Overwatch’s Newest Hero Continues the Game’s Character Design Missteps

Shion’s debut as Overwatch’s 52nd hero could have been a momentous occasion. Instead, the hype for the damage-class Hashimoto mob boss fizzled quickly as online chatter about her appearance dominated her post-announcement discussion.

Shion would look cool in most other contexts. Her clean white business suit complements the bright red neon lights that run through the mechanical parts of her body. Her scarlet motorcycle adds a level of stylishness that anyone would be jealous of. The combination of robotic augments and human features combined with a badass moveset would work well in any first-person hero shooter, or even most other video games in general.

In Overwatch, however, she represents a large problem the game’s developers have had with character creation. Shion is an Omnic, a race of sentient robotic beings with features that distinguish them from humans; they lack human faces and are clearly mechanical in nature. They were built in Omniums, self-sustaining megafactories owned by the Omnica Corporation, and are capable of independent thought while also being stronger and smarter than humans.

Shion is the first playable feminine-presenting Omnic. Instead of marking her introduction into the lineup with a more traditional Omnic design, Shion’s creators included far more human features seemingly for no reason other than to sexualize her. She has an attractive face, a human shaped butt and breasts, and even a tongue (as seen in her announcement trailer). Nothing about her makes viewers think she’s entirely robotic until she talks and her mouth doesn’t move.

Blizzard developers will most certainly bend over backwards when explaining her lore to justify Shion’s physical humanization instead of admitting they are copy-and-pasting the same formula for each new female character they release. The most recent women added to Overwatch’s lineup frequently share similar characteristics; symmetrical faces, athletic builds, and hyper-feminine features, with some of these characters getting slapped with common East Asian cultural motifs without much thought.

Anran, the 22-year-old graduate of Wuxing University’s Fire College, uses a flaming fan to scorch her enemies. Kiriko, the 21-year-old medic from Japan, is defined visually by her guardian fox spirit. Sierra, a 25-year-old soldier from Colorado and the most recent hero before Shion, bursts onto the battlefield with heavy winged eyeliner, lipgloss, and various technological tools of war (a big gun, a drone, etc.).

Fans are not blind to this formula, either. Posters on Reddit summarize this trend succinctly. As one user puts it: “The character sheet at blizzard: Woman, attractive, young, Japanese, cyberpunk, anime. Yeah, that sounds like money right here.”

These are just a few examples of the epidemic of Overwatch’s women being limited to a very specific niche, one that falls far short of the original Overwatch lineup’s ingenuity. Shion, as a female-presenting robotic character with a clear reason to split from these features, could have been the Overwatch developer’s chance to hit a female design out of the park after a series of swings-and-misses, but is instead another disappointing addition.

Other Omnic characters have managed to stand out visually without adopting human features. Ramattra, the most recent Omnic addition to Overwatch’s lineup, has a menacing appearance with cohesive, lore-appropriate features and aesthetic. The difference between Ramattra and Shion that allowed him to not fall into the formulaic character design Overwatch is now infamous for is that fact that he is a man.

By adding yet another standardly sexy woman character to the roster, Overwatch developers are telling their fans they care about creating conventionally attractive women over thoughtful characterization. Shion is just another unfortunate victim in their long-running war against creative experimentation when it comes to female characters.

Toy Story 5 Is Already Proving Doubters Wrong

The impending release of Toy Story 5 had the generations of fans raised by Woody, Buzz, and friends worried. After the financial success of Toy Story 4, another sequel — needed or not — was bound to happen, despite a myriad of complaints about the direction of the series. A new addition to the canon of stories about our favorite talking toys, even if trailers hinted at taking on timely themes, was not exactly wanted.

However, film journalists got their first look at the newest Toy Story, and the reactions have been rapturously positive. So good to the point that some major critics and publications are even predicting it will be in talks for this year’s Oscars, even beyond the Animated Feature category. Taylor Swift’s end credits song “I Knew It, I Knew You” has also gotten a number of shoutouts.

Almost anything released after Toy Story 3 is, without a doubt, completely unnecessary. The Toy Story shorts, holiday specials, and various spinoffs have been cute, but not anything groundbreaking. Toy Story 4, for all its visual grandeur, offered nothing but convoluted characterization and undermined the perfection that was the final minutes of Toy Story 3.

Doing something completely new without forgetting the ethos of the Toy Story franchise is a tight requirement for the fifth installment to have a modicum of success. The first Toy Story came out in 1995 and immediately asserted itself as a classic. The next two, which each brought in new characters, storylines, and themes without forgetting that most of the characters are toys, are also highly regarded. Toy Story 4 lost the idea that its characters are, in fact, toys; a pseudo-Frankenstein narrative between elementary schooler Bonnie and the plastic utensil craft Forkie underlie a plot about self exploration more akin to a Chloe Zhao film than a Pixar outing.

The trailers, which set up the parallel storylines of Woody aging and the obsolescence of toys as a whole, hinted at this desperately needed novelty. Although full reviews of the film are embargoed until June 16, it is not a stretch to say the creators behind the newest Toy Story likely hit gold.

It’s important to note that Toy Story 4 also had positive reviews from critics before its release. Vanity Fair called it a “forking good time,” while The Guardian claimed the franchise was still “very much alive.” Both the critics and audience scores for the film on Rotten Tomatoes are in the 90s. Although the film itself is far from being truly bad, it struggles in comparison to the original three movies, and few reviews have been able to capture the fact that it is by far the worst in show for Pixar’s flagship series.

Fan discourse about Toy Story 4 has been what has ultimately defined its legacy within the series. Popular film social media platform Letterboxd, which bases scores off the cumulative reviews given by its users, gives the film a 3.3 out of 5 (a below-average score for the franchise).

Right now, it’s too early to tell if Toy Story 5 will fall into the same trap. To avoid it, the film will have to give its doubters a clear reason as to why it should exist after the litmus test created by Toy Story 3’s ending. It will also likely have to shed the ham-handed existentialism and complex, often contradictory morality of Toy Story 4.

Instead of focusing on a talking fork and erasing Woody’s character arc and main motivation of making kids happy, Toy Story 5 needs to remind fans why they started thinking of their toys’ feelings after seeing the first movie.

George Clooney Has an Unprompted (and Solid) Pick for the Next James Bond

Amazon MGM can rest easy on its hunt for a new 007 because George Clooney’s been on the case and he’s cracked it. According to Clooney, there’s a “perfect” James Bond out there already, and it’s Callum Turner.

The London-born Turner, who recently wed pop star Dua Lipa, is best known for playing Newt Scamander’s brother Theseus in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald and Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, but has also snagged plum roles in Apple TV’s Masters of the Air and last year’s well-received romantic comedy Eternity.

The 36-year-old actor might be slightly on the older side for MGM, which is reportedly looking for a younger actor for its new incarnation of the iconic British spy. Still, Clooney has thrown Turner’s hat into the ring for him.

“I hope Callum ends up being the next Bond. I think he would be a great Bond,” Clooney told The Hollywood Reporter unprompted. “He’s tall and handsome and charming and British, so he’s the perfect guy to do it.”

Clooney also cites Turner’s comparative lack of “easy paychecks” over the years, in contrast to his more interesting roles, as a good reason to believe he’s proper leading man material. “Somehow Callum has weaved his way through all of the noise and found a place where people look at him and go, ‘There’s something with this young man.’ It’s exciting to watch people saying, ‘That guy — that’s a guy I want to follow and pay attention to.’“

When asked directly about the James Bond speculation swirling around him, Turner said, “I’m not going to comment on that,” later adding, “I’ll tell you what’s so funny about the Bond thing: Even your best friends ask you, people text you that you haven’t spoken to for 10 years — and you know nothing! It’s such a weird thing of something happening and nothing happening at all. I genuinely know nothing. I just find it quite amusing.”

Realistically, Turner is a solid choice for the new Bond. He’s young enough, but also looks like he could already be a bit experienced in espionage, given that he’s also the same age as actor Jack Lowden, the spy in Apple TV’s terrific Slow Horses. Callum is charismatic but has proved he can handle more serious roles, and also has the right physicality for Bond. More importantly, perhaps, people don’t immediately associate him with another iconic role, which might prove less of a distraction than someone like the hotly tipped Jacob Elordi, who many still think of as the manipulative and abusive Nate Jacobs in Euphoria.

Are you with Clooney on this one? Let us know in the comments!

The Death of Robin Hood: Exclusive Look at Hugh Jackman’s Unmasking of a Legend

Most folks do not like it when their heroes die. A quick glance at online discourse about franchise movies that ended with icons perishing will remind you of this. But the resistance to fictional mortality dates back far longer. There are dozens upon dozens of Robin Hood movies, for example, yet only one previously has made a serious attempt at adapting Robin’s death. Even fewer have genuinely sought to examine the events of “A Gest of Robyn Hode,” a ballad dating back to at least the 16th century that is our oldest surviving account of Robin’s demise.

Yet for Michael Sarnoski, the writer-director of Pig, A Quiet Place: Day One, and this month’s A24 release of The Death of Robin Hood, it was always the story of brave Robin’s end that most intrigued, beginning with when the headmaster of his school handed him a collection of ballads written down in a previous century.

“I was fascinated by it and I was confused by it,” Sarnoski muses about his reaction to Robin Hood dying. “As a kid, you’re like, wait a minute, he’s this heroic, folkloric immortal character that has persisted through the ages, yet he also has a very human, quiet, simple death? The seeming paradox of that really fascinated me as a child, and it was all kind of happening right around the time that I lost my own dad.”

Raised previously by his parents to think of Robin Hood as a swaggering talking fox, courtesy of the 1973 animated Disney movie, Sarnoski suddenly found himself confronting the very real prospect of mortality—and all at the same time he was introduced to a Robin fading away in a bed, watched over perhaps too eagerly by the Prioress of a nearby nunnery.

“I’m 10 years old and realizing these iconic symbolic characters are human beings, I’m talking about parents in this situation, and they can fail and die just like any other person can,” he continues. “They can suffer. It’s when you’re coming to terms with what mortality is and what growing up is, and I think it all just sort of hit me right around the same time.”

The impact of that hit lingered in Sarnoski’s mind for decades, seemingly expressing itself in strange ways. The filmmaker swears he wasn’t thinking about Robin Hood when he named Nicolas Cage’s vaguely outlawish chef living in the self-exile of a forest “Robin” on Pig, but he won’t deny the similarities between that story and the Robin Hood movie he would begin writing soon afterward—or even his A Quiet Place prequel. It was in fact the prospect of tackling the latter, which led to him finally returning to that elegiac ballad about Robin and the Prioress.

“I was getting ready to write A Quiet Place, and it was just like this moment of ‘screw it.’ I’m about to go do a studio movie, so let’s just write this thing that’s always lived inside me and that I’ve always wanted to get out on paper. I know it could be a dumb idea to make another Robin Hood movie, who needs that? But I gotta get this thing out of me to see if it’s something that I wanted to put aside and leave behind, or if it’s something I wanted to pursue someday.”

What came from Sarnoski’s pen is, in some ways, a faithful adaptation of the earliest, bloodiest medieval ballads of Robin Hood, before daring exploits in the Holy Lands or Locksley lands and titles were later granted to the character’s name. In other ways, however, it’s a total inversion in which the violence is extreme, and so is the spiritual penance Robin unconsciously receives when he ends up on an island with a true holy woman.

Hugh Jackman in the Death of Robin Hood 2 with Bill Skarsgard

At a glance, it could be perceived by audiences as another hero at sunset movie like Logan or the last Indiana Jones movie. It indeed stars the Wolverine himself, Hugh Jackman. But right down to the way the film ruthlessly deconstructs that romantic image from its opening scene, where Jackman’s titular highwayman is introduced more like the monster in the woods than a gruff hero, there is something darkly subversive to the material. Hence its appeal for the Wolverine actor.

“Early on in my first meeting with Hugh, we [acknowledged] there are similarities to Logan that people are going to see about this aging hero,” says Sarnoski, “but I think he got that this performance was going to go in a totally different direction. You can start with an aging man of violence. That’s a classic character trope. But there are so many ways you can go with it, and I was excited to dive into that and show people we can take it in a completely different direction, and emotionally it’s going to feel vastly different…. You’re not going to be seeing Wolverine with a bow.”

The first sequence is shockingly violent as an unexpected monster-slayer seeks out Robin in his aged isolation in order to extract a debt. But then, much of the film’s first half hour is by design relentlessly brutal, even if it barely scratches the surface of the earliest ballads Sarnoski researched.

“The world was rough and scary back then, so even children’s stories needed to be pretty rough and scary,” Sarnoski observes. “Like it’s supposed to be funny [in one story] when Robin cuts off people’s heads and wears them into town as like a little head-mask. Just pretty grotesque, horrible stuff.” While nothing that extreme happens in Sarnoski’s movie, there was a desire to remove as many of the flourishes that writers and filmmakers introduced centuries later, from Sir Walter Scott to Michael Curtiz—right down to the choice of setting The Death of Robin Hood in 1247, more than 50 years after the backdrop of most Robin Hood movies.

Explains Sarnoski, “My feeling was let’s go back to those earliest sources and try to create what the character might have looked like from those and get rid of the later additions… So the Crusades? They weren’t part of the earliest Robin legends. All of the Richard the Lionheart Crusades [elements], that was something added on. Robin Hood is not a real character. At best he’s probably an amalgamation of a few maybe real people, but [due to] the earliest versions, 1247 is a theorized date that some people have thrown around for when maybe his death might have taken place.”

While certain elements from the legend remain—Jackman’s Robin is scarily good with a bow—others were intentionally omitted or shrewdly shifted.

“The only characters in the movie that wear green are Little John and his family,” notes the director, “as if he’s the only one that sort of maintained that romantic idea of Robin and what they were, embracing it in some strange way. Whereas Robin is always in browns and grays, and then we introduced blue to the palette when they get to the priory, and suddenly there’s color and life that kind of comes into all of the costumes.”

Indeed, the first half hour is savage, with Sarnoski suggesting he wanted to give viewers everything they’d expect in a Robin Hood movie—robbery, adventure, sword and arrow play—but for it to “feel almost like a horror movie or a war movie, so that by the end of it, you’re like, this is unpleasant.” Only then does Robin and the movie’s world turn upside down as Little John (Bill Skarsgård) takes the antihero to rest at a priory on an island out in the Irish Sea. The film becomes about a haunted folk hero (in the loosest sense), but also something more elusive and ephemeral. It’s where Robin at last meets the woman who will give him grace, and whom is played by the infinitely graceful Jodie Comer.

“So I had met Jodie right after Pig, and we sort of immediately had this feeling of ‘it’s not going to be right now, we don’t have something yet, but we’re gonna work together,’” says Sarnoski. “There was some sort of creative soul connection going on there. And then when the Prioress popped up, I never really write for a specific actor, but it was just really obvious early on that this is the one for Jodie.”

With her full name of Sister Brigid, the Prioress lives in a pastoral oasis drenched in sunlight and inviting greens. She brings an air of mystery to the film, but also a sense of intense empathy and humanism as she collects broken folks like Robin and an even more enigmatic leper played by The White Lotus’ Murray Bartlett.

“[Robin] sees her and he’s like ‘who is this person?’” Sarnoski explains. “‘She is sharper and more observant than anyone I’ve ever met. She rivals me with her keenness, but then there’s also some sort of mystery and some sort of paradox to her.’” She brings out a core theme in the film, which goes beyond mere redemption.

Hugh Jackman in the Death of Robin Hood 3

Says the director, “It would be sort of simple to say this is a story about redemption. It’s more complicated than that, and it’s not simple redemption. It’s coming to terms with many disparate understandings of who you are as a human being and how those things can integrate and live together.”

The core connecting tissue is humanity, the humanity of a man as broken as Robin, and as delicately rebuilt as the woman who will give him absolution. In many respects, it is still in dialogue with the sorrows of Pig and A Quiet Place: Day One, as well as their triumphs.

“I learned what I had to from Pig and Quiet Place, as far as making a big and small movie,” Sarnoski says. “So I was excited to be like, ‘Okay, I have the tools to make this sort of Robin Hood at this sort of scale where it’s going to be a grown-up adult drama, but at a price that makes sense.” It is a Robin Hood movie that no one else would make, which might be why it aims so true.

The Death of Robin Hood opens only in theaters on Friday, June 19.

The Social Reckoning Trailer Has Already Failed to Live Up to The Social Network

The Social Network had no business being the perfect movie it is. Pairing the verbose and optimistic Aaron Sorkin with the frigid and controlled David Fincher? Making a movie about Facebook, an obvious fad only a few years into its popularity? Focusing a lot of attention on nerdy computer guys coding a website? And yet, as a montage of Facebook posts played over a choral version of Radiohead’s “Creep” in the first 30 seconds of the trailer, we knew that The Social Network would be something special.

The Social Reckoning offers no such reassurance. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the clip, which does exactly what a good trailer should do. It introduces us to Mikey Madison as Frances Haugen, the whistleblower who leaked thousands of internal Facebook documents to journalist Jeff Horwitz, played by Jeremy Allen White. It also debuts Jeremy Strong as a more aggressive, more powerful Mark Zuckerberg, who once again finds himself on trial, being examined by Wunmi Mosaku, coached by Bill Burr, and smugly mocked by Billy Magnussen.

It all looks like a competent legal thriller, and that’s not at all a bad thing. In the 15-plus years since The Social Network debuted, the types of legal thrillers that used to hit theaters on a monthly basis have all dried up. Since superheroes took over, John Grisham and his ilk have stayed on bookshelves and moviegoers have had to accept Juror #2 as a reasonable facsimile of the middlebrow flicks we used to love.

Moreover, Facebook has only grown more dominant, with AI bots created by foreign governments to make your grandparents nuts replacing the goofy status updates featured in the trailer for The Social Network. We now know Facebook to be a genuinely dangerous part of modern society, not a fun, harmless thing created by a weird misogynist.

Perhaps most importantly, The Social Reckoning arrives in the shadow of The Social Network, a film now fully canonized as one of the greatest movies of the 21st century. The new movie’s trailer couldn’t just grab a different Radiohead song and have its own montage. It had to go in its own direction.

But is this the right direction? Aaron Sorkin’s decision to write and direct the film, without the involvement of Fincher, already puts it under great scrutiny. When he’s on, Sorkin can write some of the most brilliant, sparkling dialogue in all of media. When he’s off—and he’s usually off when he’s directing himself—he’s overbearing, self-congratulatory, and all together exhausting. Throw in Strong’s very literal take on Zuckerberg, a far cry from Jesse Eisenberg‘s more human interpretation, and we have good reason to doubt The Social Reckoning.

Still, this is only one trailer, and not the whole film. And one trailer isn’t enough to judge an entire movie… unless it’s the trailer for The Social Network.

Summer Game Fest 2026: What We Learned About Resident Evil Veronica

One of the biggest announcements at Summer Game Fest 2026 was its very first, with Capcom unveiling a cinematic trailer not only confirming it was developing a Resident Evil – Code: Veronica remake, but that it was expected to release in 2027. Simply titled Resident Evil Veronica, the announcement trailer retains the 2000 game’s story of Resident Evil 2 protagonist Claire Redfield searching for her missing brother Chris in Europe. In an invite-only presentation at the Summer Game Fest Play Days private campus in Los Angeles attended by Den of Geek, Capcom revealed more details about the upcoming game.

To be clear, the presentation did not include any additional footage from Resident Evil Veronica, including the continued omission of any gameplay sequences from the remake. Instead, the presentation began with a story so far style recap, recontextualizing that Veronica takes place three months after the events of Resident Evil 2 and the destruction of its setting of Raccoon City. This aligns with the announcement trailer, which opened with Claire visiting her brother’s abandoned apartment in Paris only to be captured by an elite soldier looking and sounding an awful lot like Umbrella Corporation specialist HUNK.

As the presentation pivoted to a Q&A session, project producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi noted that one of the most common questions he’s received is why the remake dropped “Code” from its title. While pointing out that he and the development team respect and appreciate the original title, the simplified rebranding matched the Resident Evil franchise’s current titling patterns. Ever since 2017’s Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, the series had kept its mainline entries to a single word, a trend echoed by 2021’s Resident Evil Village and this year’s Resident Evil Requiem.

More than staying in line with recent mainline releases, the retitling underscores Hirabayashi’s stance that he, the development team, and Capcom consider Code: Veronica and its remake as being just as important to the franchise as any numbered Resident Evil game. This distinction is one that’s repeated several times during the presentation, with Hirabayashi observing that the prominent inclusion of so many franchise main characters makes the game’s importance all the more clear. The other repeated detail from the presentation is that Resident Evil Veronica is a reimagining of Code: Veronica, revamped for modern audiences, though details about any planned changes were not elaborated on at this time.

What is elaborated on is that Resident Evil Veronica features the same development team from the 2019 remake of Resident Evil 2 and 2023 remake of Resident Evil 4, including Hirabayashi himself, who was a producer on both titles and a franchise mainstay for decades. Not only is the team using the latest version of the RE Engine, Capcom’s proprietary video game engine introduced with 2017’s Resident Evil 7, but Veronica will be a third-person game like the team’s prior projects. This comes as the announcement trailer primarily featured a first-person perspective from Claire’s point-of-view, with only a handful of shots actually showing her face.

We asked Hirabayashi how Resident Evil Veronica plans to reimagine Rockfort Island, the primary setting of Code: Veronica, which was glimpsed throughout the remake’s announcement trailer. Hirabayashi noted that there would be a greater emphasis on examining the people who inhabited Rockfort Island before they were overwhelmed by and transformed into zombies. In Code: Veronica, the remote European island had been the location of a large prison, which was also briefly seen in the trailer, but more varied environments, including the palatial estate of Ashford family, though none of the familiar characters beyond Claire and, potentially, HUNK were seen.

But beyond these details, Capcom is currently keeping details surrounding Resident Evil Veronica very close to the chest. This time last year, Capcom had unveiled early gameplay footage and a solid release date for Resident Evil Requiem at Summer Game Fest 2025 in its private presentation for the game. This year, neither element has been revealed just yet, with Hirabayashi even coy in confirming if Code: Veronica supporting character Steve Burnside would make an appearance in the remake when asked (though the character’s signature guns can be seen in the announcement trailer).

With Resident Evil Veronica announced in the wake of Resident Evil Requiem becoming the franchise’s fastest-selling title of all time and more DLC on the way, it’s clear that the quintessential survival horror video game series is still a prominent property in Capcom’s catalog. Moreover, fans have been clamoring for a Code: Veronica remake for years and the upcoming project finally realizes that widespread wish while reaffirming the 2000 game’s vital place in the franchise. We haven’t seen anything more than the general public regarding the already eagerly anticipated game but, in hearing directly from Yoshiaki Hirabayashi, it sounds like the project is in the right hands, ready to honor the legacy of Code: Veronica while making the whole experience feel fresh again.

Developed and published by Capcom, Resident Evil Veronica will be released in 2027 for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.

Doctor Who Christmas Special Canceled by BBC as Russell T Davies Sets Record Straight

Doctor Who is set to regenerate again, but this time in a rather different and sudden capacity. The BBC has confirmed today that it is putting the show out to competitive tender and that showrunner Russell T Davies and producer Bad Wolf have officially left the beloved British sci-fi series, with a planned Christmas special also canceled.

“Doctor Who remains an important part of the BBC and this tender underpins the BBC’s continued commitment to Doctor Who, ensuring audiences will enjoy the show for years to come,” the Beeb said in a statement. “This decision was not taken lightly, and we know it will be disappointing for fans, but in order to set the show up for future series, it was decided that rather than bridge the gap with a one-off special, we are choosing to push forward to invest in the long-term future of the show which ensures that when the TARDIS lands once more, it does so in all its glory.”

Davies took to Instagram to set the record straight on his departure and the status of the Christmas special, which he suggests never really got off the ground in the first place, with no script written and no actor set to play the new Time Lord following Ncuti Gatwa, who portrayed the Fifteenth Doctor until 2025.

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“And so GOODBYE from me to Doctor Who but HELLO to a big new future for the show, as the BBC announces it’s putting the show out to tender. As a result, there won’t be a Christmas Special — we only cooked that up to guarantee a future when no one knew what would happen, but now we do know, there’s no need for it.

“You’ll have to wait a bit longer for new Doctor Who… but you’ll be waiting for MORE Doctor Who than a one-off. So it’s worth it! For the record: there was no script, I never wrote it, and no actor was ever approached to play the next Doctor. You may disagree; fine, sit in that chair and wait to be proved right. You’ll wait a lonnng time. Now I’m as excited as anyone to see what comes next! Will they keep the theme tune? Will they lose the blue box? Will they bring back the Drahvin?! It’s all up for grabs, which is so Doctor Who, exciting and unpredictable and new! Here comes the future, vworp vworp.”

Comments under Davies’ post were predictably mixed, with Doctor Who’s passionate fan base weighing in with both positive and negative views about the showrunner’s time on the series. Nevertheless, there will hopefully be a fresh start ahead for further live-action Doctor Who adventures.

In the meantime, fans can look forward to some family fun with the Doctor, as an animated series is currently in production for CBeebies.

15 Once-Common TV Tropes You Just Can’t Do Anymore

TV Tropes are elements of television shows that get repeated constantly, working as plot threads that audiences know and recognize. They might seem repetitive, but it’s a way to suspend our disbelief and accept that this is the reality the show works with. The show must go on.

But as people’s sensitivities change, so too do the things they’ll accept in their shows. Therefore, certain Tropes are no longer usable, since you’ll lose audience, money, and likely get ‘cancelled.’ It should be said, for good reason, since these added sensitivities are here to stay, letting us accept people of all backgrounds and not making jokes at their expense.

The Airport Love Confession

For years, romantic comedies and TV dramas loved scenes where a character raced through an airport to stop a departing lover. Modern airport security makes these grand gestures far less plausible than they once seemed.

The Magical Amnesia Plot

A simple bump on the head used to trigger instant amnesia in countless television shows. Modern audiences are much more aware of traumatic brain injuries, making these convenient memory-loss storylines feel dated.

The Panic-Attack Slap

Classic westerns, noir films, and television dramas often portrayed slapping a distressed woman as a legitimate way to calm her down. The trope was common for decades but has largely disappeared from modern storytelling.

The Very Special Episode

Many sitcoms paused their usual comedy for a “very special episode” about serious topics like drugs, teen pregnancy, or gun violence. By the following week, everything was usually back to normal.

The Clip Show

Clip-show episodes once saved money by reusing footage from earlier seasons. As television shifted toward shorter seasons and serialized storytelling, audiences became far less tolerant of episodes built mostly from old scenes.

Persistence Equals Romance

Older television frequently suggested that relentless pursuit would eventually win someone’s affection. Characters who ignored rejection and kept showing up were often rewarded, a message that tends to be viewed very differently today.

The Gay Panic Joke

Many sitcoms built jokes around male characters being mistaken for gay or appearing too feminine. Shows like Friends used the trope regularly, but changing social attitudes have made it far less common.

Peeping Tom Shenanigans

Teen characters spying on women changing clothes was often treated as harmless comedy. What was once framed as a rite of passage is now far more likely to be recognized as invasive behavior.

Domestic Violence as a Punchline

Television once featured casual jokes about spouses hitting one another, usually for comedic effect. Modern audiences are generally less accepting of treating domestic abuse as a harmless source of laughs.

Cartoon Suicide Gags

Older cartoons frequently used exaggerated suicide jokes to show despair. Characters might dramatically threaten themselves after a setback, a style of humor that has largely vanished from contemporary family entertainment.

The Teacher-Student Romance

Television once portrayed relationships between teachers and students as forbidden but exciting romances. Today, such storylines are far more likely to emphasize the ethical and legal problems involved.

The Lovable Town Drunk

Characters like Otis from The Andy Griffith Show turned public intoxication into a recurring joke. Modern television is generally less likely to treat alcoholism as a charming personality trait.

The Sitcom Dating Pest

Many sitcoms featured characters whose entire personality revolved around relentlessly pursuing women. Figures like Fez or early Howard Wolowitz were common archetypes, but audiences have grown less receptive to that behavior.

Smoking Everywhere

Characters once smoked almost anywhere without comment, from airplanes to offices and even around children. Modern restrictions and public health awareness have made these scenes feel like relics of another era.

The Permanently Unlocked Door

Television characters in New York or Los Angeles routinely left their front doors unlocked, allowing friends to wander in unannounced. Modern viewers often find the practice far less believable than earlier audiences did.

15 Classic Onscreen Couples With the Wildest Age Gaps

Actors often aren’t the same age as their characters, something mostly seen when adults play teenagers. But if you take into account their real ages, it is a bit wild when you consider the age differences between certain on-screen couples. Granted, they often aren’t real couples, but it feels wild all the same.

Some might say that there is no age for love, and for starters, that’s a dangerous statement in a general sense. But with consenting adults, age gaps of 15 or 20 years mean a world of life experience that one side has over the other. These are the wildest age gaps we could fand in classic movies.

Casablanca

Humphrey Bogart was 44 while Ingrid Bergman was 27 during the production of Casablanca. Their chemistry is legendary, but the 17-year age gap is much larger than many viewers realize when revisiting the classic romance.

To Have and Have Not

In To Have and Have Not, Humphrey Bogart was 44 and Lauren Bacall was just 19. Their 25-year age gap raised eyebrows even then, though the pair famously fell in love and later married.

Charade

Cary Grant was 59 when he starred opposite 33-year-old Audrey Hepburn in Charade. Despite a 26-year difference, their chemistry helped make the film one of the most beloved romantic thrillers ever made.

North by Northwest

In North by Northwest, Cary Grant was 54 while Eva Marie Saint was 34. The 20-year gap is often overlooked because both performers brought so much charm and confidence to their roles.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

James Stewart was 50 when he appeared opposite 22-year-old Vera Miles in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. The nearly three-decade difference is striking when viewed through modern eyes.

McLintock!

John Wayne was 56 when McLintock! was released, while Maureen O’Hara was 43. The 13-year gap is smaller than some others on this list, but it paired two classic stars whose screen chemistry often made audiences overlook their age difference.

Sabrina

In Sabrina, Humphrey Bogart was 54 while Audrey Hepburn was 24. The 30-year age difference became a frequent topic among critics, especially since the film revolves around a romantic relationship.

Never Say Never Again

Sean Connery was 53 when he starred opposite 24-year-old Kim Basinger in Never Say Never Again. The unofficial Bond film featured a 29-year gap between its romantic leads.

But Not for Me

Clark Gable was 59 while Carroll Baker was 29 in But Not for Me. The 30-year age difference reflected a common Hollywood trend of pairing aging male stars with much younger women.

Love in the Afternoon

Gary Cooper was 59 when he starred opposite 27-year-old Audrey Hepburn in Love in the Afternoon. Even Hepburn later admitted the 32-year age gap made the romance difficult to fully sell.

Funny Face

In Funny Face, Fred Astaire was 58 and Audrey Hepburn was 28. The musical remains beloved, but its 30-year age gap is one of the first things many modern viewers notice.

The Searchers

John Wayne was 46 while Natalie Wood was only 16 in The Searchers. Although the film’s romance is limited, the attempted pairing remains one of the more uncomfortable age differences in a classic western.

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner

Spencer Tracy was 67 when he starred opposite 39-year-old Katharine Hepburn in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. Their 28-year age difference was overshadowed by the film’s larger social themes.

Man’s Favorite Sport?

Rock Hudson was 41 while Paula Prentiss was 25 in Man’s Favorite Sport? The 16-year gap was hardly unusual by Hollywood standards, though it stands out more today.

Fedora

William Holden was 53 when he starred opposite 22-year-old Marthe Keller in Fedora. The 31-year difference fit a long-running pattern in classic Hollywood casting that audiences largely accepted at the time.

15 Actors Who Really Can’t Run

The way movies are made, characters running don’t always look right. There are countless reasons for this, and it’s usually not the actors fault. After all, you shouldn’t outrun the camera man, you need to remain in the frame, and a running scene is rarely done in a single shot.

This is why Tom Cruise and his Mission Impossible movies are so praised in the running department: it’s not just his individual skill (which we can’t deny), it’s also how the scene is filmed and edited. However, it’s still fun to point out silly ways of running, so here are some actors known for doing just that.

Keanu Reeves

Keanu Reeves is famous for handling action scenes and firearms training with impressive skill, but some viewers have long joked about his running form. Clips from films like Point Break and John Wick regularly spark online discussion.

Liam Neeson

Liam Neeson’s late-career action movies turned him into an unlikely action hero. While audiences embraced the tough-guy persona, his sprinting scenes have often been singled out by fans for looking slightly awkward.

Steven Seagal

Steven Seagal’s running has become something of an internet legend. As his action career progressed, many viewers noticed that chase scenes often seemed carefully staged to minimize how much actual running he did.

Nicolas Cage

Nicolas Cage commits completely to every performance, including action roles. Unfortunately for him, that dedication has also produced several memorable running scenes that audiences frequently cite when discussing unusual on-screen sprinting styles.

Maggie Grace

Maggie Grace’s action scenes in the Taken films occasionally drew attention for her distinctive running form. Online discussions have repeatedly highlighted her sprinting sequences as unintentionally distracting moments in otherwise tense scenes.

Ezra Miller

Ezra Miller’s run as Barry Allen in Justice League and The Flash generated countless memes. The exaggerated arm movements and unusual posture became one of the most discussed aspects of the character’s super-speed depiction.

Robert Patrick

Robert Patrick’s run in Terminator 2: Judgment Day is memorable for a different reason. To portray the relentless T-1000, he trained extensively and developed an eerily efficient sprint that many viewers found unsettling.

Leonardo DiCaprio

Leonardo DiCaprio has delivered countless acclaimed performances, but internet users have occasionally poked fun at the way he runs in certain films. His sprinting scenes often appear in compilations of unusual celebrity running styles.

Zendaya

Zendaya’s running scenes have occasionally become a topic of online conversation, particularly among fans who noticed an unconventional sprinting style. The discussions are usually playful, but the clips tend to spread quickly.

Danny Glover

Danny Glover’s Roger Murtaugh spent much of the Lethal Weapon series reminding everyone he was getting too old for this. His increasingly weary action scenes sometimes made his running look appropriately exhausted.

Roger Moore

Roger Moore’s James Bond was known for charm more than athleticism. Producers reportedly used doubles for some running scenes, and fans have long noticed that Bond’s sprinting suddenly looks very different from shot to shot.

Jackie Chan

Jackie Chan is one of cinema’s greatest physical performers, but his running style is unmistakable. His frantic, high-energy sprints became part of his screen persona and often added extra comedy to action sequences.

Dylan O’Brien

Dylan O’Brien spent much of The Maze Runner franchise running from danger, which made audiences especially familiar with his sprinting style. Fans frequently joke that no actor has logged more on-screen miles.

Ben Stiller

Ben Stiller’s comedic roles often lean into physical awkwardness, and his running scenes are no exception. Films like Along Came Polly and Starsky & Hutch feature deliberately goofy sprints that audiences still remember.

Chris Evans

Even Captain America isn’t immune from internet scrutiny. Despite being convincingly athletic, Chris Evans has occasionally appeared in online discussions where fans debate whether his running style looks surprisingly unusual for a superhero.

15 ’90s Movie Stars Who Were Younger Than You Thought

Child stars often surprise us with their performances, not only for the quality of them, but for how young they were at the time. We are so used to seeing 30 year olds playing teens that, when an actual teen shows up on stage, we have a hard time believing it.

The more time passes, the more we let our perception get the best of us. These stars did incredible work as children and teens in the 90s, but we tend to think they were older than reality. These are the most shockingly young actors at the time of their performances.

Natalie Portman

Natalie Portman was only 12 when filming Léon: The Professional and 13 when the movie was released. Given the emotional complexity of her performance as Mathilda, many viewers assumed she was several years older than she actually was.

Kirsten Dunst

Kirsten Dunst was just 11 years old during the production of Interview with the Vampire. Sharing scenes with stars like Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt made her mature performance seem far beyond her age.

Anna Paquin

Anna Paquin was only 11 when she filmed The Piano, a role that earned her an Academy Award. It’s still surprising to remember that one of the youngest Oscar winners ever was barely in middle school.

Edward Furlong

Edward Furlong was around 13 when he starred alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. His confidence and screen presence made many audiences forget just how young he really was.

Macaulay Culkin

Macaulay Culkin became one of the biggest stars of the decade through Home Alone, but he was only 10 years old when the film was released. Carrying an entire blockbuster at that age remains remarkable.

Christina Ricci

Christina Ricci was just 10 during the filming of The Addams Family. Her deadpan portrayal of Wednesday Addams was so iconic that many viewers remember the character as older than she actually was.

Claire Danes

Claire Danes was only 16 when she played Juliet in Romeo + Juliet. Acting opposite a slightly older Leonardo DiCaprio, she brought a level of maturity that made audiences overlook her age.

Leonardo DiCaprio

Leonardo DiCaprio himself was only 21 when Romeo + Juliet hit theaters. Thanks to his leading-man confidence, many people remember him as being much older during his early stardom.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Joseph Gordon-Levitt was only 15 when 3rd Rock from the Sun debuted. Playing the most sensible member of an alien family often made him seem older than the teenager he actually was.

Jodie Foster

Jodie Foster may have become famous in the 1970s, but she was only 29 when she starred in Contact in 1997. Many viewers assumed she was already a veteran actress in her late thirties.

Alicia Silverstone

Alicia Silverstone was just 18 during the production of Clueless. Her portrayal of Cher feels so effortlessly confident that many fans remember her as being several years older.

Elijah Wood

Elijah Wood was only 18 when The Faculty was released. Having already built a lengthy film résumé as a child actor gave him the presence of someone much older.

Thora Birch

Thora Birch was just 16 when she appeared in American Beauty. Considering the film’s mature themes and her central role in the story, many viewers assumed she was already an adult.

Jonathan Taylor Thomas

Jonathan Taylor Thomas was only 13 when he voiced young Simba in The Lion King. His performance became so ingrained in pop culture that it’s easy to forget how young he was.

Haley Joel Osment

Haley Joel Osment was just 11 during the filming of The Sixth Sense. Delivering one of the most acclaimed child performances of the decade, he carried scenes with veteran actors while still in elementary school.

15 Photos from the Simple But Perfect 1970s Gaming Life

Gaming is now everywhere, particularly due to the fact that we all have smartphones. Between those devices, home computers, and dedicated consoles, we can game in a myriad of ways. And it’s not just accessibility: gaming has become much more ‘mainstream,’ to the point that a capital-G Gamer refers to someone that lives and breathes games, not just plays them.

But there was a time where this wasn’t the case, a time where the hobby was just starting. Home consoles weren’t as common as before, and computers were far more related to work than to leisure. These few pictures showcase a simpler time, where the word gamer wasn’t even being used.

The Novelty

It wasn’t all that weird to see adults play video games back then, particularly if they were tech enthusiasts. Even though only one of them is playing, you can see both of them marvel at being able to interact with something on the screen.

Pong

Like many technological developments, the first recognized video game came about during military tech testing. Legend says it was created by a submarine radar technician, for both fun and to test the software.

Couch Gaming

Even back then, couch gaming was definitely a thing. It involved using the family TV to play games until dinner was ready, or until someone wanted to watch the news on the device.

Publicity

While gaming was a new medium, it was a fast growing one. Arcades were all the rage, and they quickly appeared in magazines and other publicity outlets being sold to potential buyers.

Pelé Soccer

Many sports stars participated with Atari in showcasing sports games, with Edson Arantes do Nascimento, also known as Pelé, having a video game named after him. Winning the Soccer World Cup probably had something to do with it.

Pinball Is Also Gaming

Nowadays, considering the humble pinball machine as part of gaming culture might seem quaint, but back then, you’d see a pinball machine as much as an arcade cabinet, if not more.

Competitive Gaming

Yes, competitive gaming is as old as gaming itself. While some adults were into gaming back then, the competitions were held between kids and teens; the ones with the most free time to perfect their gaming technique.

The Old Guard

As the 70s rolled around, more and more games were added to the arcades, each with a more modernized cabinet look. Even back then, Pong felt like the grandad of the other cabinets due to its more subdued design.

Christmas Spirit

Due to the decorations in the background, we can say that this picture takes place sometime around Christmas. We can see the start of kids no longer running around, but glued to a screen playing games all day.

Publicity, Home Edition

Selling things for corporate conglomerates and selling things for home use are different monsters. Here, we can see the different actors, poses and even angle of the device shown to sell it, even though we are still talking about Pong.

The Perfect Gift

Few things make a child happier than getting that gaming console they were nagging you about for days, weeks or even months. It isn’t just a toy, it’s a device that lets them embark on nearly endless adventures.

In The Way

While kids certainly enjoyed games a lot, this one is a bit too young to have the motor abilities to use a joystick. Clearly the adults were playing, needing to stop since their toddler decided to explore the TV.

The Atari 2600, Today

All of the previous pictures were a window of the 70s, mixing nostalgia with a bit of a history lesson. This is the Atari console as a fan keeps it today, quite dusty, but still in perfect working order.

Handheld Football

Gaming on the go started with the rest of the gaming innovations in the 70s, but as you can see, the screen size is quite limited. It’s incredible to think about how far we’ve come today.

Telstar Arcade

While having a home console meant not having to leave the house, the arcades still had the benefit of having fun ‘peripherals’ like steering wheels and guns. The Teslar Arcade aimed to bring that to user’s homes, to not much success.

Widow’s Bay’s Latest Twist Puts Mayor Tom in an Impossible Situation

This article contains spoilers for Widow’s Bay episode 9, “Emergency Shelter”

The penultimate episode of Apple TV’s phenomenal new horror-comedy series Widow’s Bay starts by confirming what everyone suspected when they first saw the hotel’s painting of Sarah Westcott Warren’s frantic escape from the island with founder Richard Warren’s kids, only for the camera to be drawn to the bottom right-hand corner of the painting, where a young girl reaches out to be rescued. This curse? Yeah, it’s far from over. One of Warren’s kids definitely survived.

After Wyck (Stephen Root) and Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) dug him up from his grave in surprisingly good condition, Warren (Hamish Linklater) was forced into a final death at sea during episode 7, supposedly ending his pact with the island’s demonic force. Yet his demise did not end the horrors of Widow’s Bay, something that Patricia (Kate O’Flynn) found out when she became the ultimate final girl in the Boogeyman-centric “Your Baggage” last week.

Indeed, Frances Warren survived Sarah’s fateful trip. As Rosemary (Dale Dickey) exhaustively takes us through her geneaology with the best TV slideshow presentation since Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s “Hush”, the excitement and trepidation grows between the gathered trio of Tom, Wyck, and Patricia as they discover Frances only has one living descendant still on the island: Tom’s elderly assistant Ruth Livingston, who is home alone during the biblical storm forcing everyone else to shelter underground until it passes.

It’s a surprising twist that subverts the audience’s expectations (and popular fan theory) that Frances’ last known descendant might somehow be Tom’s son, Evan. After all, that would be the worst possible outcome for Tom, who has put Evan through a rollercoaster of emotions in recent episodes, promising to take him safely off the island for the first time in his life, only to reveal that his mother didn’t die in childbirth as he’d always insisted. But with the curse still lingering, safe passage for Evan and everyone else born in Widow’s Bay is unlikely, including Bechir’s forthcoming baby with his wife Chelle. That is, unless Tom does the unthinkable and kills Ruth for “the greater good.”

Tom is now in an impossible situation as he grapples with the classic trolley problem dilemma. Will he sacrifice one person (Ruth) tied to a track by intervening and pulling the lever on a runaway trolley that is on course to collide with and kill a number of people tied to the other track? Or will he allow the trolley to continue and let the chips fall where they may, knowing he probably could have stopped it all from happening by acting when he had the chance?

Tom enquires about Ruth’s health, wondering how much time she realistically has left, while Patricia is astonished that Tom can even try to justify killing Ruth, the sweet old lady who bakes them birthday cakes and babysits Evan. “There are hundreds of lives at stake,” Tom explains. “And one of them is my son.”

Wyck sides with Tom as Patricia grows increasingly infuriated with the notion of killing Ruth, suggesting that doing so would make Tom a murderer. “When she dies, it ends. She lived a good life,” Wyck reasons, assuring Patricia that he’d have ended his own life if he’d turned out to be Warren’s descendant.

As the episode concludes with Tom making his way into the storm to find Ruth, it seems he’s already made his decision. We’ll find out what happens next in the finale of Widow’s Bay, but it looks like there’s no going back for the island’s beleaguered mayor, who seems determined to rid its residents of Warren’s demonic pact, no matter the cost.

Will Tom kill Ruth? Are there more twists yet to come? Drop your Widow’s Bay finale predictions in the comments!

Widow’s Bay concludes on Apple TV on June 17.

Jem and the Holograms Is Getting a Second Chance at Live Action

Jem and the Holograms will join Prime Video’s TV offerings of female-centered series that have seen massive success with Gen Z like The Summer I Turned Pretty and newest addition, Off Campus. Deadline broke the news that Amazon and MGM studios are starting the development process for a TV series based on the hit animation from 1985, Jem. This series adaptation is coming just over 10 years after the poorly-received film, directed by Jon. M Chu, hit theaters in 2015.

The Jem and the Holograms film has a truly outrageous rating of 22% on Rotten Tomatoes. Frank Scheck of The Hollywood Reporter said, “Not being part of the generation that watched the show, I can’t vouch for its merits. But it’s safe to say that it must be miles ahead of this wan, bloated screen version which forgoes the original’s sci-fi and thriller aspects.” Indeed, many fans of the original animated series criticized how far the movie strayed from the cartoon and bemoaned that the story wasn’t exciting enough to get a new generation on board.

The original cartoon possesses elements of sci-fi through Jem’s holographic computer, which she inherited from her father and uses to live a double-life as the practical Jerrica Benton and her pop star alter-ego Jem. Jerrica raises money for the Starlight Foundation through her band and Starlight music, the recording company owned by her and her sister Kimber Benton.

In the original animation, Starlight Foundation is a charity for foster girls created by Jerrica’s parents, Emmet and Jacqui Benton and continuing the foundation is an important part of the band’s mission. In the 2015 film, the Starlight Foundation is rebranded as Starlight Enterprise owned by antagonist executive Erica Raymond (Juliette Lewis), rather than a charity. Additionally, Jem becomes a popstar through a viral video of her singing that her sister secretly posts.

The film clearly aimed to add a realistic lens to the sci-fi animated series as a manifestation of what a “Jem and the Holograms” band would look like in real-life and how that coming-of-age story might proceed, misinterpreting that the sci-fi elements may have been a more exciting aspect for fans than the production team realized.

The project is pushed by Hasbro Entertainment with the married screenwriting duo Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan producing. The couple is known for creating successful series like Westworld for HBO and Fallout for Amazon. Jonathan Nolan has written scripts for several of his brother Christopher Nolan’s films such as Interstellar and The Dark Knight. Any casting has yet to be announced as well as any specifics to the plot and similarities to the original, but it is likely the producers will take notes from the 2015 film of what not to do.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Writer Downplays Season 3 Criticism

Star Trek is about optimism, exploration, and boldly going where no one has gone before. Star Trek fandom is often about complaining. We’re not pointing fingers here; god and his starship know we have launched criticisms at Star Trek here at Den of Geek. Nor is this anything new. The people who make Star Trek have been told they’re getting wrong from the very beginning, when Gene Roddenberry had to scrap the original pilot to film a new one with William Shatner‘s James Kirk as captain.

For that reason, anyone who would make a Star Trek property must have thicker skin than most, and learn how to downplay most of the criticism directed their way. Still, we can’t help but be a bit concerned about Strange New Worlds writer and executive producer Bill Wolkoff’s comments about criticisms of season 3.

“There were some episodes that got criticized. And that criticism is very real for everybody,” he conceded to TrekMovie, and even acknowledged, “I do read the criticism, and I think about what that means for what my part telling that story was.” But he finally insists that “every episode that we did, we got there for a reason, and we operate as a team.”

To be sure, every season of Strange New Worlds has been criticized, from its recasting of classic characters, especially Paul Wesley as Kirk, to its changing cannon around Khan to introducing a musical episode into the franchise. And certainly, there is a loud, bad faith contingent that dislikes any time modern Trek gets remotely progressive, despite the fact that The Original Series and The Next Generation regularly pushed boundaries.

Moreover, much of the buzz around the first two seasons of Strange New Worlds has been positive. The show has been praised for its deepening of underdeveloped classic characters like Dr. M’Benga and Number One, for its reframing of Original Series concepts (see the season one finale, “A Quality of Mercy”), and for returning exploration to the heart of Trek. Heck, we even liked the “Sybok” name drop.

Then came season 3. Perhaps because of the confines of a modern 10-episode season, perhaps because of a desire to recreate the viral moments from season 2, season 3 swung wildly between goofy comedy and abject horror. “What Is Starfleet?” raised big questions that had always plagued the franchise and answered none of them, patting itself on the back the entire way, while “A Space Adventure Hour” made fun of Star Trek itself. “Four-and-a-Half Vulcans” had none of the fun of “Spock Amok,” while the finale “New Life and New Civilizations” raised the stakes to the point that the Enterprise was fighting the actual Devil and then hand-waved the resolution.

We could tell things were off early on, with the introduction of Dana Gamble, a young medical officer played by Chris Myers. Gamble is kind, enthusiastic, and smart, everything an ideal Starfleet officer should be. Which is why, of course, his eyes explode, he screams in pain and terror, and then gets possessed by the Devil to be the season’s big bad.

These complaints aren’t that Strange New Worlds isn’t real Trek, or that we don’t like the race or gender or sexuality of main characters. These are complaints about mechanics and tone, the fundamentals of storytelling. When fans complain that the stories feel sloppy, that they don’t give sufficient attention to the high stakes they raise or that they rely on jokes that make the characters seem dumb, they point to fundamental problems in the construction of the episode.

To dismiss the complaints by comparing the writer’s room to the Enterprise bridge crew and saying, “we have each other’s backs,” as Wolkoff does in the interview, suggests that jumping to warm feelings instead of dealing with the nuts and bolts of a problem isn’t just a storytelling choice.

Wolfkoff does admit that there are “some criticisms in season 3 that I took to heart,” but he doesn’t say which ones. And certainly, he’s just one voice in the room, a room filled with other writers whom he doesn’t, and shouldn’t, want to throw under the bus in this interview. But to disregard legitimate complaints and insist that everything’s fine because the people who make the show get along… well, that’s just as useless to Star Trek as endless complaining.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4 premieres on Paramount+ on July 23, 2026.

Disclosure Day Review: Steven Spielberg’s Coda to a Lifetime of Alien Movies

I always felt bad for Larry, Josef Sommer’s character in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). In Steven Spielberg’s magnum opus about UFOs and the governments who cover them up, Larry is a true believer that, like Richard Dreyfuss’ Roy and Melinda Dillon’s Jillian, traveled all the way to Devils Tower in Wyoming, sneaking past federal authority checkpoints and lies… only to miss the aliens at the last minute because of some knockout gas.

That of course was part and parcel for Spielberg’s vision of an obsessive, almost maniacal need to know. Only the most dedicated, driven and, ahem, visionary folks like Roy get to learn the truth and board a starship with little gray men. Everyone else should be so lucky to see the epic John Williams concert and UFO light show at the top of the mountain. Otherwise we wind up like Larry: left behind in the dark, wondering what really happened on that evening of night skies.

The Spielberg who made Close Encounters is a different man. He’s indicated as much over the years by saying he regrets his amazing ending of Roy abandoning his life and family to go on a space odyssey. Becoming a parent in real life will have that effect. But he’s also become more fixated on the stakes of our world and society as a collective. The man who once made grandiose adventures about the lone individual facing nature in Jaws, or a little boy fixing his fractured childhood by befriending another extraterrestrial in E.T., has spent most of the last 20 years making dramas about who Americans are as a people, a culture, and (perhaps quaintly these days) a force for moral good. You watch how he frames Abraham Lincoln or Kay Graham, and you know he believes in the dream in his bones.

It’s so strong that his civic-minded egalitarianism has even drifted into the fifth(!) alien film in his career, Disclosure Day. In many respects, Disclosure Day positions itself to be a king returning to his throne. The paterfamilias of the modern blockbuster is reclaiming a style of moviemaking he perfected decades ago, yet has barely acknowledged at all in the last 15 years, save for 2018’s Ready Player One. But after two achingly personal passion projects like West Side Story (2022) and The Fablemans (2023)—alas two masterpieces that were sadly commercial flops—Spielberg is returning to his roots in a movie with car chases, government big bads, and of course aliens.

Yet the film is at its best when the director stops showing off the craft and a boundless energy that eludes men a third his age and instead pivots to the more magnanimous view of humanity, and for that matter aliens, which has evolved in the filmmaker’s later years. If Disclosure Day is a coda on the man in the beard’s fixation with unexplained lights in the sky, it is also a reclamation for the Larrys of the world; a wide-eyed, awe-inspired gaze into a future where no one gets left behind and the truth is shared with all. Human and extraterrestrial alike.

To get to that kind of graceful epiphany, however, Disclosure Day spends a lot of time running through some standard blockbuster storytelling, or at least what was the standard 20 years ago when Spielberg and other filmmakers were still making zippy escapism for adults. Two such grown-ups are Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) and Dr. Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor). To the outside world, and even to the characters, these are two folks who should have little in common. Margaret is a professionally stifled weatherwoman at a local TV station in Kansas City who wants more out of her life; Daniel works for WARDEX, a government-adjacent agency that for the last 50 or so years has coordinated UAP research and cover-ups for the Department of Defense.

Yet Margaret and Daniel’s paths are inextricably linked after Dan goes the full Edward Snowden route and steals reams of classified documentation, files, and even video evidence that prove aliens are real, they’ve been visiting us for longer than there’s been a U.S. government, and we know where some of the literal bodies are buried because our leaders put them there. He even gets his hand on something that’s only cryptically referred to as… The Device.

Curiously, the moment Daniel and his mentor, an aloof but immediately endearing Colman Domingo, get the information out of government control is the moment that Margaret starts getting visions of repressed childhood memories and discovers she somehow can speak all languages and knows everything that can and will happen to Daniel—especially as WARDEX boogeyman Noah Scanlan (Colin Firth) begins closing in with his men in black. Noah isn’t without sympathy, but it has stark limits when he resorts to threatening (or worse) Daniel’s girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson).

Longtime Spielberg collaborator and screenwriter David Koepp recently confirmed to me that the final scene of Disclosure Day is the first sequence Spielberg wrote. It is also one of the things that was left largely untouched after Koepp and Spielberg began reworking the director’s treatment. This shows in the final film. Without giving away what the finale of Disclosure Day exactly is, rest assured it features some massive secrets which allow Spielberg to return to the cinematic vernacular of 1970s cinema, both his own with his penchant for characters staring up in bewildered, wondrous close-up, as well as some of his contemporaries like Sidney Lumet and Alan J. Pakula.

It’s pure Spielbergian magic. The movie that gets to those final moments is a lot more checkered, although not without its charms and entertainment.

Blunt and O’Connor make for compelling leads who find themselves as the everyman and woman in extraordinary situations. Blunt, particularly, walks a fine line that skirts close to saying something sacrilegious or heretical as her mysterious and definitely alien-touched journalist carries an air of the prophet about her. There is something radical being teased by this characterization, but it’s perhaps intentionally left unexamined. Mostly the religious implications of what discovering aliens walking among us would mean for Old World texts and tenets are softly, even patronizingly slow-walked in a subplot involving Hewson’s Jane, a former novitiate nun who is forced to consider some profound implications about God’s Garden of Eden apparently being a lot bigger than the good book suggested.

But the biggest hurdles Disclosure Day faces is repeatedly raising some explosive ideas and then demurring from unpacking them. One glorious exception in the film involves a crackling intellectual confrontation between Firth’s cynical justifications for control and concealment, and Domingo’s full-throated advocacy for radical transparency and dissemination. Domingo is indeed the performance of the film, offering an avuncular and twinkly personification of truth-telling. His debate with Firth is about extraterrestrials, but one senses it is as much of a plea for humanity needing grown-up conversations about empathizing with their fellow man… and facing the unknown with a sense of charity and openness.

I honestly wish Domingo’s Hugo was the protagonist, and his motivations more front and center, as one senses that they’re Spielberg’s own convictions as well. But Hugo is ultimately peripheral to the central dynamics of Spielbergian everymen and women finding themselves in preposterous thrill ride sequences. At one point there’s even a rental car left dangling from the sides of a train.

Nonetheless, there is still some of that old school fairy dust from the storyteller who knows how to turn rolling boulders and bobbing buoys into cinematic legend. One sequence in particular involves Firth’s antagonist using “the Device” to manipulate a human character into acting against their self-interests is a tour de force scene of dread and violation. Bright and shiny science fiction suddenly takes on an air of dark magic, or possession horror, and it is yet one more reminder that it’s a shame Spielberg himself never tried his hand fully in the chiller genre.

What makes Disclosure Day ultimately worthwhile, however, exists beyond the thrills. This is a movie with a warm, even grandfatherly sense of equanimity to it; of a storyteller bringing perspective and newfound affection to one of his favorite subject matters. The film does not seek to glorify UAP accounts like Close Encounters, or turn it into something sweet (E.T.) or horrifying (War of the Worlds). It is a movie that wants viewers to be radically open to all ideas and perspectives, even those that might seem scary.

It wants us all on that starship alongside Dreyfuss, and its effectiveness is self-evident when the ending holds out its hand and leaves you eager to climb aboard.

Disclosure Day opens on Friday, June 12.

Tom Holland’s The Odyssey Plea Is Gen Z’s Latest Attempt to Save Cinema

The kids are alright, at least as far as the movies are concerned. After years of speculation that too many video games and internet videos would make them disinterested in the theatrical experience, it turns out that Generation Z loves the movies, and movies on the big screen, in particular.

Case in point: the appeal that Tom Holland made to users of Letterboxd, the film-rating social media platform popular among teens and 20-somethings. Holland appeared to urge viewers to see the Christopher Nolan movie The Odyssey in different formats and to record their experience on the app. “For the first time ever on Letterboxd, you’ll be able to track and share the way you experience the film with a brand new digital punch card,” Holland declared, reading the site’s marketing copy, before issuing a challenge. “All of the formats for all your watches and rewatches—bragging rights fully unlocked.”

To celebrate the forthcoming release of Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, Tom Holland announces a special treat for the Letterboxd community.

The Odyssey is in theaters worldwide July 17. pic.twitter.com/78FG5Z5QJU
— Letterboxd (@letterboxd) June 8, 2026

To be completely clear, Holland is fundamentally pitching a product here, not unlike when George Clooney flashes a smug smile talking about food delivery or Matthew McConaughey purrs about luxury cars. That’s nothing new.

What is new is the product being sold: going to the theater and watching The Odyssey in multiple different formats. Letterboxd knows that there is a market for people who not only want to see a movie on the big screen, but they want to see it in the best possible format. Moreover, they want to talk about it with their friends.

The choice of Holland as a pitch man is also interesting. Holland isn’t the star of The Odyssey; he plays Telemachus, son of the protagonist Odysseus (Matt Damon) and Penelope (Anne Hathaway). Yet, Letterboxd chose him, in part, over other big names like Damon, Hathaway, Charlize Theron, and Lupita Nyong’o because Holland is a Gen Z movie star, less like those elders and more like Zendaya and Robert Pattinson, who also appear in The Odyssey.

This trio is hardly alone. Long after Marvel and franchise films seemed to kill the movie star, replacing big names with recognizable characters, Holland, Zendaya, Pattinson, Timothée Chalamet, and Florence Pugh draw crowds on their names alone, a quality shared with the big names of earlier, healthier days of the movies.

The same is true of production companies and distributors, especially A24 and Neon. In the same way that MGM and Warner Bros pictures carried a certain pedigree in the Golden Age of the studio system, and that Miramax and New Line Cinema had in the ’90s, A24 and Neon have a cultural cache that gets attention, sometimes more than the stars or plot.

Even better, one look at the current box office shows that Gen Z isn’t just watching movies. They’re making their own, with Obsession putting new spins on old material and Backrooms bringing their interests to the screen. While The Mandalorian and Grogu, Mortal Kombat II, and Masters of the Universe—IP movies more associated with Gen X and Millennials—have all struggled to find an audience, Obsession and Backrooms are exceeding all expectations.

Of course, The Odyssey goes back far further than any of these generations, and director Christopher Nolan sees himself working in a classical tradition. But Holland’s plea shows that as long as Hollywood makes interesting movies with compelling ideas, Gen Z will show up.

Romy and Michele 2 Deserves a Theatrical Release

Back in the 1990s, films often found their audiences on home video. That was certainly the case for Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, which didn’t do much in the way of business at the box office and wasn’t particularly well received by critics at the time either.

Nevertheless, people eventually discovered the movie, and it became an outright cult classic, spawning a made-for-TV prequel film and even a musical as audiences warmed to David Mirkin’s charmingly offbeat comedy about a pair of best friends (played by Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow) who start to feel like failures when they get an invite to their high school reunion and decide to lie about their successes instead.

So, 30 years later, should the movie’s long-awaited sequel also go directly to homes and bypass theaters? No, but that’s exactly what’s being planned for it, with THR confirming that not only is filming underway on Romy and Michele 2, but it will stream exclusively as a Hulu Original on Hulu in the U.S. and on Disney+ internationally.

This is clearly a business decision that made sense to someone at 20th Century Studios. Someone will have sat at a big, fancy desk in an office somewhere at some point, telling a small group of gathered suits that Romy and Michele 2 won’t make any money with a theatrical release, and the best possible option is to dump it on streaming. I wasn’t in that meeting because I’m a normie who writes words on the internet, but because I get to write words on the internet without risking large sums of money in Hollywood, I’m about to tell those people why they’re probably wrong.

Yes, the first movie was a box office disappointment, but the people who originally grew to love it are now middle-aged adults, one of the only groups still happy to turn out for movies that appeal directly to them. Why are studios happy to spend around $200 million on a Masters of the Universe film after the 80s version flopped, but baulk at a theatrical release for a movie that has a relatively tiny budget in comparison? Romy and Michele 2 absolutely won’t do Avengers: Endgame-level numbers, but it doesn’t need to! It just needs to make a decent profit on that smaller budget, which seems entirely doable. Instead, the studio behind it has placed its importance solely on streaming subscriber acquisition and retention metrics.

Yet if it were only middle-aged people the new movie appealed to, you could probably tell me to do one. But Gen Z and Gen Alpha have also discovered Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion. There have been plenty of TikTok fan edits doing the rounds over the years. It’s a cult classic that has remained one for anyone who has stumbled across it because it’s genuinely fun to watch and beats with a heart that fundamentally cries out “just be yourself!”

The original movie was full of lively fashion choices and concluded with the message that you should dress how you want, no matter what anyone else thinks. Are you going to tell me that the costumes and aesthetic of both movies wouldn’t appeal to people of all ages who want to make an event out of attending a screening? The first image from the sequel even suggests that Romy and Michele are still walking their own fashionable path. With studios often relying on social media influencers to do some of their marketing, they have plenty to work with here.

The reunion you’ve been waiting for! The Romy and Michele sequel is now in production. pic.twitter.com/jXXU1qpopj
— 20th Century Studios (@20thcentury) June 8, 2026

Studios also seem constantly baffled that movies largely marketed at women make money. In terms of sequels, The Devil Wears Prada 2 just grossed $664.2 million. Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy notched approximately $140 million worldwide last year. And Greta Gerwig’s weird, $1.4 billion-grossing new take on Barbie? They forgot it! “More toy movies!” was the answer. They learn all the wrong lessons.

It’s not just the type of audience, either; it’s the genre. Somewhere along the way, studios simply decided that comedies belong on streaming. This has created a self-fulfilling cycle: audiences stop expecting comedies in theaters because studios stop releasing them there. And when they do? Well, let’s look at this month’s Scary Movie. It’s not even a good film, but it still did remarkable numbers. Freakier Friday could have also gone directly to streaming, but instead made about $94 million domestically. The surprisingly great legacy sequel The Naked Gun also did well at the box office.

But let’s step away from the money side of things, which will nearly always be the studio’s focus. Ultimately, the people who shared 1997’s Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, and who continue to share it, quote it, and talk about it like the cultural touchstone it actually was, deserve a chance to once again prove to studios that if we’re going to have belated sequels 30 years in the making, we’ll show up for them. This seems like a real missed opportunity to allow us the opportunity to do so.

Things Get Biblical in The Bear Season 5 Trailer

A first trailer for The Bear’s final season has arrived, and it sees our flat-broke gang fighting back a flood of biblical proportions in the restaurant as Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) gets ready to depart and find out who he is when he’s not cooking. If a flooded eatery isn’t enough to handle, Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt) announces he’s planning to sell the restaurant.

FX also released this official logline for the season: “With no money, the threat of a sale and a torrential storm in their way, the new partners must band together with the rest of the team to achieve one last service, hoping they’ll finally earn a Michelin star. Ultimately, they learn that what makes a restaurant ‘perfect’ might not be the food, but the people.”

Additionally, FX has confirmed that season 5 picks up the morning after the season 4 finale, when Sydney, Richie, and Sugar first learned that Carmy had quit the industry and left the restaurant to them, raising questions about the timeline of the final scene in The Bear’s one-off special, Gary, which was released back in May.

Gary initially went back in time and documented a road trip that Mikey (Jon Bernthal) and Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) took just before Mikey ended his life. During their time together, Mikey had a breakdown while hanging out with Richie and told him he was going to be a terrible father just as his daughter was about to be born. The pair weren’t on speaking terms by the end of the trip, but the special ended with a flash-forward cliffhanger set in the present, in which Richie was shockingly T-boned by a vehicle at an intersection.

Richie shows no sign of any injuries from the accident in the trailer for season 5. Check it out below…

The first season of The Bear was critically acclaimed, hitting 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. It was followed by a second season that nearly maintained that at 99%, but many felt that seasons 3 and 4 saw a marked decline in the show’s quality, giving audiences more of a simmering vibe rather than the boiling point of the first two seasons.

The fifth and final season of The Bear premieres June 25 on Hulu/FX and Hulu on Disney+.

15 Questionable Pokemons Suggesting They’ve Run Out Of Ideas

Pokemon has been around for a while now, and with ten generations strong, there are a lot of creatures to choose from. Between starters, legendaries and godlike entities, finding your favorite Pokemon is not an issue. Finding the worstly designed ones is, sadly, just as easy.

Granted, you can still have fun with these little creatures, and they are likely someone’s favourite. Don’t let our opinion detract from your personal enjoyment. But there’s no denying that, compared to other creatures, these few lack some proper work.

Klefki

Klefki is literally a ring of keys that collects other keys. While it has lore involving its habit of gathering metal objects, it quickly became one of the most cited examples of Pokémon fans arguing the designers were scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Vanilluxe

By the time the line reaches Vanilluxe, players are looking at what appears to be a double-scoop ice cream sundae. It remains one of the franchise’s most debated and frequently mocked designs.

Trubbish

Trubbish is a sentient garbage bag created from accumulated waste. Some fans appreciate the environmental theme, while others cite it as one of the clearest examples of Pokémon turning random objects into creatures.

Chandelure

Chandelure is literally a haunted chandelier. Despite its surprisingly strong battle performance and interesting Ghost-type lore, its appearance often gets mentioned in conversations about how far Pokémon designs have drifted from their roots.

Comfey

Comfey resembles a floating flower lei. While inspired by Hawaiian garlands, many players initially struggled to see it as a Pokémon rather than a decorative accessory brought to life.

Sinistea

Sinistea is essentially a haunted teacup. Its unusual concept won over some fans, but others viewed it as another sign that designers were increasingly drawing inspiration from kitchen shelves.

Flamigo

Flamigo generated discussion because it is essentially a flamingo named “Flamigo.” Many fans joked that the design looked less like a Pokémon and more like a regular bird with minimal changes.

Dudunsparce

After years of anticipation, many players expected Dunsparce to evolve into something dramatic. Instead, Dudunsparce is largely just a longer Dunsparce, making it one of the most hotly debated evolutions in the series.

Alcremie

A Pokémon based on whipped cream and decorated desserts was never going to be universally loved. While some players enjoy its whimsical appearance, others see it as one of the franchise’s stranger concepts.

Eiscue

Eiscue is a penguin with a giant ice cube for a head. While its gimmick has gameplay value, many fans have cited it as one of the franchise’s strangest and least natural-looking designs.

Bruxish

Bruxish was intentionally designed to look unsettling, and it succeeded. Its bright colors, human-like lips, and unusual facial features have made it one of the most polarizing Pokémon in the franchise.

Falinks

Falinks consists of several tiny soldiers marching in formation. Some players love the Roman legion inspiration, while others joke that it resembles a group of unrelated creatures standing very close together.

Gholdengo

Gholdengo evolves from collecting 999 coins, leading many players to expect something spectacular. Instead, they got a string-cheese-looking mascot that continues to divide opinion despite its competitive success.

Stonjourner

A living Stonehenge-inspired monument is certainly unique, but many fans felt Stonjourner looked more like a walking landmark than an actual creature inhabiting the Pokémon world.

Voltorb

One of the original object Pokémon, Voltorb is essentially a living Poké Ball. Fans have joked for decades that it was created because the designers needed a mimic-style monster quickly.

14 Classic Stories That Disney Got Completely Wrong

When adapting a story, it makes sense to alter details here and there, particularly if you want it suitable for children. Some stories need more editing than others, but once you know the depths of how different Disney stories are to their original counterparts, you start to wonder what’s even left of the real tale.

We will always remember a story from its most iconic rendition, or at least for the one we witnessed first. In both cases, the answer to that question tends to be ‘the Disney version,’ but we need to remember there was an original out there, with an intention. These are the stories Disney changed the most, and not always for the better.

Hercules

Disney’s Hercules turns the Greek hero into a lovable underdog battling Hades. In mythology, Hades isn’t the main villain, Hercules isn’t Zeus and Hera’s estranged son, and many of his most famous stories are far darker.

The Little Mermaid

Disney gave Ariel a happy ending and a prince. In Hans Christian Andersen’s original tale, the Little Mermaid suffers heartbreak, fails to win the prince, and ultimately dissolves into sea foam.

Mulan

Disney’s version adds dragons, villains, and a romance subplot. The ancient Chinese poem focuses more on Mulan’s military service and loyalty, with no Mushu, no Shan Yu, and far less fantasy.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Disney transformed The Hunchback of Notre-Dame into a family-friendly adventure. Victor Hugo’s original story ends in tragedy, with major characters dead and little of the film’s optimism.

Pocahontas

The real Pocahontas was around eleven years old when she met English settlers. Disney aged her up, invented a romance with John Smith, and dramatically altered historical events.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Disney softened many of the grim elements from the Brothers Grimm version. The original queen faces a much harsher punishment, and several details are considerably more disturbing.

Cinderella

Disney’s Cinderella is based partly on Charles Perrault’s version, but other classic tellings are much darker. In the Grimm story, stepsisters mutilate their feet and suffer gruesome consequences for their actions.

Sleeping Beauty

The original tale behind Sleeping Beauty contains elements Disney wisely omitted. Earlier versions include betrayal, attempted murder, and situations far darker than the romantic fairy tale presented in the animated film.

Pinocchio

Disney’s Pinocchio learns valuable lessons before earning a happy ending. In Carlo Collodi’s original novel, the wooden boy is far more troublesome, and the story contains considerably harsher consequences throughout.

Tangled

Disney’s Rapunzel enjoys a relatively lighthearted adventure. In earlier versions of the fairy tale, Rapunzel becomes pregnant after meeting the prince, and the story takes a significantly darker turn.

Beauty and the Beast

Disney’s adaptation streamlines a complicated French fairy tale. Earlier versions contain additional siblings, extended family drama, and magical backstory elements that were removed to focus on the central romance.

Tarzan

Disney’s Tarzan focuses on family, adventure, and self-discovery. Edgar Rice Burroughs’s original novel is much more violent, with Tarzan displaying a ruthless survival instinct and participating in far deadlier conflicts.

Alice in Wonderland

Disney combined elements from both of Lewis Carroll’s Alice novels while simplifying much of the wordplay and satire. The result is memorable but considerably different from the source material’s literary complexity.

The Fox and the Hound

Disney’s film emphasizes friendship and reconciliation. Daniel P. Mannix’s novel is significantly darker, featuring a much bleaker tone and ending that differs dramatically from the one audiences remember.

Classic Photos of Peak Arcade Life from the 1980s

While there certainly are some arcades left in the world, the boom of ‘arcade life’ was, without a doubt, the 1980s. Kids and young adults would gather at these establishments and enjoy the wonderful pastime of video games, one quarter at a time.

There was a social aspect that was lost with time, particularly with the advent of the home console. Now, games are certainly social, but they don’t connect you as much with local communities. Going to the arcade was meeting like-minded individuals in your area, and these are the pictures that reminds us of the best of those days.

A Watchful Eye

Kids loved the arcade life more than anyone else, but it was important to have someone watching over you at that age. Here we have a kid going through a complex game with their guardians watching.

Innocent Violence

Age ratings weren’t a thing until Mortal Kombat came around, so before then, kids could access all sorts of violent games and have a blast. They weren’t full of explicit gore, but here we have a few kids enjoying Final Fight, a game not suited to them by today’s standards.

Nobody Around

It was hard to master a game at the arcade, not just for the money investment, but for the crowds that would gather wanting their turn on the machine. For this lucky guy, getting good at Karate Champ is no issue with nobody around.

Table Play

Today’s leisure parlors have tables for duo play, but they are mostly analog games that are more similar to pool than anything else. Back when everything needed to be an arcade cabinet, some arcades were set as tables. The light from the ceiling would often make visibility difficult, hence why they were discontinued.

Time Shared

Not all experiences can be shared, and the control scheme of arcade machines often made them a solo experience. But with racing games, sharing the wheel is almost natural, something this parent and child used as a bonding experience.

Arcade Stance

The main demographic for arcades were children and teenagers, the latter more than the former. As such, the cabinets were made with their heights in mind, something adults had to suffer through with the famed ‘arcade stance.’

r/OldSchoolCool/tellman1257, Raymond Cooper

Arcade Hunch

Some adults could spread their legs and get into the proper arcade height, but for particularly tall people, this wasn’t possible unless you wanted to do the splits. Bending over the machine was far more practical, and yet more taxing on your back as a whole.

Steven Spielberg

Arcades were popular all over the world, and with everybody as well. While Steven Spielberg wasn’t going to a town’s local arcade, he did have his own personal collection at his house, something anyone that can afford it would do.

Quarter Boys

Keeping people playing was part of the business, but having them go all the way to the counter for more quarters could make them think twice. That’s why there were people whose job was giving change to anyone that needed it on the spot.

Black & White

Taking pictures in black and white is an aesthetic nowadays, and with all the color pictures around of the arcade days, you’d think this was a style choice as well. But back in the 80s, people still had black and white cameras, since the ‘upgrade’ to color wasn’t as instant as many would have you believe.

Posing For The Camera

Arcade cabinets were everywhere, attracting potential customers. At this video rental store, these teens pose for a picture, eager to continue their games after the click is heard.

Teaching The Craft

Here, a grown teen shows a small child how the game is played. Here’s hoping the kid was paying attention, because his turn to play wasn’t going to come any time soon.

r/OldSchoolCool/BullBoyXVII, Ira Nowinski

Contagion

Many adults enjoyed some leisure time at the arcade, but pictures showing many of them at the same time are rare. Exactly where these cabinets are installed might shed some light as to why no children are around, but at least everyone is having fun.

Action Pose

Getting too much into the action of a video game can make us do silly things, like moving a joystick thinking that moves the character faster. Well, the same happened back then, but we would move our entire bodies to ‘avoid’ upcoming bullets.

The 15 Most-Modded Classic Cars

There are plenty of cars that are legendary, at least for our own cultural standards, because of their classic look, feel and style. Such a legacy attracts people wanting to build their own tale from that base, so enthusiasts all over the world grab these classics and make them wholly different.

Most modifications involve chasing more horsepower, improving handling, personalizing the appearance, or building something entirely unique. These cars offer the perfect combination of performance potential, aftermarket support, affordability, or cultural significance. These are the models people can’t stop tinkering with.

Toyota Supra Mk IV

The fourth-generation Toyota Supra is practically synonymous with car modification culture. Its legendary 2JZ engine can handle enormous power increases, making it one of the most commonly modified performance cars ever built.

Ford Mustang

Few vehicles have inspired more aftermarket parts than the Ford Mustang. From drag racing builds to restomods and track cars, every generation has attracted enthusiasts eager to customize performance and appearance.

Chevrolet Camaro

The Camaro has been a favorite among modifiers since the muscle car era. Owners routinely upgrade engines, suspensions, and bodywork, creating everything from vintage street machines to modern high-performance builds.

Nissan Skyline GT-R R32

Nicknamed “Godzilla,” the R32 GT-R became famous for its tuning potential. Its advanced all-wheel-drive system and turbocharged engine made it a natural platform for extensive performance modifications.

Mazda RX-7 FD

The RX-7’s lightweight chassis and rotary engine have made it a staple of tuning culture. Some owners preserve the rotary, while others perform engine swaps that push performance to extreme levels.

Honda Civic

The Civic’s affordability and enormous aftermarket support helped make it one of the most modified cars in the world. Everything from daily drivers to race cars has been built from humble Civics.

Nissan 240SX

Beloved by drift enthusiasts, the Nissan 240SX became a modification icon thanks to its rear-wheel-drive layout and adaptability. Engine swaps, suspension upgrades, and custom bodywork are especially common.

Volkswagen Beetle

The classic Beetle has been customized for decades. Hot rods, dune buggies, drag racers, and custom cruisers all trace their roots back to one of the most versatile automotive platforms ever created.

Jeep CJ-7

Off-road enthusiasts have spent generations modifying Jeep CJ models. Lift kits, larger tires, upgraded suspensions, and engine swaps have made the CJ-7 one of the most personalized vehicles on the road.

Datsun 240Z

The original Z-car offered attractive styling and strong performance at an affordable price. Enthusiasts quickly embraced it as a platform for racing, engine swaps, and extensive custom builds.

Chevrolet Corvette C3

The C3 Corvette became a favorite among modifiers thanks to its dramatic styling and V8 power. Owners frequently upgrade performance components while preserving the unmistakable look of the classic sports car.

BMW E30

The E30 generation of BMW’s 3 Series has become a favorite among tuners worldwide. Its balance, simplicity, and motorsport pedigree make it a popular choice for both street and track projects.

Mazda MX-5 Miata

The Miata’s lightweight design and affordability have encouraged endless customization. Owners routinely modify suspension, engines, and bodywork, turning the roadster into everything from autocross machines to track-day weapons.

Porsche 911

While many owners preserve them, countless Porsche 911s have also been heavily modified. Performance upgrades, widebody conversions, and restomod projects have become increasingly popular within enthusiast communities.

Mini Cooper Classic

The original Mini’s compact size and racing history inspired decades of customization. Performance upgrades, rally-inspired builds, and unique cosmetic modifications have kept the tiny British icon relevant for generations.

12 Conspiracy Theories That People Still Actually Believe

For some people, conspiracy theories are a way of life, a window into the real world that the ‘powers that be’ don’t want you to see. They control us through countless means so we stay as sheep, with the perpetual ‘them’ acting as both wolf and shepherd.

That sentiment is one anyone can sympathize with; the issue comes when discussing what is being actually believed in. We can all agree there’s something wrong in the world, some general injustice, but the shape of the Earth, lizard men, and fantastical creatures living among us are borderline too silly.

The Moon Landing Was Faked

Despite overwhelming evidence supporting the Apollo missions, some people still believe the Moon landing was staged. The theory argues that NASA fabricated the event, often citing supposed photographic anomalies that have been repeatedly explained.

The JFK Assassination Cover-Up

Few conspiracy theories have endured as long as the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Many people remain unconvinced that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone and suspect a larger plot.

Bigfoot Is Hiding in North America

Reports of a large, ape-like creature living in remote forests continue to fuel belief in Bigfoot. Enthusiasts point to eyewitness accounts, footprints, and blurry photographs as evidence of its existence.

The Loch Ness Monster Is Real

For generations, people have claimed that a mysterious creature inhabits Scotland’s Loch Ness. Despite numerous searches and scientific investigations, believers continue to argue that Nessie remains undiscovered.

Chemtrails Are More Than Contrails

Some people believe the white trails left by aircraft are part of secret government programs. According to the theory, these “chemtrails” contain chemicals intentionally released into the atmosphere for various hidden purposes.

Paul McCartney Died and Was Replaced

One of pop culture’s strangest theories claims that Paul McCartney died in the 1960s and was secretly replaced by a lookalike. Fans continue searching for supposed clues in Beatles albums.

The Denver Airport Has Hidden Secrets

The unusual artwork, architecture, and underground infrastructure of Denver International Airport have inspired countless theories. Some believe the airport conceals bunkers, secret facilities, or evidence of larger conspiracies.

Reptilian Shape-Shifters Rule the World

Popularized by writer David Icke, this theory claims powerful world leaders are actually reptilian beings disguised as humans. It remains one of the most famous modern conspiracy beliefs.

Princess Diana Was Murdered

The death of Diana, Princess of Wales generated numerous conspiracy theories. Some believers reject the official conclusion of a tragic traffic accident and suspect a deliberate plot.

The Earth Is Flat

Despite centuries of scientific evidence demonstrating Earth’s shape, a modern Flat Earth movement still exists. Adherents argue that governments, scientists, and space agencies are collectively concealing the truth.

Elvis Presley Faked His Death

The King of Rock and Roll remains at the center of one of the most enduring celebrity conspiracies. Some fans believe Elvis Presley staged his death and lived in secret afterward.

The Philadelphia Experiment

This legend claims a World War II naval experiment accidentally rendered a ship invisible or teleported it. Although historians have found no evidence supporting the story, it continues to fascinate conspiracy enthusiasts.