Movie trivia is usually supposed to make you appreciate a film even more. Every now and then, though, you stumble across a behind-the-scenes fact that just makes the whole experience a little sadder. Some actors never got the careers they deserved after a breakout role. Others went through miserable productions, saw years of work go to waste, or watched a movie become famous for all the wrong reasons. These are the movie facts that are much more unfortunate than fun.
Here are 15 movie facts that are more unfortunate than fun.
Alan Rickman later admitted he almost turned the movie down because he didn’t understand the script. It ended up becoming one of the most beloved comedies of his career.
Disney reportedly gave the film a much smaller marketing push than many expected, and its disappointing box office performance helped derail plans for sequels despite its later cult following.
John Carpenter’s horror classic bombed when it first came out and was heavily criticized by reviewers. It only gained its legendary reputation years later.
Despite glowing reviews and a passionate fanbase, the movie underperformed at the box office, ending any hopes of turning the comics into a film series.
Disney invested heavily in the film, only to watch it become one of the studio’s biggest disappointments before the Disney Renaissance completely changed its fortunes.
Today it’s considered one of the best science fiction films of the century. At the time, however, it struggled financially and found much of its audience years later.
It wasn’t an instant hit when it reached theaters. Its enormous popularity came later through home video, where it slowly became one of the most quoted movies ever made.
15 People Share the 6/10 Movie They Still Watch All the Time
Every movie fan has at least one film they’re willing to defend even while admitting it isn’t exactly great. Maybe the dialogue is cheesy, the CGI hasn’t aged well, or the critics were right about half the complaints. None of that seems to matter once you hit play. These are the movies people throw on when they’re bored, flipping through channels, or just looking for something familiar. They’re far from perfect, but somehow they’re always worth another watch.
Here are the 6/10 movies people still watch all the time.
It’s exactly the kind of over-the-top action movie people love putting on in the background. Fast cars, Nicolas Cage, and a simple premise make it an easy rewatch despite its flaws.
The dialogue can be ridiculous and the science makes absolutely no sense, yet it’s almost impossible not to get sucked into another viewing once the disasters begin.
Even fans admit it’s incredibly dumb, but that’s part of the appeal. If you grew up quoting it with your friends, chances are you still laugh at the same jokes today.
Even people who make fun of Armageddon usually end up watching the whole thing. Michael Bay’s explosions and surprisingly emotional ending keep pulling audiences back.
It never reaches the highs of the first movie, but Brendan Fraser’s charm and nonstop adventure make it an easy sequel to revisit.
Marvel Has the Chance to Do Something So Funny with Avengers: Doomsday at SDCC 2026
If last year’s five-and-a-half-hour Avengers: Doomsdaycast announcement livestream didn’t give it away, Marvel was heading for an aloof—and elusive—marketing run with its new superhero team-up movie. The stream in question notched up almost six million views as chairs printed with actors’ names were placed alongside each other, and while it was an impressive roster, it ended with Robert Downey Jr. showing up to view the long line of chairs, eyeballing the camera and making a “shushing” motion as he placed a finger to his lips.
Arguably, that “shush” was the start of what would become a marketing campaign so weirdly secretive that many fans would begin asking themselves, “What the hell is even going on with this movie?” From a countdown clock to a string of give-basically-nothing-away trailers that the Russo Brothers claimed were actually “clues,” to June’s exciting Avengers: Doomsday tease that ended up being …a pop-up coffee shop, very little has actually been confirmed or revealed about the plot of this year’s blockbuster or Downey Jr’s new role as Doctor Doom as the movie gears up for its December release, and I’m here to say: Good. Keep it up.
This week, fans are once again getting their hopes up for a first proper Doomsday trailer to come out of Marvel’s (only potentially triumphant) return to Hall H at San Diego Comic-Con. In the past, head honcho Kevin Feige has made some big reveals there for Marvel Studios, bringing out Tom Hiddleston in full Loki costume and even announcing plans for entire phases of the MCU, but now that Marvel has kept up its cryptic Doomsday campaign for so long, it’s even funnier to cross the line from amusing to absurd through sheer commitment and reveal very little or nothing at all.
It could actually become the marketing equivalent of the henchman screaming as the slow, steady pace of a steamroller heads toward him in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, or the puking scene in Team America: World Police. String this out as long as possible, please, because I’m finding it more hilarious the longer it goes on. While I know it infuriates others, such as my good friend, fellow Den of Geek writer and podcast co-host, Joe George, I simply love a gag that doesn’t know when to stop.
More than just being incredibly funny to me, Doomsday’s lack of build-up has given something back to Marvel that it desperately needed: the wonder of the unknown. Laying out exhaustive phases full of MCU movies and TV shows has not only drained the creative well but also made many of Marvel’s projects feel like mere stepping stones. As soon as one finished, there was a post-credits scene teasing the next thing, and fans became aware that X couldn’t die because they were in Y project, or that Z’s plot didn’t matter because they had already told us Thing Would Happen. For the first time in a long time, we don’t really know what will happen next. Yes, we know there’ll be another Avengers movie, and that other films are in development, but the longer the Doomsday secrecy goes on, the less we can predict about what Marvel has up its sleeve.
It may not feel like it right now, but Marvel is trying to go back to basics here. It needs to make people feel excited about the MCU again, and some of that excitement will naturally lie in the unknown. “We were both talking about this concept that we are back to phase zero,” Doomsday co-director Joe Russo told SXSW London last month. “This is starting over from scratch.” Maybe it’s time to believe him and embrace this weird new era, rather than expect the MCU to somehow continue at the level of hype that led to Avengers: Endgame. This “phase zero” might be cryptic, but it’s also embracing a pretty funny edging approach that Marvel has never really attempted before.
Of course, part of me still hopes that everyone who wants a big Avengers: Doomsday trailer out of Marvel’s SDCC appearance gets what they so desperately crave. That this incredible footage finally lands and properly ignites the hype train for the film. In fact, Marvel has already begun teasing it via its Fantastic Four social media accounts. But since Marvel has yet another chance to do the unexpected at SDCC, I would no longer be surprised if it takes it. Casting rumors for the studio’s X-Men reboot have gone into overdrive this month, and a full cast reveal for that movie would certainly be something else to witness instead.
If you do get a revealing Doomsday trailer this week, I hope you’re happy with it. If you don’t? Well, I hope you’ll spare a moment to imagine me having a good old chuckle about it.
15 Public Figures Who Left the Spotlight Behind
Some celebrities seem to disappear overnight. One day they’re everywhere, showing up on magazine covers, late-night talk shows, and every red carpet imaginable. Then, almost without anyone noticing, they stop showing up altogether. In some cases, that was exactly the plan.
Whether they chose family, privacy, or a completely different career, these public figures stepped away from the spotlight while everyone else kept looking for them.
Despite selling millions of records, Enya has always preferred a quiet life away from fame. She rarely gives interviews, almost never tours, and has spent years avoiding the celebrity lifestyle.
After years as one of Hollywood’s biggest actresses, Swank slowed down her career to focus on family, including caring for her father during his illness.
Once one of Hollywood’s most sought-after writers and directors, Whedon’s public profile changed dramatically after multiple workplace misconduct allegations. Since then, he’s largely stayed out of the spotlight.
Fabio seemed to be everywhere throughout the 1980s and 1990s, appearing on magazine covers, TV shows, and commercials. These days, public appearances have become much less common.
Unlike many of his Brat Pack peers, Emilio Estevez stepped away from mainstream Hollywood. He still directs and occasionally acts, but mostly avoids the celebrity circuit.
Coulter spent years dominating political talk shows and bestseller lists. Compared to the 1990s and 2000s, though, she has kept a much lower public profile.
One of the biggest teen stars of the 1990s, Jonathan Taylor Thomas gradually stepped away from acting and has largely stayed out of public view ever since.
Although Burnham occasionally releases projects, he has spoken openly about stepping back from performing live and spends long stretches away from the spotlight.
Apple has never chased fame the way many musicians do. Long gaps between albums and very few public appearances have made each comeback feel like a surprise.
After years of starring in major Hollywood films, Gordon-Levitt shifted much of his attention toward directing, producing, and developing creative projects outside the traditional studio system.
Moranis famously walked away from acting after the death of his wife to raise his children, turning down roles for years despite remaining beloved by fans.
Diaz stepped away from acting for nearly a decade, saying she wanted to focus on her personal life. She only recently began taking on a few projects again.
Bridget Fonda was one of Hollywood’s most recognizable actresses throughout the 1990s before quietly walking away from acting. Unlike many retired stars, she has shown little interest in returning to the spotlight.
15 People Share the Celebrities Who Have No Real Competition
Ask ten people who the greatest basketball player of all time is, and you’ll probably get a few different answers. Ask who the greatest pole vaulter is, or the greatest swimmer, and the debate gets a lot shorter. Every so often, someone becomes so dominant that comparisons almost stop making sense. Instead of chasing their rivals, they end up chasing their own records, their own achievements, or simply trying to outdo what they accomplished the year before.
These are the celebrities who have no real competition.
For years, Beyoncé has been the artist other performers get compared to. Between her live shows, chart success, and influence on pop music, plenty of fans feel she’s been setting the standard for an entire generation.
Gretzky’s records are so far ahead of everyone else’s that hockey fans often joke the only person who could compete with Wayne Gretzky was Wayne Gretzky.
Most film composers would be thrilled to receive one Oscar nomination. John Williams has received so many that he occasionally ended up competing against himself in the same category.
Duplantis has broken the pole vault world record so many times that people almost expect it now. More often than not, the biggest obstacle is clearing the height he set himself a few months earlier.
If you’ve watched a nature documentary, there’s a good chance you’ve heard David Attenborough’s voice. After decades behind the microphone, it’s hard to imagine anyone else filling that role.
In the 1500-meter freestyle, Ledecky hasn’t just won races. She’s filled the record books with her own name, leaving everyone else chasing times she already set.
Nobody else has managed to build an entire career around parody songs quite like Weird Al. Decades later, he’s still the first name people think of when the genre comes up.
For more than a decade, Carlsen was the player every chess tournament revolved around. Winning against him felt like an upset because losing was something he simply didn’t do very often.
Biles has spent years doing skills so difficult that gymnastics had to come up with new ways to score them. At her best, everyone else was competing for second.
The Grammy for Best Polka Album became almost synonymous with Jimmy Sturr. He won it so many times that, after the category was retired, plenty of people joked he’d taken it with him.
At the height of his career, betting on Tiger Woods often felt safer than picking the rest of the field. He wasn’t just winning tournaments. He was making the world’s best golfers look ordinary.
Secretariat
More than 50 years later, Secretariat’s Belmont Stakes record is still standing. His Triple Crown run was so dominant that it’s still used as the standard every great racehorse gets measured against.
Every major sprint seemed to end the same way for years: Bolt pulling away from everyone else. Even today, his world records are still the numbers every new generation is trying to chase.
Most musicians spend a lifetime mastering one style. Yo-Yo Ma did that, then started exploring music from around the world, introducing millions of people to sounds they might never have discovered otherwise.
20 People Share the Most Addictive Video Game They’ve Ever Played
What does it mean to be truly hooked by a video game? It isn’t just that it’s the only thing you think about, it means that you want to play it at every hour of every day, going to sleep far later than your body allows on a weekday. What hooks each person, however, depends entirely on the individual.
This is why users of Reddit started sharing their experiences on the site, saying how different games affected them in different ways. Strategy, PvP, RPGs, you name it, there is a fan that lost countless hours having fun in that game and genre.
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World of Warcraft
Blizzard’s MMORPG became famous for consuming entire weekends. Between leveling characters, chasing rare gear, exploring new expansions, and participating in raids, World of Warcraft created a progression loop that kept millions of players subscribed for years.
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Civilization
The phrase “one more turn” became synonymous with Sid Meier’s strategy franchise for a reason. Building an empire from ancient history to the future makes it remarkably easy to lose track of time.
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RuneScape
Whether training skills, completing quests, or grinding for valuable items, RuneScape built its reputation on long-term progression. Many players spent years steadily increasing stats and chasing ever more ambitious goals.
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Diablo II
The hunt for better loot is the heart of Diablo II. Randomized item drops, character builds, and endlessly replayable difficulty levels kept players running dungeons long after finishing the story.
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Age of Empires II
The classic real-time strategy game combines quick matches with tremendous strategic depth. Learning civilizations, mastering build orders, and competing online has kept players invested for decades.
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Factorio
Few games are better at creating a cycle of constant optimization. Every automated factory reveals new inefficiencies to solve, turning simple production chains into sprawling industrial mega-projects.
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EverQuest
One of the defining MMORPGs of the late 1990s, EverQuest rewarded persistence with powerful gear and hard-earned levels. Its social structure and demanding progression kept many players deeply invested.
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Stardew Valley
What begins as a relaxing farming game quickly becomes an obsession. Between expanding a farm, building relationships, fishing, mining, and completing community goals, there is always another task waiting.
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Balatro
This poker-inspired roguelike thrives on constant experimentation. Discovering powerful card combinations and chasing increasingly absurd scores makes it incredibly difficult to stop after a single run.
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The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Players often start with a simple quest and end up spending hours exploring caves, joining factions, crafting equipment, or wandering the wilderness. Few open-world games encourage distraction quite like Skyrim.
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RimWorld
Every colony creates its own unpredictable story. Managing resources, responding to disasters, and dealing with eccentric colonists makes it easy to spend entire evenings guiding a settlement through chaos.
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Tetris
The gameplay is simple enough to learn in minutes yet compelling enough to play forever. The constant pursuit of higher scores and perfect placements has kept players hooked for decades.
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StarCraft
Blizzard’s science-fiction strategy classic rewards mastery at every level. Fast-paced matches, precise mechanics, and competitive play created an experience many players found difficult to walk away from.
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League of Legends
The combination of ranked competition, constant updates, and hundreds of champions helped make League of Legends one of the most-played games in the world. One match often turns into several.
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The Sims 4
Building homes, creating families, and guiding virtual lives gives players nearly endless objectives. Many sessions begin with a small renovation and end hours later with an entirely new household.
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Counter-Strike
Its simple premise hides extraordinary depth. The drive to improve aim, learn maps, and climb competitive rankings has kept players returning to Counter-Strike for more than two decades.
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Dota 2
Valve’s multiplayer phenomenon offers immense strategic complexity. With over a hundred heroes and countless team compositions, players can spend thousands of hours learning and still discover new approaches.
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Baldur’s Gate 3
Larian Studios packed its role-playing epic with meaningful choices, hidden content, and replay value. Many players finish one campaign only to immediately start another with a different character.
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Cities: Skylines II
The city-building sequel encourages constant tinkering. Expanding infrastructure, solving traffic problems, and refining layouts can transform a quick check-in into an unexpectedly long session.
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Path of Exile
Grinding Gear Games built an action RPG around deep character customization and endless loot hunting. New leagues, massive skill trees, and constant progression make it easy to keep playing.
15 TV Shows That Peaked in Their First Season and Went Downhill After That
The first season of a show has a lot of work to do for the future of the series, since it needs to establish the premise, recurring characters and overarching plots in a satisfying manner. When done right, it can hook audiences for decades who want to know more about the characters, or how the story ends.
One thing the first season can get away with, however, is answering all questions. That is the responsibility of future seasons, and the better the set up was, the higher the pressure on the payoff. These are the shows that had less than stellar seasons following a near masterpiece of a first one.
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Stranger Things
The first season balanced nostalgia, mystery, horror, and character drama almost perfectly. Later seasons became bigger and more ambitious, but many viewers feel the intimate small-town atmosphere of the debut was never matched.
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Heroes
NBC’s first season was a phenomenon, introducing a large cast of interconnected superpowered characters. Subsequent seasons struggled with inconsistent storytelling, production issues, and plots that never captured the same excitement.
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Westworld
The original season’s mystery-driven structure and philosophical questions captivated audiences. Once the central puzzle was solved, later seasons became increasingly divisive and failed to generate the same level of enthusiasm.
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Prison Break
The first season’s central premise, escaping from Fox River State Penitentiary, was tightly focused and suspenseful. Once the escape happened, the show struggled to find an equally compelling direction.
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True Detective
Although later seasons have their supporters, the first season starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson remains the benchmark. Its atmosphere, performances, and mystery proved difficult to surpass.
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The Walking Dead
Many fans consider the six-episode debut season one of the strongest runs in the franchise. As the series expanded, pacing issues and repetitive storylines became frequent complaints.
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Bloodline
The first season built tension masterfully around the Rayburn family’s secrets. Later seasons suffered from narrative complications and the challenge of following up the fallout from the initial mystery.
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Big Little Lies
Originally conceived as a miniseries, the first season told a complete story and won widespread acclaim. The second season featured strong performances but lacked the same narrative urgency.
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Under the Dome
The first season generated interest through its intriguing premise and Stephen King connection. As the show continued, increasingly convoluted storylines caused many viewers to lose interest.
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Sleepy Hollow
The debut season blended supernatural horror, historical mythology, and procedural storytelling effectively. Later years struggled to maintain that balance and saw declining audience enthusiasm.
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Scream Queens
Ryan Murphy’s horror-comedy found its strongest footing in the first season’s murder mystery. The second season changed settings and never generated the same cultural buzz.
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The Terror
The first season’s adaptation of the Franklin Expedition was widely praised for its atmosphere and storytelling. The anthology’s second season received a much more mixed response from critics and audiences.
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Wayward Pines
The opening season delivered a compelling mystery and satisfying reveals. Once the town’s secrets were exposed, the show found it difficult to maintain the same momentum.
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Russian Doll
Its first season offered a clever and emotionally resonant time-loop story with a strong sense of closure. The second season took bigger narrative swings that divided viewers.
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The Following
Kevin Bacon’s thriller began with a tense cat-and-mouse dynamic between an FBI agent and a serial killer. Later seasons expanded the mythology but never matched the impact of the original run.
The Odyssey Box Office Marks New Peak for Nolan, New Low for Social Media Malcontents
As it turns out, audiences love a Christopher Nolan movie that leans into the epic imagery of heroes and monsters, and all with grand emotional stakes. Who would have guessed otherwise?
Apparently quite a few folks, as you might have noticed if you spent any significant time on social media and video sharing apps like TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and especially X, the latter of which is owned by the richest man in the world. Indeed, in one week alone last May, Elon Musk posted 60 times about his vocal misgivings for the then upcoming Nolan adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey. Even so, this apprehension clearly hasn’t trickled down to regular moviegoers.
This past weekend’s release of The Odysseygrossed an estimated $124.5 million across three days—plus Thursday night previews—well above what prognosticators last week were suggesting would open around $105 million. Furthermore, it is the highest domestic start of the year for a live-action movie, falling only behind Toy Story 5($159.7 million) and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie($131.7 million). It’s also something of a coup for Nolan, marking the highest domestic opening of his career that is neither a sequel or a Batman movie. (His biggest openings remain The Dark Knightand The Dark Knight Rises with $158.4 million and $160.9 million, respectively.) And it is also his biggest global release, period, hitting $264.1 million across the weekend.
Domestically these might not be Batman numbers, but the fact The Odyssey is outpacing what became leggy and beloved hits like Inception, Interstellar, and Oppenheimer, the latter of which benefitted greatly from being one-half of the “Barbenheimer”phenomenon in 2023, and Odyssey is doing that while still being a sprawling three-hour and R-rated epic, is a testament to Nolan’s popularity. In a summer when traditional franchise films appear to be faltering, the box office is still growing and healthy because, in part, of audience excitement for ambitious filmmakers who can turn their name recognition into something of a brand. Odyssey’s “A” CinemaScore also suggests we might be headed toward another leggy run, similar to Oppenheimer dropping only 43.4 percent in its second weekend after receiving an “A” CinemaScore.
The implications of Odyssey’s success are tantalizing in a few ways. The first is of course being a welcome reminder that social media noise is often more a tempest in a teacup than the zeitgeist-defining battleground the culture warriors imagine. Plenty of social media malcontents have made a penny off manipulating YouTube, X, TikTok, and other algorithms by feeding negative content and amplifying racially-tinged toxicity over the casting of Black actors in Odyssey, as well as trans actor Elliot Page in the role of a Greek soldier, and yet for all the rage-filled engagement it generates on the internet, the online vitriol likely has no more to do with general audience attitudes than similar campaigns targeting flops in genres that audiences may have become exhausted by.
In other words, the only thing online echo chambers seething over Oscar-winner Lupita Nyong’o being cast as Helen of Troy achieved appears to be the further feeding of ad revenues for certain social media personalities.
Beyond the culture war nonsense, The Odyssey’s success is not surprising but it’s still illuminating. As we wrote last week, the box office has seen four or five disappointments from massively marketed franchise (or intended to be franchise) films. Several were new installments in storied brands with decades-long cinematic history, others were new live-action remakes in a franchise that saw its last installment gross more than $1 billion not even two years ago.
Despite these underperformances, the general sentiment around Hollywood, and definitely among theater owners, is that this has so far been a solid year at the movies. That’s because box office on the whole is up from this time last year, as is attendance. It just appears to be what audiences are more keen to see is shifting. There remains plenty of room for the big splashy blockbuster epic. But unlike Moana, Masters of the Universe, or Supergirl, the selling point of Odyssey isn’t the intellectual property (although the fact most audiences around the world should have heard of Homer’s 2,800-year-old epic at some point in their lives certainly helps); it’s that the audience trusts in the filmmaker and the way he and Universal Pictures were able to leverage that in the marketing campaign.
As with Ryan Coogler’s unapologetically film-nerdy marketing push to explain the appeal of IMAX 70mm projection last year during Sinners’ rollout, or Phil Lord and Chris Miller doing something similar for Project Hail Marythis spring, the fact Nolan is the first filmmaker in history to shoot an entire narrative film with 65mm IMAX cameras became one of The Odyssey’s biggest assets. Granted, Nolan was the original pioneer of using IMAX photography in Hollywood productions, beginning with The Dark Knight almost 20 years ago, but at that time it was more of a novelty adored by cinephiles and Nolan’s most ardent fans. Eighteen years later, it’s one of the biggest selling points, one that might matter more than shared universe interconnectivity.
The film’s success also suggests movie stars continue to be an added value, if not the greatest selling point, considering The Odyssey’s cast, like Denis Villeneuve’s Dune movies, is absolutely stacked with familiar and recognizable faces. From the top of the call sheet performers like Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, and Tom Holland, all the way down to the supporting ensemble including Nyong’o, Charlize Theron, Jon Bernthal, John Leguizamo, Mia Goth, and Robert Pattinson among its ranks, The Odyssey seemed to benefit from the kind of retro all-star cast trick that ironically was a mainstay of the type of 1950s sword and sandal epics Nolan seemed to be partially channeling here.
It is not a small irony that one of the biggest hits of the year is relying on larger format presentations and starry ensemble casts like the Hollywood of 70 years ago. But when coupled with the success this summer of original, young-skewing horror movies like Obsession and Backrooms, as well as the return of adult-leaning sci-fi movies like Hail Mary and even the middle-aged-skewing comedy of Devil Wears Prada 2, it does create a glimpse into the future of what might be working.
And when it comes to selling tickets, winning the online grifters and malcontents seems fairly irrelevant. Still.
15 Famous Movie Scenes Everyone Remembers Wrong
There are movie scenes and lines so iconic, we all keep quoting and referencing them whenever we get the chance. The thing is, human memory is not an infallible thing, so we might share the quote in the wrong way, which can go viral in seconds with today’s internet.
As such, there are plenty of examples of scenes that a lot of people remember in one way, and in reality went in a completely different direction. Even people that haven’t seen the films continue the spread of misinformation. Here are some of the most well-known examples so you can set the record straight.
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“Luke, I Am Your Father” Never Happens
One of the most famous movie quotes ever is also one of the most misquoted. In The Empire Strikes Back, Darth Vader actually says, “No, I am your father,” not the version endlessly repeated in popular culture.
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The Wicked Witch Never Says “Fly, My Pretties!”
Many people remember the Wicked Witch of the West commanding, “Fly, my pretties, fly!” In The Wizard of Oz, she actually says, “Fly, fly, fly!” before adding, “Fly, my pretties, fly!”
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Humphrey Bogart Never Says “Play It Again, Sam”
Despite becoming the title of a famous Woody Allen film, the line never appears in Casablanca. The closest dialogue is Ilsa asking Sam to play “As Time Goes By.”
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Dirty Harry Doesn’t Ask If You Feel Lucky
People often shorten the speech to “Do you feel lucky, punk?” In reality, Harry Callahan’s famous monologue is longer and more elaborate than the version commonly quoted.
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Snow White Never Says “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall”
Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs actually uses the line “Magic mirror on the wall.” The more famous version largely comes from later retellings and adaptations.
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The Graduate’s Ending Isn’t Happy
Many remember Benjamin and Elaine escaping together as a triumphant romantic ending. What they often forget is the lingering shot of both characters looking increasingly uncertain and uncomfortable.
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The Shower Scene Doesn’t Show the Stabbing
Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho is remembered as an extremely graphic murder sequence. In reality, careful editing and quick cuts create the illusion of violence without showing the knife entering flesh.
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Scarface’s Final Stand Is More Chaotic Than Heroic
Pop culture often portrays Tony Montana’s final battle as a triumphant last stand. The actual scene is frantic, desperate, and ends with Tony being completely overwhelmed.
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The Monster Isn’t Called Frankenstein
Countless people refer to Boris Karloff’s creature as Frankenstein. In Mary Shelley’s story and the classic films, Frankenstein is the scientist, while the creature remains unnamed.
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The Silence of the Lambs Barely Features Hannibal Lecter
Many viewers remember Hannibal Lecter as constantly present throughout the film. Anthony Hopkins actually appears for only about sixteen minutes, despite dominating discussions of the movie.
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The Titanic Door Debate Misses the Real Issue
The famous argument isn’t whether Jack could physically fit on the floating debris. The film itself suggests the problem is that the makeshift raft cannot support both their weight.
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The Karate Kid Wasn’t About Illegal Kicks
A popular internet theory claims Daniel’s winning kick was illegal. The tournament rules shown in the film allow kicks to the face, making the victory legitimate within the movie’s logic.
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The Chestburster Scene Wasn’t Completely Secret
A common story claims the Alien cast knew absolutely nothing about the chestburster sequence. While they were unaware of specific effects and details, they knew an alien would emerge.
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Indiana Jones Didn’t Always Hate Snakes
People often remember Indiana Jones as universally terrified of snakes from the beginning. The films establish that his fear comes from a specific childhood incident rather than a lifelong phobia.
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Rocky Doesn’t Win the Fight
Because Rocky became such a classic underdog story, many people assume Rocky Balboa wins the final match. The emotional victory matters more than the scorecard, because Apollo Creed wins the decision.
15 Horror Villains Who Could Have Been Stopped by One Competent Adult
A lot of horror movies depend on adults being absent, dismissive, or spectacularly bad at their jobs. If a single responsible parent, teacher, police officer, counselor, or any form of authority figure had stepped in at some point, those horror stories might have ended before they truly began.
That’s especially true when the villain spends half the movie targeting children, exploiting obvious warning signs, or benefiting from adults who refuse to listen. While some horror villains are unstoppable supernatural forces, many get surprisingly far thanks to a complete lack of competent supervision. These are the horror villains who might have been defeated by one responsible grown-up.
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The Grabber, The Black Phone
The Grabber successfully abducts multiple children partly because the adults around the community never connect the clues quickly enough. A more proactive investigation might have ended his crimes much sooner.
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Billy and Stu, Scream
The Ghostface killers rely heavily on adults being distracted or absent. Had a competent parent, teacher, or police officer paid closer attention to the escalating warning signs, their killing spree could have collapsed.
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Esther, Orphan
Much of Esther’s success comes from adults ignoring increasingly alarming behavior. A thorough background investigation or a professional willing to take concerns seriously would have exposed the truth quickly.
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Brenda Bates, Urban Legend
The killer in Urban Legend benefits from campus authorities repeatedly dismissing legitimate fears. A university administration taking the pattern seriously might have prevented numerous murders.
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Chucky, Child’s Play
Chucky’s greatest advantage is that almost no adult believes Andy when he says a doll is committing murders. If even one responsible adult had taken his claims seriously from the beginning, Chucky’s rampage would have been much shorter.
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The Firefly Family, House of 1000 Corpses
Captain Spaulding and the Firefly family operate in plain sight for years. A competent sheriff thoroughly investigating disappearances in the area would have uncovered their activities much earlier.
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Leslie Vernon, Behind the Mask
The mockumentary format highlights how carefully Vernon prepares his future killing spree. Ironically, one observant adult taking reports seriously could derail his entire elaborate plan.
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The Parents, Society
Bill repeatedly notices bizarre behavior and increasingly disturbing clues about the adults around him. If even one trustworthy grown-up had acknowledged what he was experiencing, he might not have been left to face it alone.
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The Cult, Paranormal Activity 3
The coven spends years positioning itself around Katie and Kristi. More attentive adults recognizing the danger surrounding the children could have interrupted those plans long before they succeeded.
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Mary Lou Maloney, Prom Night II: Hello Mary Lou
The supernatural killer spends much of the film targeting high school students while adults either ignore warning signs or fail to recognize the growing danger. Earlier intervention could have prevented much of the chaos.
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Mick Taylor, Wolf Creek
Taylor’s entire method relies on exploiting travelers in remote locations. More effective local oversight and quicker responses to disappearances would make his crimes far harder to continue.
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The Killer, Happy Death Day
Tree repeatedly dies because no authority figure uncovers the truth behind the attacks. A competent investigation into suspicious events on campus could have resolved matters much sooner.
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The Pale Man, Pan’s Labyrinth
While technically part of a fantasy-horror story, the Pale Man’s threat depends on a child navigating terrifying situations alone. Direct adult supervision would eliminate most of the danger immediately.
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The Villagers, Children of the Corn
The murderous children take over Gatlin largely because no effective adult authority remains. A single capable grown-up arriving early in the crisis might have prevented the entire cult from forming.
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The Tall Man, Phantasm
Mike spends much of the film trying to convince adults that something is wrong at the local funeral home. Most dismiss his concerns, allowing the Tall Man’s bizarre activities to continue unchecked.
15 Horror Movies Where Just Leaving Was Always On the Table
There are plenty of examples of horror movies where the characters are trapped before they know it, or where escape is impossible. That, however, isn’t the case for every single film, since there are plenty of times where the main characters could’ve left.
That doesn’t make for the most entertaining piece of cinema, but it would’ve been the sensible thing to do. Of course, for the sake of the plot, characters stick around haunted houses, creepy towns, suspicious hosts, and increasingly dangerous situations long after common sense would suggest leaving. These films are packed with moments where walking away remained a very real option.
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Speak No Evil
The visiting family encounters increasingly bizarre and uncomfortable behavior throughout their stay. They have multiple chances to pack their bags and leave long before the situation escalates into outright horror.
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The Invitation
As the dinner party becomes stranger and more unsettling, several guests express concerns. Walking out early would have spared them from discovering exactly what their hosts had planned for the evening.
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The Sacrament
The journalists travel voluntarily to an isolated religious commune modeled after Jonestown. Once they begin noticing disturbing levels of control and paranoia, leaving immediately would have been the most sensible course of action.
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Midsommar
The American visitors repeatedly witness alarming rituals and disturbing behavior. Several characters even discuss leaving, but curiosity and personal motivations keep them in Sweden far longer than seems wise.
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Barbarian
After discovering increasingly unsettling secrets inside the rental property, multiple opportunities arise to leave. Unfortunately, curiosity and attempts to help others repeatedly pull characters back into danger.
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Fresh
Noa ignores several red flags after meeting Steve and agrees to a secluded weekend getaway with someone she barely knows. The decision turns a promising romance into a nightmare that could have been avoided.
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House of Wax
The travelers encounter a suspiciously empty town and increasingly unsettling residents. Before the danger becomes unavoidable, they have several chances to get back on the road and leave.
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The Rental
The vacation rental becomes progressively more uncomfortable as tensions rise and strange discoveries emerge. Leaving early would have prevented nearly every problem that follows.
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The Ruins
The entire disaster begins because a group of tourists chooses to visit a remote archaeological site they know little about. Had they stuck to their vacation plans, the horror never would have started.
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The Visit
The children quickly notice their grandparents behaving in increasingly alarming ways. Calling their mother and leaving the farm earlier would have avoided many of the film’s horrors.
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Cuckoo
Gretchen’s father willingly relocates his family to a bizarre resort community in the Alps despite increasingly suspicious behavior from its owner. Several opportunities to leave present themselves before the truth becomes impossible to ignore.
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X
The aspiring filmmakers arrive at an isolated property owned by hosts who immediately make several people uncomfortable. Packing up and relocating the production would have been the safest option.
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Pearl
Several characters continue engaging with Pearl despite obvious signs that something is deeply wrong. Maintaining distance from her increasingly unstable behavior would have dramatically improved their odds of survival.
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The Wicker Man
Sergeant Howie grows increasingly suspicious of Summerisle and its residents. Despite recognizing that the community is hiding something, he continues investigating long after a cautious retreat becomes appealing.
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Hell House LLC
The documentary crew repeatedly encounters terrifying and unexplained incidents while preparing their haunted attraction. Nearly every member has a moment where abandoning the project would have been entirely reasonable.
House of the Dragon Season 3: Who Is Prince Joffrey?
This article contains spoilers for House of the Dragon season 3 episode 5.
“Your Grace, glad news! [Ed Note: See, I wasn’t lying about the ‘glad news’ part]” a nameless servant informs the dragonqueen. “Young Prince Joffrey has returned this hour from The Vale. I’m told he’s asked for you.”
Rhaenyra’s reaction to this statement is inscrutable. It seems as though both one million and precisely zero emotions cross her face all at once. Ultimately she responds with a curt “I will come to him when I’m able. I’m sure he’s tired.” Later on, after another day filled with the weight of governance, Rhaenyra finally does visit this Prince Joffrey, only to find the little child fast asleep in his bed, watched over by yet another nameless attendant.
“He tried to stay awake for you, Your Grace,” the woman says. This time Rhaenyra says nothing, just gazes at the snoozing boy meaningfully and walks out of the room.
So who is this Prince Joffrey? He’s one of Rhaenyra’s five sons, of course – sent to the Vale for safety while the Dance of the Dragons rages across the continent. Most of you reading this probably recalled that fact but still wanted to make sure, hence the “house of the dragon who is prince joffrey” googling.
And there’s no shame in that! There are many, many, many named characters in these series, some of whom have similar names (or in Joffrey’s case an identical name to another prince from Game of Thrones). Even if you remembered who Joffrey is, you might need some help recalling where he’s been and why Rhaenyra seems so unsteady about his return. Let us help out with that.
Prince Joffrey Velaryon (played by Oscar Eskinazi) is Queen Rhaenyra Tagaryen’s third of five children (all of them sons) and the last child she “had” with her first husband Laenor Velaryon. We put “had” in quotation marks because it’s common knowledge across the realm that none of Laenor’s three children – Jacaerys, Lucerys, and Joffrey – with Rhaenyra are actually his biological offspring.
Before he was “killed” (but in actuality fled to Essos) Laenor infamously preferred the romantic company of men. In fact, Prince Joffrey is named after Laenor’s first love Ser Joffrey Lonmouth, who was cruelly beaten to death by Criston Cole over a petty slight at Laenor and Rhaenyra’s wedding. In actuality, Jace, Luke, and Joff were all sired by Rhaenyra’s lover Ser Harwin Strong (He’s dead now too. Basically everyone is dead or soon-to-be-dead in this show).
Shortly after the death of Joffrey’s elder brother Luke and a brazen attempt on his mother’s life on Dragonstone, Rhaenyra decided to send him to stay with her mom’s side of the family in the Vale of Arryn for safe-keeping. Now that her eldest son Jacaerys is also dead, that appears to have been a shrewd decision as Joffrey is suddenly heir to the Iron Throne, ahead of his half-brothers Aegon and Viserys (both children Rhaenyra had with her uncle/husband Daemon) in the line of succession. With King’s Landing firmly-ish in her grasp, Rhaenyra sent Daemon off to the Vale to retrieve Joffrey and bring him back to the capital. Daemon returned well ahead of Joffrey because, though the little prince is bonded with his equally little dragon Tyraxes, the pair are probably too young for a solo flight to King’s Landing and had to hitch a ride on a boat or carriage.
Getting Joffrey from Dragonstone to the Vale and then to King’s Landing cannot have possibly been an easy logistical endeavor, especially during a time of war. So why then does Rhaenyra seem not particularly eager to talk to her son and heir? The answer to that is fairly simple: she’s terrified for him.
While Rhaenyra obviously loves Joffrey, he’s also a living reminder of how miserably she’s failed her other sons. Joffrey should not be her heir. He should not even be the heir to her heir. But the deaths of both Jace and Luke have not only shattered Rhaenyra’s heart, they’ve transformed what could have been a peaceful, playful childhood for Joffrey into a crucible of impossible expectations and danger.
It’s no wonder that Rhaenyra wants to let the little guy sleep. That may be the last truly restful night he has for awhile.
New episodes of House of the Dragon season 3 premiere Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max, culminating with the finale on August 9.
House of the Dragon Season 3 Episode 5 Review: The Stranger Offers Us Rest
This review for House of the Dragon season 3 episode 5 contains spoilers.
What does Criston Cole want?
That’s the question that Westerosi nobles and House of the Dragonviewers alike have pondered ever since the Dornish marcher knight arrived on the scene by unhorsing the great Daemon Targaryen at a King’s Landing tourney.
At first it seemed as though Ser Criston (Fabien Frankel) wanted the usual things that one would expect a member of a lowly vassal house to want: fame, respect, glory – you know, the full Ser Duncan the Tall package. Then, immediately upon achieving some semblance of prestige through his elevation to King Viserys I’s Kingsguard, Criston was prepared to throw it all away for love, begging a young Princess Rhaenyra to renounce her royal birthright and run away with him to Essos for a lifetime of kisses and pomegranates. When Rhaenyra turned down this generous offer, Criston fucked her best friend, killed her fiancé’s lover, and crowned her half-brother king.
Now we’re roughly a year into the civil war that Criston’s actions helped spurn and are no closer to the answer of what drives him. Or at least we weren’t until House of the Dragon season 3 episode 5. It turns out that Ser Criston Cole wants a lot of things – honor, fame, love, power, autonomy – but above all else, Ser Criston Cole wants to die.
Welcome to Game of Thrones, everyone! We like to have fun here.
The fifth episode of House of the Dragon‘s third season isn’t especially bleak as far as this franchise goes. There are no “Red Wedding” or “Blood and Cheese” level atrocities and the body count of named characters isn’t even unusually high for the Seven Kingdoms (in fact, we actually gain two bodies here with the returns of Ser Tyland Lannister and Prince Joffrey Velaryon). But by focusing on arcs like Criston’s doomed insurgency in the Riverlands, Prince Aemond’s internment in a spooky haunted castle, and a banquet for the dead, this hour goes further in articulating the bleak nature of life at war than the show’s previous depictions of war itself.
At the center of it all, of course, is the man history will come to know as “The Kingmaker.” While Criston initially seemed excited at the prospect of deploying guerrilla tactics to slow down Lord Oscar Tully and Roddy the Ruin’s massive armies, it quickly becomes apparent that guerrilla warfare can go both ways. Criston, Ser Gwayne Hightower (Freddie Fox), and their increasingly disheveled soldiers are left stranded between rivers, their dams destroyed and their warhorses fallen to Medieval landmines. Gwayne, accustomed to a life of luxury and privilege running up the Hightower to see the dawning sun with his brother in Oldtown, wonders what Criston has up his sleeve now. Surely, there is one weird trick this Kingmaker… this Great Man of History, has cooked up to overcome the reality that Roddy and Oscar have 200 men for every one of theirs.
Criston has no such answer but to die. And he’s not particularly bummed about it. As he tells Gwayne, dying beats the hell out of serving. “You have offered me service to your House and I’m grateful. But I’ve been a servant all my life. To Green or to Black. I have defined myself by oaths, through unyielding devotion. The high born have made much of me while it pleased them to do so. But I will not let them diminish me now. I will not return, spurned, rejected. I am the realm’s greatest warrior and I will die as such. Clear-eyed, unbent, glorious in battle. And not in their service… finally.”
As a member of a noble house, Criston is not “low born” per se. But the stewards of House Cole are closer in experience to the “smallfolk” of Westeros than the Hightowers. He understands better than most that the real currency of Westeros – more so than money, secrets, or dragons – is service. It wasn’t just witnessing the biblical destruction wrought by dragons that turned Ser Criston the Kingmaker into Ser Criston the Emo; he was always more concerned with the human beings riding those dragons. A dragon can merely swallow you whole and put your whole city to flame. A human being can compel you to kneel… to serve.
There’s a reason why the Faceless Men of Braavos utter “valar doeharis (all men must serve)” in response to “valar morghulis (all men must die).” Those are the only two possible states of existence for a man in this world. If you’re not servin’, you’re dyin’, and many indeed prefer the latter. The Faceless Men serve (there’s that word again) “The Many-Faced God,” an amalgamation of every god of death from every culture across Westeros and Essos. Criston himself invokes one of those deathly gods in the episode’s haunting final line “The Stranger offers us rest.”
Moreso than the Father, the Mother, the Crone, or any other face of the Seven, the Stranger has always offered the most respite for poor wretches like Criston. Over in Harrenhal, Alys Rivers (Gayle Rankin) even pays tribute to those the Stranger has whisked away when some schmucks arrive to kill her, enticed by Queen Rhaenyra’s sizable bounty on Prince Aemond’s head.
“Seems you’ve not learned your history of this place – of the laborers who built it, who died here in chains, in service to Harren the Cruel,” she says. (He’s more commonly known as “Harren the Black” but point taken.)
Alys understands the principles of valar doeharis and valar morghulis as well as anyone and her magical mastery over the bones of Harrenhal has made her quite the formidable figure. It’s no wonder that an injured and ailing Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) is helpless in her presence, having found yet another mommy to latch onto. One might say he’s even ready to serve.
If only Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) could see Aemond now. Sure, Aegon has every reason to hate his younger brother since he, you know, tried to kill him at Rook’s Rest. But phrasing like “poor darling Aemond and his scabby little eye” betrays that his animus all still boils down to petty childhood grievances. Larys Strong (Matthew Needham), ever cast as the servant to more powerful men, finally reads the Brat King the riot act, describing him as a terrible king and an even worse man. Later on when Larys and Aegon stumble upon a disfigured but very much alive Ser Tyland Lannister (Jefferson Hall), Aegon seems properly chastened by the dressing down, or at least he becomes more useful as he swiftly and silently kills an urchin who discovers his secret crown.
House of the Dragon is making little attempt to hide where it’s going with Aegon and Larys’ journey on the road. “The king secretly spends time among his subjects and learns to better empathize with their plight” is a common enough fantasy trope that its also forms the dramatic backbone of the show’s sister series A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. Though it’s all a bit obvious, it works. And intended or not, the storyline also operates as a Team Green mea culpa from a show accused of (at times not unfairly) “favoring” one side of this war over the other.
While Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) was always the Realm’s Delight and Aegon its annoying pain in the ass, the two characters’ arcs make clear that they’re on diverging upwards and downwards moral trajectories, seemingly destined to meet somewhere in the middle. In the episode’s best non-Criston scene, Rhaenyra and Daemon (Matt Smith) meet in the sept where the former is praying to the Seven, or more accurately: berating the gods for their inability to get the High Septon and smallfolk in line despite so graciously hoisting her up onto the Iron Throne. The pair’s extended conversation in High Valyrian is some of the best fictional foreign language acting this franchise has produced yet and goes a long way towards establishing Rhaenyra’s deteriorating mental state and paranoia.
That’s not to say some paranoia isn’t warranted. As if it weren’t bad enough that Lord Ormund (James Norton) is now printing his own King Daeron coinage, someone in the capital is killing gold cloaks. What starts as the odd homicide here or there progresses into a gruesome tableau of dead cops with their eyes gouged out and “A FEAST FOR TRAITORS” message scrawled in blood on a wall of the Red Keep. Less theatrical but no less traitorous are the actions of Alicent (Olivia Cooke), who tries to spirit Helaena (Phia Saban) away from their confinement upon finding out she’s pregnant. Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno) puts a stop to that, receives a half-earnest “IOU,” and then just…lets it happen again?
As is the case with many episodes in House of the Dragon season 3, this hour is filled with interesting ideas executed imperfectly. The heart is there in Philippa Goslett’s script but the eye doesn’t always follow through in Nina Lopez-Corrado’s direction. Even the largely successful Criston plotline doesn’t feel quite as visually striking as it should. Criston and Gwayne’s host is believably battered and broken from its time in the woods but it has not gone through the appropriately Dante-level hell that a production with more time, money, and creativity might have achieved. “The Stranger offers us rest” hits hard because how could it not? But it could have hit harder.
Still, it’s hard to complain too much about an episode this thematically on point. Even the quieter, seemingly more disposable scenes like Ormund and Daeron playing cyvasse feel indispensable in light of Criston’s plight. Not only does Ormund continue to justify social media’s Dennis Reynolds comparisons of him by melting down after losing a board game to a child, his subsequent lesson to Daeron (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) about what really kept Dorne independent is surprisingly insightful, even if accidentally so.
Ormund may think that the parable of Meria Martell a.k.a. the Yellow Toad of Dorne is all about one woman’s cunning military mind being able to outwit and outlast the might of Aegon the Conqueror, his sisters, and their dragons. But it wasn’t merely Meria’s aptitude for strategy that kept Dorne unbowed, unbent, and unbroken; it was her stubborn insistence on being unbowed, unbent, and unbroken in the first place that so stymied House Targaryen.
It’s amazing what someone can accomplish when they politely say “not today” to the god of death. The Stranger’s offer of rest to Ser Criston is just that: an offer. The fact that he’s so eager to accept it says more about him than the supposed inevitability of his situation. Yeah, going out in blaze of glory bright enough for the singers to remember would be nice. But so too would be simply rebuilding the stupid dam and retiring to Oldtown.
New episodes of House of the Dragon season 3 premiere Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max, culminating with the finale on August 9.
The Odyssey Is Christopher Nolan’s Warning for the Imminent Collapse of Our World
This article contains spoilers for The Odyssey.
This weekend’s The Odysseyis remarkably faithful to a story that likely dates back more than three millennia. Writer-director Christopher Nolan makes plenty of nips and tucks to the material due to the necessity of modern filmmaking—not to mention the built-in three-hour time limit imposed by 70mm IMAX projection platters—but most of what Homer eventually wrote down from an oral tradition in the 8th century BCE is here. The cyclops, the Sirens, old blind Tiresias, and more.
What’s changed is how Nolan, ever the rationalist, interprets the material and reflects it back in his own image. Like so many of the filmmaker’s previous protagonists, and perhaps most hauntingly J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Odysseus played by Matt Damon is another great man who feels greater shame due to how his celebrated genius was used to kill thousands in a now dead city. And the horrors of that deed must be reconciled with the man, including as a husband and father, before he earns the right to go home.
That is in keeping with many channels that course through Nolan’s work like the River Styx. Yet the most striking change in Nolan’s Odyssey isn’t that he made it another film about a flawed hero who misses his wife; it’s that he uses a story that predates Christ by centuries to discuss what is going on in our modern 21st century world right now—and how like the Mycenaean and Achaean Greeks in The Odyssey, our civilization is dangerously close to going over a self-engineered cliff.
As we’ve detailed elsewhere, Nolan’s biggest addition to Homer’s text is the inclusion of the Sea People(s) as a vaguely ominous off-screen threat. They are whispered about by Penelope (Anne Hathaway) and Telemachus (Tom Holland), and are a foreboding menace when one stranger along the Aegean asks Odysseus’ right-hand man Eurylochus (Himesh Patel) if they’re “the people from the sea.”
These “people” are not in Homer, but they are in actual Greek and Near East history; a mysterious collection of cultures and tribes who, depending on who you ask, either hastened or downright caused the Bronze Age collapse by sacking city states all along the Mediterranean, from the Hittites in modern-day Turkey to the Mycenaean Greeks. Only Egypt was able to resist and defeat the “people from the sea” (which is also why we know they exist and have that ominous name). Their mystery was written down in Egyptian temples and records. Conversely, all recorded history of the Hittites simply stops. Meanwhile Greek civilization (of a kind) survived, but it was still an apocalyptic occurrence for those who remained, with conditions regressing to a more rustic, primitive culture without written word or history. It was the Greek Dark Ages and it lasted more than 300 years.
Nolan takes this catastrophic historical mystery and bends it to his purposes by tying it directly to xenia, an ancient Greek concept that roughly translates to “guest-friendship” or “ritualized friendship.” In Nolan’s Odyssey, they call it simply “Zeus’ law,” and it is the idea of recognizing shared humanity and kinship in strangers from distant shores. Furthermore, it demands a political and moral imperative to treat guests with honor, respect, and kindness. It is the ancestor of the Christian faith’s “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” or the more modernized “Golden Rule.”
In the time of Homer and antiquity, it might have been partly implemented because there was a fear that the stranger you bully or belittle could be a god in disguise, or Odysseus himself returned (a concept that also trickles down into parables about good Samaritans), but it was also an ethical and even pragmatic gesture. Politically, is i not better to build bridges with foreign lands than it is walls or siege towers?
Xenia is a crucial element of Homer’s original epic poem, but Nolan is the first adapter to my knowledge who recognizes the hypocrisy of Odysseus surviving due to the comity and hospitality of good hosts like the Phaeacians, but only after he broke Zeus’ law by offering a gift of peace to the Trojans and then using it to enslave, rape, and murder them in their beds.
The way The Odyssey frames this is, like Oppenheimer ushering in the Atomic Age beneath the mushroom clouds of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Odysseus has given permission to his fellow Greeks to dismiss Zeus’ law, one of their most sacred rites of civility and fellowship. That includes his fellow Trojan War veterans who are “mistaken” for Sea People while burning a village or later threatening to execute Circe (Samantha Morton) as a witch after she revealed these men’s true animalistic nature. But it’s even more transparent in younger men who never saw the great towers of Troy and were instead raised on stories of their fiery collapse.
Zeus’ law would have it that strangers like Odysseus in a beggar’s disguise should be treated with empathy and humanity, but the entitled suitors who did not fight in Troy, yet seek to enjoy its spoils by marrying the wife Odysseus left behind, would rather beat and deride the beggar than give him a scrap of food they never paid for. Robert Pattinson’s Antinous is a particularly special piece of work: sniveling, capricious, vain, and a diva who almost chokes with glee on the venom in his throat while spitting, “Filthy beg-GAR!” at Odysseus in disguise.
Nolan and Pattinson seem to have a field day developing the most disgusting collection of vices that increasingly become virtues in a post-Trojan War Greece—and one cannot help but see echoes in similar foibles that have turned into political assets in the 21st century.
In Homer’s Odyssey, Antinous is also a selfish and self-aggrandizing snob, but he has no real backstory with Odysseus. In Nolan’s film, we learn Antinous was essentially drafted to fight in the Trojan War but bought his way out by getting his poor shepherd’s son Sinon (Elliot Page) to go in his place. This is not in Homer, and Sinon did not appear in Trojan War stories until centuries after Odyssey. Yet one need not squint to recognize parallels with modern-day leaders and self-styled strongmen who also avoided drafts in their youth by relying on their wealth and connections.
Such men do not fight in wars but are quick and eager to seek other people’s sons to commit violence on their behalf, all while indulging in luxury paid for by others, and perhaps leering at another man’s wife. Pattinson’s Antinous is a deliciously boorish caricature of modern leaders who hide behind their banquet tables and pillars while demanding subordinates go die in their name. And when his own time comes in Nolan’s film, it is with Nolan’s added line that Odysseus seeks to “give you back your shame.”
Like Antinous in Nolan’s Greece, such preening thuggery is ascendant today. Values that were once considered sacred or institutionalized have been marginalized or undermined by the sycophants and opportunists always holding court at their feasts. Even Elon Musk, the wealthiest and most prominent critic of Nolan’s Odyssey, has derided the movie by amplifying social media posts that claim it will “destroy Western civilization,” even as the trillionaire born with a silver spoon in his mouth has lamented in the press that “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.”
One of the 3,000-year-old cornerstones of xenia, and the foundations of Western civilization, including Homer’s Odyssey, is now viewed as a “fundamental weakness” by the richest man in the world and his fellow travelers who claim to be protecting the West. Others might say they are perverting it like Antinous in Odysseus’ once great house. They certainly recoil at sharing their scraps, just as Musk was giddy about feeding USAID “into the wood chipper” during his brief stint in government, an action that according to a Boston University epidemiologist has already caused the death of roughly 600,000 people. Most of them children.
Earlier in The Odyssey film, Penelope and young Telemachus share a conversation about the people from the sea and the future of their Mycenaean culture. Telemachus scoffs that anyone could destroy their world. Just look at their great house! Yet the building isn’t what makes a civilization great, his mother counters, it’s the people inside of it, their values, their morals, that give it meaning.
By breaking Zeus’ law with the Trojans and murdering women like the young Trojan girl (Zendaya) who becomes the very image of Athena in Odysseus’ mind, Odysseus won a war but gave permission to his society to drift from their decency. He helped create a world where jackals like Antinous rise to power and high halls, and empathy for foreigners, elderly dogs, and even a lowly beggar is treated with disdain and hostility.
In Nolan’s mind, it created the “Sea People” and was the death of a civilization 3,200 years ago. And it can do it again.
The Odyssey: Who Were the Sea People and Why Are They So Scary?
This article contains major The Odyssey spoilers.
One of the most chilling antagonists and nightmares offered in Christopher Nolan’s The Odysseyis neither sirens nor the cyclops, the hospitality of Circe or the dreaded gates Hades. Instead it’s a whisper, a rumor spread across the wind, from Odysseus’ dear and distant Ithaca to the great halls of Sparta. It is vague and ominous tales of “the Sea People.” These apparent strangers emerging from parts unknown along the Aegean and Ionian Seas are spoken about in the movie as an existential threat greater than old King Priam of Troy could ever hope to muster.
Yet come the movie’s end, the weary and grayed Odysseus played by Matt Damon offers a more ominous theory about who the Sea People are and why they will mark the ruin of the Ancient Mycenaean civilization we witness throughout the story. It’s a curious and somewhat surprising innovation since, unlike nearly everything else in Nolan’s Odyssey, the Sea People of the film appear nowhere in Homer.
While Nolan’s film is a surprisingly dense retelling of nearly every misadventure Odysseus has on his way home to Penelope (Anne Hathaway), the Sea People are from real history, as opposed to pure myth. And to this day, many historians and classists debate whether they caused or were symptoms of the catastrophic events that brought about the collapse of the Bronze Age and ushered centuries of darkness into Greece. They certainly spelled doom for several of the ancient Mycenaeans’ greatest neighbors, which ironically, has roots in the Trojan War as well…
The Real Sea Peoples and the Ruin of the World
During the Bronze Age in which The Odyssey is set, the city-state of Ugarit was one of the greatest coastal powers along the eastern Mediterranean. Located in what is modern day Syria, it was neighbors to the Hittites and Egyptians during the New Kingdom’s height, and was a respected port by the Ancient Greeks during their alleged Age of Heroes.
They were also the first to fall.
“The enemy ships are already here,” the last King of Ugarit desperately fretted in a message intended for his counterpart in what is modern day Cyprus. “They have set fire to my towns and done very great damage in my countryside.” The message was never delivered. Instead it was discovered by modern archaeologists still in the rubble of the kiln in which it was being fired onto a clay tablet. But by that point, it was already too late. The king’s city—which was left undefended when he sent armies to help another ally being invaded by people from the sea—was sacked and torn asunder, its history left in ruins. Ugarit was never rebuilt.
This is one of many accounts that historians and archaeologists have relied on to piece together the mystery of the Sea Peoples, a term which was adapted by 19th century French Egyptologists to describe all the ominous accounts in Egyptian texts about various naval forces and invaders that sought to conspire against the armies of the pharaohs during the 19th and 20th dynasties. Ugarit would hardly be the only city to fall to this threat either.
As written in Toby Wilkinson’s lively popular history, The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt, “All along the eastern seaboard of the Mediterranean, cities were being sacked and torched, harbors burned and looted, entire nations laid low. While coastal communities had been harried by pirates for decades, this new onslaught was of an entirely different order of magnitude. Most frightening of all, it had come out of the blue, the sighting of enemy ships on the western horizon being the first warning of an impending attack… As Egypt watched from afar, great cities and civilizations were reduced to rubble, and the cultural achievements of centuries went up in smoke.”
Indeed, the death of Ugarit was foreboding enough, but one of Egypt and the Mycenaean Greeks’ greatest rivals, and occasional ally, the Hittites, were brought also to ruin by invaders from the sea, with the Hittite ruler’s final urgent diplomatic messages likewise writing of fighting a sea-borne enemy. Hattusa, the seat of power for the Hittite Empire, was completely decimated and the grain storehouses emptied bare. Afterward all written historical records of the Hittites simply stop.
To be clear, there is scholarly debate to this day whether the Sea Peoples actually caused the catastrophic ruin of the Bronze Age or whether they were a symptom of it. The Hittites, for one, were suffering heavily from droughts before invasion, and being cut off from neighbors who were also sacked by the mysterious ships from the western Mediterranean meant entire economies reliant on trade might have collapsed before any city was put to the torch. And if the Sea People were themselves likely fleeing drought or famine, they might have just been a symptom of a larger ecological collapse.
Be that as it may, there is strong archaeological evidence, and written records in Egypt, which suggest invaders from the sea exacerbated or instigated widespread destruction, including in the Mycenaean city-states glorified by Homer. By the 12th century BCE, the Mycenaeans had a written language and network of kingdoms that could supplant the Minoan civilization on Crete and rival the Hittites to the Near East, including, possibly, the city we now call Troy. Yet like those neighbors, they too suffered invasion, economic ruin, and finally a collapse so catastrophic that the Greeks would enter a three-century period of illiteracy and regression that scholars now call (or fight against calling) “the Greek Dark Ages.”
Interestingly, a major reason we have a decent idea about this catastrophic ruin is because of the one empire these invaders could not bring low. As proudly boasted upon on the walls of Mediate Habu, a mortuary temple for Ramses III on the West Bank of the Nile outside of Luxor, as well as on the walls of ancient Thebes’ Karnak complex, various people “from the sea” attempted to invade Egypt on several occasions, including along the Nile Delta in the 12th century BCE. The Egyptians, however, lured the invaders’ apparently greater and more advanced naval force into the narrow mouth of the Delta, and obliterated these ships with archers, and capsized them with grappling hooks, leading to mass drownings. The survivors were enslaved.
Where Did They Come From?
The term Sea Peoples, emphasis on the plurality, is again a modern creation by 19th century Egyptologists who were using it as a catch-all for various tribes and invaders, some mysterious and some known, during the 12th and even 13th centuries BCE. In actual Egyptian texts, they were referred to as “of/from the sea,” and they included among their ranks the Peleset, a possible forerunner to the Philistines who settled in biblical Canaan. There were also the Sheridan, who probably hailed from Sardinia and parts of Greece, not to mention possible Aegean Greeks referred to as the Denyen. There is also evidence to believe some of these seafaring nomads hailed from the Anatolian peninsula in what is modern day Turkey, and others from the Etruscan civilization in Bronze Age Italy.
The truth is that the exact origin, or origins, of who the lone surviving Egyptian civilization passes down to us as “people of the sea” remains a great mystery. However, we do know that the entire Mediterranean underwent nearly a century of on/off drought and famines in the 12th century BCE. Thus an emerging popular theory is that many of the Sea Peoples were simply distant cultures—possibly the Etruscans or maybe further from western Europe—who sailed east in search of fertile and richer lands, taking food and wealth by force. Wilkinson writes they brought with them women, children, and ox-drawn carts, suggesting a mass migration. This in turn might have exacerbated the shaky economies of cultures like the Greek Mycenaeans, whose reliance on trade was already stressed by the droughts of the period.
Intriguingly, this idea is given some credence since a 2019 genetic study of skeletons from the Philistine city of Ashkelon proved there was common European DNA along the Levant (modern day Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan). This suggests there was some degree of exodus out of southern Europe near or during the Bronze Age collapse.
Who They Are in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey
The above is an overview of why the so-called Sea Peoples were so ominous in history, but their inclusion in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey seems to represent something else. Throughout the film, there are suggestions that like in Homer’s source material text, the right of guests as well as hosts is under threat in the times following the Trojan War. The cyclops is a cruel host to the Greeks he finds hiding inside his cave, but the suitors who would seek to marry Penelope and steal the home of Odysseus and his son Telemachus (Tom Holland) also take advantage of the Ithaca’s formal recognition of guests’ rights (or “Zeus’ law” in the film).
As the movie progresses, what we are witnessing is no less than a collapse of civic values and respect for Zeus’ law, as well as Greeks for their fellow man. At the beginning of the story, Telemachus scoffs at his mother for suggesting their house or civilization could ever come to ruin. Look at their great home! But it is in that exact house Odysseus must stain with the blood of usurpers and pretenders who drink his family’s wine, eat their meat, and yet would not dare share it with a starving beggar when Odysseus arrives in disguise.
Odysseus ultimately surmises to Penelope that all these stories about raiders from the sea are not mysterious foreign invaders: it is the ruined and scarred survivors of the Trojan War returning home, devoid of their civility and humanity. Worse, it is a new generation inspired by the utter depravity Odysseus showed the Trojans by offering a gift of peace as a pretext for mass rape and slaughter.
We are the Sea People, the movie all but states.
This rather cutely ties into the debate of the Sea People’s origins, including some scholarship that believes some of the tribes the Egyptians named were of Greek origin. Furthermore, while the existence of a historical city of Troy is agreed upon, some have speculated the actual city-state, a vassal of the Hittites, was destroyed by the Sea Peoples. But that’s all Greek in Nolan’s movie!
It all gets thematically to Nolan’s greater point: the collapse of civilization comes from within, and from the corruption and erosion of literal civility. One need not squint too hard and see parallels to today in Robert Pattinson Antinous, a rich man’s son who buys his way out of military service and prances and pretends to be a great warrior while trying to steal another man’s wife. He is the epitome of civic values gone to rot.
Still, as someone who actually stood in Temple of Ramses III in Karnak, I cannot help but be bemused about Odysseus and Penelope fleeing the collapsing opulence of Mycenaean Greece by sailing into the west. If they want to escape the rot and ruin of the Sea People’s invasion, they’d best head southeast to the Nile!
The Odyssey is in theaters now.
EXCLUSIVE SNEAK PREVIEW: Dark Matter Season 2 Fan Screening, Special Giveaway Comes to San Diego Comic-Con
It’s been over two years since Dark Matter fans were left in superposition, that quantum state of Schrödinger’s cat who is both alive and dead inside the box, except the limbo state for viewers was the fate of Jason Dessen and his family. Were they safe at the end of season one, or were they in more danger than ever before?
Although Dark Matter’s return is still a month away, answers will be forthcoming for attendees of San Diego Comic-Con 2026 this year. Apple TV and Den of Geek will be hosting an exclusive fan screening of the first episode of Dark Matter season two on Friday, July 24 at 10 p.m. PST in Convention Center Room 6DE, so at least the immediate aftermath of the season one finale will be revealed.
Based on the novel of the same name, Dark Matter follows physics professor Jason Dessen (Joel Edgerton) after he’s kidnapped by an alternate version of himself and thrust into a labyrinth of parallel realities. As Jason searches for a way back to his wife Daniela (Jennifer Connelly), and son Charlie (Oakes Fegley), he discovers other lives he might have lived and learns more about the giant quantum box that makes the journey possible.
Dark Matter creator and executive producer Blake Crouch will be joined by Edgerton, who also is an executive producer on the show. Also on the panel will be Dayo Okeniyi, who plays quantum project investor Leighton Vance, as well as writer and executive producer Jacquelyn Ben-Zekryand executive producer Matt Tolmach. Those who attend the screening and panel will receive an exclusive limited edition Dark Matter poster to take home with them. Den of Geek host Sam Stone will MC the intro.
As we learned in our exclusive interview for the SDCC edition of the Den of Geek magazine, Dark Matter will move from themes of regret and reunion in the first season to survival and fulfillment in season two.
“I think season one in some ways is a very idealistic story,” Crouch says. “This man who’s in love with his life but has some dissatisfaction is thrust through this wild sci-fi journey where he learns that the things that bugged him about his life are actually what make it special. But now what? How do you keep your family when all of the idealistic trappings fall away, and you have nothing, and you’re stuck trying to find a world that’s safe enough to settle in?”
Edgerton agrees that season two has a deeper morality to explore. “Season two has this feeling of what happens next when you release technology,” he says. “It’s like a gun: a gun could sit on a table and not hurt anyone for a hundred years, but what hand holds the gun? Season two is watching different hands hold the gun and what they do with it. How does it influence ego? How does it become a tool to help the world? How does it become destructive? How does it become a selfish, personal tool?”
If you’re attending the convention this summer, be sure to stop by Convention Center Room 6DE at 10:00 p.m. on Friday, July 24 for this exclusive screening of the Dark Matter season two premiere. And read our full interview with the panelists in the SDCC edition of the Den of Geek magazine, available for free to all convention attendees.
Dark Matter season two premieres on Friday, August 28 on Apple TV.
The Odyssey: Lupita Nyong’o is a Master of Dual Roles
This article contains spoilers for The Odyssey.
The Odyssey just opened on Thursday night, but that’s already enough time to completely disregard the dumbest criticism heading into the film. Some observers had complained about director Christopher Nolan’s decision to cast Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy, the woman whose coupling with the prince Paris “launched a thousand ships,” in Christopher Marlowe’s words, and started the Trojan War.
Obviously, these were always bad faith takes, more about the fact that Christopher Nolan would cast a Black woman as a character they assumed was white (despite the fact that actual scholars show that such distinctions were irrelevant to the Greeks). Moreover, these criticisms completely ignore the fact that, in addition to being a cosmopolitan polyglot, Nyong’o is also an Academy Award-winning actress and an international model. Perhaps most importantly of all, the role actually calls for two performances, as Nyong’o plays both Helen and her sister Clytemnestra. And if there’s one thing that Nyong’o does well, it’s play two identical characters, especially if they’re scary.
Twice as Important
We meet Nyong’o’s character midway through The Odyssey, when Odysseus’ son Telemachus (Tom Holland) visits the Spartan king Menelaus (Jon Bernthal), who fought with Odysseus (Matt Damon) in the Trojan War. Telemachus hopes that Menelaus knows where his father has been, but instead learns more about Odysseus’ brilliant tactic of constructing the Trojan Horse. At the same time, Telamachus meets Menelaus’ wife Helen, who glares at her husband through her scarred face, belying her servile position.
The information proves just as useful to viewers as it does to Telemachus. Through Menelaus, we learn the full legend of the Horse, and of the soldiers’ esteem for Odysseyus. But through Helen, we learn about how others suffer because of soldiers’ decisions. The Greek king Agamemnon (Benny Safdie) sacrificed Iphigenia, the daughter he had with Helen’s sister Clytemnestra, to the goddess Artemis. Clytemnestra greeted Agamemnon and celebrated his return from the Trojan War. But then she murdered her husband in revenge, and was eventually killed by she and Agamemnon’s son, Orestes.
In Homer’s text, Agemmonon reveals his fate to Odysseyus from the afterlife, a plot point repeated in Nolan’s film. Further, the film tells the viewer about the sacrifice of Iphigenia relatively early, and there too foregrounds Agamemnon’s perspective. These two decisions prioritize Agamemnon, framing his decision to sacrifice his daughter as something necessary, if not noble, to win the war. Agamemnon emphasizes his own suffering when telling Odysseus about Clytemnestra’s revenge, which sets up the hero’s decision to disguise himself when he returns to Ithaca.
However, the decision to place Helen’s telling of Clytemnestra’s story in the middle prevents us from fully sympathizing with Agamemnon, and sets up the themes that Nolan will develop in the movie’s final hour. For that, he needed an actor capable of playing two women, equal in beauty and ferociousness. For that, he needed Lupita Nyong’o.
Twice as Terrifying
At the end of the first act of Jordan Peele’s Us, the wild-eyed Red spins a yarn to her captors, the Thomas family. She tells about a little girl who came with her parents to a seaside carnival, only to get lost in a house of horrors. There she met her double, who locked her in the tunnels under the carnival and escaped to the world. The double went on to have a perfect life, complete with a loving husband and two perfect kids. Trapped in the labyrinth, the girl experienced only pain and suffering, forced to live with brutal, imperfect grotesques of the double’s family.
So powerful is Red’s story that it forces the audience to forget the inconsistent logistics of Us‘ world and overwhelms viewers with its thematic resonance and emotional power. Red, the lost girl, and Adelaide, the double who took her place, are both played by Nyong’o, who fully embodies the latter’s terror at losing what she loves and the former’s anger at a life stolen from her. Through her performance, we understand the point that Jordan Peele wants to make about the inability of class distinctions to separate people and the impossibility of looking away from the suffering of the lower classes.
That weighty material comes through in the way Nyong’o plays Red and Adelaide during the aforementioned confrontation. As Red, Nyong’o squeezes her words through a shattered windpipe, as if the simple of act speaking took great labor. As Adelaide, Nyong’o remains wary and tense—scared about what might happen to her family, for certain, but also more aware about who Red and these doppelgängers are than her family realizes.
With the way she twists her body to play Red and the way she holds her head to play Adelaide, Nyong’o communicates to the audience both the profound connection and stark differences between these two women. She conveys entire themes with just the slightest gestures. Which makes her the ideal person for Nolan’s take on Homer’s epic.
Twice As Powerful
Like most Nolan stories, The Odyssey is about a man who feels immense guilt over the way his actions have separated from his family. But it’s also about the cost of seeking power, a theme present in the director’s work since Inception and The Dark Knight, and most pronounced in Oppenheimer. While he explicitly lays out those themes when Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, recounts to his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) about his violation of Zeus’s law and murder of Athena’s priestess (Zendaya), he sets it up with the story of Helen and Clytemnestra.
The rage of Clytemnestra appears in flashback. It’s only through other people’s stories that we see her pushing against soldiers to rescue Iphigenia, and later attacking Agamemnon. Her rage and her anguish exist in the past, mitigated by other people’s narratives, turned into a character in their stories.
But that’s not the case with Helen. When Helen turns toward Telemachus to glare at him past Menelaus, her gaze burning all the brighter because of the scars around her eyes, her anger is present and real and cannot be dismissed by her husband’s tales of glory to his young, adoring guest. In that stare, Odysseus isn’t just some brilliant adventurer. He’s a brute.
Helen only gets a few minutes of screen time, and most of that is spent standing quietly as the trophy for Menelaus she is. For that reason, she needed to make her words and her rage count, because she wasn’t just speaking for herself—she was speaking for her sister and, by extension, all the casualties of war. Thus, Nolan needed an actor who wasn’t just beautiful and talented and could carry herself like a queen. He needed a first-class actor who excels in dual roles, which is exactly what he got with Lupita Nyong’o.
The Odyssey is now playing in theaters worldwide.
15 Actors Who Showed That Age Really is Just a Number
There comes a point when most actors begin choosing smaller roles or slowing down altogether. Others go in the opposite direction. Some return to major franchises, some take on physically demanding action movies, and others deliver career-best dramatic performances well into their 70s, 80s, or even 90s. These performances proved that talent, experience, and screen presence don’t disappear with age.
Here are 15 actors who showed that age really is just a number.
Playing Sherlock Holmes at 93 required McKellen to carry nearly every scene, shifting between different stages of the detective’s life while delivering one of the strongest performances of his later career.
Weaver took on performance-capture work and portrayed a teenage character despite being in her 70s, an unusual challenge that required both physical and technical preparation.
At 65, Bening trained extensively to portray long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad, taking on one of the most physically demanding performances of her career.
Even after decades of acclaimed performances, Fiennes continued taking emotionally demanding leading roles that relied almost entirely on dialogue and subtle expression rather than spectacle.
Silo Season 3’s Best and Worst Twists Are Canceling Each Other Out
This article contains Silo season 3 spoilers.
Siloseason 2 ended with a major shift in narrative. No longer would we be entirely focused on the trials taking place inside the show’s dingy, post-apocalyptic underground silos; we were also granted the chance to go back in time and finally find out how and why pockets of survivors got stuck in them. It was a twist not only faithful to Hugh Howey’s Silo book series, but also a much-needed jolt of energy for the Apple TV show, which had slowed its pace considerably in its second season to focus on character building.
Season 2’s dual perspective of the events taking place in Silos 17 and 18 was replaced by a new dual perspective: the aftermath of Juliette’s return to Silo 18 in the present and Daniel and Helen’s investigation into the plan to retaliate against Iran’s dirty bomb attack on Washington, D.C., in the past. In the latter’s flashbacks, we were out in the “real world” where our new characters, a conflicted congressman and a determined journalist, could move freely for the first time, darting around from pubs to government buildings and parks as an exciting political conspiracy unfolded.
Silo felt renewed and energized. It was also a relief to be fully outside for once because that’s all we want for our survivors in the present, isn’t it? A return to the freedom of the world, liberated from the threats of the insidious Legacy AI and the spiral staircase that leads some poor souls down to the dreaded mines, should they make a serious enough mistake. But as exciting as it’s been to see Daniel and Helen form an allegiance and begin digging into the chain of events that will lead to siloed existence, that remarkable and invigorating twist has arguably been undermined by the one unfolding in the present day, and as Silo season 3 flits between those two stories, the excitement of the past is being canceled out by the infuriating present-day scenes of Juliette’s amnesia plotline.
Juliette’s forced memory suppression at the hands of a Legacy-pilled Camille Sims is not a part of Howey’s Silo books. In the source material, Juliette instead triumphantly returns to Silo 18, becomes mayor, and sets about bringing reform to the silo. She does not forget her time outside; that particular twist is a major deviation from the books, introduced by the show’s writers… and it is absolutely exasperating.
When a main character in any show has memory loss, intrigue is typically at a minimum. The audience suddenly knows much more than the character and has to twiddle their thumbs, waiting for them to catch up with the story. In Silo’s third season, Juliette revisits people and places she should recognize but doesn’t, asks redundant questions, and chases answers that the show has already given us. Her slow progress is enormously frustrating. In the first three episodes of season 3, Juliette still hasn’t caught up, and despite the looming threat of a deadly “safeguard” if she and Lukas Kyle begin telling people what they know, Juliette’s scenes feel like a holding pattern as the show spins its wheels and delays key events.
Season 3 currently has a real problem: half of the show is treading water, while the other half makes you lean forward in your seat and try to pay attention again before being drawn back into yet another scene where Juliette tells a character she simply can’t remember why they matter. It’s a different problem from the one season 2 had, but it’s a problem nonetheless.
Although some people enjoyed the second season’s slower storytelling, others found it a struggle to get through, especially toward the end of the season, when the writers spent a large handful of episodes finally getting Juliette back to Silo 18 to save its denizens from mass death. In contrast, season 3 is giving many of its viewers a constant sense of whiplash. One minute, Daniel and Helen are on the case, tracking down evidence and exposing another piece of the Silo puzzle; the next, the temptation sets in to scroll on their phone while Juliette says “I don’t know you” to someone else who would simply love to get the plot back on track.
To be sure, it’s clear that Doctor Victor Crnkovich, performing his controversial tests on memory suppression and recall in the past, is how Legacy and IT end up messing with memories in the present. These two plot points may indeed converge in a different, surprising way later in the season. After all, a vital, underlying part of Silo’s narrative is that those in charge of the silos can (and do) use forced amnesia to control individual identities and those of its societies, preventing rebellion and free thought. However, that doesn’t make Juliette’s memory loss scenes any less frustrating.
It does feel like there was a missed opportunity to choose a different narrative path for the show’s main character so that this season could truly improve on the one that preceded it. Unfortunately, in order to make the third season feel satisfying as a whole, there needs to be a whole lot of momentum in the present-day story, and fast.
New episodes of Silo season 3 premiere Fridays on Apple TV.
Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey vs. Homer’s Epic Poem: What Are the Differences?
This article contains major The Odyssey spoilers.
In more than a few ways, The Odysseyfeels like a film Christopher Nolan has been working up to his entire career. At least three of his most popular movies are the story of a husband or father trying to reclaim their idea of home after leaving for long stretches in order to do great, terrible things. And what is Batman but a guy unable to find a domestic peace, whether in Gotham or far from it, after his family was stolen?
So Homer’s epic poem Odyssey (or Odýsseia in the original Ancient Greek) proves not only foundational for Western literature writ large, but also the very intimate muses that drive Nolan. What might surprise viewers who never read a translation of Odyssey—or only have dim memories of the cyclops and Sirens from early school days—is that right down to Homer’s original structure, the story intrinsically lends itself to Nolan’s instincts.
Like many of the director’s films, the epic poem from the 8th century BCE is a nonlinear tale that begins near the end, with Odysseus long absent from his throne on Ithaca and his beloved wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway on the screen). Meanwhile the Greek king has for years lived lost in a kind of delirium on a remote island with the sea nymph Calypso (Charlize Theron in the new movie). Odysseus (Matt Damon) is then forced to relive his memories—although the circumstances of why changes radically in adaptation—and revisits his past in order to return home, much the same way that Leonardo DiCaprio’s Cobb confronts what happened in his own life during Inception.
In retrospect, it probably shouldn’t have surprised us so much that Homer and Nolan fit each other. Even so, changes were made, characters omitted, and paradigm-shifting subplots added. So what are the major differences between Homer and Nolan’s tale of one man’s voyage after the Trojan War? Well…
The Islands Not Visited
It would be impossible to list every minor shift made by Nolan in the adaptation process, not least of which includes far more modernized dialogue, but there is also a danger of taking a too sweeping overview. From a gods’ eye vantage, The Odyssey (2026) is remarkably faithful to the basic plot credited to Homer. Still, there remain acute changes with profound ripples.
In terms of the overall structure, nearly every island Odysseus visits in the poem appears onscreen, as do most of the key threats: the cyclops named Polyphemus, the alluring Sirens who draw men to their deaths, the sea monsters Charybdis and Scylla—the whirlpool and multi-headed beastie that devours six of Odysseus’ crew—and even a detour to the edge of the world and mouth of Hades.
Yet there are a few exceptions that even Nolan couldn’t squeeze into his swiftly edited three-hour epic. The most notable is the Phaeacians from the island of Scheria. In Homer’s text, it is on their shores, and not Ithaca, that Odysseus washes up after abandoning Calypso to travel by raft. This actually occurs near the start of the narrative since a beaten but apparently quite sexy Odysseus charms the Phaeacian princess Nausicaa, who takes him home to her parents. They wine and dine Odysseus and after hearing a poet romanticize the fall of Troy, he weepingly reveals his identity and then tells the story of his misadventures at sea. This is how the reader/listener learns of most of the misfortunes, from giants to a sun god’s cattle.
It is clear why Nolan cut this: it would be yet one more stop on an already long journey. Furthermore, this one seems to exist so Odysseus has a great banqueting hall to recount his story of monsters and gods before. In Nolan’s film, Odysseus is instead forced to painfully remember these details to Calypso as a kind of detox from the Lotus flower. Nonetheless, its inclusion in the poem is key to the larger theme about guests’ rights. The Phaeacians treat Odysseus with hospitality and are the ones to eventually sail the forlorn Greek back to his homeland with treasure to boot—an act that angers Poseidon so greatly that their island is cursed for helping Ithaca’s rightful ruler.
Similarly missing is Odysseus’ crew having a run in with the Lotus flower at the start of their travels. Its omission is perhaps to spare a certain redundancy with Odysseus’ own later addiction to the plant, but before even the cyclops, Homer briefly acknowledges the crew arrived on Djerba where they met the famous Lotus-eaters, who drift through eternity with empty heads while eating a flower as sweet as honey. At the time, Odysseus does not partake and admonishes his crew for doing so and forgetting their home. Just as he must later reprimand them when Aeolus, King of Aeolia, gifts Odysseus’ fleet a bag containing such strong winds that it would carry them all the way to Ithaca, defying the gods’ wills. Alas, his crew opens the bag when Ithaca is within sight and they’re blown wildly off course.
In the same vein, the exploits of Telemachus, Odysseus’ son played by Tom Holland, are condensed with the young man simply meeting Menelaus and Helen in Sparta in the new movie. In Homer, he first meets with the far wiser King Nestor in Pylos, who advised Agamemnon during the Trojan War and was second only to Odysseus in wits, before traveling on to Sparta (which, for the record, is landlocked and not on the water).
What’s in a God or Monster?
The perhaps biggest visceral change, then, is not the overall plot or scope, but how Nolan interprets ancient mythology for a modern audience. In other words, how his film tellingly begins with the words “In a time of apparent magic.”
There is indeed just enough wiggle room to suggest plausible deniability for much of the magic and “supernatural” elements we see in the film. While there is a cyclops and all the rest, we only learn of this from Odysseus as he is trying to mend his shattered mind with Calypso. An interpretation could be made that he is an unreliable narrator. We certainly can confirm that the version of Athena, goddess of wisdom and strategic warfare, is a manifestation of Odysseus’ own guilt. As revealed at the end of the movie, the goddess, whom only Odysseus can see walk by his side, is a projection of a young Trojan woman played by Zendaya. She is also the woman Odysseus witnesses being murdered by his countrymen on the night Troy fell, and right at the moment a statue of Athena is desecrated.
Personally, I reject this Rashomon-like interpretation. Every time justice is threatened or meted out in the “present” of the story, an approving rumble of thunder bellows from Zeus’ sky. It is the same thunder on a cloudless day that causes Calypso to accept she needs to stop feeding Odysseus the Lotus, meaning she only lets him go because Papa Zeus commanded it.
With that said, the gods are very real in Homer’s Odyssey and frequent supporting characters. Right down to being able to survive fighting the 108 suitors almost single-handedly (though in the original, Odysseus’ son and loyal swineherd slave also helps out), Odysseus is blessed with Athena’s company and aid. Athena is also visible to mobs who want Odysseus dead at various points, as well as to Penelope and Telemachus at times (though she takes different forms as disguise). The raging Poseidon and the largely apathetic Zeus appear frequently in the text.
Furthermore, the fantasy elements that Odysseus recounts in both versions of the tale are far grander and/or weirder in Ancient Greek. Not only can the cyclops speak like the movie, but he has jaunty conversations (at least in his view) with Odysseus. His name is Polyphemus and he likes to ask the Greeks he eats over his roaring fire, including when he asks Odysseus his name. Odysseus, ever the trickster, says, “I am called Noman.” So when Polyphemus is blinded, his cycloptic neighbors living further up in the hills of that island come to his blocked cave dwelling to answer his screams. “Polyphemus, who has hurt you?” they ask. He shrieks, “No-man has hurt me!” So they shrug and leave.
Ain’t that Odysseus a stinker? (His real mistake is then boasting after his escape to the blinded giant that he is actually Odysseus! Son of Laertes!! King of Ithaca!!! Oh, dear.)
Calypso lives in far grander luxury as a divine sea nymph, as does Circe. In fact, one of the years Odysseus loses is because he spends 12 months making love to a far more comely Circe in her palace after she turns his men back to humans. Frankly, I prefer the folk horror nightmare version played by Samantha Morton…
The Women of Troy and Greece
The change of Circe from seductive, if dangerous, goddess to brooding witch belies one of the larger and most intriguing thematic shifts in Nolan’s vision of the tale: an emphasis on the tragedy of women living in Ancient Greece (or really any location and time in history). Homer’s Odyssey is relatively progressive for its era when compared to the all-male and hero-worshiping The Iliad (leading to theories they were written by different poets or based on different oral traditions), with the plight of Penelope front and center throughout Odyssey.
Even so, Penelope is glorified purely on her ability of being a true and faithful wife despite the temptation of her many suitors, just as Circe’s magic seems tied to her divine allure. By contrast, Nolan’s Circe is a woman who has clearly been wronged by soldiers and warmongers, insisting her magic doesn’t turn men to pigs but rather reveals their true nature. Others become deer or lions, but the men who sacked Troy transform to swine, and Odysseus doesn’t seem to dispute the point when she calls them murderers and rapists. This ties into Odysseus’ greater shame when he recalls the death of “Athena” before his eyes in a sacking that ancient Greeks like the poet we call Homer glorified as a conquest of many women taken into bondage and as prizes.
This is most amplified by the depiction of Helen in the film. Despite what Wolfgang Petersen movies tell you, Helen did not escape the fall of Troy and was instead taken back by her estranged Greek husband Menelaus. Other ancient storytellers acknowledged the tragedy of this, with Helen being one of the many doomed titular characters in Euripides’ The Trojan Women, written some 400 years after Homer. But in Homer’s Odyssey, Helen is a dutiful wife to Menelaus who refers to the war as a fight by Greeks “on account of my most shameless self,” and furthermore tells Telemachus she felt great gladness when Troy was sacked because she yearned for home after the “wrong that Aphrodite had done me in taking me over there, away from my country, my [daughter], and my lawful wedded husband, who is indeed by no means deficient either in person or understanding.”
Helen is, in other words, happy to again be Helen of Sparta and an apparent victim of the gods’ meddling in mortal affairs, condemned to love a Trojan prince only because of a spell cast by the goddess of love. In Nolan’s movie… not so much. Helen is obviously a captive in a hateful marriage with a spiteful husband who intentionally beat half her face to ruin. She also begs Telemachus’ forgiveness for all the horror that was wrought in her name.
Speaking of Agamemnon, as in all versions of the Trojan War—except bizarrely the 2004 movie—the great king of the Mycenaeans is among the first to return home… where he is promptly murdered by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. In Homer, it is Aegisthus who does the final deed, but only with Clytemnestra’s approval and aid. Yet the way Homer and almost every ancient Greek text writes about the event sounds much more similar to Jon Bernthal’s Menelaus than the horror most modern readers/viewers have toward a Greek king who sacrifices his daughter for favorable winds. In the ancient mind, it’s an act of justice when their son Orestes killed his mother, as well as Aegisthus, in revenge for the death of a father.
Homer was not alone in this opinion. Sophocles’ Electra play positions the titular character and daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra as a tragic but dutiful daughter who also rightly slaughters her mother—the fact that her “dear” father sacrificed her sister to the gods never even really enters the equation. In the ancient view, Clytemnestra is “the slut of a murderess” (as per the Samuel Butler translation of Odyssey). Conversely, in Nolan’s movie, it is the fact that Agamemnon murdered his own daughter which horrifies Odysseus and Penelope into accepting that he must go to Troy. Both are disturbed by the lengths this man will go to conquer the rival city-state. They also implicitly value women more than Agamemnon or his brother Menelaus. They certainly have a happier marriage.
The Legacy of the Trojan War and Odysseus
It is on the point of Odysseus’ values that we mark the greatest differences between text and screen. While in all tellings, Odysseus is the cleverest and most cunning of the Greeks, it is how he lives with that burden of greatness that strikes a far more poignant tone in the movie. The literary Odysseus is heartbroken and pained by his inability to get home, often lamenting his lot as a victim of the gods. But there is little in the way of introspection about his past deeds beyond mistakenly revealing his name to the cycloptic son of Poseidon. Whereas the core tragedy of Odysseus in Nolan’s movie is the bitter shame he feels over unleashing the beastliness of men onto Troy, particularly the dead city’s women and children.
Odysseus hides himself in disguise from Penelope and Telemachus when he finally returns home not to test Penelope as the ghost of Agamemnon suggests (and which his literary counterpart intends), but because he also wants to make sure he is not too much changed to be unworthy or unrecognizable to the wife he abandoned. It is only by her side he admits that by engineering his greatest trick, the wooden horse, he unleashed a new world of carnage and horror.
It doesn’t take much squinting to recognize the film as a companion piece to Oppenheimer, or even a sequel. Both star great men who are lionized for their brilliance and ability to win grueling wars, but the consequences of that victory are devastating and worldending. That is literally so in the case of Oppenheimer, even if no one has pushed “the red button” since 1945, but in this new Odyssey, the Trojan Horse and subsequent sacking of a civilization shamed the Greeks, making them crueler and more savage than when they left their homes 10 years prior. It is rather awkwardly posited by Odysseus to Penelope that the horse alone turbocharged the fall of their Mycenaean world.
The latter is based on real matters of antiquity, but not Homer. At the end of the Bronze Age, there was indeed a mysterious group called “people from the sea” by the only civilization to successfully resist them: the New Kingdom Egyptians. The Ancient Egyptian chroniclers didn’t know where they came from, although some were likely Greek, many more might have been from the Levant (modern day Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan), or perhaps Etruscans (Italy) fleeing famine.
What we do know is they sacked and slaughtered numerous Mediterranean ports and towns, including felling the Hittite Empire, who counted among its vassals the city-state of Troy. Ergo, Nolan is blending the real collapse of the Bronze Age into his story, suggesting the Greeks who came home from, or were inspired by, the Trojan War and the murder of that civilization were the “Sea Peoples” who wiped out neighbors, including fellow Greeks, casting civilization back centuries to a world of intellectual darkness and ignominy.
One need not strain to see the implications for our own decay of institutional virtue and civic empathy for our fellow man. Perhaps there’s a lesson in Odysseus’ guilt?
A Bloody Homecoming and Final Exit
The Ithaca side of Nolan’s Odyssey also mirrors Homer in many ways, albeit with cosmetic changes in the margins. Odysseus’ beloved dog Argos, who only appears right before his death after 20 years of waiting for his master on the page, becomes a genuine supporting character appearing throughout the narrative as the much abused punching bag of the suitors. (In both versions, Odysseus finds Argos wasting away on a dung heap.) We similarly have more flashbacks introducing Odysseus’ history with other characters he meets on his return, including most fatefully Antinous (Robert Pattinson’s snide ringleader of suitors).
Antinous is also the worst in the original text, however other than the suitor admitting to seeing Odysseus hunting once as a boy, he has no backstory with the Greek hero. In Nolan’s film, we learn that not only is Antinous a coward, but he literally bought his way out of a proverbial draft lottery by getting his shepherd’s son to take his place in sailing off to Troy. (To my knowledge Elliot Page’s character Sinon does not appear in mythology until Virgil’s The Aeneid 700 years after Homer, where he is the Greeks’ other great liar who knows very well that Greeks are in the horse but manipulates the Trojans.) One of the most satisfying elements of the film is Odysseus returning to Antinous his shame, which feels like it might have pointed meaning for real-life tough-guy strongmen who avoided drafts and civic duty in their youth…
Also shifted in the finale is the addition of Odysseus saving Telemachus from a trap laid by suitors near the strait of Ithaca. In the poem, it is at sea and Athena does the saving, but in the film we get a pretty satisfying if obligatory fight scene. Shortly afterward in the poem, Odysseus straight up admits he is father to the boy. Telemachus does not figure it out on his own, nor does Penelope who speaks with her husband in disguise as a beggar but fails to clearly recognize him, as she does in the film. (There is some scholarly debate on that last bit, but Penelope seems so shocked by the news of the suitors’ death when a servant wakes her from her sleep on the page that I don’t believe she knew.)
Furthermore, the literary Penelope decides to test Odysseus to make sure he is not a god in disguise after all the bloodletting, proving perhaps why she is a perfect match for this man. Her test amounts to her asking him to move their bed into the hall, which he says cannot be done since he carved it with his own hands from an olive tree that grew from the base of what is now their house. It’s honestly a cute bit of domesticity… but it only comes after horrible violence.
Much like the film, the climax is a total bloodbath that begins after every suitor fails to string Odysseus’ bow and fire an arrow through 12 metal axes, albeit on the page Antinous is the first to die instead of the last. Additionally, Telemachus and the loyal slave Eumaeus (John Leguizamo), as well as another servant, help fight and slaughter every single last suitor. They even take it further and hang by the neck each slave girl who lay with one of the suitors, killing 12 in all in the most agonizing and humiliating method Odysseus could conceive. In Nolan’s film, only one enslaved woman, Mia Goth as a nameless servant, is presumably killed in the melee, although we never see it.
What is strikingly different is the aftermath. In the poem, murdering these suitors becomes a mild concern: Odysseus should face judgment from his neighbors and subjects since many of the lads were Ithaca’s sons and brothers. So after reconciling with his father Laertes—who is also cut from the film in favor of only Penelope and Telemachus—all three generations of the island’s royal men proudly stand against their subjects, debating who shall be manlier in facing the mob. Luckily, Athena intervenes at Zeus’ behest, forcing all sides to make peace.
Even so, Odysseus confides to Penelope that after their reunion, he must soon leave again, as Tieresias foretold, and sail west until he finds a land so far from the sea, the people know not even how to mix salt in their food! There he must make a sacrifice to Poseidon to receive full clemency from the gods and the vouchsafe to live peacefully into old age by Penelope’s side on Ithaca.
In Nolan’s movie, Penelope joins Odysseus on his final journey west with the knowledge they will never return. This is because the father violated Zeus’ law by murdering the suitors, and many times more by conceiving of the Trojan Horse. It is thus his penance that, like Moses from a different mythology, he will never get to enjoy the promised land of home. Instead he and Penelope will live in exile and their son will assume his rightful place as king and heir. Meanwhile Greece will fall into the historical dark age we know came shortly after this story is set. It combines the history of the Bronze Age collapse with Nolan’s sympathy and judgment of great men who do terrible things.
Still, unlike the literary Odysseus, one senses he’ll never leave his wife again. And as far as Nolan movies are concerned, that is the happiest of endings. Maybe they’ll even end up drinking wine by the Arno River in Italy.
The Odyssey is in theaters now.
15 Actors You Didn’t Realize Had Entirely Different Careers
Most actors spend years trying to build a career in Hollywood. A few got there by taking a very different route. Some had already become doctors, decorated soldiers, scientists, or professional athletes before anyone knew their names from movies, while others left acting behind to succeed somewhere completely different. Looking back, it’s hard to imagine these careers belonging to the same people.
Here are 15 actors you didn’t realize had entirely different careers.
Before making audiences laugh in The Hangover and Community, Jeong worked as a licensed physician specializing in internal medicine. He continued practicing medicine even after his acting career began to take off.
Away from movie sets, Lamarr co-developed a frequency-hopping communication system during World War II. The technology later influenced Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS.
After overcoming addiction and serving time in prison, Trejo worked as a substance abuse counselor. He landed his first acting job while helping someone on a film set.
Buscemi served as a New York firefighter before becoming an actor. Following the September 11 attacks, he quietly returned to help fellow firefighters at Ground Zero.
Jackson stepped away from acting for more than two decades to serve as a Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom before eventually returning to the screen.
Before becoming famous in Dracula, The Lord of the Rings, and Star Wars, Lee served in the Royal Air Force during World War II and later worked in intelligence.
15 Movies Where the Action is Clearly More Important Than the Plot
Think about the last action movie you really enjoyed. Chances are you remember the car chase, the fight, or the impossible stunt long before you remember the plot. That’s hardly unusual. Plenty of action movies are designed that way, putting all their energy into spectacular set pieces while keeping the story as simple as possible.
Here are 15 movies where the action is clearly more important than the plot.
The story could be summed up in a couple of sentences, but that’s never been the point. George Miller fills nearly every minute with practical stunts, vehicle chases, and explosive action that barely gives the audience time to catch its breath.
Jason Statham spends the entire movie racing across Los Angeles because his character can’t stop moving. The ridiculous premise exists mainly to connect one outrageous action sequence to the next.
Filmed almost entirely from a first-person perspective, the movie plays like a nonstop video game. The plot stays intentionally thin while the camera throws viewers into one fight after another.
The premise is straightforward: a SWAT team has to fight its way through a building full of criminals. Everything else revolves around brutal martial arts choreography that turned the film into a modern action classic.
Instead of slowing down after the first film, the sequel delivers even bigger fights, longer chases, and more elaborate set pieces. The story mostly exists to move the characters toward the next unforgettable showdown.
By the fourth movie, the rules of the assassin underworld matter far less than watching Keanu Reeves battle his way through increasingly creative action scenes. Every sequence tries to top the last one.
Arnold Schwarzenegger’s one-man rescue mission wastes very little time on character development. The movie quickly embraces explosions, impossible body counts, and one-liners that have become action movie history.
The face-swapping premise is completely absurd, but it gives John Woo an excuse to stage slow-motion shootouts, elaborate chases, and over-the-top action that audiences still remember decades later.
A plane full of dangerous criminals is exactly the kind of setup that allows for maximum chaos. The movie rarely pauses before throwing another explosion, fistfight, or impossible escape into the mix.
This was the moment the Fast & Furious series stopped pretending to be about street racing. The massive vault chase through Rio became the film’s defining image, overshadowing almost everything else
The plot mainly serves as an excuse to gather some of the biggest action stars of all time in the same movie. Watching them exchange punches, gunfire, and explosions is the real attraction.
Chris Hemsworth’s mission is easy enough to follow, but the movie is remembered for its extended “one-take” action sequence, which became its biggest talking point almost immediately after release.
Several assassins end up on the same train, but the constantly escalating fights and inventive choreography steal the spotlight. The increasingly chaotic action matters far more than untangling every twist.
The original First Blood explored the lasting effects of war, but the sequel shifted almost entirely toward large-scale combat. Explosions, helicopter battles, and impossible rescues became the movie’s real focus.
The movie openly embraces its own absurdity from the opening scene. Clive Owen dispatches enemies in increasingly ridiculous ways, making it clear that creative action—not realism—is the entire point.
15 Actors Who Got the Job Done in Their Youth, and Their Old Age
There comes a point when many actors stop landing leading roles, leaving the spotlight to a younger generation. Others never seem to reach that point. Some became stars before turning 30 and were still carrying major films or television series decades later. Looking at their careers side by side, it’s remarkable how many different eras of Hollywood they managed to dominate.
Here are 15 actors who got the job done in both their youth and their old age.
Ford became an international star with Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark before returning decades later to lead Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and the hit series 1923.
She earned acclaim as a teenager in Taxi Driver before returning later in life with award-worthy performances in films like Nyad and the fourth season of True Detective.
After becoming one of the defining stars of the late ’80s with Beetlejuice and Batman, Keaton experienced a remarkable comeback through Birdman, Spotlight, Dopesick, and Knox Goes Away.
After becoming famous as Captain Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation, Stewart returned to the role decades later while also continuing to lead major stage and screen productions.
Bassett broke through portraying Tina Turner in What’s Love Got to Do with It before delivering another career-defining performance as Queen Ramonda in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
Risky Business and Top Gun established Cruise as a leading man in his 20s. More than forty years later, he was still headlining the Mission: Impossible franchise.
McKellen had already built an acclaimed stage career before becoming a global movie star through The Lord of the Rings. Even into his 80s, he continued taking leading film and theater roles.
Mirren was already a respected actress in the 1970s before winning an Oscar for The Queen and continuing to headline everything from prestige dramas to blockbuster franchises.
Moore dominated Hollywood in the late ’80s and early ’90s with Ghost, A Few Good Men, and Disclosure. Decades later, she reminded audiences of her dramatic range with her acclaimed leading role in The Substance.
15 Movie Characters Everyone Thought Were the Villains… Until They Grew Up
Watching a movie as a kid and watching it again years later can completely change who you root for. Characters who once seemed mean, overly strict, or determined to ruin the hero’s fun suddenly make a lot more sense when you see the story from an adult perspective. Sometimes they were simply doing their jobs. Other times, they were reacting exactly as most people probably would in the same situation. They weren’t always perfect, but they also weren’t nearly as villainous as they first appeared.
Here are 15 movie characters many viewers eventually realized weren’t the real villains after all.
As kids, most viewers naturally rooted for Daniel LaRusso. Watching The Karate Kid years later, plenty of fans began questioning whether Johnny was really the biggest problem or just another teenager caught up in the rivalry.
Sharpay spends years preparing for the school musical, only to watch two complete newcomers walk in and immediately compete for the lead roles. Looking back, her frustration feels a lot more understandable.
She demands professionalism, expects people to take their jobs seriously, and refuses to lower her standards. As adults, many viewers realized she was often asking for competence more than perfection.
For most of the series, Snape comes across as cold, unfair, and determined to make Harry’s life miserable. Looking back after finishing the story, many viewers realized there was far more behind his actions than simple cruelty.
For years, plenty of viewers blamed Summer for Tom’s heartbreak. Watching the movie again as an adult, it’s much easier to see that she was honest about what she wanted from the very beginning. The real problem was Tom expecting her to become someone she never claimed to be.
Ego isn’t trying to tear Gusteau’s restaurant down out of spite. He’s a food critic whose job is to be honest, and when he experiences something truly extraordinary, he’s the first to admit it.
Peck questions an unregulated business storing dangerous supernatural equipment in the middle of New York. Looking at the situation as an adult, his concerns don’t seem nearly as unreasonable.
Tom spends his days trying to catch a mouse that’s constantly wrecking the house and making his life miserable. As adults, many viewers find themselves sympathizing with the cat instead.
As kids, Miranda often came across as the “mean” parent. Looking back, it’s much easier to understand why she was frustrated with Daniel’s constant irresponsibility.
James Bond constantly ignores orders, causes expensive damage, and takes enormous risks. Watching the movie as an adult, it’s much easier to understand why M is always frustrated with him.
As kids, Ken comes across as an obnoxious boyfriend. Looking back, his girlfriend really is spending all her time with a talking bee who’s clearly trying to win her over. His reactions suddenly seem a lot less ridiculous.
Sid looks like the neighborhood bully, but from his perspective, he’s just a kid taking toys apart to see how they work. Since he has no idea the toys are actually alive, his behavior suddenly seems a lot less sinister than it did growing up.
As kids, Magneto seemed like a straightforward supervillain bent on destroying humanity. Watching the X-Men movies as an adult, it’s easier to understand that his worldview comes from a lifetime of persecution. His methods are extreme, but his fears don’t come out of nowhere.
