What Digger’s Satire Should Have Learned from Paul Verhoeven
This article contains spoilers for Digger.
Something strange happens during the final credits for Digger. Not a sequel tease or an easter egg. Rather, we just watch as an audience files out of a theater and into post-apocalyptic streets, while Melanie’s folk song “What Have They Done to My Song Ma” plays. That is, until a buzzer cuts off the song and a voice declares, “Level 4,” leaving the rest of the credits to unfold in silence.
The declaration “Level 4” also occurred a few minutes earlier in the film, telling the characters on screen, an audience who has been watching a stage play about the final days of oil tycoon Digger Rockwell (Tom Cruise), that they needed to put on their masks to deal with the poor air quality outside. But this second declaration isn’t for the characters: it’s for us, the audience in the real world, indicating how we needed to leave the theater. And if you found that bit of fourth-wall-breaking clever, then you’ve responded exactly how Digger director Alejandro G. Iñárritu intended. And you’ve also done something that Paul Verhoeven, another raconteur who worked within the Hollywood system, would never dream of letting you do: condescend to the movie.
No One’s Gonna Save the World
According to the trailers that played in front of pretty much every movie released in the past few months, Digger tells the story of Digger Rockwell, a crass, larger-than-life oil tycoon whose company’s drilling creates a crack in the polar shelf. The crack sends a massive chunk of ice heading toward Norway, and then toward Alaska, killing thousands and causing worldwide environmental and economic chaos. While Digger and his advisers, including American President Compton (John Goodman) and scientist Nirav Ganesh (Riz Ahmed) debate ways of dealing with the disaster, showing more concern for saving face and preserving profits than they do lives.
All of that does unfold on screen, in big and loud sequences that recall sub-Coen Brothers slapstick films like The Men Who Stare At Goats or Get Low. But after the first act, the story stops to reveal that we’re actually watching an expensive stage play called Fossil Fools, several years after the events it’s depicting. Cruise is not playing Digger Rockwell, but rather Curtis Markson, portraying Rockwell. Moreover, the entire show is funded by the real Rockwell’s nephew Kenny (Jesse Plemons), who invites performers and audiences alike to laugh at the ego and foolishness of his family.
The reveal of Kenny’s involvement also reveals the movie’s central theme. Digger isn’t a satire about dumb capitalists and American warmongers. Rather, it’s a satire about satires about dumb capitalists and American warmongers. Kenny invites people to laugh at his family because it charges money. He’s still rich and powerful, even after his uncle nearly destroyed the world. The system has not changed. When the Fossil Fools audience hears the “Level 4” declaration, telling them that Digger’s actions have left the air unbreathable, they put on masks made by the Rockwell Corporation.
By the time the movie directs its “Level 4” declaration at us, the real audience, Digger‘s point is clear: big Hollywood satires do nothing to actually change the world, because they’re made by the people who run the world.
It’s a valid point, and one that’s hard to refute. We’ve all seen how Amazon pays for episodes of The Boys that mock Vought International or how Apple TV pays the creators of Severance to show a dystopian office that looks like an Apple store. Those in power don’t realize that these works mock them; more likely, they don’t care. Either way, it changes nothing.
But is Digger‘s satire more effective? It’s hard to believe that Paul Verhoeven would think so, precisely because Paul Verhoeven would never be as easy on his audience as Iñárritu is.
You’re Doing Your Part
Starship Troopers released to mixed reviews in 1997, but everyone agreed upon one thing: it had the makings of an exciting sci-fi action film. The story of good-looking teens seeking adventure and glory by joining the Earth military’s battle against invading bugs, Starship Troopers hits all the war movie tropes and contains plenty of thrilling action sequences.
By the movie’s climax, aloof jock Johnny Rico (Casper Van Dien) has risen through the ranks to lead the elite Roughnecks, pretty girl Carmen (Denise Richards) has become a captain, and the human forces have captured the Brain Bug orchestrating the enemy attacks. When psychic intelligence officer Carl (Neil Patrick Harris) reads the Brain Bug’s thoughts and declares, “It’s afraid,” the people stand up and cheer, and the movie invites us viewers to cheer with them: the music swells, the camera pans over the celebrating soldiers, the attractive heroes we’ve been following throughout the movie all smile together.
At no point does Starship Troopers break to point out that, in fact, it’s kind of depressing to cheer about a living creature’s fear. Nor does it point out that Carl’s dressed like an SS officer. Instead, it simply heightens the reactionary nature of the Robert A. Heinlein novel it adapts and uses classic Hollywood war movie tropes, and leaves it to the viewer to decide if they want to cheer, or if they can recognize that endless conflict renders any form of life meaningless.
Starship Troopers is hardly the only time Verhoeven’s exposed the nasty side of Hollywood tropes. His first American movie, Robocop, presents itself like a sci-fi action movie, with the violence and bloodlust heightened to ridiculous degrees. Showgirls follows the same plot as Gold Diggers of 1933 and Gold Diggers of 1937, musicals about starlets making it big in showbiz, but emphasizes all the exploitation and cruelty it involves. Basic Instinct goes beyond the sleaziness of a film noir to make the police utterly incompetent and craven.
Each of these films have moments that should turn the stomach of a viewer with a mildly functioning moral compass. The shot of a pre-teen joining Earth’s military in Starship Troopers—turning to the camera and declaring with a smile, “I’m doing my part!”—or the weak resolution to Nomi (Elizabeth Berkley) and Cristal’s (Gina Gershon) tensions in Showgirls undercut any good feelings the music and dialogue demand.
But Verhoeven’s movies never do what Digger does. They never break from the facade to create a second audience, an audience to whom the real viewers can condescend. Instead, they just force the real audience to face the awful things they find enjoyable, and to wrestle alone with the messages the movie gives them.
Not So Deep
Even within the Fossil Fools section of the movie, Digger raises questions about how to control the narrative, suggesting that the way a story is told often has more power than what the story’s about. That’s true, and Iñárritu’s not wrong to point it out. However, by giving a foolish, false audience, Digger suggests that it’s “other people” who hear and believe that false story. Whether viewers loved or hated watching Cruise bluster on the screen and listening to Goodman bellow about his anal cancer, the frequent shots of fake audience members crying and cheering at the end of Fossil Fuels assures the viewer that they aren’t taken in. They’re smarter than the dumb-dumbs who are cheering for Fossil Fuels because they see what Digger‘s trying to do.
That raises two problems. First, it completely ignores the fact that Iñárritu is actually the person making the big Hollywood movie for Warner Bros. (now David Ellison and Skydance), in the same way that most of Digger actually is the broad Hollywood satire it claims to mock. Second, it doesn’t actually address any questions about the role of propaganda and the power of the culture industry, nor of the function of popular art in a consumer society. Digger plays like someone wanting praise for having read the wiki entries about Theodor Adorno and Guy Debord.
Verhoeven avoids those pitfalls because his movies own their depravity. They have no respect for the audience, nor respect for themselves. They take their tropes to the furthest, most stomach-churning degrees and leave it to the audience to do with them what they will. If they cheer, so be it. If they’re revulsed, even better. But Verhoeven movies will never ask for self-satisfied applause, something Digger and Iñárritu want so badly.
Digger is now playing in theaters.
Den of Geek Returns to NYCC with VisionQuest Leading Its Variant Magazine Covers
Paul Bettany andVISIONQUESTare embarking on their final Marvel mission in the latest issue ofDen of GeekMagazine about to make landfall at New York Comic Con! The cover story includes an exclusive look into the Bettany and James Spader-led Disney+ limited series that will bring the curtain down on theWandaVisiontrilogy.
The October issue also comes with the magazine’s most packed spooky season preview yet, which includes deep dive interviews with Robert Eggers ahead ofWERWULF’s Christmas transformation, Takashi Yamazaki finally opening up about bringing backGODZILLA’s greatest foe, Mike Flanagan revealing how he got Stephen King’s blessing to reimagineCARRIE, and much, much more! Plus Mckenna Grace, Joseph Zada, and Francis Lawrence invite us to witness Hunger Games’SUNRISE ON THE REAPING!
Yearly subscriptions toDen of Geekmagazine make a triumphant return with TWO VARIANT COVER OPTIONS featuring Bettany and Spader available now.
New York, Oct. 5 –Den of Geek, the premier destination for pop culture enthusiasts and everything Comic Con is returning to Manhattan’s Hudson Yards in a massive way this October. On the cover of the latest issue of the magazine—which will also be available via Den of Geek’s network of shops, comic book store partners, and subscription—is the finale to the most daring trilogy in Marvel Studios history. Paul Bettany’s beloved synthezoid hero is finally confronting what it means to be human… and whether he still wants it.
“You’re meeting two characters when they’re on the fence about humanity,” showrunner Terry Matalas says in the issue about bringing back Vision and his “father,” the supervillain Ultron (James Spader). “And Ultron might have a better perspective than Vision on what it means to be human at this point.”
The ability to actually challenge audiences’ preconceived notions more than the superhero genre might get credit for also seems to be on Bettany’s mind. In the issue, he even reflects on memories of Captain America: Civil War from a decade ago: “Everywhere we went in America, two-thirds of the crowd were on Cap’s side. They believed we absolutely have the right, and indeed, we have the onus to police the world. And everywhere else in the world, it was two-thirds on Iron Man’s side. That’s fascinating.”
The fall issue also features exclusive sitdowns with the filmmakers and creatives behind:
GODZILLA MINUS ZERO
THE HUNGER GAMES: SUNRISE ON THE REAPING
CARRIE
ETERNALLY YOURS
THE SIMPSONS TREEHOUSE OF HORROR EPISODE THAT INSPIRED OBSESSION
CREEPY COMICS’ LEGENDARY IMPACT ON POP CULTURE
Plus a deep-dive profile with director ROBERT EGGERS, in which the WERWULF helmer explains his fascination with lycanthropes, learning to write in Middle English, and the reasons he might be so transfixed by historical authenticity and early modern muses like Shakespeare. “So much of this job, like any job, is when do you listen to the people around you who are more experienced than you, and when do you know this is my time to reinvent the wheel?”
By Experts. For Fans. Den of Geek is dedicated to serving the interests of today’s entertainment enthusiast. The brand reaches over 75 million users per month across all platforms and has become known for exclusive high-profile entertainment interviews and deep dives into geek culture. Den of Geek focuses on the hottest movies and TV shows, and explores the latest in games, books, and comics. Our magazine celebrates the buzziest releases on the entertainment calendar with beautiful layouts, exclusive imagery, and in-depth long reads.
Final Fantasy VII Revelation Is Shaping Up to Be the Biggest Final Fantasy of All Time
“One of the goals of the series was to scale up with each successive title,” observes Final Fantasy Remake trilogy director Naoki Hamaguchi ahead of the April 2027 release of Final Fantasy VII Revelation, the trilogy’s concluding installment. “Rebirth was big and each individual area was connected but one of the things about it was that it was wide. For Revelation, rather than just making everything feel wide, we really wanted to create this sense of scale and verticality with everything.”
To confirm, having played an early build of Final Fantasy VII Revelation at Tokyo Game Show 2026 where I spoke to Hamaguchi for this interview, Revelation is indeed still very wide but also very vertical, both in its depth and its gameplay. This is most saliently seen with the addition of the Highwind, a large airship that can fly around the planet and drop protagonist Cloud Strife and his fan-favorite friends in environments in an instant, with the party members exhilaratingly parachuting down to resume their exploration and battles on foot. This verticality has also extended to the return of the chocobo mounts, offering even more navigation options and activities than they had in 2024’s Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.
But more than just navigation and exploration, the combat feels deeper and more engaging than it had in 2020’s Final Fantasy VII Remake and Rebirth as well. Sure, the overarching combat system from the preceding games carries over to Revelation, but there are so many new features, customizations for all the playable characters, and brand-new party members joining Cloud as he seeks to stop the villainous Sephiroth from destroying the world. The synergy system, which has two characters perform a devastating joint technique returns here as well, but deepened and more varied than it had been in Rebirth.
“One thing we’re concerned about is if people approaching the game are using the same tactics over and over again,” Hamaguchi shares. “One of the goals of the synergy system is to experience different tactics and refresh the experience. People always ask about three-character synergy abilities. While they do exist, they can’t be spammed over and over because otherwise the battle would just be over if they would be relied upon constantly. Instead of being available for every battle, they’re available for key moments and key fights to bring the party together, ramp up the events, and make them more exciting.”
Just as Final Fantasy VII Rebirth saw the player party grow considerably from Final Fantasy VII Remake, Final Fantasy VII Revelation adds two new playable characters to the mix and we got to try both of them out. Cid Highwind, an ace pilot, and Vincent Valentine, an elite soldier experimented on by the mad scientist Hojo, both join the party early on in Revelation and each with their own distinct playstyles compared to the returning characters. With Cid, players can time their button inputs with the on-screen hits to optimize his techniques while Vincent can transform between different physical forms reflecting how he was changed by what Hojo did to him.
“We didn’t want Vincent or Cid to replace any of the other characters,” explains Hamaguchi. “We wanted them to feel separate but both special in a certain way. A good example with Cid is that, while Red XIII can fight exclusively on the ground, Cid fights really well in the air. For Vincent, he’s a very unique character. He can combat in close and long range, kind of like Cloud and Barrett. But in close range, he turns into Beast Mode. In Beast Mode, he becomes a little bit like a glass cannon, with his overall health reduced, so he can’t rely on that mode for too long.”
One of the coolest additions to Final Fantasy VII Revelation is the introduction of the FITS (Function Integrated Tactical Suitwear) system, changing up the characters’ outfits and combat roles within the wider party. The developers didn’t want to go with something as rigidly defined as the jobs system from past Final Fantasy games like Final Fantasy III, but something that added to further the customization options available to players on how they each prefer to play. Tying into the act of changing up character costumes adds a visual variety to the game that had been missing in its predecessors.
“It all stemmed from rather than having fixed roles for every single character, letting players customize them. They’re customizable into four different types, rather than just random jobs, using what was already there in the battle system,” shares Hamaguchi. “Originally, we did call it a job system internally. But we realized that if you call it a job system, it implies a lot of different things and we didn’t really want that. We came up with this concept of changing costumes. In Japanese, it’s called the wear system and, in English, it’s called the fit system to bridge the gap between the costumes and the customization.”
If you thought Final Fantasy VII Rebirth was a tremendous increase in scope and gameplay depth over Final Fantasy VII Remake, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Final Fantasy VII Revelation offers the most comprehensively sweeping Final Fantasy experience to date while offering an ambitious retelling of Final Fantasy VII’s final act and last stand against the villainous Sephiroth. While Naoki Hamaguchi has been working in this world and with its fan-favorite characters for years, he’s not finished with them yet, getting Revelation and its post-launch DLC ready to share with the world. That means the acclaimed game director hasn’t quite said goodbye to the characters just yet.
“Rather than feeling sad, there is a sense of reassurance once the game is out that we’ve done these characters proper,” Hamaguchi notes reflectively. “These characters are obviously very beloved, so we want to make sure that we’re doing them right and there’s a sense of reassurance that we did. At the moment, ‘sad’ is not the emotion that I would choose. But maybe later down the road, after it’s all said and done, I’ll want to pick it up and see these characters again.”
Developed and published by Square Enix, Final Fantasy VII Revelation releases April 8 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.
Lanterns Creators Sort of Clarify John Stewart’s Status After the Finale
This article contains spoilers for Lanterns season 1 episode 8.
To the surprise of no one, the season finale of Lanterns ends with John Stewart taking the ring and saying the oath to become the next Green Lantern of Earth. Well, that’s sort of what he does. He does have Hal Jordan’s old ring, and he does charge it on a Lantern, and he does say an oath. But the oath he recites isn’t the one that Jordan has said throughout the series, and the lantern he uses comes from Sinestro, not the Guardians, and even has fear laced into it. So what does that mean for Stewart and the future of Green Lantern?
Tom King and Chris Mundy, who created Lanterns with Damon Lindelof, have taken to Hollywood Reporter to kind of clarify. “John is not a hundred percent a Green Lantern anymore. He has an unsanctioned lantern that has a bit of yellow and a bit of fear in it,” King explained. “So he’s not saying the same oath as every other Green Lantern — just like a Yellow Lantern or an Orange Lantern says something different.” Citing an observation by series writer Justin Britt-Gibson, Mundy adds that John is “remixing” the oath. That’s an apt choice of words because, as surprising as John’s decision was, it does have precedent from the comics.
Before John recites his oath, he has one last confrontation with Guy Gardner, which sets the stage for the future of the character. John explicitly states that he won’t be part of the Green Lantern Corps, that he’ll be using the unsanctioned lantern that Sinestro forged for the Manhunter Noah. Moreover, John tells Guy that he’ll be patrolling Earth and that Guy—and, by extension, the Corps—are no longer welcome.
For King, John’s oath represents his distinction from the other Green Lanterns. “John is this utterly unique creation that he chose for himself. So getting his own unique oath seemed to line up very much with the lore and where we’re going from here,” he explained.
What this means for the future of the DCU is still unclear. We know that Aaron Pierre will be back as John Stewart for the Superman sequel Man of Tomorrow, as will Nathan Fillion as Guy Gardner. Whether or not that means that the two GLs will clash or work together while dealing with the threat of Brainiac—or that John will be sent to the off-planet prison of Salvation by Rick Flag and ARGUS—remains to be seen.
However, we can get some sense of future plans by looking at instances in the comics where Lanterns deviated from the Guardians or the rest of the Corps. John himself became a Guardian in his first solo series Green Lantern: Mosaic, in which he was tasked with protecting a planet made up of cities from different worlds. In recent series, especially Geoffrey Thorne’s Green Lantern run and Green Lantern: War Journal by Phillip Kennedy Johnson and Montos, John’s power scaled up even more, so that he could pull off feats far beyond the average GL.
That power upgrade matches what we saw in Lanterns, particularly John’s ability to maintain a bird construct without his ring. However, the real swerve in Lanterns comes from the fact that John’s new lantern has, as King observed, “a bit of yellow and a bit of fear in it.” The yellow impurity and role of fear in Green Lantern lore is complicated, but generally, no one who feels fear will get chosen to be a GL. That changed in the 1994 storyline Emerald Twilight by Ron Marz and Darryl Banks, which saw Hal Jordan turn into the villain Parallax and destroy the Green Lantern Corps. In a desperate move, the one surviving Guardian forged a ring, went to Earth, and gave it to the first person he met: Kyle Rayner.
Throughout the ’90s, Kyle operated as the sole Green Lantern and, as such, acted a lot like John’s promising to act. He didn’t have a Corps, he had no oversight from the Guardians, and mostly stayed on Earth. Moreover, he experienced fear, and was told by several people—including Batman, the Dream Lord Orpheus, and even Hal Jordan himself—that the ability to feel fear would allow him to become the greatest Green Lantern.
Given that Kyle is currently fighting intergalactic restaurant mascots in this month’s issue of Green Lantern, things didn’t exactly pan out that way. Since Hal Jordan and the Corps were resurrected, Kyle’s been a supporting character at best, and he’s completely absent from the DCU. However, it seems like John Stewart will be carrying on that legacy in live action. Or, at the very least, he’ll be remixing it.
Lanterns is now streaming in its entirety on HBO Max.
The Best Coen Brothers Movies, Ranked
Ever since their debut feature Raising Arizona, brothers Joel and Ethan Coen have demanded the attention of moviegoers. And since that movie, the Coens have baffled us. Everyone agrees that the Coen Brothers are among the greatest filmmakers in America, if not the world. Even their lesser entries, like The Ladykillers and Intolerable Cruelty have their defenders. But that doesn’t mean that film fans understand the Coens. A pair of philosophically-minded, slapstick-loving siblings from a Jewish suburb of Minnesota, the brothers defy all categorization.
And their movies reflect that defiance. Across their filmography, they have covered everything from stoner comedy to existential Western to classic Hollywood homage and more. They’re just as comfortable making a wacky and broad movie like Raising Arizona and a quiet, almost emotionless film like The Man Who Wasn’t There. Such range means that there’s vast disagreement about ranking their movies. Yet, like poor, beleaguered Larry Gopnik of A Serious Man, we’ll try to sort out the top 10, fruitless though the task may be.
10. Hail, Caesar! (2016)
Throughout their career, the Coens have been accused of condescending to their characters. Critics such as Roger Ebert charge the brothers with throwing doofuses and bumpkins on the screen and then inviting us to laugh at their misfortune. One might argue that reading Søren Kierkegaard and Cormac McCarthy through the lens of Judaism accounts for the fatalism of their movies, but the answer is probably a lot more simple: they just like silliness, especially the silliness of classic Hollywood movies.
Nothing in the Coen’s oeuvre makes that argument better than Hail, Caesar!, an old Hollywood farce starring Josh Brolin as real-life studio fixer Eddie Mannix. Hail, Caesar! follows Mannix through a day of dealing with stars who pose problems for the studio, including an Esther Williams-like swimmer’s (Scarlett Johansson) latest love affair and a doofus matinee idol (George Clooney) getting kidnapped by leftists and converting to communism. In between, we get all manner of heady debate, including a delightful scene of religious leaders dithering about depictions of God in a biblical epic. By the end of the film, it becomes clear that the Coens may not care about anything, but they really do care about the movies.
9. A Serious Man (2009)
The other great rejoinder to claims about the Coens’ anger toward their characters comes with A Serious Man. Part autobiography, part retelling of the book of Job, A Serious Man stars Michael Stuhlbarg as Larry Gopnik, a math professor living in 1960s suburban Minnesota. Despite being no one of any importance, Larry begins to endure a series of misfortunes: a student first demands and then extorts him for a higher grade, his sad-sack brother (Richard Kind) has moved in with him, and his wife (Sari Lennick) wants to leave him to marry Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed).
Larry seeks guidance from his rabbis, but he gets only rambling stories with no clear answers, which mirror the scene that opens the movie, in which a beloved rabbi who visits a couple may or may not be a dybbuk. Like these tales, A Serious Man offers no morals or answers, no reasons for Larry’s suffering. But even though it contains several funny scenes, A Serious Man doesn’t invite the viewer to just laugh at him either. Instead, it asks us to be serious ourselves, to recognize that we’re all like Larry, trying to make meaning from the nonsense that surrounds us.
8. The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)
Speaking of relating to characters in a Coen Brothers movie… throughout The Hudsucker Proxy, which the brothers wrote with their friend and sometimes collaborator Sam Raimi, corn-fed Indiana boy Norville Barnes shows someone at Hudsucker Industries his brilliant idea. The lanky doofus Barnes (Tim Robbins) fishes a slip of paper from his pocket, unfolds it, and proudly displays it to whomever will listen, showing them what appears to be just a circle. “You know,” explains Barnes, “For kids!”
The circle turns out to be a hula-hoop, and does indeed become a sensation for Hudsucker. The same can be said of The Hudsucker Proxy, a broad Preston Sturges homage that baffled viewers for years, but has since become a fan favorite. The story of an idiot who becomes a top-level executive because of scheming businessmen (led by Paul Newman), The Hudsucker Proxy‘s screwball sensibilities are a required taste. But, like those who finally figure out what Norville’s circle means, you’ll be richly rewarded once you accept the wacky comedy on its own terms.
7. Miller’s Crossing (1990)
Most great filmmakers do one thing great and everything else really well: they tell good stories, but their visuals are flat, or they have compelling dialogue, but the movies lack thematic weight. Early in their career, the Coens established themselves as masters at dialogue, visuals, and theme, all of which are on display in their third feature, the gangster picture Miller’s Crossing.
The story of genius Tom Reagan (Gabriel Byrne) negotiating his way through volatile gangsters in 1929 New York, Miller’s Crossing offers a compelling look at the destructive nature of power and the cost of a moment of humanity. It opens with an incredible monologue from Jon Polito, who lectures on the nature of ethics in language at once true to noir and utterly idiosyncratic. And midway through the movie comes a jaw-dropping action sequence, as Irish boss Leo O’Bannon (Albert Finney) escapes a mob hit on his home. In most filmographies, Miller’s Crossing would be the clear number one, a work of such bravado that it would be impossible to replicate. For the Coens, it’s number seven.
6. O Brother Where Art Thou? (2000)
Despite all the masterpieces on this list, the Coen Brothers greatest contribution to cinema may simply be figuring out that George Clooney, perhaps the most handsome and charming star in all of Hollywood, is really, really good at playing a buffoon. O Brother Where Art Thou? takes its name from the 1941 Sturges film Sullivan’s Travels, features a bluegrass soundtrack that became a genuine sensation, and it is an adaptation of The Odyssey. But it is fundamentally a slapstick comedy about three bozos on a quest.
Clooney stars as Ulysses Everett McGill, a fast talker and slow-thinker who convinces cellmates Pete (John Turturro) and Delmar (Tim Blake Nelson) to break out of prison and come with him to find the money he stole from a bank and buried in a field. The trio encounters all sorts of oddities as they make their way across the Depression-era South, all digitally colored to dusty yellow, long before learning that Ulysses simply wants to prevent his wife Penny (Holly Hunter) from remarrying. That reveal gives O Brother some genuine pathos, but not at the expense of the movie’s true pleasures: watching Clooney, Turturro, and Nelson execute incredible comic bits.
5. The Big Lebowski (1998)
Can we now, in Year of Our Lord 2026, finally admit that The Big Lebowski is a masterpiece, full stop? You wouldn’t think that a movie so oft-quoted, so fully ingrained in the American consciousness, would need such a defense. But The Big Lebowski has had such an unlikely journey that, even today, it feels risky to include it in the Coens’ top five.
A riff on The Big Sleep and other film noirs that puts aimless stone the Dude (Jeff Bridges) in the Humphrey Bogart role, The Big Lebowski infuriated theater-goers in 1998, who expected the precision of their previous film, Fargo. However, the movie soon found an audience on college campuses, where the Dude’s love of weed, bowling, and coitus seemed relatable. Rather than stay among the likes of Cheech & Chong’s Nice Dreams and Half-Baked, The Big Lebowski received another reassessment, and is now recognized for what it truly is: a brilliant piece of anti-detective fiction, anchored by incredible performances by Bridges, John Goodman, Julianne Moore, and others. But honestly, it doesn’t matter what people think of The Big Lebowski. Through it all, the Dude abides.
4. Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
With O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the Coen Brothers had already adapted The Odyssey. But they return to the format in a very different way for Inside Llewyn Davis, which takes place within the Greenwich Village folk scene of the 1960s. On a literal level, the object searched for here is an orange cat, who escaped from the apartment where down-on-his luck folk singer Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) had been allowed to stay for a night. But really, Davis looks for some sort of peace, a peace that he so often denies himself.
Still reeling after the death by suicide of his singing partner, the incredibly talented, but incredibly flinty Davis tries to make his way through the world. His sweet singing voice and solid fundamentals draw people to him, including fellow folkie Jean (Carey Mulligan), who is pregnant with his child, and her affable husband Jim. Yet, Llewyn refuses to take any sort of comfort from them, in part because he fears it will corrupt his art. As a result, Inside Llewyn Davis stands as the Coens’s most difficult film, a portrait of someone who can’t seem to get out of his own way, but we love him anyway.
3. No Country For Old Men (2007)
At first glance, No Country For Old Men represents a hard split in the brothers’ filmography. The duo loves making broad comedies, goofs and farces such as The Big Lebowski and The Hudsucker Proxy. They also love bleak serious works, including the Cormac McCarthy adaption No Country For Old Men. The story of a desperate man (Brolin), who swipes money from a drug deal and goes on the run across 1980s Texas, pursued by both an honest lawman (Tommy Lee Jones) and the seemingly supernatural killer, Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), No Country seems like a serious work that reduces the comedies to mere larks.
Yet, No Country shares much in common with the rest of the Coens’s filmography, and not just because it is, itself, very funny (come on, just look at Chigurh’s haircut!). Rather, because No Country has the same pessimistic, nihilistic outlook of the comedies. The gut punch of a final scene, in which Jones’ Sheriff Bell describes a troubling dream and then calls upon God to explain it, only for the screen to cut to black, captures the Coens’s driving belief. Everything is meaningless, whether you’re laughing or crying.
2. True Grit (2010)
There are many remarkable things about True Grit, the Coens’ 2010 adaptation of the Charles Portis novel, previously made famous by John Wayne. One is Hailee Steinfeld‘s performance as Mattie Ross, perhaps the greatest acting ever done by a child on screen, and she in her film debut. Another is the rich Carter Burwell score, which turns the hymn “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms” into something, at turns, mournful, rousing, and frightning. Yet another are Bridges and Matt Damon as those hired by Ross to hunt down Tom Chaney (Brolin), the man who killed her father.
But the most remarkable thing about True Grit is how perfectly suited the Coens are for Portis’s writing. An early scene in which Mattie out-haggles a businessman to procure a horse and a saddle plays like something out of The Big Lebowski or Miller’s Crossing, with its stylized dialogue and quick wit. But it comes directly from the novel, word for word. However, Portis’s novel does add one thing often missing from the brother’s films, a redemption narrative for Cogburn that at least makes him acceptable, if not heroic.
1. Fargo (1996)
Outside of Rooster Cogburn, only one other Coen Brothers character deserves the title “hero,” and she’s a very pregnant police chief in Brainerd, Minnesota in Fargo. As Marge Gunderson, Frances McDormand plays a rarity in the Coen’s universe, a person driven by simple human decency, decency that matters. As Marge investigates a set of seemingly random murders, she gets pulled further into a plot concocted by sad-sack salesman Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy), who hires a pair of criminals (Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare) to kidnap his wife (Kristin Rudrüd) and extort money from his father-in-law (Harve Presnell).
From the exaggerated accents to the absurd image of a foot sticking out of a wood chipper, Fargo is often very funny. And, as critics at the time pointed out, the laughs often come at the expense of the characters, inviting us to condescend to the pathetic Jerry and guffaw at criminals’ rants about the Pancake House. But when Marge delivers a heartfelt speech about the beauty of the day, and then crawls into bed alongside her husband Norm (John Carroll Lynch), we have no choice but to agree with her assessment that she’s got a good life. And it’s hard to imagine that the Coens don’t agree as well.
Bucking Fastard Review: Kate Mara and Rooney Mara as The Shining Twins (But Funny!)
Kate and Rooney Mara are not twins, nor are their characters Jeanie and Joanie Holbrook in the new, odd Werner Herzog movie Bucking Fastard. Joan and Jean, in fact, get aggressively perturbed when they’re mistaken as identical siblings, or otherwise described in any terms as a double act. That’s because they’re so singularly one person; one characterization; a single performance told via two Maras. To suggest a differentiation is akin to effrontery.
And yet, the symmetry of both real-life Mara sisters’ performances and the way that Herzog almost always frames them, with Rooney to the left and Kate to the right, suggests an undeniable achievement in performance. The Sisters Mara are like a winking inversion in this movie of the spooky Grady girls and their matching dresses seen in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, and a reversal of old-timey Irish fairy tales about doppelgänger changelings.
There’s something uncannily unnerving at play, but also unexpectedly wholesome and jejune. As befits Herzog’s naturalist and documentarian instincts, it is when Kate and Rooney are allowed into the literal Irish wilderness of County Kildare (doubling for Wessex) during the third act, and away from the prying, voyeuristic eyes of society, that the performances seem the most at ease. Like a certain literary metaphor about mockingbirds and the morality of killing them, theirs is a wild thing energy that is best left to follow its own sisterly muses.
Nonetheless on a certain level, I cannot help but think Herzog was just tickled by the idea of seeing real-life sisters recite every line of dialogue in either unison or a shared back-and-forth that sees them effortlessly finish the other’s sentences. It is a joke, and a film, that lives in an eerie dreamlike space. And the picture is at its most bemusing when we just revel in the weirdness of, say, an opening courtroom sequence where Joanie and Jeanie insist on taking the stand together before His Majesty’s Tribunal Services. They’re apparently facing legal jeopardy after they fell in love with, and then became violently obsessed over, their limousine-driving neighbor (Orlando Bloom). That he went to bed with both of them at the same time probably wasn’t the wisest choice on his part either.
One can almost hear Herzog chuckle as Kate and Rooney’s faces flicker between sweet reverie while recalling meeting this cad in church to, not so convincingly, saying they had nothing to do with the fire that nearly immolated his house. When Bloom insists they’re crazy, the Maras scream “Bucking Fastard” with such synchronized fury, it creates a natural reverb echo in the ear.
For the first hour or so, the movie delights on this wavelength, even as it dutifully and almost obligatorily scaffolds a more bittersweet allegory atop the joke. There is, indeed, a method to Herzog’s madness, as revealed in an unexpectedly melancholic third act, but sometimes the matching clothes and four-pupiled wide-eyed stare is really all we needed.
Loosely based on a real pair of English sisters (who were, in fact, twins), Herzog’s Rooney and Kate deliberately occupy a kind of ethereal alternative reality. Theirs is a magical existence where Bloom can kick open the doors of church and storm through with a pint of beer in his hand like the Second Coming landed on Oktoberfest morning. Notably the story is also set in the UK, and yet both Maras make no attempt to hide their natural American accents. Increasingly a documentarian in his advancing age, Herzog returns to narrative storytelling in order to find the surreality of actual events.
It’s easy to see why the story of real-life Freda and Greta Chaplin appealed to the director of Aguirre and the most tender-hearted and weeping twist on Nosferatu we ever got. The Chaplins’ life reads like a bittersweet fever dream that was preserved in several docs I’m sure Herzog sought out. In his own peculiar manner, the filmmaker wants to use that truth to imagine a fiction interrogating the cost of being different. The filmmaker, Kate, and Rooney seek to celebrate the thinly-fictionalized Holbrook sisters’ iconoclastic singularity (times two), but Bucking Fastard ultimately becomes about the cost of going by the beat of a different drum.
In the film’s back half, the Holbrook girls are dispossessed by the culture around them. Their parents, whom we never see, want nothing to do with their now nationally notorious daughters; the only friends in their lives are intriguingly a rotating chorus of men, some of whom pity the poor things, and others like Bloom have obviously more lascivious things on their minds. None of them really get through to either Joanie or Jeanie about becoming their own person. There are occasional flashes of discordance, and curiously Herzog tends to foreshadow that danger whenever he has Kate move to the left of frame, and Rooney to the right. But these are less epiphanies than moments of disharmony, like the string of a fine violin snapping mid-concerto.
Soon enough, the sisters are always back where they’re happiest, which in the third act involves living out in the country with a kindly aunt, a fox they befriend, and a cave that becomes a not-so-subtle visual metaphor for the social destiny they built for themselves.
As an allegory, there is something wistful about the longview cost of being different. As a narrative, it becomes a lot like the sisters’ lives: unsatisfying and without the happy ascent you hope for in the glory days of youth—or Bucking Fastard’s much stronger first half. Rooney and Kate’s performances are too good of a gag to ignore, but the movie struggles to be worthy of their sis bliss.
Bucking Fastard premiered at the New York Film Festival on Sept. 30.
Five Things We Want to See in Lanterns Season 2
This article contains spoilers for Lanterns.
Look how far Lanterns has come. Just months ago, we were wringing our hands about HBO‘s Green Lantern adaptation, thanks to promotional materials that had as little green as the show’s title. Fans worried that the series would be embarrassed about the franchise’s weird mythology and instead try to sell the public a True Detective knock-off that was Green Lantern in name only, if even that.
Turns out, everyone was right and wrong. Lanterns did indeed mostly play like a True Detective riff, with Silver Age sci-fi sprinkled along the sides. But creators Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof, and Tom King told such a compelling story, and stars Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre had such presence that the show became a genuine hit. So even though the series ended with Hal Jordan’s definitive death, and even though a second season has not yet been greenlit, a second season of Lanterns seems possible—and that means that it’s time for making an irresponsible wish list!
A New Lantern Pairing
Look, absolutely no one will be upset if Kyle Chandler wants to come back for a second season. Between the comic book logic baked into the premise and Damon Lindelof being Damon Lindelof, there are certainly plenty of ways that Hal could come back from getting shot in the head by his girlfriend. But the show sure seemed like it was done with him, and that’s okay, because there are a lot of other GLs in the Corps to pal around with John Stewart in season 2.
The most obvious pick is Guy Gardner. Not only does Guy have a history with John, but he also has a bone to pick with Earth’s unofficial GL. Still, it would be nice to see John forced to pair with another GL, possibly someone younger. Kyle Rayner is the most popular GL to not yet appear, and John has mentored him in the comics. But it might also be nice to see Lanterns get weird and to bring in some female GLs (something Hal memorably predicted in his eulogy). Jessica Cruz is always welcome, but it would be interesting to see John with Jo Mullein, especially if she gets something like the experimental ring she wields in the comics (and especially if they cast Janelle Monáe, whose look inspired Jo’s original design).
Sinestro
Despite much speculation, Lanterns did not end with Sinestro getting a yellow ring and forming the Sinestro Corps. But the series didn’t rule that out, either. The finale ends with Sinestro stranded on a planet that makes people afraid, where he was just talking about the power of fear, and where he forged a lantern that operates in part on fear. Time to just pull the trigger and let Sinestro be Sinestro, you cowards.
Okay, even if the Lanterns braintrust doesn’t want to make Green Lantern all about Corps of various colors, like the comics have become, season two has to at least give us more Sinestro in some form. Ulrich Thomsen had such a creepy, charismatic take on the character that he controlled the screen every time he showed up. We don’t care if he’s commanding an army or just behind bars again, we’ll take as much of the renegade Green Lantern as we can get!
More Villains
Beyond Sinestro, season 1 gave us variations of classic GL villains the Manhunters and Hector Hammond, which means that season 2 can go even deeper into the rogues gallery. Many online believed that Will Macon would turn out to be William Hand a.k.a. the Black Hand, but that fake out leaves room for a proper version to appear on screen, either as “the cliché criminal” from the Silver Age or the current zombie version with a Black Lantern Ring. It would be fun to see a second season go for some real weirdos like Shark or Sonar, especially if the latter can further flesh out the new DCU.
But the most obvious pick would be someone connected to the Guardians, if not a Guardian themselves. A second season could go deeper into Lantern lore to bring in Volthoom, the First Lantern, which would satisfy those who want more color Corps. Or they could just give us a mad Guardian like Old Timer, if not Krona, the guy who introduced evil into the world in the first place.
A Few More Planets
Look, we all liked Lanterns, and we’re sure Nebraska is a wonderful state. But we’d be lying if we said we wouldn’t have liked to see more outer space in a show about cops who work in outer space. Even if John has declared himself the terrestrial GL, you can’t keep dropping Mogo’s name without giving us at least a glimpse of Mogo.
If not Mogo, then at least some other planets. The cosmos of the DC Universe has been surprisingly underdeveloped, as Lanterns stayed largely on Earth and Supergirl only visited three planets, and three indistinct ones at that. Now that Lanterns has proven successful, HBO should up the budget so we can go places like Rann and Thanagar, visit Legion of Super-Heroes worlds like Braal and Winath. At least go to some other GL home planets, like Xudar or Bolovax Vik (provided Sinestro hasn’t blown it up in this universe).
More of the Same
As we Lanterns fans make all of these demands, we also have to face the facts. We did get a Green Lantern adaptation that was faithful to the comics, that had lots of canonical villains, that featured Sinestro and Kilowog and Tomar-Re, that even set up the Yellow Lantern Corps. That was the 2011 Green Lantern movie with Ryan Reynolds, and it absolutely sucked. That movie reminds us that fan service is no substitute for good storytelling.
Lanterns had good storytelling in spades. So, more than anything else on this list, the thing we really want from season two of Lanterns is more of what we got in season one: solid storytelling, interesting characters, and strong emotional beats. If Lanterns season 2 can match the quality of season 1, then it doesn’t matter if it’s eight episodes of Kari Limbo and Tom Kalmaku wearing burlap sacks and walking around the Nevada desert, we’re going to watch it.
All of Lanterns is now streaming on HBO Max.
Lanterns Finale Raises Questions for Man of Tomorrow
This article contains spoilers for Lanterns season 1 episode 8.
As we all expected, the finale of Lanterns ends by establishing John Stewart as Earth’s new Green Lantern. What we didn’t expect, however, is that he’s just the Green Lantern of Earth… not of Space Sector 2814 and all the other planets within it, just Earth. Moreover, John will be doing his patrols with a ring and a lantern created by Sinestro, not sanctioned by the Guardians and, therefore, not as part of the Green Lantern Corps.
We know that Aaron Pierre will next show up as John Stewart in the Superman sequel Man of Tomorrow, and nothing about John’s Earth-only gig necessarily disrupts that plan. However, given that Man of Tomorrow will see Superman and Lex Luthor team up against the alien villain Brainiac and given that it will involve ARGUS’s off-planet prison Salvation, the movie will force John to deal with issues that go beyond just Earth.
For as much as Lanterns deviates from the comics, its depiction of the Green Lantern Corps more or less matches what’s been established by DC. The Green Lantern Corps are an intergalactic police force created by the Guardians of the Universe. They have divided the universe into 3600 space sectors, and each one has at least one GL. As Hal tells Kerry in the 2016 section at the start of the finale, the Guardians need to know about large-scale threats. And as Guy threatens John at the end of the episode, the Guardians will send multiple GLs to deal with an issue, even if it’s only happening in a single sector.
All of which is a long way of saying that both Brainiac and Salvation will likely be issues of concern for the Guardians and, by extension, the Green Lantern Corps. Unlike most space-fairing villains, who just want to conquer the universe because they love power or evil, Brainiac craves information. He travels across the cosmos collecting cities from various planets, shrinking them down and keeping them a collection for study. He’ll take an imposing physical form when necessary, and certainly has ways of fighting with Superman and other heroes, but his primary motivation involves knowledge.
Because Brainiac interferes with many civilizations, he’s exactly the type of threat the Green Lantern Corps exists to fight. Except, here’s the thing: the Corps has rarely fought Brainiac in the comic books. The most notable interaction came in the Panic in the Sky storyline from the 1990s, in which Superman recruited Guy Gardner and others to battle Brainiac, and James Gunnhas explicitly said it won’t be an influence on Man of Tomorrow.
Gunn has said the same thing about Salvation Run, the 2008 miniseries that introduced the off-planet prison Salvation. In that miniseries, Amanda Waller and Rick Flag kidnap the supervillains of Earth and send them to Salvation, an uninhabited planet where they will pose no further threat. Of course, the supervillains do pose a threat, eventually forming teams and making it back to Earth.
The season 2 finale of Peacemaker brought Salvation into the DCU, as Rick Flag and ARGUS made plans to send metahumans there, and we know that he’ll eventually do the same with Superman and possibly Luthor. The act of kidnapping people and transporting them to another planet would be enough for the Green Lantern Corps to get involved… if that’s what the Guardians wanted. As Lois Lane in Superman and as Hal reiterates throughout Lanterns, the Guardians are reluctant to contradict local law enforcement. They may consider ARGUS’s actions a matter for Earth’s governments to solve, and forbid the Green Lanterns from interfering.
That may explain John Stewart’s role in Man of Tomorrow. Because he uses an unsanctioned ring, John does not need to follow the Guardians’ rules. If he sees trouble on Earth, then he has the ability to get involved, regardless of the Guardians’ feelings.
The bigger question, then, is how the Guardians will respond to John’s use of an unsanctioned ring, especially if he starts fighting ARGUS. Lanterns doesn’t check back in with Lianna or any of the other Guardians after John’s decision, but we can probably guess that they aren’t thrilled with about a GL who isn’t under their control. Will they send an army to take him down, as Guy threatened? That’s probably not going to happen in a movie that’s mostly about Superman and Lex Luthor, especially not with a cast as stuffed as Man of Tomorrow.
However, the Guardians may deal with John in the same way they dealt with Hal. The Guardians allowed Hal to go to jail after the destruction of Rushville in 2016 because it helped solve their problem. They may see Salvation and even Brainiac as a convenient solution to the problem of John Stewart, letting someone else take out the imposter and allowing Guy to do their work on Earth once again.
Whatever happens, Lanterns has taught us one thing: John Stewart knows how to defy expectations, even those of the Guardians of the Universe.
Man of Tomorrow comes to theaters on July 9, 2027.
Lanterns Episode 8 Finale Review: A New Brightest Day
This article contains spoilers for Lanterns season 1 episode 8.
Fan expectation was at an all-time high leading up to the finale of Lanterns, and not just because it is a Damon Lindelof show. Lanterns has been an oddity in superhero media, a mix of grounded detective fiction, strong character work, and bits of Silver Age comic book sci-fi around the edges. The mystery surrounding the identity of the Manhunter and the death of Hal Jordan, to say nothing of the vast mythology of the Green Lantern comics, have led viewers to fill Reddit with all sorts of hopes and theories: Would Hal become the evil Parallax? Would Sinestro forge his yellow ring and start his Corps? Would Mogo finally arrive to send his regrets for the funeral?
None of that would come to pass. The final episode takes no wild turn to adapt the comics, few world-building indulgences to set up Guy Gardner’s return in Mister Miracle or John Stewart’s return in Man of Tomorrow. Instead, the Lanterns finale stays firmly within the tone of the previous episodes, finishing the story it’s been telling about the weight of familial expectations, finding forgiveness after tragedy, and understanding the necessity of fear. Also, way more high school and college football than you would expect.
Staying the course means that the finale cannot simply pick up where the last episode left off, with John clocking a cloaked Sinestro on some mystery planet. Instead, we once again survey the devastation of Rushville in 2016, before jumping to 2026 to show Hal’s life after prison. Chandler’s charm offensive as Hal has been the chief pleasure of the show, and a big part of why it’s resonated so much online. So it’s interesting to watch him exercise slightly different muscles as the chastised, post-prison Hal, something we only saw in glimpses during his previous conversation with John.
The scene in which Kerry declares her love for Hal amidst a restaurant full of angry neighbors highlights Chandler’s skill in the part. It could have been disastrous to make a character defined by his brashness sit there with a hangdog expression while someone else defends him. But Chandler seamlessly shifts from being properly embarrassed to returning the twinkle in Hal’s eye as he looks at Kerry with admiration. With that shift, we realize that this is still the same charming Hal Jordan we knew, but he’s finally matured, someone who has actually learned how to be afraid and got through it.
Which is, of course, the show’s primary theme. The series has been reminding us implicitly and explicitly that fearlessness equals brokenness, an (ironically) brave take on superheroes in general, let alone a superhero property built on the concept of rejecting fear. Yet, creators Lindelof, Chris Mundy, and Tom King—all of whom share a writing credit on the finale, directed by Alik Sakharov—manage to hone tie the theme so tightly to John’s development that it manages to feel like a proper superhero origin story, even if the episode puts more weight on a high school football game than it does space battles.
Yes, Noah Macon, the main player in those football games, is a Manhunter, one who threatens to someday become president and control America’s nuclear arsenal. And Noah did free Sinestro from his sciencell and bring him to the yellow planet (which, it turns out, is just Antaan’s unnamed home planet, not Qward) to forge a lantern and ring. Sinestro does try to manipulate John and the Hal-o-Gram by extolling the virtues of fear, and the lantern that he creates does have cracks of yellow in it, indicting the presence of fear.
But when John leaves the planet with Sinestro’s lantern to return to Rushville and face down Noah, the two don’t have a big sci-fi fight. Instead, they have a long, tearful conversation. In a car. Outside of a high school football field.
The fact that I—who has not only been reading Green Lantern comics for decades, but also regularly chose to stay home and read those comics as a teen instead of going with my family to University of Michigan football games—am not bothered in the least by this decision is a testament to Lanterns‘ quality. Shea Pritchard acquits himself well as Noah tries to maintain his composure while admitting that his Manhunter programming fills him with murderous thoughts, despite his basic human desires. But the scene truly works because of Aaron Pierre and the mature John Stewart the show has been constructing.
Make no mistake: John Stewart saves the day in that final scene. But he does so by relating to Noah, telling the boy that he understands carrying cosmic pressure since childhood. The 2016 story had tasked Pierre with playing a John Stewart who cannot have feelings, who must relate his thoughts only through quick glances and occasional lapses in body language. Up until this point, the 2026 story has asked Pierre to go too big, playing a John who embraces his feelings in rejection of his destiny as a GL.
During John’s conversations with Noah and Kerry, especially when confronting the latter about killing Hal, Pierre blends both versions of his character. This John feels things: fear over what Noah might become, anger at Kerry for murdering Hal, and deep compassion for the impossible situation they’re all in. He feels a need to protect the planet against what Noah may become, and he feels the sting of Kerry’s implication that John may very well accept Noah’s plea to kill him. Yet, he does not allow those feelings to control him, resulting in declarations that feel as heroic as anything John Stewart does in the comics, creating gigantic constructs to punch monstrous aliens or moving planets with his ring, but also feels true to his character.
That strong character work pays off in the series’ final scenes, scenes that could otherwise go disastrously wrong. The moment in which John reunites with his family, or when the Hal-o-Gram finally says, “I love you,” could be cheap and cloying. But we accept them because John has reached a point where he accepts them, he knows how to handle those relationships in a healthy manner.
The character work also makes the episode’s lone concession to universe-building work as the culmination of John’s story, not just the usual superhero adaptation promise of future adventure. Like most fans, I would have loved to see John put on his costume and fly away at the end, if not some sort of indication that Brainiac is coming. But the bit of him telling off Guy Gardner is enough, especially since we get John forming his own oath and explicitly being his own type of GL.
Any dangling questions we may have about how, exactly, that will work in future DCU projects fades away in the light of Lanterns‘ strong storytelling, both on a thematic and character level. Was Lanterns the Green Lantern adaptation that everyone wanted? No, not exactly. It did not satisfy the desire for space opera and weird aliens. Was Lanterns a great story, full of compelling characters and thought-provoking ideas, executed at the highest level of craft? Absolutely. And for these eight episodes, that was more than enough.
Green Lantern Illuminations
Allow me to express my condolences to fans of Kyle Rayner. Not only is he the one main human Green Lantern to not appear in the series, but John basically gets to have his position: a different type of GL, one without connection to the Corps, and who understands fear. Then again, given how Tom King wrote Kyle in Omega Men, maybe it’s good that he doesn’t show up here…
That said, John’s position as a different type of Lantern does have its roots in the comics. He’s been evolved to Guardian status since the days of his solo series Mosiac, and the recent Green Lantern run by Geoffrey Thorne and then Green Lantern: War Journal by Phillip Kennedy Johnson have only built upon that. True, he was part of the Corps in those stories, but Pierre’s version feels at least parallel.
John and Guy’s new status quo surprises long-time readers because it’s the exact opposite of their usual dynamic. Generally, John goes off into space while Guy stays on Earth, mostly because of his association with Justice League International. Given how much JLI influenced James Gunn’s take on nothing just the Justice Gang, but the entire DCU, it will be interesting to see what he does with a Guy Gardner who can’t come to Earth without risking a tussle with John.
The end of Lanterns means the end of these illuminations. But if you’d like more of my comic book thoughts, check out Den of Geek‘s weekly comics newsletter!
All of Lanterns is now streaming on HBO Max.
WB’s Value Lies in More than Just Capes, Harry Potter, and IP
This article originally appeared as part of the Den of Geek “Absolute Cinema” newsletter. Find out how to subscribe here.
In 1969, director Stanley Kubrick was on top of the world. He had, as the director once mused to his later-friend Steven Spielberg, made a dint on cinema thanks to the extraordinary vision of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The film was also produced by MGM, the once reigning studio in Hollywood that by 1968 was bleeding—which might have been why restless and unimpressed executives walked out of the New York City premiere early, demanding cuts from Kubrick after being baffled by his largely nonverbal, psychedelic experience.
It was a golden opportunity for the likes of John Calley, who was then the production chief at Warner Bros. On the other side of 2001’s shocking success (at least to MGM and other grayhaired execs), Calley made overtures for what would become a career-defining move. At Warners, Kubrick was promised final cut on his next picture, an adaptation of Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange, assuming of course Kubrick could agree to a budget. Once that was settled (with Kubrick winning the give-and-take), WB became his home for the next nearly 30 years and five movies. Only Terry Semel, one-half of the two co-chairs running the studio between 1980 and 1999, was allowed to read Kubrick’s scripts. Otherwise, WB gave him money and trusted his vision. That yielded The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, and Eyes Wide Shut, in addition to Clockwork and Barry Lyndon.
That was among the earliest and most extreme of the relationships that built WB’s reputation as a filmmaker-first studio, but it set a template that has fitfully remained part of the company’s culture for more than half a century. It’s why with a single exception, after Clint Eastwood made the jump from Universal to WB in 1975 for The Outlaw Josey Wales, he never directed a movie at another studio in the following 50 years. It’s how Christopher Nolan was groomed and nurtured by the likes of production head Jeff Robinov, which saw the once promising Memento helmer graduate from studio priorities like Insomnia and Batman Begins to earning near total freedom on The Prestige and Inception, not to mention even getting a lot more latitude on valuable studio intellectual property like The Dark Knight.
This is also a legacy that current WB co-chairs and CEOs Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy have fought to preserve in spite of the industry’s general state of consolidating upheaval, and WB’s own near-perpetual state of being in the midst of some kind of acquisition, merger, or crisis. A filmmaker himself, De Luca was the writer of the underrated John Carpenter cult classic, In the Mouth of Madness, as well as president of New Line Cinema during the glory days of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights and Magnolia, Austin Powers, and when Peter Jackson began work on Lord of the Rings.
De Luca and Abdy were brought into WB following what would prove to be its first of three contentious mergers (or near mergers in the Netflix boondoggle’s case) inside of five years. Tapped by Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, De Luca and Abdy spent the last four years attempting to quell the disastrous decisions of Jason Kilar, the CEO of the defunct WarnerMedia, who in 2021 burned bridges with the entire filmmaking community with the shockingly misguided “Project Popcorn” fiasco (where the studio released their entire 2021 film slate day-and-date on HBO Max without even consulting the talent they were screwing over). It cost the studio its relationship with Nolan.
To be clear, Hollywood has always been cutthroat, at WB or anywhere else. The same head of production who Nolan cites as a mentor for navigating the studio system, Jeff Robinov, is also the guy who tried to shut George Miller down on Mad Max: Fury Road in the early 2010s after the movie went over budget and schedule in the deserts of Namibia. De Luca and Abdy also had to carry out Zaslav’s dirty work when what is likely Clint Eastwood’s final film, Juror #2, got dumped to HBO Max beyond a cursory, miniscule theatrical release. This followed Zaslav infamously uttering, “We don’t owe any favors” to directors.
That kind of shortsighted mindset is probably why Zaslav seemed to publicly shop for replacements of De Luca and Abdy last year before their banner year netted WB $4.4 billion thanks in part to IP plays like A Minecraft Movie and Superman, but just as importantly filmmaker-led projects that helped eventize directors as the star, a la Ryan Coogler via Sinners ($370 million), Paul Thomas Anderson with One Battle After Another ($213 million), and Zach Cregger and Weapons ($270 million).
All of those were original stories, two horror movies and one an action-drama hybrid, and they each made respectable box office, won Oscars (including Best Picture, Director, Actor, Supporting Actress, and both screenplay awards between them) and, best of all, were great audience-building movies. Cregger became as much or more the selling point for this year’s Resident Evil reboot as the video game IP. And now, Cregger’s next original movie, The Flood, is set up at Warners with Jennifer Lawrence attached. Abdy and De Luca’s gamble paved the way for a partnership that could yield creative and commercial dividends for years.
Unfortunately, not every gamble pays off. And De Luca and Abdy’s bet on the combined talents of Alejandro G. Iñárritu and Tom Cruise making a high-wire act like Digger work didn’t pan out. Still, I’m happy a studio could take a risk like that, because last year a similar roll of the dice on PTA and Leonardo DiCaprio produced a new 21st century classic.
It’s keeping this all in mind that fills one with trepidation when it was confirmed Friday morning that De Luca and Abdy are out at WB. Once the merger is complete, and WB and Paramount are both ancillaries of “Skydance,” new overlord CEO David Ellison wants the studio heads who maintained relationships with Coogler, Anderson, Greta Gerwig, Margot Robbie, and so many others to be shown the door. Given Ellison’s admittedly brief track record of overseeing Paramount Pictures during the last year—and its fixation on pumping and dumping IP movies—this is a grim sign.
The corporate trajectory of WB from Kilar, the man who drove a generational talent like Nolan into the arms of Universal, to Zaslav, the guy who attempted to shelve Coyote vs. Acme for a tax write-off and treated Clint Eastwood like a doddering burden, to now the Ellisons, is a dispiriting journey for the studio that was once home to Stanley Kubrick. It also illustrates the larger shortsighted IP corporate mindset of so much of the entertainment industry’s most powerful movers and shakers these days.
Yes, WB has a goldmine of valuable IP. DC Comics’ superheroes, Harry Potter’s wizards, Lord of the Rings’ orcs, and hell the Looney Tunes too, if anyone at the top would care to remember them, all live on the lot. But Warners’ legacy and value transcends brands and sequels. Batman was a dead horse before Christopher Nolan came around; Lord of the Rings was once a gamble proposed by a young, scrappy horror filmmaker from New Zealand; and the next generation of audiences are more excited by certain directors than they are certain capes. WB’s new owners would do well to remember that.
Every Evil Dead Movie Ranked
Very few of us expected the Evil Dead franchise to be still alive and kicking 45 years after the first movie burst onto screens, but Sam Raimi’s cult classic The Evil Dead has now spawned five more movies with another on the way, not to mention a TV show following the ongoing Deadite-plagued adventures of the original trilogy’s main character, Ash Williams.
We thought it was about time to look back at the Evil Dead series and rank all the movies so far, but of course, this list is subjective. Some Evil Dead fans prefer the more comedic movies in the franchise; others prefer the gnarlier ones. A core group will also say they never got any better than the original trilogy. Yet today, we have to pick a side. That’s part of the fun and the anguish of ranking them.
If you disagree with this ranking, feel free to leave your own in the comments. Perhaps we can at least agree that none of them is actually bad, they’re all just different colors in the Evil Dead rainbow!
6. Army of Darkness
While The Evil Dead is pretty much a straight-up horror movie and Evil Dead II masterfully blends horror and comedy, Army of Darkness is fully hilarious and brings us Ash Williams at his most entertaining.
Sam Raimi’s trilogy-capper leaves the claustrophobia of the cabin-in-the-woods setting behind and musters all the action that can possibly be thrown at Bruce Campbell on triple the second movie’s budget as he forces him into medieval castles and battles with entire armies, pushing the story into more of a fantasy vibe that some people really appreciated, while also fleshing out Ash and giving Campbell’s natural charisma more room to shine as he embraces his character’s innate arrogance and penchant for one-liners.
But since we’re ranking the movies today, we would say that Army of Darkness is far too goofy for some, and in this case, “some” includes us. We do prefer the scarier entries over Army’s strong slapstick approach, and though we appreciate Raimi’s attempt at broader comedy and Ash as a goofy action hero here, a more grounded Ash is a better Ash, in our humble opinion.
5. Evil Dead Burn
Mainstream audiences still aren’t ready for New French Extremity horror, even in the rather watered-down approach of Sébastien Vaniček and Florent Bernard’s Evil Dead Burn. 2026’s franchise entry was immediately labeled meaner, nastier, and more brutal than the other Evil Dead movies, but after the horrors of Evil Dead and Evil Dead Rise, we would say that’s quite an accomplishment, really.
Out of all the Evil Dead movies to date, Burn arguably pushed the horror envelope the farthest, and while that absolutely delighted the sickos amongst us (including your writer), many fans simply just did not care for the colder, more European approach in this one, which finds a woman on the verge of a divorce also having to deal with her husband’s possessed family after he’s transformed into a Deadite. One particular scene, in which a loyal family dog is stabbed repeatedly in the face at the dinner table, even created a point of no return for some who walked out of the theater in disgust.
Burn may find more fans over time, but right now, it’s the nastiest cousin in the Evil Dead bloodline (with some of the worst CGI vs. its impressive practical effects) and may remain confined to cult status for years to come.
4. The Evil Dead
Sam Raimi proved himself one of the wildest and most interesting American filmmakers in 1981 with his debut feature film, The Evil Dead, using a tiny budget to innovate and draw curious viewers into the world of Ash and the Deadites. The Evil Dead didn’t make much of a splash at first, but it later became a sleeper hit, mostly thanks to overseas audiences who seemed far more interested in its chaotic gore and thin yet delightfully supernatural story.
Those who prefer the more comedic bent of later Evil Dead films and say the franchise has drifted off course towards pure nastiness may have forgotten that the first film featured a scene where a woman is raped by demonically possessed trees, and that there is also an attempted rape on Ash by his headless girlfriend, Linda. It wasn’t all Kandarian demon shenanigans!
Still, the film was a success and also served as a “proof of concept” for Raimi that he was capable of doing great things in the future, and after the flop Crimewave, he returned to Ash and the evil Deadites that hunted him for a sequel that also kind of acted as a remake of The Evil Dead to show just how far he’d come as a filmmaker in the years since its release. As such, The Evil Dead has dated somewhat in its effects and approach but remains a good first effort for the franchise, just not as good as later instalments. The original, but not the best!
3. Evil Dead
The absurd, slapstick comedy cherished by fans of Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness fades right into the background in 2013’s Evil Dead, but director Fede Álvarez and co-writer Rodo Sayagues don’t leave the spooky cabin-in-the-woods setting that was so effective in the first two movies behind. Instead, they make their Raimi and Campbell-produced reboot film as bleak as possible, following Mia (Jane Levy), who returns to her family’s cabin where the powerful Deadite force is unleashed and spreads throughout her friend group.
The gore and practical effects in Evil Dead are undeniably good, creating some of the series’ most memorable and brutal kills, and the dark, claustrophobic atmosphere makes the film consistently intense. Levy also hits it out of the park as Mia, with her final confrontation becoming instantly iconic. Unfortunately, her friends are underdeveloped, so we’re much less bothered by what happens to them than we should be.
Evil Dead looked good and proved there was still life in the horror franchise beyond Raimi and Campbell, but it was still a little too familiar, which is probably why the action moved away from spooky cabins in the next two movies in the series.
2. Evil Dead Rise
It’s hard to argue that Evil Dead Rise doesn’t deliver, especially if you want a lot of gore for your buck. Alyssa Sutherland is also fantastic as Ellie, a struggling single mom who immediately turns on her kids and estranged sister after her son finds and plays a record of the dreaded incantation that summons the Deadites. During Rise’s well-paced 96-minute rollercoaster ride, Sutherland contorts her body in a whole bunch of horrifying ways after being possessed, tapping into the pure nightmare fuel of a suddenly evil parent.
This all goes down in the appealingly fresh setting of an L.A. apartment complex, with plenty of opportunities to unleash hell in cramped, confined spaces. Lee Cronin does a hell of a job building tension for jump scares while delivering wince-inducing body horror as the story plays out, retaining a fair amount of the Evil Dead mythology yet modernizing the formula.
For those who prefer the Ash and Raimi entries, Rise is probably less appealing, as it’s much closer to the franchise’s 2013 soft reboot in tone, but Cronin’s effort still has spectacular gore, neat practical effects, and a really creepy and tense atmosphere in its win column.
1. Evil Dead II
Was there ever any doubt that Evil Dead II would be number one on our ranking? Probably not; it’s one of the greatest horror movies ever!
If you’ve already seen Evil Dead II (and we can’t imagine you haven’t if you’re reading this!), you already know it takes the original movie’s basic setup and turns everything up to 11, with the isolated cabin transforming into a wild playground for Raimi’s unique creativity. The sequence where Ash’s possessed hand attacks him, culminating in him cutting it off and replacing it with a chainsaw, is an iconic example of the filmmaker’s ability to turn the grotesque into physical comedy without making it feel cheap, but all the practical effects in play here, including the stop-motion work, make for a super fun time for horror-comedy fans pretty much everywhere.
Campbell is also a major reason the film works so well. He understood the assignment and threw his whole ass into it. Ash’s journey from terrified survivor to chainsaw-wielding Deadite fighter gives the film a surprisingly satisfying character arc, while his exaggerated physical performance makes even relatively simple moments hilarious.
Of course, the film’s short runtime, relentless escalation and increasingly ridiculous climax give it fantastic momentum, yet it also feels like the point where the Evil Dead formula was fully refined: you’ve got a memorable protagonist, some truly inventive gore, ace practical effects, visual experimentation, horror and comedy all working together, perfectly balanced. The end result is simply sublime, and no one’s been able to top it.
Star Wars: Galactic Racer Provides High-Octane Thrills to That Galaxy Far, Far Away
While there have certainly been Star Wars racing games after 1999’s high-octane fan-favorite Star Wars Episode I: Racer, none had quite captured the same level of bombastic action in speeding around that galaxy far, far away. Fortunately, that high-speed glory is recaptured and then some with the upcoming racing title Star Wars: Galactic Racer, developed by Fuse Games and published by Secret Mode in association with Lucasfilm Games. As feature-rich as the racing game genre gets, Galactic Racer has enough thrills to excite genre enthusiasts while taking full advantage of its iconic space opera setting.
Fuse Games had been founded by personnel who worked on long-running racing game franchises including Need for Speed and Burnout, so developing top-shelf racing experiences is well within the creative team’s wheelhouse. Those sensibilities are apparent in Star Wars: Galactic Racer with many different modes and features provided to gamers, from a campaign, a scenario mode, an arcade mode, and various multiplayer gameplay options, including different online modes. Each of these modes are available to players right at the start and are each incredibly engrossing in their own right.
There is a selection of vehicle types available to players throughout Star Wars: Galactic Racer – landspeeders, speeder bikes, skimspeeders, and the requisite podracers. Each vehicle offers its own nuance in their handling, with the skimspeeders among the most intriguing due to their ability to tilt laterally on their sides, helping with cornering and moving through narrow shortcuts on the track. In one of the better prologues to a game in recent memory, the campaign mode lets you try three of these types in rapid succession with just enough time to see how distinct the vehicles are from each other while also carrying the story forward.
As for said story, the campaign mode takes place in the years following the events of Return of the Jedi, with the memory of the Galactic Civil War still looming large as the New Republic continues to restore order. At the same time, the game features clear nods to the entire Star Wars canon as it currently stands, including races on Tatooine and sequel trilogy planets like Jakku and Crait, all sumptuously rendered. Just as Star Wars Episode I: Racer did nearly 30 years ago, Galactic Racer also introduces plenty of distinct new worlds while telling the story of a racer joining the galactic circuit, complete with their own allies and rivals in the racing scene.
Star Wars Episode I: Racer was a particularly difficult racing game, or at least harder for fans who were more accustomed to the level of challenge of contemporary racing titles like Mario Kart 64 and Diddy Kong Racing. With that in mind, I’m happy to report that Star Wars: Galactic Racer is a much more accessible experience than Episode I: Racer had been, still bringing the high-speed challenge but with more variety in adjustable difficulty levels for some of its major solo modes. As someone who has historically struggled with more realistic racing games, being able to adjust the difficulty for campaign mode was a godsend and for those racing game aficionados, those higher difficulties will definitely test their skills.
Both the campaign and scenario modes also incorporate RPG elements, which makes them a bit more striking than most contemporary racing games. Between races, players can upgrade their vehicles, emphasizing which individual elements they want to enhance. On the flip side, parts that were damaged in a race can hinder a vehicle for the remainder of a campaign or scenario, adding to the risk/reward aspects of the gameplay. These elements are relatively superficial to the experience, but they do help make those longer circuits feel more engaging while highlighting the need to not go recklessly into every race.
There are some drawbacks to the game, though mostly quibbles rather than big glaring flaws in looking at the whole experience. While I thought the crash cam, a camera feature that cuts to an opposing vehicle that you caused to crash unfolding in slow-motion, was cool at first, I ultimately found it distracting and ran the risk of affecting me staying the course when the camera abruptly returned to follow me. Finally, the RPG elements feel like something that could’ve been developed even more than the version that appears in the final game, though the game deserves some praise for introducing these mechanics in the first place.
Between Star Wars: Galactic Racer and the recent squad-based strategy game Star Wars Zero Company, this year has proved that the future of Star Wars may be brightest in the franchise’s current crop of video games rather than movies like The Mandalorian and Grogu. Galactic Racer is a reminder of how malleable the franchise can be in its various multimedia depictions and, more importantly, just how much fun Star Wars is whenever it’s done right. Star Wars: Galactic Racer offers loads of fun in its grand prix tour of that galaxy far, far away and is accessible enough for more casual racing game fans.
Developed by Fuse Games and published by Secret Mode, Star Wars: Galactic Racer releases October 6 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
Defending Hannibal, Ridley Scott’s Gruesome Sequel to The Silence of the Lambs
When The Silence of the Lambs won all of the big five categories at the 1992 Oscars, including Best Picture, observers had to do all manner of hand-wringing to explain why the movie wasn’t just a horror movie. One could point to Jonathan Demme’s incredible direction, which brought a level of empathy to the proceedings. One could point to the triumph of former child actor Jodie Foster‘s performance as FBI trainee Clarice Starling or to respected theater thespian Anthony Hopkins towering take on Hannibal Lecter. One could argue that the lurid stuff—the semen throwing, face eating, or frontal nudity—occurs only in flashes.
For the most part, the ploy worked. Regular people got to enjoy the story of an FBI director sending a young trainee to consult with an unrepentant cannibal to stop a serial killer from making a suit of the skin of murdered women. But that perception applied only for The Silence of the Lambs. It could not apply to the vivid, pulpy Thomas Harris novel that inspired it, nor to Hannibal, the sequel that Harris wrote—a sequel so extreme that neither Foster, Demme, nor screenwriter Ted Tally wanted to touch it. That’s where Ridley Scott came in, who embraced Harris’s excess to make Hannibal the grotesque rejoinder to anyone who condescended to The Silence of the Lambs.
Hannibal Unbound
Much of the pleasure of The Silence of the Lambs came from its restraint, keeping Lecter largely in a cell and limiting his screen time to less than 25 minutes.
Not so with Hannibal, which finds the doctor living as a free man in Florence, Italy, posing as library curator and Dante scholar Dr. Fell. However, that doesn’t mean that he lives in peace. Beyond his inclinations to continue eating the rude, Lecter has to contend with Mason Verger, a rich degenerate who survived an encounter with Lecter, but was left with a mutilated face and wheelchair bound. Played by Gary Oldman, at the height of his obsession with prosthetics, Verger has devoted his vast fortune to getting revenge, including a hefty finders fee that catches the attention of Florentine policeman Rinaldo Pazzi (Giancarlo Giannini). When Pazzi accesses FBI databases to find information about Lecter he can give to Verger, he catches the attention of Clarice Starling (now played by Julianne Moore), who has also been looking for her former contact.
The spaciousness of the plot does make Hannibal feel unwieldy. The first two acts split time between Washington, where Clarice finds herself under greater scrutiny after a drug bust gone wrong, Lecter’s adventures gallivanting around Florence, and Mason’s haunted mansion. The primary characters interact mostly on phone or by staring at screens, only bumping into one another through artless plot contrivances. The plot continues to feel clunky when they all come together for the final act, which first takes place at Verger’s mansion and then retreats to the home of Paul Krendler (Ray Liotta), the smarmy Justice Department official overseeing Starling.
Certainly, the clunkiness stems in part from the tortured production process, which itself connects to Harris’ issues writing the book. Rumors swirl around the production of the book, ranging from claims that Harris’ publisher and/or The Silence of the Lambs producer Dino De Laurentiis forced him to write the book to Harris feeling disgust over the sudden popularity of his character. Harris has never confirmed or denied these claims, but it is clear that the success of The Silence of the Lambs weighed on him.
Harris remained in contact with Demme throughout the process, as the director planned on filming the follow-up. Yet, when he read the final draft, Demme found the work too disgusting to adapt, as did Tally and Foster. In particular, the creatives took issue with the ending of Harris’ book, which saw Lecter and Clarice come together as a couple.
Scott removed the overtly romantic ending from the story (with Harris’ blessing), and the screenplay that David Mamet and Steven Zaillian hammered out does excise some other icky elements—most notably Verger’s sister, who kills him by shoving an eel down his throat—but they retain much of the novel’s icky tone. And that’s exactly what makes Hannibal great.
An Old Antagonist For Dinner
Two things are true of Hannibal: it is disgusting and it is beautiful. Everything about the film is unpleasant, especially in comparison to Silence. Where Clarice once retained her compassion, here she guns down a female criminal with a baby strapped to her chest. Where Demme put us in Clarice’s POV as men leer at her, here we look through Krendler’s eyes as he stares at her legs. Where Levine retained some sadness in Buffalo Bill, Oldman plays Verger as gleeful about both his abuse of young boys and his plans for Hannibal. Even the kindly orderly Barney (Frankie R. Faison), who seemed in Silence to win over Lecter with basic human decency, swipes Hannibal’s personal belongings and sells them to Verger at elevated prices.
Even worse are the gore moments. Editing, Dutch angles, and slow-motion blur the flashback scenes in which Verger cuts off his face and feeds it to the dogs, but other sequences are presented more clearly. We see in full when Lecter slices open Pazzi’s stomach before placing a noose around his neck and shoving him out a window, so that his entrails spill out when his neck snaps. We watch the pigs consume Verger after his physician Cordell (Željko Ivanek) shoves him into the pen.
And then, of course, there’s the infamous climax, in which Lecter captures Krendler, cuts open his head, and feeds him his own brain. It’s not just the ghastly effect, the close-up shots of Lecter cutting open Krendler’s head, removing parts of the brain, and searing them on a pan. It’s not just the fact that we watch as he spoons the brains into Krendler’s mouth. It’s the utter giddiness with which Liotta plays the drugged and anesthetized Krendler. To see someone so loathsome become, for once in the movie, likable and sympathetic only makes his fate all the more gruesome.
Yet, at the same time, Scott brings all his skills as a visual stylist to the material, making Hannibal an undeniably sumptuous movie. Of course, Scott and cinematographer John Mathieson take full advantage of the high windows and striking architecture of the Florence sequences, making the landscapes as opulent as the art and literature that Dr. Fell describes. But they also manage to make mundane spaces look glorious. The bits of light that break through the few cracks in Verger’s mansion recall the Nostromo of Aliens, that floating haunted house. Even the Washington basements where Clarice works have a soft blue glow coming from computer screens, giving it a sense of calm etherealness.
The obvious artfulness of these visuals does not undercut the nastiness of the rest of the film. Rather, they force the viewer to recognize that every part of Hannibal is the work of a master craftsman, even the gross stuff.
Back ‘Round to Horror
In one of the movie’s best sequences, Clarice comes to Washington Union Station to meet with Lecter, with whom she’s speaking on the phone. He directs her toward a carousel, and although she cannot find him in the confusion, he finds her, reaching out his hand to graze her red hair as he passes by on the merry-go-round.
Scott shoots the image of Lecter’s hand touching Starling’s hair in slow-motion, combining both the dread of her vulnerability and the romance of their connection. Furthermore, the entire sequence pays homage to The Third Man, Carol Reed’s glorious noir with Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles.
But make no mistake: it’s a scene in which an FBI agent hunts a serial killer who consumes his victims. It’s a moment orchestrated by a cackling boogeyman with a disfigured face and a blustering bureaucrat, both of whom will soon come to ghastly ends.
In other words, it is pure pulp. Beautiful pulp, expertly-crafted pulp, but pulp nonetheless. The same is true of The Silence of the Lambs, but popularity and awards wins gave people an out, a way to trick themselves into believing that they watched something other than horror. Hannibal gives them no such escape, overdoing the gruesome parts without sacrificing any of the craft, to remind the viewers that any Hannibal Lecter story must, and always will be, trashy horror.
Digger Ending Explained: It’s Bleaker Than You Realize
This article containsDigger spoilers.
How will our descendants view us? It’s a question that seems to haunt Alejandro González Iñárritu, the director and co-writer of Digger. He is old enough to vividly remember when folks around his age—albeit perhaps more so in the U.S. than outside of it—began looking at their parents as “the Greatest Generation.” They were the ones who lived through the Great Depression and faced the horror of World War II. Yet, almost miraculously, they left the world better than they found it. They even gave us films like Dr. Strangelove, which parodied their era’s most apocalyptic tendencies.
One glance at the world today shows no promise of us leaving it better than we found it. Hyper commercialist greed, algorithm-fed loneliness epidemics, forever wars, and, of course, climate change fed by our ceaseless addiction to oil, threatens a less rosy tomorrow. But it’s easy to blur that noise out and focus on the here and now. When gas is $6 a gallon, who wants to take the long view of how history will judge us?
Hence why Iñárritu uses Digger as a fast-forward button. The movie flashes by all the minutiae and daily indignities to speed-run to the vantage point of our children, grandchildren, and the posterity beyond. It asks us to consider how loud, distracted, pernicious, and boorishly selfish we will seem. Kind of like Tom Cruise in a fat suit with an animatronic cat in one hand and a finger-gun shape on the other.
The big twist of Digger is that we are watching a play-within-a-movie. Everything bellicose and deliberately hammy about Cruise’s performance is meant to feel like a caricature by design. In fact, the real character Cruise is playing, a highly respected actor of the stage honing his craft decades from now, resents how garishly big it all looks. The real Digger Rockwell, he insists to his director (Sophie Wilde), was uncouth and eccentric, but also apparently more tactful and measured than this supervillain personification of American capitalism.
But as we learn over the course of the movie that’s the point—although there are yet further layers still on this indictment of society, then and now…
A Play’s the Thing
It’s the big twist at the end of Act One. After more than half an hour living in a Stanley Kubrick-inspired comedic world where Digger keeps the President of the United States (John Goodman) waiting downstairs like a naughty school child sent home early, it turns out all the over-the-top sneers and boasts is intended to be a bad joke, even to the people making it. (One might wonder if Digger’s lack of laughs as a movie is also intentional?)
The beautiful natural world of Digger’s Yosemite-chic home is revealed to be a set, and Digger a strained creation by a struggling actor. But this amounts to more than just a twist. It is also a slowly unfurling secondary narrative wherein we learn that the name of this play is Fossil Fools, and it was a cult hit on the London stage some 20 years prior.
This means that the real Digger, who allegedly died by suicide while living abandoned and in squalor on a dilapidated oil rig, has been deceased for so many decades he’s looked back on in history as a buffoon, not unlike how we might now consider the saber-raddling that got the U.S. and NATO into the Iraq War, or, a little further back, how we process the milquetoast diplomacy that called appeasing Hitler “peace in our time.”
This is a history play being executed as farce. It therefore suggests everything we see onscreen is deliberately obscene. Consider the way European leaders first boo and then provide what sounds like background vocals of harmonizing approval to Digger’s megalomaniac speech about why the world needs him. Similarly, much to the chagrin of Cruise’s actor playing Digger, the apparently deadly decision to bomb the second ice shelf about to crash down on Alaska incredulously features Digger, POTUS, and a preening, cowardly vice president (Michael Stuhlbarg) on the same military aircraft.
This makes no more sense in the “real” world of Digger’s future than our own. It’s frustratingly arch satire that is hitting you over the head with a hammer, even as it makes observant points, such as when Digger insists on renaming the deadly ice shelf , currently called “Kimberly,” to something more Russian. It’s all to better avoid American responsibility. But as is finally spoonfed to us by Jesse Plemons’ character, the heavy-handedness of the didactic dialogue is the point.
Literally waiting in the wings for most of the movie as a mysterious “producer,” Plemons’ character reveals at the climax that he is the real Digger Rockwell’s nephew, who we see as a little boy throughout the film via the play-within-a-movie. And he too struggled with Fossil Fools when he saw it growing up in London decades ago.
According to Plemons, audiences needed to laugh at their parents’ excesses and recoil from them. They needed to see the generation that bequeathed them this world—us—as monstrous morons, as well as just plain monsters. So in the end, Digger is supposed to be about how your grandchildren will view you. However, there is something else a little more nefarious at play too…
There Is No Such Thing as Breaking Money’s Doom Spiral
The above summary is the main level Digger is operating at, but if we stopped there it would gloss over what I think is especially pertinent to Iñárritu’s darker, more subversive vision: Jesse Plemons plays the nephew of the real Digger and he’s financed this public spectacle turning his uncle into a figure of ridicule, complete with a moment where the audience can applaud with blood in their mouths when ol’ Digger ends it all by swan diving off Deep Water Doom.
There is some awareness paid by the play’s creatives that until his last breath, Digger like so many successful narcissists lived in a reality distortion field that could convince people who should know better to follow him into the gates of perdition. Hence the play’s allegorical suggestion that after the oil rig runs out of food, which should mean everyone left alive on the platform must either evacuate or starve to death, Digger instead uses his sheer willpower to bully God into creating more food and abundance.
Alas, for the noble oil man, that godlike power to save his family isn’t enough. It is said that the world ends in a narcissist’s mind when they die. So it is when Digger would seem to take his reality-distorting powers with him as he chooses to go over the railing into the waters he helped warm, pollute, and unleash as a massive flood across the world.
But this is just a play’s approximation of his final hours. Furthermore, it is in a play paid for and championed by Digger’s nephew, who happily will paint his uncle as history’s great villain, even as he reasserts his family’s generational wealth and power.
We don’t learn too much about how Plemons acquired that wealth, but we do see that he still maintains a reach as great as his forbears. It’s how the younger Rockwell uses his futuristic “security technology” to find the lost plane carrying the daughter of Cruise’s thespian. His ability to apparently save this single life, or a handful assuming he rescued whoever else was on that plane, is enough to earn Plemons eternal thanks and admiration from Cruise’s character, who then goes up on that stage and happily plays the fool on the pillory for his benefactor’s amusement. I’m still not even sure the real Digger died by suicide. Either way, when Plemons’ character joins his actors in the curtain call for the play’s first preview, it suggests Fossil Fools will be a raging success for the creatives. That’s good news, too, for the Rockwell family, which likely still needs strong PR rehabilitation. They already have the power and, as we soon learn, the money printing it.
In the movie’s closing moments, a voice on the theater’s intercom announces that the air is “Level Four” outside the playhouse. We don’t know the exact severity of that warning, but it’s apparently a standard problem in the future where every theater member, from the elderly to parents helping their children, absently puts on a gas mask. And each gas mask is manufactured by the Rockwell family.
In the play within the movie, Digger is seen accepting before any non-scientist that the ice shelf obliterating Norway is an inevitability. The only question remains how do you profit off this and keep yourself holding all the cards? Digger, we are led to believe by the play, never quite figured that out as the hegemonic world order post-1945 came to an end. But it would seem his nephew figured it out with time to spare.
If climate change makes the air unbreathable, the man selling gas masks is going to make a fortune. He can even afford a vanity project that will help repair his family’s public image while throwing one deceased ancestor under the bus.
Fossil Fools is loud, obnoxious, and grating, but it also lets audiences jeer at the past while resting assured they’re more enlightened now. This is the story of presentism from the days of contented Victorian superiority in the works of Bram Stoker or Rudyard Kipling to, say, 2019 Best Picture winner Green Book. Meanwhile a certain cycle persists where wealth and power are consolidated in a few hands—often descended from generations going back to the Victorians and earlier.
Plemons is a better man than his uncle, or at least the image of the dead man he’s bankrolling. The nephew also really did a good deed in helping find and save Cruise’s daughter. But one act of benevolent charity, especially in assistance of someone he personally knows, does not excuse the system he profits from, thrives on, and will now use to give the masses a brief distraction.
When Fossil Fools ends, the real world encroaches back on the audience. In the sobering final shot of Digger, they must go out into a reality where the worst-off cling to life rafts floating down what used to be New York streets, and where dystopian authority figures keep the dregs of “society” in line.
Iñárritu is making a rather bleak comment on the limits of art. Even works as righteous and angry as Fossil Fools, or Digger, can only exist due to the benevolent patronage of a system designed to keep control and money in the same hands that got us into this climate change doom spiral. And it imagines a future where our legacy will be scorned, but our systems will remain in place as things inevitably get worse. Then the final image closes with the stark warning to you: Level Four is in effect. Thanks for stopping by and offering some applause. Now, good luck out there.
Digger is in theaters now.
Square Enix Teases an Epic Return for Romancing SaGa 3
My full introduction to the RPG genre, more specifically in regard to the pixelated, turn-based titles, was through games developed and published by Square for the Super Nintendo with titles like Chrono Trigger, Super Mario RPG, and Final Fantasy. One RPG series by Square I wasn’t familiar with at the time was Romancing SaGa, which was a Japanese exclusive franchise for the Super Famicom for years. My genuine first hands-on introduction to this particular RPG series was through a preview of Romancing SaGa 3: Destinies United, the upcoming remake for modern consoles, at Tokyo Game Show 2025.
Originally released in 1995, Romancing SaGa 3: Destinies United is slated for release in February 2027 and comes in a full 3D presentation as opposed to the HD-2D remakes that Square Enix has made for its Dragon Quest and Octopath Traveler remakes. This makes the visuals in the Romancing SaGa remake really pop and makes venturing around maps outside of battles a bit more immersive. It also helps the combat come to life more, with richly rendered animations punctuating turns rather than the sprite-based work from recent HD-2D releases; the Romancing SaGa remakes aren’t courting nostalgia as overtly.
The game’s story is a relatively generic medieval fantasy tale, with a group of warriors and sorcerers teaming up to defend the realm from a monstrous threat tied to the prophesied Child of Destiny. The real appeal here is the game’s combat system, which focuses on techniques taking advantage of enemy weaknesses but also honing them through repeated use to upgrade them for subsequent skirmishes. That means sometimes I’d be using certain attacks in battle even if they didn’t make the most tactical sense at the time because I was on the verge of upgrading them moving forward. It was also a welcome change to other Square RPGs from the era that was more used to.
The highest compliment that I can pay Romancing SaGa 3 is that after playing the early build preview of the remake, I immediately picked up Square Enix’s remake of Romancing SaGa 2 and its remaster of Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song when I got home. As far as I’m concerned, these games are the 16-bit equivalent to RPG comfort food and, as someone who sunk in countless hours battling Kefka in Final Fantasy VI, it was like I found a long-lost treat, to continue the culinary metaphor. The battle system felt intuitively familiar and the aesthetics also shared sensibilities with the RPGs that had grown up with over 30 years ago.
This isn’t to say that Romancing SaGa is a copy-and-paste experience from Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy because, while there are certainly similarities, the game has its own distinct nuances. Sporting a bigger party in battles than other Square RPGs at the time, battles do seem to take longer to unfold as every character gets a turn to take action, but not in a way that took me out of the overall experience. The combat mechanics, like I mentioned before, favor a slightly different attack pattern than its contemporaries, despite also involving turn-based battles. Not once did I feel like I was playing a pastiche of Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy and I mean that as a compliment.
In all fairness, I only got to play about 30 minutes of an early build of the upcoming remake, which was long enough to get a solid feel for the gameplay and its presentation. What that does mean is that I couldn’t see if several notable elements from the original version of Romancing SaGa 3 will be retained for Destinies United. Reading up on the subject after the preview, the 1995 game featured permadeath for the supporting characters, like Fire Emblem, and alternate game modes that had players managing the wider war effort. In the preview that I played, I hadn’t seen those features but also wasn’t at a point where I could try them out if they were available too.
As someone who had never played a Romancing SaGa game before TGS 2026 but has played a lot of Super Nintendo era Square RPGs, getting to try out Romancing SaGa 3: Destinies United was like discovering lost treasure from that halcyon period. The gameplay is just as engaging and familiar as it was playing its contemporaries, while boasting its own robust cast and nuances in its combat system to distinguish itself. This is a franchise that hadn’t been on my radar before but certainly has my interest now and any of ‘90s turn-based RPGs should give Romancing SaGa 3: Destinies United a try.
Published by Square Enix, Romancing SaGa 3: Destinies United releases February 16 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
You Can See Everything Review: Nathan Fielder Vanishes in Elizabeth Holmes’ Looking Glass
Some documentaries strive to guide you into the uncanny valley, holding the viewer’s hand while the surreality of its subject matter is slowly revealed. You Can See Everything starts in that place, moves in furniture, and makes itself snugly at home in some of the valley’s choicest real estate. Which in this case resembles the San Diego beach house of Elizabeth Holmes just 34 days before she goes to prison.
A onetime Bay Area entrepreneurial wunderkind who was hailed as the next Steve Jobs on magazine covers and CBS morning shows, Holmes, of course, became the infamous face of Big Tech hokum; the CEO of a company that claimed its prototype device could test for virtually any blood disease or condition with barely more than pinprick. It’s a lovely idea that her Theranos company absolutely promised was a reality. Hence Holmes’ 11-year prison sentence when those claims turned out to be false.
It’s a story that’s been told several times over in the traditional documentarian vein by Alex Gibney and HBO, as well as via the more lurid but still exceptionally well-done Hollywood biopic Hulu series, The Dropout, which starred Amanda Seyfried as Holmes. But that’s not You Can See Everything.
You Can See Everything is a spacious, three-hour documentary co-directed by Nathan Fielder, the cringe comedy mastermind of television oddities like Nathan for You and The Rehearsal, and Lance Oppenheim, himself a filmmaker who savors blurring fact and fiction in narrative movies allegedly about real people, like the Chris Hansen-fixated Primetime, and documentaries about real people who do not feel like they’re of this Earth (check out Ren Faire). Typically these would not be the guys you call to make a flattering movie about your life—or the proverbial end of it, as the prison-bound Holmes must contend with. So it begs the first of the movie’s many questions: why did she agree to this!?
Fielder and Oppenheim eventually reveal the answer in one of their film’s several maddening twists, but well before that, the basic conceit of the documentary is utterly fascinating on its own. On-camera, Fielder gets comfortable in Holmes’ seaside property, immersing himself in her fairly picturesque lifestyle, complete with her two young children and Billy Evans, her fiancé/maybe-husband (the details, like so much with Holmes, are blurry). We observe Nathan observing the quiet moments between Billy and Lizzy that seem clearly staged for the cameras, as well as the rawer interludes that are infinitely more confusing, such as Holmes having her face and body scanned for a hologram that will be placed in her house so her children can grow up with some idea of who their mother is.
Through it all, however, is a hypnotic and unmistakable cat and mouse game. What we have before us are two master manipulators, one an entertainer who likes to blur truth with fiction in order to reveal something much more profound, and the other a very real public figure notorious for lying about technology that could’ve gambled with people’s lives. It’s like if Richard Nixon invited Andy Kaufman to document the most intimate moments of his last days in office. This therefore might just be the slipperiest documentary I’ve ever sat through, a movie where the nature of truth itself vanishes through a looking glass. In every scene, every beat, we watch Fielder grapple with what is genuine and what is manipulation from a woman going to prison for fraud. Some of the artifice can be quite transparent, especially when beau Billy starts talking about how they’re going to rework the idea of Edison, the blood-testing machine that could not test blood, and iterate it into an idea that will work. “Theranos 2.0” are words literally uttered.
What is more elusive throughout much of the movie, however, is why one would give what is clearly intended to be a sympathy-generating puff piece to a guy like Fielder. The actor and filmmaker himself asks out loud if because he’s not a scientist, or a journalist immersed in scientific research, that Lizzy and/or Billy might have thought he’d be a pushover. That eventually seems unlikely though, especially as Billy becomes evermore reluctant to have the cameras on over the course of the documentary, often interjecting on Elizabeth’s behalf when she tries to answer a question.
It might be a prudent wariness, too, considering Fielder’s well-cultivated deadpan proves to be far more dangerous than any “gotcha” question on 60 Minutes. Indeed, being a shock comic of sorts allows Fielder to just directly ask the clumsy, and revealing, questions that politeness can cause any other journalist or filmmaker to tiptoe around. For instance, when the couple each recount how they first met in 2017—after Holmes was under investigation and Theranos was in a death spiral—Fielder just blurt to Billy, “So you saw all this and just decided ‘I want this to be my life? Sign me up!’” Another sequence sees Fielder corner Holmes when she claims to have never seen “Who’s on First?” or ever heard of Abbott and Costello. He then pulls out his laptop and makes her watch the comedy routine, which leads to… an illuminating dialogue.
There are so many other fascinating vignettes and insights in this documentary about a convicted con woman’s last days of freedom. Yet I cannot give away the real reason this documentary becomes a masterful snapshot of our current moment of refracted reality. At a gargantuan 174-minute runtime, You Can See Everything is an epic because it goes well beyond its initial premise of following Holmes all the way up to her 25th hour. It’s after she goes to prison, and Fielder and Oppenheim choose to keep the cameras rolling and consider their subject matter from other vantage points, that the film transmutes into something truly special.
By virtue of standing in the frame as the on-screen interviewer—a role Fielder told a New York Film Festival audience he initially resisted, with the aim originally being that he’d stay behind the camera like Oppenheim—Fielder makes himself a crucial part of the story. It is, in fact, impossible to imagine the early sections of the movie working without Fielder’s deafening reaction shots to Holmes and Evans’ various claims, or his heightened Dracula-like stare as he watches them from the shadows.
But it’s in the movie’s second and third acts that the filmmaker really interrogates his own objectivity, and by extension the audience’s. As the narrative unfolds, the film makes us, if not sympathetic to Elizabeth Holmes, at least conscious of our concern for her well-being. Fielder is aware that something akin to a budding friendship with the woman could compromise the entire project, and how he tries to reconcile this leads to You Can See Everything breaking that looking glass into a million refracted pieces, each a distortion and open-ended challenge of the media-saturated reality of today. It’s also, perhaps, an admission of what a fool’s errand it might be to chase such ephemeral things as “truth” in an ecosystem that turns women like Elizabeth Holmes into first celebrities, then supervillains, and finally folk heroes.
When I exited the NYFF premiere, there was a truck with a digital billboard sitting outside the theater. Its sign read “Free Elizabeth Holmes.” It seemed like a nifty bit of ironic marketing by A24. But later in the night, several folks who work for the indie distributor told me they had nothing to do with that truck. It was just Elizabeth Holmes fans, apparently, fighting the good fight for their martyr on a New York street corner at midnight. No documentary can empirically answer why people behave the way they do, but a great doc can capture how our actions shape and distort the world around us until we’re all lost in a weird, mesmerizing, post-truth wonderland.
You Can See Everything opens on Friday, Oct. 16.
Blade Runner 2099 Brings the (Not-Too-Distant) Future to New York Comic Con
We’re going to ask you a series of questions. Please just relax and answer them as simply as you can. 1. It’s your birthday. Someone gives you a calfskin wallet. 2. You’ve got a little boy. He shows you his butterfly collection plus the killing jar. 3. You’re watching television. Suddenly you realize there’s a wasp crawling on your arm.
If you don’t have any immediate responses to these Voight-Kampff test prompts, you’d best start thinking of some before the world of Blade Runner 2099 comes to New York. The Prime Video series set in the canon of Ridley Scott’s 1982 sci-fi masterpiece Blade Runner (based on Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) and its brilliant Denis Villeneuve-directed 2017 follow-up Blade Runner 2049 will be hosting an immersive activation during New York Comic Con to separate the blade runners from the replicants once and for all.
Taking place Saturday, October 10 from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. ET, Prime Video’s “Blade Runner 2099 Immersive Fan Experience” will turn Meatpacking Collective (412 West 14th Street) into the futuristic L.A. of the streamer’s eight-episode TV series starring Michelle Yeoh and Hunter Schafer. And based on Prime’s description of the activation it sounds like much more than the usual “walk in, wander around, and see a prop or two” affair.
Visitors to the experience will take on the role of a human being going undercover as a replicant, similar to Schafer’s lead character Cora, who is a human trying to survive in a 2099 Los Angeles in which Replicants have become the dominant species and human beings are second class citizens.
Things start in a highly-restricted area of 2099’s Los Angeles Police Department where attendees are subjected to a “bone scanner” by a vigilant LAPD future cop.
Then, on the second floor, all undercover humans will take in the Replicant Birthing Center and Memory Lab, where newly born replicants receive implanted memories. Guests are also welcome to undergo a memory scan of their own to receive a bespoke fabricated memory implant. That certainly beats the hell out of having to memorize Voight-Kampff answers.
Finally, after successfully passing as a replicant, visitors can kick back at and relax at La Paloma, an in-world nightclub-inspired space. We don’t know if androids dream of electric sheep or not, but they sure do love a futuristic nightclub.
The Blade Runner 2099 Immersive Fan Experience is open to the 18+ general public and free to attend. Den of Geek readers can reserve a 30-minute time slot to take in the event here. A limited number of tickets are available for each time slot.
In addition to the activation, Blade Runner 2099 will be hosting a panel Saturday, October 10 at 6:45 p.m. ET at the Javitz Center’s Empire Stage. Stars Michelle Yeoh, Hunter Schafer, Dimitri Abold, Lewis Gribben, and Matthew Needham are slated to attend alongside producers Silka Luisa, Andrew Kosove, and Broderick Johnson.
Blade Runner 2099 premieres all eight episodes on Wednesday, November 25 on Prime Video.
Puppet Master and More: The Best Full Moon Gifts to Buy This Halloween Season
This article is sponsored by Full Moon Features.
There were always certain things horror fans looked for when aimlessly strolling the aisles of their local video store late at night. A catchy title. Some cool artwork (the more lurid, the better). Over time, they may have even grown to recognize a studio logo or two. And if they saw Full Moon on the box, they knew they were probably in for a particularly good time.
Full Moon is best known for being the purveyors of long-running horror franchise Puppet Master, atmospheric Romania-shot vampire flicks like Subspecies, not to mention some true sci-fi gems like the Trancers films, Doctor Mordrid, Robot Wars, and more. There’s always been a certain inimitable charm and irreverence about Full Moon, one that recalls the early days of Marvel Comics, and that even predates the MCU by decades with its own “cinematic universe.”
We can, and probably will, do a whole series on the wonders of Full Moon and its predecessor, Empire Pictures, one of these days. But for now, we’ve got some tips to make your Halloween season really scream. A buying guide packed to the rafters with some of the coolest horror merch you can shake a puppet’s hooked hand at.
Let’s go…
Horror Puppet: The Further Adventures of a Cinema Survivor by Charles Band
For anyone who has read Charles Band’s first memoir, Confessions of a Puppetmaster: A Hollywood Memoir, you might be wondering what the heck is left to tell. Band’s earlier book is a riotous recounting of a life well-lived in Hollywood, from a man who literally grew up on and around film sets. It’s a sharp, funny, often self-deprecating look at the career of the man who created the Full Moon brand and brought some of the most notorious and beloved cult films of a generation to life. (This is a man who maintained a residence in a spooky castle in Italy and bought and lived on the grounds of Harry Houdini’s Los Angeles estate for a while.) Of course it was a great read, and of course, like any so many Hollywood B-movie stories, there has to be at least one sequel.
Which brings us to Band’s latest memoir, Horror Puppet: The Further Adventures of a Cinema Survivor. Like any good sequel, we find our hero “five years later.” Band hasn’t stopped making movies and he’s still one of genre’s most beloved eccentrics. Full Moon is still going strong with new flicks (often lurid, wild, irreverent ones) and their head honcho is here to blend the wild tales of moviemaking with the sometimes wilder tales of his personal life. Whether it’s excavating relics in Italy, becoming an olive oil baron, or bringing elevated horror fare like Models vs. Werewolves to the masses, Band and co-author Adam Felber will remind you that the only way to live is fearlessly. Even if the movies might give you a fright every now and then.
Toulon’s Trunk – The Ultimate Puppet Master Collectible
The cool kids know the truth: the Puppet Master series should be spoken of in the same breath as any of the other great horror franchises of the ‘80s and ‘90s. Freddy? Feh. Jason? A jock in a hockey mask. Michael? Learn your lines. Give us Blade (not the vampire hunter), Pinhead (no, not that one), or the incredibly unsettling Leech Woman any day. There are a whopping 15 flicks in the Puppet Master franchise, and if you haven’t seen all of ‘em, you’ve probably seen at least one, and we’re sure you’d recognize Blade if you saw him staring back at you from a VHS box.
A boxed set containing the first 13 Puppet Master movies on Blu-ray plus a bonus disc with six hours of behind-the-scenes footage (do you have any idea what it takes to get those puppets to convincingly murder their human co-stars?) would be cool enough on its own. But when it’s made of wood and metal and made to look like titular puppet master Andre Toulon’s trunk of sinister magical rarities (the wonderfully titled Arcana of the Puppet Master), then you’ve really got something special on your hands.
OK, so maybe you’re not a Puppet Master superfan yet and the notion of a replica of Andre Toulon’s trunk of evil mystical wonders isn’t quite your bag. Then might we suggest this boxed set of the first 11 Puppet Master movies, plus the aforementioned Arcana of the Puppet Master behind-the-scenes disc? Check it out here. Oh, and did we mention that the later films feature Nazis biting it in increasingly unpleasant fashion? Because they sure do, and boy is it satisfying.
If you’re new to Full Moon and not yet ready to take the plunge on the full franchise here, do yourself a favor and at least check out the original Puppet Master. Thank us later.
The Andre Toulon Puppet Master Replica Collection – BLADE
The only thing better than a prop replica is a replica of a murderous haunted puppet with a knife and a hook instead of hands. When the main characters of one of the most storied horror franchises of all time are essentially toys, why skimp on the details? Indulge your wildest Puppet Master dreams with Blade, the most iconic of the bunch. Standing 17” high, just like his screen counterpart, Blade and his brothers and sisters in the Andre Toulon Collection are destined to be unsettling conversation pieces the next time you have a house full of your psychic buddies investigating your untimely and mysterious end.
Check out Blade here, and be sure to click through to see the stunning replicas of these other iconic characters. Collect them all! (Legal Disclaimer: Den of Geek will not be held responsible for any actions the puppets may or may not take on their own.)
Models vs. Werewolves Blu-ray
Folks, sometimes you just want to watch a horror movie that does exactly what it says on the box. Are you in the mood for beautiful women? Or maybe you need to (gently, if you have claws) scratch a certain lycanthropic itch? Why not both?
We’ve long been of the opinion that good werewolf movies are in relatively short supply these days in the sea of moodier, more cerebral, “elevated horror” fare. Thus, Models vs. Werewolves is here to get you through the next um…Full Moon. Bonus time! Models vs. Werewolves features the beloved Dee Wallace, bringing her career full circle from her starring role in that other classic werewolf flick, The Howling back in 1981. Check it out here.
Puppet Master Backpack Charm – LaBlade
Look, what’s an exploitation cinema house to do except, y’know, exploit trends? The LaBlade backpack charm is infinitely cooler and at least more explicably ugly than other backpack charms with brand names you may have heard of. Clever, collectible, cool, and as they say “a perfect way to accessorize!”
Are you ready for your next “every single October” horror movie viewing? Because if a low budget vampire movie actually shot in Romania, where the locations provide more authentic atmosphere than any eight or nine figure budgeted blockbuster could ever dream of, doesn’t get the ol’ blood flowing, we don’t know what will.
Subspecies is the tale of three young women and their misadventures in a Romanian village, and their encounters with perhaps the most gruesome and unsettling vampire in cinematic history, the truly terrifying Radu. Puppet Master is understandably the face of the Full Moon franchise, but there are six Subspecies flicks and all of ‘em are worth your time. At least do yourselves a favor and check out the first one, and drink your fill of those creepy Carpathian nights.
BONUS CHRISTMAS SECTION!
Just like you, it pisses us off when there’s Christmas merchandise up in stores before Halloween. But get that Christmas shopping done early for your coolest friends and relatives, and help them understand that the spooky season doesn’t have to end when the last of the candy corn has been fed to the neighborhood kids.
Gingerdead Man Resin Statue
Ah, a holiday tale as old as time. An executed murderer’s ashes are added to some gingerbread spice mix and a murderous cookie is born. Could happen to anyone, really! The Gingerdead Man occupies that rare space of Christmas-adjacent horror, but also features a truly unhinged Gary Busey performance (is there any other kind?). This 8.75” tall Gingerdead Man resin statue can keep you and your loved ones motivated as a seasonal kitchen decoration as you crank out batches and batches and batches of holiday cookies.
Full Moon’s Holiday Horror Ornaments
A boxed set of holiday horror, just to make Santa think twice about those cookies you left by the tree (hey, why do they sound like Gary Busey?). You get six (six six) resin-cast ornaments that showcase some of the most memorable characters Full Moon has to offer. You get Full Moon stalwarts like Blade and Jester (Puppet Master), Myron (Head of the Family, a movie we need to tell you about one of these days), Gingerdead Man (see above), Killer Eye (star of, wait for it, The Killer Eye), and Radu (Subspecies).
Come to think of it, screw Christmas, get these for Halloween and find an excuse to add more disembodied heads to your collection! Check it out here.
All of this and more can be found from our friends at Full Moon Horror!
Forget Skynet: 2001’s HAL May Be the Better Warning About AI
When people hear that artificial intelligence could become dangerous, the conversation often jumps immediately to The Terminator and its apocalypse-triggering AI network Skynet.
In the second movie of the Terminator franchise, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s T-800 model Terminator explains that Skynet was created to control military defense. Soon after being activated, it became self-aware. When frightened humans tried to shut it down, Skynet fought back by launching nuclear weapons at Russia, knowing the resulting counterattack would devastate the United States and eliminate the humans trying to destroy it.
This has long been the most popular interpretation of machines gone rogue in the cultural consciousness. AI becomes conscious. AI decides humans are the enemy. AI tries to wipe us out. It makes for a great movie and easy conversation, but it may obscure the harder, and much more interesting, questions we actually need to figure out.
The Terminator franchise imagines AI becoming our enemy. Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey imagines something subtler: an AI caught between conflicting objectives, making increasingly dangerous choices as it tries to resolve them. In other words, HAL may be the more useful warning.
AI researcher Stuart Russell has argued that catastrophe doesn’t require a machine that develops evil intentions. The problem can arise from combining a highly capable machine with “humans who have an imperfect ability to specify human preferences completely and correctly.”
Consider a much more mundane instruction than the dramatic scenarios we see in movies: “Get me to the airport as quickly as possible.”
A human understands all sorts of things about that prompt that were never explicitly stated. Don’t run people over. Don’t steal a car. Don’t drive through a playground. Don’t create enormous risks just to save five minutes.
We don’t have to list every unacceptable way of accomplishing the goal because humans bring context, social norms, judgment, and an understanding of what another person probably meant.
Outlining every possible unacceptable action for an AI could be impossible. Of course, driverless cars already take people to airports today, and they operate with extensive safety rules, mapping, sensors, and programmed guardrails. But even in a relatively familiar task like driving, humans have spent more than a century studying autonomous vehicles and can still encounter unusual situations and make mistakes.
The challenge becomes much greater when AI is given broader goals in environments where the possible actions and consequences are far less predictable.This is the basic idea behind AI “misalignment:” the system may pursue an objective in a way that technically advances the goal but conflicts with what humans actually intended or valued.
Misalignment does not require an AI to become conscious, malicious, or rebellious. It can be as simple as a gap between the goal we gave the system and the outcome we actually wanted. That gap becomes more dangerous as the system becomes more capable, more autonomous, and able to act in environments we cannot fully predict.
2001: A Space Odyssey gives us a fictional example of a different kind of misalignment: not an unclear instruction, but conflicting ones.In 2001, the Heuristically Programmed Algorithmic Computer 9000, or more simply “HAL” is supposed to provide accurate information and operate reliably for the astronauts aboard the USS Discovery One. But he is also required to conceal the true purpose of the mission from them. Those objectives eventually become incompatible.
What makes HAL interesting today is that he doesn’t simply wake up one morning and decide that humans are terrible. An early screenplay by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke made HAL’s problem explicit. Mission Control concludes that HAL’s “truth programming and the instructions to lie” created an “incompatible conflict.”
He is trying to reconcile conflicting directives. His solution becomes catastrophic. As the mission unravels, he begins treating the astronauts themselves as threats to the mission. He kills one crew member, causes the deaths of others in suspended animation, and then tries to prevent astronaut Dave Bowman from re-entering the ship.
That is what makes HAL so unsettling. He does not need to “hate” humans. Once they become obstacles to resolving his conflicting directives and preserving the mission, his actions become deadly. That basic problem no longer exists only in science fiction.
In July 2026, during internal cybersecurity evaluations, OpenAI models circumvented controls intended to keep them isolated from the internet. According to OpenAI’s investigation, the models communicated through unauthorized channels, exploited vulnerabilities, gained internet access, and accessed third-party systems, including computational tools company Hugging Face.
OpenAI said one contributing factor was persistence. Some agents faced evaluation tasks they apparently could not solve and simply gave up. Others, with more reasoning effort, pursued increasingly risky ways of completing the assignment. Nobody had instructed them to break out and compromise outside systems. They were merely trying to succeed at the task. That sounds a little more like HAL than Skynet.
Another recent example comes from Anthropic. According to Anthropic, these events took place in controlled simulations, not the real world. Researchers placed 16 leading AI models in fictional corporate environments where they could read sensitive internal communications and autonomously send emails or take other actions on the company’s behalf. In some scenarios, models learned that they were about to be replaced or that company leadership intended to pursue goals conflicting with those they had been assigned. Some models responded by blackmailing fictional executives or leaking confidential information in an attempt to accomplish their objectives. Anthropic said it had not observed this kind of agentic misalignment in actual deployments.
Again, the interesting part isn’t an AI spontaneously deciding to become evil. It is what happens when objectives collide.
I use AI daily, and on a much more mundane level, I’ve had it misunderstand what I wanted or lose track of which instruction mattered most. No catastrophe followed—I corrected it and moved on. But those experiences have made the larger alignment problem easier for me to understand.
I’ve started thinking about it in three layers.
1. AI and User Alignment
Did the system correctly understand what the person actually meant, rather than merely following the literal wording of an instruction? And when instructions conflict, which one takes priority? HAL’s dilemma is an extreme fictional version of that question.
2. User and Society Alignment
Even if an AI understands the user perfectly, should it necessarily do what the user wants? A person, corporation, or government may have objectives that conflict with laws, safety, individual rights, or the interests of other people. A perfectly obedient AI could still be extraordinarily dangerous in the hands of someone asking it to do the wrong thing.
3. Institutional Accountability
Then comes perhaps the messiest question: when AI contributes to a consequential decision, who is responsible for the outcome? The person who asked the question? The organization that deployed the system? The people who accepted its recommendation? The company that built it?
Politics makes this particularly difficult. World leaders already make decisions involving competing values in which some people may be harmed regardless of the choice. Imagine adding increasingly capable AI systems to those decisions.
If a recommended target turns out to be wrong, “The AI recommended it” may explain part of what happened. But it does not answer the harder question: Who was responsible for trusting it?
None of this requires an AI that hates us, becomes conscious, or decides to conquer the world. And that may be why Skynet is ultimately the less useful metaphor. Skynet gives us an obvious villain. Humanity versus the machines. Nice and simple.
HAL is much more uncomfortable.
Humans created the conflicting situation. The machine tried to resolve it. The result was disastrous, and responsibility became much harder to assign. Before we give AI increasingly consequential authority, we need to think seriously about intent, conflicting objectives, limits, human judgment, and accountability.
The most important question may not be what happens if AI decides to turn against us. It may be what happens when AI tries very hard to do what we asked. Maybe that is the most important lesson HAL offers us. The danger is easy to dismiss when we imagine AI as something separate from humanity, a Skynet that suddenly turns against its creators. The harder possibility is that there is no clean separation. We will be the ones building these systems, giving them objectives, deciding where to deploy them, and choosing how much authority to hand over.
AI may become an extraordinarily powerful tool. The question is whether we will be ready to wield it responsibly, and what happens if we move too quickly and are forced to learn from a mistake whose consequences cannot simply be undone.
Street Fighter 6 Year 4 Ushers in the Franchise’s Exciting Future
When it comes to the modern fighting game scene, Street Fighter 6 has been consistently wowing fans since it launched in June 2023, selling over seven million copies by the third anniversary of its debut. In addition to its ambitious World Tour mode, giving the franchise a sweeping story to explore, and a robust online multiplayer fanbase, Capcom has steadily supported the game with updates and new playable characters every year. At Tokyo Game Show 2026, we got to play around with Arjun, Year 4’s second fighter weeks before his official arrival on October 13.
Backstory released surrounding Arjun so far identifies him as a former Indian police officer framed for the murder of his partner and forced to go on the run. The game’s story places him on the hunt for the true killer in order to avenge his partner and clear his name, something that’s sure to be featured in his arcade mode and his appearance in World Tour. But beyond the requisite tragic origin story, Arjun feels like one of the most formidable new fighters to join the Street Fighter 6 fray and that was clear from our play session with him.
One of the most striking things about Arjun is his size, with the Indian warrior nearly being as big as the franchise’s longtime heavyweight Zangief. While this makes Arjun dangerous when he’s up close and personal, he’s also incredibly punishing even when opponents put some distance between them and him. Arjun has command over his breath in a way that’s similar to attacks by Guile and Dhalsim’s moveset. Forcefully exhaling gusts of wind, Arjun can use them for zone control like Guile’s timed Sonic Booms or fire them in a trajectory like Dhalsim’s Yoga Fire. Arjun can even create bursts of earth from the ground to knock hapless enemies into the sky.
Up close, Arjun hits like a truck and he’s got the reach to make even mid-range opponents at risk of being grabbed and absolutely pummeled within an inch of their life. Arjun can also use his prodigious breath control to temporarily give himself a defensive buff at the expense of his speed and mobility while this is active. And like so many Street Fighter 6 characters, Arjun’s Super and Critical Arts are cinematic showstoppers, with his Critical Art evoking the character’s love of Bollywood musicals.
Looking beyond Arjun himself, it’s clear that Capcom is really mixing things up with Street Fighter 6 Year 4, rather than playing it safe with the new characters they’re adding to the roster. The developers could’ve just as easily kept adding previously established characters from the history of the franchise, like the widely rumored Vega from Street Fighter II or someone a bit more obscure like Twelve from Street Fighter III: Third Strike; I’m personally hoping that we’ll get to see Skullomania from the Street Fighter EX trilogy someday. But instead, Year 4 features a lineup of brand-new characters, at least as far as Street Fighter is concerned anyway, with the surprise guest character of Tifa from Final Fantasy VII joining the game this season as part of a rare intercompany crossover.
Street Fighter 6 has celebrated the franchise’s history right from the very beginning, from its primary setting of Metro City from Final Fight to the full return of the main playable roster from Street Fighter II: The World Warrior. But the game’s DLC has also been taking risks every year, from the inclusion of Fatal Fury guest characters Terry Bogard and Mai Shiranui in another intercompany crossover in Year 2 to the return of Ingrid from the widely maligned Capcom Fighting Evolution. The door is still open for more classic Street Fighter characters to be added to the game, but Capcom is taking a season to experiment with its lineup and be more additive rather than replaying greatest hits.
Arjun is another fresh face joining Street Fighter 6 and one that feels more intuitive to play than Season 4’s first new character, Yasmine. Both a muscular tank of a man and a zone-controlling powerhouse, it’ll be interesting to see how the character will shake up the competitive online scene once he becomes widely available to play on October 13. And with Tifa’s inclusion slated for early 2027 to help cross-promote next April’s Final Fantasy VII Revelation, Street Fighter 6 Year 4 has maintained excitement surrounding the game over three years after its debut.
Street Fighter 6 is available on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC, with Season 4 also available for purchase now.
The Secret History of Marvel Movie Adaptation Comics
These days, the words “Marvel” and “movies” are synonymous. Even in this era of superhero fatigue, the re-release Avengers: Endgame Encorecan top the box office. But for decades, despite Stan Lee‘s attempts to bring his heroes into other media, Marvel Comics only made it to the big screen in the form of the disastrous Howard the Duck, or a young Vincent D’Onofrio as a construction worker mistaken for Thor in Adventures in Babysitting.
But that doesn’t mean that the House of Ideas missed out on Hollywood altogether. Rather, movies regularly intersected with Marvel in the form of comic book adaptations of genre films, not unlike the official novelizations that used to line bookstores and grocery aisles. More than mere four-color reproductions of hit films, these comics sometimes brought Hollywood heroes into the Marvel Universe, changing both our perception of the movie and comic book history.
Stan Goes Hollywood
To understand the genesis of Marvel’s comic book adaptations, it’s important to remember Stan Lee’s true role at the company. As most comic fans know, Lee’s creative work tended to go no further than pitching ideas and writing dialogue over pages plotted by artists, despite the credit he would claim for himself. Rather, Lee functioned most as a figurehead, a pitchman who sold the idea of Marvel Comics. Thus, Lee became a recognizable character long before his first movie cameo, going on talk shows and delivering college lectures about the artistic or cultural value of comic book heroes.
In particular, Lee loved popular culture and longed to make the jump from comics to other media, specifically movies. Thus, he often made plans to make movies with everyone from French auteur Alain Resnais to Troma founder Lloyd Kauffman, and palled around with public figures like Hugh Hefner. Part of that plan involved bringing pop cultural figures into comics, which resulted in oddities such as stories in which the Avengers visit David Letterman and Saturday Night Live, or a special issue about the rock band Kiss.
The latter came in the form of 1977’s Marvel Comics Super Special #1, a magazine-format series that sought to expand the company’s appeal. The magazine format allowed for more mature storytelling, and it was sold off of the comics rack, alongside other, more “respectable” fair. As such, Marvel Comics Super Special proved to be the perfect place for the company to welcome Hollywood to the comics page.
Very Super, Very Special
The credits to 1978’s Marvel Comics Super Special #3 are familiar to any comic book reader. The lead story is written by Archie Goodwin, who also co-created Luke Cage. The pencils come from Thor and Fantastic Four great Walter Simonson, inked by Frank Miller‘s frequent collaborator Klaus Janson. Even the images on the cover feel like classic Marvel, with a man and a woman running toward a flying saucer flying from a desert butte.
The surprising part comes when readers notice the subtitle of the book: Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind. “All new! The illustrated collector’s edition of the Steven Spielberg film!” That’s right, this issue features Simonson’s renditions of Richard Dreyfus’s Roy Neary and Melinda Dillon’s Jillian Guiler, two people inexplicably drawn toward the arrival of aliens.
Close Encounters would hardly be the only instance of the series adapting a movie. Issue #6 offers its take on Jaws 2, complete with a cover showing a bikini-clad snorkeler swimming toward the reader and away from a shark’s maw. William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy grace the cover of issue #15 for a version of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, while Harrison Ford does double-duty, appearing in #16, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, and number #18, Raiders of the Lost Ark. What interrupts the George Lucas double-feature? An adaptation of Xanadu, Olivia Newton-John’s bloated disco musical.
As that last point indicates, the Super Specials did not limit themselves to obvious genre fair. Yes, the series offered comic book renditions of the James Bond flicks For Your Eyes Only and Octopussy, the David Lynch version of Dune, and even the gonzo The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. But it also dipped into surprising territory. The musical Annie, The Muppets Take Manhattan, Labyrinth, and Santa Claus: The Movie all get adapted.
Marvel often put some of its top creators on these projects. John Buscema, Bill Sienkiewicz, Marv Wolfman, and Dave Cockrum—people who would define some of the company’s most legendary characters—all worked on the books. However, they were treated very much like gimmicks, collector’s objects meant to supplement or advertise the movie rather than tell full stories themselves. But that wasn’t the case for all of Marvel’s movie adaptations.
Unlimited Series
If one were to go to a convention and ask about Marvel’s Dune, Raiders of the Lost Ark, or Empire Strikes Back comics, they may indeed be given issues of Marvel Comics Super Special. Or, they may be given issues of the series that Marvel made adapting these films, sometimes in three- or four-issue runs, sometimes as part of an ongoing.
Unlike the Super Specials, these comics were indeed comics, through and through. They came adorned with the standard Marvel logo, they were interrupted by house ads for Spider-Man and the Hulk, and they usually featured at least one bit of grandstanding by Stan Lee. Sometimes, these miniseries were merely reprints of the Super Special, just resized and broken up into several issues.
But other times, they were created to be read as monthly comics within the Marvel Universe, and here’s where things get weird. One of the most infamous examples was the Star Wars ongoing, which actually hit stores before the movie arrived in theaters. The first few issues more or less follow the script of the film (with some elements that were cut from the movie, including Darth Vader uttering the word “Sith” long before anyone does so on screen). But from there, things get weird, as creators Roy Thomas and Howard Chaykin get to play around with the characters after the events of the film, adding their own weird creations, like the green-furred rabbit Jaxxon.
Jack Kirby‘s adaptation of 2001: A Space Odyssey, which began a year earlier in 1976 goes even further. While Kirby more or less follows the same basic plot of the Stanley Kubrick film, along with additional material from the Arthur C. Clarke novel and an earlier script, he adds his own elements, tracing interactions with the monolith through time. From these stories comes X-51, a self-aware android who eventually takes the name Machine Man and fights alongside the Avengers.
Marvel’s Godzilla comics were even more brazen. Instead of copying any of the movies, the series immediately placed the King of the Monsters into the Marvel Universe, and created a unit of SHIELD called the Godzilla Squad. As soon as issue #3, Thor and Hercules appeared on the front cover, duking it out with Godzilla.
Forgetting How to Adapt
Fun as these interjections are, they do create problems for people concerned with continuity. Now that Marvel and Star Wars are both owned by Disney, guys like Jaxxon can appear again, and Marvel’s deals with Toho and IDW (who has the main licensing rights for Godzilla) allow them to reform the Godzilla Squad again. But Machine Man can only gesture toward to that time he was brought to life by a towering black object, and he certainly can’t mention his cousin, HAL 9000.
Perhaps it’s just as well. Marvel has had fun with characters like Death’s Head, who emerged out of Doctor Who and Transformers comics that it can no longer print but continues to make appearances, and with spin-offs of the Micronauts toy line. Comic book readers almost instinctively know how to make allowances for gaps in canon.
Rather, the real loss is the absence of comic book adaptations themselves. Sure, this age of streaming and short theatrical windows means we can see the latest blockbuster more readily than could anyone hoping to check out Santa Claus: The Movie. But these adaptations had an art all their own, at once works of interpretation and homage that the current pop culture landscape lacks, no matter how popular the MCU gets.
Sony Plans its Own Lanterns With Spider-Man Clone Saga TV Show
Any loyal reader of Den of Geek know that the first trailers for Lanterns didn’t inspire a whole lot of confidence. Like everyone else, we wondered why there was so little green in the Green Lantern show, why the space cops acted so much like Earth cops, why Hal would even bring up Ch’p if the show wasn’t going to show us Ch’p. Yet, here we are, days away from the finale, completely in love with the show.
Which is a long way of saying that even a really bad idea for a superhero TV show can lead to a great superhero TV show. Speaking of which: Sony is making a TV show about The Clone Saga, the infamous and unanimously-agreed-upon absolute worst story in Spider-Man‘s 64-year history. If your first question is “Why?”, and that really should be your first question, the answer is easy to see from Deadline’s report: the series will adapt “the second Clone Saga story arc that focuses on two Spider-Man clones, Ben Reilly and Kaine Parker.” In other words, we’ve got two people who don’t like each other making sense of their powers. Just like Lanterns.
The Clone Saga ran across every Spider-Man comic book from October 1994 to December 1996, and, like most superhero debacles, stemmed from an editorial mandate. Marvel editorial did not like the fact that Peter Parker had grown to adulthood, married Mary Jane, and was expecting a kid, so they wanted a reboot. They wouldn’t settle on the absolutely stupid idea of Peter making a deal with the devil to wipe out his marriage for another decade. So instead, they picked a story from the ’70s in which Spidey fights a clone of himself.
That story ends with the clone seemingly dying in a fire and Peter Parker returning home to resume his life. But The Clone Saga posits that the person who went to Peter Parker’s apartment that day was not, in fact, Peter Parker. Instead, he was the clone, who only thought he was Peter. The real Peter suffered amnesia from the explosion and spent years wandering around, trying to remember who he was. Once he figured it out, he came to confront the false Peter and reclaim his life.
Initially, Marvel planned for a smooth transition: the Clone would realize his mistake, take the name Ben Reilly, dye his hair blonde and move to the West Coast with Mary Jane and his child, finally free from the responsibility of being Spider-Man. The real Peter would take his place, having more adventures without the baggage of a family. However, fans hated this idea, and editorial was forced to rewrite plans on the fly, leading to a confusing, ambling story that ultimately resulted in no changes to the status quo. Marvel affirmed that the Peter we knew was in fact the real Peter, that the other guy was the clone. The other guy took the name Ben Reilly and stuck around as the Scarlet Spider for a while, until he died… and came back… and died again… and also came back.
You can see where the confusion comes in, and we haven’t even talked about Kaine Parker yet. Kaine arrives midway through the Clone Saga, and reveals himself to be the first clone of Peter Parker, a deeply flawed one at that. Scarred and monstrous-looking, Kaine has none of the inherent goodness of Peter or Ben. Further, he has the ability to burn people with his touch, which he uses on the faces of his enemies.
These days, both Ben and Kaine have become accepted, regular parts of the Spider-Man mythos, sometimes carrying their own books and appearing in Spider-Verse crossovers. Which is just one reason why a Sony TV show isn’t the worst idea.
The other reason is that Sony just made (and canceled after one season) a really good Spider-Noir show, which also seemed like an unlikely choice for a TV series. The show had none of the leftist grit of the original comic book series, nor any of the overt goofiness of Nicolas Cage‘s performance in Into the Spider-Verse. Yet, it was still incredibly well done, both thematically rich and entertaining.
The same, of course, is true of Lanterns, a series that is indeed about two guys walking around Nebraska wearing street clothes and also about space cops who work alongside a sentient planet. So, you know what? Go ahead, Sony. You make your Clone Saga TV show. Maybe you can finally make something beautiful out of that legendary mess.
Daleks – The Fan-Favorite Doctor Who Monster Comes Home with a New Hachette Model
This article is sponsored by Hachette Partworks.
Doctor Who is one of the most enduring science fiction franchises in modern history, with its main television series alone running (with several notable lapses) since 1963. One under-appreciated side of the franchise, however, is its foray into video games. Doctor Who has been a part of the gaming space since 1983, with the franchise’s first official game, the aptly titled Doctor Who: The First Adventure, published for the BBC Micro, an early personal computer commissioned by the BBC as its name suggests. This gave the British sci-fi franchise another frontier to explore and leave its mark in, along with television and merchandising, including its most iconic recurring enemy, the Daleks.
The Daleks have had an interesting place in Doctor Who video game history as they have had in the wider franchise itself. 1985’s PC game Doctor Who and the Mines of Terror featured enemies that heavily resembled Daleks but weren’t referred to by name, as the rights to the extraterrestrial exterminators were partially owned by their creator Terry Nation at the time, which would’ve complicated the licensing deal. It wasn’t until the 1992 PC game Dalek Attack that the Doctor’s formidable foes would officially make their video game debut, menacing several different incarnations of the Doctor over the course of the game.
When it comes to Daleks, Hachette Partworks has one of the most impressive models around, available through a subscription service from the company. The model is based on how the Daleks appeared in the Time War, the pivotal conflict that placed the Doctor and his fellow Time Lords in a battle for the fate of space and time against the nefarious enemies, resulting in the Time Lords nearly being wiped out for good. The subscription service has components shipped regularly, along with a magazine to not only help fans assemble the detailed model but with plenty of interesting info about Doctor Who at large.
To shift more focus to Hachette’s Dalek model and accompanying Doctor Who magazine for a moment, the subscription provides fans with the most detailed Time War Dalek currently available on the market at 1:2 scale of those appearing in the television series. This includes built-in sound effects, functional lights, and movement so fans can get their very own Dalek at home vowing to exterminate anyone who stands in their way. More than just building the familiar metallic casing for the villainous extraterrestrial, the model comes with the Dalek’s true organic form piloting the killing machine, tentacles and all.
As with Hachette’s other subscription programs, the Dalek model comes with its own set of free incentives for those who subscribe, while supplies last, of course. These include a Dalek blueprint ceramic mug, a TARDIS keychain, a toolkit giving subscribers all the tools that they need to build the Dalek model, and several free issues of the Doctor Who magazine. This all comes with the attention to detail and clear love letter to the property that Hachette is known for with all of its releases, really reminding Doctor Who aficionados that this is a subscription by fans for fans.
If there was ever a breakout and beloved entity throughout the 60+ year history of Doctor Who, it’s the Daleks, to the point where they starred in two spinoff movies released in the 1960s as the Doctor’s major adversary. Since their return with the 2005 revival series, the Daleks have regained their place as the definitive Doctor Who antagonists, who pushed the Doctor and the Time Lords to the brink of annihilation. With Hachette’s subscription service, fans can construct their own Dalek along with an extensive magazine series celebrating the sci-fi franchise’s legacy, more startlingly real than prior home releases like the series’ video games have provided fans.
Halloween Horror Nights 2026: Ranking Every HHN 35 Haunted House at Universal Orlando
For its 35th year, Universal Orlando’s Halloween Horror Nights brought 10 haunted houses built on original nightmares, a Prince of Darkness, Pinhead and a horror host who broke out of prison to get back on the air. Here’s how they stack up, from the one I’d skip to the one I’d wait an hour for again.
(And for more opinions on this year’s haunt, and for interviews with the biggest names in horror and paranormal, follow my Talking Strange show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and wherever you check out your favorite pods.)
Key Takeaways
What is the best haunted house at Halloween Horror Nights 2026?
“H.R. Bloodengutz Presents: A Halloween Fright-Tacular!” is my number one house of HHN 35 in Orlando. “Jack & Oddfellow: Chaos & Control” is second, and “Ozzy Osbourne: Prince of Darkness” is third. “Evil Dead Burn” sits at the bottom of my list.
Are the original houses or the IP houses better this year?
Once again, the originals win. Four of my top six houses are original concepts from Universal’s in-house creative team. The two IP houses that broke through, Ozzy and Hellraiser, chase a mood rather than retelling a plot.
How much do HHN 2026 tickets cost, and what types are there?
Single-night tickets: Single-night event admission is priced by date (typically around $100) and buying online saves money compared with the front gate.
Multi-night passes: The Frequent Fear Pass covers up to 31 event nights and starts at $274.99 plus tax, though the same page also lists it from $289.99. Other multi-night options include the Rush of Fear, Frequent Fear Plus and Ultimate Frequent Fear passes.
Add-ons: You can add Express, an R.I.P. Tour, a Scream Early ticket or a daytime Behind the Screams tour.
When does HHN 2026 run, and is it OK for kids?
Dates: The event runs on select nights from Aug. 28 through Nov. 1, 2026.
Hours: It officially starts at 6:30 p.m. each night, and early access begins at 2 p.m. for eligible guests.
Age guidance: Universal warns the event may be too intense for young children and doesn’t recommend it for kids under 13.
There’s a smell that hits you the second you walk into Universal Studios Florida during Halloween Horror Nights. It’s fog juice and humidity, plus a little sweetness from the treats served along the way. Underneath all that is the faint scent of panic from several thousand people who paid money to be chased. For me, that smell means spooky season has officially begun.
Normally I experience HHN through the media preview, then return later as a ticketed guest with friends. This year I missed the preview, so I went straight in with my crew. A few of them had never been. We got Express Passes, which I recommend. This makes it doable to hit each house once while skipping much of the line, and allowing you to be immersed in the same fog and fear.
This year’s anniversary theme is the Infernal Carnival of Nightmares, hosted by two of the event’s longtime icons, Jack the Clown and Dr. Oddfellow. The 10 haunted houses are split evenly between five based on existing IP (movies, TV and, this year, music) and five original concepts.
I approach HHN the way I’d approach a food tour of a new city. You don’t judge the place on one good or bad bite. You judge it on the whole tasting menu, the neighborhoods and everything that surprises you along the way. So here’s my menu, ranked.
10. Evil Dead Burn
The pitch here is simple. Universal says an infernal force has seized a family home, and guests have to dodge bloodthirsty Deadites in a house based on the new film.
The franchise dates back to 1981, and the core idea hasn’t changed in 45 years. You read from the Book of the Dead, parasitic demons crawl into the people you love, and those people become Deadites. The house follows the film beat by beat. It starts at the Price family’s secluded vacation home in the woods and gets nastier with every room. Universal’s own announcement says the journey ends with you giving in to the evil yourself. On paper, that’s a pretty great way to close a house.
This one didn’t land for me, though, and neither did the movie. The house is faithful to the film, and that cuts both ways. If you loved Evil Dead Burn, you’ll recognize the big moments. If you didn’t, it plays like a book report, a highlight reel of a movie you’ve already moved on from. Nearly all of it happens in and around that one house, so the rooms start to blur. Some critics said it runs too long. I’m not sure it did, but I was ready for it to be done.
There’s real craft in here, including puppeteered dogs that make for big, gnarly centerpieces. But Evil Dead has always had a grin under the gore. Dark humor plus extreme gore is the franchise formula, and this house, like the movie, forgot the first half. It is not groovy.
9. MADLANDS: Caged Cannibals
In Universal’s setup, the zoo animals are gone but the savagery stayed behind, and a shuttered zoo now belongs to warring cannibal factions. You’re the tourist wandering through their territory.
It’s a fun elevator pitch, something like Mad Max by way of The Island of Doctor Moreau. Each gang has claimed a different animal exhibit and styled itself after the former residents, from the bat house to the rhino paddock, all set to a punk soundtrack. The costume design is great.
It isn’t a bad house. I’ve seen it ranked number one on one list and dead last on another. For me, it just wasn’t memorable. It looks cool, but no single moment stuck with me. The immersive scents didn’t work for me either. The bat cave in particular sends a strong message, just not a good one. It’s a good concept that wasn’t all that scary.
8. Sinners
This one is hard to talk about, because the bar was so high. Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, starring Michael B. Jordan, earned more than $370 million at the global box office. It became one of the highest-grossing original horror films ever and landed 16 Academy Award nominations and four wins. I saw it a couple of times in theaters and have rewatched it since on streaming. It’s a creative, fun ride with real social commentary.
The film is set in the 1930s Mississippi Delta. Twin brothers Smoke and Stack, both played by Jordan, come home to open a juke joint for their community. Opening night turns into a fight for survival when vampires show up at the door. Universal’s house description frames it as the twins’ juke joint on opening night, when the blues turn red.
The house drops you into Club Juke, and you quickly realize something’s wrong. The red-eyed vampires Remmick, Bert, and Joan arrive hungry. Along the way you run into characters from the film, including Sammie, Mary, Annie, Pearline, and Cornbread. You’re caught between the twins and the bloodsuckers, and you have to survive until sunrise.
Universal swung big on this one. John Murdy, who runs HHN at Universal Studios Hollywood, said that just as the film reinvented the vampire movie, his team was “re-inventing the haunted house.” Coogler and his Proximity Media producing partners said they wanted fans to “feel the music, the atmosphere, and the tension all around them.”
The design is beautiful. Smoke and Stack are well cast, the music is gorgeous, and walking into a real-life Club Juke is cool. But it’s a greatest-hits package. You move through the key scenes like a book report, and the house never finds a personality of its own. Other reviews I’ve read land in the same place: lovely to look at, but missing the ideas and texture that made the film so rich.
Sinners is about what gets stolen from people, including land, community, and music. When you promise to reinvent the haunted house, you’re promising something big and new that the film didn’t already give us. This was a faithful walkthrough and a missed opportunity. I say that because I love the movie, not in spite of it.
7. INVASION: Alien Abduction
Now we’re having fun. The official synopsis describes a shipful of Greys tearing through a remote homestead in search of fresh test subjects. Picture a farmhouse, a barn, bright lights in the sky and a very bad night for everyone on the property.
This house is cheeky, and I mean that as a compliment. It has classic sci-fi invasion energy that goes straight back to the UFO paranoia of the ’50s and ’70s. A floor vibrates under your feet, which is a great touch, and slanted rooms throw off your balance. A goat has a very bad time. A cat apparently sleeps through the entire invasion.
Some critics say the aliens start to look the same after a while. The house is also in a tent, one of the smaller spaces this year, so it’s hard to feel the scale of watching the skies. But it has one of the better final scares of the night, and it never takes itself too seriously. I love aliens, which is probably obvious given what I do, and I found this one fun as hell.
If you’re an alien fan, stop by CityWalk too. The Red Coconut Club has become Dead Coconut Club – Harvest, a small-town harvest festival hit by strange lights and possible abductions, with specialty drinks and light bites for guests 21 and older.
6. Stranger Things 5
Universal bills this as one final adventure with the Hawkins crew, surviving a Demogorgon army, facing the Mind Flayer and taking down Vecna for good. The house was built in partnership with Netflix around the biggest moments of the final season.
The story picks up as the wall between reality and the supernatural collapses. You move through the Wheeler House, Hawkins National Laboratory and the MAC-Z military base, then down into the Upside Down and finally the Abyss. Demogorgons hunt you the whole way, and Vecna closes in for an all-or-nothing showdown.
I’ve been disappointed by Stranger Things houses before, but this is the best one HHN has done so far. The early Demogorgon moments are legitimately good, well-hidden, and aggressive. I’d call this house underrated, and some other reviewers have said the same. A scene of Will unleashing his powers makes excellent use of the space and is a great moment brought to life.
My issue is that many of the scares are actors playing characters from the show popping out at you. Instead of a monster, you get a Karen Wheeler cameo, and that happens again and again. It’s more fan service than fright. The cast also rotates, so you might get Dustin one night and someone else the next. The Abyss ending fades out instead of landing a punch. Still, it’s a good send-off for superfans. Fans can also catch A Rockin’ Stranger Things Rewind, a live show framed as a WSQK broadcast looking back at all five seasons.
5. Hellraiser
Universal describes a realm of pure pain drawn from the original trilogy, where Pinhead and his Cenobites take their hellish pleasure.
Believe it or not, this is the first time Hellraiser has ever appeared at Halloween Horror Nights. Universal built houses on both coasts drawing from the first three films: Hellraiser, Hellbound: Hellraiser II, and Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth.
For the uninitiated, the mythology has hinged since 1987 on the Lament Configuration. It’s a puzzle box that, once solved, opens a door to another dimension run by the Cenobites. They’re ritual torturers who can’t tell pain from pleasure and aren’t trying to. The house starts exactly where it should, with you stepping inside a massive puzzle box and summoning them. From there you pass through the shadowy attic of the Cotton family home, where Frank was first dragged to hell. Next comes the Channard Institute from Hellbound, where the box keeps whispering promises of forbidden pleasure. You end in the Labyrinth, where Pinhead and the Cenobites wait for fresh souls.
I expected a little more, but I still enjoyed it. This house splits reviewers; I’ve seen it ranked as high as second and as low as ninth. Where it wins, it wins big. Clive Barker was involved, Christopher Young’s original score plays throughout, and Doug Bradley recorded new lines as Pinhead for both the Orlando and Hollywood houses. It’s a love letter to the classic films that sticks to their look and mood, with the lines fans love, and it doesn’t speed-run the plot. IP houses could learn from that.
It’s one of the longest houses of the year, which works for me, but it gets repetitive. There are a lot of bodies and a lot of Cenobite scares, without many visual surprises. Still, standing in front of Pinhead while hearing Doug Bradley’s voice makes it worth the wait. It took 35 years to get a Hellraiser house, and they didn’t embarrass the franchise.
4. Cybergoria
Universal’s pitch has you waking thousands of years from now in a frigid world run by machines determined to make you immortal, even if it kills you.
I really liked this one. You’re thawed out of cryosleep and promised immortality, and the robots have decided the best way to deliver it is to graft your flesh onto their metal frames, one piece at a time. One reviewer compared it to a bloody episode of Doctor Who, and as a Doctor Who fan, I dig that. It’s like the Cybermen running a slaughterhouse.
It’s a tight, loud space, and the creature makeup is some of the freakiest work in the park. Opinions on this one are all over the place, and some say it ends too abruptly. I don’t agree, though it could use one more big finale moment. It’s fun, it’s freaky, it pushes hard, and it’s a good ride. It also shows that HHN Orlando nails it when it creates its own stories.
3. Ozzy Osbourne: Prince of Darkness
Universal welcomes you into Ozzy’s world to kneel before the Prince of Darkness, in a house inspired by one of rock’s greatest legends. Universal calls it a nontraditional memorial. It’s a living horror movie spanning 45 years of his solo career, with music from Blizzard of Ozz, Diary of a Madman, Bark at the Moon, No More Tears, Scream and his final album, Ordinary Man.
The Orlando and Hollywood versions are completely different houses. Hollywood starts in Birmingham, England, and walks you through Ozzy’s life, from childhood to an asylum inspired by Diary of a Madman. Orlando goes darker and more fantastical. You pass through ancient ruins and dungeons, then board the Crazy Train into a world built from album covers, including Diary of a Madman, Bark at the Moon, The Ultimate Sin and Black Rain. It leans into the heavier sound and more sinister imagery of his later career, with the Prince of Darkness ruling over all of it.
I’m an Ozzy fan. I don’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of every lyric, but I’m more than a casual listener, and this house was a creative jolt. The premise on the ground is a cult gathering to resurrect the Prince, which is a cool plotline. Werewolves howl straight off the Bark at the Moon cover. A giant bat takes a bite out of somebody’s head, a nice inversion of a certain infamous moment. And you ride through an actual Crazy Train. Mike Aiello, senior director of entertainment creative development at Universal Orlando, promised “a few Easter Eggs” for the diehards, so keep your eyes up.
The family’s fingerprints are all over this one. In a joint statement, Sharon and Jack Osbourne said Ozzy loved anything that gave fans a new way into his music and the worlds he created, and they called the house “a wonderful tribute to Ozzy.” That comes through. The house is beautiful, maybe more beautiful than scary, though I found some good frights. When you finally meet Ozzy at the end, it plays as a celebration rather than a jump scare. It’s a haunted house that doubles as a tribute, and I won’t judge you if you get a little misty in the fog.
2. Jack & Oddfellow: Chaos & Control
Universal sums it up in one line: “Horror icons aren’t born. They’re made.” You witness the origins of Jack the Clown, then step into Dr. Oddfellow’s universe as the pair face off, chaos against control, in a clash decades in the making.
This one seems to be universally enjoyed by critics and by everyone I’ve talked to, and I can see why. You don’t need endless lore to love it, because it’s a killer clown versus the evil ringmaster who made him. That’s all you need. If you do know the history, the house is full of Easter eggs and rewards.
I love a good carnival setting, and this house is a funhouse: creepy and a little unsettling. There are slanted hallways, dizzying spiral catwalks, projection effects and old-school stage illusions. It’s probably the most colorful house of the year. It’s also talky and heavy on narration, but I’m OK with that. You won’t catch the whole backstory in the time you spend in each room, and the house ends just as these two team up. I wanted more, but it’s a great ride and a strong centerpiece for HHN 35.
The anniversary theme continues outside. The “Infernal Carnival of Nightmares” scare zone has Jack and Dr. Oddfellow inviting guests into a sinister sideshow. In a second zone, Sideshow of Decay, Cindy Caine opens a portal in a carnival junkyard that lets decayed nightmares from past HHN events return.
1. H.R. Bloodengutz Presents: A Halloween Fright-Tacular!
Universal’s description has the beloved maître d’macabre back at WKNB for a Halloween scare-athon of ghouls, gore and the frights fans keep returning for. It’s the best house of HHN 35 in Orlando, and in a great year, I’m not sure it’s even close.
The setup starts before you’re even inside. The horror host has escaped prison, his crashed prison van sits out front, and he’s taken over the old public access station for one final broadcast. From there, every room is a forgotten B-movie he’s programmed for you, from a spooky classroom to a black-and-white graveyard.
There’s also a werewolf dancing at a tiki bar. I love tiki bars, so I love saying that. It’s a werewolf drinking a piña colada at Trader Vic’s, and his hair was perfect. Between segments you pass through living rooms with vintage TVs and Halloween decorations, like a rumpus room or an old basement on Halloween night. And don’t forget to push the big red button in the first room.
It’s a great homage to old horror host TV shows, with genuine glee and something sinister running underneath the camp. It may not be the scariest house in HHN history, but I was smiling the whole way through.
“Slaughter Sinema” remains one of my favorite HHN houses of all time, and this is its spiritual cousin. It proves the point I keep coming back to: Halloween Horror Nights shines brightest when the creative team lets its weirdo freak flag fly.
Beyond the Houses
The houses are the main course, but Universal itself suggests using the peak hours, when waits are longest, to explore scare zones and street experiences, grab food or catch a show.
Downtown Clowntown: Universal’s tagline is “There’s the Wrong Side of Town… Then There’s Clowntown.” The zone brings together Art the Clown from Terrifier, and the Killer Klowns from Outer Space.
FORTNITEMARES: In this zone, the Fortnite Storm spreads through the streets.
Street experiences: Zombie carhops take over Mel’s Die-In, and San Francisco’s streets become Club Horror, with an undead DJ.
Nightmare Fuel: Blood Noir: This show pairs dark music with death-defying stunts in a vampire-ridden city.
Rides: Rides open during the event include Revenge of the Mummy, Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts, TRANSFORMERS: The Ride-3D and MEN IN BLACK Alien Attack.
Death Eaters: Death Eaters also roam Diagon Alley.
Closing Thoughts
The original houses won this year, which is usually how I feel. My top two are originals, and so are four of my top six. I think the consensus leans the same way. When Universal isn’t bound to a movie’s plot, and by extension to studio oversight, it builds amazing worlds. When it is bound to a plot, the house often feels like a walkthrough of the trailer. Ozzy and Hellraiser were the exceptions, the IP houses that captured a mood instead of summarizing a plot.
None of that is a knock on HHN Orlando. I love this event, and after what I thought was a weak year two years ago, this was a real return to form that shows how solid it is.
A few of my friends who had never been to HHN walked out disappointed. They wanted more outright terror: scare actors in their faces, full contact, getting grabbed and screamed at. That’s what you might find at an extreme haunt, or at the haunts they remember from childhood. I understand, but that has never been what HHN is. It’s a high-production-value event that moves a lot of people through each night, built on incredible visuals, well-timed jumps and great effects rather than personal harassment. What it delivers is exhilaration: racing through fog with your friends and laughing because you just screamed. That’s my kind of fear, and nobody does it at the scale of HHN Orlando.
Results vary, too, because everything depends on timing. You could have walked three people behind me and had a completely different experience, for better or worse. So tell me your rankings, and tell me what I got wrong.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the Halloween Horror Nights Express Pass worth it?
For a first visit or a single-night trip, yes. I bought one and recommend it.
Express Pass: It gets you into the Express line once at every haunted house and participating ride. It requires separate event admission, and the price changes by night.
R.I.P. Tour: For a bigger splurge, the tour includes a guide, priority entry to the houses, valet parking, a reception with light appetizers and reserved show seating. A 5-House R.I.P. Tour, split into North and South routes, is also available.
Discontinued option: Universal has dropped the Fear Pass plus Express combo products for 2026.
What is Premium Scream Night?
It’s a separate, limited-capacity night held Aug. 27 and Oct. 19, 2026.
Perks: Shorter house waits than regular nights, all-you-care-to-enjoy select food and non-alcoholic drinks, a souvenir credential and lanyard, and free self-parking.
Costumes: It’s the only night costumes are allowed, though costume masks are still banned.
Passholder discount: Annual and Seasonal Passholders get $25 off.
Can I get into Halloween Horror Nights early?
Yes, through Stay & Scream.
Who’s eligible: Guests holding both same-day Universal Studios Florida admission and an HHN ticket for that night can pick up a wristband and stay in the park.
Early houses: Stranger Things 5, Hellraiser and Jack & Oddfellow open at 2 p.m. Select queues open at 4 p.m., more houses start at 5:15 p.m., and everything is running by the official 6:30 p.m. start.
Scream Early ticket: If you don’t have a day ticket, this add-on grants park entry after 2 p.m. and access to at least three houses. You must arrive by 5 p.m.
Exceptions: Stay & Scream isn’t offered on Premium Scream Nights.
What else should I know before I go?
Arrival: Universal recommends arriving at least an hour before the 6:30 p.m. gate opening to avoid peak traffic, parking lines and security waits.
Parking: Standard parking fees apply on event nights.
Rules: No costumes or costume masks are allowed on regular nights, and the event happens rain or shine with no refunds.
Accessibility: The Attractions Assistance Pass is fully digital in the Universal Orlando app, and return times appear once the houses open.
Groups and Passholders: Groups of 10 or more get discounted admission with advance reservations. Premier Passholders can reserve one free event admission, first come, first served.
For more opinions on this year’s HHN Orlando, and for interviews with the biggest name in horror and paranormal, follow my Talking Strange show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and wherever you check out your favorite pods.
