntarily-drugged Steve cannot wrap his head around Michael J. Fox (or Alex P. Keaton from Family Ties!” as Steve keeps insisting) as the star of an adventure movie.
Yet this Amblin entertainment from director Robert Zemeckis, and producer Spielberg, better encapsulates the exuberant tone of Stranger Things’ third season where kids get up to the darndest adventures, physics, interdimensional planes, and even flux capacitors be damned! – DC
Red Dawn
A recurring through-line in seasons 3 and 4 of Stranger Things was ‘80s pop culture’s obsession with Russian bad guys and the Cold War. As we learn in the third year, there is even a secret Russian base beneath the feet of Hawkins, Indiana. This Red invasion fantasy where only the teenagers can save us owes a deal of debt to John Milius’ Red Dawn. Actually the no-frills, no-apology depiction of gun culture in the States—a major theme in Kevin Reynolds’ screenplay—runs an influence all the way back to Stranger Things 1 where Nancy Wheeler gets target practice with Jonathan that proves vital in the finale and beyond.
However, Milius’ heightened sense of jingoism histrionics in Red Dawn find their way into seasons 3 and 4 when a group of kids meet the commies beneath their feet. – DC
Stripes
But the depiction of the Russians themselves may owe more mostly to ‘80s comedies like Stripes, at least in season 3. Depicted as envious buffoons who just want that sweet, sweet capitalism—and for Americans to stop making their lives so miserable—the Russians of the third season better resemble the Soviets we meet in Bill Murray’s popular 1981 Cold War comedy. The Ruskies get a lot more sinister in Stranger Things 4 after Hopper is shipped off to a gulag, but in function Joyce and Murray’s season 4 plot is still basically the third act of Stripes: the comic relief must slip past the Iron Curtain and save their friends from Soviet, err, hospitality. – DC
Super 8
Finally, while every other film on this list is a movie that inspired Stranger Things, it’s worth ending on a movie that tried to be Stranger Things… five years before Stranger Things even premiered! Directed by J.J. Abrams, 2011’s Super 8 is basically a dry run for everything that Netflix’s streaming behemoth would one day present. It’s: 1. Set in the ’80s (Well, 1979 technically). 2. Clearly inspired by Messrs. Spielberg and King (with Spielberg actually producing the film). 3. Features precocious youths dealing with a sci-fi/horror threat in a small Midwestern town.
Where Stranger Things and Super 8 diverge, however, is that Stranger Things is very good and Super 8 is not. That’s not to say that Super 8 is awful, mind you. Abrams’ slick, kinetic direction is rarely boring and the kid performers are all compelling enough. The Spielberg pastiche is just missing a certain energy, spark, and originality that Stranger Things contains in spades. The contrast between Stranger Things’ success and Super 8’s relative anonymity, just five years apart, is a reminder that art is a tricky thing. Sometimes talented artists can have the same good idea at roughly the same time and yet fate will smile upon only one as the zeitgeist-breaker.
How Bonnie Langford Convinced Bradley Walsh to Join the Ranks of Doctor Who Companions
Fourteen different actors have “officially” played Doctor Who’s famous Time Lord, even more if you count some of the ancillary figures like Jo Martin’s Fugitive Doctor, John Hurt’s War Doctor, or David Bradley, who took over the role of the First Doctor in the series’ modern era. (And technically, David Tennant did it twice.) While that may seem like a lot, it’s really not when you consider the fact that the show’s been running for well over 60 years at this point. But when it comes to the Doctor’s constant partners in adventure, the number’s much higher.
Depending on the criteria you use to judge what a “companion” means in the world of the show, anywhere from 50-70 people have travelled with the Doctor over the course of the series’s run. Many made multiple appearances, often across time periods and eras, and their legacy lived on well after they were gone, both within the world of the show and outside of it. And sometimes, the people who have played them end up shaping the show’s direction even years later.
Bonnie Langford played classic companion Melanie Bush, who appeared opposite both Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy’s Doctors in the 1980s. But it turns out that Langford is not just a former companion herself; she played a pivotal role in the casting of another many years later. She apparently helped convince Bradley Walsh to join the show.
Speaking with the Radio Times, Langford recalled encouraging the actor and popular TV presenter to say yes to the opportunity.
“I went and met him for lunch,” she said. “And he said, ‘I’ve been asked to do Doctor Who, I don’t know if I should.’ I said, ‘Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.’ And he did! In the end, we ended up doing a scene together, and I was just so pleased.”
Walsh played Graham O’Brien opposite Jodie Whittaker’s Thirteenth Doctor for two seasons before departing the show in the 2021 special “Revolution of the Daleks”. He later returned for 2022 special “The Power of the Doctor,” the finale installment that served as a swan song for both Whittaker and then-outgoing showrunner Chris Chibnall.
The episode saw Langford and Walsh’s characters cross paths during a (hilariously long overdue) gathering of a support group for former companions, which featured appearances by multiple former Who stars, including William Russell (Ian Chesterton), Katy Manning (Jo Grant), Janet Fielding (Tegan Jovanka), and Sophie Aldred (Ace).
But although we haven’t seen Walsh onscreen since, Langford has returned for multiple guest spots in recent seasons. Mel, now a UNIT employee, first popped up again during the 60th anniversary specials with David Tennant, and most recently appeared in the two-part season 15 finale “Wish World” and “The Reality War”.
According to Langford, she was “delighted” when she first received the call from Chibnall asking her to reprise her role, and gave substantial consideration to the idea of the person that the Mel would have grown into over the years.
“At that point I thought, ‘Well, I wonder what Mel would be,'” she said. “A lot calmer. A lot calmer, and much more into her computers, yet very discreet about the work that she does. She had such a loyalty to the Doctor. It was really great that I had been able to still be in touch with [Mel], to think, ‘I wonder where she’s been and what she’s done, and how she has kept her connection with the Doctor.'”
But mostly, she says, she’s glad she got to reestablish the character for a new generation of fans and tone down some of her more “irritating” tendencies.
“I’m really honoured that he thought Mel was worth bringing back, and that she got totally and utterly involved with the bi-generation,” Langford said. “It was a thrill. I was very taken with the fact that I was able to correct all those mistakes that I felt I had made first time round and, for Mel’s sake, that she was able to return as a much more rounded character with vulnerabilities.”
Prime Video Just Stealth Released One of the Biggest BBC Historical Dramas of the Year
We all know that we live in an Age of Content. Dozens of television shows, movies, and unscripted series are hitting streaming on what feels like a daily, if not hourly basis, and it’s honestly more than any of us could ever hope to keep up with. But it does help when you at least know they exist. Case in point, Prime Video’s King & Conqueror, which many people may be surprised to learn you can actually turn on your televisions and watch right now.
The streamer’s decision to stealth drop the series, a big-budget, sweeping British historical drama that aired on BBC One and BBC iPlayer earlier this fall, with absolutely zero fanfare — not even a pre-release date announcement! — is fairly bizarre. Given the earlier buzz around the streamer’s acquisition of the series, it seems almost incomprehensible that it actually arrived with such a profound whimper. But, hey, as they say, knowing is half the battle.
Featuring a starry cast that includes Game of Thrones alum Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and former Grantchester Hot Priest James Norton, the sweeping eight-part saga dramatizes the lead-up to the Battle of Hastings in 1066, an event that reshaped England forever and ushered in profound changes in everything from the aristocracy to the country’s language. But though the show features its fair share of bloody battles and grisly betrayals, its story is primarily told through the strangely mirrored lives of its two primary protagonists: Harold Godwinson (Norton), Earl of Wessex and the last Anglo-Saxon King of England, and William of Normandy (Coster-Waldau), the man more commonly known as William the Conqueror.
Given pop culture’s current Game of Thrones-induced obsession with gritty series following warring families indulging in elaborate betrayals and political backstabbing — George R.R. Martin’s books are not so subtly based on England’s Wars of the Roses — King & Conqueror feels built in a lab to hit and hit big. This story, after all, has it all: a messy succession crisis, an interconnected family dynasty that essentially goes to war with itself, complex women, and more. (Granted, the early reviews out of the U.K. are mixed, but much worse shows have dominated streaming charts in recent years.)
Perhaps Amazon worries that U.S. viewers will find the complicated relationships and sprawling cast of characters at the center of this particular corner of English history too confusing to follow, and subsequently just threw the project out to see what happened. But the answer appears to be a positive one, given that the series is currently sitting in Prime Video’s Top 10 with almost zero promotion behind it. Maybe Americans are actually a lot more interested in early British history than the folks in charge at Amazon thought?
New Star Trek Comic Echoes Real-Life MLK Connection
One of the primary appeals of Star Trek has been the utopian world that Gene Roddenberry imagined, a future in which humanity has overcome sexism, racism, and capitalism to work together as they explore the stars. That vision has made earned the franchise some famous fans, including none other than Martin Luther King Jr. So inspired by the show was King, that when Nichelle Nichols told him that she planned to resign from playing Lieutenant Uhura and focusing on Broadway, he urged her to stay aboard.
A new Star Trek one-shot from IDW pays homage that that famous incident. Star Trek Deviations: Threads of Destiny, written by Stephanie Williams and illustrated by Greg Maldonado and Anthony Fowler Jr. The story will draw from the classic TOS episode “City on the Edge of Forever” to send Uhura back in time to 1963, where she will participate in the Civil Rights movement.
Of course, Star Trek is no stranger to the Civil Rights movement, having aired the first interracial kiss on television in the episode “Plato’s Stepchildren” and explicitly called out racism in “Balance of Terror.” But Threads of Destiny feels particularly special, given Nichols’ connection to King.
The star, who passed in 2022 at the age of 89, described her interaction with King in a 2010 interview with StarTrek.com. According to Nichols, the two met in the same weekend in which she gave Roddenberry her resignation letter. Instead of accepting immediately, Roddenberry asked her to think about it over the weekend, during which she happened to be attending a NAACP event.
“One of the organizers of the event came over to me and said, ‘Ms. Nichols, I hate to bother you just as you’re sitting down to dinner, but there’s someone here who wants very much to meet you. And he said to tell you that he is your biggest fan,'” she recalled. “I said, ‘Oh, certainly,’ I stood up and turned around and who comes walking over towards me from about 10 or 15 feet, smiling that rare smile of his, is Dr. Martin Luther King.” Nichols did not immediately make the connection, and thought, “Whoever that fan is, whoever that Trekkie is, it’ll have to wait because I have to meet Dr. Martin Luther King.” But then King introduced himself saying, “Yes, Ms. Nichols, I am your greatest fan.”
Awestruck as she was, Nichols managed to shock the reverend doctor when she revealed her plans to leave the show. “He said, ‘You cannot,'” Nichols continued. “And so help me, this man practically repeated verbatim what Gene said. He said, ‘Don’t you see what this man is doing, who has written this? This is the future. He has established us as we should be seen. Three-hundred years from now, we are here. We are marching. And this is the first step. When we see you, we see ourselves, and we see ourselves as intelligent and beautiful and proud.'”
Needless to say, Nichols stayed on the show, cementing Uhura as one of the foundations of science fiction, a foundation continued by Zoe Saldaña and Celia Rose Gooding, both of whom played Uhura afterwards. And now it’s the turn of the creative team on Star Trek Deviations: Threads of Destiny, bridging the real world and the fantasy, until our world finally starts to resemble the utopia that Star Trek imagines.
Star Trek Deviations: Threads of Destiny goes on sale on February 25, 2026.
Chloe Zhao Understands the Assignment When It Comes to the Buffy Revival
Fans who were worried that Hulu’s forthcoming Buffy the Vampire Slayer series would turn out to be just another cheap retread of a formerly beloved franchise that stomps all over everything we loved about the original can breathe a little easier. Chloé Zhao’s got us.
The Hamnet and Eternals director is the mind behind the series’ revival and clearly understands the scope (and importance!) of what the project she’s been asked to take on. In a wide-ranging interview with Variety’s Awards Circuit podcast, Zhao is adamant that she isn’t reinventing the popular sci-fi series, but honoring its legacy, even as she continues its story of slayers and vampires in Sunnydale. In her mind, she has a clear vision of what this show should be. And that’s definitely not a reinvention or rehash of what has come before.
“It is not a reboot. It’s a sequel,” she said.” You can never replace these characters. I would never allow that. And Sarah’s back. I love my cast, the new cast. We will bring back OG characters for sure. And it is a show that bridges two generations — it’s not just about the kids.”
She also echoes original Buffy Sarah Michelle Gellar’s comments that her take on the franchise is meant as both an accessible entry point for new viewers and a story full of elements that longtime fans will enjoy
“I think the fandom is so important to us. We want the fandom to see themselves mirrored in the original fandom,” Zhao said. “And of course, we want new fans to join, and it’s very much about both generations.”
Titled Buffy the Vampire Slayer: New Sunnydale, the series will both revisit the beloved franchise and move it into a new era. The revival—sorry, sequel—follows the story of a new slayer played by Ryan Kiera Armstrong, with Gellar reprising her role as the famous Chosen One. Whether that means she’ll take over as a Watcher for the new slayer (or slayers, remember, original Buffy series finale “Chosen” essentially activated all the potentials in the world, doing away with the idea of one girl in all the world meant to stand against the darkness) remains unknown, but there’s something intrinsically appealing about the idea of Buffy fully embracing her Giles era.
Such a twist would also track with Zhao’s in-depth knowledge of the series’ history and longtime personal fandom. The director herself is an admitted Buffy lover, who watched the original “religiously” in her college days.
“I was at Mount Holyoke. We would all gather — I think it was every Thursday or Tuesday — and we would watch, because you only get one episode and you’re waiting a week. It’s such a ritual,” Zhao said. “I remember the last episode finishing, and we sat there; everyone was crying, and we were all holding hands. I remember looking at the screen, tears streaming down my eyes, and I said, “Good luck to you, Buffy Summers, good luck to you.” Seeing Sarah in real life was probably one of the most stressful moments of my life.”
Given all this, the promise of more original cast members popping back into this universe is certainly a tantalizing one, though Zhao is tight-lipped about what that might mean. There are also, of course, various real-life constraints involved, including the tragic death of original star Michelle Trachtenberg and Nicholas Brendon’s legal issues and struggles with drug abuse. (There’s also the fairly impossible task of convincing anyone that former stars like David Boreanaz and James Marsters are somehow still ageless immortals. I mean that last bit with affection! I swear!)
But there’s certainly no reason someone like Alyson Hannigan’s Willow or Anthony Stewart Head’s Giles couldn’t pop back up. And even though Eliza Dushku has changed careers in the years since the original Buffyverse wrapped up, it’s hard to imagine a world where she wouldn’t leap at the chance to play Faith again, even if only for a brief cameo.
But, like so much else about this series — we’ll have to wait and see.
Lanterns’ Schedule Push Might Be Good News For Fans of Cosmic DC
In brightest day, in blackest night, no evil will escape Green Lantern’s sight… Well, okay, evil can rest easy for a bit longer. The upcoming HBO series Lanterns had been slated to be the next official entry of the DCU, coming early in 2026. But The Wrap has reported that the eight-episode series has been moved to the end of the summer, placing it between the movies Supergirl and Clayface.
For those who love the weirder parts of the Green Lantern mythos, this change in schedule might be great news. Let Supergirl introduce viewers to the cosmic aspects of the DCU; then, we can focus on Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) and John Stewart (Aaron Pierre), two members of the intergalactic peace keeping force the Green Lantern Corps.
Although originally introduced in 1940’s All-American Comics #16, written by Bill Finger and penciled by Martin Nodell, as a standalone character with a magical wishing ring, Green Lantern was revamped by editor Julius Schwartz in the Silver Age as a member of an intergalactic police force (heavily indebted to the Lensmen of Larry Niven’s Known Space Trilogy). 1959’s Showcase Comics #22, written by John Broome and penciled by Gil Kane, introduced Hal Jordan, a test pilot who gets recruited as the newest member of the Green Lantern Corps, given a power ring and tasked with patrolling space sector 2814.
Since the Silver Age, the Corps has added more humans to its ranks, including marine-turned-architect John Stewart and the brain-damaged hot head Guy Gardner, whom Nathan Fillion introduced to the world in this year’s Superman. But most of the Green Lanterns are weird aliens, such as the crystalline Chaselon, the zombie Driq, the gaseous Flodo Span, and Ch’p, a cartoon squirrel.
Despite the cosmic nature inherent to the Green Lantern concept, early buzz on the series Lanterns has been entirely terrestrial. In his first announcement for the show, James Gunn compared Lanterns to True Detective and Slow Horses—good shows each, but not exactly the type of series where a living planet could show up. Likewise, the only image released from the series so far shows Chandler and Pierre as Jordan and Stewart, walking down a desert road in plainclothes: no aliens, no strange planets, not even a power ring.
Since then, Gunn, as well as Lanterns co-creators Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof, and Tom King have all assured readers that the show’s central mystery may take place on Earth, but there will be plenty of cosmic elements. And the cast does include Ulrich Thomsen as Sinestro, a renegade former Green Lantern from the planet Korugar, and Paul Ben-Victor as an alien on a mission of vengeance.
But the schedule change might be the clearest sign that Lanterns will indeed have a cosmic element. Based on the maxi-series Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow by Tom King and Bilquis Evely, Supergirl will follow Kara Zor-El (Milly Alcock) as she initially travels to various planets with a red sun, weakening her powers enough so that she can get drunk to celebrate her 21st birthday. On one of those planets, Supergirl will be recruited by young Ruthye Marye Knoll (Eve Ridley) to help her find her father’s killer, Krem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenaerts). Also, the Czarnian bounty hunter Lobo will show up, played by Jason Momoa.
In short, Supergirl will take viewers deep into space, introducing them to some of the strangest parts of DC’s universe. Moreover, it will give viewers even more grounding to understand who the Green Lantern Corps are and why they matter so much.
Does this mean that Lanterns will suddenly become hard sci-fi and will deal with the Omega Men rebelling against the Spider Guild in the Vega System? Probably not. But it will at least show viewers that Hal and John are part of something much bigger and much stranger than anything on Earth and remind them that, if worst comes to worst and evil does threaten to escape their sight, they can always call on their friend and fellow Green Lantern member, Mogo the Living Planet.
Lanterns comes to HBO in the summer of 2026.
Jonathan Frakes Promises Lots of Levity in New Star Trek Show
It’s no secret that fans have complicated feelings about new Star Trek shows, and the early looks at the upcoming Starfleet Academy isn’t changing anyone’s feelings. Older Trekkies share their worries about how new shows both valorize the past and abandon the previous series’ focus on professionals doing their jobs well. They complain about the reliance on too many gimmicks, the serialized seasons about intergalactic threats, and everything about Spock’s love life.
But who’s this, swinging his leg over a chair and sitting down to share a good word about the future of Star Trek? Why it’s Jonathan Frakes, who will continue his directing career by helming a few episodes of Starfleet Academy. And from his perspective as the Trek insider, Starfleet Academy has a great tone, which he attributes to one cast member in particular.
“To its credit, Academy has lots of levity, and great—well, first of all, Paul Giamatti is the villain,” Frakes shared with TrekMovie. “I met him while he was there, and I am a massive fan of his—I think most actors are, and most people are. And I said, ‘How’s it been?’ He said, ‘I have been having such a good time.’ And then he leans in and says, ‘Maybe too good a time.'”
What does Giamatti mean by that? Frakes doesn’t explain, simply choosing to laugh in delight. But it’s not hard to imagine, given Giamatti’s body of work. After establishing himself as a reliable theater and supporting actor in throughout the ’90s and early 2000s, Giamatti broke out with acclaimed performances in American Splendor in 2003 and Sideways in 2004. While those movies showed off his dramatic range, Giamatti’s always been able to bring a playfulness to even his most serious part, something he demonstrated again in his Oscar nominated portrayal of a grouchy teacher in 2023’s The Holdovers.
Giamatti already joins an impressive cast on Starfleet Academy, which includes not just Holly Hunter as Chancellor Nahla Ake and Tatiana Maslany as mother to cadet Caleb Mir (Sandro Rosta), but also Robert Picardo reprising his role as the EMH, alongside Discovery cast members Mary Wiseman as Sylvia Tilly and Tig Notaro as Jett Reno.
Starfleet Academy focuses on the incoming class of recruits to the school after its reconstitution in the 32nd century, as seen in the later seasons of Discovery. Giamatti plays Nus Braka, a half-Tellarite, half-Klingon who creates trouble for the young people and their teachers, which apparently is a lot of fun for both the actor and for Frakes.
“I’m grateful,” Frakes said of his opportunity to continue working within the world of Star Trek. “I search out the levity in any script, especially in the Treks… because there’s so much. And [on Academy] it’s there. And it helps the rhythm of the cutting and the storytelling.”
So take heart, longtime fans worried that Star Trekhas lost its way. Will Riker—or rather, the guy who has played Riker on numerous series and has served as director on most of them as well—sees Starfleet Academy as pure Trek, as long as you’re willing to embrace the fun side of the franchise.
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy debuts on Paramount+ on January 15, 2026.
Hunger Games: Sunrise of the Reaping Trailer Is Full of Familiar Faces
Let the 50th Annual Hunger Games begin! The first teaser trailer for the forthcoming The Hunger Games prequel, Sunrise on the Reaping, is here, and with it, a look at one of the deadliest games in Panem’s history.
Set 24 years before the events of the original trilogy of films, Sunrise on the Reaping is both an origin story for District 12’s Haymitch Abernathy (Joseph Zada, originally played by Woody Harrelson) and a deft study of the long-tail impact of propaganda. It revolves around the Second Quarter Quell, a special anniversary edition of the Hunger Games that takes place every 25 years and constantly shifts the rules for selecting those who must participate. The Quarter Quell in Catching Fire, for example, features former victors as competitors. This version goes for the violent promise of simple volume, reaping nearly 50 tributes (who let’s not forget, are children) to fight to the death.
Since fans already know that Haymitch goes on to win his Games—and is subsequently ruined by his victory—everything about this story has a decidedly tragic air from the jump, as horror after horror piles up in ways that complicate many of our assumptions about what we thought to be true in the original Hunger Games trilogy.
Though it’s brief, the trailer looks great, promising a bigger, badder, meaner Games than ever before and including shots of dozens of terrified participants, desperate hugging, and soundless screams all set against a gorgeously verdant backdrop that hides lethal secrets, not to mention an active volcano. We get quick glimpses of Haymitch’s District 12 teammates: Maysilee Donner (Mckenna Grace), Wyatt Callow (Ben Wang), and Louella McCoy (Molly McCann), as well as fan favorite Ampert Latier (Percy Daggs IV), the son of a well-known former Games competitor.
But this is a prequel, after all, so the clip also features multiple shots of the younger versions of several franchise favorites, including Elle Fanning as a beaming Effie Trinket, Jesse Plemons as a pensive Plutarch Heavensbee, and Ralph Fiennes steadily racking up squares on his problematic villains bingo card as a removed and grim-looking Coriolanus Snow, now firmly settled into both middle age and his own power.
Book readers already know that these aren’t the only familiar characters who pop up over the course of this particular story — Kieran Culkin will play a younger version of Stanley Tucci’s flamboyant Cesar Flickerman, for starters, among several other spoilers—but we have to assume the marketing team is saving them for a longer trailer release next year. The film’s cast is also stacked with newcomers, including Glenn Close as Capitol spokeswoman Drusilla Sickle and Whitney Peak as Haymitch’s District 12 girlfriend Leonore Dove.
Of course, the question on everyone’s mind is likely whether we’ll see Harrelson reprise his role as Haymitch at some point during this film. The odds certainly seem in our favor because, unless Zada is a much better mimic than any of us gave him credit for, that certainly sounds like Harrelson’s voice at the end, doesn’t it?
The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping will be released on November 20, 2026.
House of the Dragon Gets a Fourth (and Maybe Not Final?) Season
Like the Targaryen “dreamers” Daenys, Aegon I, and Helaena before them, HBO has seen the future… and it’s got a hell of a lot more dragons in it. In addition to a slew of second season renewals for freshmen series The Chair Company, I Love L.A., and Task, the network also announced new seasons for Game of Thrones spinoffs A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms and House of the Dragon.
Based on George R.R. Martin’s “Tales of Dunk and Egg” novellas, the first season of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is set to adapt Martin’s The Hedge Knight and will premiere January 18 on HBO. The fact that the Ira Parker and George R.R. Martin-created series scored a renewal before its first season even debuted is impressive, but not unexpected. Warner Bros. clearly loves being in the Game of Thrones business and the second story in the Dunk and Egg saga, The Sworn Sword, provides a clear road map for another batch of six short episodes.
While House of the Dragon‘s season 4 renewal similarly comes in advance of the show’s third season premiere in summer 2026, what’s interesting about HBO’s announcement is what it doesn’t mention. There’s no “final” wording here. House of the Dragon season 4 serving as show’s conclusion has long been expected by many fans who have their eye on timeline provided by its source material: Martin’s Targaryen history tome Fire & Blood. Those expectations were seemingly confirmed when HotD showrunner Ryan Condal told reporters that the show would run four seasons. Why then, is HBO’s renewal announcement playing coy?
According to Deadline, HBO and Condal are leaving their options open, with the site reporting that “sources tell us Condal is still writing the fourth season and the end date could change. Condal will make the final decision after season 4 is completed.”
Reading between the lines, this seems to be a classic case of a corporation realizing it has treasured access to beloved IP and becoming gun shy at the prospect of ending it. This will certainly be troubling to fans who are understandably sensitive at the prospect of anotherbungled Game of Thrones ending. After all, part of the appeal of the storyline adapted by House of the Dragon is that it provides a full beginning, middle, and end penned by none other than Martin himself. There should, in theory, be no outside creative interpretation of what is a relatively straightforward conclusion.
As Martin himself could tell you, however, endings are a tricky thing in Westeros. The fantasy universe is so rich and lived-in that no story told in it ever truly ends. Even though the Targaryen civil war known as The Dance of the Dragons depicted in Fire & Blood technically concludes, time itself still marches on. Once the dragon fire smoke has been cleared and the charred bodies have been buried, the Seven Kingdoms carry on under a new monarch and the conflicts of yesterday simply set the stage for the conflicts to come.
It’s not hard to see how this perpetual stew approach to storytelling could appeal to the creatives involved in House of the Dragon. Perhaps the end of Rhaenyra, Daemon, and Alicent’s stories doesn’t need to be the end of House of the Dragon. Perhaps, once season 4 is concluded, “House of the Dragon” simply becomes the brand name for all Targaryen-related projects in the Game of Thrones universe.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms might have the Blackfyre era locked down for the foreseeable future but there are plenty of other Targaryen dynasty-related conflicts for House of the Dragon to explore. In fact, we already know of at least one additional Targaryen spinoff in the works – a series covering Aegon’s Conquest some 300 years before the events of Game of Thrones. It certainly seems like giving that a simple House of the Dragon: Aegon’s Conquest rebrand might simplify a lot of folks’ contracts.
Whatever HBO’s long-term plans for House of the Dragon and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms are, we now know we’re locked in for fresh Thrones content through at least 2028. And that’s nothing to shake a Valyrian steel sword at.
Brendan Fraser Blames the Olympics for The Mummy 3’s Strange Shift
Without question, we’re all looking forward to Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz returning for The Mummy 4. But we also have to admit that, while the 1999 original may be perfect, it’s a franchise with only one good entry. Instead of realizing that the second film failed because it strayed too far from the formula of The Mummy, producers made the bizarre decision to set the third film in China, abandoning the titular monster altogether.
As he looks forward to his fourth outing as Rick O’Connell, Fraser can now explain why The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor broke the mold in the particular way it did. “The third one was a model of … how can I say this to the AP reporter?” Fraser recently revealed. “NBC [owned by Universal Studios] had the rights to broadcast the Olympics that year. So they put two together and we went to China.”
And so, a franchise about an American and a Brit battling a mummy became a movie not about a mummy. Set 13 years after The Mummy Returns, Tomb of the Dragon Emperor sends Rick and Evie (now played by Maria Bello instead of Weisz) to follow their grown son Alex (Luke Ford), who has come East with his archeology professor. There, they get caught up in a plot by General Yang (Anthony Wong) to revive the mythical Dragon Emperor Qin Shi Huang (Jet Li) and restore China to its former glory.
While Tomb of the Dragon Emperor made back its budget at the box office, it disappointed fans and critics alike, leading Universal to shelve the franchise until a somehow even worse reboot with Tom Cruise in 2017. But it wasn’t all bad for Fraser and the crew.
“Working in Shanghai, an incredible experience,” he told the AP. “I’m proud of the third one because I think it’s a good standalone movie. We picked up and did what we do with a different crew on deck and gave it our best shot.”
But that pride cannot take away from the fact that he had hoped that the third movie would have gone a different way. “The one I wanted to make was never made,” Fraser said of his idea third Mummy movie, before pointing out that a change is coming. “The one I wanted to make is forthcoming. And I’ve been waiting 20 years for this call. Sometimes it was loud, sometimes it was a faint telegraph. Now? It’s time to give the fans what they want.”
Fraser doesn’t get specific about how exactly The Mummy 4 will deliver what the fans want. But NBC still has the broadcast rights to the Olympics and Universal is still in charge. Does that mean we’ll see Rick and Evie in Italy or the French Alps to match the setting of the 2026 or 2030 Winter Olympics? Perhaps they’ll be in Los Angeles or Australia so Universal can save travel costs while covering the 2028 or 2032 Summer Olympics?
Or maybe they’ll just stay in Egypt and make a Mummy movie about the mummy, like they should have done in the first place.
A24 Rom-Com Eternity Might Just Settle Titanic’s Ending Dilemma
Filmmaker David Freyne has thought a lot about the afterlife. Who hasn’t? After all, even a self-described quasi-atheist—“I’m kind of hedging my bets,” he smiles—is only human. But Freyne is also the co-writer and sole director of Eternity, which has given him additional insight into the big questions, all while crafting a surprisingly sweet and fairly intimate romantic comedy. It’s lighter on its feet than that name suggests too.
“It’s definitely an intriguing title,” the Irish storyteller muses when we sit down with him on an overcast day in New York City. He confides the moniker was maybe a tad imposing when the first draft of the screenplay by Patrick Cuanne was sent to him by his agent. Yet the hook of the film wasn’t (only) the chance to imagine the afterlife onscreen, but also an opportunity to explore the explosive idea of having more than one love of your life waiting for you on the other side.
“I was just immediately engrossed by the premise specifically, this woman having to choose between first love and last love,” Freyne recalls. “Even though the film is set in post-death, it’s all about life. It’s about what it is to exist.” Which, whether we like it or not, often comes down to the choices you make.
The biggest choice in question for Joan (Elizabeth Olsen), a 90-something woman who recently passed on and reclaimed her youthful appearance, is between that of the long-lost husband she finds waiting for her on the other side—military hero and Korean War casualty Luke (Callum Turner)—and the second husband she spent an entire lifetime with: Larry (Miles Teller). Larry is our true POV character, as we follow his journey first into an afterlife that is less pearly white gates than it is a bougie train station still operating like it’s Cannes 1962. Poor Larry wound up here after choking on a pretzel at a party for his next great-grandchild. But he knows his terminally ill wife will soon be right behind him in entering a “next stage” where the recently deceased are asked to pick boutique “eternities” to spend the rest of their existence in.
What he doesn’t count on, however, is Joan’s first husband also being there.
It’s a classic high-concept love triangle, and one which might serve as a kind of sequel to Titanic’s storybook ending where Kate Winslet’s Rose famously fled to an afterlife aboard the RMS Titanic where she was reunited with a guy she knew for a few days (Leonardo DiCaprio) after being married to another man for a lifetime.
“I’m really hoping I don’t get sued by James Cameron,” Freyne chuckles when we note the similarities. “But that is the question: is she going to go with Jack or is she going to stay with her husband of how ever many years? I think most of us, unless maybe a lucky few, have more than one love in our lives at different points.”
According to the central star of his film, the beauty of Eternity is there are no easy answers between Joan choosing between the one who got away and the one she’s known for what feels like forever.
“[We were] hoping to show all the different types of loves there are,” says Olsen, while pointing to some of the side characters in the film. “[There] is a form of self-love, and there’s another [couple] which could be a more complicated version of a love. But I do know that David really wanted to tell a story about how many ways love can be experienced.”
Indeed, one of the most significant changes Freyne made to the film during his own rewrites of the screenplay was emphasizing the impossibility of Joan’s choice. While he never changed the ending Cuanne created, Freyne was eager to make this as much a film about a chance to switch proverbial sliding doors.
“It was really important to me that there is no right or wrong choice for Joan,” says Freyne. “I think even though the end of this film feels right to me, she could have chosen a different path and that would feel right too… it’s really vital that you can be Team Larry or you can be Team Luke, but we are always Team Joan.”
In this way, the rom-com with its wild high-concept, but gentler disposition, resembles the laughers of Hollywood’s Golden Age that Joan and Luke might have enjoyed before he was shipped to Korea.
“Preston Sturgis is a genius, and Billy Wilder is my hero,” Freyne enthuses when we note tonal similarities to movies like Sullivan’s Travels and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. “Even [Ernst] Lubitsch with Heaven Can Wait. I always aspire to make a film in the spirit of that Golden Age. I think that’s when rom-coms were their best. I think that’s when they won Oscars, that’s when they dealt with really heavy topics, but with a lightness of touch.”
He also encouraged his stars to seek out that cinema while finding their characters.
Says Callum Turner, “What I wanted to do with Luke was [show] that he is at an age where he doesn’t yet know who he is. He’s not become a man. So he has an idea of what a man is, and these matinee idols like Gary Cooper and Clark Gable, those were his north stars of what he wanted to present and who he wanted to be. And he’s stuck in a world for 67 years where you can’t evolve. What does that do to someone? That was really my thing to play with.”
Developing that world also became Freyne’s north star for Eternity’s heightened charm offensive.
“We really spent a long time wanting to create somewhere that felt bureaucratic,” Freyne says. “It felt like it had these rules and boredom and tedium to it… It’s very vibrant and exciting but it’s an artificial world, and I think we see particularly through Callum’s character that it’s a weird stasis to stay in for a long time.” Still the director thinks it is supposed to be initially beguiling as a way station. The filmmaker even takes mild offense when we suggest the brutalist architecture could be its own form of hell.
“That’s actually my idea of heaven!” Freyne insists. “I love brutalist architecture, and if I could live in the Barbican or the National Theatre in London, I’d be very happy. I also love the idea that this was a place that was redesigned recently. But for the afterlife, that was the ‘60s when that architecture was kind of the idea of utopia almost.”
Another core aspect of the film is designing what individual “eternities” that souls are forced to choose between. Some are basic, such as a “Mountains” eternity that Luke favors, and which looks suspiciously like British Columbia. Meanwhile Larry prefers an overcrowded “Beach” eternity. Yet some are incredibly specific, be it a “No Men Ever” eternity or a “Capitalist” one where you can spend eons looking down at the poor from a Manhattan high-rise. “Some people do think there’s no point of being rich if somebody else isn’t poor,” the director observes.
One of his favorites though was also among the first things he shot for the afterlife: a 1980s-style infomercial called the “Weimar Germany But With No Nazis!” eternity.
“That was mine,” the director admits. “I think that was one of the first ones I wrote, and that probably is my favorite. And actually shooting those ads, those kind of infomercials, it was the very first thing we shot and it was probably the funnest day. It really set the tone for the whole shoot.” In fact, he is eager to revive such commercials’ visual language. “We shot those on DigiBeta, and I’m going to be the Chris Nolan of DigiBetas. I want to bring it back. I want to shoot an entire feature on DigiBeta!”
Nonetheless, the hope is that as funny as the movie can be, it also triggers something in viewers.
“I think what’s been amazing in screening this film is how much people have reflected on their own lives after watching it, and to discuss their spouses or how much they mean to them or talked about a past relationship,” Freyne considers. “We’re all human, we all occasionally question what if we had chosen something else?”
Sometimes you get a second chance to find out—whether you like it or not, Joan.
Eternity is in theaters on Wednesday, Nov. 24.
The Marvel Characters That Should Have Been in the MCU By Now
After 17 years, 37 movies, 30 shows, and more to come, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has featured a lot of characters from the world of Marvel Comics. At this point, most of the major figures have appeared in some form or another in the MCU: Spider-Man, the A-list Avengers, and even the Fantastic Four and the X-Men have finally joined the universe (albeit only in animated form so far for the latter). Furthermore, the MCU has made stars out of even B- and C-listers from the comics, building the entire universe around also-ran Iron Man and turning Star-Lord and Rocket Raccoon into favorites.
Yet, even now, there are some big names from the comics who still aren’t represented in the MCU. To be sure, some of these are coming soon: obviously, Robert Downey Jr. will play the most important Marvel villain Doctor Doom in Avengers: Doomsday, longtime Avengers member Simon Williams will be played by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II in the upcoming Wonder Man show, and the X-Men aren’t far behind.
But these big names are still absent from the MCU, and it really stands out to comic book readers.
Wolverine
For the most part, this list will ignore members of the X-Men, for two reasons. One, X-Men ’97 is within the MCU, even if it doesn’t take place on Earth-616, and two, we know the X-Men are coming, likely in Avengers: Doomsday or Secret Wars. Further, Wolverine did appear in the MCU, as played by Hugh Jackman (again).
But here’s the thing: Wolverine is bigger than the X-Men. Heck, he’s probably bigger than Marvel. Easily the most popular character created after the initial batch of 1960s heroes, Wolverine is a franchise unto himself and certainly too important to be squirreled away in some alternate dimension or relegated to fans’ nice feelings about Jackman or Ryan Reynolds. It’s shocking that Kevin Feige hasn’t introduced one of the indisputably most popular characters into the MCU sooner.
Green Goblin
Again, there are some caveats that we need to acknowledge here, as Norman Osborn a.k.a. the Green Goblin has been in two MCU properties. Willem Dafoe reprised the role for Spider-Man: No Way Home and Colman Domingo voices the character in Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man. But even more than Wolverine, Spider-Man is the most popular superhero in the entire world, and Green Goblin (whether its Norman Osborn, his son Harry, or someone else) is easily his arch-nemesis.
One cannot help but think that Marvel shot themselves in the foot to an extent by bringing back Dafoe for No Way Home. While they certainly scored points for nostalgia, Dafoe’s delightfully committed performance set a high bar for fans and made it harder for anyone else to step into the role. With Spidey returning to his roots for the upcoming Brand New Day (or so we’re told), the time may be right to give us a proper MCU Green Goblin.
Miles Morales
Wait, you say. Miles Morales has already been the focus of two excellent movies, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. Isn’t he in the MCU already? Actually, no! Those movies were all produced by Sony, and have as much to do with the MCU as Madame Web. Thus far, the closest we’ve seen to actual Miles is a passing reference from Aaron Davis (Donald Glover, whom artist Sara Pichelli used as a model when she first drew Miles) about his nephew in Spider-Man: Homecoming.
Of course, Miles is a tricky character. He was introduced in Marvel’s Ultimate Universe after the death of Peter Parker, meaning he could stand on his own as a unique character and not have to worry about overshadowing Peter. That’s clearly not the case in the MCU, as Tom Holland continues to play Peter and fans love him for it. Still, between the comics, the Spider-Verse movies, and the recent video games, Miles has developed more than enough of a fan following and deserves to be in the MCU as well.
Rick Jones
By now, all of the major Avengers have been portrayed on screen, including founders Thor, Hulk, Iron Man, Ant-Man, and the Wasp. Well, almost all of the founders. We’re still missing Rick Jones, one of the odder, and yet important, parts of the early Marvel Universe.
Rick made his debut in Incredible Hulk #1, as the dumb teenager who drove onto a bomb testing site, an accident that drove Bruce Banner to chase him off the site and get bombarded with gamma energy himself, turning him into the Hulk. Since then, Rick went on to become Marvel’s general teen sidekick, paling around with not just Hulk, but also Captain America, Captain Marvel, and most of the Avengers.
If even modern Batman movies are afraid to include a teen sidekick, Rick’s chances seem unlikely, but it’s strange that not Feige hasn’t even let the character show up in a supporting role yet.
Nova
Speaking of teens, there’s Nova. Richard Rider was introduced in Marvel Comics in the late 1970s, when the company saw Peter Parker aging up and wanted a new hip teen like those on which the company was built. A regular kid imbued with the powers of a cosmic police force, Nova had all the potential to be a favorite, but languished as a Z-lister until joining the extreme ’90s group The New Warriors and then especially as part of the cosmic Annihilation crossover event from the mid-2000s, the same storyline that made the Guardians of the Galaxy so popular.
There has long been talk of bringing Nova into the MCU, and, of course, the Nova Corps of Xandar do appear in the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie. But with the MCU slowing down its television output, Rick Rider’s back on the back burner, with no real debut in sight.
Captain Britain
Every MCU fan knows that the main Marvel world is designated Earth-616, but almost none of them know where that designation came from. The short answer is “Alan Moore,” more specifically the issues of Captain Britain that he did with Dave Thorpe and Alan Davis. Like his American counterpart, Captain Britain is a national hero, specifically for the U.K. But his origin is more mystical, as rich arrogant teen Brian Braddock is granted superpowers by the magical being Roma, and turned into Captain Britain.
Over the years, Brian learns that he is just one of many such Captains across the multiverse, specifically the Captain of Earth-616, which leads to his many reality-bending adventures. Most Americans know Captain Britain best as either leader of the X-Men adjacent Excalibur or for being the twin brother of the X-Man Psylocke, who also has recently taken on the mantle of Captain Britain.
Power Pack
The MCU may be a massive franchise that wants as many fans as it can get, but it superheroes remain fundamentally children’s entertainment. So it’s a bit surprising that Feige and co. keep giving the green light to new Spider-Man cartoons and even a Groot series before bringing in the Power Pack, Marvel’s premiere toddler team. That’s especially perplexing given how many elements of the Power Pack’s backstory have already appeared in the MCU, specifically Captain Marvel.
Before gaining their abilities, the Power Pack was just the Powers siblings: Alex, Julie, Jack, and Katie, all children of a brilliant scientist working for a government program called Project Pegasus. Project Pegasus’s experiments drew the attention of aliens called the Snarks, who kidnapped Dr. Powers and his wife, and the horse-like Kymellians, who gave the quartet super abilities. From that point on, the Power Pack’s playful approach to super-heroics have made them frequent guest stars in X-Men and Fantastic Four comics. Now that those bigger characters are coming to the MCU, surely the Power Pack aren’t too far behind, especially since they eventually get a fifth member: Franklin Richards, son of Reed and Sue.
Moondragon
Moondragon is a tough character, despite the fact that she’s frequently on the Avengers roster. With her bald head and scant clothing, she has a striking physical presence, especially when she creates monstrous psychic manifestations. But, she’s a pretty arrogant jerk, and many of her early Avengers adventures involve her telling everyone else how much better than them she is.
Second, Moondragon is tied to two other characters, who have very different stories in the MCU. She’s the daughter of Drax the Destroyer, who isn’t a human in the movies and who claims his family was killed by Ronan. And she’s the partner of Phyla-Vell, introduced as a young girl in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Clearly, Feige would have to change the character significantly to make her work, but it would be worth it to bring in such an interesting Avenger.
The Beyonder
The Beyonder is one of the most powerful characters in the Marvel Universe, a cosmic being so great that he gathered together most of the heroes and villains for a battle royale in the 1985 Secret Wars event. Since that foundational crossover, the Beyonder has appeared a few different times, most often as a white man with Michael Jackson’s hair (yes, really) and a beige leisure suite. Jonathan Hickman reimagined the Beyonder and his race as something more strange, while still humanoid for his 2015 Secret Wars, which only underscores the importance of the character.
We know that Avengers: Secret Wars is coming, but outside of occasional references to incursions and perhaps other realities gathering defenders, nothing from any comic book Secret Wars story has been integrated into the MCU. Hopefully, they’ll bring the Beyonder along, if only to recreate the scene in which Spider-Man has to teach him how to poop.
Blade
Okay, again, Blade has appeared in the MCU, once again portrayed by Wesley Snipes in Deadpool & Wolverine. But that entire appearance was built around Snipes assuring everyone that there will never, ever be another Blade. And the MCU’s ongoing inability to actually make a Blade movie with Mahershala Ali as the Daywalker only underscores that point.
But, seriously, why isn’t Blade in the MCU? Before the 1998 movie, Marvel went no further than the televisions screen, outside of the disastrous Howard the Duck movie a decade earlier. Blade proved that the Marvel heroes work on the big screen, long before Tony Stark said “I am Iron Man,” long before Thanos was inevitable. Blade is the MCU’s granddaddy, and some version of him should really be in franchise.
Stargate to Return to TV With New Prime Video Series
With the right technology, we can bridge the past and the present, with fantastical results. That’s always been the premise of the Stargate franchise, which began life as a blockbuster movie in 1994 and soon expanded into several hit TV series, with books, comics, and more. Even though the franchise more or less sputtered out of steam with the end of Stargate Universe in 2011, our current technology can bring it back.
Stargate is set to return for a new streaming series on Prime Video. While there’s no word yet about the cast of the new show or its connection to previous series, longtime fans can rest assured that it’s in good hands. Franchise veteran Martin Gero will return as executive producer and writer for the new show, joined by producers Joby Harold and Tory Tunnell of Safehouse Pictures, who previously worked on Monarch: Legacy of Monsters and Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Directed by Roland Emmerich, who co-wrote the script with frequent collaborator Dean Devlin, the 1994 movie Stargate starred James Spader as archeologist Daniel Jackson and Kurt Russell as soldier Jack O’Neill, who investigate a mysterious wormhole device that connects the Earth to a race of powerful aliens. The duo discovers that the aliens visited ancient Egypt and made themselves their god, including the imposing Ra (Jaye Davidson), who is making his return to the planet he ruled.
Three years after the movie’s release came Stargate SG-1, in which Richard Dean Anderson replaced Russell as Jack O’Neill and Michael Shanks took over from Spader as Dr. Jackson, joining a cast of other scientists and soldiers who explore other Stargates across the cosmos. That series gained such a devoted fan following that it not only lasted 10 seasons, but also survived a jump across networks, moving from Showtime to the Sci-Fi Channel midway through its run.
The series also spawned two other spinoff shows, Stargate Atlantis and Stargate Universe, as well as web series and other forms of media.
For Gero, the new Prime Video show has its roots in these many different iterations. “Twenty years ago, my first real job in television was as a Story Editor on Stargate Atlantis,” he said in a statement announcing the show. “I spent five years at the franchise working across all three series, Stargate taught me everything about making television — it’s written into my DNA.”
For those worried that 14 years and another channel will change the franchise’s fundamental DNA, Gero has nothing but reassurance. “I’m beyond thrilled that Amazon MGM Studios has entrusted me with guiding this incredible franchise into its next phase. For those who’ve kept the gate active through conventions, rewatches, and unwavering faith — this one’s for you,” he declared, before adding a welcome to neophytes. “And for those that are new to our world — I promise you’re in for something extraordinary.”
Will this new show be as amazing as the pyramids, the sphinx, and other wonders of the ancient world? Probably not, but we’ll probably get some good sci-fi action, and that’s not too bad either.
Stargate is now in production at Prime Video.
Dick Van Dyke Recalls His Very Good Reason for Not Becoming James Bond
“The name’s Califragilisticexpialidocious… Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” Those words were almost spoken on screen. Sort of.
Now nearly 100 years old, Hollywood legend Dick Van Dyke has had a glorious career, playing everything from a clumsy comedy writer to an affable chimney sweep to a sleuthing doctor. But he almost had a chance to play James Bond, the great actor recently revealed to the Today Show (via EW). “Cubby Broccoli came to me, and said, ‘Would you like to be Bond?'” Van Dyke said, referring to the late head of Eon Productions, the company that controlled the Bond adaptation rights from 1962 until earlier this year.
Van Dyke’s revelation is shocking today, not just because it means a classic actor could have taken a very unusual role. With Daniel Craig‘s much-lauded tenure having ended with the death of his Bond in No Time to Die and the adaptation rights for the Ian Fleming character having been sold to Amazon, the series is in a period of transition. But while there’s been plenty of talk of casting a non-white actor in the role for the first time, with Idris Elba and Dev Patel being the online favorites, absolutely no one is considering letting an American take on 007.
But back around the time that Sean Connery was stepping away from the character, other nationalities were in play. The Australian George Lazenby took over for Connery for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, but when he decided not to return for a follow-up, Eon hired John Gavin of Psycho and Spartacus to play Bond in Diamonds Are Forever.
When Connery agreed to return, Gavin was kicked to the curb. And when Connery did leave for good (at least as far as Eon’s concerned, having reprised the role for Never Say Never Again) and his successor Roger Moore considered retiring, Brocolli once again looked at an American, nearly hiring James Brolin for the part. Brolin even did screen tests for Octopussy, a film for which Moore eventually returned.
Even more than those folks, Dick Van Dyke made a certain sense, as he starred in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, a kid’s movie produced by Cubby Brocolli and based on an Ian Fleming novel. But, as with the other Yanks, Van Dyke couldn’t get over the character’s inherent Englishness. “I said, ‘Have you heard my British accent?'” he joked, miming that the discussion then ended abruptly. But, for him, it went further than that.
“It would have been a great experience,” Van Dyke admitted, but also worried that his fans wouldn’t have “accepted” him in the part, to say nothing of the Bond aficionados. This isn’t to say that Van Dyke hasn’t played his share of villains, having played a grouchy silent star in 1969’s The Comic and a murderous photographer in an episode of Columbo, as well as traumataizing a generation of kids as the surprise villain in Night at the Museum.
It’s just that he never could see himself as the type of guy who would order a shaken martini instead of singing Chim Chim Cher-ee.
James Cameron Promises Alita: Battle Angel 2 Is Still Coming
Never bet against James Cameron. Time and time again, Cameron has made gigantic gambles that everyone doubted, whether it was spending a record-breaking amount of money for a sequel for his grimy horror flick about a killer robot from the future or spending another record-breaking amount of money on to recreate the sinking of the Titanic or spending another record-breaking amount of money to basically remake Fern Gully. And each and every time, Cameron turns out to be correct.
So as much as it seems unlikely that anyone would green light a sequel to the 2019 sci-fi oddity Alita: Battle Angel, we have to believe that it will happen, simply because James Cameron says it will. “Robert Rodriguez and I have sworn a blood oath to do at least one more Alita movie,” Cameron told Empire Magazine, speaking for himself and for director of the first film. “In fact, we’re thinking of an architecture that bridges to a third film, but we’ll be satisfied if we can make one more. And we’re making progress on that.”
Even better, Cameron added some specifics. “Now that I have a home in Austin, Texas, about three miles from [Robert’s] place, I think we’ll probably get more serious about that as soon as I wrap the mix [for Avatar] here in a few weeks.”
Written by Cameron and Laeta Kalogridis, and based on the manga Battle Angel Alita by Yukito Kishiro, Alita: Battle Angel starred Rosa Salazar as a cybernetic woman built from a scrapheap by the kindly Dr. Ido (Cristoph Waltz) and becomes a champion Motorball player and, eventually, a revolutionary. In addition to the spectacular fight action sequences that Rodriguez puts into the film and movie’s odd world-building, Alita is notable for the way it digitally enhanced Salazar’s appearance, giving Alita the giagantic eyes common to manga and anime.
Despite only doing modest sales in the U.S., Alita doubled its budget worldwide. However, critics were far more mixed on the film, with some wowed by its ability to bring the manga to life and others unimpressed by its flat storytelling. Despite the uneven reviews, Alita has found a strong audience, and their numbers continue to grow. As they grow, so do the calls for another adventure.
According to Cameron, that support inspired him to keep working on Alita 2. “I appreciate the loyalty of the Alita fans,” he acknowledged. But, let’s be honest, the movie doesn’t really need fan support to happen. Robert Rodriguez has always been one of cinema’s true mavericks, and has always followed his own muse. Who else would turn his kid’s stories into the feature film The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 2005, and then revisit the film with We Can Be Heroes 15 years later?
Well, James Cameron would. Because he always does what he wants, such as making more Avatar movies, despite people claiming the original film from 2009 had no cultural footprint. And here he is in 2025 finishing Avatar: Fire and Ash, the reason for the Empire interview that led to the Alita conversation. So if Cameron says it’s going to happen, and if he has Rodriguez on his side, no sane person would doubt that Alita will be motoring into theaters again soon.
Steel: Why the Cheesy DC Movie Gets Better Every Year
Kindness is the new punk rock. That’s the message of Superman, James Gunn‘s universally-loved, big budget 2025 film about the Man of Steel. But decades earlier, a much less-loved, much cheaper, Superman-adjacent movie came to the same conclusion. And while it was mocked at the time, that film managed to marry the message to a tone that’s all the more valuable today.
Nothing demonstrates that sense of wholesomeness like the way the hero reveals himself in the 1997 Shaquille O’Neal vehicle Steel. Midway through the film, a rich couple gets mugged by a street tough (a shocking pre-Deadwood John Hawkes) and runs off to examine his ill-gotten gains. But as soon as he finds an allyway filled with steaming pipes and empty boxes to hide away, the mugger hears a voice, promising that if he returns the couple’s belongings, there will be no problem.
“I ain’t got no problem!” sneers the mugger.
“Oh yes you do,” responds Steel, striding onto the screen and directly into a hero shot.
Although not nearly as inspiring or well-constructed as anything in any modern superhero movie, let alone a top-level one like Superman, the aw-shucks cheesiness of Steel feels even more remarkable today.
Forging Steel
Steel, the comic book character and the movie, began life in the most unlikely of ways. The comic book character came first, introduced as part of the Reign of the Supermen storyline from 1993. The final part of the Death of Superman event, Reign of the Supermen saw four individuals arrive in the absence of Kal-El of Krypton, each claiming to be the new Superman. While three of the four had more or less “legitimate” claims (one was a teenaged clone of Superman, another a Kryptonian artificial intelligence who took Superman’s form, and the third was a cyborg villain who modeled himself after Superman), John Henry Irons carried on the spirit of Superman’s never-ending battle.
Irons made his debut in 1993’s Adventures of Superman #500, written by Louise Simonson and penciled by Jon Bogdanove, an engineer and inventor who once was rescued by Superman, Irons created a suit of armor to protect his neighborhood after the hero’s death. When the real Superman returned to life, Irons stood beside him and helped ward off the threat of the Cyborg Superman, earning the Man of Steel’s blessing and taking the code name Steel.
None of that makes it into the movie Steel, which stars O’Neal as Irons, now a former weapons dealer, who comes back to his home neighborhood after an accident leaves his best friend Susan Sparks a.k.a. Sparky (Annabeth Gish) in a wheelchair. Back at home, Irons realizes that former colleague Nathanial Burke (Judd Nelson) is arming local street gangs with high-tech weaponry, and so with the help of Sparky and eccentric inventor Uncle Joe (Richard Roundtree), Irons creates his own armor to be come Steel!
A Good Heart Under Metallic Armor
As that plot summary suggests, Steel has even less depth than your average DC comic of the early 1990s, veering more towards Saturday morning cartoons. Irons is an unfailingly good man, who takes all the blame for Sparky’s injury (even though it was more due to Burke’s meddling), and who loves to support matriarch Grandma Odessa (Irma P. Hall) and just wants to inspire the boys in his community.
While it’s unlikely that Shaq could handle playing even a little more depth in his character, the flatness works for the type of story that Steel wants to tell. Director and writer Kenneth Johnson, best known for the V TV series, understands his heroes and villains in the simplest terms. Good guys try to help the vulnerable, while bad guys seek their own profit, no matter how many people get hurt along the way. There’s a clarity to Steel that fits a superhero story, certainly more so than some attempts to add layers of philosophical babbling to tales about guys in bright tights (see: another Superman movie with “Steel” in the title).
Furthermore, Johnson surrounds Shaq with a supporting cast who can bring the material to life. Former Brat Packer Nelson chews the scenery as Burke, giving his best cackle at every opportunity, especially when he’s working alongside classic ’90s hoodlums, the same type of guys that Jean Claude Van Damme and Wesley Snipes would beat up. Gish manages to sneak notes of genuine melancholy into Sparks, without ever overburdening the one-note script, giving it just enough subtly to make up for her co-star’s lacks.
Best of all is Richard Roundtree’s take on Uncle Joe. Roundtree doesn’t seem to be sure of what’s going on in the movie, and he doesn’t let that bother him. He’s just happy to be involved in the goofy production, and his genuine delight at all of the crazy plot machinations infect the viewer. Whenever he flashes his incredible smile at the latest piece of junk that Uncle Joe gives Irons, we get over pretensions and laugh along with him.
Roundtree’s on-screen joy helps sell the movie’s general tone. Steel doesn’t involve a threat to the galaxy, nor do the bad guys do 9/11-levels of damage to the city. Irons has no internal evil to overcome, and Burke doesn’t represent some real-world villain who harms actual people. It’s just a movie about a good guy doing his best to help people… which, you know, is what superheroes are fundamentally all about.
Shining More Every Day
As close readers might notice, the character Steel had only been around for a few years when the Shaquille O’Neal movie came out, and was not yet the fan favorite he’s become today. But the character quickly caught the eye of music legend Quincy Jones, who liked the idea of a superhero who would appeal to Black kids. Together with his creative partner David Salzman, Jones enlisted journeyman director Kenneth Johnson to put together a movie based on Steel. And to give the film some star power, they got Superman superfan and NBA star O’Neal to take the lead role.
Of course, O’Neal ended up being more of a blessing than a curse, as he gives a performance as stiff and uncharismatic as the titular metal. Steel flopped in theaters and continues to be a regular on bad movie podcasts today, an embarrassing remnant of the days before Kevin Feige and James Gunn were making superhero films. But despite Shaq’s many limitations, Steel‘s small stakes and clarity of vision could give these big names a few reminders about how to tell a superhero story, making the movie far more enjoyable today than it was thirty years ago.
Maybe its kindness isn’t quite punk rock, but Steel‘s wholesomeness is pleasant jazz, and that’s sometimes preferable to the Wagnerian bombast of so many modern superhero movies.
Wicked: For Good Review – Gravity Sets In During Muddled Finale
I am going to let you in on a secret that all Broadway fans know, and a few thousand tourists discover eight times a week at the Gershwin Theatre in New York: Wickedmight just be the most popular piece of musical theater ever written, and will surely one day become the longest-running, but almost all the songs and moments that make it so are in Act One.
This has been an issue for the show since it opened in 2003, but for those who have seen it even once, it always seemed destined to be more pronounced in Jon M. Chu and Universal Pictures’ splashy Hollywood adaptation of the material. While last year’s Wicked (or Wicked: Part One, as the title card reveals once they get you into the cinema) featured bangers upon bangers like “Popular,” “Dancing Through Life,” “The Wizard and I,” and most spectacularly “Defying Gravity”—plus the odd couple friendship between not-Hogwarts’ blonde queen bee diva, Galinda (Ariana Grande), and the ostracized, sensitive alt-girl Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo)—Act Two revolves around only a handful of more subdued and elegiac tunes, reflecting its characters’ growing sense of dissonance as they enter adulthood, and Oz as it descends into full-fledged autocracy and fascism.
It is, in other words, the grimmer part of a single story as we hurdle toward a climax which culminates in perhaps the only widely loved song of Act Two, and from whence the second film takes its subtitle, “For Good.”
So whether Wicked was really divided in half due to commercial reasons or the alleged creative ones (admittedly “Defying Gravity” is such a showstopper that it demands the show to literally stop), the question becomes how do you make Act Two a full cinematic meal, and something as tuneful as the movie that floored audiences last year? The answer comes almost instantaneously in this week’s Wicked 2: you pad it out with plenty of reprises of songs folks liked the last time!
Wicked: For Good thusopens a bit like a superhero flick with the now rebellious Elphaba performing outlaw acts of heroism by attacking the Wizard of Oz’s minions as they force enslaved animal labor to build his precious Yellow Brick Road. During the sequence, we get truncated reprises of “No One Mourns the Wicked.” Afterward the lyrics of “What Is This Feeling?” and a few bars of “Popular” are rewritten and recontextualized for sequel table-setting exposition as we are reintroduced to Glinda; these days she has passively agreed to become “the Good Witch” face of propaganda for the Wizard of Oz (Jeff Goldblum). The bits of the old songs are useful in reminding audiences where we left off with these characters a year ago, although one cannot help but feel the cynicism of reminding customers of the music and even dance choreography that captured their hearts in minds in another, better film.
It sets the stage for both the virtues and vulnerabilities of Wicked: For Good writ large. This is still a movie with the same charming cast, the same stunning production design of art deco green and pink by Nathan Crowley, and definitely much of the same music. But to justify the shorter (and frankly always worse) second act of the musical getting its own film, the narrative, character beats, and that glorious music is uniformly padded out as we stroll instead of run toward the general thrust of Wicked’s climax: Elphie and Glinda are divided by the green one’s devotion to the truth and doing what is right versus Glinda’s fondness for what is safe and comfortable.
Between that central conflict lies a few other narrative strands, including the evolving loyalties of the dashing Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), now promoted to Captain of the Guards, as well as Elphie’s disabled sister Nessa (Marissa Bode) and the sinister Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh), essentially an Ozian Joseph Goebbels. Any and all will face a reckoning when a gal named Dorothy comes to town. Still, in its heart of hearts, this is a two-hander about two powerhouse performances which can find great harmony whenever Wicked: For Good swings back around to the better musical numbers written nearly 25 years ago for the stage.
Indeed, the titular “For Good,” a final duet between the leads, is a heartfelt weepy that speaks to the mysteries of true, transformative friendship that to this day leaves young theatergoers bawling. Sometimes their parents too. Grande also gets an excellent solo in “Thank Goodness.” it is not nearly as bubbly or tourist-friendly as “Popular,” but it reveals newfound dimensionality to Grande’s performance of Glinda, which in the sequel exceeds the stage show’s interest in exploring and judging her complicity in Oz’s cruel regime. Similarly, newly added lyrics to the Wizard’s “Wonderful,” an old-timey Vaudeville number for Goldblum’s carnie-turned-despot, feel deliberately updated for a modern world where the threat of encroaching corruption and oppression is not so abstract.
When composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz is simply adding new context to his old songs, as with “Wonderful,” the effect can be grand. In addition to making the song updated for our modern, orange-hued Oz, tweaks allow for more screen time between Erivo, Grande, and Goldblum—which is probably the highlight of For Good. Yet when Schwartz is writing entirely new songs in order to theoretically beef up a second film, and presumably to give Erivo a big solo since Elphie never quite had one in Act Two, the film runs into a recurring problem: long stretches of stifled momentum and energy, which seem directly proportionate to the need to turn a climactic charge into a dawdle through the poppy field.
Consequently, issues that seemed mildly off-putting in the first Wicked, such as the strange choice to seek a washed out lighting and color palette in locations as vibrant as the Emerald City, become more glaring in the sequel. And the bits that always felt a wee contrived or melodramatic on stage, such as the resolution of Elphie and Nessa’s relationship, are met by new scenes of similar or greater soapiness in Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox’s screenplay.
It’s almost unfair though to dwell on where For Good struggles since it succeeds in plenty of other areas. Erivo still gives a towering performance of self-actualized defiance, even if her arc is mostly completed after the last movie. Grande has more to do in this film and provides depth to what was largely a comedic turn last time. And when For Good finally gets to its revisionist ending of The Wizard of Oz, the film earns the tears it is sure to conjure from the target audience.
Yet the one-year gap between films, and the reverse-engineered concessions this placed on For Good, become like an enchantment that’s gone interrupted. The words are still eventually uttered, and a sorcery invoked, but the spell is broken. There remains some of that familiar magic on the screen and in the ear, but we’ve had enough time to become aware of the illusion’s strings. As it turns out, gravity cannot be defied forever.
Wicked: For Good opens on Friday, Nov. 21.
GoldenEye Director Dismisses Long-Rumored Bond Scene
Perhaps fitting for a franchise about espionage and double-crosses, James Bond fans love their conspiracies and secret information. Even before the advent of the world wide web, Bond aficionados traded theories about James Bond being a code name, behind-the-scenes wrangling, and, of course, plans for the next actor to take on the role. One of the more persistent rumors involves the BMW Z-3 Roadster that Q (Desmond Llewelyn) gives new Bond Pierce Brosnan in 1995’s GoldenEye.
Looking at the incredible array of weaponry equipped with the sports car, fans assumed that some version of the script had a sequence in which Bond rides his roadster into battle. But now, after 30 years, GoldenEye director Martin Campbell sets the record straight. “There never was a scene [like that],” he told Hollywood Reporter in an anniversary retrospective. “I mean, it would have been nice,” Campbell continued, noting that the Q introduction scene, before insisting, “the story didn’t involve the car.”
One can sense a bit of frustration in Campbell’s answer, and with good reason. Hadn’t he done enough with GoldenEye? After the rough-hewed agent gone rogue movie License to Kill in 1989, GoldenEye had to both bring the Bond franchise back to basics while ushering it into the post-Cold War age. Few would disagree that it did so beautifully, introducing a debonair Bond in Pierce Brosnan, giving him a mission both personal and global in scale, and, of course, arming him with gadgets.
GoldenEye saw Bond chasing after the titular weaponized satellite, navigating the fractured world stage in the early days after the Cold War, represented by affable CIA agent Jack Wade (Joe Don Baker) and KGB agent turned gangster Zukovsky (Robbie Coltrane). Operating under assignment by a new M played by Judi Dench, Bond gets assistance from comely computer programer Natalya Simonova (Izabella Scorupco) and must face off against the sadistic Xenia Onatopp (Famke Janssen). Worst of all, Bond must face his old friend and partner 006 Alec Trevelyan (Sean Bean), who has turned against Britain to seek revenge for his parents’ death.
Overstuffed as the plot sounds, Campbell handled it beautifully, gliding from plot point to plot point with sleek action sequences and plenty of bon mots. In fact, he did it so well that there was little space for anything else… especially an action sequence built around the car.
“In any of the action, the problem was there just wasn’t a place that made sense for it;” argued Campbell. “You couldn’t just fire [the missiles]. I’m sure, at the time, we must have talked about it, like, ‘is there a way in which we could incorporate [the car] in terms of an action scene?’ But, if you look at the story, it’s just not possible as it stands.”
Campbell’s explanation seems pretty definitive. But when has that stopped online speculation before? Certainly, even after Campbell’s revelation, someone online is going to insist that the original secret script for GoldenEye still exists on some computer in the now-defunct Eon Productions headquarters, a computer that some intrepid Amazon employee will uncover. Outlandish? Yes. But this is James Bond.
