The Best Horror Movies of the 2020s So Far

It’s spooky season, which means that it’s time for us to pull out our old favorite horror movies. Every year, we have to check in with Michael Myers and Freddy Krueger, maybe even throw on Universal and Hammer classics about Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster.

As important as it is to remember the past, horror movie fans would be doing themselves a disservice if they ignored the new in favor of the old. The past six years have been a true treasure trove for lovers of all things macabre, as some of our best current filmmakers have put their talents to scaring the crap out of audiences. In their honor, we take on a task just as frightening by trying to narrow down the 15 best scary movies of the 2020s so far. Surely, we’re going to leave off some favorites, but hopefully that will just be proof that the 2020s have been a frightfully good time so far.

15. Host (2020)

Were it released any other year, Host would be little more than a clever little gimmick movie with some fun jump scares. But because it was made and released at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Host managed to capture general anxieties and turn them into something trenchant and timeless. Written by Rob Savage, who shares co-writing credits with Jed Shepherd and Gemma Hurley, Host uses the screenlife formatting to show what happens to a group of friends who hold a seance over Zoom and don’t follow the rules.

We watch the entirety of Host as it unfolds on the main screen, allowing the characters and premise to feel relatable, if not mundane. Moreover, Savage and his co-creators integrate genuine tensions between the characters, particularly lead Haley (Haley Bishop) and her best friend Jemma (Jemma Moore). Those tensions give weight to the proceedings as the spirit they accidentally invited in begins to attack the participants, all heightened by Savage’s clever use of the screenlife format. Once you watch Host, you will never again look at funny Zoom animations in the same way.

14. The Empty Man (2020)

The worst thing to be said about The Empty Man is that it never gets better than its first 20 minutes. But that doesn’t mean that the 110 minutes to follow are bad. In fact, they’re quite good. But the mini-movie that opens the film, about a doomed mountain climbing expedition and the reveal of a terrifying idol, is so perfect that few films could maintain that level of quality.

The main portion of the movie follows former cop James Lasombra (James Badge Dale), who gets pulled into a mystery when his neighbor Nora’s (Marin Ireland) daughter disappears, leaving behind the message “The Empty Man made me do it.” As he investigates the strange goings on among the teenagers in his town, Lasombra makes some horrifying discovers about his own identity. Writer and director David Prior, loosely adapting a comic book by Cullen Bunn, manages to let the terror of the cold open linger over the procedural elements of The Empty Man, giving the entire film an unshakable sense of dread.

13. The Substance (2024)

What does it say about the development of culture that, in 1985, a horror movie lampooning the decade’s health-food craze, had to be the Larry Cohen cult fave The Stuff, but in 2024, The Substance is a widely-loved hit, starring Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley? Whatever the reason, Coralie Fargeat followed up her lean and mean debut Revenge (2017) with the glossy body horror extravaganza The Substance and audiences loved it.

The Substance owes some of its success to Demi Moore’s fearless, egoless performance as Elizabeth Sparkle, an actress and fitness personality treated like a horrible monstrosity because she’s reached her 50th birthday. In desperation, Elizabeth takes a shady drug that makes her younger (portrayed by Qualley), but with some horrible side-effects, and not just because her younger self, Sue, increasingly takes control. The entire story builds to a stomach-churning climax, the sort of thing you’d have to visit a sketchy video store to see back in the 1980s.

12. 28 Years Later (2025)

28 Years Later should be terrible. Or, at least, it should be a comforting, but unsurprising, retread of a past triumph. After all, T2: Trainspotting isn’t a bad movie, but the last time Danny Boyle revisited a previous masterpiece, no one was particularly impressed. Whether it’s because he’s re-teaming with Alex Garland, or because the Brexit crisis invites strong feelings, but 28 Years Later somehow feels just as urgent as its predecessor, 28 Days Later (2003).

Boyle and Garland avoid any legacy sequel shenanigans involving characters from the first movie. Instead, what begins as the story of a father (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) taking his son Spike (Alfie Williams) on a coming-of-age mission into the rage-zombie-infested woods outside of the community stronghold becomes a meditation on the nature of death. The movie achieves this shift thanks to Ralph Fiennes’s deeply empathetic Dr. Ian Kelson, who can find the humanity in even the hulking zombie Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry) and help Spike deal with his mother’s (Jodie Comer) illness. The move from horror to humanism allows 28 Years Later to feel vibrant and necessary, and not just like shambling, lifeless IP.

11. Nosferatu (2024)

Of all the classic monsters, Dracula may be the most difficult to do well, precisely because he’s so popular. Audiences have been inundated with countless variations of Dracula and other blood-suckers to the point that a work needs to be truly unique to catch their attention. Leave it to Robert Eggers, that master of historical verisimilitude, to find a novel approach. Eggers goes back to the first Dracula adaptation and updates Nosferatu, F.W. Murnau’s silent, copyright-violating take on the Bram Stoker novel.

A heavily-made-up Bill Skarsgård transforms into the titular monster, the hideous Count Orlok. Where modern vampire tales emphasize the seductive nature of the creature, Skarsgård’s Orlok speaks in a rumbling voice and glowers from wild eyes, desiring first to consume real estate agent Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult), and then Hutter’s wife Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp). Helping the humans stand against Orlok’s evil is Prof. Albin Eberhart von Franz, played with the perfect mix of humanity and eccentricity by Willem Dafoe. Eggers mixes the elements together to create a vampire tale at once familiar and utterly unexpected.

10. Obsession (2026)

On the surface, Obsession is a simple indie horror flick, buoyed by a manic central performance and an interesting behind-the-scenes factoid, given its 25-year-old director Curry Barker’s relative lack of cinematic experience. However, one look at the summer box office numbers proves that Obsession is so much more than just an indie movie. Barker and his actors have tapped into larger conversations about women’s bodily autonomy, making Obsession a lightning bolt of a film.

Inde Navarrette stars as Nikki, who wants to be nothing more than friends with her close pal Bear (Michael Johnston), despite his desire for more. When Bear uses a mystical One Wish Willow to override her desires with his own, Nikki transforms into the most devoted, doting, and ironically possessive girlfriend who ever lived. Yet, lest anyone mistake this as a horror story for Bear, Obsession repeatedly reminds us that it is ultimately Nikki who suffers.

9. Sinners (2025)

In most cases, a multi-award-winning, culturally-transformative movie like Sinners would take the number one spot. But since this is a horror-focused list, we do have to dock Sinners a bit for not being quite so scary as some other 2020s releases. Yes, Ryan Coogler does fill the screen with vampires, and he does feature one of the most magnetic bloodsuckers to ever appear on screen, in the form of Jack O’Connell’s magnetic Irishman Remmick. Yet, Coogler and co. play the monster beats for pathos more than they do for horror.

That said, the fact that Sinners sits at number nine on this list is a testament to what it does right, which is just about everything. Michael B. Jordan finally cements his proper movie-star status with a dual turn as twins Smoke and Stack, come back to Clarksdale from Chicago, ready to open their own juke joint. Despite some rough reunions with former loves, played by Hailee Steinfeld and Wunmi Mosaku, the twins get the juke up and running—only for Remmick and his brood to descend upon them. What follows is at once a celebration of the power of music, a warning against cultural hegemony, and a pure cinematic spectacle that deserves every bit of praise it earned.

8. Weapons (2025)

Despite some worthy entries such as Mass and the most recent Texas Chainsaw Massacre (yes, really), Hollywood still hasn’t figured out what to do about the school shooting crisis. Weapons is a movie that hasn’t figured out what to do with any of the themes and feelings it invokes, which range from the exact time that writer and director Zach Cregger learned of his friend Trevor Moore’s death to fears about children being attacked in school. Yet, somehow, the messiness of Weapons makes it more resonant.

Weapons stars Julia Garner as a teacher who comes under fire when all but one of her students runs out of their houses at 2:17 a.m. and disappear. Josh Brolin co-stars as one of the kids’ parents, who demands answers from the teacher. Those answers come in the form of Aunt Gladys (Amy Madigan), in an Academy Award-winning performance, just one of the many odd and endearing characters that make Weapons a scary, funny, and often moving mess.

7. Talk to Me (2022)

When news broke that Aussie twins Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou, originally known as YouTubers RackaRacka, were making a horror movie, most expected something gross, kinetic, and shocking. Their debut feature Talk to Me certainly delivers on that promise, particularly with a sequence in which a possessed pre-adolescent batters his own body to a pulp. The story of a teenage party game in which participants allow themselves to be possessed by gripping a statue of a white hand, Talk to Me has plenty of disturbing content.

No, the surprising part about the Philippou brothers’ first movie is its emotional depth. The primary teen Mia (Sophie Wilde) isn’t your average horror movie victim. Rather, she’s a fully fleshed-out character, as are the members of the family who takes her in after her biological family’s dissolution. That grounding makes Mia’s decisions at once frustrating and understandable, and it makes the fate of those around her feel true and truly terrifying.

6. Pearl (2022)

Like Host, Pearl was a film that seemed initially driven by its gimmick. Filmed alongside and released shortly after Ti West‘s ’70s slasher X, Pearl promised to tell the story of that movie’s killer, the titular Pearl (portrayed there by Mia Goth under heavy make-up). Whether or not anyone wanted to know more about an elderly crone whose sexual desires drive her to murder, that didn’t matter.

It didn’t matter because Pearl exceeds all expectations. Part origin story, part slasher, and part homage to The Wizard of Oz, Pearl stars an absolutely magnetic Goth as a woman whose big dreams drive her to cut her way out of her small town. While West and Goth, both credited as writers on the movie, include some shocking horror scenes, the real power of Pearl comes from the pathos given to the title character, making her somewhat sympathetic and at least relatable—at least until she flashes that unhinged smile of hers.

5. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (2026)

Early in Jane Schoenbrun’s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, young director Kris Williams (Hannah Einbinder) explains that the third act of her debut movie Jouissance was a remake of Psycho, from the perspective of the shower curtain. With that joke, anyone worried that Schoenbrun was just interested in doing an artsy-fartsy riff on ’80s schlock like Friday the 13th and Sleepaway Camp could relax. And yet, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is an artsy-fartsy riff on ’80s schlock. But it’s a riff that’s both in on the joke and in love with that schlock.

At its core, Teenage Sex and Death follows Kris as she tries to recruit one-time final girl Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson) to star in her remake of the slasher franchise Camp Miasma. But as Kris and Billy bond, they explore both the pleasures of trash and the vulnerabilities of sexual expression, making Teenage Sex and Death perhaps the most thrilling movie of the year, even if its kills come with a Counting Crows needle drop.

4. Malignant (2021)

Let’s get this out of the way right up top: Malignant is about a lady who has a whole other person growing out of the back of her head. Sometimes, that other person takes over the lady’s body and uses it to kill people. If that premise is too silly for you, then skip this entry. But if you find that premise even a little intriguing, if it makes you wonder how anyone could pull something like that off, then you must check out Malignant.

Working from a script by Akela Cooper, director James Wan pulls off the conceit by leaning all the way into its ridiculousness. Annabelle Wallis plays the lady in question, Madison Mitchell, who has almost no memory of her imaginary friend Gabriel or the surgeries she underwent as a child. After hitting her head during an accident with her husband, Madison begins blacking out and seeing visions, visions that turn out to be the actions of Gabriel, the parasitic twin who surgeons did not entirely remove. Yes, it’s a ridiculous concept, but it’s one Wan and company fully embrace, especially in an unbelievable sequence in which Gabriel takes control of Madison to slaughter a cell full of inmates.

3. Godzilla Minus One (2023)

Perhaps befitting a franchise based on giant monsters battling each other, Godzilla fans love to fight. They fight about their favorite eras, the virtues or lack thereof of American vs. Japanese movies, serious or silly kaiju movies, and so on. It’s surprising, then, that so many people agree upon Godzilla Minus One‘s excellence—that is, until you realize that Minus One embraces Godzilla’s many contradictions.

Written and directed by Takashi Yamazaki, Godzilla Minus One takes us back to the years after World War II, where former kamikaze pilot Kōichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) lives in disgrace over not sacrificing himself in the war or during an earlier kaiju attack. When Godzilla resurfaces, Kōichi goes back into action. But as he and his countryman weigh the horrible options to stop Godzilla and try to find a method that embraces life, Godzilla Minus One becomes a movie at once bleak and hopeful, goofy fun and deadly serious.

2. The Invisible Man (2020)

All horror movies have themes that can speak to our political moment, even the goofiest and trashiest of the bunch. And sometimes, when a filmmaker tries to make that subtext too firmly into text, the themes lose their strength and the horror dies under the didactics. So when Leigh Whannell remade The Invisible Man and focused on the perspective of a woman (Elisabeth Moss) terrorized by a male abuser no one can see, we all worried that another classic would be turned into a political tract instead of a horror movie.

How wrong we were. To be sure, The Invisible Man spares nothing in showing how the wealthy and respected Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) uses his privilege to demoralize his girlfriend Cecilia Kass (Moss). But Whannell pairs that depiction with expertly-crafted horror sequences and camera movements so deliberate that the audience fears Griffin’s presence, even when he’s not on screen. Between the stillness of Whannell’s camera and Moss’s commitment to playing an unraveling woman, The Invisible Man succeeds at being a real-world warning and real horror.

1. Nope (2022)

The most shocking thing about Jordan Peele‘s brief filmography is that Get Out is somehow his “worst” movie, and Get Out is a five-star masterpiece. The thrilling thing about Peele’s filmography is that, despite coming out of the gate with a culture-defining, critically-lauded film, he’s only become more playful and audacious, which makes his most recent film his best. With all its talk about the curse of spectacle and the danger of fame, Nope serves as both a comment on Peele’s career and the next step in his artistic evolution.

All that makes Nope sound like a suffocating bit of metatext, and it’s anything but. Keke Palmer and Daniel Kaluuya play mismatched siblings, desperate to save the family ranch after the death of their father (Keith David, who is introduced riding a horse!). When they recognize that a UFO has been visiting their valley, drawn by a nearby show run by a former child actor (Steven Yeun), the duo think they’ve found their big break, if they can survive the experience. As much as Nope invites parallels between the various fame-seekers and Peele himself, the movie’s expertly-crafted horror and compelling characters make it worthwhile as an excellent horror movie first, and a comment on the state of the industry second, if at all.

Street Fighter: Ranking Every Movie World Warrior By Game Fidelity

This article contains spoilers for the fights of Street Fighter (2026).

The new Street Fighter is a wonderful, campy fever dream of an action movie featuring far too many characters. As it should be, really.

The lore of Street Fighter is pretty interesting as there is more emphasis on the characters than the major storylines that bring them together. Yes, at times there is a power-hungry dictator trying to take over the world via exploiting martial artists or the Illuminati using a fighting tournament to gather people worthy enough to survive the apocalypse or whatever. In the end, however, the focus is more about the heroes and villains, how they relate to each other, and what they do in their downtime.

With the new Street Fighter film going as colorful and outlandish as the games, it gets a leg up over the previous two cinematic attempts. But which characters were more accurate to the games and which ones were too different? Let’s rank ‘em!

19. Sagat

Sagat is more of an honorable mention here. On one hand, he is completely lore accurate in every way. His match with Ryu ends with Ryu losing control and shredding up Sagat’s chest. Sagat is then seen years later, scarred and obsessively to get his revenge. He’s also courted by M. Bison and his minions to join his organization.

It’s just that all of that was in animated form. Much like Johnny Cage in the modern Mortal Kombat movies, Sagat’s live-action self exists as a cliffhanger and selling point for a potential sequel. Giving him a real ranking here feels like it would defeat the purpose of this whole thing, so consider Sagat disqualified.

18. Joe

Joe (Alexander Volkanovski) predates most of the characters in this movie. Of the first Street Fighter’s 10 opponents, he was part of the five who fell into complete obscurity. At most, Joe had an easter egg appearance in Final Fight Streetwise. Joe has been known as the generic American opponent with the red pants from the Street Fighter game nobody likes. That’s all he has going for him as a character design and somehow they STILL made him Australian. You had two jobs and one of them was picking out pants!

His role in the movie is still interesting, though. The idea that this loser character ends up winning the tournament because the protagonist is too busy trying to thwart M. Bison makes this film more of an adaptation of the first Capcom vs. SNK game. His tournament winning status is pretty fitting as Joe was also once meant to be the hero character of Street Fighter and when that didn’t pan out, he inspired Cody from Final Fight and Terry Bogard from Fatal Fury.

Anyone else think his movie self looks like a blond Disco Inferno from WCW?

17. El Fuerte

Introduced in Street Fighter IV, El Fuerte is another one-and-done character from the game’s history, though his role in the film is far smaller. The wrestler is shown as one of Ken Masters’ opponents when Ken is in the middle of falling apart with his bad boy lifestyle. El Fuerte’s deal is that he’s a small luchador who is also obsessed with cooking despite being notoriously bad at it.

We don’t see too much of El Fuerte in his loss to Ken. We see him wielding a frying pan, which is very much something he does in the game. On the other hand, he’s played by Christian Valle, whose hulking body type doesn’t quite go with the plucky high-flyer. You’d think that if they were going to have a big guy get his ass handed to him by Ken, it would be Rufus.

16. Dan Hibiki

Andrew Schulz as Dan Hibiki is interesting in the sense that he comes off like he belongs in the 1994 movie. His personality and look makes him feel like he’d be at home with the dysfunctional conmen versions of Ryu and Ken. Here, he gets some of the main aspects right. He wears pink, he is a terrible fighter, he trained under Master Gouken, and he’s comic relief.

The movie version of Dan seems to be a little too self-aware of how lousy he is. In the games, Dan gets his ass handed to him on an hourly basis but he also thinks he’s a top tier threat. He’s also partially driven by revenge, angry that Sagat killed his father. That might be saved for the sequel but the best way to describe Dan in the Street Fighter movie is that they removed the parts that made him Inigo Montoya and replaced it with Fredo Corleone.

15. Guile

Guile was once the protagonist of a Street Fighter movie and the Saturday morning cartoon that spun off from it. Now he’s Dusty Rhodes’ son as a comedic side character and gets sliced up by Vega off-camera. Silly hair or not, Guile was never comic relief in Street Fighter, instead more of a straight-laced killjoy. It’s something to see his obsession with avenging his old friend Charlie being treated as ignored small talk as he spends the movie as a stoic goofball. In the world of wrestling, Cody Rhodes has played the comedy role on internet shows like The JBL and Cole Show and Being The Elite. Guile here really feels like Cody doing one of those online bits but inexplicably on the big screen.

In the end, after Van Damme played him as a generic action hero, it only makes sense to dive deep into making Guile look as game accurate as possible. When you’re going to do that, especially with that hair and bombastic theme song, there’s nothing else you can do but laugh at him. Especially when he’s doing his “family man” win quote verbatim. In my theater, the audience laughed not at the line but the audacity of it all.

By the way, does this mean that in this universe Gunloc looks just like Dustin Rhodes?

14. Cammy

In the games, Cammy started off as a stone-cold, but heroic soldier with amnesia. Then the Street Fighter Alpha prequels showed what she once was: an emotionless assassin working for M. Bison. There’s also some stuff where she’s actually his gender-flipped clone and acts as a spare host body for his soul in case he gets killed but it would be surprising for the movies to hit that plot point.

Mel Jarnson’s Cammy is based on the pre-amnesia version of the cheeked-out fighter but she definitely has more personality and malice to her than Cammy ever did in the games. It’s very possible that this character was meant to be fan-favorite psychopath Juri Han and they made the change during pre-production. You need to play up that Street Fighter II upgrade nostalgia.

13. Ken Masters

Noah Centineo does a great job as Ken Masters. He really does. The reason he ranks so low is because despite being one of the marquee characters in the series, Street Fighter has never given Ken the spotlight. While Ryu is getting pulled into the main story stuff, Ken is off to the side, casually dealing with his love interest Eliza or shrugging off the existence of Rufus. It isn’t until Street Fighter 6 where Ken gets a big role as a discredited victim of a conspiracy out to clear his name and get revenge.

That said, the setup was always there. Of course Ken would be a self-destructive party boy who is haunted from seeing himself as being stuck in Ryu’s shadow. Thinking about it, the games and their adaptations never really gave Ken any moments to mourn Gouken, leaving that focus to Ryu. Let the man have a character arc! Maybe Eliza can show up in the sequel to ground him a little bit now that he’s gotten all the immaturity out of his system.

12. Juli

Admittedly, Juli (Rayna Vallandingham) doesn’t get to do much in the movie outside of a couple small moments and being the third wheel in the fight between Chun-Li and Vega but you know what? She doesn’t really get to do much in the games either. Juli and Juni were two Cammy head-swaps (with added leggings, probably better for sitting on cold seats) introduced in Street Fighter Alpha 3 as a miniboss duo. They represent the Shadaloo Dolls, a dozen mind-controlled and genetically altered assassins who rank just under Cammy. A few of the other Dolls appear in the movie but only Juli gets to do anything.

Juli’s only other piece of background is that she is the kidnapped girlfriend of Thunder Hawk, who among Fei Long and Dee Jay, is one of the only characters from the Street Fighter II revisions not to have a role in the movie. Perhaps that will be in the next one. Otherwise, Juli’s use of a staff does feel like they were trying to mix her a bit with Street Fighter V character Falke.

11. Blanka

Jason Momoa as a green-skinned CGI monster is the kind of thing that almost breaks the movie in that it’s so weird. But Blanka is one of the original eight of Street Fighter II, so he needs to be shoe-horned in there somewhere. While different from his previous live-action depiction (where he was a mutated take on Charlie Nash), they do stick with the idea that he’s a living weapon wielded by M. Bison, a concept that’s alien to the games. Regardless, Blanka’s oddball personality with a simple-minded demeanor mixed with surprising wisdom feels on the right track. Especially with Blanka’s goal to one day find his mother driving his actions.

In the games, Blanka’s best friends are Dan and Sakura (who has yet to show), and he does not have much connection to Ryu. That makes their dynamic feel strangely fresh as Blanka, himself a mix of man and monster, can look at Ryu’s inner struggle with a unique perspective.

10. Gouken

Don Lee plays Gouken and he… does Gouken stuff. I’m going to be honest with you, Gouken is not the most interesting character in Street Fighter lore. He’s more of a foil for more interesting warriors like Ryu and Akuma. Is he Ryu, Ken, and to a lesser extent Dan’s teacher? Yes. Does Akuma thrash him to push the Karate Star Wars plot forward? Yes. Is there really much more to him? Not really.

Well, except one thing. Eventually, the games reveal that Gouken did survive his fight with Akuma through some new Light Side of the Karate Force ability that Ryu has to learn. In the movie, Ken is actually carrying Gouken’s ashes around like luggage (it’s definitely his baggage). Yeah, Gouken’s dead dead in this continuity.

9. Dhalsim

Dhalsim is a hard character to adapt because his powers are weird, he never has much of his own agenda that doesn’t piggyback onto the others, and he constantly acts and talks like a martial arts master character with no real protégé to bounce off. Vidyut Jammwal absolutely kills it as the wise and unpredictable yoga practitioner, and is magnetic whenever he’s on screen, though he’s just sassy enough to feel a little off model. Don’t get me wrong, happily recognizing Guile and calling him “dog” is great but in terms of this list, it doesn’t exactly feel true to the character. Still beats “sad scientist who had to make Blanka” any day.

Funny thing is that as odd a pairing as Dhalsim and Guile is, there is precedent in the games. Street Fighter IV made it apparent that Dhalsim’s son and Guile’s daughter are pen-pals. Then again, Dhalsim also once had dinner with Marvel’s Shuma-Gorath (er, Gargantos?), so this guy can get along with anyone.

8. Balrog

50 Cent as Balrog is such a choice but at least we get an accurate version of the boxer for once. Balrog is in all three live-action films and this is the only time they really get it right. Even him greeting Vega as “pretty boy” and the two having an uneasy partnership as Shadaloo agents felt at home. He’s a hard-hitting henchman who knows what he’s worth and is probably privy to overspend on that in the club.

Really, all he’s missing is the anger issues. If anything, we needed to see Balrog completely lose his cool and either cause massive damage to his opponent or have it all blow up in his face. And hey, if he shows up in the sequel, maybe they can throw Ed in there and we can have the series’ most surprising father figure.

7. M. Bison

The way I figure it, director Kitao Sakurai realized that nobody was ever going to top Raul Julia as M. Bison, so he told David Dastmalchian to just do whatever. Then his whatever turned out to totally slap. M. Bison in this movie is very over-the-top and off kilter, but maybe that’s what he needs to be. He’s a mad scientist supervillain dictator obsessed with pumping himself up with so much negative energy that he needs backup bodies because his own body can’t handle the juice. You have to throw in some camp if you’re going to be jumping on that wagon.

Dastmalchian isn’t the buffest guy in the world but again, neither was Raul Julia. Neither was the Street Fighter II version of the character, only beefing up in the prequels and sequels. Either way, Ryu’s discussion with him validates his appearance and connection to the games: M. Bison did not work for his status as top of the food chain. He uses mad science to steal and cheat. He’s such a scumbag that Akuma doesn’t want to kill him for the challenge but because he feels Bison exists as an insult.

6. E. Honda

Edmund Honda (Hirooki Goto) mainly cares about three things: sumo wrestling, bathhouses, and chanko stew. He cares so much that throughout the games, he runs his own sumo dojo, his own bathhouse, and his own chanko stew restaurant. He’s also good buddies with an oil wrestler who once helped save the world by throwing Honda headfirst into an oncoming asteroid, but we have to save something for the sequel.

Getting back to him owning a bathhouse, his Street Fighter V story mode centers around that, especially fighting guests over breaching etiquette. This all culminates in Honda and an underdressed Ryu fighting it out in the bathhouse. Unlike the movie, we don’t end up seeing Honda’s bare ass during this bit unless you’re using some questionable mods.

5. Chun-Li

Once again, we have a female character who exists as a hybrid. With her undercover agent setup, Chun-Li (Callina Liang) shares a lot with Crimson Viper. It’s okay, though, as it’s a gambit that feels like something Chun-Li would do if given the opportunity. She wants to take down the big, evil villain with kung-fu for killing her father and will do what needs to be done to get the chance. It’s a setup so easy that all three Street Fighter movies have been able to grasp it no matter their quality.

If there’s any criticism to be had it’s that she’s so locked into the revenge plot and playing the role in Bison’s inner circle that there’s never a chance for Chun-Li’s occasionally upbeat nature to shine through. With all these characters throwing out jokes left and right, somehow Chun-Li is the one having to put on a serious face in every scene. Though now that I think about it, it’s hard to find a reason to jump up and down while screaming, “YATTA!” when you have to spend so much time with a horndog Kyle Mooney. Nobody needs that.

4. Akuma

For the past couple of years, The Rock has called himself “The Final Boss,” so it’s fitting that his cousin Roman Reigns gets to one-up him as the secret final boss you can only fight by not using continues and getting a high enough score. Outside of the awkwardness of Akuma having a beard in all the anime flashbacks, Reigns as Akuma actually works! He’s supposed to be a martial arts Sith lord and, by God, that’s exactly how he comes off.

From the beginning, Akuma’s deal was that he is a Ryu/Ken type who is way harder to fight and laced in demonic imagery. Here, he’s depicted as he should be, an opponent so fearsome that even if you can defeat him, the sacrifice necessary defeats the purpose. Ryu can only best Akuma by tapping into his own darkness and losing control. At that point, no matter who is left standing, Akuma wins. If there is a sequel, it’s not just about stopping M. Bison but for Ryu to truly earn his victory and come through the other side with his soul intact.

3. Ryu

There are two main aspects to Ryu as a character. One is that he’s a drifter who is obsessed with fighting as a vehicle to understand others and himself. It led to him punching the likes of Ghost Rider, Wario, and Yatterman-1. He gets around and just likes mixing it up with whoever is interested. Unfortunately, he’s been held back from that action in this movie due to his other main aspect: he’s afraid of what he might become. His biggest win that made him a top name in the street fighter world is also his greatest shame and he’s deathly afraid of what might happen if he keeps going and loses himself.

Other adaptations have shown Ryu give up like Andrew Koji’s version did in this movie. The Street Fighter Alpha anime had him mindlessly wander the streets, not lifting a finger if he bumped into someone and ate a beating for it. The Street Fighter Alpha manga (the first appearance of Evil Ryu!) had him tag along with Birdie, a career criminal he befriended in that first tournament. It’s friendships like that that show Ryu’s real strength, which is reflected well in the movie. Yes, he’s got a little bit of Incredible Hulk in him, but he can also conquer it in the long run because he has so many opponents-turned-friends who see the best in him because he sees the best in them.

Even Akuma has softened due to Ryu’s nature. Maybe we’ll see that on the big screen one day.

2. Zangief

Olivier Richters being cast as Zangief nearly justifies the film on its own. Some say that they didn’t cast Zangief; they found him. His time is sadly limited in this movie but whenever he’s on screen, you will notice him. He’s a mountain who seems less like a human and more of the kind of lumbering cartoon character that would try to crush the throat of Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck.

Like with Chun-Li, it would have been nice to see a bit of good nature from the Red Cyclone. As fearsome as he looks, he’s the kind of guy who would bellow in laughter while smacking you on the back so hard that it would separate your shoulder. At the very least, he could have talked Ryu down during the climax by explaining that just because he is a bad guy does not mean he is a bad guy.

1. Vega

Chun-Li, M. Bison, Balrog, and Vega. These are the three characters who have been in all three live-action adaptations of Street Fighter. In the 1994 movie, notorious for having so many characters be so, so wrong, Jay Tavare’s Vega was celebrated as being the one character who seemed to be right on the money. Taboo in Street Fighter: Legend of Chun-Li? Not so much. Here in 2026, Orville Peck is able to out-Vega Jay Tavare by embracing him so thoroughly.

Vega rarely, if ever, gets the spotlight in this movie. Hell, his win over Guile is on the cutting room floor. Still, he’s always there, being a picture-perfect version of how he is in the games. A threatening ninja underling but with flair and ego to go with it. A psychopath but wrapped in his own glorious style. An assassin too protective of his handsome face being portrayed by Orville Peck, an entertainer who refuses to show his face is an idea that’s so out there that it ends up working perfectly.

Man, between this and Baraka in Mortal Kombat II, it’s a great year for adapting fighting game characters with arm blades.

Capcom’s Original Icon Is Back in the Spotlight with Mega Man: Dual Override

Not counting remasters and collections, there hasn’t been a new Mega Man game since 2018’s Mega Man 11, despite the long-running Capcom franchise being an industry icon since the ‘80s. Just in time for the series’ 40th anniversary in 2027, the new mainline game Mega Man: Dual Override is coming to virtually every major gaming platform currently available to commemorate the occasion while teaming up the Blue Bomber with the Proto Man for a new adventure against a whole host of formidable Robot Masters. We got a chance to play an early preview build of Mega Man: Dual Override at Tokyo Game Show 2026 and talk to the creative team behind Mega Man’s eagerly anticipated return to a video game platform near you.

Played from a 2D perspective like all the classic games in the mainline series, sub-series like Mega Man Legends or Battle Network notwithstanding, Dual Override looks as vibrantly presented as ever, while maintaining the cartoonish style that has endeared the franchise to millions worldwide for generations. Mega Man controls very much like he did in those titles, including slide mechanic introduced in Mega Man 3, though rather than having to play an entire stage in a single run, each Robot Master comes with a set of sub-levels, each with multiple checkpoints and a mini-boss concluding the segments leading up to the epic confrontation with the Robot Master selected. This approach was a means to highlight the sense of accomplishment in overcoming challenges with more punctuative milestones along the way.

“When you look back at older classic Mega Man titles, when you select a stage, you have to go through that entire stage, beat the boss, and it sometimes takes multiple tries before you’re able to beat it and get that sense of achievement,” explains director Shinya Ikuta. “That sense of achievement is very important for Mega Man games in general, including Dual Override. However, we wanted to add more opportunities to get that sense of achievement at different earlier breaks within a single stage, which is why there’s a boss waiting within each area in a single stage.”

And despite the multiple checkpoints and sub-levels, that sense of challenge is still very much apparent throughout Dual Override, both in the boss battles and its platforming sequences. The one Robot Master that we fought against the fireworks-fueled Twinkle Girl took multiple tries to complete, highlighting the series’ longtime emphasis on pattern recognition and timing to overcome formidable bosses. Building from the Double Gear system in Mega Man 11, the game allows players to customize chips that they acquire, providing different abilities like dash attacks and forcefields. These chips have their own transformative appearances while battle damage on Mega Man and the Robot Masters add another level of detail to the experience.

“The visuals, especially in terms of damage that they’ve taken, is something we wanted to try and challenge ourselves with for a long time,” observes art director Yuji Ishihara. “It was something that we were finally able to do with Mega Man: Dual Override. Being able to tell how much damage Mega Man or the bosses have taken is a visual indicator and, simultaneously, it just looks cool to see that change in appearance.”

As revealed in the trailers, Mega Man isn’t alone in his fight against the Robot Masters this time, with Proto Man joining the fray with incredibly distinct gameplay. Armed with a shield and melee weapon like Zero in the Mega Man X series, Proto Man favors close-quarters combat and comes with his own unique playstyle, encouraging players to complete levels with both characters. While capable of formidable attacks, Proto Man has to avoid overheating, with art director Shinsuke Komaki noting Proto Man has visible vents letting him expend steam. That level of detail highlights his distinct presence in Dual Override beyond his moveset.

“Unlike Mega Man, Proto Man’s moves are executed through a command input,” teases Ikuta. “You would press a unique button and a directional key to be able to perform whatever move it is that you want to do, whether it’s the charge move or the uppercut. It makes him a very aggressive and fun character to play with. We’ve balanced that, which is why we have the heat gauge bar. If you choose it too much, you overheat, so you have to be cautious about not expending too much heat.”

At once more accessible than many Mega Man games before it yet with a healthy amount of challenge that had me get increasingly locked in, Mega Man: Dual Override is set to thrill longtime fans and newcomers alike. For the generation of gamers who honed their run-and-gun chops with Cuphead, Dual Override reminds everyone who set the standard for the genre while evolving with the times. For Capcom, the new game comes at the perfect time to commemorate the long-lasting legacy of the company’s original enduring icon.

“In 2027, we’ll be celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Mega Man series,” declares producer Hiroyuki Minamitani. “This is why it’s so important for us to deliver a brand new game that fans are looking forward to. We feel that this is the right time to bring in a brand new Mega Man game.”

Developed and published by Capcom, Mega Man: Dual Override will be released in 2027 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.

You Can See Everything: Exploring the Ending and Nathan Fielder’s Spoiler-Filled Intentions

This article contains major You Can See Everything spoilers. Please do not read before watching the movie.

Is Nathan Fielder trying to protect Elizabeth Holmes? Are we protecting Elizabeth Holmes?

It’s the final, devastatingly open-ended question that Fielder leaves hanging in his and Lance Oppenheim’s You Can See Everything. Are the filmmakers compromised by Elizabeth Holmes’ widely recognized abilities to manipulate? Is the audience? After all, as Fielder’s onscreen accomplice, therapist, and final accuser states in the last line of the movie, “You care about her.”

By the film’s end, I suspect many viewers do as well. Even Fielder’s partner-in-crime seems to have some personal investment in Holmes’ fate, if only in relation to her seemingly exploitative husband. And yet, the mere fact that the woman who wants to help Fielder save Elizabeth from her ethically-dubious hubby is none other than Amanda Seyfried, an actress who cultivated a career highlight—not to mention an Emmy, a Golden Globe, and slew of other awards—by playing a fictionalized, and deeply unflattering, version of Holmes just adds one more layer of surreal discomfort to You Can See Everything’s finale.

In a documentary marketed as a tête-à-tête between master manipulators, one a filmmaker/comedian notorious for his reality-bending onscreen persona, and the other a woman currently serving an 11-year prison sentence after being found guilty of fraud, the end of the movie might seem almost wholesome. For all her demonstrable crimes, Holmes is still a human being, still a mother, and still seemingly at the mercy of a man who uses her name and even her voice on social media platforms like X without her apparent knowledge or consent.

At least that is how Fielder and Oppenheim choose to frame the last act of their movie in a script that Fielder literally wrote based on his recollections of a visit with Holmes at Federal Prison Camp, Bryan. And these words Fielder puts in Holmes’ mouth are then given life by none other than Seyfried, a woman whom the real Holmes seems to detest, or is at the very least wary of. There is, indeed, a moment that blows well beyond the famous Lewis Carroll Looking Glass metaphor, shattering that infinity mirror into a million refracted pieces as Seyfried-as-Holmes says she never wants to have that actress speak for her again, and laments once more the unfairness with which she is depicted as criminally manipulative in Hulu’s The Dropout.

There is an especially sadistic irony when Fielder and Oppenheim juxtapose Seyfried-as-Holmes dismissing The Dropout scene where Seyfried (still as Holmes) reacts to her alleged miracle machine, the Edison, not being able to analyze blood. “It doesn’t matter,” the TV Holmes tells her engineers. The implication, of course, is that Holmes decided to lie to the world in this moment. The real Holmes (as still played by Seyfried) claims that never happened, and then Fielder’s doc cuts to a moment days earlier when Seyfried sits with Fielder before a roaring fire, and The Dropout star first reads Holmes’ criticism of her work.

“It’s a work of fiction,” a visibly defensive Seyfried insists with such persistence that Fielder only responds with his trademark smirk. “It could have happened” like it appears in the TV show, Seyfried explains, but it probably didn’t. As is Fielder’s wont on TV shows like Nathan for You and The Rehearsal—series that blur the line between documentary, reality TV, and straight up scripted comedy—Fielder quietly hands Seyfried what might amount to a bit of rope. And yet, both Fiedler and his (mostly) off-screen co-director, Oppenheim, sympathize with the justifications Seyfried makes for The Dropout. Hell, Oppenheim made those same distinctions to me barely a month ago while discussing the differences between the real public figure Chris Hansen and the “fictional character” Robert Pattinson plays in Oppenheim’s Primetime.

But the responsibility of artists to the historical figures they dramatize isn’t the moral of You Can See Everything, if there is anything moral at all playing here. Rather, the film seems to hold a mirror up to our times while asking how far does our notion of “truth” really apply in a post-fact world where a woman like Holmes could see her now defunct medical-tech company, Theranos, reach a valuation of $9 billion due to little more than smoke, mirrors, and deception. It then asks us to still buy in…

Who, If Anyone, Is on First?

Perhaps the greatest trick at work with You  Can See Everything is its marketing. For a movie audiences didn’t know existed a scant 45 days ago, public awareness is through the roof online due to a cryptic teaser in which an eerily wide-eyed Holmes unconvincingly pleads with Fielder, “Why would I deceive you? There’s no reason for me to do that.” The obvious lie of this claim from a woman who is desperate to repair her public image is as glaring as the 60-foot-tall photo of her eyes dotting billboards from Times Square to Burbank.

And to be fair, much of the first half of the doc is what it’s sold as: a game of cat and mouse between a real-life criminal and a baffling choice for her documentarian. In the seeming first day of the film’s shoot in San Diego, Fielder even asks if he was selected because Holmes and her husband, William “Billy” Evans, thought he would be a pushover because he is neither a scientist nor a tech journalist. Elizabeth and Billy’s protestations are unconvincing, but so much of Elizabeth is. At first. For instance, both she and Evans attempt to explain away her promise that the Edison could test for most or all blood diseases and conditions with little better than a pinprick. What she apparently meant, they claim in the doc, is that the Edison one day could test for any blood disease. Just not today.

This highly suspicious claim is mercilessly defanged by Fielder from an entirely leftfield direction when he compares it to Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s on First?” routine, a comedic sketch, and a pair of comedians, Holmes claims to have never heard of. Unfortunately for her, Fielder rarely lets go of a loose thread, and soon  enough is pulling out his laptop and looking up the sketch online. Like everyone else, Holmes smiles along at the wordplay, but afterward claims like her freedom depended on it that she cannot possibly comprehend what the joke is, even while Fielder painstakingly explains it to her like he’s talking to a small child. This is a woman, dropout or not, who attended Stanford; a woman who, fraud or not, acquired the status of billionaire by convincing venture capitalists, politicians, and mostly male opinion-leaders that she was the next Steve Jobs. And here she now is befuddled by the nuances of Abbott and Costello.

That is the documentary Fielder and Oppenheim likely thought they were making when they accepted the invitation to keep up with the Holmses: a methodical takedown of Elizabeth’s rationalizations and justifications. But a funny thing continues to develop as You Can See Everything keeps going: the focus stops being about Holmes the criminal. Part of this is by design as Holmes and Evans obviously want to highlight her humanity by inviting filmmakers to document moments that appear genuine between Elizabeth and the children she will soon have to leave behind for almost their entire childhoods. Other tableaus might appear more calculated, still it slowly becomes difficult to parse out which is which.

Yet the focus really blurs when Oppenheim and Fielder turn their attention fully from Holmes to Evans. Part of this is a matter of necessity since halfway through the doc, Elizabeth goes to prison. But while that would be the obvious place to end a film like this, Fielder and Oppenheim kept shooting for close to a year, and furthermore revealed more of their documentary’s origins.

The Real Villain

Holmes might be the marketing hook that draws people in, but the ultimate subject du jour of this film is not the founder of Theranos; it’s her husband Billy. He’s introduced innocuous enough as nearly in the background, the supportive husband who seems protective of Elizabeth and a bit wary of Fielder when he’s doing his Dracula thing and comically staring at them from the shadows of their rented beachside San Diego home.

As the film unfurls, however, it is Billy who floats more than once the idea of resurrecting or iterating upon Theranos’ goal to democratize medicine through the wonders of technology. The words “Theranos 2.0” are even uttered before an incredulous Fielder. In a film filled with grifters and deceivers, there is something preternaturally off about this guy who opts to do full-frontal nudity for what he thinks is a puff piece documentary.

It’s only after Holmes goes to prison, however, that the doc puts its real cards on the table. In a sequence that deliberately echoes The Rehearsal, Fielder has a combination of actors and real people playing themselves reenact how, they claim, Evans came to them to pitch this documentary. He and Holmes invited Fielder, Oppenheim, and A24 executives over to discuss a potential film, and then Holmes left the room. It is at this moment Billy breaks the ethical taboo of documentary filmmaking and demands a cut of the profits of the film from A24. We’re then told the filmmakers reluctantly agreed, assuming this was a rope-a-dope, pay-to-play move that Billy and Elizabeth collaborated on as spouses. But then during the actual making of the documentary, Fielder becomes hung up on a maddening aside by Holmes: she claims she’ll never make a dime off this documentary.

This is what becomes the driving thesis of Fielder’s movie. If Holmes really did not know that her husband established a profit-sharing deal on the side, she is the victim of a leaching, exploitative creep. And if she did, she has successfully manipulated the Nathan for You mastermind.

Much of the rest of the documentary thus turns into an attempt to better understand Billy Evans, who increasingly seems strung out, guarded, and from my vantage, delusional. He certainly isn’t going to win over the core A24 demo when he insults Amanda Seyfried to her face and describes himself as an acolyte of Charlie Kirk. But Evans also seems sincerely creepy in the way he talks down to Seyfried, just as he seemed aggressively controlling when he dismissed Holmes on-camera and took over egg-beating duties from her earlier in the movie.

Furthermore, by his own admission in the film’s back half, he is using the power of attorney to speak as “Elizabeth Holmes” online through her X social media handle while the real woman and mother of his children sweats in a Texas prison. If there is a villain in this movie, it ain’t Elizabeth.

The Final Manipulation

Which brings us back to the infinitely slippery ending. Over the course of the film’s back nine, we are given every reason to holster our healthy skepticism of Elizabeth Holmes and instead replace it with empathy—not for an innocent woman wrongly accused, but for a woman whose celebrity has been commandeered by a man who will literally profit off her name while she rots. He’ll even start Twitter-wars by cursing out strangers and kids online like a proper edge-lord douchebag.

After seeing that context in a rough edit of the film, Seyfried exclaims, “I want to break them up!” Her reaction, I should add, got applause and guffaws at the film’s posh New York Film Festival premiere. We want to see Amanda Seyfried, and Nathan freakin’ Fielder, save damsel-in-distress Elizabeth Holmes.

All of the uncanny unreality of the film’s third act where Seyfried reprises the role of Elizabeth in Fielder’s little “documented” reenactments is in service of a noble cause; or at least discovering if Holmes is aware that she’s being manipulated by her husband. But any real catharsis in this vein is ultimately impossible to capture on video. Federal prison does not allow you to record visits on your iPhone, never mind a professional-grade 4K film camera.

Hence the film’s final revelations are left to Fielder to relay to us after the fact, along with Seyfried’s help. The filmmaker’s contemporaneous journaling of his morning with Elizabeth in a dreary prison certainly has the ring of truth in the way it’s filmed. Every word Fielder claims to remember, every inflection of Holmes’ answers to his questions, he labors over and debates wth Seyfried. Each time, though, Fielder ultimately takes the most positive and charitable spin on Holmes’ responses. When Seyfried offers a more cryptic line-reading, he asks her to do it again with an entirely different motivation.

The takeaway would seem to be that Holmes claimed to know that Billy tried to extract a cut of the profits from A24, but only because she didn’t want to seem to be betraying the father of her children. She also unconvincingly (in Fielder and Seyfried’s hands) claims to give her blessing to Billy putting words in her mouth on the internet. She ultimately is just trying to survive hell right now, and is so happy to see her husband and children that the manipulations Fielder, Seyfried, and the audience obsess over are rendered trivial. Furthermore, days after Fielder’s visit, Evans rescinded his claim on You Can See Everything profits, seemingly suggesting that behind closed doors, Holmes put a stop to it.

… But that is just the most optimistic reading of the details we have, if also the reading Fielder most favors. Another might be that she really knew about her husband’s high-handed claims on the profit, and only after she was confronted with it on camera did she and Evans realize how bad this would make them look in a film they at one point hoped would be a Prince Harry and Meghan Markle-style puff piece.

This is still the woman who lied to the world about inventing a miracle machine, and this is still a filmmaker who enjoys playing fast and loose with ephemeral things like “truth,” especially in a modern era where you can win an Emmy for playing a “fictional” real person, and reality TV stars run the world. You Can See Everything is like the demon in The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus. It explains exactly what it’s doing and how it’s going to guide you straight into the mouth of hell. But it’s so honest and forthright about that, and so entertaining and distracting, you’re still a little surprised when we get to that impossible destination.

One way to read the end of the film is that whether Holmes knew about Evans’ greed or not, Fielder and Oppenheim have lost their objectivity. He all but admits as much when Seyfried says “you care about her,” and Fielder doesn’t have a response. The way that hangs over the film is evidence of his, and our, complicity in rooting for Holmes.

But another, far darker way of reading it is to question whether Fielder and Oppenheim always intended to lull us to this state, hence waiting until late in the narrative to reveal Evans’ demands, and only after Holmes seems possibly innocent of the quid pro quo. There even seems to be an open question about the final shot of the movie: a man who looks an awful lot like Nathan Fielder frolics in the cold, wintry waves of a golden San Diegan coast. If it is him, it contradicts Fielder’s claim earlier in the movie that he doesn’t swim in cold water. It also is a very cozy moment in the Holmes home.

No matter how objective and clear-headed you attempt to be, it’s so easy to get swept away in a good narrative, losing touch of the shoreline and the firm ground you were sure rested underneath your feet.

You Can See Everything is in theaters now.

NYCC 2026 Recap: The Biggest News From Marvel TV, Star Trek, Blade Runner, and More

And just like that… another successful New York Comic Con is in the books. The 2026 iteration of the Big Apple’s premier con was fit to burst with talent, panels, and big-time announcements. Thankfully, your friendly neighborhood Den of Geek was there to take in it all.

Here is what we learned on the ground of the Javitz Center and all around Manhattan as we attended panels, press rooms, and activations; all the while inviting some folks to Den of Geek studio in Midtown.

Panels and Activations

Mayfair Witches Season 3 | AMC

Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches

Anne Rice’s coven of New Orleans witches may have gotten rid of the cursed Taltos, Lasher, but their woes are not over. In season three of Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches, Rowan Mayfair, played by Alexandra Daddario, is traveling to Salem, Massachusetts where the story takes a detour from the books with an introduction to the history of witches and witchcraft. Focusing on Salem as both a historical place for the mystic and unusual, it is also acting as a personified environment for the characters of this season. Acting as a prison, Salem is a trap in which witches can never leave. Mysteriously, Rowan has found herself stuck there with currently no way out. 

Joining Daddario in the AMC-hosted panel were showrunner/executive producer, Esta Spalding executive producer Mark Johnson, and cast members Harry Hamlin (Cortland Mayfair), Tongayi Chirisa (Ciprien Grieve), Betsy Brandt (Katherine Mayfair), and Eliza Scanlen (Jessica). Scanlen’s character joins the series as a Salem witch whose introduction to magic has been much more stifling than Rowan’s, including a branding mark all Salem witches have to wear so they are not taken by mysterious forces that come in the fog. While season 3 offers up a new setting, new enemies, and new characters, the O.G. witches are getting fleshed out in new ways. 

“We wanted to see [Rowan] much more badass than she’d ever been before, and one of the ways that she could be her great witchy self and be funnier and looser was to have more people she could play off of,” Spalding said. “Jessica is a witch who doesn’t know that she’s trapped in Salem. She’s grown up there. She just thinks that’s where she lives, and she hasn’t ever left. Having somebody to play off of who’s really comic and full of heart, lets her grow and be much more commanding.”

Mayfair Witches season 3 begins streaming on AMC and AMC+ Dec. 30. – Nyla Gilbert

Saheli Khan and Aishu Devan attend the Avatar: Seven Havens Panel at New York Comic Con at Javits Center during New York Comic Con on Friday, Oct. 9, 2026 in New York. Photo Credit: Todd Williamson/JanuaryImages for Paramount+

Avatar: Seven Havens

Avatar: Seven Havens released the first three episodes of Book 1 on Oct. 9 to Paramount+. That same day, the cast and creatives behind the newest Avatar series took to NYCC’s main stage to give fans a behind-the-scenes look at the latest story and tease the next Avatar projects to look forward to. Janet Varney, the voice of Korra from The Legend of Korra, acted as the host of the panel. She was joined by executive producers Michael Dante DiMartino, Bryan Konietzko, Sehaj Sethi and Ethan Spaulding, along with voice actors Saheli Khan (Pavi), Aishu Devan (Nisha) and Major Curda (Jae). 

With a first look at the conclusion of episode one of the new series, Avatar fans are in for a treat with new fantastical scenarios that truly make this a show strikingly different from its previous installments. In a world 200 years post “Cataclysm,” the Seven Havens are the only places humanity lives safely from the “Spirit Wilds.” It will take more than a singular Avatar to save the world that no longer believes in the goodness of the Avatar. For fans already in love, don’t worry; not only is Book 2 confirmed, but Books 3-4 will be making their way to Paramount+ in coming years. Seven Havens isn’t the only series coming from Avatar Studios. Avatar Kuruk is making an on-screen appearance in Avatar Kuruk: Waves of Chaos, an action-comedy that is taking on the teenage years of the former Avatar. – NG

Blade Runner 2099 NYCC Immersive Experience

Blade Runner 2099 Activation

The Blade Runner 2099 Immersive Fan Experience brought 2099 to NYCC, giving attendees an ultimate dive into Blade Runner 2099 protagonist Cora’s experience disguising herself amongst the replicants at the LAPD. The activation was full of props from the series’ set and replicant actors roaming around to fully immerse you into the Blade Runner universe. Fans got to experience two crucial replicant rites of passage the intake test and the memory transfer. After getting to see props like the Cora and Olwen’s blasters and getting a photo in front of the exact car used for filming, you proceed to the intake test. 

When I sat down in the intake chair, I felt as though I was truly getting integrated by a true replicant. The replicant actors ask you a series of questions like, “when a child cries, do you assume something is wrong?” or “Did you cut up worms when you were a kid?” and you are instructed to answer these questions without hesitation. After questioning you are sent upstairs to get your happy memories implanted, you lay down in your doctor’s office chair, place this sci-fi wired hat on your head and watch your new memory play out on the monitor. A QR code is displayed after for you to download and keep the memory for yourself. Before leaving you visit La Paloma and get to pick from a series of themed mocktails on your way out. 

The activation was carefully crafted to give NYCC fans a sneak peak into the universe that will be brought to Prime Video in November and imagine what it would be like to step inside Cora’s shoes of deception and try to pass as a replicant in this new role reversal. – Grace Schmidt

Eric Stonestreet, Kadia Saraf, Bokeem Woodbine, Krysten Ritter, Jack Alcott, Michael C. Hall, James Remar, Uma Thurman, Ntare Mwine, Desmond Harrington, Dominic Fumusa and Nona Parker Johnson attend the Paramount+ Dexter: Resurrection S2 Premiere on Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026 in New York. Photo Credit: Todd Williamson/JanuaryImages for Paramount+

Dexter: Resurrection Season 2

Have you ever had to deal with a serial killer during a mid-life crisis? Hopefully not, but you will get to see one deal with his newest need for recognition, unfulfillment, and messy parenting in the second season of Dexter: Resurrection. NYCC gave Dexter fans a surprise screening of episode one of the upcoming season as part of a panel that included cast members Michael C. Hall (Dexter Morgan), Uma Thurman (Charley), James Remar (Harry Morgan), Jack Alcott (Harrison), Bokeem Woodbine (Captain Mixon), and Krysten Ritter (Mia Lapierre). Joining them were showrunner and executive producer Clyde Phillips, writer and executive producer Scott Reynolds, and director and executive producer Marcos Siega. 

The show, which is set in New York City, was not the only thing being celebrated by the panel. This year marked the 20th anniversary of Dexter and NYCC acknowledged that in the form of the “Dexter: 20th Anniversary Museum Experience,” an exhibition that included Dexter’s killer setup, art, and photo backdrops. Promoting the event during the panel, along with their experiences behind the scenes, the cast and creatives, new and old, talked about the two decades of experience, joy, and craziness that the show has brought to their lives. 

Dexter: Resurrection Season 2 starts streaming Oct. 30 on Paramount+. – NG

Kill Jackie | AMC

Kill Jackie

The AMC+ panel for Kill Jackie drew a lively crowd to the Main Stage. Catherine Zeta-Jones, who stars as Jackie Price, and also serves as an executive producer, appeared alongside showrunner, writer, and executive producer Tom Butterworth and executive producer Peter Lawson. Together, the trio gave fans a look at the creative thinking behind the adaptation of Nick Harkaway’s The Price You Pay, including the decision to shift the source material’s male lead into a female protagonist. Zeta-Jones drew laughs from the crowd when she commented on the shift, saying, “If [Jackie] had balls, she’d scratch them,” a line that captures the show’s irreverent humor and the unfiltered, messy edge she brings to the character. 

The biggest draw for attendees was the sneak peek of episode three, which releases Oct. 16. The footage showed her raw, brutal strength alongside her cunning and beauty, two sides of the character that Zeta-Jones clearly relished playing. “It was a liberating experience,” she said. “I found myself rounded as an actor. It was cathartic and liberating.” She noted that she had often been cast as the love interest or damsel in distress, as in The Mask of Zorro, and that it took 57 years to reach a role like Jackie. She also credited her dance background with preparing her for the action, saying it gives performers “a physical muscle memory that never goes away.” – Isabella Ardetto

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - OCTOBER 08: (L-R) Brad Winderbaum, Terry Matalas, James Spader, Paul Bettany, Ruaridh Mollica and Emily Hampshire speak onstage during the Marvel Panel at NYCC 2026 at Javits Center on October 08, 2026 in New York City. (Photo by Arturo Holmes/Getty Images for Disney)

Marvel Television

The Marvel Television panel was packed with exciting news for Marvel fans from Brad Winderbaum, head of Marvel Television and now comics. Firstly, Marvel Comics’ new editor-in-chief, Stephen Wacker, made an appearance hyping the crowd. “It’s so great to see everyone! This is Awesome. Comics on a TV panel, this is legend!” Wacker said as he joined the stage. Both gained cheers from the crowd as they announced they had been meeting with renowned comic artists like John Hickman to talk about the future of the medium. The duo spoke with enthusiasm for the next chapter of comics, with Winderbaum expressing gratitude for the impact they had on his youth. “Comic books were a lifeline to me growing up, and I just want to thank my mother for taking me to paperback exchange,” Winderbaum said.

After promoting Marvel’s Midnight Universe, a vampiric twist on the franchise’s most beloved characters, and some lesser-known faces, the panel jumped right in to Marvel’s upcoming TV titles. Daredevil: Born Again season 3 cast members Charlie Cox (Matt “Daredevil” Murdoch), Krysten Ritter (Jessica Jones), and Finn Jones (Dany “Iron Fist” Rand) joined Winderbaum on the stage to give fans an action-packed look at the grittier season. Hell’s Kitchen’s favorite crimefighter will be starting this season off in prison. Season 3 marks the conclusion of the series, much to the dismay of fans and Cox, who told fans to revive the “Save Daredevil” campaign. 

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man season 2 will hit Disney+ on February 13, 2027, with many of Spider-Man’s rogues’ gallery joining this season. Show creator Jeff Trammell brought a sneak peek to attendees that leaves fans anticipating the entrance of one black, inky symbiotic suit. Also announced were the next installments of Marvel Zombies that shall be feeding the spooky lovers for Halloweens-a-plenty: Marvel Zombies: Winter Soldier will premiere Halloween 2027, Marvel Zombies: The Fist of Khonshu on Halloween 2028, and Marvel Zombies: The Last Guardian on Halloween 2029. X-Men ‘97 fans were given a glimpse of an exclusive clip showcasing the wedding of fan-favorite mutant couple Gambit and Rogue, with cameos from She-Hulk, Deadpool, and more. In a time of heightened persecution for mutants, the Brotherhood is stepping in to fill the gap as mutants ask, “Where are the X-Men?” 

A mysterious new series was also announced for the future of Marvel Television. Zodiac, a spy-thriller for those who love espionage, should be dropping to your nearest screen in 2028. However, that’s all we know. “If you’re a fan of the comics, there’s a lot hidden in that logo,” Winderbaum said. “That’s all you’re getting. It’s supposed to be a secret.” The cast of VisionQuest took the stage to answer questions about their experience with filming the new series. Showrunner Terry Matalas joined the panel, along with Paul Bettany (The Vision), James Spader, reprising his role as Ultron, alongside newcomers, Ruaridh Mollica (Tommy Maximoff) and Emily Hampshire (E.D.I.T.H.). Attendees got to watch the first episode of the series, rolling in the first wave of reviews as the panel concluded. – NG

Ben Stiller and William Shatner attend the CBS & Paramount+ Star Trek Universe Panel at New York Comic Con at Javits Center Ben Stiller and William Shatner attend the CBS & Paramount+ Star Trek Universe Panel at New York Comic Con at Javits Center during New York Comic Con on Saturday, Oct. 10, 2026 in New York. Photo Credit: Todd Williamson/JanuaryImages for CBS/Paramount+

Star Trek

The Star Trek Universe panel brought fans a peek at Starfleet Academy‘s final voyage and a 60th anniversary toast with Captain Kirk himself, William Shatner. Holly Hunter, Sandro Rosta, Bella Shepard, Karim Diané, and Robert Picardo opened the panel alongside executive producers Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau, with Collider‘s Perri Nemiroff moderating. The first half centered on Starfleet Academy, whose final season will premiere on Paramount+ in March 2027. Landau explained that season one was about shedding your old self to start over at the academy, while season 2 will be a sophomore-year story about realizing life may not go the way you expected. Kurtzman teased that the best is yet to come when the cadets meet Nova Squadron, the academy’s elite flight team.

Then the panel went from the next generation to the original captain, the second half a true showstopper. Lifelong Trekkie Ben Stiller led a conversation with Willaim Shatner, playing fan-favorite clips from the original series while inviting comments and reactions from Shatner, who was in rare form as he trailed humorously off topic to complain about his hotel or how grueling scenes were to film (whether it be scorching heat or powdery “regolith” clinging to him). The talk also turned reflective too, with Shatner repeating his long-held view that he rarely looks back at his own performances and that people should, above all else, “Stay in the moment!” – IA

The State of TCGs

Among the events that Den of Geek had a direct presence at for this year’s NYCC was Experience12’s PopCultr Marketing Summit, which conducted a set of panels focusing on different elements of pop culture media and fandom. One of the major panels as part of this summit was centered on trading card culture, moderated by Den of Geek contributor and host Sam Stone. Joined by a panel of experts, the group led a lively discussion about their shared fandom and the current state of trading card games and tabletop gaming today before an audience of industry professionals and press.

The group reflected on their own origins as trading card game fans, dating back to the launch of Magic: The Gathering and Pokémon, touching on the community-building aspects of the medium. The ensemble discussed how the COVID lockdowns and collector interest in the market has also driven trading card game popularity to new heights, with the momentum not visibly slowing down any time soon. With a lifetime of trading card game experience, the panelists shared that they hadn’t lost their love of the game as they provided their insight to a rapt audience. – SS

Norman Reedus as Daryl Dixon, Melissa McBride as Carol Peletier - The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon _ Season 3, Episode 7 - Photo Credit: Carla Oset/AMC

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon Season 4

Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon fans filled the main stage at NYCC to see stars Norman Reedus and Melissa McBride along with their executive producers David Zabel and Scott M. Gimple talk about the beloved spinoff’s final season. The panel had many sneak peaks from the show and video cameos from cast members Romain Levi and Candela Saitta popping in to share their excitement to be part of the series conclusion. 

Zabel prepared fans for some intense scenes involving the European walkers in Spain, “in terms of the walkers, I think there’s an sequence in the opening episode that’s one of the the scariest sequence we’ve done on Daryl Dixon and there’s a sequence at the end of the season that I think is one of the scariest sequences in in all of Walking Dead lore.” Gimple followed up with, “I can confirm.” 

While the fans are certainly sad to see this series end, the four onstage seemed excited to provide a proper conclusion to Daryl and Carol’s journey. Reedus reported, “prepare yourself, it’s really heartfelt,” and McBride followed, getting a little emotional, “It’s so good. It’s so emotional from all of the characters, all the different storylines.” She also praised Reedus, “So proud of you. Seriously, such a good actor. The places he goes in this next season are truly incredible.” – GS

Interviews

Adam McArthur

Actor Adam McArthur is a busy man, starring in hit anime like supernatural action series Jujutsu Kaisen as protagonist Yuji Itadori. Fortunately, McArthur made the time to speak with us, discussing his career, including the recently released Jujutsu Kaisen season 3 and the upcoming Netflix original anime series Fool Night. Set to premiere on November 26, Fool Night stars McArthur as protagonist Toshiro Kamiya, with McArthur hinting that his character is haunted by his inner demons as he tries to survive on a darkened planet.

More than just talking about his current projects and his popular voiceover roles, McArthur shares how affirming and important opportunities like NYCC are in getting to connect with fans directly. This connection includes how much McArthur’s roles have resonated with fans worldwide as he puts his own distinct approach to Yuji Itadori and his character arc in Jujutsu Kaisen. McArthur also touched on the specific nuances that come with anime voiceover roles that have established Japanese voice actors for the original iteration of the role. – Sam Stone

Lewis Gribben, Matthew Needham, Dimitri Abold of Blade Runner 2099 | Den of Geek

Blade Runner 2099

Blade Runner 2099’s very own Dimitri Abold, Lewis Gribben, and Matthew Needham joined us in the Den of Geek studio during NYCC to dive into their characters in the upcoming Prime Video series. All three actors acknowledged the influence of the first two films on this series in the set design and their performances.

“I saw [Blade Runner 2049] in cinemas when it first came out. I was blown away by the visuals of it, the distinctness of it, just the color. I found it one of Ryan Gosling’s kind of most interesting performances, like it was so muted and so like held back for most of the film, which was really different from what I’d usually seen him in,” said Gribben.

Needham added: “I was just a big fan of the original film and it’s just such an effect on so much just outside of the film itself. It’s such a singular vision and it really created its own genre.”

Another huge talking point for the three was the attention to detail on the set design that helped immerse them into the Blade Runner universe. Abold even found a specific connection with his character’s home, “I was born in Jamaica and Bebeto’s family is very much tied to Jamaican culture. The first day I came into the set, they had pots boiling food, real food, and there was one pot that I was supposed to dish something out from that smelled like and also looked so much like Jamaican cornmeal porridge. I don’t know if it was planned like this, but I was like, ‘why do I feel like I’m at home right now?’” – GS

Frank Miller, photographed by Nick Morgulis | Den of Geek

Frank Miller

Comics legend Frank Miller joined Den of Geek’s Sam Stone at the eBay Live studio on Oct. 10, for a special event combining a conversation about his career with a live charity auction benefitting the Book Industry Charitable Foundation (Binc). Known for his groundbreaking work on Daredevil, Batman, Sin City, and Ronin, Miller discussed pushing the boundaries of comic book storytelling, creative collaborations he’s had over the years, and his new autobiography, Push The Wall. The auction featured rare books, autographed artwork, vintage cards, and exclusive items signed by Miller, with a custom Batman cover serving as the final item up for grabs. The livestream raised several thousand dollars for Binc, which supports independent bookstores, comic shops, and their employees. 

Following the 40th anniversary of The Dark Night Returns, Miller also reflected on what continues to inspire him about comics. “Oh, just about everything,” he said, continuing on to express his love for drawing, developing stories, and collaborating with the talented creators working in the industry. He also highlighted how the medium has grown into a broader playground for imagination, with comics increasingly influencing television, movies, and video games. Miller encouraged creators to embrace that creative freedom and push themselves to do their best work, adding, “There’s no excuse for comic book makers to give it anything but their absolute best and to be very brave.” – IA

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - OCTOBER 08: Brandon Rogers, Bryce Pinkham, and Harvey Guillén appear on stage during Prime Video's "Helluva Boss" Q&A and world premiere screening at New York Comic Con on October 08, 2026 in New York City. (Photo by Valerie Terranova/Getty Images for Prime Video)

Helluva Boss Season 3

Helluva Boss creator and executive producer Vivienne Medrano stopped by the Den of Geek studio alongside cast members Brandon Rogers, Richard Horvitz, Vivian Nixon, Erica Lindbeck, Bryce Pinkham, and Harvey Guillén to discuss the hit animated series’ highly anticipated third season, which premiered Oct. 14. The group teased what’s next for the denizens of Hell as the story picks up after season 2, with its characters navigating major life changes, complicated relationships, and the consequences of getting what they thought they wanted. 

Throughout the interview, the cast emphasized the emotional stakes driving season 3. Stolas must adjust to life without his former wealth and status while working alongside I.M.P., while Blitzø discovers that getting what he wants doesn’t necessarily mean finding happiness. Millie and Moxxie face new responsibilities and fears as soon-to-be parents. Loona continues to find her palace within the I.M.P. family. Guillén also teased his new character, Vassago, whose arrival adds another intriguing element to the show’s ever-expanding world. Despite the heavier themes, the conversation retained the show’s distinct humor that makes Helluva Boss such a fan favorite. Rogers summed up the cast and crew’s dedication to the series with a characteristically outrageous declaration: “We do pour our whole Hellavussy’s into [this show].” – IA

Catherine Zeta-Jones in Kill Jackie | AMC

Kill Jackie

After the Main Stage panel, Zeta-Jones, Butterworth, and Lawson headed to the pressroom to take further questions. We asked Zeta-Jones whether any moment during filming made it difficult to translate the book’s masculine perspective into a feminine one, or whether it was a non-factor. She explained that Jackie has “a percentage of masculinity about her,” describing her as elegant yet also “a hot mess.” The team also held onto “so much of that great stuff from the original book,” she said, reshaping certain moments for a female perspective while leaving others untouched, since in some cases, “a man or woman could do” anything Jack or Jackie does. 

Butterworth added that the shift in perspective turned out to be one of the more interesting parts of the process. “I think the thing that was really interesting is if you do give traditional male actions to a female character, something interesting happens,” he said. Rather than forcing the material to fit, the change “naturally swerves and skews in a way that” gives the story a new shape. “It just has its own different character and flavor,” Butterworth explained. Casting Zeta-Jones helped sell that. “When you’ve got Catherine playing that, it was interesting how much you could do because I think there is something quite masculine about her,” he said. – IA

Sumomon

In an interview with Al Kahn, the famed American business executive and licensing pioneer reflected on bringing some of the world’s most recognizable children’s franchises to Western audiences, including Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and spearheading American brands like Cabbage Patch Kids and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Kahn recalled first seeing Japanese children playing Pocket Monsters, now known as Pokémon, and recognizing its potential despite concerns from its owners that American children wouldn’t embrace the franchise. “I had a feeling in my psyche that kids are kids,” Kahn explained, believing that children share the same play patterns regardless of where they grow up.

Now, Kahn is applying his experience to Sumomon, a new original franchise designed to appeal to children and families. With plans for an animated Sumomon series and trading card game in 2027, and to make its products more accessible to young fans, the project reflects Kahn’s belief that children deserve fresh experiences rather than recycled ideas or collectibles priced beyond their reach. Throughout our conversation, Kahn discussed how nostalgia has increasingly shaped the entertainment and collectibles industries, why understanding a target audience is essential, and the importance of developing a distinctive voice and product concept that gives people a reason to care. For Kahn, success comes down to thinking outside the box, trusting your instincts, and being willing to pursue ideas even when others doubt their potential. – IA

Todd McFarlane

It doesn’t feel like Comic Con unless Todd McFarlane visits the Den of Geek studio and the co-founder of Image Comics was more than happy to oblige. During a chat in the studio, McFarlane elaborated on the origins of the comic book prequel miniseries Spawn 77 and how it differs from the mythos of the hellspawn. Based on sketches by McFarlane when he was a teenager, the story delves into New York City during 1977 and a different kind of crusader prowling its streets.

With McFarlane also the founder of McFarlane Toys, he recalled how his company positioned itself in a way corporate giant competitors can’t as he fostered a flourishing partnership with DC Entertainment making figures based on its iconic heroes and villains. The talk also turned to the long-gestating Spawn movie, with McFarlane appreciating recent horror movies like Obsession and Backrooms mirroring his vision’s creepy sensibilities while clarifying that he doesn’t see the project as providing another cinematic origin story for the hellish superhero. Finally, as a lifelong baseball fan, McFarlane shared his insights on the ongoing Major League Baseball postseason and who he personally wants to see win the World Series this year. – SS

Two Mikes 

The ‘Two Mikes,’ Mike Carbonaro and Michael Raphael from ‘Miked Up’ joined us in the Den of Geek studio at NYCC to host their eBay Live auction event for the Binc Foundation. The Binc Foundation supports local book and comic book stores to stay a float in a digital world. 

The selection from the auction included Marvel grails, graded books, vintage cards and a brand new signed copy of Frank Miller’s memoir Push The Wall. The auction had a live studio audience, with audible cheers, laughter, and competitive in-person bidding that brought an electric vibe to the studio.

Gary Vee holding up two VeeFriends cards.

VeeFriends

Entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk has blended his business acumen with his deep love of comic books and gaming for his multimedia venture VeeFriends. Combining the super-powered spectacle of superhero universes with the family-friendly collectibility of popular properties like Pokémon, VeeFriends has been a steady presence at NYCC and beyond for the past several years. At a special invite-only event kicking off this year’s NYCC, Den of Geek spoke with Vaynerchuk about VeeFriends and how it’s grown considerably since it launched in 2021.

With well over 200 characters and counting, VeeFriends combines positive messages for each figure along with an entertaining story to captivate readers. In addition to the growing comic book line, with a trade paperback collection being sold at NYCC this year, VeeFriends has also received its own extensive trading card set produced by Topps. In our interview with Vaynerchuk, he details his ambitions for VeeFriends and what it has got coming up next as it continues to forge its own path in the multimedia space and interconnected comic book universe. – SS

Norman Reedus as Daryl Dixon - The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon _ Season 3, Episode 6 - Photo Credit: Jorge Alvarino/AMC

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon

After their panel, Norman Reedus, Melissa McBride, David Zabel, and Scott M. Gimple headed upstairs to answer further questions for the press. Reedus got the opportunity to reminisce on his first day on The Walking Dead set and his relationship with McBride, “That cast was already sorta hanging out with each other,” Reedus recalled. “It was kind of like that little clique was already happening. They’d done a year of press already and were buddies. So we were both kind of new to the circle. Yeah, we just got along really well. She’s got a really crazy sense of humor, lots of potty humor, which I find funny. We just got along well.”

The four also dove into the central message of the series and the weight it held in filming this last season. Reedus said, “Your lives get ripped away in an apocalypse, and you try to find where you belong after that. And sometimes it’s with groups, and sometimes groups fall. And sometimes it’s with new territories, and those territories burn to the ground. So you’re constantly looking for a place to feel like you can sleep at night. So that theme is kind of, hope you live and learn in the end.” – GS

Magic: The Gathering Darkhold Destiny Set | Wizards of the Coast

Wizards of the Coast

The fan-favorite tabletop gaming company Wizards of the Coast came into NYCC 2026 hot, with several major developments across its biggest titles. First off, WOTC has entered a partnership with Blizzard Entertainment to create a crossover expansion for Dungeons & Dragons with Blizzard’s high fantasy franchise Warcraft. This includes its own rulebook drawing from the epic realms, monsters, and artifacts from Warcraft, along with detailed miniatures that can be detailed by fans as they create their own campaigns across Azeroth.

The other major announcement coming out of NYCC 2026 involving Wizards of the Coast was the next rollout in Universes Beyond, the crossover decks for Magic: The Gathering. After the successful Marvel Super Heroes decks released this past summer, something wicked this way comes from the Marvel Universe with the Marvel: Darkhold Destiny set. These cards are drawn from the magical side of the Marvel Universe and feature a stronger narrative focus as Doctor Strange and Thor work together after the powerful Darkhold falls into the wrong hands. Anticipated for an April 2027 release, these cards offer a more sinister side to Marvel and seamlessly fit right into the world and gameplay of Magic: The Gathering. – SS

The Batman: Part II Just Became a Different Type of Blockbuster

Things looked bleak, even for the Dark Knight. After multiple delays already pushing back the release of The Batman: Part II to February 18, 2028, the Caped Crusader suffered another blow with the announcement that production had paused as director Matt Reeves stepped away for personal reasons. But here’s the thing about the Batman: yes, he may be a brooding creature of the night, and, yes, he may keep on file contingency plans for defeating his closest friends. But Batman is never truly alone.

So, who should come the rescue, but Steven Soderbergh, playing the Superman to Reeves’ beleaguered Batman. Deadline has announced that Soderbergh will “help finish principal photography for the final weeks” of the shoot. The precise wording there is notable, as is the clarification that DC Studios co-head James Gunn posted to social media, noting, “Matt is still the director of The Batman 2 and always will be.” Yet, even with those qualifications, it’s impossible to think that Soderbergh won’t have some influence on the finished product, and that could make for a very different, and very exciting type of Batman movie.

The average moviegoer knows Steven Soderbergh primarily for the big blockbuster films he made in the ’90s and early 2000s, primarily Out of Sight, Erin Brockovich, Ocean’s Eleven, and Traffic, the last of which won him a Best Director Academy Award. However, most of Soderbergh’s (very full) filmography consists of experimental movies that play with the cinematic form.

He broke out with 1989’s Sex, Lies, and Videotape, a psychosexual drama about a weirdo (James Spader, of course) who films women confessing their fantasies. In 2002, right after Traffic and Ocean’s Eleven, he made the low-budget talkie Full Frontal to play with digital video techniques and Solaris, an attempt to marry the contemplative sci-fi of the Andrei Tarkovsky original to glossy Hollywood filmmaking. In recent years, Soderbergh has been experimenting with the iPhone as a viable film camera and with streaming services as distribution models, which has allowed him to release eleven movies in nine years.

Soderbergh’s adventurous spirit helps explain why he, a respected Academy Award winner, would be willing to work under someone else’s vision. And, to be sure, that’s the way he talks about his involvement in the movie. “The goal here is to work with Matt and his team to generate footage that will integrate seamlessly with what’s already been shot so Matt can properly finish his film,” he said in a statement released to Deadline.

Yet, that playfulness will certainly change some of The Batman: Part II‘s look, if not its structure. The Batman took a film noir approach to the DC Comics hero, making Robert Pattinson‘s Bruce Wayne an emo version of a hard-boiled detective. It featured a grounded, realistic Batman who made mistakes, but told it through heightened, red-hued visuals.

Those all fit within Soderbergh’s style (remember the heavy yellow and blue tints of Traffic?). But the adventurousness of Soderbergh’s more recent work means that we might see him try using unexpected cameras and unique angles in the movie, adding a new flavor to the mix.

And that’s all for the better. Because even though the Batman likes to do things his own way, he’s learned time and again that his fight for justice is more effective, and more exciting, when he accepts the help of others.

The Batman: Part II will arrive in theaters on February 18, 2028.

The 10 Best Sports Movies of All Time

You don’t have to love sports to love sports movies. Sure, it might help if you’re watching Eight Men Out from the perspective of someone who adores baseball history, and Miracle probably means more to people who remember watching the U.S. best Russia at hockey. But movies are their own thing, with their own storylines and structures, and definitely their own pleasures. So while it may seem like Den of Geek is taking a break from that whole “geek” thing for this list—rest assured that we can rank sports movies while still being a bunch of nerds.

As a bunch of nerds, we do need to make some qualifications before we go further. This list won’t deal with any fictional sports, so no movies about rollerball or Quidditch will show up. That said, we aren’t dealing with true stories either, so the lauded documentaries When We Were Kings or Hoop Dreams won’t show up. Finally, we’re going to stick to sports that most people agree are sports, leaving aside marginal cases like billiards (The Hustler) or bowling (The Big Lebowski).

Okay, with that out of the way, let’s get on our gear, hit the field, and battle it out to get to number one!

10. Whip It (2009)

Before you cry foul and say that we’re already violating our own rule about fictional sports, keep in mind that roller derby may sometimes mirror the pageantry of professional wrestling, it is very much a real sport. Those are real bruises and breaks those skaters sustain, and they’re really fighting for real points. Whip It works because it never shies away from that pomp and circumstance, while still telling a compelling story about real people.

Working from a screenplay by Shauna Cross, who adapts her own novel Derby Girl, and directed by Drew Barrymore, Whip It stars Elliot Page as teen girl Bliss Cavendar. Sick of the beauty pageants her mother (Marcia Gay Harden) forces upon her, Bliss rebels by seeking out another form of extravagant glory. Taking the name Babe Ruthless, Bliss joins the Holy Rollers, where she finds herself at home with other oddballs, including Maggie Mayhem (Kristin Wiig), Rosa Sparks (Eve), and Smashley Simpson (Barrymore).

9. Eephus (2024)

Baseball makes for great cinema because its leisurely pace allows for moments of character drama. But few baseball movies are as leisurely as the recent delightful indie offering, Eephus. Eephus comes from director Carson Lund, who wrote the screenplay with Michael Basta and Nate Fisher, and it takes its name, fittingly, from the famously slow trick pitch.

Everything moves slowly in Eephus, and that’s exactly the point. Set some time in the 1990s, the film chronicles the last game between the red-classed Adler’s Paint team and the blue-hued Riverrats, all adults playing beer ball one last time before their field gets demolished and replaced by a school. With a huge cast of mostly unknown actors, Eephus feels no need to hurry from plot point to plot point. Instead, it takes its time to luxuriate in the humanity of the indistinct but compelling men who don’t want the game to end.

8. Slap Shot (1977)

Slap Shot begins with a French Canadian player explaining to a newscaster about the illegal moves in hockey—illustrating them, that is, by performing them on the newscaster. Thus begins easily the most raucous and irreverent film on this list. Working from a script by Nancy Dowd, director George Roy Hill and star Paul Newman exaggerate the rough and uncouth nature of 1970s minor league hockey, and turn it into a celebration of working-class resilience.

Newman dirties up (but in no way diminishes) his incredible good looks to play Reggie Dunlop, player-coach of Pennsylvania’s Charleston Chiefs. With a steel mill layoff plunging the town into a depression, and failing ticket sales about to make all of the team’s past-their-prime players unemployed, Dunlop decides to embrace chaos, turning his team into a spectacle, partially with the help of the goonish Hanson Brothers. Does Dunlop’s plan save the day, restore the town, and bring the team the championship? Not quite. But that just makes the Chief’s anger all the more resonant.

7. White Men Can’t Jump (1992)

If Slap Shot is all about the chaos of amateur sports, White Men Can’t Jump takes it one step further to look at two loudmouth hustlers in the world of pick-up basketball. Writer and director Ron Shelton, whose name will appear again on this list, plays into the comedy inherent in the title. But he also finds notes of dignity in his players, whose love of the game is always in conflict with their need for a buck.

Wesley Snipes has never been more magnetic than he is playing Sidney Deane, king of the local basketball courts. When gawky white guy Billy Hoyle (Woody Harrelson) shows up, Deane thinks he has an easy victory, even after they put money on the game. But he soon learns that Billy, a former college basketball star, has been playing him the whole time. The partnership formed by the two generates plenty of amusing jabs at one another. But the real pleasure of White Men Can’t Jump comes from the film’s look at economic desperation and the hope of an impossible big break.

6. Creed (2015)

The winter of 2015 saw not one, but two seventh-entry legacy sequels in franchises that began in the 1970s. One of them was great and the other was Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The great one was Creed, Ryan Coogler’s extension of the Rocky story, this time focusing on Apollo Creed’s son Adonis a.k.a. Donnie. Played by Michael B. Jordan, fully establishing his movie-star credentials, Donnie reframes the Rocky narrative, without undercutting the original’s scrappy spirit.

Unlike the Italian Stallion who started the whole thing, Donnie begins the movie running from his life as a financial services executive to participate in illegal Mexican fights. When he realizes he can no longer avoid the complicated legacy left by the father he never met, Donnie relocates to Philadelphia, where he convinces Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) to train him as a proper fighter. Likewise, Coogler and his co-writer Aaron Covington never avoid the shadow cast by the original movies. But also like Donnie, Creed finds its own way, thanks to strong choices, including a bravado oner early in the film.

5. Hoosiers (1986)

“My team is on the floor.” In lesser hands, that declaration, made by a high school basketball coach about his underestimated group of players, would read as sappy and obvious. But in Hoosiers, directed by David Anspaugh and written by Angelo Pizzo, it has weight and resilience, and not just because it comes from the mouth of the legendary Gene Hackman.

Yes, Hackman brings the full weight of his serious screen presence to Norman Dale, who comes to a small Indiana town in the 1950s to teach civics and coach the school’s failing basketball team. And, yes, Hackman has plenty of opportunities to play Dale as a demanding coach who ejects the best player for rudeness, and who defends his choice of former college great and current alcoholic Wilbur “Shooter” Flatch (Dennis Hopper) as assistant coach. But Anspaugh surrounds the film with such wholesome, rural tones, that Coach Dale’s declaration feels at once aspirational and completely grounded.

4. Challengers (2024)

In any other sports movie, a closing shot of a player’s wife bending over to shout “Come on!” would read as triumphant. But Challengers isn’t about celebrating the winners, even though it’s about tennis players at the top of their game. Instead director Luca Guadagnino and screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes portray the destructive nature of the lust for victory, without diminishing the lust shared between the three central characters.

Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist play Art Donaldson and Patrick Zweig, two tennis stars who grew up together. Their friendship both turned intimate and eventually fell apart with the arrival of Tashi Duncan (Zendaya), a would-be star whose career ends after an irreparable injury. When Tashi leaves Patrick for Art, she puts her energy into his career, driving him to be the best—regardless of what he wants. The tensions come together in a match between Patrick and Art that unfolds over the course of the movie, the tensions heightened by Guadagnino’s audacious shot choices and a driving synth score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.

3. Rocky (1976)

As with Sylvester Stallone’s other great franchise, Rambo, it’s easy to forget where Rocky started. The Rocky sequels become little more than flashy montages and ridiculous fight scenes, culminating with Rocky winning the Cold War by beating the Russian champ. But the first Rocky has none of that flash and excess, telling the story of a man who will always be a loser.

Working from a script that he wrote for himself, Stallone uses his soulful eyes almost as much as he does his biceps. Rocky spends his nights losing fights in the ring, and his days working dead-end jobs, sometimes breaking fingers for a local bookie. But when the grandiose champ Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) agrees to fight a Philly amateur for a publicity stunt, Rocky gets his chance at the title, and even convinces the crusty Mickey (Burgess Meredith) to manage him and wins the heart of shy pet store clerk Adrian (Talia Shire). Despite the victories he does achieve, and despite the propulsive sounds of the Bill Conti score, director John G. Avildsen follows the lead of Stallone’s script, and keeps the stakes small and human.

2. Bull Durham (1988)

Anyone reading the plot synopsis for Ron Shelton’s Bull Durham would be forgiven for dismissing it as a crass ’80s comedy. Set in Durham, North Carolina, the movie follows the losing single-A team the Durham Bulls, whose season may turn around if “baseball groupie” Annie (Susan Sarandon) can inspire/seduce one of the players. The two players in contention are well-past-his-prime catcher Crash Davis (Kevin Costner) and empty-headed rookie pitcher Ebby Calvin LaLoosh (Tim Robbins), whose rocket arm could send him to the big leagues if he could only aim.

Whatever unsavoriness may be in a premise involving two men fighting for the right to bed a groupie, Bull Durham never feels anything less than human. Certainly, the movie gets broad at times, especially when Robbins channels The Hudsucker Proxy‘s Norville Barnes. But Shelton keeps a steady hand on the tone, keeping the character motivations real, which makes the baseball—and the steamy chemistry between the leads—constantly captivating.

1. Raging Bull (1980)

Raging Bull is the anti-Rocky. Where Stallone plays a basically good-hearted palooka who just needs a chance, Robert De Niro plays his real-life fighter Jake LaMotta as a truly despicable human being, someone who only knows how to batter the people in his life, whether or not he’s in the ring. But Martin Scorcese, working off a script by Paul Schrader and Mardik Martin, never let LaMotta be anything less than human, even though the movie knows we don’t want to root for him.

Raging Bull does this work partially by following the relationship between Jake and his brother Joey (Joe Pesci), the one person who can truly love the brutal fighter. It also does it with the film’s incredible, visceral fight scenes. To this day, no boxing movie has matched the power and the loneliness of Raging Bull‘s boxing sequences—not because they’re realistic; rather, because they capture the psyche of a man who only knows how to punch and be punched.

ParaNorman is the Perfect Stop-Motion Horror Movie

This article contains some spoilers for ParaNorman.

Every year, adults filled with nostalgia and kids ready for something a little bit spookier seek out the stop-motion classic Coraline. Even after the utterly disgusting revelations about author Neil Gaiman, who wrote the source novella, Coraline remains a charming evergreen watch, thanks to the strong voice performances and the incredible stop-motion animation from veteran director Henry Selick.

Believe it or not, though, Coraline isn’t the best movie from its studio, LAIKA. There’s another stop-motion release with even better visuals, even more compelling characters, and an even more moving story. That movie is ParaNorman, and it deserves to be added to everyone’s Halloween watchlist.

Abnormal Norman

Throughout its first act, ParaNorman delivers more or less what you’d expect from a kid-friendly horror movie. As 11-year-old Norman Babcock (Kodi Smit-McPhee) makes his way from home to school in his small, New England town, he’s harassed by his preppy older sister Courtney (Anna Kendrick), harangued by his high-strung father Perry (Jeff Garlin), and menaced by the local bully Alvin (Christopher Mintz-Plasse). Norman finds comfort in his odd-ball best friend Neil (Tucker Albrizzi) and from his crass but kind paternal grandmother (Elaine Stritch), who loves to watch horror movies with Norman.

Norman’s time with Grandma is particularly special because she died long ago. And Neil loves to hang out with Norman, because Norman can see Neil’s recently-deceased dog. In fact, Norman can see and talk with all manner of ghosts, which makes his life difficult.

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So while the first act does indulge in the occasional jump scare and spooky image, nervous viewers can take comfort in knowing that Norman takes it all in stride. The ghosts aren’t mean or cruel. They’re just lost, lonely, and confused, unable to move onto the afterlife for reasons they may not yet understand. So when a green arm shoots out from the side of the frame or the ghost of Norman’s crazed great uncle Mr. Prenderghast (John Goodman) emerges from a toilet, viewers will jump and shudder for a moment, but then they’ll feel okay.

That is, until things get out of Norman’s control. Mr. Prenderghast’s ghost comes to him with a warning, that he alone had been staving off attacks from a witch by performing a certain ritual. And now that he’s died, Norman must complete the ritual. But he can’t do it right, partially because he’s a kid fumbling through an arcane process, and partially because he’s interrupted by Alvin, coming to deliver a beating. And Norman’s blunder leads to not just the arrival of the witch, but also zombies rising from the grave to attack the town.

Here, ParaNorman shifts from horror watered down for kids, to actual horror. The zombies shamble towards the townspeople with pained expressions and maws dangling open. The skies turn black and purple and blue. The townspeople turn into a mindless mob as they try to fight back. And the witch takes the form of a glowering face in the clouds, electric with rage.

Crafting Terror

The horror sequences allow directors Sam Fell and Chris Butler (who also wrote the script) and the animators at LAIKA to show off their craft. Certainly, the characters and setting felt distinctive from the very first frame, with each face rendered as expressive and odd: nose bending at unexpected angles and body shapes exaggerated far beyond anything realistic. Even before the witch and zombies attack, the town had the qualities of German Expressionism, all sharp angles and unusual corners, albeit bathed in green and yellow and blue instead of the traditional black and white.

However, the animation gains a renewed fluidity once the horror kicks in. Norman, Alvin, and Neill never feel graceful, nor do Courtney and Neill’s jock brother Mitch (Casey Affleck), who get thrown in with their siblings. Yet, the animators imbue them with a unique dynamism when they start running away from various ghouls. The bounce around in Mitch’s van like toys rattled around by a toddler and Norman scuttles up a tower to face the witch less like a boy and more like a roach.

The general unsightliness of the characters and setting underscore ParaNorman‘s central theme, as do the horror sequences in the movie’s second and third acts. Yes, the witch and the ghouls are frightening monsters. But they’re just as unusual-looking as the human beings. And that’s because they too are just human beings, misunderstood and scared.

Monstrous Misunderstandings

At the climax of ParaNorman, Norman faces down the witch, but not to defeat her. Instead, he wants to talk to her, to relate to her. He realizes that she was once Aggie Prenderghast (Jodelle Ferland), a little girl his own age in Colonial America, who has his same ability to see the dead. As with him, that ability scared the people around her, and she was condemned for witchcraft by Judge Hopkins (Bernard Hill) and other Puritan leaders.

She died angry and alone, which is why her ghost will come and attack unless Mr. Prenderghast, her relative, completes the ritual. Which is essentially what Norman does, telling her she’s not alone, she’s not evil, and helping her to find peace in happier times.

Even more remarkable is the revelation that the zombies who beset the city are Judge Hopkins and the other town elders, whose guilt over shunning Aggie has turned them into the suffering undead. They arrive not to terrorize the city nor consume the living. Rather, they arrive to express their sorrow for the mistakes from the past, to admit they were just scared and foolish, and to beg Norman to complete the ritual so that no one else has to suffer.

As these plot points reveal, ParaNorman is ultimately a movie about empathy. Throughout the film, people get scared by something or someone they don’t understand, and they hurt themselves and others when they act out of that fear. But when they accept the fear and then move through it to understanding, they realize the threat wasn’t there at all.

Scared into Understanding

To be clear, ParaNorman does all of this without undercutting any of the horror. It’s genuinely scary to see the zombies and witch attack, even to grown horror fans. And the movie’s theme only works if people, including the audience, feel real fear. Otherwise, the passing through to understanding has no value.

ParaNorman’s approach to horror and empathy recalls a famous misquote/paraphrase from G.K. Chesterton’s 1909 essay “The Red Angel,” which says, “Fairy tales don’t tell children that dragons exist. They know very well that dragons are real. Fairy tales tell children that dragons can be defeated.” The most famous version of that paraphrase comes from Neil Gaiman’s opening to the novella Coraline, in which he explains why he made a scary story for kids. Both the book and movie version of Coraline achieved that goal well.

But ParaNorman does it even better, by forcing the audience to actually feel fear, and then showing them that fear is no reason to withhold empathy.

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Season 2 Promises a Brand New Night City Story

This article appears in the new issue of DEN OF GEEK magazine. Find out how you can subscribe to get the full physical copy right here!

Anime’s rich relationship with video games goes all the way back to the ‘80s and has only become more prominent over time. Netflix has found tremendous success with its anime adaptations of iconic gaming franchises such as Castlevania, Devil May Cry, and Arcane. This synergy often feels natural, but it’s still a challenge to pull off in a way that appeals to both seasoned gamers and anime acolytes who have never worked their ways through these virtual worlds. 2022’s Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, a passionate extrapolation of CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077 RPG, has set new standards regarding video game anime. 

Set in Cyberpunk 2077’s Night City technocracy, the anime forged a unique path forward with an original story that matches Cyberpunk 2077’s ethos rather than a straight adaptation of the video game. Not only did Studio Trigger’s Cyberpunk: Edgerunners resonate with anime fans, accruing nearly 15 million hours of viewing in its first week alone and winning Anime of the Year at 2023’s seventh Crunchyroll Anime Awards, it also led to a symbiotic relationship that saw even more gamers logging into Cyberpunk 2077‘s Night City to immerse themselves in this cybernetically-enhanced dystopia.

Even Cyberpunk tabletop RPG creator Mike Pondsmith and acclaimed video game industry visionary Hideo Kojima (Metal Gear Solid, Death Stranding) praised Cyberpunk: Edgerunners as a modern cyberpunk classic and a triumph in world-building. To many, the prospect of returning to Night City for a sequel and losing this magic would be tempting fate. However, leave it to CD Projekt Red and Studio Trigger to find a way for lightning to strike twice and match Cyberpunk: Edgerunners’s excellence, albeit in a brand-new package. 

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2, which drops its entire 10-episode season this Fall, plugs into a brand-new tale of tech-driven revenge, rebirth, and revolution with a fresh cast of characters. If Cyberpunk: Edgerunners’s fans thought David Martinez, Rebecca, and Lucy were a lot to handle, they’ll need to prepare themselves for what Weak Kingsley, D, and Roman Carax bring to the techno table. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2’s showrunner and executive producer, Bartosz Sztybor, along with the series’s director, Kai Ikarashi, tease what fans can expect in their return visit to Night City in what’s guaranteed to be one of 2026’s most talked-about anime.

The first season of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners was such a breakout success. Any time a second season or sequel for a project gets announced, there’s some degree of trepidation over whether it can match its predecessor’s quality. What was the process like putting this second season together, and why was it the right story to tell in this return to Night City?

Bartosz Sztybor: I already had ideas for Edgerunners 2 while writing David’s and Lucy’s story. I already knew that though one story arc was finished, Night City had more stories to tell, as there’s so much more to say about the ethos of being an edgerunner. As for the process of finding the right story and style for Edgerunners 2, that was actually rather simple! We knew from the start that it needed to be something completely unique but true to the core pillars of Edgerunners.

Of course, there were moments when I had doubts about making that choice. I’ve even had nightmares about it. After all, fans love David and Lucy’s story so much! But we also knew that their story was concluded. Even though some fans ask for David’s resurrection, we should honor his and Edgerunners’s legacy.

So to get back to the original question — I wanted to take those core story pillars and themes of Edgerunners and present them from a totally different perspective. With different characters, the audience can see different outcomes that draw from the particular decisions and choices these new characters, new people, make.

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 tells an original story with new characters. With so much changing, were there any particular elements from the past that you knew you needed to include to represent the series’s DNA?

Sztybor: Yes, I already mentioned those story pillars and themes that you knew from Edgerunners, so of course the show had to be about that: edgerunners in Night City. More often than not, cyberpunks are mercs working for fixers, but it’s a group that also includes people who are living on the edge, those who can’t fully cope with the reality around them and try to rebel against it in their own way.

Beyond that, there are many more avenues and themes that are part of that DNA. The edgerunners ethos, the sense of sacrifice, different kinds of love in a bleak reality, even a relationship with your parents as something that makes you who you are. If you recall the very first episode of Edgerunners, with David and his mother Gloria — that scene between them in the car, before the tragic crash occurs — we’re going deeper into moments like that.

You were both involved with Cyberpunk: Edgerunners’s first season. How was that previous experience helpful – and potentially challenging – for returning to this world?

Sztybor: I definitely took all of my knowledge and experience working with Studio Trigger into Edgerunners 2. Working together with them on Edgerunners opened me up a lot, and I learned so much. Of course, it’s a new creative team for Edgerunners 2, but their processes and the way they understand and interpret the story are rather similar. And it felt great that I could use that experience and knowledge from Edgerunners right away and hit the ground running.

Of course, working with a new director is always going to bring a new challenge, too; it’s a new perspective with new ideas, after all. But from the very first meeting with Kai Ikarashi, I had a feeling we had a similar taste in music and movies (and I was right!), so there was a mutual understanding between us and what stories we wanted to tell.

Kai Ikarashi: Having worked on Cyberpunk: Edgerunners as an episodic director, I had a good idea of how to approach the visual style. Whether I chose to deviate from that framework or fit right into it, having that baseline made the process a lot more manageable. As for the story, I figured it would be difficult to put together something on par with the original season. And in reality, it truly was challenging.

How is the version of Night City that’s seen in Cyberpunk: Edgerunners any different from the first season? Has a lot changed since the first season’s events?

Sztybor: Tricky question; it depends how deep you want to go when you talk about change. In fact, I’d rather not say and leave this up to the viewers to see for themselves.

Kai Ikarashi: In my opinion, it hasn’t changed, because a system like that cannot be changed so easily.

Was there ever the temptation to tell a more conventional sequel that’s a direct continuation of the first season or was it important to let those characters rest?

Sztybor: Never. Well, only those recurring nightmares that are whispering… no, screaming into my ear that it should be more conventional… But no, David’s story came to an end. It’s his legacy. At CD PROJEKT RED, we don’t want to rely on fan service. We want to create new things, explore the unexplored, risk and experiment to always lead, never follow.

Curiously, the first season’s intense melodrama and emotional devastation were a huge part of what made Cyberpunk: Edgerunners such a success. Are these tonal elements that have carried over to Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2?

Sztybor: Yes, that’s one of the core elements of Edgerunners as a series. Of course, we can’t repeat ourselves; we need to surprise fans and play with their expectations, but yes — if you want trauma, Edgerunners will deliver.

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners’s eclectic cast of characters won over fans with their creative designs, which felt unique but also authentic to the cyberpunk experience. What were some of the challenges with designing a whole new cast of characters? Were there any limitations or mandates present or changes that had to be made?

Sztybor: One thing that we had to keep in mind was the Cyberpunk 2077 design style, so every character needed to stay true to the world. But if you look at Doc or Faraday in Edgerunners, both characters introduced new design ideas that we then incorporated into our lore. So, we wanted Studio Trigger to have some artistic freedom to explore crazy ideas. But the biggest challenge was the one you already mentioned. How do you make the characters of Edgerunners 2 stand out, and feel interesting in their own right after you’ve already had such an amazing and original cast in Edgerunners?

Thankfully, we didn’t let that tame us. We didn’t search for originality just for the sake of it. We knew that edgerunners have their style, so it needs to be recognizable, but we can play with their look here and there. We’re also introducing types of characters that we were not exploring in Edgerunners, and we have two super wild designs that I think will make fans incredibly excited.

Revenge is a major part of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners’s story. Can you talk about its role this season and why vengeance was important to explore?

Sztybor: Revenge was David Martinez’s drive, and it is one of the core emotions for Edgerunners as a series, so we wanted to explore that further. Revenge itself is also a very common thing in this world where you need to fight to survive. And sometimes you can hurt someone, even if you had your own good reasons (in a moral sense), the outcome can be perceived as negative for someone else. Moral ambiguity is a very important topic in everything CD Projekt Red works on, and vengeance is a great story engine to explore it.

Kai Ikarashi: I believe that revenge represents a powerful personal emotion that exists independently of any system. That is why it was brought as a theme in Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2.

Why do you think the cyberpunk genre is experiencing such a renaissance and appealing to so many people right now?

Sztybor: We’re living a cyberpunk reality right now, so what was a dark future 40 years ago is now super close to reality. On one hand, people see it as a cautionary tale, but on the other hand, it is something that is getting closer and closer, one year or even one week ahead. Cyberpunk is also a tale of humanity and identity, so it perfectly catches the zeitgeist.

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners season 2 premieres Oct. 20 on Netflix.

Street Fighter Review: A Star-Studded, Violent, Love Letter to the ‘90s

Street Fighter, the second attempt to bring the legendary fighting game franchise to the big screen, is somehow even weirder and more colorful than its trailers have made it look. In fact, the marketing hasn’t done it justice. But dismiss this flick as a misguided send-up at your own peril, because it packs a surprisingly charming punch underneath its bold, colorful visuals.

Street Fighter follows Ken Masters (Noah Centineo) and his former best friend and fellow fighter Ryu (Andrew Koji) six years after the end of the first World Warrior Tournament. Ryu walked away as champion, but with terrible, long-lasting consequences for both men. Now Ryu has forsaken fighting for a quiet life, while Ken is a bad boy celebrity who spends his time partying, cashing endorsement checks, and quietly longing for something more meaningful. But when dictator/crimelord M. Bison (a wonderful David Dastmalchian, having the time of his life) announces a new World Warrior Tournament, he sends Chun-Li (Callina Liang, in a potential breakout performance) to gather the world’s best fighters and the expected mayhem ensues.

Of course we have one protagonist fighting a dark side and characters with secret agendas. And of course we get villains doing the old “join me” schtick. If you’ve seen the trailers or played the games it goes without saying that Street Fighter is played as broadly as they come, at times feeling self-consciously like a ‘90s blockbuster (the film takes place in 1993 and it’s easy to see this sitting comfortably in a mid-’90s multiplex, just as Street Fighter II arcade machines populated so many theater lobbies). The spectacle is very much the point, and director Kitao Sakurai walks a tightrope of winking at the audience and celebrating the source material. It’s always just on the verge of going completely off the rails and slipping fully into parody, yet never feels like it’s apologizing for the source material’s excesses in the way that this year’s similarly colorful and ridiculous Masters of the Universe often seemed to.

Our heroes’ backstory is filled out via hand-drawn anime flashbacks. It’s ironic that these sequences – some of the film’s best moments – feel less heightened than the live-action portions. Instead, the anime serves as an effective reinforcement of Sakurai’s approach to the rest of the film, achieving with flesh-and-blood actors the kind of over-the-top action, emotion, and colorful cinematography associated with anime, with a healthy dose of wuxia-inspired fight choreography for good measure.

And oh, those fights! Centineo may get top billing, and he acquits himself well in the action scenes, but this is Andrew Koji’s movie. Koji cemented his bona fides leading HBO Max’s Warrior and his turn as Storm Shadow in the better-than-you’ve-probably-heard Snake Eyes. There’s a refreshing clarity and in-camera focus to most of the action, alternating between bone-crunching violence and video game excess. Unfortunately, the low point of the movie involves a CGI-enhanced Jason Momoa as the monstrous Blanka, a necessary and sincere adaptation for fans of the game, but the effect doesn’t quite land. Yet even this can be forgiven when we get humdingers like an inventive fight between Ryu and sumo wrestler E. Honda in a sauna (featuring New Japan Pro-Wrestling’s Hirooki Goto in an inspired piece of casting) and a gorgeous Ken/Ryu punch-up in the rain.

It’s a stacked, colorful ensemble, and while elements like Cody Rhodes’ absurd wig are attention-grabbing, there’s an endearing and truly funny strangeness to his hyper-macho Guile, especially when paired with a scene-stealing and magnetic Vidyut Jammwal as Dhalsim. Putting alt-country artist Orville Peck behind Vega’s mask or casting the always wonderful and welcome presence of Don Lee as Ken and Ryu’s mentor are sublime choices. It’s an effective mix of martial artists (note Rayna Vallandingham as one of the villains), pro wrestlers (yes, that’s perpetual WWE champ Roman Reigns under the Akuma special effects), and celebrities (Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson looking like he stepped right out of the video game, Eric Andre doing his absurd best), and everyone’s commitment to the bit just adds to the charm.

But the authentic ‘90s movie touch that Street Fighter could really use is a leaner run time. Some of the jokes – especially an anachronistic, cloying musical moment that overstays its welcome – are groaners. Even at an economical (at least by recent tentpole standards) 120 minutes, Street Fighter gets less interesting the bigger it gets in that last half hour. Still, it’s tough to fault Sakurai for going the distance with total conviction. If you were hoping for a serious street-level martial arts flick, well, Sonny Chiba this ain’t. But if you’re looking for a colorful, action-packed ride, drop your quarters in the slot, press start, and bring your friends.

TV Premiere Dates: 2026 Calendar

Wondering when your favorite shows are coming back and what new series you can look forward to? We’ve got you covered with the Den of Geek 2026 TV Premiere Dates Calendar, where we keep track of TV series premiere dates, return dates, and more for the year and beyond. 

We’ll continue to update this page weekly as networks and streamers announce dates. A lot of these shows we’ll be watching or covering, so be sure to follow along with us! 

Please note that all times are ET. 

Note: These are U.S. releases. For upcoming British releases, head on over here.

DATESHOWNETWORK
Thursday, October 15The Diplomat Season 4Netflix
Thursday, October 15Hollywood ArtsNetflix
Thursday, October 15Crystal LakePeacock
Thursday, October 159-1-1 Season 10 (8:00 p.m.)ABC
Thursday, October 159-1-1: Nashville Season 2 (9:00 p.m.)ABC
Thursday, October 15Grey’s Anatomy Season 23 (10:00 p.m.)ABC
Friday, October 16Money Trap: The Karun TreasureNetflix
Friday, October 16Tulsa King Season 4Paramount+
Friday, October 16The Rainmaker (10:00 p.m.)USA Network
Sunday, October 18Maigret (9:00 p.m.)PBS
Sunday, October 18The Gold (10:00 p.m.)PBS
Tuesday, October 20Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2Netflix
Wednesday, October 21The Mothers of Penguins Season 2Netflix
Wednesday, October 21The New Stanford Prison Experiment Netflix
Wednesday, October 21The Terminal List Season 2Prime Video
Thursday, October 22Nobody Wants This Season 3Netflix
Thursday, October 22Did Someone Happen to Mention Me?Netflix
Friday, October 23Lupin Part 4Netflix
Friday, October 23Fading GrandeurNetflix
Friday, October 23Yaga AMC+
Friday, October 23Happy’s Place Season 3 (8:00 p.m.)NBC
Friday, October 23Newlyweds (8:30 p.m.)NBC
Monday, October 26Minimum WageNetflix
Monday, October 26The MobHulu
Tuesday, October 27The One About Matthew PerryNetflix
Thursday, October 29Balaraw: Blood IslandNetflix
Thursday, October 29Ghosts Halloween Special (9:00 p.m.)CBS
Friday, October 30A Couple of LiesNetflix
Friday, October 30AkkaNetflix
Friday, October 30How to Ruin Diwali: Meet the ParentsNetflix
Friday, October 30Dexter: Resurrection Season 2Paramount+
Friday, October 30NocturneApple TV
Sunday, November 1The Gilded Age Season 4 (9:00 p.m.)HBO
Monday, November 2St. Denis Medical Season 3 (8:00 p.m.)NBC
Monday, November 2The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins Season 2 (8:30 p.m.)NBC
Tuesday, November 3Bass x MachinaNetflix
Wednesday, November 4The GreatestPrime Video
Thursday, November 5North of NorthNetflix
Thursday, November 5Black DovesNetflix
Sunday, November 8City of God: The Fight Rages On Season 2HBO Max
Wednesday, November 11The BodyNetflix
Wednesday, November 11The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of PowerPrime Video
Thursday, November 12The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives: Orange CountyHulu
Thursday, November 12The Good DaughterPeacock
Friday, November 1312 12 12Apple TV
Sunday, November 15The ChosenPrime Video
Thursday, November 19The AltruistsNetflix
Friday, November 20Yellowjackets Season 4Paramount+
Friday, November 20Percy Jackson and the Olympians Season 3Disney+
Monday, November 23DigPeacock
Wednesday, November 25Blade Runner 2099Prime Video
Thursday, November 26The Hunting Wives Season 2Netflix
Wednesday, December 2Bad Monkey Season 2Apple TV
Tuesday, December 8Only Murders in LondonHulu
Thursday, December 10Ghosts Christmas Special (9:00 p.m.)CBS
Thursday, December 10The Murder of JonBenét RamseyNetflix
Thursday, December 17Ted: The Animated SeriesPeacock
Friday, December 18Frisco KingParamount+
Thursday, December 24Emily in Paris Season 6Netflix
Friday, December 25Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s StoneHBO Max
Friday, January 22NeuromancerApple TV
Sunday, January 24Common Side Effects Season 2 (11:00 p.m. ET)Adult Swim
Monday, February 15The LandHulu

If we’ve forgotten a show, feel free to drop a reminder in the comment section below!

Want to know what big movies are coming out in 2026? We’ve got you covered here.

Digger: Why Movies Can No Longer Properly Conceive of the Apocalypse

This article contains spoilers for Digger.

For a movie about the end of the world as we know it, Digger sure has a hard time imagining what that would actually look like. 

As the conclusion of Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s film reveals, New York City streets are overrun with floods of water, while survivors cling to life rafts and military enforcers, robots, and drones patrol the streets. Meanwhile, we are told a “level four” condition has descended (mirroring the same alarm system we’ve seen in the play, which has become a reality for the citizens of today). The theater-goers leave the play in gas masks, resigned to the fact that the air is presumably now unbreathable. 

According to the timeline of the film, it’s been 25 years since the apocalyptic events have played out and the world has barely moved on. The post-apocalypse is locked in a stereotypically apocalyptic stasis with all the usual signs of decay and disuse. We all know things are a bit shit. What’s the point in saying the future is like now, but without waste management?

Could it be that we can’t imagine the apocalypse beyond what we are already basically living in?

Back track for context, or for people who can’t actually be bothered to watch Digger. 

When the film begins it appears that Tom Cruise is playing corrupt oil magnate Digger Rockwell, whose ruthlessness and money grabbing ways have dislodged an ice shelf in Greenland which scientist Ganesh (Riz Ahmed) predicts is on its way to wipe out massive parts of Europe, and later parts of America. The most powerful men in America opt to do nothing about it and the consequences are catastrophic. 

Except that about half an hour into the film we learn that what we are watching is a play, produced by the real Digger’s now grown-up nephew (Jesse Plemons), a multi-millionaire himself. Later still, we learn that this play, called Fossil Fools, is actually based on the true story of the real Digger who (according to the play) really did cause a massive eco disaster through his own greed. What’s more this play is having a revival 25 years after it was originally shown – the “now” of the film is actually in a dystopian future, while the “now” of the audience – us, not the audience of the play – is around about the time when Digger was going to further destroy the planet. 

This is what could happen if we don’t take care, the film warns, but also, if it does we will re-frame it as art and take it no more seriously after it’s occurred, solving nothing and leaving the same sort of rich idiots in power, guffawing and cheering at a show about the end of days, while actively enjoying the death by suicide of Digger. Meanwhile ordinary people suffer.

Love it or hate it, it’s a deliberately bleak ending. But it’s also vaguely underwhelming for a movie packed with so much cinematic flair and invention. Given that Digger’s deeds happened at least 25 years earlier, this apocalypse is simple and unconvincing. What we see are floods running through the streets, cars turned over and general dereliction. Something you might find perhaps a year after a disaster, but 25-plus years later? What, no one could clear up a few cars, get rid of the trash and make the streets flood-safe and workable? 

Clean up of Ground Zero following the September 11 attacks in New York City took around one-to-two years and the site was largely restored within a decade. The city of New Orleans will never look the same post-Katrina but it rebounded and is still a thriving community today. Why wouldn’t the future of Digger recover similarly? Particularly given that in Digger’s world new tech has been developed in that time (the passing of the phone number via finger tip, is surely just the “tip” of the iceberg, and certainly there’s infrastructure to restore the theater and put on a very technically advanced show). We are not saying that this isn’t all part of the film’s master plan – perhaps they are saying that, no, in this dystopia the wealthy care only about theater and tech and don’t care enough to fund even the most rudimentary levels of urban reconstruction. Maybe, maybe, but we’re not convinced.

It actually looks like a more worrying indication that we just don’t know how to imagine what a scary, realistic cinematic apocalypse looks like, in a way we once did. Think about Threads (1984), for example, or Grave of The Fireflies (1988), or even the more gentle but no less devastating When The Wind Blows (1986). These were narratives that leaned into the effects of the apocalypse, and that is not what Digger is. But for a film about storytelling, the lack of a compelling and ideally terrifying vision of our new version of hell would have been a final impactful hoorah.

Is it any wonder though, at a time when extreme weather and environmental disasters are commonplace, international schools are preparing for El Niño, and when poverty and starvation are so pervasive we don’t see this as apocalyptic at all. It happens. We rebuild. (Unless you’re watching the new Channel 4 reality show Apocalypse which plays it as a bunch of argumentative idiots scraping over tins of spam and weeing in buckets.)

In Don’t Look Up (2021), the world just dissolves, in 2023’s Leave The World Behind (which does a much better job of imagining what might happen) we see a pre-apocalypse but not what the post-apocalypse looks like, The only other options seem to be scorched earth type post apocalypses in Mad Max etc. And you could argue that that’s the point, in Digger, what we already have is a hell of our own making. But setting this 25 years in the future which looks just like now with a tiny bit of new tech is… lacking in imagination. As David Crow writes in our explainer “Fossil Fools is loud, obnoxious, and grating, but it also lets audiences jeer at the past while resting assured they’re more enlightened now.”. Is Digger really saying that 25 years after a(nother) global disaster the world is going to be give-or-take just about as shit as it currently is? Or is the main big difference that in 25 years we can’t be bothered to clean up?

In 1667 poet John Milton brought us his epic tome Paradise Lost, which states its aim is to “justify the ways of God to men.” A regular complaint, though, is that hell, Satan and his congress of fallen angels is WAY more interesting than Milton’s depiction of Eden (which essentially involves two naked people in a nice garden doing a bit of work and having a rest – which tbh, right now sounds pretty great.) Hell has lakes of fire, adamantine chains, chimera, demons of all sorts and a massive great palace called Pandemonium made of gold. When Satan heads off on his mission to mess up mankind, he meets Sin and Death, Chaos and Time, all gloriously personified in terrifying form. It’s pretty great! 

Hell is something we can’t truly imagine – or rather our imaginations aren’t hindered by any pre-conceived perceptions of what it is. Therefore Milton can write one of the most vibrant unfettered visions of the worst that could possibly come into his mind. It seems like with Digger, all we can imagine is a slightly worse version of what we already have. We’re so tired of our own apocalypse that it’s essentially just the current status quote but without infrastructure. Accurate perhaps – time will tell – but hardly thrilling or even much of a cautionary tale.

Perhaps this is a churlish point to make about a film which is essentially a thought experiment. But I for one would like to see a really bold vision of the hell we might be cruising towards, something frightening that might kick us up the bum, or if not, provide the kind of cinematic vision that film is built for, before we crawl out of the theater to our own slow-burn destruction. 

Ben Affleck Hating Justice League Just Confirms He’s the Perfect Batman

Batman knows that criminals are a suspicious, cowardly lot. Movie fans know that Ben Affleck is a sad, tired man. Put the two together and movie magic should happen. Yet, for some reason none of Affleck’s four outings as Bruce Wayne have really stuck with anyone other than the dwindling group of Zack Snyder fans, still yelling on the internet about something. Yet, whatever the many (many, many) problems with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Justice League, Zack Snyder’s Justice League, and The Flash, there’s no question that Affleck puts in good work as a beleaguered Bruce Wayne and an even more frustrated Batman.

Turns out, the performance stemmed from a sort of unintentional method acting. On the Happy Sad Confused podcast (via The Hollywood Reporter), Affleck explained, “The experience of Justice League for me was so, so negative for lots of different reasons.” Although some of those reasons were personal, others had to do with the making of the movie itself. “I really saw how not to make a movie like that when the studio is at odds with the filmmaker,” he said. “You’re really making a mistake. That was what really doomed that.”

Doom and gloom is rarely what any studio wants to hear from a lead actor. But in this case, it’s perfect.

As seen in Batman v Superman, Affleck was cast to play an older, more cynical Batman, a man who had spent his younger years fighting the good fight, and now wants to give up. Moreover, the 9/11-esque destruction that opens the movie only disheartens him more, as he now realizes that there’s a god-like being on Earth. That movie ends with Batman and Superman (and Wonder Woman) teaming together to fight Lex Luthor’s monstrosity Doomsday, but Superman dies in the process.

In both versions of the follow-up, Justice League (initially directed by Snyder, but then reshot and re-assembled by Joss Whedon) and Zack Snyder’s Justice League, Batman has seen the error of his ways and wants to embrace superheroes. He even goes so far to gather the heroes into a team. But here, he’s upset about the way his actions led to Superman’s death. And he’s upset that Superman first returns as an unemotional super-being.

In other words, Ben Affleck plays a sad-sack Batman. And that’s great, because Affleck excels at playing sad. He may be a tall, charming movie star. But Affleck is best when he’s beaten-down and sad. Take one of his best recent performances, in the basketball drama The Way Back. His character is a former athlete and someone able to command the attention of young men. But he’s a broken alcoholic, someone barely able to make it through the day. Affleck manages to combine both his good looks and his deep melancholy to play someone so unbearably sad that we can’t help but watch them.

He brought the same energy to his Batman movies. Affleck’s Batman isn’t the team player we usually see, a guy who hangs out with Robin or the JLA. Nor is he the troubled, but eventually okay Bruce Wayne that Christian Bale portrayed in the Christopher Nolan movies. This is a guy who hates being Batman, hates getting called back into action, hates dealing with Superman and Lex Luthor, and hates teaming up with the Justice League. He even hates talking to annoying Barry Allen in The Flash.

And we can tell he hates it, which makes his performance believable. Is that enough to make those movies good? Absolutely not. But it is enough to remind us that we could have had some really great movies with Affleck as Batman.

But if the movies are good, would Affleck have been as sad? And if he wasn’t sad, would his performance be good? Those are questions not even the World’s Greatest Detective can answer.

Prime’s The Greatest Trailer Depicts Muhammad Ali’s Superhero Origin Story

A child with an alliterative name is born into an unassuming family in an unremarkable small city in the middle of the United States. He grows up poor, experiencing the sting of segregation and intolerance. He becomes preoccupied with justice, honing his body and mind to win glory and fight oppression. And when he eventually reaches his final form, he changes his name into something more elemental that becomes a symbol of strength, perseverance, and controversy to millions across the globe.

This is a journey familiar to many comic book readers who have seen heroes like Bruce Wayne, Peter Parker, and more embark upon it in the pages of Marvel and DC‘s most iconic titles. It also just so happens to apply to the real life Cassius Clay a.k.a. Muhammad Ali a.k.a. The Greatest. The legendary boxer lived the kind of paradigmatic life only possible in America – going from nothing to something to everything for some. His story has always been ripe for adaptation and now Prime Video is stepping into the ring with a series that they certainly hope can live up to its subject’s imposing legacy.

The Greatest is created by Ben Watkins (Cross) and produced by Michael B. Jordan‘s Outlier Society and Shawn Carter a.k.a. Jay-Z. The late boxer’s wife, Lonnie Ali, is also attached as an executive producer. With all eight episodes of the series set to debut to Prime Video worldwide on Wednesday, November 4, the streamer today released a first look trailer that leans in to the superheroic origin story of a young Cassius Clay. Give it a watch below.

“A fighter like you comes along once in a lifetime… maybe once in history.” Ali’s boxing coach Angelo Dundee (Giovanni Ribisi) says early in the trailer. And, of course, he’s right. Muhammad Ali is widely regarded as one of, if not the, greatest boxers of all time, boasting a 56-5 career record with 37 knockouts, including KOs of Sonny Liston, Joe Frazier, and George Foreman. It’s Ali’s history outside the ring, however, that elevated him to American icon status.

Born Cassius Clay in 1942, the boxer changed his name to Muhammad Ali in 1964 shortly after aligning himself with the National of Islam. Ali would become a political activist, unafraid to antagonize the white establishment while still ostensibly working within it as a professional athlete. Per its plot description, The Greatest is set to follow Ali through this transitional period: “Set against a changing America, The Greatest follows a once-in-a-generation talent fighting for the right to become his own man. Through the fights that made him a champion and the convictions that made him an icon, a young man from Louisville transforms himself into Muhammad Ali, the greatest of all time.”

Newcomer Jaalen Best stars as Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali. He is supported by a cast that includes Omari Hardwick as Cassius Clay Sr., Dana Gourrier as Odessa “Bird” Clay, Kai Parham as Rudy Clay, Amin Joseph as Sonny Liston, Giovanni Ribisi as Angelo Dundee, and Michael Ealy as Malcolm X.

While the life of Muhammad Ali has naturally been the subject of many films, books, and other media – most notably the 2001 film Ali starring Will Smith – Prime Video notes that The Greatest is “the first authorized scripted series about the life of Ali.” How the show will balance that level of privileged access with an honest look at the less savory aspects of Ali’s story like his series of infidelities and paternity claims remains to be seen. But what would a superhero origin story be without some controversy?

VisionQuest: Tommy Maximoff’s Story Is Even Weirder in the Comics

This article contains spoilers for VisionQuest season 1 episodes 1-2.

Speed has arrived! Years after Tommy Maximoff and his twin brother Billy seemed to disappear after their mother Wanda dropped her hex in WandaVision, VisionQuest reveals that Tommy somehow lives, now as a Scottish man called Thomas Shepherd (Ruaridh Mollica). The second episode of VisionQuest shows us how this happened, as the drowning of young Thomas allowed for Tommy Shepherd’s spirit to find a new host, not unlike the way Billy Maximoff’s spirit found a home in the body of the late Billy Kaplan (Joe Locke) in Agatha All Along.

That’s really weird. And, to its credit, VisionQuest doesn’t shy away from the weirdness. But TV can only go so far, even Marvel TV with a Disney budget. Comics are so much weirder, which means that the story of Speed outpaces VisionQuest when it comes to bizarre decisions.

The Terror of the Baby Hands

Anyone who needs evidence of comics’ appetite for weirdness need look no further than the cover to 1989’s Avengers West Coast #52, written and drawn by John Byrne. There, you’ll see supervillain Master Pandemonium standing triumphant over the California-based team of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, including Vision and the Scarlet Witch. Master Pandemonium has a ridiculous name and he’s dressed in a ridiculous outfit, complete with flowing red sleeves and a horned mask that lets his curly black hair peak out from the top. But such things are to be expected among supervillains.

The unusual thing about Master Pandemonium are his arms, specifically what he has in the place of his hands: two young boys, turned green and monstrous. Even more absurd are the variations of that same scene inside the issue, where Master Pandemonium has two normal young boys at the end of his arms.

Those boys are Tommy and Billy, the twin sons of Vision and Wanda, and everything about them is weird. Vision is, of course, a synthezoid, an artificial human being made from the body of the Golden Age Human Torch and implanted with the “brainwaves” of Simon Williams a.k.a. Wonder Man, long dead by the time of Vision’s first appearance in 1969’s Avengers #57. Make no mistake: Vision is a wonder, a complex android capable of thought, self-awareness, and even emotional depth, as demonstrated by his love for Wanda.

But Vision cannot reproduce, so when Wanda gave birth to a pair of twins in 1986’s The Vision and the Scarlet Witch #12, questions were raised. And those questions went mostly unanswered. Chalk it up to the power of love, chalk it up to a miracle, chalk it up to Wanda being a witch. Somehow, a synthezoid got her pregnant—with twins, no less!

The Devil’s Due

Eventually, an explanation for the miracle did come, in the story leading up to Avengers West Coast #52. When Wanda used her magic to make the twins, she inadvertently stole fragments of Mephsito, the Marvel Universe’s version of Satan (you saw him played as just a regular dude, for some reason, by Sacha Baron Cohen in Ironheart). The magic-user Master Pandemonium wanted to use those fragments to gain power, but he in fact drew Mephisto’s attention. Mephisto absorbed those fragments back into himself, thereby wiping Tommy and Billy from existence.

Or so we thought. The first signs of something strange happened in 2005, with the arrival of the Young Avengers: a group of teen heroes arrived to take the place of the Avengers, who had just been defeated when a crazed Wanda turned Vision into a bomb. Initially, the teens all mirrored members of the original Avengers, with Patriot mimicking Captain America and Asgardian mirroring Thor. However, as the storyline went on and we learned the secret behind the team (they are adolescent heroes assembled by a teenage Nathaniel Richards, to stop his older self, the time-traveling villain Kang the Conquerer), the heroes began to take on new identities.

In particular, Asgardian revealed that he wasn’t from Asgard. Rather, he was a magic-using boy called Billy Kaplan. Moreover, Billy had hex powers like those of Wanda Maximoff. And with good reason, because it turns out that he is Billy Kaplan… sort of.

Billy and Tommy did disappear when they were reclaimed by Mephisto. Furthermore, Agatha Harkness (a kind, if mysterious, old crone in the comics, not the sassy woman we know from TV) wiped all knowledge of the twins from Wanda’s memories as an act of kindness. But when Mephisto died again, as all Marvel characters eventually do, his soul shattered and Billy and Tommy’s spirits when free again. However, Wanda had no memory of her children and could not reclaim them, so they had to wander between the dimensions as lost souls.

Weird Rebirth

That is, until they found M’Kraan.

M’Kraan looks like a palette-swapped version of the X-Men character Phoenix, and with good reason. She’s the living embodiment of the M’Kraan crystal, a gem of unbelievable power. So great is M’Kraan’s power, that she was able to sense the spirits of Billy and Tommy and give them homes. Billy’s spirit was reincarnated as the son of Jeff and Rebecca Kaplan, while Tommy reincarnated as the son of Frank and Mary Shepherd.

Billy’s magical powers allowed him to not only join the Young Avengers as Asgardian/Wiccan, but also allowed him to realize the truth about his identity sooner. The same couldn’t be said of Tommy, who was captured by scientists and held captive as soon as his powers manifested. When Vision and the Young Avengers learned about a teen with superspeed being imprisoned, they went to rescue the boy. But even though Tommy has white hair, like his uncle Quicksilver, and has superspeed, like his uncle Quicksilver, and otherwise looks like Billy’s twin, it takes everyone a long, long time to realize that he is indeed the reincarnated Tommy Maximoff.

But how did M’Kraan know to look for them? Why, it’s simple. M’Kraan was created by Billy and Tommy in the future, who extracted her identity from the M’Kraan crystal and sent her to the past to find them. Simple!

These days, there’s no question about Tommy’s identity. He dresses in a green lightning bolt costume (again, like his uncle Quicksilver) and fights alongside his family under the (unimaginative) superhero name Speed.

We’ve already seen Thomas Shepherd use his powers a bit in VisionQuest, so he’ll probably become Speed at some point in the show. But will this Speed’s story ever be as strange as that of the Speed in the comics? We can only hope.

VisionQuest streams new episodes every Wednesday on Disney+.

VisionQuest Doesn’t Address the MCU’s AI Problem

This article contains spoilers for VisionQuest season 1 episodes 1-2.

With few exceptions, the primary appeal of a new Marvel property is the way it expands the shared universe, bringing back old favorites with new characters. VisionQuest follows suit by giving Vision the spotlight and pairing him with his creator and arch-enemy, the evil robot Ultron. But VisionQuest also puts a twist on the formula by bringing back names we know with faces we’ve never seen before. 

D.U.M.-E. And U, robotic arms who have lived in Tony Stark’s shop since the first MCU movie Iron Man appear as handymen played by Henry Lewis and Jonathan Sayer. Tony Stark’s second AI assistant, F.R.I.D.A.Y., originally voiced by Kerry Condon, appears as Orla Brady, while E.D.I.T.H., the glasses at the center of Spider-Man: Far From Home, is now a spunky security chief portrayed by Emily Hampshire. Even James D’Arcy returns as Jarvis from Agent Carter, though now as an AI butler. Fun as it is to see all these actors on screen together, the reunion has another, more chilling effect, reminding us that the MCU is filled with AI—and it’s becoming more of a problem each year.

Not-So-Marvelous Optics

The problem of Marvel’s addiction to AI was particularly evident in the biggest movie of 2026, Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Director Destin Daniel Cretton and star Tom Holland touted the movie as a return to Spider-Man fundamentals, bringing Peter Parker back to the low everyman he has been in the comics, now separated from his friends and Stark’s fortune. But as much as Peter broods in a dingy (but really spacious) New York City apartment, he’s never really alone. He has AI E.V. (Naomi Watts) to talk with and offer advice.

Brand New Day isn’t the first time that ol’ Pete has had to fall back on an AI. In Spider-Man: Homecoming, he had a nice, long heart-to-heart with Karen (Jennifer Connelly), and he bickered with E.D.I.T.H. (first voiced by Dawn Michelle King) in Far From Home.

Although most egregious when applied to Spidey, AI use appears all throughout the Marvel Universe. Whether it’s T’Challa or Shuri, Black Panther relies on Griot (Trevor Noah). Before he became Vision, Paul Bettany played Tony’s closest confidant, J.A.R.V.I.S. The Life Model Decoys of the comics become fully synthetic AIs in Agents of SHIELD. Ironheart recovered her best friend via AI, when her operating system N.A.T.A.L.I.E. took the form of her late pal Natalie Washington (Lyric Ross). Heck, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law revealed that AI is even at the center of the entire franchise, when she went face-to-face with K.E.V.I.N., the “true” face of Kevin Feige.

Occasionally, the MCU does recognize that AIs aren’t perfect. The Hydra agent Arnim Zola corrupted SHIELD from inside when he became an AI in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. The cheery Miss Minutes went mad when defending the sacred timeline in Loki. And then there’s Ultron, who, of course, tried to wipe out all of humanity.

In short, the MCU thinks that AI can do great things, sometimes bad things and sometimes good things. And that’s the problem.

Artificial Integrity

But Ultron highlights the MCU’s overall approach to AI. AI is capable of great things, in the MCU’s imagination, both good and bad. But whenever the AI goes bad, there’s always a good AI there to stop it. Even better, the bad AI can be reformed, made better, and turned into a force for good.

We can see that tension at work in the two main characters from VisionQuest, Vision and Ultron. Obviously, Ultron tried to destroy humanity nearly immediately after his creation in Avengers: Age of Ultron. He was built to protect the world and, after studying the history of mankind, determined that the greatest threat to humanity was humanity itself.

Yet, even in those initial scenes, the good AI J.A.R.V.I.S. saw what he was trying to do and attempted to dissuade him. When that failed, J.A.R.V.I.S. became the Vision, and took more drastic steps. Age of Ultron made us believe that Vision took the ultimate approach to stopping Ultron by destroying him. But VisionQuest reveals that Vision merely destroyed Ultron’s body, and saved some of his code.

VisionQuest seems to want to tease out the reasons for saving Ultron’s code (beyond the very obvious reason that it’s fun to watch Paul Bettany and James Spader chew the screen together). However, even in these early episodes, we can tell that Vision wants to save Ultron, to reform him and turn him into a force for good. On the surface, we support that decision. Heroes constantly try to redeem villains and get them to help society. But Ultron isn’t a person; he’s an AI, which suggests that the MCU believes even when AIs go wrong and, say, try to kill every single human being on the planet, that’s just a bug, something to fix in the next iteration and update.

A Lack of Vision

Marvel Comics became huge in the 1960s because their heroes lived in New York City, not fictional towns like Metropolis and Gotham. They existed in what Stan Lee called “the world outside your window,” as if you could see the actual Spider-Man and Hulk in your city streets if you looked at the right time.

The more the MCU embraces AI, the more it turns away from the world outside our window. As much as executives love the idea of getting Claude and Gemini to write emails instead of paying someone to do it, and as much as your weird aunts and uncles enjoy making AI pictures of themselves hanging out with George Washington, the fact remains that the larger public is deeply skeptical, if not outright hostile toward the use of AI.

Marvel should know this, as they’ve been at the receiving end of some of that hostility. Amidst complaints about the unfair treatment of special effects teams, reports leaked that Marvel used AI to create the opening credits to its show Secret Invasion. Just months ago, people took to the internet to complain about “AI slop” in the art book for Spider-Man: Brand New Day.

Yet, VisionQuest seems blissfully unaware that anyone would think of AI as anything other than a cute lil’ helper, here to help you fulfill your dreams. And it’s making the MCU seem increasingly out of touch.

Apropos of the thoughtful hero at the center, VisionQuest raises big questions about identity and family and purpose. And, as a superhero show, it’s fundamentally concerned with right and wrong, good and evil. But the show’s stubborn refusal to direct any of those questions at the function of AI, something that is no longer a cute sci-fi fantasy, removed from actual existence, makes VisionQuest feel outdated, obsolete, and fake.

VisionQuest streams new episodes every Wednesday on Disney+.

15 Actors That Were Older Than You Thought They Were

Good child actors are hard to come by, and when you find the ideal performer, in just a few years they’ll stop being a child. For roles about teenagers, however, finding ideal candidates is far easier, since a lot of adults can play them convincingly.

So convincingly, in fact, that audiences might not realize the actors were adults at all. Of course, there are films where the entire high school is populated by adults, but in well made productions, we can suspend our disbelief. These are the actors that, when their movies happened, seemed eternally young.

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Stockard Channing in Grease

Channing was 33 while playing high-school student Rizzo, making her significantly older than nearly everyone else portraying teenagers in the movie.

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Alan Ruck in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

Ruck was 29 when playing anxious teenager Cameron Frye, something audiences often forget because he convincingly fit alongside the younger cast.

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Rachel McAdams in Mean Girls

McAdams was 25 during filming, older than many viewers assume for someone so strongly associated with one of cinema’s definitive high-school movies.

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Jason Earles in Hannah Montana

Earles was already around 30 years old while playing Miley Stewart’s teenage brother Jackson on the Disney Channel sitcom.

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Keiko Agena in Gilmore Girls

Agena was 27 when Gilmore Girls began, despite convincingly portraying teenage student Lane Kim throughout much of the series.

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Bianca Lawson in Pretty Little Liars

Lawson became famous for repeatedly playing teenagers well into adulthood, including during Pretty Little Liars when she was already in her early thirties.

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Gabrielle Carteris in Beverly Hills, 90210

Carteris was 29 when she started playing high-school student Andrea Zuckerman, making her one of television’s most famous older “teenagers.”

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Shirley Henderson in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Henderson was 37 while playing ghostly Hogwarts student Moaning Myrtle, surprising many fans who assumed the actor was far younger.

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Andrew Garfield in The Amazing Spider-Man

Garfield was 28 during filming, older than many audiences realize for an actor portraying awkward teenage Peter Parker.

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Stacey Dash in Clueless

Dash was 28 while playing high-school student Dionne Davenport, making her nearly a decade older than several younger cast members.

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Thomas Brodie-Sangster in The Queen’s Gambit

Brodie-Sangster was 30 during production, yet still looked youthful enough that many viewers assumed he was much younger.

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Ben McKenzie in The O.C.

McKenzie was 25 when The O.C. premiered, despite playing troubled teenager Ryan Atwood throughout the massively popular teen drama.

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Judd Nelson in The Breakfast Club

Nelson was 25 during filming and noticeably older than several co-stars, though audiences still accepted him as rebellious high-school student John Bender.

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Charisma Carpenter in Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Carpenter was already 27 when Buffy premiered, making her considerably older than the high-school cheerleader character she played on the series.

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Paul Rudd in Wet Hot American Summer

Rudd was already 32 while playing a teenage camp counselor, yet his youthful appearance made many viewers assume he was far closer to the character’s actual age.

15 Actors Who Allegedly Didn’t Get Along On Set

Hollywood loves selling the illusion of perfect chemistry, even if behind the scenes, plenty of famous co-stars reportedly could barely stand each other. Sometimes it was personality clashes, creative disagreements, or simply spending too many exhausting months trapped together during difficult productions. In other cases, the tension became so obvious that audiences eventually noticed it onscreen.

Legendary old-school feuds and modern blockbuster drama make up these conflicts, which became part of entertainment history almost as much as the movies and shows themselves. Some rivalries cooled off with time, while others stayed bitter for decades. Either way, these productions prove that great performances do not always come from friendly working relationships.

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Bill Murray and Lucy Liu on Charlie’s Angels

Reports from production claimed Murray and Liu clashed during filming, with tensions allegedly escalating into a heated argument that later contributed to Murray not returning for the sequel.

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Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams on The Notebook

Director Nick Cassavetes later claimed Gosling and McAdams struggled personally during production despite eventually becoming a real-life couple afterward.

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Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron on Mad Max: Fury Road

Both actors later acknowledged serious tension during the difficult desert shoot, with Theron describing parts of the experience as emotionally exhausting.

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Wesley Snipes and Ryan Reynolds on Blade: Trinity

Stories from production described Snipes and Reynolds having dramatically different personalities and approaches, contributing to a notoriously chaotic filming environment.

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Richard Gere and Debra Winger on An Officer and a Gentleman

Winger openly criticized both the movie and Gere during production, later admitting she found parts of the filming process deeply unpleasant.

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Bette Davis and Joan Crawford on What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

Their feud became legendary in Hollywood history, with both actresses reportedly sabotaging and antagonizing each other throughout production.

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Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson on The Fate of the Furious

Public social media comments and separate filming schedules fueled reports of major behind-the-scenes tension between the two action stars.

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Shannen Doherty and Jennie Garth on Beverly Hills, 90210

Years of rumors surrounded alleged conflict between the co-stars, with both later acknowledging their relationship became tense during the show’s original run.

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Chevy Chase and Bill Murray on Caddyshack

Production stories claim the comedians nearly got into a physical fight backstage after years of lingering tension dating back to Saturday Night Live.

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Julia Roberts and Nick Nolte on I Love Trouble

The two reportedly disliked each other so intensely that some scenes allegedly required stand-ins because they refused to film together directly.

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Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey on Dirty Dancing

Although their chemistry became iconic onscreen, Swayze later admitted he sometimes found Grey difficult during production because of differing working styles.

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Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic on Castle

Long-running rumors claimed the leads experienced serious behind-the-scenes friction, with reports suggesting they occasionally avoided each other off-camera entirely.

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Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe on Some Like It Hot

Curtis later described filming with Monroe as frustrating because of repeated delays and production difficulties during the classic comedy’s shoot.

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Claire Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio on Romeo + Juliet

Reports suggested Danes sometimes found DiCaprio immature during production, while he reportedly thought she was too reserved and serious.

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Isaiah Washington and Patrick Dempsey on Grey’s Anatomy

Behind-the-scenes conflicts reportedly escalated during production, eventually becoming part of the larger controversies surrounding Washington’s departure from the series.

14 Actors Who Chose Quality Over Quantity

Actors, like any other person, need to work to pay the bills. Sure, a lot of them have a lot more money than the average person, but that isn’t true for all performers, much less at the start of their careers. And yet, there are a few actors that, once they gained some renown, decided to be more picky on the films they starred in.

Not all of the films they chose were instant classics, but that’s not why they chose them. These are actors clearly working their craft to the best of their ability, searching for roles that challenge them. They may not have starred in plenty of films, but the filmography they are in was worth it.

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Daniel Day-Lewis

Day-Lewis famously disappears for years between projects, carefully selecting demanding roles instead of maintaining constant output, yet still became one of cinema’s most acclaimed actors.

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Leonardo DiCaprio

DiCaprio gradually shifted toward fewer, prestige-focused collaborations with directors like Martin Scorsese and Christopher Nolan rather than chasing nonstop commercial releases.

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Tom Hanks

Although extremely successful commercially, Hanks carefully avoided oversaturating audiences and consistently balanced mainstream popularity with respected dramatic performances throughout his long career.

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Jodie Foster

Foster frequently stepped away from acting for years at a time, preferring selective projects and directing work over constantly appearing in major studio films.

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Denzel Washington

Washington built a career around carefully chosen dramatic roles and character-driven stories, maintaining prestige across decades without appearing in an overwhelming number of films annually.

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Frances McDormand

McDormand has long prioritized unusual scripts and acclaimed filmmakers over blockbuster visibility, resulting in a smaller but consistently respected body of work.

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Gene Hackman

Hackman avoided excessive franchise work and eventually retired entirely, leaving behind a filmography filled mostly with critically respected performances instead of endless studio output.

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Michelle Pfeiffer

Pfeiffer often turned down projects and took lengthy breaks from Hollywood, maintaining a carefully curated career rather than maximizing sheer screen appearances.

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Cate Blanchett

Blanchett balanced prestige dramas, stage work, and occasional franchise appearances while maintaining an unusually consistent reputation for high-quality performances across genres.

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Cillian Murphy

Murphy spent years avoiding traditional celebrity culture and carefully selecting projects, eventually becoming a major leading man without flooding theaters with constant releases.

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Amy Adams

Adams built her reputation through selective dramatic and character-focused performances rather than appearing in as many commercial projects as possible.

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Philip Seymour Hoffman

Hoffman consistently gravitated toward challenging material and respected directors, creating one of modern cinema’s most admired filmographies despite relatively limited mainstream blockbuster presence.

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Tilda Swinton

Swinton frequently chooses eccentric independent films, art-house projects, and unusual collaborations instead of pursuing maximum commercial exposure or conventional Hollywood stardom.

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Viggo Mortensen

After The Lord of the Rings massively raised his profile, Mortensen deliberately focused on smaller, respected projects rather than aggressively chasing blockbuster franchise fame.

Movies Everyone Quotes Without Having Actually Seen Them

Movies become instant classics by covering deep themes, being incredibly entertaining, or having quotable lines. That last batch of movies have a tendency of becoming memes, catchphrases and joke enders, to the point that the quote is far more memorable than the film itself.

This has the unfortunate effect of audiences quoting movies they’ve never seen, with the phrases exploding in popularity through other media. There are people that don’t even know the quote is from a movie, since the quote has morphed so much. We hope that this article makes you watch the movies with the immortal quotes.

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The Godfather

People quote “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse” constantly, even if they have never sat through the full nearly three-hour mafia classic.

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The Terminator

“I’ll be back” became such a universal pop-culture shorthand that plenty of people know the line long before ever actually watching the movie it came from.

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Jaws

“You’re gonna need a bigger boat” escaped the film so completely that many people quote it without ever having seen Spielberg’s shark thriller from beginning to end.

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Forrest Gump

“Life is like a box of chocolates” became a cultural catchphrase repeated far beyond the movie itself, often by people who know the quote more than the plot.

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Jerry Maguire

“Show me the money!” became bigger than the movie in everyday conversation, sports talk, and comedy references, even among people who skipped the actual film.

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A Few Good Men

“You can’t handle the truth!” became one of cinema’s most quoted outbursts, often repeated by people who only know the courtroom moment in isolation.

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Casablanca

Lines like “Here’s looking at you, kid” remain deeply embedded in pop culture, even though many quoters have never actually watched the wartime romance itself.

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Gone with the Wind

“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn” is one of the most famous final lines in movie history, often recognized by people who never sat through the epic runtime.

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The Wizard of Oz

“There’s no place like home” became a cultural shorthand so completely that its movie origins sometimes feel secondary to the quote itself.

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Star Wars

“May the Force be with you” turned into a universal phrase repeated across generations, including by plenty of people who never actually watched the original film.

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Dirty Harry

“Do you feel lucky?” remains iconic tough-guy dialogue, even for audiences who know the quote mainly through parodies and impressions instead of the movie.

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Taxi Driver

“You talkin’ to me?” became one of cinema’s most endlessly referenced moments, often quoted by people who have never seen the unsettling character study around it.

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Field of Dreams

“If you build it, he will come” became a motivational shorthand in everyday language, far beyond people who have actually watched the baseball fantasy.

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Apollo 13

“Houston, we have a problem” became such a common shorthand for disaster that many people forget it comes from a specific movie scene.

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Sudden Impact

“Go ahead, make my day” became a political and pop-culture catchphrase so famous that its original Dirty Harry sequel is often less remembered than the line itself.

14 Actors Who’ve Been in Everything, But You Might Not Recognize

Depending on the decade, the entertainment industry tends to use the same actors across plenty of films, mainly due to their popularity. This is something we’re used to, but the characters behind the big leads also get reused often, something we tend to overlook since, well, they’re in the background.

Still, their performances have merit, since someone needs to play all those roles. Once you see them, though, you can’t unsee them, so be prepared to recognize them everywhere. It’s incredible how prolific these actors are, leaving a legacy of their own by being in so many memorable movies.

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William Fichtner

Fichtner has spent decades popping up in major films like Heat, Armageddon, Black Hawk Down, and The Dark Knight, often as stern military figures, criminals, or authority characters.

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Clancy Brown

Even if people know the voice, many forget Brown’s huge live-action résumé, including Highlander, Starship Troopers, The Shawshank Redemption, and countless villain or heavy roles.

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Zeljko Ivanek

Ivanek became one of Hollywood’s most reliable intense supporting actors, appearing across major films and prestige television while frequently playing lawyers, officials, and morally gray professionals.

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David Dastmalchian

From The Dark Knight to Blade Runner 2049, Dune, and multiple superhero projects, Dastmalchian repeatedly appears in memorable supporting roles despite remaining less instantly recognizable than many co-stars.

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M. C. Gainey

Gainey built a long career as intimidating bikers, convicts, and rough-edged authority figures, showing up in Con Air, Sideways, Django Unchained, and many television dramas.

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Titus Welliver

Before Bosch made him more visible, Welliver had quietly appeared in films like The Town, Gone Baby Gone, Argo, and Transformers: Age of Extinction.

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J. T. Walsh

Walsh became one of the most dependable character actors of the 1980s and 1990s, often playing corrupt officials, executives, and antagonists in major studio films.

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Xander Berkeley

Berkeley repeatedly turned up in thrillers, action films, and genre projects, often portraying military officers, investigators, or quietly sinister authority figures.

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James Rebhorn

Rebhorn quietly became one of Hollywood’s most utilized supporting presences, appearing in everything from Independence Day to Meet the Parents and Scent of a Woman.

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Miguel Sandoval

Sandoval appeared steadily in crime dramas, thrillers, and action-heavy projects, often playing detectives, commanders, or morally complicated authority figures.

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Al Leong

Leong became a staple of 1980s and 1990s action movies, frequently appearing as henchmen or silent villains in films like Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, and Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

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Tommy Flanagan

Flanagan regularly appeared in gritty supporting roles across action films, crime stories, and historical epics, often recognizable more by his scarred look than his name.

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Kevin Dunn

Dunn spent decades playing politicians, fathers, executives, and authority figures across major films, becoming one of those actors we recognize instantly but rarely name.

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Peter Stormare

Stormare built a huge career through eccentric villains, criminals, priests, and oddball supporting characters in films like Fargo, Constantine, and Armageddon

15 Movies We Don’t Believe Anyone Actually Watched All the Way Through

Watching movies is meant to be a joyful experience, even if you’re watching a tense thriller. The point is to have a good time, hence why films are part of the entertainment business. But what happens when a movie isn’t something enjoyable, but something you have to endure?

This is the topic for today: movies that are so hard to get through, people have walked out of cinemas out of sheer frustration. And not because they’re controversial; they’re just plain bad. If you’re planning a movie night, these are the movies to avoid. Or, if you’re brave, these are the movies to endure.

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Cats

Cats became infamous less for its story than for its uncanny visual effects, erratic tone, and baffling adaptation choices that left viewers treating it more like a curiosity than a full sit-down watch.

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Movie 43

Its anthology format, wildly uneven sketches, and intentionally gross-out humor gave Movie 43 a reputation as something often talked about more than actually finished.

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Battlefield Earth

Critics and audiences alike mocked its Dutch angles, awkward performances, and bloated runtime, helping Battlefield Earth become shorthand for movies people abandoned out of frustration.

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The Last Airbender

The heavily criticized adaptation quickly became known for awkward exposition, stiff performances, and disappointed fans who struggled with how far it drifted from beloved source material.

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Dragonball Evolution

Long criticized by fans of the original manga and anime, the movie became notorious for flattening major characters and delivering a product that no one liked, even if you knew nothing about the source material.

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The Emoji Movie

Its corporate premise and critical backlash made The Emoji Movie a common punchline, with many remembering the concept more vividly than the actual full viewing experience.

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Son of the Mask

As a follow-up to a hugely recognizable comedy, Son of the Mask became infamous for chaotic CGI, strange humor, and poor reception, making it one of those sequels many people know by reputation more than by finishing it.

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Gigli

Production gossip and brutal reviews often overshadowed the film itself, turning Gigli into one of Hollywood’s most famous flops that many know by reputation alone.

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Foodfight!

Technical problems, unfinished-looking animation, and years of troubled production made Foodfight! notorious as a bizarre disaster many sampled more than fully consumed.

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Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore

Even as a family sequel, it gained little cultural footprint and often gets cited as one of those studio follow-ups most people forgot existed at all.

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The Love Guru

The Mike Myers comedy drew criticism for repetitive humor and uncomfortable jokes, quickly becoming better known for backlash than for lasting audience affection.

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Batman & Robin

Its toyetic excess, puns, and exaggerated camp eventually made it a cult curiosity, but for years it represented blockbuster overload at its most exhausting.

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Norbit

Its heavy prosthetic comedy and divisive humor helped make Norbit one of those hits many people remember existing, while fewer passionately defend revisiting it.

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After Earth

The sci-fi survival story is a case of stiff pacing and flat emotional impact, leaving it remembered more as a disappointment than a must-finish experience.

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Transformers: The Last Knight

Even within a huge franchise, The Last Knight became especially criticized for chaotic plotting, mythology overload, and a runtime many viewers found exhausting to sit through.

VisionQuest Episode 1-2 Premiere Review: Coming Into Focus

This article contains spoilers for VisionQuest season 1 episodes 1 and 2.

From the first episode of VisionQuest, it seems that the chief pleasure of the show will be watching Paul Bettany and James Spader chew the scenery. The actors reprise their Marvel roles, with Bettany back as a more questioning, less empathetic Vision than we’ve seen before, and Spader returning as a more avuncular, but still genocidal Ultron. The two crackle in every scene they share, as they prod and debate with one another about the value of humanity and the value of the humanities. The actors clearly love playing off each other, and we love watching them do it.

It’s a good thing, then, that Disney+ decided to air the first two episodes, “No Strings” and “Theseus,” back to back. While the pilot episode gets mired in exposition, unappealing visuals, and unmoored performances, the second clicks into place, giving the show some forward propulsion. Were it not for “Theseus,” VisionQuest would start in the wrong direction, leaving its leads to simply munch on bland and tasteless digital scenery.

Part of the difficulty comes from VisionQuest‘s awkward position as third part in a trilogy that includes WandaVision and Agatha All Along, with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness thrown in there as well. It’s been five years since we last saw Vision in WandaVision, and 11 years since his debut in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Moreover, Vision rarely drove any of those stories, and was often subordinated to Wanda’s arc.

As a result, VisionQuest needs to devote much of its first episode to catching up viewers, which it does in sometimes inelegant ways. The series takes place after the events of WandaVision, in which Wanda Maximoff not only created the twins Tommy and Billy, but also resurrected Vision, who died when Thanos pulled the Mind Stone from his head in Avengers: Infinity War. WandaVision revealed that the government organization S.W.O.R.D. built a cold, unfeeling copy of Vision (dubbed “White Vision” because of his colorless look), who did battle with the resurrected Vision. By the end of the series, Wanda releases her hex, thereby causing the resurrected Vision to die, but not before he transferred his memories into White Vision.

Thus, VisionQuest begins with White Vision trying to figure out his identity, which he does through two methods. The more visually compelling of the methods involves taking human form, calling himself Sherwood Ellis, and working in the Edinburgh pub where his previous version spent his last happy days with Wanda, which we saw in Avengers: Infinity War. There, he exchanges friendly banter with the barkeep Fiona (Polly Frame), as she dispenses motherly advice via a thick brogue.

The pub setting provides the strongest parts of the “No Strings,” and not just because Bettany has easy chemistry, playing a slightly awkward man trying to figure out humanity, not unlike Brent Spiner’s best work as Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation (a comparison VisionQuest showrunner and Star Trek: Picard season three showrunner Terry Matalas rejects, as you can read about here). It also works because it introduces the most dynamic character in these early eps, the hired assassin Paladin, played by Todd Stashwick.

Together with his handler (Diane Morgan, a.k.a. Philomena Cunk), Paladin and his team attack the pub in the hopes of capturing Vision for an unknown buyer, killing Fiona in the process. The scene crackles with energy, thanks in part to the visuals, with light streaming through bullet holes in the manner of the Coen Bros. movie Blood Simple, and thanks in part to the performance.

Stashwick knows how to play a compelling heavy, but he seems so much more brutal and direct here, as if he’s annoyed by having to be in a Marvel show. Even though his chemistry with Morgan feels dulled by the decision to keep her physically separated from him, Stashwick commands attention every time that he’s on the screen. That’s particularly true of “Theseus,” which gives us more about Paladin’s background. When Paladin loses control, befuddled by his mysterious client and a shadowy assailant, or forced to recall part of his past, then Stashwick finds moments of vulnerability, hinting toward a richness not immediately apparent.

The same can be said of Bettany’s take on Vision, who is explicitly a different character than the synthezoid we saw elsewhere. As this Vision tells Paladin, he has the Avenger’s face, “but not his virtue.” He is alienated from his feelings, even able to slaughter Paladin’s men, which Bettany expresses by moving seamlessly from his kindly British gentleman persona into something mechanical.

Less effective are sequences that take place inside the Mindscape, a virtual mansion where Vision is waited on by a team of AIs, all manifestations of characters we saw/heard in robot form earlier MCU entries.

D.U.M.-E and U, robots from Tony Stark’s workshop, appear as silent handymen played by Henry Lewis and Jonathan Sayer, respectively. F.R.I.D.A.Y., Stark’s replacement for J.A.R.V.I.S., is a personal assistant and life coach, portrayed by Orla Brady. Emily Hampshire appears as E.D.I.T.H. a.k.a. the glasses that Peter Parker almost used to call a drone strike on Brad Davis in Spider-Man: Far From Home. And James D’Arcy sort-of reprises his role as the butler Jarvis from Agent Carter, but this time as the AI J.A.R.V.I.S. that preceded the J.A.R.V.I.S. that Bettany voiced and who eventually became Vision.

Yes, it’s a lot. And, in theory, watching these delightful actors do funny bits together would be a lot of fun. But the artificiality of the setting, the broadness of the roles, makes every scene fall flat. At best, the sequences play like lesser versions of WandaVision (we’re introduced to the Mindscape via jaunty ’50s music and close-ups on suburban products and mod-cons); at worst, they play like actors’ exercises. They sure look like they’re having fun together. Us viewers, not so much.

Which brings us to James Spader as Ultron. Look, Spader is utterly delightful. His screen presence as a thoughtful, vaguely hedonistic weirdo has only gotten better as he ages. Spader’s costuming in VisionQuest—long hair, wild beard, ostentatious clothing choices; he appears only briefly as a giant robot before taking human form—only accentuate those qualities, making him feel like a more sensuous take on Doctor Who‘s nemesis, the Master.

But as much as Ultron and Vision trade shots about their previous encounter in Age of Ultron or observations about Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights, their conversations never reach the depths that they seek. It all feels like clever banter, being exchanged by two likable, but slightly unfocused, actors standing in digital stage spaces.

Fortunately, “Theseus” picks up on the pilot’s final plot point, and starts to get moving. “No Strings” ends with the reveal that Paladin has found Wanda and Vision’s son Thomas, who has somehow survived being dissipated at the end of his mother’s hex. Played by Ruaridh Mollica, the Scottish Thomas is working as a con artist, alongside his partner Lisa Molinari (Lauren Morais), whose backstory opens the second episode.

Unlike his brother Billy, played by Joe Locke in Agatha All Along, Thomas was not raised in a loving family and has to fend for himself alone. He does not feel confident in his powers, nor does he take kindly to learning through Paladin that he has a father. Even more than Stashwick, Mollica gets to play a properly human character, despite his character’s absurd background. By quivering his voice, by creasing his brow, Mollica relays an internal conflict that better embodies the show’s questions about selfhood and identity than any of Bettany and Spader’s bombastic scenes.

Comic book readers know that Thomas becomes the super-fast Speed, and these episodes show why that’s such a good thing. If VisionQuest wants to be a worthy successor to WandaVision and Agatha All Along, it needs to run as fast as it can away from the empty banter and exposition that marred “No Strings” and toward the substance on display in “Theseus.”

VisionQuest streams new episodes every Wednesday on Disney+.

Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival Revels in the Horror of the Grotesque

We were incredibly relieved at Summer Game Fest 2026 when we learned that Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival wouldn’t be yet another asymmetrical online horror game based on an existing cinematic property. After all, following in the steps of Dead by Daylight, there has been no shortage of them, including Friday the 13th: The Game, Evil Dead: The Game, and Halloween: The Game – that well has run bone dry for some time. After that SGF preview, we’ve gotten to play the full version of the game and we’re happy to report that Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival is a solid single-player horror title that definitely feels in line with the horror franchise that Barker created.

Developed and published by Saber Interactive, the game follows protagonist Aidan Lynch, whose girlfriend Sunny is viciously taken by the Cenobites after they accidentally unleash the sinister potential of a puzzlebox known as the Genesis Configuration. Following the Cenobites into their hellish dimension to rescue Sunny, Aidan finds himself traveling between Hell and his own reality, where he must contend with a murderous cult known as the Scarlet Church. Using a variety of weapons and unlocking the powers of the Genesis Configuration, Aidan travels between the Scarlet Church’s sanguine hideouts and the labyrinthine corridors of Hell, braving cultists and Cenobites alike to save Sunny.

Right from the game’s opening scene, it’s clear that Revival is keeping in line with the gratuitous nature that the Hellraiser franchise is known for, with plenty of graphic sex and violence to set the mood. Even as someone who’s watched the Hellraiser movies – well, the good ones – and is well-aware of how delightfully nasty it can be, I was surprised by how much was shown on-screen in the game, something that only seems to escalate as the story progresses. Simply put, this is a game that earns its M-rating and definitely evokes the grimy and unpleasant atmosphere of the cinematic source material, inviting players to experience the lurid sights that it has to show them.

Played from a first-person perspective, players get to see these gory and BDSM-inspired sights up close and very personal as they guide Aidan through his nightmarish adventure. Running the game on a standard PlayStation 5 for the purposes of this review, the game visually looks stunning, particularly whenever the action shifts back to Hell and its puzzle-filled levels as Aidan ventures deeper into his own heart of darkness. The game’s early sequences in the real world are similarly well-crafted but as Aidan enters more well-lit environments, the technical presentation’s seams start to show, with its textures and frame rates not quite up to par in these portions of the game. Horror works best when it’s in the darkness and so does Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival.

The game’s combat is where the overall experience falters the most, particularly when multiple enemies are on screen at once. Aidan relies on everything from melee weapons and conventional firearms to the Genesis Configuration and its supernatural abilities to kill and dismember any foes that get in his way. Feeling routine at best and uninspired at worst, the combat system serves its purpose but rarely exhilarates in a way that contemporaries like Resident Evil or even the more grounded melee action in Silent Hill does. I never quite found myself looking forward to a skirmish in Hellraiser: Revival and was usually more relieved when a given fight was done than anything else, so that I could move on. The boss fights are handled much better, with any encounter with the Chatterer being a standout sequence, but they tend to be further and farther in between than ripping and tearing through the rank and file enemies populating every level.

Where Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival excels is through its atmosphere and the more puzzle-centric challenges that players have to overcome throughout the game. Whenever the player is plunged into the masochistic mayhem in the shadows or the Gothic majesty of Hell, the whole experience is elevated significantly. If the game shaved off its more perfunctory combat sequences and heightened its focus on exploration and puzzle-solving, including multiple memorable sequences that feels directly inspired by P.T., it would be a near-flawless recreation of what has made the Hellraiser franchise so great.

When Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival leans into its strengths through unsettling mood and tension-fueled set pieces over overt action, the game is truly firing on all cylinders as the ultimate love letter to the franchise. The game recognizes when its major set pieces are expected to deliver and appropriately takes its biggest swings creatively during these sequences, making the most of the familiar Hellraiser aesthetics. It’s the moments in between, however, where the game could use a bit more polish, though the title is still a must-play for fans of the franchise.

And, at the very least, it’s a good thing this isn’t yet another Dead by Daylight knock-off.

Developed and published by Saber Interactive, Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival is available now for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.