14 Movie Geniuses Who Made Incredibly Dumb Decisions

We don’t want characters in movies to have all the answers; after all, without conflict and mystery, there is no plot. But the problems they face should match their abilities. A character who can fly shouldn’t forget they can just because a chase scene needs them to run.

Well, that’s the feeling we got from these fictional characters and their incredible brains. They are experts in their fields, but don’t manage to foresee outcomes we could’ve told them, all so the show can go on. It’s hard to suspend your disbelief when the actions of the characters are less than believable.

Tony Stark

Tony Stark is one of the smartest people in the Marvel universe, yet he creates Ultron without adequately considering the risks. The resulting disaster nearly destroys humanity and creates problems that haunt multiple films.

Bruce Wayne

Christopher Nolan’s Bruce Wayne prides himself on preparation and strategy. Even so, he willingly gives Lucius Fox the data needed to recreate a citywide surveillance system he previously admitted was dangerously invasive.

Dr. Alan Grant

As a respected paleontologist, Alan Grant immediately recognizes the dangers of Jurassic Park’s cloned dinosaurs. Nevertheless, he repeatedly returns to dinosaur-infested islands despite every prior visit ending in catastrophe.

Peter Venkman

The Ghostbusters are scientists who understand the supernatural better than anyone. Yet Peter Venkman casually agrees to shut down the containment grid, unleashing New York’s trapped ghosts and nearly causing a citywide disaster.

Dr. Ryan Stone

Ryan Stone survives one life-threatening situation after another in Gravity. Still, several crucial moments involve her making risky decisions that seem questionable for a highly trained astronaut and engineer.

Robert Langdon

Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is portrayed as exceptionally intelligent. Across multiple films, however, he repeatedly trusts suspicious strangers and walks directly into obvious traps that a more cautious expert might avoid.

Dr. Stephen Strange

Stephen Strange possesses one of the sharpest minds in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In Spider-Man: No Way Home, he casts a reality-altering spell before fully discussing the consequences with Peter Parker.

Dr. Ellie Arroway

As a brilliant scientist in Contact, Ellie Arroway dedicates her life to careful research and evidence. Yet she boards an alien machine built from mysterious instructions with remarkably little hesitation.

Reed Richards

Reed Richards is often described as Marvel’s smartest human. In Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, however, he reveals Black Bolt’s powers to a dangerous opponent moments before disaster strikes.

Dr. John Hammond

John Hammond is a visionary entrepreneur who spares no expense creating Jurassic Park. Unfortunately, he repeatedly ignores expert warnings about safety, security, and chaos theory until his entire project collapses.

David Levinson

Jeff Goldblum’s David Levinson helps save Earth in Independence Day. His plan works, but uploading a computer virus into an alien mothership using human technology remains a leap of logic many viewers question.

Professor Xavier

Charles Xavier is one of the world’s greatest telepaths and educators. Despite that, he repeatedly keeps vital information from his students, a habit that often makes already dangerous situations much worse.

Dr. Henry Jones Sr.

Indiana Jones’s father is an accomplished scholar obsessed with the Holy Grail. Yet his lifelong pursuit repeatedly puts himself and others in extreme danger for an artifact whose existence was never guaranteed.

Sherlock Holmes

Even brilliant detectives can make mistakes. Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes often rushes into dangerous situations with minimal backup, relying on his intellect to save him from problems that better planning could have avoided.

Disclosure Day Ending Explained with Screenwriter

This article contains massive Disclosure Day spoilers.

It’s a single word with profound implications. On a night where the world feels like it is on the eve of WWIII, and the media breathlessly follows reports of geopolitical turmoil coming out of the Korean peninsula, all of the petty problems of humanity seem suddenly mooted by a sequence that is pure Spielbergian magic.

Driven by—or possessed—by her connection to extraterrestrials that dates back to a childhood abduction, Emily Blunt’s Margaret Fairchild is able to commandeer her local new station in Kansas City, and soon enough the entire planet, and reveal we are not alone: not in this universe, nor in our shared ability to be awed, as indicated by a cornucopia of Steven Spielberg’s patented “gaze up in wonder” shots. Around the globe, families and friends, neighbors and strangers, stop in their tracks to greet the news on their screens in stunned silence. Yet unlike so much of the real-world’s daily news, the ending of Disclosure Days offers glad, if enigmatic, tidings.

The aliens are here. They have always been here, and in the movie’s final moments, a gray, tortured, and aged extraterrestrial is wheeled into the newsroom by a team of true-believers led by Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo). Suddenly, it’s clear how Hugo knew all along about Margaret and Daniel (Josh O’Connor), two adults who were both taken at a young age to be test subjects, or perhaps ambassadors, for what comes next: worldwide first contact.

The details are deliberately vague, but the implications are vast as Blunt translates the beleaguered gray’s first televised comment to the world: “Listen.”

This stunning finale to Disclosure Day is the first scene that Steven Spielberg wrote when he dreamed up the story for the film. However, the final line was an invention of his longtime screenwriter and collaborator, David Koepp, who we spoke with at length about the ending of the movie.

“[The last line is] in my very first draft,” says Koepp. “As I typed and was reaching the end, I knew she was going to face the camera. So I wanted her to say something and I wrote the first word of the line because I thought it represents quite a bit. She’s saying ‘listen,’ because the space boy just told me a bunch of interesting stuff, and she’s saying ‘listen to one another,’ which is the heart of the message.”

Koepp also adds the word has a lot of meaning throughout fiction and human history: “It just so happens to be the first word of one of my favorite books, Slaughterhouse-Five,” notes the screenwriter. “It’s also the first word of numerous Hebrew prayers. So I wrote ‘listen,’ and then I just typed a period, because I think when you have one word that says everything you want to say, you should stop talking.”

This sequence was, again, always the ending, dating back to the 40-plus page script treatment that Spielberg first emailed to Koepp while asking for notes. The rest of the movie was in essence reverse-engineered to reach this point. According to the writer, there was never any doubt it would end at the very moment the world saw a living extraterrestrial with their own eyes.

“We always wanted to stop that night in the control room or in a studio, in part because the movie is called Disclosure Day,” Koepp explains. “In the beginning, we’re told that this information is super important, and it needs to get out, and at the end of the movie, the information gets out. That is your story. If you continued, you could never stop. If the movie was called ‘Disclosure Day and the Subsequent Week,’ then you know you got a lot of explaining to do. But our story was accomplished and it was time to end it.”

The final line is designed to leave the audience wanting and wondering. If you’re interpreting or projecting what comes next after the credits roll, you’re continually involved with the film, which is a win for Koepp and Spielberg.

But it’s more than just the final seconds of Disclosure Day that leaves the mind racing. There’s also the technology and the implications of its effect. In a movie rife with Christian imagery and teases that the aliens in the film have been visiting Earth since the dawn of history, it seems even open to interpretation how much the extraterrestrial influence is responsible for the religious variety. There are especially notes of Christlike empathy and persecution when Blunt’s Margaret, first “awakened” to her otherworldly knowledge, is able to get strangers and even antagonists to repent, at last seeing the redeeming qualities of their fellow man. Eventually, this culminates in the deeply cynical and misanthropic Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth) seeing the light. Elsewhere in the movie, Margaret is chilled when one believer makes the sign of the cross after witnessing what could be called one of Margaret’s miracles.

For his part, however, Koepp remains coy on whether the film is suggesting Christ or other religious figures throughout history might have an alien connection in the film’s universe.

“I do think there are references and I do think that there are visitations that occurred for thousands of years throughout human history, and there are references if you choose to interpret it that way in the Bible and other historical works,” Koepp cryptically allows. “But my reading of it is not that human events on Earth were affected, or that they built the Pyramids.”

Still, he ultimately concedes, “I think you can’t talk about outer space and possible extraterrestrial life without talking about God. They just go hand-in-hand because they question our place in the universe.”

There are a lot of ideas in Disclosure Day, a movie its director and writer hope acts as a “unifying theory” for every close encounter and alien abduction story you’ve ever heard. In this film, it’s true. All of it. But it’s the filmmakers’ job to confirm this reality, not to necessarily explain it. This extends all the way down to the bizarre alien contraption that one character compares to a “magic wand” in the film, and which everyone else simply calls the Device. By design, its powers are inexplicable, including to the screenwriter.

“If it had even one more power, it would be too much,” says Koepp. “It becomes the magic wand. So the humans in the film don’t understand how it works, and we’re comfortable that we also don’t understand how it works, except for these two things that it seems able to do.”

It’s a mystery, not necessarily based on any actual alleged UAP sighting or close encounter, but on the filmmakers’ own desire to “make a fun movie.” Still, if that fun leaves you pondering what comes next, either between our relationships with each other or the little green men out there, then it’s done its job of living past Disclosure Day.

Disclosure Day is in theaters now.

The Death of Robin Hood Review: Hugh Jackman Leads a Beautifully Brutal Elegy

The earliest surviving narrative text featuring that rogue we now know as the Prince of Thieves, the Fox of Sherwood, the guy with the bow, is the ballad of “Robin Hood and the Monk.” Our copy is believed to date back to around 1450, although the tale is likely older. But even that long ago, many of the elements we associate with Robin Hood are already in place: the Merry Men, Little John, and an antipathy toward the Sheriff of Nottingham.

Yet if you actually go back to dust off the stanzas and verse of that tale, the details can be disquietingly unique. Robin robs from the rich, yes—or at least the clergy of the title—but it’s not at all clear if this is for his own pocket or anyone else’s. Also when the monk of its title gets Robin Hood arrested, Little John and the Merry Men respond by executing the friar and his page both, beheading them like a farmer culls wheat. It offers an altogether bleaker vision of the Middle Ages; and likely a more honest one too since England really hadn’t left that era by the 15th century.

It’s also a world that the writer-director of Pig, Michael Sarnoski, seeks to capture with unrelenting verisimilitude in his new A24 picture, The Death of Robin Hood. Given its title and Hugh Jackman’s severe gray beard in the marketing, the extreme violence likely will not surprise many. The film’s quiet and even stunning sense of grace, however, could be an outright revelation for those willing to endure the early medieval hack-and-slash carnage.

Pulling loosely from several 16th century ballads about Robin Hood’s death at the hands of a wicked prioress, Sarnoski’s The Death of Robin Hood in many ways resembles the simple, yet often moving, adult dramas of the 1970s (albeit not, ironically, that decade’s own death of Robin Hood movie starring Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn). It is a straightforward character study told in two parts. The first is about the reality behind the myth of Jackman’s Robin Hood; the second accounts for the absolution of this monster at the hands of a genuine hero: Sister Brigid (Jodie Comer) and her priory on the Irish Sea.

This parable kicks off properly when an old and grizzled Robin is found living alone in the wilderness by his former compatriot, the much younger Little John (Bill Skarsgård). Whether any other Merry Men existed is ambiguous, but based on the fact that John still wears green while Robin is bundled up in blacks, grays, and the red of those he’s killed, it’s clear which of them actually believes the legends that have already begun to spring up along the countryside like dandelions. John romanticizes his past, even as he finds some semblance of peace for the future with a wife and young daughter, Margaret (Faith Delaney). Alas, the past isn’t done with him. Relatives of a nobleman he slew some years back have taken his family hostage, and John wants Robin to go on one last adventure to free them.

The aftermath of that quest is so cataclysmically violent that our wounded folk hero is forced to seek shelter in the aforementioned priory on the sea. There, Comer’s Prioress has built a bucolic Eden separate from the medieval miseries across the waterway. She takes in orphans, loners, and even a leper (an endearingly aloof Murray Bartlett). And now she has taken in Robin, albeit the leper warns the brigand not to reveal his famous identity to the others. So things grow complicated when John’s little girl Margaret also arrives on the island, recognizing Robin as her father’s friend. Meanwhile others likewise approach, searching for the outlaw.

Seeing Hugh Jackman play another legendary hero at sunset after the also quite poignant Logan nearly a decade ago might cause some viewers to suspect this is familiar territory for the Australian star. Yet the tagline “he was no hero” proves to be more than just a marketing gimmick. It is difficult to think of a recent protagonist more challenging or potentially despicable than this Robin Hood. It is, indeed, the first movie I can think of with a scene where the protagonist of your film considers whether they may, or may not, murder a child—depending on if Margaret knows him by the name Robin. Frequent Sarnoski cinematographer Pat Scola even shoots the queasy scene by torchlight, casting ominous red pits in Jackman’s eyes.

There will be some viewers who will simply recoil at the prospect of such a depiction of a classic hero—and others who don’t want to see any feature with a hero (in the loosest sense) who is so broken and flawed. But for those up for the challenge, the emotional resonance of the piece unfurls a profound beauty that’s survived in the most perilous of contexts. It’s like a flower that’s somehow bloomed in the grays of January.

Part of this is obviously Jackman’s undeniable charisma as a performer. A born showman with a penchant for soulfulness, he exudes a humane intelligence hiding behind a beast’s fixed grimace. I do not think this Robin can be redeemed, but he can atone, which is where the real heart of the film comes into focus.

A deeply thoughtful and often understated performer, Jodie Comer’s Sister Brigid proves the true core of the film. Despite Robin not living up to the legends that strangers spin about him, Jackman’s character is in many ways an open book. The Prioress, on the other hand, is warm and empathetic, patient and forgiving. Nonetheless, Comer imbues the woman with just enough mystery to hint at layers and motivations left unseen, and perhaps a journey far grander than even Robin Hood’s. His is a world of gray, hers is awash in natural light, offering the only green in the movie not worn by Little John. Hers is the actual story of redemption for a land, if not a man.

The obvious inversion of the legend, where Robin is the fiend and the Prioress the hero, amounts to a classic kind of revisionism that used to be commonplace in Hollywood. Nowadays, though, it’s faintly heretical to find a film so willing to dwell in deep shadows and wallow in the mess of the human experience instead of sanitizing it. The fact Sarnoski does this with what is essentially intellectual property via Robin Hood is shrewd. By adapting one of the most famous characters in the English language, Sarnoski creates a mythic stage to put on a show every bit as big-hearted, and curiously innocent of guile, as Pig was four years ago.

That it achieves this after the first half hour borders on medieval snuff cinema—with Robin and Little John rolling in the mud of their soon to be murdered attackers—is a kind of tonal magic trick. It also is a credit to the dignity of all the performances.

Together they and their director, perhaps aptly in the 21st century, reject one of the great cinema quotes from a previous one. “When legend becomes fact, print the legend.” The Death of Robin Hood would seem to argue when fact is concealed by legend, tear down the myth before it deludes and poisons the soul. The Death of Robin Hood guards its own soul jealously before finally expressing it with deep equanimity and fellowship.

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

How Eraser Director Chuck Russell Challenged Arnold Schwarzenegger

By the time Eraser released on June 21, 1996, Arnold Schwarzenegger ruled Hollywood. It’s not just that he was a giant man, the former Mister Universe. Arnold had already done all-time classics like Predator and Terminator 2. He knew what he was and he got his way. So when he wanted to make a movie about a U.S. Marshal who defends a whistleblower in witness protection from a government conspiracy, most would just follow orders.

Not Chuck Russell. When the script for Eraser hit his desk, Russell—fresh off horror classics A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors and The Blob, as well as The Mask—thought the former Mister Universe could do more.

“I liked the idea of an Arnold film,” Russell recalls to Den of Geek. “But Eraser was a minimalistic Arnold film. That’s a cool movie to make, and he’s made some like that. But I’m not going to step in after True Lies and Terminator and do the same thing. So when Arnold brought me the script, I told him we could do it together if we could jack it up and make it a little wilder, a little hyperreal.”

That’s exactly what Russell and Schwarzenegger did with Eraser. Schwarzenegger plays Marshal John Kruger, a specialist in “erasing” people and putting them in witness protection. Kruger’s latest task involves Lee Cullen (Vanessa Williams), a weapons company employee who works with the CIA to reveal plans for an illegal rail gun. But when he learns that his superior Robert DeGuerin (James Caan) is involved in a conspiracy to control those plans, Kruger must protect Cullen’s life as much as he must erase her identity.

Working from a script credited to Tony Puryear and Walon Green, Russell punctuates the material with incredible, over-the-top set-pieces. Arnold does battle with rampaging crocodiles, shoots down a jet while dangling from a parachute, and dodges enemies with high-tech weaponry.

“I knew the basic story was really good, but it needed a rewrite to do two things,” explains Russell. “One, we needed more from Arnold’s relationship with Vanessa’s character. And, two, I felt three setpieces were missing from the movie.

“The original script was straight-up handguns and fistfights. And I’m like, ‘Guys! This is two years after True Lies! We’ve got Arnold Schwarzenegger! Come one, we need crocodiles! We need an airplane jump! We need railguns!”

Those aren’t just big demands, they’re expensive demands. And to get the funding for those set-pieces, Russell needed his star on board, which meant convincing Schwarzenegger to deviate from a script he loved.

“I told Arnold this was a great movie, but we had to make it better. I knew what I had in mind, but it wouldn’t happen unless he the one was telling the studio that he wanted it,” says Russell. “Those kinds of things can be tricky, and Arnold and the studio don’t want to make each other uncomfortable. I had to convince him that it would be good for his brand to make these changes, and that I would protect his brand.

“But I wanted to make Eraser crazier and more hyperreal. He liked what I told him, and he’s a man of his word, so he started campaigning with me to take a little more time and spend a little money on some of these scenes.”

He admits that “the studio was slightly uncomfortable,” but he hastens to add, “They were very happy with the film. So everyone was happy in the end. It doesn’t always end that way, but it did with Eraser.”

While some might be intimidated by the prospect of challenging a superstar and a huge movie studio, Russell says it’s all part of the appeal of making movies.

“I liked him,” Russell says of his star. “There’s a reason he’s Arnold in person, and he definitely uses that persona. He’s got the cigars, and he’s very competitive, man to man. But if you respond to Arnold fearlessly and with humor, he’ll love you. So we got along very well.

“He can be intimidating when he cares about something. But like a lot of powerful men, he’s actually a sweetheart. So I enjoyed him, and I enjoyed how much he wanted to make this film. We had each other’s backs in getting the best version of Eraser made.”

Schwarzenegger’s not the only intimidating figure in the Eraser cast, which includes James Caan, former Miss USA Vanessa Williams, and screen legend James Coburn, all of whom Russell picked because “they’re not traditional for an Arnold movie.”

That desire to fill out the cast with interesting people came from his beginnings working with stunt people, which also gave him the confidence to approach people like Schwarzenegger without fear.

He points out, “When I first came to LA, I was sweeping stages and doing gigs, and one of the first things I did was become a sort of mascot with Stunts Unlimited. I ran around with the stunt team with a mentor named Alan Gibbs. These were the people who did all of Roger Corman‘s movies, The Cannonball Run, Smokey and the Bandit—all the top stunt drivers at the time. It was a wonderful education.”

“I love stunts,” he declares, a statement that might seem surprising coming from the man who directed the early CGI triumph The Mask. “I still believe in physical action, because it creates suspense that all the technology in the world can’t duplicate. If an actor in a horror film is coming down a hallway, and they know a door is going to explode out, they’re actually scared. Even though it’s safe, and even though I walk them through it personally, and show them how to do it, there’s a different tension in their performance.

“There’s a different tension when the principal actors are in a stunt fight. When I was making The Scorpion King, I told Dwayne Johnson the he needed to kill his enemy with his heart. ‘Yeah, you’re going to close in with a sword, and I know you can do the physical stuff, but remember why your character’s doing this.’ We would go over that part first.”

For all the talk about dealing with tough guys and doing physical stunts, Russell sums up his role in simplistic terms. “I’m a cheerleader as a director, honestly. It’s a little corny, but it helps. I’ll make a fool of myself sometimes,” he confesses.

Clearly, the cheerleader approach works, especially when working with big-name stars. “I’m grateful for my career,” he reflects. “I’ve had the opportunity to direct Patricia Arquette‘s first movie, Cameron Diaz‘s first movie, Dwayne Johnson’s first leading role,” he points out. “It’s very fun as a director, very satisfying. I’m grateful these films are entertaining beyond the year that they were made.”

And if it took challenging Arnold Schwarzenegger to put more crocodiles in Eraser to give those films such staying power, then it was clearly worth it.

Eraser re-releases in 4K UHD on June 16, 2026.

The Batman 2 Is Taking the Right Approach to The Penguin

Batman‘s always had a villain problem. Not just because they keep getting out of Arkham Asylum every time he puts them in, but also because they keep overshadowing him in movies. Even The Batman, which gave plenty of time to Robert Pattinson‘s emo take on the Dark Knight, also featured the Riddler, Catwoman, Carmine Falcone, a cameo by the Joker, and Colin Farrell as the Penguin. The Batman: Part II seems to be following the same model, with Sebastian Stan, Scarlett Johansson, and Charles Dance playing Two-Face and members of the Dent family.

Yet, in an encouraging report, Farrell has revealed that his character Oz Cobb will have limited screentime in the Matt Reeves-directed sequel. After praising the quality of Reeves’ screenplay, Farrell admitted to ScreenRant, “I’m only in two scenes, which is great because it means I can enjoy the rest of the film.” That’s great not just for him, not just for Batman, but also for the Penguin. Because too much of Farrell’s Penguin can absolutely be a bad thing.

Need proof? Look no further than the HBO series The Penguin, which put Oz Cobb in the center role. The Penguin often wanted to be a gritty, realistic crime drama in the vein of The Sopranos. The Penguin had as its star an actor just as nuanced and multilayered as James Gandolfini. But where Gandolfini made Tony Soprano into a three-dimensional character through his facial expressions and body language, Farrell had to work though not just layers of makeup and prosthetics, but also an over-the-top accent. The series didn’t find its footing until it gave more attention to Cristin Milioti, who had more to work with in Sofia Falcone.

Conversely, Farrell worked great in The Batman, and stole everyone from his scenes. His barking about “Mister Vengeance” or Batman’s ability to “habla español” injected just the right amount of cartoon energy into a film that could sometimes get self-serious. He leveled out the tone of the movie, helping Pattinson craft his human, neophyte detective.

Farrell’s comments promise a sequel just as rich in psychological depth. “I got to read from the first to last page and it’s really magnificent,” he gushed. “I just think Matt Reeves is brilliant and he wrote, not only tonally, a really kind of dark and at times terrifying piece, and not only psychologically weighty and nuanced, but really… full of feeling.”

Certainly, Batman has proven to be the rare superhero who can handle such thematic depth. But Batman stories are fundamentally about a guy who dresses up like a bat to beat up outrageous villains. For that reason, there’s room in even a psychologically weighty Batman movie for a cartoon gangster who waddles and shouts. But only a little, something The Batman: Part II seems to understand.

The Batman: Part II releases in theaters on October 1, 2027.

Gary Vee Follows Jim Henson’s Example With VeeFriends

Ask entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, better known as Gary Vee, about his goals for the more than 200 characters he’s created for his VeeFriends brand, and he won’t just talk about the comics or stickers in which they’ve appeared, nor the newest set of VeeFriends trading cards released by Topps Chrome. No, Gary Vee wants VeeFriends to “bring balance to the world.”

Such a monumental goal requires an even greater guide, and Vee thinks he’s found one in Jim Henson, specifically in Henson’s pitch for the 1983–87 series Fraggle Rock. “Henson gave his creative team a brief when they were trying to figure out Fraggle Rock,” Vee explains to Den of Geek. “Normally, these things are 10 pages, 15 pages, or five pages. This one was literally two words. Jim Henson wrote to his creative team, ‘End War.'”

The 2026 Topps Chrome VeeFriends set releases with a roster of 200 characters and a variety of insert styles, including special cards from internet content creators such as Kam Patterson, Jake Paul, and Livvy Dunne.

Despite the emphasis on YouTube stars, Vee finds his inspiration in his own childhood. He recalls, “I grew up in the ’80s, where we had Transformers, Go-Bots, Thundercats, He-Man, Max Headroom. And I have a brother who’s 11 years younger, and he was very affected by Pokémon. So I grew up at a lucky time when an extraordinary amount of intellectual property was invented from scratch, in video games, cartoons after school, or trading cards like the Garbage Pail Kids.”

Vee turned toward those childhood memories when he wanted to expand his market in 2021 by creating VeeFriends. Citing his own “entrepreneurial ambitions” and looking at “AI and blockchain, and “the trend of collectibility,” Vee saw “an opportunity to build something very meaningful.” But that meant changing his approach.

“My personal brand started getting bigger and I, as Gary Vee, was becoming popular because I was spreading love and accountability, and I talked about stuff that was impactful on me,” he explains.

Vee sees VeeFriends as a way to speak the language of children and families. As evidence that he’s found that language, Vee points to his characters such as Patient Pig, a cartoon swine who advises children, “Patience isn’t complacency… it’s the ultimate ingredient for long term success.”

For Vee, those teachings set VeeFriends apart from other collectible card sets. “At first, I thought I was making something more like Disney or Pokémon,” he admits. “But as I went through my journey, I realized I was building more of a Jim Henson-like business. Yes, I would like to be as commercially successful as The Muppets or Sesame Street. But I do want to have a positive impact and help parents navigate this challenging parenting ecosystem.”

Even conceding that that Pokémon “is the biggest intellectual property in the world” and that he aspires “one day to have people care about VeeFriends even half as much as they care about Pokémon,” Vee thinks that there’s room for another card game next to monster franchise. “I do feel that, over time, it will become obvious that there’s more meaning and deepness to VeeFriends,” he ventures.

As an example, Vee points to his character, Reliable Rat. “As you know, being a rat is not a good thing. That means you’re stabbing someone in the back, you’re doing the wrong thing by them. You also know that ‘reliable’ is one of the most admirable words. With VeeFriends, I’m desperate to change perceptions.

“When a kid falls in love with [VeeFriends character] Authentic Anaconda, that seven-year-old is going to go up to their mom and ask, ‘What’s authentic mean?’ I’m providing emotional value to families, allowing a mother or a father to have a conversation around authenticity and why it’s important.”

Vee’s already seen the fruits of his labor. “I get three to five to 10 messages a day via DM or email from girl dads who thank me,” says Vee. “It’s the same email every time, just written differently: ‘Hey, I’ve got a son and a daughter, I’ve got two sons and a daughter, or I’ve got three daughters and a son, and I’m really into card collecting. Every Saturday, my son and I go to the shows or the card store, and my poor daughter has to get dragged along with us because we’re letting mom do XYZ. Thank you for creating VeeFriends, and especially thank you, Gary, for creating Ambitious Angel and Fearless Fairy. It’s given me something to start collecting with my daughter.’

“It feels good to be part of something like that,” Vee declares.

Jim Henson didn’t quite end war with Fraggle Rock, but he certainly inspired plenty of letters like that one. Gary Vee hopes VeeFriends can do the same.

Topps Chrome’s second VeeFriends card set is available now via Topps and Fanatics, and at retailers Dick’s, Target, and Gamestop.

10 Photos from When Entertainment Involved Real Danger

Articles that talk about how back in the day, the danger was real for the performers on stage, tend to sound like they miss those days. We don’t. We believe we live in an era where safety needs to come first, and where animals aren’t exploited. It isn’t a perfect world, but we’re trying.

Instead, we are focusing on these images to remember the strange things we thought were fun. Dangerous stunts still happen, but with a much more dedicated medical staff. Animals are still used in entertainment, but with far more laws protecting them. These are the windows to a past we won’t be returning to.

Polar Bear Chorus

Training a bear to do something is one thing, training a whole group of them is quite another. These bears had to balance on balls, look cute, and jump over rings of fire just to earn a meal and go back to their cells.

Basketball On Wheels

Perhaps one of the more quaint auditions to the list, here we have some players of basketball with an additional difficulty spike: balancing on monocycles. It’s hard to imagine any dribbling taking place.

Elephant Parade

While the animals here seem to be treated better than the bears (and better than in Dumbo), these poor elephants must have been scared of being around so many people. And believe me, a scared elephant is one of the most dangerous things in the world.

Balancing Without A Net

Yes, seeing acrobats doing their craft without need of a safety net is impressive, but only because you fear for the poor person’s life. Is it really all that less impressive if you know the artist will survive at the end?

Monowheel Confidense

Riding a monocycle is already hard, but it is harder if you also need to balance someone on top of you. Fortunately, the audiences will be focused on the person on top, since the one below will be too focused to be charismatic.

The General

Moving on to films, The General featured one of the most expensive and dangerous stunts of the silent era when a real locomotive was sent crashing through a burning bridge.

Ben-Hur

Ben-Hur used a massive practical chariot race involving real horses, real collisions, and significant risk to performers and stuntmen.

The Man with the Golden Gun

The Man with the Golden Gun included a record-setting corkscrew car jump performed for real, requiring precise calculations and leaving little room for error.

Police Story

Police Story featured Jackie Chan doing many of his own stunts, suffering burns and injuries during one of cinema’s most famous scenes.

Roar

Roar was filmed with dozens of real lions, tigers, and other big cats. More than 70 cast and crew members reportedly suffered injuries during production.

14 Actors Who Looked 40 Their Entire Careers

As actors and performers grow in age, the roles they can play change dramatically. Child actors grow into teen dramas, who later play adults and veterans until only elderly roles are left. But not everyone functions that way, since not all bodies grow in the same manner; some people are eternal children, while others look 40 from before and after they turn that age.

Chalk it up to a receding hairline, a weathered face, or simply an unusually mature screen presence, these actors often found themselves playing authority figures, parents, and grizzled professionals long before their actual age suggested it. Looking back, it’s hard not to wonder whether some of these actors were somehow born looking 40 years old.

Wilford Brimley

Wilford Brimley is the patron saint of this category. He was only 49 when he played a retiree in Cocoon, and generations of moviegoers have joked that he looked 65 for roughly half a century.

Tommy Lee Jones

Even in his younger roles, Tommy Lee Jones carried the weathered face and stern expression of a veteran lawman. Fans often remark that he seemed middle-aged from the very beginning of his film career.

Richard Dreyfuss

Richard Dreyfuss was only 27 when Jaws was released, yet many viewers assume he was at least a decade older. His mature appearance became a frequent topic of discussion among movie fans.

Christopher Lloyd

Christopher Lloyd somehow looked elderly for decades without appearing to age much further. Many viewers remember him as an old man in the Back to the Future era, even though he was much younger than they assumed.

Jack Nicholson

Jack Nicholson had the receding hairline, grin, and world-weary demeanor of a man well into middle age long before he actually got there. Even his early breakout performances projected a surprisingly mature image.

Michael Shannon

Michael Shannon built a career playing authority figures, hardened criminals, and intimidating professionals. Fans frequently joke that he looked 45 at 25 and has barely changed appearance ever since.

Gene Hackman

Gene Hackman rarely looked youthful, even during his earliest major roles. His rugged features and serious screen presence made him seem like a seasoned veteran long before he reached that age.

Walter Brennan

Walter Brennan made a career out of playing grizzled old-timers and elderly sidekicks. Audiences often assumed he was much older than he really was, even during the height of his popularity.

Paul Giamatti

Paul Giamatti has long looked like somebody’s experienced accountant, coach, or neighbor. Fans frequently joke that he arrived in Hollywood already looking like a dependable forty-something character actor.

Jonathan Banks

Jonathan Banks became famous as tough authority figures and hardened criminals, but his weathered appearance had people assuming he was older than he actually was for much of his career.

George C. Scott

George C. Scott possessed a stern, commanding presence that made him seem older than many of his contemporaries. Even in earlier films, he projected the authority of someone decades older.

Abe Vigoda

Abe Vigoda became so associated with elderly characters that many viewers are surprised to learn how long his career lasted. He looked old, played old, and somehow stayed looking old for decades.

Edward Asner

Ed Asner’s balding head, deep voice, and serious demeanor gave him the appearance of a much older man early in his career. As a result, he slid naturally into elder statesman roles.

Donald Sutherland

Even in films from the early 1970s, Donald Sutherland carried himself like a seasoned professional rather than a young leading man. His distinctive look often made audiences assume he was older than reality.

Actors Who Were Somehow Cast as Teenagers for Way Too Long

Some actors seem to maintain the face and physicality of youth for longer than other people, letting them play young adults or even teens well into their thirties. Emphasis on some, since there are other actors that simply don’t look the part. Adults act better than teens, but they need to fit the bill.

We’ve gathered here a few actors that played teens for a bit too long, traversing high school halls looking more like teachers than students. Some of them were able to trick us for years, but not forever; at some point, it’s time to pass the torch to the new generations.

Bianca Lawson

Bianca Lawson is the gold standard for this topic. She played high school students in Saved by the Bell: The New Class, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dawson’s Creek, Pretty Little Liars, and Teen Wolf well into her thirties.

Nicholle Tom

Nicholle Tom was in her twenties for part of her run on The Nanny, yet Maggie Sheffield remained a teenager for much of the series. Her youthful appearance helped extend the illusion longer than most actors could manage.

Stacey Dash

Stacey Dash spent much of the 1990s and early 2000s playing teenagers. She was 28 in Clueless and continued portraying high school-aged characters long after most actors had moved on.

Gabrielle Carteris

Gabrielle Carteris was nearly 30 when she started playing Andrea Zuckerman. She remained a high school student for multiple seasons despite being significantly older than the rest of the teenage cast.

Jason Earles

Jason Earles was almost 30 when Hannah Montana began and continued playing teenager Jackson Stewart throughout the series. He may be one of Disney Channel’s oldest “teen” stars ever.

Michael J. Fox

Michael J. Fox spent much of the 1980s and early 1990s playing characters significantly younger than himself. Between Family Ties and the Back to the Future films, he remained Hollywood’s go-to teenager well into adulthood.

Rachel McAdams

Rachel McAdams wasn’t alone in being older than her character, but she became one of the most famous examples. At 26, she played Regina George so effectively that few questioned it.

Charisma Carpenter

Charisma Carpenter was 27 when she began playing Cordelia Chase on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Even after graduating the character, she spent years playing someone who had only recently left high school.

Ben McKenzie

Ben McKenzie was 25 when he starred in The O.C., joining a long tradition of twenty-somethings portraying troubled teenagers. The role helped define an entire era of teen television.

Trevor Donovan

Trevor Donovan joined 90210 at age 30 while playing high school student Teddy Montgomery. Few actors have stretched the definition of “teenager” quite so far.

Tom Welling

Tom Welling was 24 when Smallville began, and the series spent years depicting Clark Kent’s adolescence. By later seasons, viewers were watching a man in his thirties play a very recent high school graduate.

James Van Der Beek

James Van Der Beek was 21 when Dawson’s Creek began and spent six seasons playing a high school student and recent graduate. Like many teen drama stars, he stayed younger on screen than in reality.

Chad Michael Murray

Chad Michael Murray was in his early twenties when he started playing Lucas Scott. After previous teen roles in Gilmore Girls and Freaky Friday, he became one of television’s most recognizable perpetual teenagers.

Sara Rue

Sara Rue was 20 when Popular premiered and spent multiple seasons playing a high school student. While not as extreme as some examples, she became part of the late-’90s tradition of adult actors filling teen roles.

Keiko Agena

Keiko Agena played Lane Kim throughout Gilmore Girls, beginning the series at age 27. She spent years portraying a high school student and later a young adult while remaining far older than the character.

14 Most Cursed TV Shows

What does it mean that something is cursed? Well, in the way the term is used now, it doesn’t mean that something (or someone) is being altered supernaturally, rather, it refers to events or circumstances that are so weird or tragic, they feel like a curse was cast.

No one actually thinks these shows were cursed, but people do agree that parts of their plots, productions or scripts feel that way. These are the TV shows that generate a lot of online discussions, not due to their plots or characters, but due to how they look and feel in the real world.

The Partridge Family

The wholesome family sitcom had a surprisingly troubled legacy. Several cast members faced personal struggles, health problems, financial difficulties, or addiction issues, giving the show’s history a much darker tone than its cheerful premise suggested.

Glee

Few shows have accumulated as many real-life tragedies as Glee. The deaths of Cory Monteith, Mark Salling, and Naya Rivera, combined with numerous controversies involving cast members, fueled its reputation as a cursed production.

8 Simple Rules

The sitcom was forced to radically reinvent itself after the sudden death of star John Ritter during production. Losing its lead actor in the middle of a successful run remains one of television’s most shocking tragedies.

The Young and the Restless

Long-running soap operas naturally experience losses, but The Young and the Restless has seen an unusually large number of cast deaths over the decades, leading some fans to jokingly label it cursed.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers

The original Power Rangers cast experienced a remarkable number of tragedies, legal troubles, and untimely deaths. Those incidents have contributed to a long-running belief among fans that the franchise is unusually unlucky.

The Curse of Oak Island

A show about misfortune almost seems destined to attract more of it. Over the years, accidents, injuries, equipment failures, and endless setbacks have become part of the series’ identity.

Diff’rent Strokes

The lives of several young stars from Diff’rent Strokes were marked by personal struggles, legal problems, addiction issues, and early deaths. The show’s behind-the-scenes history remains one of television’s saddest.

ALF

The sitcom was successful on screen but notoriously difficult behind the scenes. Cast members frequently described the production as miserable, with technical limitations and stressful working conditions creating constant tension.

The X-Files

Production delays, demanding shooting schedules, injuries, and frequent reports of difficult filming conditions followed The X-Files throughout much of its run. Even the cast has spoken openly about the challenges.

Bonanza

Several cast members died relatively young, including Dan Blocker and Michael Landon. Combined with other tragedies connected to the show’s extended family of actors, Bonanza developed a reputation for bad luck.

The Royle Family

British sitcom The Royle Family became associated with sadness after the deaths of multiple beloved cast members, including Liz Smith, Geoffrey Hughes, and Caroline Aherne, all within a relatively short period.

Deadliest Catch

A show about commercial fishing in dangerous waters almost qualifies automatically. Numerous crew members featured on the series have died over the years, both on and off the job.

The Jerry Springer Show

The show became infamous for the chaos surrounding it. Multiple guests later faced arrests, scandals, or violent incidents that kept adding to its notoriety.

The Simpsons

No major television show has generated more “curse” theories. Fans have spent years pointing to the uncanny number of real-world events seemingly predicted by episodes, giving the series a bizarre reputation online.

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.