SNL’s Greatest Legacy May Be In The Competition It Inspired

Saturday Night Live‘s cultural imprint is unquestionably massive, as is the list of comedy stars who have come through the show in its 52 seasons. But the new documentary, SCTV: The Greatest Show You’ve Never Heard Of, reminds us of a lesser-known legacy: the many competing shows it inspired.

Launched in 1975, SNL took the world by storm with the help of Second City Toronto alums Dan Aykroyd and Gilda Radner. Second City Television (eventually shortened to SCTV) started a year later in response, giving remaining troupe members an outlet. But the two shows were vastly different. 

With its “live from New York” setting, celebrity hosts, and musical guests, SNL presented as a high-wire spectacle with a weekly hook. SCTV, on the other hand, was taped from Toronto without the added star power or crossover appeal. A smaller-scale alternative driven solely by comedy, it was felt more deeply than widely, with interconnected sketches lampooning cheesy pop culture conventions. 

Though SCTV launched to keep Toronto’s finest comedy minds from migrating south, SNL still looked at it as a possible talent pool. There’s a story in the doc about a “disaster” of an audition in which SNL creator Lorne Michaels brought in SCTV stars John Candy, Joe Flaherty, and Dave Thomas. It did not go well. “After this horrible set, we went to Lorne’s table. He didn’t say anything,” recounts Thomas in the doc before archival footage shows a Candy interview where he jokes that there must have been “something wrong with [Michaels’] throat because he couldn’t talk. Either that or he was very rude.” It’s a rejection that SCTV co-creator and producer Andrew Alexander says Candy was “stung deeply by.” 

Michaels would have a much stronger connection with the next great sketch group to hail from his native Canada. 

The New Kids And Lorne’s Growing Influence

When Michaels returned to run SNL in its 11th season, he brought “Kids in the Hall” troupe members Bruce McCulloch and Mark McKinney with him as writers. And while that didn’t take, Michaels later produced the full group’s sketch series. The Kids in the Hall had a vastly different sensibility than SNL; daring, dark, and occasionally cinematic in its influences and output. 

Like SCTV, the Kids In The Hall series didn’t qualify as a ratings hit, but it inspired religious devotion among its fans in the early ‘90s (and beyond). 

While not a sketch show, the Michaels-produced Late Night with Conan O’Brien warrants a mention for its connections to SNL (O’Brien and head writer Robert Smigel), its penchant for using sketches and characters to establish its absurdist tone, and the role it played in introducing Amy Poehler and the Upright Citizens Brigade to audiences.

An Era Of Controversy And Competition

From Andrew Dice Clay-inspired boycotts to the Sinead O’Connor pope photo tearing, and a blistering New York Magazine takedown, the ‘90s were SNL’s toughest decade. 

High-profile cast members like Adam Sandler, Chris Farley, and Norm Macdonald were pushed out at the insistence of network execs. Other big-name additions to the cast proved underutilized or a poor fit, like Janeane Garofalo, Sarah Silverman, and Chris Rock.

The ‘90s also opened the floodgates, and SNL faced real competition from numerous comers.

With its focus on obscure pop culture references, The Ben Stiller Show shares more stylistic DNA with SCTV than SNL, but the connection remained. Stiller had left the mothership after just four episodes because he wanted to direct short filmed sketches. Ben Stiller Show cast member and writer Bob Odenkirk had a much longer, though somewhat tumultuous, run as a writer on SNL. 

Despite winning an Emmy, the short-lived Ben Stiller Show’s most enduring legacy may be that it’s where Odenkirk first teamed up with his Mr. Show partner, David Cross. That show, which featured eventual alt-comedy stars like Scott Aukerman, Brian Posehn, Paul F. Tompkins, Jack Black, and Silverman, often ranks near the top of lists of the best sketch shows of all time. 

The State is another ‘90s gem with long-lasting influence thanks to the work of David Wain and Michael Showalter as filmmakers. While the show seemed more traditional than Stiller’s creation, it was sneakily subversive. The State targeted the same younger audience as SNL, but it had substantially more bite. 

While cable showed the greatest appetite for boundary-pushing sketch comedy, Fox was also heavily invested in taking the fight to NBC and SNL. Created in 1990 by Keenen Ivory Wayans, In Living Color broadened the opportunities and storytelling present in a genre often distressingly devoid of non-white male actors and writers. Starring Wayans, his sister Kim, his brother Damon (who had previously been fired by SNL), David Alan Grier, and Jim Carrey, the show flourished.

With uproarious comedy and recurring characters like Homey D. Clown and Fire Marshal Bill, In Living Color was better at being SNL than SNL, particularly to anyone under age 30. It was also an incredible launchpad, with Carrey (who had failed to land SNL in multiple auditions) becoming the biggest box-office star in the world. This was followed by Sandler stepping into his own as a movie star and Rock becoming the most relevant stand-up comic in the game. SNL’s misses and early exits were making a lot of noise. 

While In Living Color earned praise and buzz at the start of the ‘90s, Mad TV came in mid-decade as its replacement, a direct competitor to SNL airing on Saturdays at 11 p.m. While the show had its fans and success stories (namely Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele, who went on to create Key & Peele), it’s not on the same comedic level as these other shows. Still, its original run lasted 14 seasons, and it definitely pushed SNL. 

Chappelle, I Think You Should Leave, And SNL’s Relic Phase

Rivaling the kind of provocative comedy SNL practiced at its inception, Chappelle’s Show also had a rare gift for driving word of mouth with memorable sketches. Clayton Bigsby, The Player Haters’ Ball, and Charlie Murphy’s True Hollywood Stories all hit before the advent of YouTube and social media. That ability to travel and endure speaks to the quality of sketches that could have never found a place on a more conservative show like SNL. 

Former SNL cast member Tim Robinson’s I Think You Should Leave is the closest thing to Chappelle’s Show in terms of virality, leaning on Robinson’s specific comedic awkwardness. In an era where reaching a niche audience is more permissible than ever, something like I Think You Should Leave has a level of cachet that something mainstream like SNL can’t hope to attain. Especially when its tools are limited to stunt casting, shock value, and uninspired political comedy in an era of unmatched real political absurdity. Add sponcon sketches, and myriad ways for young comics to get exposure outside the SNL pipeline, and it’s clear SNL needs some kind of reinvention. Even its U.K. spinoff seems fresher and livelier by comparison. 

That said, I want to be a little kind to SNL in the end. David Letterman’s Late Night was a response to Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show. The result was a chaotic, rule-breaking form of comedy that has influenced everything from the shows in this article to Hot Ones.

Similarly, none of these additional sketch shows get the chance to impact comedy culture without an SNL to react to and rebel against. While that sounds like a slight, it’s actually a tribute to SNL, extending its legacy beyond its own (still impressive) historical output and making it part of a larger portrait of comedy in the 20th and 21st centuries.

SCTV: The Greatest Show You’ve Never Heard Of is available to stream on Netflix now.

The eBay Most Wanted Collection Auction Celebrates Car Culture in Gaming

eBay Live is expanding into automotive sales while celebrating the history of cars in video games, including titles like the upcoming Grand Theft Auto VI. To commemorate this, eBay Live has unveiled its eBay Most Wanted Collection, four cars going up for auction in a livestream hosted by Fast & Furious star and noted automotive enthusiast Sung Kang alongside automotive influencer and creator Hert. With 100% of the proceeds going to charity, benefiting the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and Kang’s own history shopping through eBay for his own personal car collection, hosting the event was a no-brainer.

“eBay is really important for my personal car builds because most of the cars that I mess with are pretty old and the parts are no longer offered by OEM [original equipment manufacturer]. So I use them for rare parts,” shares Kang in an interview with Den of Geek. “With eBay (and I’m not just saying this because I’m working with them), it’s 100% secure. Everyone has dreams of creating their dream build. For these rare parts, I always tell everybody to go on eBay because they’ll find it. You can find anything there and it’s always secure.”

More than just talking to Sung Kang about the eBay Most Wanted Collection event, we got to test-drive each of the four cars being sold through the auction for ourselves. The cars included in the collection are a 1975 Chevrolet Supernova, a 1992 BMW 325i convertible, a 2006 Dodge Viper, and a 2022 Chevrolet Corvette C8, each modified to be the coolest cars on the road. All four cars handled beautifully and could easily fit in the high-octane worlds of classic car games like Midnight Club or Need for Speed. Each of the auctions for the cars start at $6, making the event accessible to hardcore automotive aficionados and newcomers looking to dive into car culture alike.

In getting to drive the cars around Los Angeles streets and obstacle courses testing our skills, each of these cars handled marvelously, with the Corvette being a particular favorite of mine. Both the Corvette and the Nova have automatic transmissions while I had to remember my old manual transmission know-how to drive the BMW and Viper, having not had to drive a stick-shift for over a decade. In getting to drive these vehicles, I recalled my own love of cars, rooted in movies like Bullitt and James Bond in addition to games like Forza Horizon and, of course, Gran Turismo and Grand Theft Auto.

For Kang, his interest in cars began when he was a kid, struggling to fit in with his peers, before he encountered a Korean War veteran in his neighborhood who was constantly working on his 1969 Chevrolet Impala SS. The man became a mentor to Kang, patiently answering questions from the young boy visiting his garage, with Kang noting that this figure taught him to value things under the hood rather than just on the surface. These insights have informed in all walks of life as he’s grown older and into his career and something he tries to impart to others that he meets.

“Unbeknownst to me then, he was teaching me what an honor it is to be a caretaker for these old cars. That Impala was the best of him. He put his nostalgia, his history, his love, his passion into it and he was able to use it as a tool of mentorship for me,” Kang recalls. “You can apply those lessons in life, as I have as I’ve gotten older and become a filmmaker. Those are lessons that I try to pass down to other people that are getting into car culture today when I meet them.”

The eBay Most Wanted Collection Auction is as inclusive as these automotive events get, serving as a full on celebration of car culture, with a particular emphasis on the legacy of cars and gaming. This intersection of passionate fandoms is what the event is all about and that its proceeds are going to a great cause makes this a can’t-miss afternoon for anyone who’s ever dreamed about driving the super stylish rides that gamers enjoy in any number of high-octane titles. It’s this celebration of the community around cars that particularly appeals to Kang, something he’s gotten to experience on a global level through his work starring in the Fast & Furious movies.

“We as humans need something to connect with,” Kang observes. “We need a community. Maybe it’s because we all have a car story. Every single human being has been in a car at one time. But as opposed to the car, it’s the memory that you have in the car. That’s something that’s just global. I’ve realized through the Fast & Furious franchise, the privilege I’ve had is that I’ve gotten to meet the global car community. I’ve got a garage clicker to everyone’s car story. It’s been really cool.”

Folks, start your engines. The eBay Most Wanted Collection Auction is set to be the automotive sales event of the year with a killer starting bid.

The eBay Most Wanted Collection Auction on eBay Live at SEMA begins at 3pm ET on Thursday, November 5 through eBay Live. Those interested can check out the collection here and set a reminder.

Patrick Stewart: A Man Who Bridged Our Past with the Future

I only ever saw Sir Patrick Stewart once in person. It was on stage at the Cort Theatre in New York City, where he starred opposite his late-in-life best friend Sir Ian McKellen. Rife with humor, but also the crushing existential misery that makes Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot such a challenge, both for performers and often the audience, Stewart’s performance as Vladimir brought a sense of affectionate doddering to a man waiting for everything and nothing—life to have a point, or for death to end it.

Admittedly though, I was in the audience for a matinee particularly to observe Stewart and McKellen at the top of their craft. As has become an increasingly common phenomenon in 21st century theater, theirs was a casting that brought metatextual baggage and delight, with Stewart and McKellen having famously played frenemies for decades in the 20th Century Fox era of X-Men movies. While the characters of Charles Xavier (Stewart) and Erik Lehnsherr (McKellen) have existed on the page for 60 years, it was the real undying bromance of Stewart and McKellen, two classically trained stage actors, which gave their superhero material a gravitas still rare in the cape genre, be it comics or on-screen.

I’ve thought a bit about that over the last day while mourning the loss of Sir Patrick, who passed away this week at the age of 86. A thoroughly British performer who grew up in the provisional part of Yorkshire during the rough rebuilding years of the mid-20th century following the Second World War, Stewart discovered acting as an outlet and escape. He used it to quite literally reinvent himself. It’s thus always a marvel to remember so much of his refined diction and presence was a presence he honed over many years, particularly while working for the Royal Shakespeare Company during the 1960s and ‘70s.

Yet something I fear many take for granted when they think of Stewart’s most beloved roles—be it Jean-Luc Picard of the Starship Enterprise or the aforementioned Professor Xavier of the X-Men franchise—is that here was a genuinely classical actor who made us feel better about the future via reminding us of our past.

In some sense, this could be quite literal. Recall that Stewart worked with the Vivien Leigh (if you haven’t, please watch his lovely reverie of Scarlett O’Hara) and Orson Welles. He genuinely was a link to the glories of a different world. But in a grander notion, he is also a product of a theatrical tradition that goes back centuries. That includes Leigh and her tempestuous union with Sir Laurence Olivier, but it also goes back to the literal times of William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, dramatists who used the English language to reveal the joys and sorrows, and even the silliness of what it means to be alive.

One of Stewart’s earliest screen roles, and still among his best performances, is as Sejanus, the Roman Praetorian Prefect in I, Caudius, a man who might have begun his slow power grab with the noblest of intentions. Opposite the likes of Derek Jacobi as the titular “dumb” Roman Emperor, John Hurt as the far more sadistic Caligula, and Siân Phillips as a divinely evil empress-in-the-wings, Livia, the series is still a near obscene showcase of British thespians who’d rotate their seasons between the West End and the BBC.

Among this company, Stewart’s gift was always being able to find the pathos and empathy in the material, making hard, even morally dubious men like Sejanus, pitiable. Through the lens of Ancient Rome, it’s the stuff of tragedy, but in his most famous roles, he built a glistening vision of the future.

While Star Trek has always offered a vision of the 24th century that is shimmering in its promise of better days, and a case can easily be made that the original Star Trek series with Kirk, Spock, and Bones, will always reign supreme, it was Stewart’s Picard and the more egalitarian (if faintly patrician) tone he set on the Enterprise bridge that made Gene Roddenberry’s dream of tomorrow seem tangible. Star Trek: The Next Generation asked Stewart to partake in some occasionally ludicrous scenarios—did you see the episode where he went back in time and became Robin Hood?—but he always treated it with the weight and grandeur of Shakespeare or Beckett.

This might be even better crystallized in what he and Ian McKellen achieved in the original 2000 X-Men movie. Now a bit of a relic of its time, caught between the bombastic excesses of ‘90s action movies and the modern reinvention of the superhero subgenre that occurred a few years later, courtesy of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, the original X-Men trilogy is stuck somewhere between those poles, especially in its first installment. The characters wear the black leather of The Matrix and speak of mutation like this is a sci-fi thriller dystopia.

But it is again the performances, including Hugh Jackman but most magnanimously Stewart, that gives that first X-Men a dramatic heft and grounding that escapes many of the far more expensive superhero movies of today. The film’s dated and the special effects are stilted, as is its barebones screenplay, but Stewart makes the dream of Charles Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters seem miraculous; a genuine sanctuary for marginalized and ostracized children who sadly remain a timeless staple in any era.

On the comic book page, Xavier is actually quite aloof and a little bit cold, depending on the writer, but Stewart’s unbounded warmth and deep reservoirs of empathy blow past any such characterization. His Xavier is too kind and preternaturally fatherly to ever be a jerk, even when poor screenplay choices in the likes of X-Men 3 attempt to frame him that high-handed way.

It was almost superhuman how Stewart could imbue any material with hope and humanity. It came from deeply knowing our roots, at least in the great English dramaturgical tradition, and infusing it into stories of tomorrow. Whether science fiction television, or a superhero genre at its absolute nadir following the campy histrionics of Batman & Robin, Stewart saw it all with the potential of the Bard and made you believe in something better. He will be missed.

Mama Bear Explained: What Curry Barker’s New Horror Short Is Really About

This article contains spoilers for Mama Bear.

Horror fans’ latest obsession is back with a new short film. Just days before Halloween, Obsession director Curry Barker returned to his original format with Mama Bear, a five-minute short film that once again deals with the supernatural and a cursed relationship.

But unlike Obsession, Mama Bear isn’t quite as clear in its plot, let alone its themes. No need to waste a One Wish Willow hoping to understand it. We’re here to explain the story of Mama Bear and what it could mean.

Mama Bear Plot Synopsis

Mama Bear opens with blackness and the sounds of Jazzersize, a cheesy version of Van Halen’s “Jump” playing from an exercise show on the television. The first visual we see is that of Floyd (Jon Lee Richardson), a young man in a cleaning company uniform dozing on the couch of a stately home, a collection of neglected supplies waiting next to him. The camera lurches forward as Floyd’s phone starts buzzing, getting closer with each ring until its sleepy owner finally answers.

The voice on the other end immediately shocks Floyd awake, warning that a woman named Lacey (Katie Sarife) is coming to kill him because she doesn’t care about the justice system. A clearly confused Floyd demands an explanation, but the other person provides none, just simply ranting about how much he loves Floyd and believes in justice, even if Lacey does not. The voice pauses just long enough to let out something like a chuckle, which Floyd takes as indication that this is all a joke, allowing himself to exhale. The voice quickly disabuses him of that notion and demands to know Floyd’s location. When Floyd answers “the Wilsons,” the voice mutters, “We’ve got him,” and hangs up.

At this point, Floyd begins to take notice of all the signs he missed. He sees multiple missed calls from Lacey and his mother, and a voicemail from the former that consists of little more than screaming. Floyd’s phone dies before he can play more, and, while he searches for a way to charge, he sees three things: a trail of blood on the floor, a bloody wrench on the table, and a shadowy figure (Joshua Snyder) in the corner. A startled Floyd demands answers from the figure, who gives no answer, only takes disconcerting and unnatural shapes.

Then, Mrs. Wilson (Ericka Kreuz) arrives, chatting on her phone about an impending divorce and insisting that her ex can have “Milo” instead of the house. She’s shocked to see Floyd still there, and even more shocked by the blood and the presence of the shadowy figure. She shuts the door as Floyd tries to explain that he has no idea what’s going on, which she takes calmly but with concern, especially when the voice on the other end of the phone starts giving directions.

Before she can follow the advice of the voice, a gunshot blows open the door and in strides Lacey, still in her pajamas and her face distorted by tears and anger. She demands to know why Floyd did what he did, and Floyd insists he cannot answer and does not know. Unsatisfied, Lacey begins shooting wildly at Floyd, sending him crawling behind a couch. There, Floyd once again insists that he doesn’t know anything, but Lacey won’t hear it. She fires multiple times into the couch, cutting through Floyd.

That’s when the shadowy figure emerges, showing himself in full. He looks like Floyd, covered in blood and flashing a cruel smile. Confused, but realizing she killed the wrong person, Lacey screams as we cut to black.

That’s what happened on screen. But what happened offscreen?

The Meaning of Mama Bear

Clearly, Lacey thinks that Floyd killed somebody close to her, presumably with the bloody wrench, and instead of waiting for the law to sort it out, she wants to take vengeance into her own hands. Also, the crime was notable enough that others heard about it, including Floyd’s mom, his friends, and possibly Mrs. Wilson’s lawyer, who may have been coaching her on how to handle the fact that Floyd was still in her house.

Furthermore, the crime must be horrific enough that Floyd’s friends would turn against him, using the pretense of caring about him to find out about his location and hunt him down.

Nothing in the movie explains who Floyd killed, but the title of the movie gives a suggestion. “Mama Bear” is a colloquialism, popularized by former Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, to describe a mother who will do anything to protect her children. Palin and others use the phrase to imply righteous lawlessness, as if they will destroy anything and anyone who gets in between her and her children.

From that hint, and the anger and shock of everyone around them, it seems that Lacey thinks that Floyd killed her child, possibly a child they had together. That theory certainly tracks with Obsession, which also dealt with a relationship turned horrific. Furthermore, the relative young ages of the main characters heightens the anxieties around parenthood and other markers of adulthood, something touched on in Obsession and has served as the thematic driver of many great horror movies, including David Lynch‘s Eraserhead.

Other elements in the film reinforce this broken family theme, such as the brief inclusion of Mrs. Wilson. Mrs. Wilson clearly has some form of success, complete with a nice house and the money to pay someone to clean it. But she’s also in danger of losing the house as her marriage falls apart. There’s a real coldness when she offers up Milo in exchange, whether Milo is a pet or a child. Combine those points with the fact that Floyd’s mother has literally lost contact with her child.

Mama Bear also carries Obsession‘s concern with the loss of selfhood. Floyd obviously did not kill anyone. Instead, it was a demon or creature who looks just like Floyd, something that Floyd recognizes as himself, but isn’t him. Moreover, the way that the Other Floyd responds to his questions by contorting itself furthers that misrecognition, refusing to use words when it answers and only using strange, inexplicable gestures.

Finally, Mama Bear shows that Barker hasn’t lost his comic timing. Before making his feature film debut with Obsession, Barker made comedy shorts on the internet, mostly absurd sketches with perfect comic timing. As dark as Obsession often gets, it also has comedic elements, from the presence of Andy Richter to the moment when a wish for a million dollars comes true.

A New Obsession

Together, then Mama Bear is a short about the loss of self and the fear of family, all in an absurd and elliptical short film. Or it may not be any of those things. Where Obsession was a film that got overdiscussed and overanalyzed, with good reason, Mama Bear may be just more of an exercise, where the ambiguity is an intentional part of the final work. Perhaps we’re not supposed to know what happened.

Whatever the purpose or meaning, we can be sure of one thing. Mama Bear proves that Obsession wasn’t a fluke, and Curry Barker is already establishing himself as a master of horror.

Patrick Stewart Finally Became a Star Trek Captain in TNG’s First Great Episode

The Captain has left the bridge. Patrick Stewart has died at the age of 86. With his passing comes the opportunity to remember the remarkable body of work that he left behind, including roles on the stage and screen, ranging from genre works like Dune and X-Men to stirring reinterpretations of Ebenezer Scrooge and King Claudius. But for most of us here at Den of Geek, Stewart is synonymous with Jean-Luc Picard, Captain of the USS Enterprise on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Even after the character veered more toward action in the movies, Picard will forever be defined by his patrician presence, the impassioned and eloquent speeches he delivered about maintaining one’s duty or showing empathy for the unknown. He was an inspiring, compassionate figure, one fully distinct from his predecessor Jim Kirk and casting a shadow over Sisko, Janeway, and all who followed. And that persona did not come together until relatively late in the show, in the season two episode “The Measure of a Man.”

Unlike its predecessor, The Original Series, but very much like every series that followed, TNG did not start out strong. The first season is largely an embarrassment of reused scripts written for the abandoned TOS sequel series Star Trek: Phase II and failed ideas, such as the more feral Ferengi. Furthermore, many viewers, Trekkies and casuals alike, weren’t quick to accept a crew without Bones or Spock, and especially not a bald Englishman in the place of the dashing and toupee-wearing Jim Kirk.

The cast were not unaware of these problems. They all expressed frustration with the series and saw it as a dead end, most obviously Denise Crosby, whose character Tasha Yar dies late in the season. For his part, Stewart stayed in a hotel and kept his clothes packed during the shooting of the season, convinced that he would be fired at any second when the series was canceled. To that end, Stewart also distanced himself from the rest of the cast, who quickly developed a jovial sense of camaraderie. Stewart described himself as “a severe bastard” in his recent memoir Making It So, admitting with embarrassment that he chided his castmates for having fun.

All of this means that Star Trek: The Next Generation wasn’t Star Trek: The Next Generation in its first season. And even though the second season isn’t much better, it is better, as the cast begins to find its place. Geordi and Worf get promoted and assigned to engineering and security, respectively. Riker grows his beard. And Patrick Stewart establishes himself as the Captain Picard we know and love today.

That establishment comes with episode 9 of season 2, “The Measure of a Man,” written by Melinda M. Snodgrass and directed by Robert Scheerer. In “The Measure of a Man,” a Starfleet scientist named Bruce Maddox (Brian Brophy) arrives to study Data. An expert in the works of Data’s creator Dr. Noonien Soong, Maddox plans to disassemble Data to understand how he works, with the hopes of manufacturing more copies. When Data refuses, Maddox asserts that he is Starfleet material and not a person.

To save his crewman, Picard demands a military trial, one overseen by Captain Phillipa Louvois (Amanda McBroom), with whom he has a complicated past. While Picard takes the role of Data’s defense attorney, Louvois appoints Riker as Data’s prosecutor, and threatens him with sanctions if he does not argue to the best of his ability against his friend.

What follows is a fascinating bit of courtroom television, expanding the philosophical debates that Kirk, Spock, and McCoy would have in TOS and turning into a full-length trial. Maddox expresses his admiration for Data as a wonder of technology, Riker proves his point by pressing a button to shut off Data’s processors, and Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg) compares the dehumanization of a sentient being like Data to slavery.

Inviting Maddox to the stand as a hostile witness, Picard questions the three criteria used to establish personhood: intelligence, self-awareness, and consciousness. After proving that Data has intelligence and self-awareness, Picard runs into an issue, admitting that he doesn’t know how to measure consciousness. Rather than hide from this admission, Picard leans into it, pressing the fact that none of them there actually know how to measure consciousness. Moreover, because Maddox plans to create a thousand versions of Data, he’s effectively creating a new race. For that reason, Starfleet must be very careful when deciding on the consciousness and value of a new race.

“Your Honor, the courtroom is a crucible. In it we burn away irrelevancies until we are left with a pure product, the truth for all time,” he pleads, leaning slightly forward and softening his voice before moving into the final boom. “Your Honor, Starfleet was founded to seek out new life,” he points out, before turning toward Data and declaring, “Well, there it sits. Waiting. You wanted a chance to make law. Well, here it is. Make a good one.”

Stewart is captivating as Picard delivers the lines, shifting from a deep, resonating voice to quiet reservation. He makes his body huge while projecting his strongest arguments and pausing to give his audiences, both fictional and real, time to consider the Captain’s points.

In that scene, Stewart proves that he understands the stakes of his role. Picard’s argument doesn’t just carry on the Star Trek tradition of thoughtful, high-concept genre television. It gets to the heart of what sci-fi does so well, its contribution to the humanities, in its ability to ponder fundamental questions about the nature of humanity. Even in terrible episodes like “Code of Honor,” we all knew that Patrick Stewart was a great actor. But in “The Measure of the Man,” when he delivers that final defense, Stewart proved that he could meet and exceed the measure of a Captain.

Patrick Stewart Was the Leader We All Wanted to Believe In

Many performers get tagged with the label legend. Sometimes that feels a bit ambitious. But for Sir Patrick Stewart, it’s a word that doesn’t feel grand enough. A classically-trained actor from a working-class family in Yorkshire who spent decades with the Royal Shakespeare Company before mainstream fame came calling, his career spanned over six decades on stage and screen. His death at the age of 86 has left multiple generations of fans in mourning, whether they first discovered his talent on the bridge of the USS Enterprise, in the hallways of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, or at a Broadway theater. 

A quintessential British actor with a distinctive baritone voice (he dropped his Yorkshire accent in drama school), Stewart played all sorts of roles over the course of his long career. Some of his more offbeat choices included a flamboyantly gay interior designer (Jeffrey), the owner of a skinhead Nazi bar (Green Room), a debaucherous deputy CIA director (American Dad!) and King Arthur’s father-in-law (Excalibur). But his legacy for so many of us will always be tied to two surprisingly similar men: Jean-Luc Picard and Charles Xavier. 

Granted, Picard and Xavier are separated by at least a thousand years and several galaxies. One is a powerful telepathic mutant; the other is a French starship captain. But these men were not just compelling characters; they were genre-defining figures who helped reimagine what these kinds of stories—so often mocked or looked down upon—could be and do. It’s easy to see why Stewart was drawn to these roles, and why audiences everywhere responded so strongly to his performances in Star Trek: The Next Generation and the X-Men films. These are the kinds of leaders we wish to see in the world: Intelligent, empathetic, thoughtful, diplomatic, and morally upright. Men who believe in the better angels of humanity (or alien kind, depending on your perspective) and who exhort those around them to do the same. 

After the bombast of William Shatner’s James Kirk, Stewart’s Picard initially felt like something of a strange choice for The Next Generation’s captain. In fact, Stewart’s agent told him the role was unlikely to disrupt his stage career, since the show probably wouldn’t make it past a single season. Instead, it ran for seven and changed Stewart’s life, along with those of millions of fans in the process. As a character, Picard was remarkable for many reasons, but perhaps for nothing so much as his ability to model a different kind of masculinity in a genre space heavy with hot-headed action types. Picard’s leadership style skews more diplomatic and philosophical than belligerent, seasoned with a heavy dose of empathy and emotional intelligence. He’s the kind of captain you go to war for, but who would never ask you to. And Stewart consistently finds the humanity and vulnerability in a figure that, in a different sort of show, could have stayed remote, stoic, and untouchable.

Stewart’s presence in the X-Men films does much the same. The fact that he signed on to these movies at all feels like something of a miracle. After all, he was an actor who’d already irrevocably tied himself to one long-running franchise; why would he make the leap into another? But his decision to play Xavier had far-reaching consequences we’re still seeing onscreen today. His presence helped legitimize the entire concept of comic book movies as a serious cinematic enterprise in a way that no previous outing had yet managed. And while Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine may have been used as the face of the X-Men films, Stewart’s Charles was undoubtedly the franchise’s heart. (There’s a reason that Xavier is the character that somehow keeps being brought back to get killed off over and over again.)

Stewart’s performance softened many of Xavier’s more comic-accurate arrogant edges, adding a warmth and tenacity that made the character believable as both a mentor-ish father figure and a steadfast leader who refuses to give up—on his students, on humanity, on a helmet-wearing villain who was once his best friend. The franchise’s most outspoken idealist—occasionally bowed, but never broken—Xavier constantly advocates acceptance, forgiveness, patience, and second chances. “Just because someone stumbles and loses their way doesn’t mean they’re lost forever,” he tells his younger self in X-Men: Days of Future Past, a mantra that should feel preachy, but instead is a time-looped reminder of his own most sincerely held belief.

Even off-screen, Stewart was a consistent beam of light in a world (and industry) with far too much darkness. He purposefully used his fame and platform for good, speaking out against domestic violence, advocating for animals, and being a generally fabulous LGBTQ ally, often with his BFF Sir Ian McKellen by his side. He even took to reciting daily sonnets over social media during the COVID-19 pandemic in the hopes of offering calm and comfort during the global lockdowns. They say never meet your heroes, but many of the traits fans most loved about Stewart’s characters seemed clearly reflected in his real life. 

That Stewart and his work meant a great deal to many, many people is evidenced by the almost uncountable number of tributes pouring out onto the internet tonight, from former co-stars and friends to talk show hosts, advocacy organizations, brands, and fans from all over the world. But while we have lost a true legend, his impact will live on long after him, in every viewer his work touched, and in a pair of franchises that probably wouldn’t exist today without him. To paraphrase Winnie the Pooh author A.A. Milne, how lucky we were indeed to have had something that makes saying goodbye so hard. 

James Gunn Says DCU Harley Quinn Role Is Margot Robbie’s If She Wants It

Harley Quinn is causing chaos once again. But this time, it’s not her fault. After all, the entire universe changed around her. The first film version of Harley Quinn came to the screen in Suicide Squad, a little-loved movie that rode the superhero boom to a huge box office return. While that movie suffered from countless problems, everyone agreed that Margot Robbie was the perfect Harley Quinn. Everyone did not agree, however, about the quality of her (excellent, in this writer’s opinion) follow-up, Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn).

So divisive was Birds of Prey that people wondered if James Gunn would use the reboot of the DCU to recast the character, despite the fact that he worked with her on his first (pre-reboot) project, The Suicide Squad. In today’s DC Studios Showcase podcast, Gunn set the record straight. “Harley is a character I’m almost certainly going to use the DCU, and if Margot wants to play her, then I’ll bend over backwards to explain that in the world,” he declared. “But if she doesn’t, then I might have to go with someone else, where I don’t have to acknowledge what happened to Harley in this universe.”

The statement comes in a special episode in which Gunn, along with co-hosts and Peacemaker stars Jennifer Holland and Steve Agee, address questions about canon in the DCU. It’s certainly not the first time that Gunn has had to wrestle with the question, as even Den of Geek directly asked him about it, back when he described himself as “a balanced canon guy.”

But Harley Quinn poses a particularly tricky problem. Harley, of course, stems from television originally, first appearing on Batman: The Animated Series, where voice actor Arleen Sorkin set the character’s spunky attitude and Bronx accent. Harley immediately became the break-out hit of the show, and soon not only arrived in the comic books, but regularly carries her own series. She’s the main character of a beloved HBO animated show, where she’s voiced by Kaley Cuoco, and was recently played by Lady Gaga in Joker: Folie à Deux.

In other words, there are a lot of different takes to choose from when it comes to Harley Quinn. And Gunn has shown that he’s willing to go in interesting directions when it comes to recasting characters, most notably David Corenswet replacing Henry Cavill to play a more innocent Superman and Kyle Chandler replacing Ryan Reynolds to play an older Green Lantern.

But, thus far, The Suicide Squad has been largely canonical to Gunn’s DCU. He’s only made changes to that movie when its absolutely necessary, and has carried over nearly every event and character, a point demonstrated by the fact that Rick Flag Sr.’s hatred of Peacemaker, who killed his son in The Suicide Squad, led to the creation of Salvation, the prison planet at the center of next year’s Man of Tomorrow.

For Gunn, the bigger issue is Robbie’s talent as a performer. Throughout the podcast episode, he praises what she was able to bring to the role, while also acknowledging that her status has only grown since then. He may want her to play Harley one more time, but she may just not have room on her schedule to make it happen.

Which would be a shame. While other performers can and have brought something interesting to the character, Birds of Prey remains one of the most compelling takes on Harley Quinn, one that fully moved her out of the Joker’s shadow (but not yet quite to Poison Ivy’s side) in the public opinion. Her twisted fairytale princess sequences in The Suicide Squad are among the best scenes in Gunn’s filmography. They would both benefit from working on another Harley Quinn project again.

But as of right now, we just don’t know what will happen. Which is exactly how Harley wants us to feel.

VisionQuest Snuck in a Cameo That Harkens Back to Ultron’s Finest Hour

This article contains spoilers for VisionQuest season 1 episode 6 and Marvel’s What If…?.

Who watches the Watcher? Lots of eagle-eyed viewers of VisionQuest, apparently, because one of them took to social media to claim that a pair of glowing dots on a monitor shown in Episode 6 belonged to Uatu, that other-worldly being from Marvel lore who can only observe, and never interfere with, major events. Turns out, those viewers were right, prompting kudos from showrunner Terry Matalas on X.

However, the bigger question may be, “Who watches What If…“? Because those who did catch up with Marvel Animation‘s series about alternate realities would know that the Watcher has very good reason to check in on Ultron, reasons that may affect the rest of the MCU.

In the comics, Uatu the Watcher is best associated with one of his first significant appearances, arriving with the coming of Galactus in 1968’s Fantastic Four #48–50. Since then, the Watcher’s presence is synonymous with a major event, some shift that would shake the very foundations of the universe.

However, the Watcher’s most regular appearances came in the anthology series What If…?, which began publication in 1977. In each issue of What If…?, the Watcher would greet the reader and invite them to join in observing another reality, one in which events from the mainline Marvel universe happen slightly differently, resulting in major changes: What if Wolverine killed the Hulk in their first meeting? What if Captain America became the President of the United States? What if Uncle Ben had lived?

The three-season Marvel Animation series on Disney+ What If…? followed this model. In each episode, the Watcher (voiced by Jeffrey Wright) shows viewers variations in the multiverse, in which T’Challa becomes Star-Lord instead of Peter Quill, or Peggy Carter takes the super-soldier serum instead of Steve Rogers. Like the comics, most episodes of What If…? were just fun little exercises in canon, enjoyable but forgettable.

However, the first season did involve an interesting, multi-episode arc, one that dealt directly with Ultron and the Watcher. In the penultimate episode, “What If… Ultron Had Won?,” the Watcher observes a world where the events of Avengers: Age of Ultron play out differently. Here, he defeats the Avengers and uses nuclear weapons to destroy humanity. So when Thanos arrives, seeking the Mind Stone in Vision, he gets killed by Ultron, who takes the Infinity Gauntlet for himself.

With the Gauntlet in hand, Ultron becomes aware of the Watcher, and the multiverse itself. Ultron attacks the Watcher, drives him from the Observation Plane, and begins an attack on the multiverse. Of course, the attack gets repelled in the season 1 finale, “What If… the Watcher Broke His Oath?”, in which the Watcher agrees to interfere (his comic book counterpart does this a lot), and assemble heroes and villains from across realities to fight back, finally destroying Ultron.

Which brings us back to VisionQuest. Since What If…? arrived on screens, the Watcher has been a fun easter egg in MCU projects, showing up to see the destruction of Genosha in season 1 of X-Men ’97 or observing the death of Vanessa Fisk in Daredevil: Born Again‘s second season. In VisionQuest, he appears in one of the monitors that Vision’s AI’s use to see how Ultron courts Jocasta, sealing their relationship with a promise to destroy humanity.

Is the Watcher watching because he’ll always show up when a Marvel TV show starts moving into its final act? Or is he here because he intimately knows just how dangerous Ultron can be? We’ll have to wait until the final two episodes of VisionQuest to find out if the Watcher’s watching is worthwhile.

VisionQuest streams new episodes every Wednesday on Disney+.

Breaking Bad’s Giancarlo Esposito Pitches a Gus Fring American Dream Origin Show

Not even the biggest Mr. Show fan would have expected Saul Goodman to be the Breaking Bad character to get a spinoff series. And not even the biggest Breaking Bad fan would have expected Better Call Saul to be such a nuanced, rich series, equal (if not exceeding) the show that proceeded it. Most would have expected a spinoff to go to the series compelling villain Gus Fring.

Giancarlo Esposito agrees. Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Esposito admitted, “I would’ve loved to have examined that part of Gustavo’s life. If there were a [spinoff] show — which I, in my brain, have already created — you’d see that there’s the other side of Gus.” He even had a title for the show, dubbing it “The Rise of Gus,” and explained that it would reveal “where [Gus] came from in Chile and how he was a made man there, but he was made in politics. He could have become the president running the country, but he decided to give all that up to become self-made in America.” Given that synopsis, it sounds like The Rise of Gus would be a companion piece to both Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul.

When we first met Gus Fring in the episode “Mandala” from Breaking Bad‘s second season, he already appeared to have achieved a type of American Dream. The courteous man who met with Walter White to inquire about the quality of the chicken served by his restaurant, Los Pollos Hermanos, seemed well-put-together and in control, successful in his business. Over the next seasons of Breaking Bad and in Better Call Saul, we saw just how much Gustavo Fring had truly achieved, coming from Chile to the United States to take control of the area’s drug smuggling trade.

But if The Rise of Gus were to happen, it would fully flesh out the story, certainly borrowing from classic crime narratives such as Scarface and The Godfather, stories about people who come to America and find their dreams can be fulfilled… as long as they work outside of the law.

Such a story would pair nicely with Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. Creator Vince Gilligan has never been secretive about the fact that both shows grapple with the American Dream, albeit cynically. Even at the start of Breaking Bad, Walter White is a nondescript science teacher who must turn to crime when the American healthcare system fails to meet his medical needs. His assent as Heisenberg happens outside of legitimate, legal channels, an assent made more striking by revelations about his work at Grey Matter Technologies.

Better Call Saul complicates things even further, showing how a talented lawyer like Jimmy McGill can’t find an ethical way to use his talents, nor can his even more intelligent (and less self-destructive) brother Chuck. As Jimmy transforms into Saul Goodman, he achieves some degree of stability, if not quite success. And even that goes away with the fall of Heisenberg’s Empire.

We may know the ultimate explosive end that Gus Fring meets, but everything up unto that point plays like the paradigmatic American Dream. Gus comes from another country with nothing in his pockets. Through his brilliance and hard work, he makes opportunities for himself. He takes unglamorous but steady work in the fast food industry to subsidize his dream, and keeps it around to help him expand his earnings. No chance goes wasted, no connection forgotten. He realized everything that America promises.

It’s just that he had to be a criminal to do it, just like Heisenberg, just like Saul Goodman.

At this point, it seems like The Rise of Gus will only exist inside Esposito’s head. But were it to be a reality, Vince Gilligan’s tryptic would be a coherent, and damning, look at America’s promises.

Brian Tyree Henry On New ‘Spaghetti Western Steampunk’ Anime Bass X Machina

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

Brian Tyree Henry has never been afraid to let his geek flag fly. “When I took this show, I remember thinking, ‘I hope I get Black nerd street cred,’” Henry admits. “I’m a Black nerd. I’m a total geek. I love cosplay. I love Comic-Con. I love comics. I love animation. I love anime. I love it. I love it. I love it.” That being said, despite Henry’s enthusiasm, it hasn’t always been easy to find representation in these forms of fandom.

“What I’ve noticed about some of these arenas is that they don’t really reflect how much we really love it. It doesn’t often feel like we are part of the narrative of that story,” he adds about representation. “What’s really great about Bass X Machina is that it’s existing in this land that we created and that’s so intertwined in such a wonderful way. They’re all trying to figure out how to exist in this world that’s denied them something. I’m hoping that fans, episode to episode, can root for somebody that looks like them.”

Bass X Machina, an upcoming animated series from Studio Mir that’s set to hit Netflix on Nov. 3, is described by Henry as a “crazy Spaghetti Western, steampunk punk rock” adventure. The series, which Henry executive produces and stars in, follows a heightened version of Bass Reeves, the first Black deputy U.S. Marshal, who fights for justice and his family in a wayward world that’s steeped in danger. The eclectic blend of genres on display in Bass X Machina brings to mind iconic anime space Westerns like Trigun, Cowboy Bebop, and Outlaw Star. It hits all the right bases for a challenging experiment that doesn’t feel the need to limit its options, which is also part of what makes it so exciting.

“I always start with my inner nerd with every project that I do,” explains Henry. “I’m like, ‘What does my inner geek want? How do I feed him? How do I shut him up for at least a day or two?’ and this will do it. I’m quite excited to release Bass to the world.” In the case of Bass X Machina, it’s been a three-year-long journey to let Bass Reeves loose and establish a new normal for anime heroes.

“I want Bass X Machina to create space for other Black nerds like myself who maybe don’t really feel like they’re seen,” he continues. “I’m hoping that Bass really creates a space and a lane that brings out more stories like this, more adventures like this, and more heroes like this. I want it to speak to Black audiences, but I want it to be global as well. I want people to be excited about seeing something so fresh.”

Clearly, Bass X Machina isn’t lacking in ambition, either on-screen or off. It’s a madcap mix of influences, styles, and spectacles that keep the audience’s heart racing from the jump.

“We’re gonna make you feel stuff,” teases Henry. “We can say that we really went there and created this badass, funky eclectic brand-new way to tell a story of this historical figure that really existed. And where else better to do it than animation?”

“Could a live-action version of this exist? Sure,” Henry adds. “But I think that in the world of animation seeing characters like this exist is so necessary, especially in the time that we’re in now. Animation has always, in my mind, been a form of protest against the norm. It can speak and reach people that you never thought would listen to certain beliefs. Animation just has a further reach than if it were live-action.”

When it comes to Bass X Machina’s animation, South Korea’s Studio Mir (Devil May Cry, Kong: Skull Island) has gone above and beyond with its work here. Meticulous visuals, radical displays of power, and brutal battles punctuate every episode.

“Each episode is a final boss,” jests Henry in reference to the endless obstacles that Reeves faces on his blood-soaked rampage. “Every story needs a hero and every story needs a villain. The crazy thing about this show is that there are so many villains. Post-Civil War has a lot of villains in it. You’re watching Bass fight through most of that.”

And on the topic of the series’ excessive brutality, Henry explains that blood is essential to Bass X Machina’s storytelling. “The overarching theme of the show is about blood. Blood ties. Blood loss. Bloodshed. What it all means. What it really means to be blood. There will be blood this season.”

This contemplative carnage would still hit hard if Bass X Machina were a complete work of fiction. However, it’s even more evocative due to how it holds up a distorted mirror to society.

Explains Henry, “We’re dealing with real-life things. We’re dealing with segregation. We’re dealing with oppression. We’re dealing with all these atrocities that happened in this country at this time. After the Civil War was a time of Reconstruction, but it was also covered in so much blood. So much loss.” Henry is honored to communicate that through genre-bending animation.

Henry couldn’t be more thrilled over Studio Mir’s work on Reeves’ revenge, but there’s another aspect of Bass X Machina that he argues is just as important to its identity. “The music is one of my favorite parts,” gushes Henry over Janelle Monáe’s Wondaland collective and their bold work on the series. “We’re using Indigenous music, drums, and sounds. We’re using African instrumentation. We’re also pulling from the funk era, using jazz and hip-hop, and blending tones to really challenge what Westerns can sound like.” Henry praises Wondaland for not just rising to the storytelling and animation’s level, but actively elevating it. “Do not skip the theme song, I promise you. You’re going to want to watch it every episode.”

Brian Tyree Henry couldn’t be prouder of the series they’ve put together and for audiences to finally see Bass Reeves in action. He’s also hopeful that this is just the start of many adventures to come for his metal-armed lawman. “There are so many stories that are waiting for Bass,” he says. “There are so many things to discover.”

Bass X Machina premieres Nov. 3 on Netflix.

The 13 Coolest Looking Werewolves in Movie History

There are certain rules you need to know to survive a horror movie. Jamie Kennedy’s Randy Meeks codified them for a post-slasher world in the 1990s via Scream. But if you’re a fan of far more classic cinema—or the lore that inspired it in the case of Robert Eggers, director of this Christmas’ Werwulf—then there are even more foundational commandments that should be obeyed: Beware the moon, stick to the road, and whatever you do, don’t go investigate that howling out on the moors.

More than any other mythical creature of legend this side of vampires, the werewolf is the monster we most associate with spooky season and Halloween. The concept goes back to the Ancient Greeks if not further, with the dread of transforming into a beast tapping into something literally primal… and perhaps seductive to a certain point-of-view. In the last century of moviemaking, the canon has been especially crystallized: the silver bullet (or weapon), the fear of wolfsbane, and of course the full moon. And yet, despite that general universality, the look of the werewolf has evolved and changed through the decades, with bipedal and quadruped lycanthropes alike earning their fans and detractors. But which is, purely aesthetically speaking, the coolest looking furry monster?

This Halloween, we’re going to determine exactly that with the below ranking of the fiercest, scariest, or just outright fun werewolf designs to bare their fangs on the big screen…

13. Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)

We start this one with a cheat since, technically, Gary Oldman plays a vampire and not a werewolf in the misleadingly titled Bram Stoker’s Dracula. However, at the same time, Francis Ford Coppola was faithful in acknowledging that Irish author Stoker really did conflate vampirism and werewolfism as one in the same in his book, as did some folklorists before him. On the page, the literary Count Dracula would seem to turn into a literal wolf from time to time. But in this film, Coppola being Coppola, means Oldman’s Count turns into a bestial horndog.

The makeup team of Greg Cannon, Michele Burke, and Matthew W. Mungle won an Oscar for a reason on this movie, and there is something appropriately retro in the modern age of prosthetics and dawning CG that Coppola essentially did a throwback design to Jack Pierce and The Wolf Man, except he covered Gary Oldman head-to-toe in fur since this monster is as much a lothario as he is lethal. Fun fact: he’s also the werewolf design that most haunted modern horror director Eggers, who said “I saw him ravaging Sadie Frost on that bench, and I was way too young to see that, and it was pretty scary.”

12. Van Helsing (2004)

For readers who were an impressionable age in 2004, we suspect this could be the gold standard. There’s no denying that the general design of the Wolfman in Stephen Sommers’ Van Helsing is fun, combining the far more lupine features of modern movie werewolves with the bipedal posture of its namesake.

That blend of old and new earns Van Helsing a place on this list, but honestly the creature is just a little too garish in its CG appearance to be higher up in the ranking. Whether it’s the early Wolfman that Hugh Jackman puts down in the movie or the midnight-hued iteration our heroic Van Helsing in turn becomes at the end, both look more like cartoons than creatures of terror. 

11. Cabin in the Woods (2012)

Here we admit is a deeper cut considering how minor the werewolf is in the absolute monster mash madness of director Drew Goddard’s Cabin in the Woods. Beginning ostensibly as a satire of the “deviltry in the wilderness” branch of horror—think Evil Dead or The Hills Have Eyes—the film, which is co-written by Joss Whedon, turns into a cacophony of every trope and cliché in horror, complete with killer clowns, unicorns, and even an honest to Cthulu merman.

In this context, the werewolf gets both a small but pivotal role, as it and not-Pinhead are the third act creature reveals that let our surviving heroes realize how doomed they are. The werewolf also gets to be the beastie that later seals that fate when it mauls Kristen Connolly’s not-so-nice Final Girl in the movie’s blood-soaked climax. And as realized purely with prosthetics and animatronics, it’s pretty badass. Pity it’s not in the movie more.

10. The Werewolf of London (1935)

If we were ranking purely based on iconic status, Henry Hull’s grandaddy of Hollywood lycanthropes would be closer to the top. There is something, indeed, unforgettable about what Jack Pierce admirer Rick Baker calls “the Elvis of Werewolf Designs” because of the monster’s widow-peak rising back into a quasi-pompadour. This is apparently because actor Hull did not want to sit in makeup artist Pierce’s chair for as long as Boris Karloff did to become the Frankenstein Monster or the Mummy a few years earlier.

Furthermore, the screenplay of Werewolf of London is also a curiosity. Before its far more famous Universal Pictures stablemate redefined the werewolf archetype six years later, this film points to how nebulous the mythology around werewolves still tended to be. So Hull’s lycan can (at times) speak and otherwise strategize when he dons a cap and scarf to conceal his furry intentions. He’s more Jack the Ripper or Mr. Hyde than a bestial id, more man than wolf. But that adds to his charm as being a kind of outlier in the subgenre to this day.

9. Curse of the Werewolf (1961)

Did you know Oliver Reed was a werewolf? Of course you did, but we mean he played a literal one too for Hammer Studios! Curse of the Werewolf is a strange work. It’s loosely adapted from the far better (if still grotesque) novel The Werewolf of Paris by Guy Endore, but its medieval concerns about generational evil and the sins of the father being passed down are turned mostly into misjudged Hammer titillation mingling with stories of rape and incest.

Be that as it may, this was Hammer’s one stab at the werewolf movie, and when it finally gets to the moment where Reed wolfs out, it is indeed a B-movie delight with Roy Ashton’s more barbaric makeup design vaguely evoking Lon Chaney Jr. while adding sharper fangs, heavier fur, and of course brighter red blood, as is Hammer’s wont. It’s an iconic look for the bipedal wolfman that needed to be in this movie more.

8. Dog Soldiers (2002)

What if we did Aliens but with werewolves in Scotland? That very well could have been the elevator pitch for Neil Marshall’s Dog Soldiers, a movie where elite British soldiers attempt to get a little practice done in a remote corner of the Scottish Highlands, and instead find themselves trapped in a house surrounded by lycanthropes. There is just a bare minimum of emphasis on transformation or the tragedy of becoming a monster. Otherwise, this is balls-to-the-wall, guns blazing action-horror.

That remove from typical werewolf movie tropes is perhaps why the monster designs are so joyfully gnarly. With a minimum of fur on the legs, but a maximum amount on prosthetic masks that look as if a horse joined a glam metal rock band, these things are devoid of all humanity or reality. They also look sick as all hell when trying to burst through a window like a full-moon xenomorph.

7. Underworld: Evolution (2006)

If we’re being honest, the Underworld movies haven’t aged great. Definite products of a mid-2000s, post-Matrix and concurrent nu-metal leather aesthetic, they’re a ridiculous product of their time—although one with a bemusing sense of commitment to them, with the casts being littered with Shakespearean thespians spouting pseudo-Shakespearean nonsense. And the early installments at least remembered their first and most important edict: it must all look kewl!

The werewolf designs in the original Underworld by Patrick Tatopoulos are the more original, with these lycans (and henceforth only “lycans” since someone at Screen Gems apparently deemed the term “werewolf” to be goofy) looking closer to hairless cats than canines. But it’s in the sequel film Evolution that we get the best of both worlds. The main lycan in question, a tundra-hued polar bear of a menace named William, is nothing short of fantastic in appearance. In the same era as Van Helsing and Twilight’s all-CGI werewolves, here was a throwback to ‘80s prosthetic mastery; a beast purely defined by wolfish features that can switch between two and four legs depending on the situation. If only the rest of the movie could’ve been just lycan this.

6. The Company of Wolves (1984)

Admittedly this one is another bit of a cheat where we’re ranking for the extended, mid-transformation appearance more than the final shape, which in this Neil Jordan cult classic essentially becomes just a gray wolf. Nevertheless, entire scenes are played out before that moment, particularly near the end with Micha Bergese’s worldly French traveler revealing what big, lustful eyes he really has for Sarah Patterson’s young Rosaleen and her little red-riding hood.

All unsubtle Freudian metaphor for the dangers of dawning desire, particularly for young women raised in a patriarchal society, there’s something simple but psychologically profound about the werwolf in this film being a bare-chested predator with long hair, preternaturally luminous eyes, and very, very big teeth. It might not win an Fangoria award, but it is perhaps the most threatening silhouette on this entire list. 

5. The Wolfman (2010)

Rick Baker might just be the Michelangelo of werewolves. He certainly designed the definitive transformation for one in the unforgettable An American Werwolf in London. He also riffed on his idol Jack Pierce’s “Elvis Werewolf” design when he lightly turned Jack Nicholson into a furry via Wolf (1994). Baker even gave us Michael Jackson’s were-cat in the “Thriller” music video! But it was right before retirement that he returned one more time to the screen for the most pure tribute to Pierce in his career, The Wolfman (2010).

A flawed but, we’d argue, fascinating movie, this troubled production featured an absolute flawless throwback to early and mid-20th century werewolf movies when Baker turned Benicio del Toro into an even hairier monster prowling the streets of Victorian London. It is probably the most sophisticated iteration of the classic movie monster silhouette. The claws are longer, the fangs scarier, and the clothes far more ripped and bloodied. Yet it is perhaps so well-done—and also so clearly a mask near the end when del Toro needs to emote more than pure rage while circling Emily Blunt—that we keep it a little lower than its paterfamilias namesake.

4. Ginger Snaps (2000)

Curiously there are not a lot of female werewolves in fiction. Be it movies, TV shows, or books, even subcultures of lycanthropes are typically depicted by male-dominated demographics. Think Twilight, Underworld, Van Helsing. That makes Ginger Snaps doubly special considering it not only centers on a she-wolf of the Great White, Canadian North, but it uses the concept as a coming-of-age allegory for young women in general and those who might identify as queer or LGBTQ+ in particular.

It is probably for that reason the designs in Ginger Snaps are so outside-the-box. We admit we’re ranking more for the mid-metamorphosis appearance of Ginger Fitzgerald (Katharine Isabelle), who spends most of the film becoming her bloody best self after being mauled by a werewolf that scented out her first menstrual cycle. Midway through the film, Ginger embraces her bad self with a monstrous face and ghostly white-streaked hair cascading in waves down her face. Later on, she is replaced by a full bear-sized quadruped which also is pretty damn nifty as well as it tries to spread the liberation.

3. An American Werewolf in London (1981)

If we were ranking werewolf transformations, this would be number one with a bullet, silver or otherwise. In fact, it is! But if we are ranking purely based on the scientific metric of “what looks coolest,” we suppose we have a bit of a bias for bipedal beasties, as we’ll get to in a moment. Nevertheless, there is no denying that Rick Baker and John Landis’ vision for a four-legged “hound from hell!” is the definitive rendition of a quadruped werewolf.

Entirely the creation of animatronics and creature-shop design in his final form, this culmination of David Kessler’s carnivorous lunar activities is a tour de force in the golden age of horror movie special effects—as well as the first film to win a competitive Oscar for makeup, albeit more so for the aforementioned transformation sequence. Once David (who is played by David Naughton) is fully wolfed out though, his eyes glow with yellow anger, a single fang is big enough to crush an entire jugular, and the way the creature is only teased while stalking down a tube station at midnight is the stuff of nightmares. By the time he is turning Piccadilly Circus into a slaughterhouse, we view the creature in all its glory. And you know what? It still holds up.

2. The Howling (1981)

Here is what I’m sure is a controversial take. While An American Werwolf in London is the winner in terms of transformation sequences and arguably quality between 1981’s two seminal lycanthrope flicks (or three if you count Wolfen), Joe Dante’s The Howling is still a hair-raising triumph. And… if we’re being honest… the werewolves are kinda cooler looking.

That might be sacrilege around some parts, but Rick Baker’s protege Rob Bottin did a phenomenal job in his own right staging the second best transformation sequence in cinema history. Also by nature of Dante going for bipedal werewolves, Dante/Bottin’s have a more classical appearance, even deliberately evoking the Walt Disney design of the Big Bad Wolf from 1933’s “Three Little Pigs” short, which Dante uncomfortably makes explicit by intercutting the cartoon with a sequence of his own Big Bad Wolf brutally murdering the film’s most proactive character. Furthermore, we get two radically different werewolf designs for the price as one when Dee Wallace’s heroine also transforms in the movie’s final scene into the most teary-eyed tragic riff on the famed Jack Pierce Wolf Man design out there. Speaking of which….

1. The Wolf Man (1941)

This will undoubtedly earn ire from some corners, but sometimes it’s a classic for a reason. Jack Pierce’s legendary application of yak hair to Lon Chaney Jr.’s face, hands, and feet is not the scariest werewolf we’ve ever seen, nor the most ferocious. But for the better part of a half century, it was the yardstick they were all measured against. From Oliver Reed to Michael Landon in I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1956), to the entire cottage industry Paul Naschy created in Spanish Wolf Man knockoffs, this was the gold standard.

So when it comes to spooky season, there remains little as charming or seasonally appropriate as the shots of Chaney in his full furry regalia, stomping through fog-choked soundstages and their spray painted trees, looking for a throat to rip. By maintaining Chaney’s physical form, eyes, and even his clothes, we see both the actor’s humanity, as well as the tangible rage only someone familiar with losing himself to demons can conjure. There’s a devilish sense of fun to this werewolf, as well as a crueler energy, both pitiable and perilous. Nearly 90 years later it still shapes how we hear the call of the moon.

The 10 Best ‘80s Action Movies

Everything was bigger in the 1980s. Chalk it up to an economic boom in the U.S., to reactionary turns under the Reagan and Thatcher administrations, to the slick wheeling and dealing of super producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer. Whatever the reasons, moviegoers wanted to see big guns, big muscles, and bigger explosions on the big screen, and action movies were happy to deliver.

Even better, action movies delivered that mayhem at a level of excellence and consistency we have not seen since the end of the decade. Which means that it’s going to be a knock-down, drag-out fight to try to limit ourselves to 10 ten best action movies of the ‘80s. We’re going to include movies that are great by any standard alongside movies that are really great at blowing stuff up. And if we miss a few of your favorites, well, feel free to keep the explosions going in the comment section. Just make sure you drop a stone-cold one-liner when you shoot us down.

Mad Max 2/The Road Warrior (1981)

As this list will show, things get big and bloated as the 1980s go on. But the first movie on this list is lean and mean and all the better for it. The success of 1979’s Mad Max gave director George Miller, working with co-writers Terry Hayes and Brian Hannant, means to certainly expand on the post-apocalyptic world for his sequel. Yet, even as Mad Max 2 takes the characters fully into a wasteland only hinted at in its predecessor, it still retains the restraint that made the first movie so striking.

The Road Warrior (as it was called in the U.S., to avoid confusing viewers who didn’t see its predecessor) finds former cop Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson) wandering the desert, having lost not just his wife and child, but all of civilization. Along with the odd Gyro Captain (Bruce Spence), Max befriends a group of settlers, and comes to their aid when they are menaced by Lord Humungus (Kjell Nilsson), the Ayatollah of Rock and Rolla. Between its vivid characters, intense setting, and expertly-shot fight sequences, Mad Max 2 more than stands alongside its big-budget counterparts of the era.

Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985)

First Blood is one of Sylvester Stallone‘s best movies. It’s a tense thriller and a sympathetic look at a Vietnam vet who gets hassled by cops on a power trip, who don’t take kindly to a drifter in their midst. It’s a great film, but not for this list. For this list, we turn to the sequel Rambo: First Blood Part II, an inferior movie in every way, except for one: it is an incredible, unbelievable, utterly ridiculous action movie.

Where First Blood showed how war left John Rambo an empty shell of a man, with no place in civil society, First Blood Part II flushes all that away to let him win the Vietnam War for America. Upon learning of POWs still in Vietnam, Rambo suits up and goes back to fight, slaughtering all who stand in the way. Morally reprehensible and narratively implausible though it may be, First Blood manages to entertain, thanks to the tight script, credited to Stallone and James Cameron, and George P. Cosmatos maximalist direction.

Commando (1985)

By no standard is Commando the best action movie of the 1980s. But by every metric, it is the most action movie of the 1980s. The screenplay by master of the excessive form Steven E. de Souza, working on a story by Matthew Weisman and comic book scribe Jeph Loeb, is filled with all sorts of nonsense, that begins—but by no means ends—with naming Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s character John Matrix—and director Mark L. Lester brings it to life in all its absurd glory.

The movie begins with Matrix seemingly left his life of violence behind him, living in tranquility with his daughter Jenny (Alyssa Milano). But when members of his former unit start dying, and especially when Jenny gets kidnapped, Matrix must go back into action. And go into action he does, battling an entire army led by his former compatriot Bennett (Vernon Wells) and by General Arius (Dan Hedaya), the dictator of fictional Latin American country Val Verde, whom Matrix helped depose. Glorious, explosive nonsense follows.

Police Story (1985)

For Americans, no ’80s action movie list would be complete without the names Schwarzenegger and Stallone (it is complete without Norris, as you can see). But when we take the entire world into consideration, then the list must include the name Jackie Chan, easily the most exciting and innovative screen action star of the decade. And in 1985, Chan released perhaps his best movie, Police Story, a film so rich with action that one of its most jaw-dropping sequences involves the main character simply answering phone calls.

Of course, nothing is simple with Chan, a genius of the form who combined Buster Keaton style physical comedy with Bruce Lee’s big-screen prowess. Those skills are fully on display in Police Story, directed by Chan from a script he co-wrote with Edward Tang. The story of Police Story is pretty simple, as it focuses on Sergeant Chan Ka-Kui of the Royal Hong Kong Police Force breaking up the grip that master criminal Chu Tao (Chor Yuen) holds on the city, getting in trouble with his girlfriend (Maggie Cheung) and Chu Tao’s secretary (Brigitte Lin) along the way. But the basic plot leaves plenty of room for the thing we really want to see in a Jackie Chan movie: incredible stunts performed in perfect clarity by the star himself.

Aliens (1986)

In Alien, a group of working-class space-truckers found themselves outmatched by a xenomorph, a perfect organism. In Aliens, humanity fights back, thanks to the bold, brash, and unbelievably-armed space marines. Yes, they mostly die horribly, their guns unable to match the hordes of xenomorphs. But still, they look really cool doing it.

That’s the magic trick of Aliens, a film that manages to feel of a piece with Ridley Scott‘s “haunted house in space” movie while also serving as the paradigmatic action flick. James Cameron gives a masterclass in efficiently introducing colorful characters, making the various Marines who join Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) feel distinctive with just a few seconds of screen time. He then continues to create set pieces that thrill, allowing the xenomorphs to remain terrifying, even as they get chewed up by chain gun fire. Ironically, Aliens manages to increase the threat of the xenomorphs precisely because they’re fighting soldiers in an action flick.

Lethal Weapon (1987)

The buddy cop genre had existed long before the ’80s, with variations like the forerunner buddy cop movie Freebie and the Bean, the buddy criminal flick Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, and the buddy cop/criminal outing 48 Hrs. setting the stage. But Lethal Weapon brought all the pieces together, fully realizing what previous movies only hinted at.

Director Richard Donner and writer Shane Black come together to tell the story of by the book veteran officer Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover, only 41 at the time, yet already too old for that shit), forced to team with troubled Vietnam vet Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson) to take down a drug smuggling operation based on Riggs’ former paramilitary unit. The combination of street grit and military action gives Lethal Weapon an energy all its own, one carried along by the rat-a-tat banter of the two leads, just as propulsive as any machine gun fire.

Predator (1987)

By now, pairing xenomorphs and Predators has become a tired and obvious trope. But back in 1987, the first Predator movie set the stage by taking the model Cameron set in his film and amping it up to 1000. The first half of Predator takes the introduction of the Space Marines in Aliens and expands it to a glorious symphony of violence, as a special forces team led by musclemen Dutch (Schwarzenegger) and Dillon (Carl Weathers) lays waste to Latin American rebels and an entire jungle.

From there, however, director John McTiernan, working from a script by Jim Thomas and John Thomas, shifts gears, turning toward sci-fi horror. The mighty American military men find themselves under attack by what we now know today as a Yautja, an alien hunter who challenges itself against the strongest opponents. The conceit allows Predator to play like the ultimate action movie, making its big, buff heroes so imposing that they draw challengers from the stars.

Robocop (1987)

Like Aliens and Predator, Robocop mixes science fiction into the action movie mix. But unlike those movies, it has a satirical edge that adds depth to the mayhem, even as it critiques it. The first Hollywood movie from Dutch provocateur Paul Verhoeven, working from a script by Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner, Robocop is both a satisfying action movie about police officer who becomes a literal crime-fighting machine and an indictment of America’s love for retributive violence.

Set in the near future, Robocop stars Peter Weller as Alex Murphy, a good cop and family man who gets transferred from his relatively quiet precinct to the apocalyptic Old Detroit. After being slaughtered by gangster Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith), Murphy gets repurposed into Robocop, a tool of unethical company OCP masquerading as a powerful force for good. Verhoeven has no use for subtlety, making Robocop’s attacks on corporate America and our lust for violence clear. But Verhoeven also knows how to shoot a memorable action scene, making Robocop an entertaining lecture.

Bloodsport (1988)

With yet another Street Fighter movie failing to live up to expectations, the 1988 Cannon release Bloodsport looks better every year. Bloodsport may star Jean-Claude Van Damme, the most physically adept but dramatically inert of the ’80s action heroes; it may draw inspiration from a totally made-up event concocted by fabulist Frank Dux; and it may be nothing more than a series of one-on-one fight scenes cobbled together – but Bloodsport manages to be pure entertainment, something no other tournament movie seems to get right.

Directed by Newt Arnold and written by Christopher Cosby, Mel Friedman, and Sheldon Lettich, Bloodsport follows Dux (Van Damme) as he participates in the underground fighting tournament Kumite. In between the bouts, Dux encounters reporters and government operatives, and befriends a galoot of an American wrestler (Donald Gibb), all building to a showdown with the deadly Chong Li (Bolo Yeung). Bloodsport isn’t deep or complex, but apparently its clean and entertaining model is almost impossible to emulate.

Die Hard (1988)

Nearly every other movie on this list features a musclebound hero, someone so built and ripped that we immediately clock them as the person who will still be standing at the end. That alone was enough to make Bruce Willis‘ take on New York cop John McClane surprising, even if modern viewers don’t know him mostly as a comedy star, as Die Hard‘s first audiences did. Director John McTiernan, working from a script by Jeb Stuart and Steven E. de Souza, turned Willis’ unlikely status into the movie’s greatest strength, making it an action movie about one normal guy’s very bad day.

As every obnoxious uncle can tell you, Die Hard is a Christmas movie about McClane flying to Nakatomi Plaza in Los Angeles in the hopes of reconciling with his estranged wife (Bonnie Bedelia) over the holidays. His plans run into a snag when a group of baddies, led by the magnetic Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) lay siege on the plaza, for reasons not initially apparent. From those impossible odds, McClane must battle his way through, stymied by everything from broken glass to cynical federal agents. All the way to the end, we doubt Willis in a way that we’d never doubt Arnold or Sly, making Die Hard among the most thrilling action movies of all time.

Star Trek: Celebrating the Scene-Chewing Genius of William Shatner

At the end of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Admiral James T. Kirk stands before the crew of the USS Enterprise to offer some words of solace on a heartbreaking occasion. Their friend, colleague, and commanding officer Spock has died, sacrificing himself to save them all. Kirk in particular has lost the person who understood him best, and fans of the franchise have lost their favorite character.

“Of all the souls I have encountered in my travels,” begins the Captain. “His was the most… human.” Kirk’s words are fitting, even the fact that he identifies the half-Vulcan as fully human, a designation the living Spock would have rejected. But its not the words that really stand out. It’s the way that William Shatner delivers those words, the preposterous pregnant pause he holds right before spitting the word “human,” the way he twists his face in anguish. 

For years, moments such as these made Shatner’s acting an object of ridicule. But it’s high time that we recognize them as what they are: excellent melodramatic acting.

A Laughed-At Legend

It’s hard to say where Shatner’s reputation went sour. Certainly, people noticed and mimicked his off-beat cadences early on. See, for example, the way John Belushi milked the pauses when playing Kirk on a sketch in a 1976 episode of Saturday Night Live. Even Shatner himself seemed to play it up on various chat show appearances. But all of these seemed like extensions of the show itself, Star Trek’s tendency to prattle on about weird alien names or borrow from Shakespeare for titles such as “Dagger of the Mind.”

Yet, for those who grew up in the era of The Next Generation, Shatner seemed like the old buffoon we had to put up with before we got to the good stuff. Shatner would go on Conan and sing/talk “Common People,” or he’d show up in a spoof of Seven on the MTV Movie Awards. But surely he didn’t deserve to be taken as seriously as Jean-Luc Picard, played by properly serious dramatic actor Patrick Stewart?

Perhaps it was all of those goofy roles that diminished Shatner’s reputation. Perhaps it was his turn as the title cop in the ‘80s series TJ Hooker that did him in. Where Star Trek let Shatner monologue about humanity’s better nature and the joys of discovery, TJ Hooker asks Shatner to deliver diatribes about permissiveness corrupting society, and how the police should be given free reign to crack down on degenerates. On TJ Hooker, Shatner’s speeches felt like the boasts of a blowhard right wing talk show host, hardly engendering the same sympathies as the intrepid captain.

And so, Shatner became a joke, even among Trekkies. That is, until Kirk finally shared the screen with our beloved Captain Picard. And then, the magic of Shatner’s style could no longer be denied.

Generational Talent

Star Trek: Generations is a terrible movie. It somehow botches the lay-up of getting Malcolm McDowell to play a fanatical villain, it turns the explicitly kid-avoidant Picard into someone who longs for a Victorian family, and it lets Kirk die on a rusty bridge. It doesn’t even do justice to the central hook, teaming Kirk and Picard on an adventure.

But Generations does do exactly one thing correct: it gets out of the way and lets Shatner do his stuff.

For those who have forgotten, Star Trek: Generations involves an anomaly called the Nexus, which traps whoever enters it, but fills them with bliss. The Nexus destroys the Enterprise-B, under the command of hapless Captain Harriman (Alan Ruck), and seemingly kills Kirk in the past. But when Picard encounters the Nexus in his present, he finds Kirk apparently living out his dream, on a ranch with horses and an off-screen wife.

The story asks Picard to convince a seemingly contented Kirk to return to action and stop the villain Soran. Picard does so by using what we’ve come to know as his greatest skill, his gift of argument and oration. Yet, in the actual conflict between the two, Picard comes off stiff and uncomfortable, while Kirk seems sprightly and excited, full of life.

Take one of their first exchanges, when Picard enters Kirk’s homestead and tries to explain that he’s the captain of the future Enterprise. Stewart stumbles over his words, talking slowly in the fear that his revelations will startle his predecessor. At the same time, Shatner bounces around the room, with Kirk paying little mind to his visitor and instead taking stock of the items around him. Kirk stops when he finds a clock and realizes it was once a gift to Doctor McCoy. Shatner, of course, pauses as he delivers the line, holding his face stone still to register the shock. When Kirk snaps out of it, Shatner speaks the next lines in a rush, as if he can’t get them out quickly enough.

Were an impressionist on SNL to speak the lines in the same way, they would sound silly and ill-chosen. But in the moment that Shatner says them, they feel perfect. He knows that the occasion calls for pomp and circumstance, and he meets that moment. The meeting of two legends should be a big deal, it deserves awe and playfulness and even sanctimony—not whatever Stewart is doing.

Shatner delivers, over-delivers, the emotion the scene requires, and he does it well, because he’s been answering the call as Kirk for decades.

Boldly Going Where No Actor Has Gone Before

Part of Star Trek’s longevity owes to the fact that it covers so many tones and genres. Yes, it is absolutely an inspiring, utopian show about how humanity gets better over time and improves to explore space. It’s an adventure show that features humans punching aliens in the face, and it’s a philosophical show that sees those same humans sitting down with aliens to talk through their differences. It’s a serious show with pretentious titles, and it’s a silly show that has its doctor chase around a white rabbit to find a pair of girls in bikinis.

In short, Star Trek involves big feelings and big thoughts, and, as such, it calls for big performances. No one has answered that call as deftly and consistently as William Shatner. Laugh if you want, do goofy impressions if you want. But of all the actors in the absurd, far-out world of Star Trek, William Shatner is undoubtedly the most human.

Michael C. Hall Talks Dexter’s Midlife Crisis in Resurrection Season 2

Everyone just wants some acknowledgment for a job well done. Even, it turns out, serial killers.

Since Dexter first premiered on Showtime in 2005, the titular Dexter Morgan (played by Michael C. Hall) has been hard at work making the world a safer place… in his own roundabout fashion. Through eight seasons in Miami (Dexter), one in upstate New York (Dexter: New Blood), and now two in New York City (Dexter: Resurrection), the blood splatter analyst has put his own murderous impulses and his dead father’s moral code to good use by killing other serial killers.

This intractable, if perverted, sense of justice has turned Dexter into a hero for TV-watching utilitarians across the globe (even if the most annoying among us occasionally have to point out that extrajudicial murder is usually bad). But that level of fame and acclaim is not something that Dexter himself often gets to enjoy. With few exceptions, the innocent people who learn of Dexter’s true nature react with horror and must be removed from the plot judiciously to keep the show going. Even though Dexter Morgan doesn’t kill the innocent, Dexter very much does.

Going into the second season of Dexter: Resurrection, the only person who knows the truth about Dexter and still accepts him for it is his son, Harrison (Jack Alcott). According to star Michael C. Hall, that level of isolation is finally starting to get to Dexter and manifest in an unusual, if predictable way: He’s experiencing a good-old fashioned midlife crisis.

“I think Dexter’s midlife crisis has to do with assessing where he’s been and what he’s done and realizing that he’s completely alone in his awareness of it,” Hall tells Den of Geek. “He’s not appreciated besides maybe his son who has his own sort of complicated, complex misgivings about what his father’s up to. The world doesn’t know how many people Dexter’s killed, how many lives he’s residually saved, and I think he craves witnesses and appreciation.”

Though some may balk at what Hall refers to as Dexter’s “spreadsheet sort of justification” for murder, the Bay Harbor Butcher will have plenty of opportunities to add to his moral ledger in Dexter: Resurrection season 2. In addition to returning season 1 killers Rapunzel (Eric Stonestreet) and Lady Vengeance (Krysten Ritter), the season is set to introduce other colorful criminals like the New York Ripper (Brian Cox) and the Five Borough Killer (Dan Stevens) for Dexter to contend with.

Of course, even if Dexter successfully dispatches the Ripper, the 5BK, and any other Big Apple-themed monster, he is still unlikely to get the recognition that he’s always craved. And that frustration only grows more acute as he ages.

“I’ve always imagined that a character like him entertains the idea of being known for what he does,” Hall says. “It’s always been the back of his mind, but it’s kind of knocking him on the head now as he gets older and finds himself on the other side of this new lease on life. He’s like, ‘Okay, now what?’ Is it that he’s a hero and he knows he’s not seen as one? ‘I can’t reveal who I am because I’ll be thought of as the opposite of what I know myself to be.'”

Perhaps one day Dexter Morgan will have his moment in the sun. It’s just going to take many more crises – midlife or otherwise – to get there.

Dexter: Resurrection premieres Friday, October 30 on Paramount+. New episodes debut weekly on Fridays.

Clayface Remembers Comics Are About Monsters and Horror as Much as Superheroes

This article contains the mildest of spoilers about the general character arc for the titular character in Clayface.

Right before Clayface rolls its final credits, we see the titular character in full: a gloopy mass of molten flesh who belts out a thunderous roar. We all know that Matt Hagen would end up this way, and not just because we already saw Clayface in season one of Creature Commandos, which takes place after the events of this movie. It’s also because Clayface is a long-established member of the Batman rogues gallery, and iterations of him have appeared in countless video games, toys, and animated series.

But Clayface doesn’t really feel like a superhero movie, even though it takes place in Gotham City. Instead when Hagan lets out a roar, full of sorrow and rejection, it becomes clear that Clayface is a monster movie. And that’s perfect, because comic book superheroes have always been a bit monstrous.

In the original comics, Matt Hagen became Clayface when he was treasure hunter, an adventurer who got caught swimming in water contaminated by some strange magic. But before Hagen, Batman faced another Clayface, one with more terrifying roots. In 1940’s Detective Comics #40 by Bill Finger and Bob Kane, Clayface was the name given to Basil Karlo, a genre movie actor in the vein of Boris Karloff (obviously) and Basil Rathbone (ditto). There’s also a bit of Lon Chaney Sr., aka the Man of a Thousand Faces!, in the characterization of the shapeshifting actor as well. Alas, when Karlo’s career started to flag, his mind broke and he began acting like the killers he played on the screen, disguising himself as those characters to attack his rivals.

As that origin story shows, superheroes have their roots in horror. Around the same time that Batman first fought Clayface, the Golden Age Green Lantern did battle against Solomon Grundy, a giant zombie with super-strength, while Doctor Fate tangled with the wizard Wotan and Captain Marvel (known today as Shazam!) matched wits with the Monster Society of Evil. Heroes such as the Spectre or Stardust the Super Wizard, the latter a bizarre creation of artist Fletcher Hanks, enacted ironic punishments on their enemies, befitting the tortures of the Jigsaw Killer from Saw.

The connection between superheroes and horror grew more pronounced with the Marvel Age of Comics in the early 1960s. Marvel’s predecessors, Atlas and Timely, spent the period following the superhero boom of World War II publishing sci-fi and horror comics (as well as Westerns, romances, and dramas). When the launch of the Silver Age seemed to make superheroes profitable again for DC, Marvel decided to follow suit, but only timidly.

The Fantastic Four didn’t get costumes or other superhero trappings until several issues into their first series, but the monster tropes were evident every time a woman screamed at the sight of Ben Grimm aka the Thing. The Hulk was a direct rip from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, mixed with Boris Karloff’s version of the Frankenstein Monster. Meanwhile Ant-Man and the Wasp were derived from The Incredible Shrinking Man. Even Spider-Man, with his gangly poses and general antisocial attitude, could have been called I Was a Teenaged Bug-Man. This was likely in reaction to how during the preceding 1950s decades, comics were as synonymous with horror full-stop, courtesy of publishers like EC Comics, as it was superheroes. Alas, self-censorship in the face of congressional hearing put an end to that, carving a path for Marvel’s new wave of heroes.

Nevertheless, horror roots of superheroes persist today, in concepts like Blade, Ghost Rider, and the Creature Commandos. In fact, James Gunn has dubbed the first era of he and Peter Safran’s DC Studios “Gods and Monsters,” a phrase taken The Bride of Frankenstein.

Clayface follows in that proud tradition. It knows that, fundamentally, superhero stories about someone who gets othered by society, pushed out into the margins. Something strange happens to them, which gives them incredible abilities but makes them unfit to live like a regular person. In the case of Superman, Spider-Man, and Batman, that otherness provides an opportunity for heroism, a chance to change the world for the better. Clayface, however, returns to the roots for the counterpoint, as well as the Gothic horror-obssessed Batman: The Animated Series, which redefined the Clayface origin story with a sense of body horror tragedy befalling show business, a la the this past weekend’s new chiller.

Clayface shows us that the opposite of heroism is also possible. Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries) could have used his shape-shifting abilities for good, but he’s too overcome by bitterness and anger. Once he starts seeking revenge against those who hurt him, he fully gives himself over to rage. Clayface fills us with dread. But because it’s set in a superhero world, it also provides a glimmer of hope. For everyone like Matt Hagen, who becomes monstrous, there’s a hero like Batman and Superman, someone who saves the day. By bringing superheroes back to horror, Clayface reminds us that the good guys have always worked best when contrasted by the dark and terrifying.

Clayface is now playing in theaters.

VisionQuest Finally Introduces One of the Strangest Avengers

This article contains spoilers for VisionQuest season 1 episodes 5 and 6.

For its first four episodes, VisionQuest pit its heroes against a mysterious figure hidden under a cloak. We’ve watched her attack various members of an AI advancement research team led by scientist Katerina Wells (Mary McDonnell). But so far, we’ve only known her by a frightening name chosen by the press: the Butcherbird Killer.

Now with its latest episodes, VisionQuest tells us what anyone who has been paying attention to the casting already knew. The Butcherbird Killer is in fact Jocasta, an android who bears more than a passing resemblance to Ultron. T’Nia Miller was announced as Jocasta long ago. But anyone who knows Marvel Comics knows that whenever Ultron and Vision are around, Jocasta can’t be far behind. And they also know how weird Jocasta’s story is, made stranger by her association with the Avengers.

Jocasta made her debut well after Ultron and Vision, first appearing in 1977’s Avengers #162, by Jim Shooter and George Pérez. Although her name comes from the mother of Oedipus in Greek Myth, the title of Avengers #162, “The Bride of Ultron,” reveals its debt to the Frankenstein story. The mad scientist/Ant-Man Henry Pym (not Tony Stark in the comics) made his monster in Ultron, a creature that emulated his father by making Vision. And now he wants a bride; one befitting the son of Hank Pym.

Ultron builds a female robot body and attempts to copy the brain waves of Hank Pym’s wife at the time, Janet Van Dyne a.k.a. the Wasp, to create Jocasta. But upon realizing that her life will result in the death of the Wasp, Jocasta chooses to sacrifice herself, an act that allows the Avengers to defeat Ultron.

Or so they thought. A year later, in Avengers #170, Ultron uses a remote control to reactivate Jocasta and force him to become his bride. Once again, however, Jocasta rebelled and sided with the Avengers, eventually joining them as an auxiliary member. However, the team refused to allow Jocasta full membership for years, despite her expressed desire to be one of them. It took until 1980’s Avengers #197, by David Michelinie and Carmine Infantino, for Earth’s Mightiest Heroes to recognize Jocasta as an equal.

However, by then, the damage was done. Jocasta left the team only a few years later, and has had a complicated relationship with humanity ever since. Sometimes, she will team with the Avengers or members of the Fantastic Four to stave off larger threats, including serving among a revived Skrull Kill Crew during the Secret Invasion storyline. Other times, Jocasta feels most comfortable with other AIs, forming real connections with the Machine Man or Vision.

That tempestuous relationship still has not settled, even to this day. When Hank Pym merged with Ultron during the 2015 storyline Rage of Ultron, Jocasta saw the combination as a means for making herself human, something she secretly always desired. When Arno Stark, the biological son of Howard and Maria Stark, began his crusade against his adoptive brother Tony (yeah, that’s a whole thing, and we don’t have time to get into it now), Jocasta initially sides with him because he promises to give her a human body.

Since both of those attempts failed, Jocasta has been even more committed to advocating for machines and artificial intelligences. She has participated in multiple robot uprisings, and will consistently choose other androids if forced to pick a side between them and other humans. This doesn’t mean that Jocasta wants to fight the Avengers or any other set of humans. Simply that she has learned that she cannot trust people, not even the good guys.

That development makes Jocasta an interesting reminder of the way that the Avengers operate in the world of the comics. From the very beginning, the Avengers have had members who the general public mistrusted, whether it was the Hulk in the first lineup or career criminals Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, and Quicksilver in the second incarnation, dubbed Cap’s Kooky Quartet. The Avengers recognize that people make mistakes, and will often extend invitations to bad guys trying to turn over a new leaf.

However, as a group of people, the Avengers themselves sometimes make mistakes. The missed opportunities with Jocasta, and her ongoing skepticism of the Avengers in particular and humanity in general, reminds us of the cost of those mistakes. Every time Jocasta appears in a story, we see that our heroes have feet of clay. And we can only hope that Jocasta has forgiveness in her programming, lest humans find themselves crushed under feet of iron.

VisionQuest streams new episodes every Wednesday on Disney+.

VisionQuest Episode 6 Review: The Marvel Method Strikes Again

This article contains spoilers for VisionQuest season 1 episode 6.

Let’s be 100% clear. I love Marvel. I love Marvel Comics, I love the MCU. I wouldn’t know things about Ravager 2099 or Eternals if I didn’t. But we should also be honest about the fact that, sometimes, Marvel tropes can be annoying, particularly when the MCU seems embarrassed about Marvel Comics. And few instances have been annoying as the moment where Thomas realizes that Paladin has sown a bomb into his arm that will explode if he goes to fast, and shouts, “You’ve made me into Speed.”

The joke is that Thomas is referring to the Keanu Reeves movie, albeit with the premise inverted. The joke is also that Thomas will become a superhero called Speed in the Young Avengers, and that his name is very dumb. Where this bit of elbowing in the side the only time VisionQuest‘s sixth episode, “Deadlock,” does a Marvel bit, then it could be forgiven. But too much of “Deadlock” gets mired in Marvel mechanics, slowing the (forgive me) speed that the series had been building.

As promised in the previous episode, “Firewall,” Vision is going to Madripoor, a third-world country whose corrupt criminal justice system doesn’t enforce the few laws they bother writing. Thomas has been taken by Ultron and given to Paladin, who will use him to finally capture Vision to exchange to an agent for his mysterious client. And who is this agent, you ask? Why, it’s Raza! Remember Raza?

No? Oh… Raza was the leader of the Ten Rings! Remember them? The terrorists who captured Tony Stark in Iron Man and were led by a scary terrorist guy played by Faran Tahir and seemed like he might be the Mandarin, even after it seemed like he was killed by Obadiah Stane? That is, until Iron Man 3, the One-Shot “Hail to the King,” and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings revealed that the Mandarin was a totally different guy with a different set of rings. And even though the Ten Rings logo from Iron Man cameoed in an episode of Ms. Marvel, Raza was never seen again (See? I told you I love the MCU).

Yes, Raza is back to just… shoot at Paladin and Vision a bit. Vincenzo Natali shoots the action cleanly enough, and Todd Stashwick and Paul Bettany remain compelling screen actors. But the return of Raza feels like an unnecessary bit of MCU world-building, more distracting than edifying. The same could be said of the entire Madripoor setting, a place that—despite previously appearing in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier—still works best as a nod to Wolverine comics than it does an actual setting.

Sadly, “Deadlock” doesn’t offer much compelling stuff, even outside of Madripoor. The electric chemistry that James Spader and T’Nia Miller showed previously gets smothered as the episode puts them in a white room to drop exposition, revealing the entirety of Carrington’s backstory. She created the first AI and modeled it on her own mind (or brainwaves, to use the term from Vision’s first appearance in Avengers #57, as a Marvel-lover like me knows). But when Carrington got cancer, her colleagues sold the AI to Stark Industries to become a weapon and, eventually, J.A.R.V.I.S.. But Carrington saved her nanobots in a “nest” buried in her grave, a nest that the Butcherbird Killer has been trying to unlock by gathering keys.

This isn’t to say that the episode lacks anything interesting. When Ultron finally calls the Butcherbird Killer by her comic book name Jocasta, her observation that it is disturbing to invoke Oedipus Rex rings true. And after the two finish dumping exposition, Ultron and Jocasta promise a properly grandiose supervillain team-up with their plan to infect humanity with nanobots to control human beings. Likewise, the client’s arrival in the form of a distorted voice on a television to address Vision moves the plot forward without erasing any of his shadowy intrigue.

Best of all, “Deadlock” gives us a rare glimpse of White Vision turning evil, something largely unexplored in VisionQuest. Amidst his standoff with Paladin, White Vision’s eyes go blank and Bettany flattens his voice to describe the minute details of the assassin’s identity, specifically the name and location of the man’s daughter. In addition to further fleshing out Paladin as a character, the moment reminds us how dangerous Vision and the other AIs truly are. As he’s told us again and again, this Vision is not the hero we knew before, and we see now the capacity for cruelty that he carries. Moreover, when he identifies information about Paladin’s daughter, Vision does what the more likably AIs like F.R.I.D.A.Y. and E.D.I.T.H. have been doing all along, invading privacy and surveilling other people. VisionQuest doesn’t really want to deal with the moral issues of AI and mass surveillance, but the scene raises them nonetheless.

Does this exciting moment make-up for the fact that Diane Morgan seems to be done with the series, with her obsolete AI abandoning Paladin and the show? Absolutely not. Hopefully Morgan got a nice paycheck, but VisionQuest never paid off the promise of Cunk on Marvel. Still, the scene does lead to E.D.I.T.H. becoming an 8-bit sprite to talk with Thomas and Laura, thus confirming that Emily Hampshire has essentially been playing Vanellope von Schweetz from Wreck It Ralph.

Delightful as this bits are, “Deadlock” lives up to its name. VisionQuest has become deadlocked, trapped and spinning its wheels in a plot that isn’t that captivating to begin with, caught in nods to the franchise and the comics, having characters talk about adamantium. As a Marvel fan, I understood that reference. But as a fan of good TV, it’s a bit disappointing to see VisionQuest lose its way.

New episodes of VisionQuest premiere Tuesday nights at 9 p.m. ET on Disney+

VisionQuest Episode 5 Review: The New Age of Ultron

This article contains spoilers for VisionQuest season 1 episode 5.

Throughout Avengers: Age of Ultron, the titular evil super robot sang a creepy version of a Pinocchio song, crooning, “I had strings, but now I’m free.” Ultron repeats that song at the end of VisionQuest‘s fifth episode, “Firewall,” when he convinces Vision to give over control of White Vision’s body. But even before he gets to take White Vision’s body for a drive, Ultron sure seems free of strings.

The AI scenes have been the trickiest part throughout the first half of VisionQuest, as the broad humor and CGI Mindspace fell flat, despite the compelling performances. So while Ultron never felt like a giant homicidal robot when he appeared in the form of a bearded, avuncular James Spader, we weren’t going to complain about the chance to watch a bearded, avuncular James Spader be charming. By taking over Vision’s body, playing mind games with Thomas, and forming alliances with Paladin and the Butcherbird Killer, Ultron reestablishes himself as a proper Marvel villain.

Most of “Firewall” finds Vision and his team trapped within the Mindspace, trying to retrace the steps that Ultron has taken in White Vision’s body. First, Ultron takes Thomas to a pub, where he prods the boy’s feelings about his synthazoid father. Next, he contacts Paladin to give the bounty hunter Thomas’ location. Then, he meets with the Butcherbird Killer to forge an alliance, before finally leaving White Vision’s body on a plane headed to Madripoor, the third-world underbelly of the Marvel Universe.

Once again, we’re in television genre territory, and the success of the episode’s plot mechanics depends entirely one one’s taste for CSI, Bones, and other such forensic shows. Much of Vision’s scenes involve him staring at screens and telling the AIs to zoom and enhance and rewind. The procedural signifiers are, of course, representations of supercomputer functions, not actual real things that real people are doing. But even with that allowance, they feel rote, completely disconnected to anything real. As a result, it’s hard to care that much about the actual plot of “Firewall.”

Now that we know that the Butcherbird Killer is a synthetic copy of Carrington, and that she’s seeking keys for something, in revenge for the life stolen from her. Those “keys” were the faces of the various members of the AI project with whom Carrington worked, faces that she copied as the Butcherbird Killer before offing her former colleagues. But since Ultron made a copy of Katerina Wells’s face and then killed her before Butcherbird could take it, he has a certain amount of control over the synth. Moreover, the information gives Ultron influence over Vision, who reluctantly removes the firewalls that keep Ultron from the internet.

Despite all the familiar tropes and concerned looks that Vision and the AIs exchange with one another, despite the fact that Ultron’s escape angers F.R.I.D.A.Y. so much that she abandons the Mindspace, it’s all a bit blurry. What do the keys unlock? What can Butcherbird do with them? What can Ultron do with them? It’s unclear.

Yet, the pleasures of the episode aren’t in the plot. Rather, they’re in Spader’s performance, now grounded by Ultron’s re-embrace of villainy. For all that the other AIs would shudder at his presence, for his occasional comments about killing all humanity, the Ultron of the first half felt like a wacky neighbor in a sitcom, more Kramer than Lex Luthor. Without tracks to follow, Spader seemed to do whatever popped into his head, which was fun to watch, but not particularly compelling on a dramatic or even comedic level.

“Firewall” doesn’t completely cure the show of that problem. A sequence set inside Ultron’s own Mindscape, in which Spader plays different parts of the synth’s identity, plays at best like Inside Out 3. But for the most part, Ultron has returned to open malevolency, which allows Spader to ground even his most charming line deliveries in menace. Every smile, every understanding wink reveals itself to be a manipulation technique, even if we don’t quite understand Ultron’s end goal.

Nowhere is that more clear than when Ultron romances the Butcherbird Killer (who still doesn’t have her name from the comics yet). Elegant and multifaceted, T’Nia Miller proves herself the perfect match the Spader. She can vamp effectively as Butcherbird and Ultron trade flirtations, and she can make villainous declarations with the best of the bad guys. But because Butcherbird claims to be the actual Josephine Carrington made synthetic, she retains levels of humanity that Spader doesn’t give to Ultron. A description about the taste and texture of brandy, brought up to taunt Ultron’s appreciation for human craft but lack of human taste buds, contains as much sadness as it does threat.

The AIs watching the sequence compare the romance to watching Hannibal Lecter flirt—an apt comparison, given that episode director Vincenzo Natali directed several episodes of the NBC series Hannibal, as well as the great indie horror movies Cube and Splice. In fact, much of VisionQuest has recalled that show, from the connection between charismatic killer and wounded investigator to the bird-themed murderers. Natali brings some of the visual acumen of that show to VisionQuest, making the scenes of Ultron’s interactions interesting to watch.

Each time Vision and the AIs trace Ultron’s location to a new spot, Spader and his scene partner appear on screen in black and white, while the AIs appear as colorized supporting players. The conceit makes the scenes feel like stage productions, complete with Henry Lewis and Jonathan Sayer carrying tables and chairs into frame, and then taking their place behind the bar to play bartenders at the same time that they’re playing D.U.M.-E and U.

With the artificiality even more heightened, one would expect Spader to go even broader and bigger than he had before. But instead, he’s more focused and frightening. The doddering old weirdo who offered a pleasurable distraction in the first half of the series is gone. In his place is an upgraded Ultron, someone who feels more dangerous precisely because he’s not a giant silver robot anymore. He’s now in human form and out in the world, all the scarier because he has no strings on him.

VisionQuest streams new episodes every Wednesday on Disney+.

Dune 3 Final Trailer Reveals a Major Deviation from the Books

Ever since the final moments of Dune: Part Two, we’ve been worried. Not about Paul Atreides, the protagonist of the Dune series, who becomes more of a tyrant with each film. Anyone paying attention to the movie or has read the books knows that author Frank Herbert wrote them as a warning against charismatic leaders. No, we’ve been worried about Paul’s beloved Chani, who stormed away from Muad’Dib at the end of the last movie.

We who have read Herbert’s 1969 novel Dune Messiah, the basis for Dune: Part Three, took comfort in knowing that Chani and Paul would stay together, and their bond would get closer as Princess Irulan and the face dancer Scytale launched a conspiracy against them. But the final trailer for Dune: Part Three steals that comfort away from us, suggesting that in the world of the films, Chani will join the conspiracy against Paul.

A book with more palace intrigue than giant sand battles, Dune Messiah takes place twelve years after Dune, with Paul (Timothée Chalamet) firmly in place as the Emperor. That fact irritates powerful factions, such as the religious Bene Gesserit, the mercantile Spacing Guild, and the science-focused Tleilaxu, who launch a conspiracy against him. Central to that conspiracy is Princess Irulan (Florence Pugh), the daughter of the deposed previous emperor and wife (in law only) to Paul, and Scytale (Robert Pattinson), a shapeshifter.

That conspiracy takes center stage in the final trailer for Dune: Part Three, with Scytale talking with Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam (Charlotte Rampling) of the Bene Gesserit. The trailer features more scenes with Jason Momoa as Hayt, the clone of Duncan Idaho who the conspirators created to distract Paul and his sister Alia (Anya Taylor-Joy) from their advances. And we see Paul confront Irulan about her involvement, showing the level of mistrust he experiences.

The trailer also features interesting deep cuts for those who know the books. We get brief shots of Isaach de Bankolé as Farok, a fighter in Paul’s Freman jihad who betrays his emperor. We may even get our first look at Leto II and Ghanima, Paul and Chani’s twin children, one of whom becomes the main character of the next several Herbert novels.

But even book readers are shocked to see the way Chani (Zendaya) behaves. Throughout the trailer, Chani declares her opposition to Paul, fighting against him and even seemingly joining the conspiracy. Instead of a victim, a bit of collateral damage in the fight against Paul, Chani has become an antagonist.

Strong as this deviation from the source material may be, it does track with the characters set up in the first two movies from director Denis Villeneuve. Even in the first film, where Chani appeared largely in visions, she was separate from Paul, less drawn in. Her fiery exit in Dune: Part Two only solidified the feeling that she would not simply go along with her lover. Now, we see just how far she’s willing to go.

Or do we? Again, Scytale is a face dancer, which allows him to change his form and copy other people. Is that actually Chani we see fighting against Paul? Or is it just one more trick to undermine his leadership? The fact that we can’t tell makes movie fans and book readers equally excited to see how Villeneuve plans to close the trilogy.

Dune: Part Three arrives in theaters on December 18, 2026.

The Debut Review: Julianne Moore Gives a Russian Nesting Doll of a Performance

I never participated in community theater, that peculiar intersection of (sometimes) professional-grade talent and a hobbyist’s after-hours work schedule. But I did get to join a couple of school plays back in my younger days, and it’s easy to remember the sense of kindness and togetherness that emanates from people gathering round in order to create—or in many cases simply to play.

One suspects writer-director Jesse Eisenberg misses that kind of innocence in his craft as well. The longtime Hollywood veteran, and more recently indie director who guided Kieran Culkin to an Oscar win for A Real Pain, also cut his teeth as a child actor along the community and Off-Broadway footlights of New Jersey and New York City. He knows those boards so well that he’s affectionately recreated them in his third feature, and what more than likely will be the feel-good dramedy of this coming holiday season, The Debut.

A love letter to the uncanniness of quasi-professional theatricals, as well as tribute to the actor’s method (both generally and with a capital “M” in the Stanislavski sense), The Debut is a showcase for Eisenberg’s muses, not to mention a powerhouse spotlight for Julianne Moore, who gets some of the best material of her career via the role of Mona. At a glance, the character’s a meek and closed off-housewife, but by this time next year she’ll very likely become every high school theater kid’s go-to Halloween costume when she transforms into Miss Danielle, the Big City super who sings about how NYC might have “Chewed Me Up (But It Hasn’t Spit Me Out!”).

This is getting ahead of ourselves, though. Before Mona becomes a down on her luck Manhattan super, she’s initially a buttoned-up suburbanite living in a beige, if swanky, New Jersey conclave. It’s there she raises her newly autonomous teenage kids with a husband (Patrick Fabian) who seems more inclined to enjoy their neighbor’s company when they get dinner at the same restaurant every week. It is that quiet emptiness which makes the prospect of auditioning for a new community production of an innocuous Broadway musical comedy, Noisy Neighbors, seem so tantalizing. At last this could be a fun distraction for the former choir kid!

That assumption would be her first grievous mistake in the eyes of Jerry, Paul Giamatti’s cantankerous regional theater director who carries himself like Orson Welles at his most imperious. Her second error was not, well, knowing how to really act or apparently sing. But after Jerry’s first choice for the relatively minor character of Miss Danielle bails on the production, leaving a note that she found role too small for her talents, Jerry is in a bind less than three weeks from opening night. So he gives Mona a call that will utterly transform her life.

Much of the joy about The Debut is how unabashedly it places dollops of nostalgia on its visions of behind-the-scenes camaraderie; even “the drama” that permeates most of the gossip one associates with any workplace, never mind those populated by the literally performative, is treated with a fond sweetness. So many showbiz portraits and tableaus yearn for the dirt-beneath-the-fingernails bluntness of Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz, or Alejandro Inarritu’s deliberately self-aware pretensions about the tortured artist in Birdman. Eisenberg goes for something a little less jaded. In fact, it’s quite wholesome at the start with novice Mona being welcomed into the world by leading lady Stef (Halle Bailey), cast in the ingénue part of “Girl in 4F” in the play-within-a-movie.

This could be a writer-director’s own rose-tinted glasses, but I suspect it is also because the movie ultimately wants to celebrate the creative spirit, even while also quite forcefully interrogating those same pretensions and melodramatic tendencies that make mole hills into mountains vaster than Julie Andrews’ Alps. While Noisy Neighbors is a fictional Broadway show that has apparently been in regional repertory rotations for decades by the time The Debut begins, the songs we glimpse, all written by Eisenberg, credibly pass for something tuneful enough to have been staged at one point, but so saccharine few would ever take them seriously. Miss Danielle’s big solo is even sung, notably, over the opening credits with maximum fairy dust by the Bernadette Peters.

All of this sweetness is ultimately an act unto itself, though; a setup to suggest how low the stakes should be for Mona when she joins the ensemble. Nevertheless, it still marks a jumping off point from which Mona, Moore, and the audience will lose themselves into the agonies and ecstasies of artistic innovation. There are no small parts, they say, and thus no excuse to not totally submit your identity and soul beneath the Demands of The Theatre!

… There really is something tragicomic about a woman who is about to ruin her life in order to bring unflinching authenticity to what is ultimately a tertiary role born out of a treacly musical.

Mona’s sheer ineptitude for acting opposite even semi-professional actors is a source of great comedy early in The Debut, with Giamatti’s patented withering stare steadily intensifying as Moore flubs her single line (“the rent is due”) in rehearsals of the opening musical number. When his suspiciously Hollywood-levels of industrious assistant brings him his daily mocha, all Jerry can grumble is “it’s too late for that” while glowering at Moore. But it’s as the pair embark on the typical mentor-mentee arc that Mona/Moore take the movie to marvelous places. The humor is almost diabolical when Mona is finally driven to the point of considering her character’s motivations, being reduced to tears while lamenting that she will be living on the street and forced to eat rats if her tenants don’t pay her the goddamn rent. It’s also the scene that I expect Moore and A24 will use in Moore’s Best Actress nomination clip come Oscar night.

The further down the rabbit hole Mona goes, the more layered and dizzyingly self-reflexive Moore’s performance becomes. It’s a bit like a Russian nesting doll as the thespian must find pathos for an evermore gloomy and “real” Miss Danielle, which in turn quickens Mona with greater life and, finally, mania as she becomes drunk on the thrill of artistic discovery.

It’s a masterclass performance that, along with Giamatti’s own smooth transition from grumpy genius to suave co-conspirator, quite intentionally over-prepares for what is still, on all levels, light comedy. It also grows a little more substantial than the knowingly formulaic structure of Eisenberg’s story might otherwise need. In its heart, The Debut is more comedy than drama, but Moore and Mona lose themselves so completely to the beast that the details The Debut’s screenplay skims feel a little underdeveloped by the end. There are a multitude of threads dangling when opening night’s final bow comes, but the movie is already out the door.

It’s an open question whether Eisenberg leaving so much dramatic meat on the table is by design. This is, after all, a tribute to community theater and the lightest of theatrical entertainments; it is a tad bit masochistic if, like Mona, you keep digging deeper than that. But the ultimate charm of The Debut is even after it ends, it leaves character and audience alike in the trenches with a shovel, still eager to see how much deeper we can excavate this thing they call art.

The Debut played at the New York Film Festival on Oct. 7 and opens in theaters on Dec. 11.

Walter Koenig Set the Path for the Future of Star Trek

Mister Chekov has left the bridge. Walter Koenig, who has played Security Officer Pavel Chekov of the USS Enterprise since Star Trek‘s second season in 1967, has died at the age of 90. He leaves behind a legacy that includes appearances in Babylon 5 and movies such as Moontrap, as well as work in comics. But he will forever be best known for his work on Star Trek, appearing in the Original Series and the movies about that crew, as well as various video games and spinoffs. Koenig even appeared in the final season of Star Trek: Picard as Pavel’s descendent, President Anton Chekov.

Clearly, Star Trek was important for Koenig. What’s less discussed, however, is how important Koenig was for Star Trek. The introduction of Pavel Chekov revealed a strategy on the part of creator Gene Roddenberry, one that not only shaped the show in its own time, but set the forward-thinking path the franchise would continue to follow to this day.

With its bright pastel colors and miniskirts, Star Trek always had a certain hipness to it. But it also had to deal with a certain amount of drabness baked into the premise. The most passionate character was Dr. McCoy, a grizzled frontier physician played by a veteran character actor. The breakout character is a stoic alien, modeled in part on Berkley police chief William H. Parker. Even hero James T. Kirk had too much classical theatricality to be the voice of a new generation.

No, Star Trek didn’t really get hip until its second season when a young mop-top appeared on the bridge. Roddenberry explicitly wanted to add “a young, irreverent, English-accent ‘Beatle’ type” to the show, because of Star Trek’s “teenage audience” and out of awareness “current trends.” Moreover, Chekov was explicitly a Russian, flying in the face of the Cold War fears of the time. Yes, the Klingons and Romulans may have represented elements of the Communist threat that the United States faced. But in the reality of the series, humanity had overcome its divisions and prejudice, and Chekov was the proof.

Which isn’t to say that Chekov didn’t indulge in some nationalism. Throughout the series, Chekov would erroneously claim some antiquated Earth tradition, one very familiar to the viewing audience, as of Russian origin. In season 2’s “The Apple,” for example, Chekov claimed that the Garden of Eden was originally located near Moscow, setting his homeland as the birthplace of humanity. Yet, at the same time, Chekov put his allegiances to his fellow Starfleet officers first, as when he almost punches the Klingon Korax for insulting Kirk in “The Trouble With Tribbles.”

In short, Chekov represented the next generation in the first generation of Star Trek. It was the show’s attempt to show off its hipness and forward-thinking. But it only worked because of Koenig’s performance. He threw himself into being the Davey Jones of the Enterprise, certainly an easy ask of any young man on television at the time. But when Chekov matured and good looks weren’t enough, Koenig kept bringing a sense of humor to the part, most famously with the “nuclear wessels” running gag in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.

However, Chekov’s greatest legacy may be in the way he established a model for the rest of the series. Star Trek has often tried to include a young, hip person intended to appeal to the youth. The ’90s versions weren’t always successful—it’s hard to call Wesley Crusher, Jake Sisko, or even Tom Paris particularly hip, despite that last one’s love of sci-fi and hot rods. Despite all the grouching around Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, it’s clear that modern Trek was doing what it has always done, showing awareness of modern trends and the desires of its teenage audience.

Regardless of one’s feelings about postmodern gags in Lower Decks or the animated adventure of Prodigy, whatever today’s fans feel about the romantic drama of Starfleet Academy or name-dropping Elon Musk in Discovery, those shows aren’t doing anything new. They’re following in the path that the franchise set out long ago, a path first traveled by Pavel Chekov.

Adam McArthur Talks Jujutsu Kaisen Season 3, Anime Fandom, and New Projects

One of the biggest anime properties in the world is Jujutsu Kaisen, based on the best-selling manga series by Gege Akutami, which launched its third season at the start of the year. Among the fan-favorite actors who bring the English-language dub of the hit supernatural action series to life is Adam McArthur, who voices the show’s protagonist Yuji Itadori. Den of Geek sat down with McArthur for an exclusive interview at New York Comic Con 2026 where he reflected on his recent work with Jujutsu Kaisen season 3 and teased his upcoming starring role in the Netflix original anime series Fool Night.

Jujutsu Kaisen season 3 really dials up the cinematic qualities of the series, especially coming off the intense highs of the preceding season’s Shibuya Incident story arc. The stakes escalate even higher this season, though through it all Yuji maintains sight of the wisdom that his grandfather imparted on him at the start of the series to help others. That advice is something that McArthur takes to heart and helps guide his performance every time he comes back to play the character again even as Yuji gradually understands what his bigger purpose in the story is.

“When he’s getting his butt kicked by Kinji Hakari, he has a whole speech about what his function is,” McArthur observes. “He’s accepting his role in the bigger picture. I think without the path that his grandpa sent him down, we wouldn’t necessarily have that speech and that realization from Yuji that he’s just a cog, that he’s meant to keep killing curses until he rusts away. It allows him to have this viewpoint that he brings up to Hakari but what their function is in all of that.”

Audiences can also see McArthur’s memorable performances in Tokyo Revengers and Kaiju No. 8 but there is something particularly special about his work in Jujutsu Kaisen. For McArthur, a big part of his own appeal in playing Yuji is the character’s resilience and his firm moral compass, something that he’s reminded of whenever he meets fans that have gone through a lot in their own lives but still come out intact and inspired.

“After everything that happened to Yuji in Shibuya, he has every right to be the villain,” McArthur continues. “He could have very well taken all of that stuff and let it turn him bad. What I love about him is that he still tries to make the right decisions despite the adversity and that makes him really special.”

For McArthur, connecting directly with fans is a huge part of the responsibility and joy that comes with the role, estimating that he does around 40 conventions and shows around the country each year. Meeting and interacting with fans, McArthur takes to heart how much the stories and his work in bringing his characters to life resonate with the audience on a personal level. This in turn inspires him every time he gets in the recording booth himself.

“I tell people all the time that the fan-side is just as important as the voiceover actor side,” McArthur explains. “Without the fans, there is no community and without the community there is no show to be had. The shows would go away and, without the show, there’d be nothing to have these conversations about.”

Among the most exciting new projects that McArthur has coming up is the upcoming Netflix anime series Fool Night, based on the manga series by Kasumi Yasuda. With all 12 episodes set to debut on the streaming service on November 26, the show boasts an all-star voice cast led by McArthur and some truly stunning animation to bring this story to life. McArthur plays Toshiro Kamiya, whose hardscrabble existence on a post-apocalyptic world takes a turn when he tries to save his ailing mother. This leads to catastrophic consequences, with McArthur really bringing out how tortured Toshiro becomes through his emotional performance.

“This guy has nothing left to live for; he is the ultimate sad boy,” the actor teases. “It’s a pretty sad story. He comes from nothing. His family takes him for granted and is abusive. He’s trying his best to save his mother, so he makes a very drastic decision and it affects what’s remaining of his life.”

Toshiro Kamiya in Fool Night is very much in line with McArthur’s acclaimed work in playing Yuji Itadori in Jujutsu Kaisen, both young characters forced to grow up quickly and sacrifice tremendously in face of extraordinary circumstances. McArthur leaves everything on the field for his soul-searing performances, noting that he often leaves recording sessions physically and emotionally exhausted to bring those raw qualities out in his work. But for audiences who find their own inspiration in what characters like Yuji endure and persevere through, McArthur settles for nothing less in reflecting that emotional honesty through his performance in the recording booth.

“When I’m in there, I’m breaking my heart for you guys, for the audience,” McArthur reflects. “I have to live those moments as if they’re happening to me and it feels heartwrenching. I’m feeling all of those emotions as I’m acting them.”

All three seasons of Jujutsu Kaisen are available to stream on Crunchyroll. Fool Night premieres November 26 on Netflix.

Perfectly Balanced Infinity Gauntlet Replica Up for Auction

Throughout the Infinity Saga of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thanos had to work really, really hard to get his Infinity Gauntlet. He had to employ various minions, fight Earth’s mightiest heroes, and he had to sacrifice his own beloved daughter, Gamora. He even had to brutalize the elf Eitri of Nidavellir to forge his Gauntlet.

In our world, things are a little more straightforward, thanks to Julien’s Auctions and East Continental Gems. The two have assembled to bring the Infinity Gauntlet off of the screen and into your hands, with a perfect 1-to-1 recreation of the item. The headline offering of the Pop Culture Legends Evening Auction in Abu Dhabi on Dec. 8, 2026, the Infinity Gauntlet will catch the interest of any Marvel lover.

Julien Infinity Gauntlet

Created in cooperation with Marvel Studios, the Infinity Gauntlet features real-world gems modeled on the six Infinity Stones from the MCU. Yet, each of them have their own value beyond mere pop cultural analogues. A release from Julien’s reveals, “The emerald representing the Time Stone was uncovered over a century ago and had been held in the East Continental Gems collection for more than thirty years — a stone the firm had long declined to sell — before being released for this commission.”

The gems weigh more than 170 carats together, resting in a Gauntlet that towers at almost 20 inches tall. Furthermore, each of the six gems come certified and authenticated by the American Gemological Laboratories, with additional documentation from the Gemological Institute of America attesting to the quality of the diamond.

The 1-to-1 Infinity Gauntlet replica may not grant its user the same power over time and reality as seen in Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame, but it will make the wearer the most envied Marvel fan in the universe. It is, as Thanos might say, inevitable.

James Gunn Is Underselling the Appeal of the Superhero Shared Universe

There are many reasons that superhero movies have dropped off from their position atop the cultural landscape in the 2010s. Lackluster projects, market saturation, and simple shifting audience interests have all led to what we call “superhero fatigue.” Undoubtedly, one of the biggest reasons is the feeling that each new superhero entry feels like homework, a phenomenon apparently at work with the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday. To properly enjoy the movie, you can’t just watch the film that hits theaters on December 18; you also have to watch all the Fox X-Men movies, Fantastic Four: First Steps, both seasons of Loki, the re-released Avengers: Endgame, and more.

So when James Gunn took to social media this weekend to push back against people talking about future movies set-up by Clayface, he was right to ask them to focus on the film itself. “I dislike the idea that individual stories aren’t meaningful unless they lead to something else. People not understanding this is strange to me, because Star Wars has essentially been doing this for 50 years across movies, shows, games and books, admittedly without the tonal variety,” he wrote on Threads. Gunn’s approach is correct, and probably healthy in this age of superhero fatigue. But we can’t forget that shared universes are one of the chief appeals of superhero movies.

2013’s Thor: The Dark World was a hit, but even then, it was recognized as a lesser entry. But there was one point when audiences seeing that film in the theater lost their minds: when Loki transforms into Captain America to taunt his brother, giving Chris Evans an opportunity to appear on screen and joke around with his pal from The Avengers.

The scene wasn’t just a cameo by someone audiences recognized and had feelings about, like when Chris Evans showed up as Johnny Storm in Deadpool & Wolverine. Rather, it showed the audience that the world of Marvel had evolved, that events from a previous chapter—The Avengers, in this case—paid off with an event in the current chapter.

Comic book fans have long known the pleasures of an ongoing narrative and a shared universe. All the way back in the Golden Age of comics, fans realized the fun of seeing characters from different stories band together, most obviously with the advent of the first superhero team, the Justice Society of America, in 1940’s All-Star Comics #3.

In the Silver Age, things got even more complicated. The Golden Age stories may have shown us that Flash, Green Lantern, and Hawkman know one another, and that Superman could hang out with Batman and Robin, but the Marvel Age of heroes, with its tighter editing by Stan Lee, showed that events from past stories affected future issues. The Fantastic Four remembered meeting Spider-Man in Amazing Spider-Man #1. Iron Man’s adventures in the pages of Avengers affected his stories in his solo book, Iron Man.

As the fandom grew more devoted and the universe expanded, the connections became more byzantine, resulting in both mistakes by creators and confusion among fans. Publishers tried to corral this in various ways, ranging from Marvel offering a “No-Prize” to anyone who could explain a canonical reason for a mistake on the page to DC rebooting the universe and starting from scratch, most famously with 1984’s Crisis on Infinite Earths.

But every time, fans and creators alike come back to wanting continuity and consistency. If the Flash breaks his leg in his own series, they don’t want to see him racing around with the Justice League of America that same month. If Gambit tried to blow up Captain America’s costume in a crossover event, fans don’t want them to be chummy in the next event, not without a hard conversation.

Of course, comic book fans are an increasingly shrinking and devoted core. And while Disney and Skydance would like the same level of devotion, they don’t want movie audiences to shrink in the same way. So Gunn is showing business savvy when he assures people that they can just go to Clayface and not worry about how it fits in with the character’s previous appearance in Creature Commandos, let alone where he and Batman will show up again in the future. Moreover, he’s right to urge people to just enjoy the movie for itself, instead of doing the all-too familiar superhero movie strategy of apologizing for a lackluster entry by promising it sets up a better one in the future.

But that doesn’t mean we don’t want one chapter of the DCU story to lead into another. And Gunn is aware of this. When discussing the difficulties of Peacemaker season 2 coming after the DC universe rebooted with he and Peter Safran taking over DC Studios, Gunn told Den of Geek, “I’m a balanced canon guy… On the one hand, people take it a little too far. Obviously, these are fictional stories, so we don’t have to pretend that they’re reality. But at the same time, these stories are supposed to be in the same world, and you need to pay attention to the connection between things.”

Hopefully, Gunn still wants us to pay attention to those things, even if he doesn’t want us to have to pay too much attention.

Clayface is now playing in theaters.