The Wire’s David Simon Will Apologize For Killing Your Favorite Character
This article contains full spoilers for The Wire, which you really should have watched by now. Seriously, why haven’t you watched The Wire?
Where’s Wallace at? For decades, that question has haunted fans of The Wire. The question arose when Baltimore drug dealer D’Angelo Barksdale (Lawrence Gilliard Jr.) realized that the boy Wallace (a young Michael B. Jordan) was missing and likely murdered. A horrified D’Angelo confronts his boss Stringer Bell (Idris Elba), peppering him with the question, asking not just where Wallace is at, but also why a child had to die.
Now, some fans in Tennessee can ask the same question and take it to the top, all the way to The Wire‘s creator David Simon. In a now-deleted post to the social media site Bluesky on December 2, 2025, Simon said, “If you are a voter in Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District and a fan of The Wire, I will, on evidence you voted today, pen a personal apology for having killed any character you cared for.”
In other words, Simon has a lot of apologizing to do.
Based on his experiences as an investigative reporter for the Sun, experiences that also spawned the television series Homicide: Life on the Street and The Corner, The Wire explored the rotting of America via an examination of Baltimore. Starting with the drug trade in project housing and tracing its entanglement with law enforcement, city politics, the school system, and the new media, The Wire managed to be at once poetic and real, a tragedy that felt both true to the citizens it followed and indicative of the entire country.
Which meant that a lot of great characters died on The Wire. In addition to innocent Wallace, there was the incredibly charismatic Omar Little (Michael K. Williams), who robbed drug dealers and met an ignoble end in season five. There was Snoop (Felicia Pearson), who has one of the show’s most memorable exchanges right before her execution. There was first season antagonist Stringer Bell, whose death was the culmination of a tragic downfall. And then there was poor Frank Sobotka (Chris Bauer), killed off screen at the end of the series’s second (and best!) season.
Of course, The Wire had incredible moments of optimism too. Famously, Simon reversed his original decision to have Detective Kima Greggs (Sonja Sohn) die of gunshot wounds in season one. Even better, addict Bubbles (Andre Royo) managed to kick the habit that ravaged him for five seasons, resulting in one of television’s all-time great character arcs.
But that’s not what people want to talk to Simon about. They want him to apologize for making them care so much about these characters and then ripping the characters away. And Simon was happy to do it, provided that voted for Democratic Aftyn Behn over Republican Matt Van Epps, whom the writer called “some cheese-eating supplicant for any tinpot dictator.”
Or, rather, Simon would have been happy to do it. But not only has Simon since removed his post (“writer’s cramp,” he explained) but Van Epps defeated Behn by nine percentage points. Which is exactly the type of terrible thing that The Wire set out to chronicle, and what made its deaths feel so real.
All five seasons of The Wire are streaming on HBO Max. So now you don’t have an excuse for not watching it.
Stranger Things Season 5 Viewing Figures Are Huge
The latest season of Netflix’s sci-fi horror hit Stranger Things has shattered its own records and then some. Viewership numbers reportedly show that the first volume of season 5 racked up a staggering 59.6 million views in its first five days after release, making it the biggest debut ever for an English-language Netflix series.
This figure is pretty dramatic compared with season 4’s premiere. When volume 1 of season 4 launched in 2022, Netflix counted around 287 million hours streamed over its opening days. While this doesn’t directly translate to views, those hours are roughly equivalent to 22 million views, meaning that season 5’s figure represents about a 171% increase.
This figure also ranks the show among the streamer’s most-watched debuts, trailing behind only the second and third seasons of Squid Game, but this level of popularity was likely partly fueled by Netflix’s decision to make the final season of the show such a huge event, one that will culminate on New Year’s Eve.
High viewership hasn’t guaranteed unanimous praise for this season, though. One notable review has claimed that Stranger Things may be outgrowing its original appeal, given the extended time between seasons and the young cast having clearly aged so much in the meantime.
In the first four episodes of season 5, we caught up with the Hawkins gang as they tried to track down the villainous Vecna and get rid of him once and for all. The fourth episode concluded with a payoff for poor Will Byers, who has suffered any number of indignities since the show first began in 2016, but has finally unlocked his supernatural powers and link to the hive mind in the Upside Down.
You can bet that the final episodes of Stranger Things will also be one of the most-watched TV events of 2025, given that so many people logged on to watch the first volume last month that the service temporarily crashed.
Ready or Not 2 Trailer Promises a Neo-Scream Queen Team Up
Late in the first Ready or Not film, Samara Weaving delivers a sound that defies all characterization. Backed into a corner by members of the Le Domas family, who try to kill her as soon as she marries a member of the wealthy clan, Weaving’s character Grace grabs a knife and emits what might be a shriek, might be a dolphin call, or might something else altogether. Whatever the sound was, it fully solidified Weaving’s status as a modern Scream Queen.
The first teaser for Ready or Not 2: Here I Come wisely replays that scene and Weaving’s idiosyncratic screech. But it goes even further to introduce Grace’s little sister Faith. Faith is played by Kathryn Newton who, of course, established her own Scream Queen credentials in Abigail, the previous movie made by Ready or Not directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett. Thus, with Ready or Not 2, we get a true Neo-Scream Queen team up, carrying on the proud tradition of women in horror movies.
Ready or Not 2 seems to pick up directly where the first movie left off. After marrying Alex Le Domas (Mark O’Brien) on the estate of his estranged family, Grace learns that his ancestor achieved such fortune in the game-making business by entering into a deal with the Satanic Mr. Le Bail. That deal bestowed untold wealth upon the Le Domases, but required them to play a game every time they welcomed a new member. In Grace’s case, that game was Hide ‘n Seek, with a deadly twist, as the Le Domases, including a reluctant Alex, had to hunt her down.
As we see in the Ready or Not 2 trailer, Grace survived her in-laws’ attack, which resulted in their being exploded like blood balloons by Le Bail, punishment for failing to uphold their part of the deal. The next movie, also written by Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy, picks up immediately afterwards. A new rich person (Elijah Wood) informs Grace that her survival simply means that the game continues, and now other wealthy families have to hunt her down. To up the stakes, Grace will be joined by Faith as the other quarry.
Film fans will certainly take note of the all-star cast making up the new families, including Sarah Michelle Gellar, Néstor Carbonell (sounding a lot like Batmanuel from The Tick), and horror legend David Cronenberg. They’ll also note that the scene of Grace being attacked in the hospital, recovering from the events of the first film, recalls Laurie Strode’s fate at the start of 1980’s Halloween II.
That’s an apt comparison, given the nature of the Scream Queen. Although the term goes back to Fay Wray in 1933’s King Kong, the greatest Scream Queen is Jamie Lee Curtis, who survived the onslaught of Michael Myers in Halloween and its sequels. Curtis, of course, came by the title honestly, as her mother Janet Leigh unleashed one of cinema’s best screams in 1960’s Psycho.
Although Curtis continues to do great work, even reprising her role as Laurie for the recent Halloween legacy sequels, it’s time for a new generation of actresses to put their own spin on the horror genre. And if Newton can deliver a noise as memorable as her on-screen sister, the future of horror is in good hands.
Ready or Not 2: Here I Come releases April 10, 2026.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Cast: Who’s Who in Game of Thrones Prequel
Though the Game of Thrones franchise is now endemic to our culture, the success of the original fantasy epic wasn’t always so assured. One can imagine HBO execs’ mounting concern in the early days of Game of Thrones‘ first season as viewers were tasked with keeping up with the immense lore of George R.R. Martin’s sprawling “A Song of Ice and Fire” canon. Then Tyrion of House Lannister met Bronn of House No-One-In-Particular on the road to The Eyrie and everything changed.
Tyrion and Bronn’s unlikely bromance was the first of many Game of Thrones pairings that would launch dozens of YouTube fan compilations and low-res “Westerbros” gifs. It served as a reminder that, even amid all the political posturing, gratuitous nudity, and child defenestration, the core of this story would always be about interesting characters bumping into one another. Now, nearly 15 years later, second Game of Thrones spinoff A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is set to boldly ask “what if we just built the whole thing out of oddball pairings?”
Based on Martin’s series of three prequel novellas called “Tales of Dunk and Egg,” A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms follows the mismatched duo of dim-witted but good-natured hedge knight Ser Duncan the Tall a.k.a. “Dunk” and his young, bald-headed squire Egg as they traipse across a postwar Seven Kingdoms looking for adventure.
“[This show] allows us to lean into the thing that I think a lot of Game of Thrones fans love, which is the odd couple pairings. That is essentially our show,” showrunner Ira Parker tells Den of Geek. “Everyone loves Brienne and Pod. Everyone loves The Hound and Arya. Game of Thrones was at its best when it could figure out who were the two least likely people to be in a scene together. That is my favorite stuff.”
Initially a writer for fellow Thrones prequel House of the Dragon, Parker was brought aboard the Dunk and Egg adaptation via an early morning text from HBO.
“[They were] like ‘what do you think about Dunk and Egg?'” he says. “The first thing I did is go and read them all. I had read the main series but I had never read Dunk and Egg. I spent about a week immersing myself in that world. I think, by the end of it, I came out knowing just as much if not more than George did about that period in history.”
That period of Westerosi history is a juicy one. Roughly 80 years since the Targaryen civil war known as the “Dance of the Dragons” (as depicted in House of the Dragon) has concluded, the Seven Kingdoms has just wrapped up another civil conflict – the first of many skirmishes in “The Blackfyre Rebellion,” in which a bastard branch of House Targaryen lays claim to the Iron Throne. While the lords indulge in their petty squabbles, life goes on for the smallfolk of Westeros, including one small folk who is not so small at all. Ser Duncan the Tall sets off for a jousting tourney at Ashford Meadow, where he’ll encounter his young charge Egg and get embroiled in a conflict that’s bigger than even him.
Accompanied by exclusive new character photos of Dunk, Egg, several Targaryens, and other major figures, Ira Parker guides Den of Geek through who to know before watching A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.
Peter Claffey as Ser Duncan the Tall
Ser Duncan the Tall a.k.a. “Dunk” isn’t just A Knight of the Seven Kingdom‘s central character, he might be an unprecedented figure within the Game of Thrones franchise thus far as he serves as the story’s only point-of-view.
“Having a single POV – that was probably the most challenging part,” Parker says. “Cutting away from one scene of Dunk to another scene of Dunk puts a lot on that character’s very broad shoulders.”
Providing those very broad shoulders is Peter Claffey – an Irish rugby player-turned-actor who previously appeared in similar swords and shields property Vikings: Valhalla and the Cillian Murphy-starring film Small Things Like These.
“Peter was in the mix very early. I would say that the biggest thing I noticed when he came in is that he got exponentially better every single time,” Parker says. “You don’t want someone who is a finished product. You want somebody who is going to grow into this. This is a huge job to take on for any actor of any level. Peter has risen to that challenge and more. I’m just so proud of him.”
Claffey also brings a certain level of humility that’s crucial for the role.
“He’s such a charismatic individual but he’s also just like Dunk. He’s got an inner anxiety about him. When he came into the first meeting he was like ‘my palms are sweating’ and I’m just like ‘this is perfect, this is what we wanted.'”
Dexter Sol Ansell as Egg
Identifying a compelling child actor to play a young character is often one of the most challenging tasks facing any given production. For A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, however, finding the right Egg might have just been its easiest endeavor.
“Dexter Sol Ansell was entry number one that I was sent at the very beginning of this process,” Parker says. “I watched his audition for Egg and I thought ‘that kid just nailed it. What do we do now?’ Our casting director was like ‘hold your horses, Ira, let’s see some other people first.’ But then we came all the way back around to him again. It feels like it was meant to be.”
An actor since the age of four, Ansell has already scored major roles like that of a young Coriolanus Snow in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes. Now he’s set to grow old(er) with the Game of Thrones franchise as Egg’s role evolves in fascinating ways in the stories to come.
Finn Bennett as Prince Aerion “Brightflame” Targaryen
After eight seasons of Game of Thrones and two of House of the Dragon, the Targaryen family has put together a lot of game tape for would-be dragon performers to analyze and emulate. Still, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms‘ showrunner sounds surprised at how naturally Finn Bennett embodies the privileged Valyrian prince Aerion.
“Finn came in and knocked it out of the fucking park for us. He can do so many different interesting things. Because the show is so religiously through Dunk’s POV, I wanted [Aerion] to feel how Dunk experiences him, which is just this bad shit happens to you sometimes. It drops out of the sky from nowhere. That’s hard for Aerion because there’s less for [Finn] to bite into. A lot had to be done with very little.”
The son of Prince Maekar, who himself is the son (though not heir) of King Daeron II, Aerion is like many other young male Targaryen royals with no reasonable expectation of sitting the Iron Throne. That is to say: he’s kind of a dick. Delving into exactly why he’s kind of a dick was an acting challenge that Bennett, who previously shined in True Detective: Night Country and Alex Garland’s Warfare, rose to meet.
“The biggest challenge with Aerion is that we don’t dig too deep into his psyche as to why he is like this and I think that’s important. There are a lot of villain backstories in general across the film and television spectrum that I’m just getting a little sick of. It’s becoming a little cookie cutter. Aerion is almost unreadable at points. You think he’s having fun with it. Then you think it’s a personality defect or maybe his father. He’s mysterious. It could go so many different ways.”
Bertie Carvel as Prince Baelor “Breakspear” Targaryen
Prince Baelor Breakspear is the black sheep of the Targaryen family in more ways than one. For starters, he doesn’t look much like the other platinum blond dragons, sporting notably darker and shorter hair thanks to his mother’s Dornish heritage. Secondly, he’s also a surprisingly level-headed and chill guy. Much more Maester Aemon than the Mad King Aerys II, the realm has good reason to believe that he will be a fair ruler when he one day takes over for his father King Daeron II.
Per Parker, Baelor’s respectable nature created an interesting casting dilemma, “Baelor was very tricky,” he says. “Because the way he was written on the page you worry that he’s just going to feel bland. That was actually probably our hardest, most complicated search.”
Thankfully, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms found half-Dornish gold with two-time Laurence Olivier Award-winning actor Bertie Carvel, best known for playing Jonathan Strange in Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and Tony Blair in The Crown.
“Bertie Carvel is one of the greatest working actors today,” Parker says. “He came in and he gave it that little extra edge and bite. You so effortlessly believe he is the one in charge. That is not easily done. But to be reserved and thoughtful and kind and honest in his approach while also being a big dog is hard.”
Tanzyn Crawford as Tanselle
As his sobriquet suggests, Ser Duncan the Tall is… well, tall. Naturally then, he is drawn to the similarly statuesque Tanselle, a humble puppeteer from Dorne. Finding the right performer for Tanselle began with understanding that physicality.
“We certainly knew the pool that we were going to be drawing from, which was modeling. Obviously [Tanselle] is pretty enough to draw Dunk’s attention and she’s tall and willowy. A lot of models fit that bill. The issue is, of course, was finding somebody who’s got almost the Talia Shire-esque vibe behind Tanselle. How to be shy but also not uninteresting. Tanzyn nailed that immediately.”
An Australian actress with only a handful of credits under her belt, Tanzyn Crawford provided precisely what production was looking for.
“The line that she nailed that got her the job was ‘All men are fools and all men are knights.’ When she says it to Dunk, he doesn’t even really know what it means. Is she taking a shot at me? She has a sly bit of dry wit. It made our decision very easy. She’s a wonderful actor.”
Daniel Ings as Ser Lyonel “The Laughing Storm” Baratheon
Part of the fun in prequels is getting to see some of our favorite characters’ forebears. Once viewers witness Ser Lyonel “The Laughing Storm” Baratheon, it will immediately become apparent where Kings Robert and Renly got their joie de vivre from. (The taciturn Stannis, however, remains a mystery). Heir to Storm’s End and just a rollicking good hang, Ser Lyonel cuts a big presence through A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms as does the actor who plays him, Daniel Ings.
“I had begun to think that I had written it poorly because we were getting auditions that just weren’t doing the scenes how they were in my head,” Parker says of Lyonel. “Then Danny Ings came in and it was like I had scored the script for him or something. Note-by-note. He got the ups and downs. Lyonel’s cadence. When he speaks, his words just rip through the air like Al Pacino.”
Best known for his breakout role in Guy Ritchie’s 2024 Netflix action series The Gentlemen, Ings now counts a very influential Thrones figure among his biggest fans.
“George [R.R. Martin] said, when he saw him in the first episode, ‘You gotta be careful. This guy might steal the show,'” Parker says. “I think some big things are happening for him. He’s gonna have a huge career.”
Sam Spruell as Prince Maekar Targaryen
Arriving to Ashford with Baelor and the rest of the Targaryen contingent is Prince Maekar, one of King Daeron II’s “extra” sons and Baelor’s younger brother. A serious and capable man, Maekar must contend with his own household of sons, each of whom he finds disappointing for entirely different reasons.
Embodying Maekar is veteran actor Sam Spruell, who just made waves in the fifth season of Fargo, playing the ageless and mysterious “Ole Munch.” For Parker, however, it was an even older role that made Spruell jump out.
“I knew him as the ex-boyfriend on Catastrophe, which I love,” Parker says. “Then I saw the work he did in Fargo and thought ‘This guy’s a genius. This is what we need.’ He does some really fun stuff. You believe him as Bertie’s brother. They just act how brothers do. He brought so many different layers to this role. His own sense of unique, quirky comedy, which we love here.”
Shaun Thomas as Raymun Fossoway
While Raymun Fossoway may have a useful surname as a member of House Fossoway of Cider Hall in The Reach, in reality he is little more than a squire and stable boy to his much more famous cousin, Ser Steffon. That relatively modest station in life allows him to empathize with a lowly hedge knight like Dunk.
“Raymun is the perfect friend for Dunk to meet when he gets to Ashford,” Parker says. “We should all be so lucky to have a Raymun in our life. He’s a lord but he’s basically an apple farmer. Because we’re not in the big cities or the fancy castles, we can meet a greater cross section of lords in Westeros.”
Playing Raymun is Shaun Thomas, a little-known actor whose real life equestrian experience almost made its way onto the show.
“Shaun is Raymun in a lot of ways. All our guys do horse riding lessons. Shaun actually came up doing horse riding but not in a fancy, posh way. It’s sort of a back country way, as he would probably describe it. It has him leaning back with his legs out. I couldn’t quite convince my horse masters to let us do that.”
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms premieres Sunday, January 18 at 10 p.m. ET on HBO.
Avengers: Doomsday Seems Ready to Fix an Endgame Mistake in the Worst Possible Way
For as much as the final third of Avengers: Endgame was all crowd-pleasing hit after crowd-pleasing hit, one moment earned more of an ugh than awe. That was the point when Spider-Man handed off the Infinity Gauntlet to Captain Marvel. As Carol Danvers prepared to face the oncoming hordes of Thanos, she was joined by all the superheroines of the MCU thus far: Pepper Potts as Rescue, Wasp, Valkyrie, Shuri, Okoye, Wanda Maximoff, Gamora, Nebula, and Mantis. But instead of feeling like a celebration of great Marvel women, the scene both wreaked of corporate box ticking and highlighted how little attention the franchise paid to female characters.
Looks like Marvel won’t be repeating Endgame‘s mistake in Avengers: Doomsday. Video footage from Giornate di Cinema, an Italian expo for theater owners, reveals the teams coming together to fight Doctor Doom. We see great male heroes like Captain America, Mister Fantastic, Shang-Chi, Gambit, and much more. We also see great female heroes including Invisible Woman, Mystique, Black Panther, Ghost, White Widow, and… Well, it’s just them.
Yes, Marvel seems to be avoiding its cringy feminist hero moment by removing the women altogether. That’s not what we wanted, Kevin Feige.
To be certain, the Lady Avengers Assemble scene from Endgame stinks and everyone on the internet agrees. Of course, a small (but obnoxiously loud) group on the internet hates the scene for the dumbest possible reason, arguing that it shows that Marvel cares more about women than men. They contend that the scene inaugurates what they derisively call the “M-She-U.”
In fact, that’s the exact opposite reason that the scene doesn’t work. By bringing together all of its female heroes, Marvel clearly wanted congratulations for its portrayal of superpowered women. But instead, the scene highlighted just how few women they have on their superhero roster. And even then, some of these are stretches; as much as we all love Pepper Potts, she had only been Rescue for maybe five minutes in Iron Man 3.
Since then, Marvel has been much better with its treatment of female characters. Wanda actually got one of the best character arcs in the franchise with WandaVision, which ended with her finally becoming the Scarlet Witch… at least until she becomes a crazy villain lady in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Captain Marvel was joined by Monica Rambeau and Ms. Marvel, and the franchise added She-Hulk, America Chavez, Ironheart, Stature, the Kate Bishop Hawkeye, and more.
None of whom show up in Avengers: Doomsday.
Now, there are a few caveats to keep in mind. First of all, this clearly isn’t the entire cast, as we don’t see every character revealed to be in Doomsday, such as Tenoch Huerta’s Namor, let alone those rumoured to appear, such as Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man or Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine. Second, Doomsday isn’t trying to encompass all of the MCU in the same way that Infinity War and Endgame did. Just because they’re not showing up in this movie doesn’t mean that She-Hulk or Captain Marvel don’t exist, any more than it means that Hulk or Doctor Strange are gone for good.
More importantly, quantity doesn’t mean quality. Part of the problem with the Endgame scene is that many of those characters hadn’t been given enough development to earn a spotlight. Heck, Hope van Dyne had to spend an entire movie playing second fiddle to Scott Lang before she got to be the Wasp, and even then she was completely absent from Infinity War and Endgame until she showed up with the other women.
For all of its post-Endgame problems, the MCU has actually been pretty good at using its superheroines. Not only did Shuri get an upgrade to become Black Panther, but these later phases have also introduced the White Widow Yelena Balova and the Invisible Woman Sue Storm. Even better, all three of these women were the leads of their respective films, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Thunderbolts*, and The Fantastic Four: First Steps.
If Doomsday is going to give these characters as much to do as their respective individual films did, then the smaller quantity of other women will be less of a problem. But if Doomsday is the super sausage fest it appears to be, then the Lady Avengers Assemble seem will somehow be even more embarrassing.
Avengers: Doomsday premieres on December 18, 2026.
The Batman Actor Catches Strays Over “Weak Sauce” Performance
Paul Dano, who has come across as a real sweetheart to date, caught some strays this week during a new interview with director Quentin Tarantino.
The Kill Bill director was chatting happily about his top films of the century on The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast, but after he ranked There Will Be Blood at number five, he didn’t hold back when explaining why the acclaimed Paul Thomas Anderson movie wasn’t higher on his list.
“There Will Be Blood would stand a good chance at being number one or number two if it didn’t have a big, giant flaw in it… and the flaw is Paul Dano,” he said. “Obviously, it’s supposed to be a two-hander [with Daniel Day-Lewis], but it’s also drastically obvious that it’s not a two-hander. [Dano] is weak sauce, man. He is the weak sister. Austin Butler would have been wonderful in that role. He’s just such a weak, weak, uninteresting guy. The weakest fucking actor in SAG.”
First of all, this is Jared Leto erasure. Secondly, Tarantino is entitled to his opinion, but his comments seem unnecessarily mean. Later, he even described Dano as “the limpest dick in the world” and added, “I don’t care for him, I don’t care for Owen Wilson, and I don’t care for Matthew Lillard.”
You can imagine these guys scrolling through their phones this week and wondering what they ever did to Tarantino, but they should take heart that many fans and critics came to Dano’s defense after Tarantino’s comments, arguing that his performance in There Will Be Blood is one of the film’s emotional cores and that his subtle, often unsettling portrayal of Eli Sunday is precisely what makes the movie as haunting as it is.
One social‑media user wrote bluntly: “Tarantino’s statement on Paul Dano is wrong on so many levels. He holds himself strong opposite a legend like Day‑Lewis… it’s one of the great performances.”
Dano’s actual body of work also stands strong against Tarantino’s assessment. Over the past two decades, he’s built a reputation for versatility and intensity, whether he’s starring in indies like Little Miss Sunshine and Swiss Army Man or offering wilder turns in more traditional blockbuster fare like his villainous Riddler in The Batman.
Leave Paul Dano alone! Leave him alone.
James Gunn Shuts Down Batman Suit Demands
As DC Studios gets rolling on a new Batman movie that will be entirely separate from Robert Pattinson’s incarnation of the character, DCU architect James Gunn and director Andy Muschietti have some choices to make about how this version of the Dark Knight will manifest onscreen.
Gunn, who is always candid about his decision-making process on social media, recently addressed a fan query about whether white eye lenses are the number one request for the new Batman suit, and whether they could even be animated like Deadpool’s eyes. The Superman director made it clear that, while the white eyes are among the most-requested design elements for Batman’s suit, they’re low on his list of priorities.
According to Gunn, the most requested Batsuit details in order of popularity are the blue and grey color scheme, the yellow around the bat, and finally, the white eyes, but all of those are less important to Gunn than “the character himself, the writing, and the person who plays him.”
Gunn then zeroed in on the conundrum at the heart of giving fans what they want, adding, “Individuals are making clear what they want to see. But even the most requested thing – the blue and grey – is split evenly with people who don’t want that. And the other two most requested things are also things just as many people say they don’t want to see. So you have to do what’s right by the specific film and story.”
Previously, Gunn has described the upcoming Batflick, tentatively titled The Brave and the Bold, as having what he believes is a “really, really good story” for Batman, so it’s clear that he isn’t interested in trotting out just another DC installment that only caters to nostalgia or fan hunger for the character, but making a movie that has something to say. His take is that the appeal of Batman lies in his flexibility as a character.
“There are so many expressions of Batman that are cool, and [having] different ways to access that character is one of the ways in which he’s so iconic,” Gunn mused. “I don’t think it’s a matter of the blue and the grey or the black Batman.”
He’s also noted that he finds there to be “a religious aspect to some of this stuff that’s very uncomfortable,” where Batman’s iconography tends to overshadow the deeper creative story.
As fans debate what Batman “should” look like, Gunn seems happy as long as audiences walk away feeling like they understood Bruce Wayne.
Avatar 3 Early Reactions Call It the Best One Yet
Avatar: Fire and Ash finally screened for the press earlier this week, and if their reactions are anything to go by, director James Cameron can just go ahead and pop a bottle of champagne (probably underwater) because his threequel got a largely warm reception. If Fire and Ash goes on to achieve the same financial success as the last two Avatar movies, he could also maybe pop [counts on fingers]… many more bottles of champagne.
If you’ve forgotten what’s happening in the Avatar franchise, the series follows Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a former human marine who becomes part of the Na’vi clan on the alien moon Pandora and dedicates his life to defending it from human exploitation. Avatar: The Way of Water continues the story years after the first flick, with Jake and his Na’vi lover Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) raising a family while the humans return in greater numbers, driving them into hiding with a new ocean-dwelling clan. Fire and Ash is set to explore deeper fractures within Pandora by introducing a fire-aligned Na’vi clan that is way more antagonistic, pushing the story towards a more morally complex struggle for the planet’s future.
“I don’t think of Fire and Ash as a sequel,” Cameron has explained. “I think it was a culmination of a saga. I like ‘saga’ better than ‘sequel’ because a lot of where we were going with the story was in the original architecture of the story. So if you think of this as the third act, I think that’s healthier. It’s a long game. And I went into it knowing that we’d be playing a long game and betting that the audience would come along with us and care about these people. Because they may be 10 feet tall and blue, but they’re people.”
Critics have described Fire and Ash more positively as a “knockout” that delivers on “an enormous scale.” Complimenting its “awe-inspiring” visuals, a few have declared it the best Avatar movie yet. However, some weren’t as impressed with Cameron’s latest, calling it “overstuffed,” “pointless,” and “mostly a repetitive bore.”
You can see some of these critical reactions below…
#Avatar FIRE AND ASH is a knockout. An epic that delivers on an enormous scale, with the characters & worldbuilding paying off surprising dividends. It's a delight to see a film be this big while still being a narratively & visually bold work of science-fiction. The best one yet. pic.twitter.com/2bu9DGrg9r
There’s too much “been there done that” in terms of plot beats and set pieces, but AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH is still an awe-inspiring technical and visceral achievement. It doesn’t skimp on the melodrama or intensity, as James Cameron delivers a towering spectacle of such all-in… pic.twitter.com/dTIxhG8hT6
AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH is a monumental cinematic achievement. Astonishing, boundary-pushing visuals are accompanied by an enthralling narrative filled with poignant commentary and genuinely moving character work. By far, the best Avatar movie. Epic. Ambitious. Heartfelt. A must see pic.twitter.com/pEgPkwKBZj
— The HoloFiles – Movie/TV News & Reviews (@theholofiles) December 2, 2025
James Cameron’s AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH is a phenomenal moviegoing experience. It’s the biggest of the three — action-packed, visually jaw-dropping and rich with themes of family, legacy and survival. The way it weaves fire, water, air and land into every nook and cranny of the film… pic.twitter.com/aNO5xOXs5x
Three films in and I still can’t get over how magical the #Avatar movies are. Wish I had more original phrasing, but this applies too well — #AvatarFireAndAsh truly feels like a ride. I couldn’t believe how quickly I was pulled back into the world of Pandora and swept up in the… pic.twitter.com/TdmAxp4ELQ
AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH is overstuffed with a lot of plot, further dragged down by repeating familiar beats from the previous entries. But Cameron still delivers amazing spectacle, with an intriguing darker tone. There’s novel concepts here I wish were more thoroughly explored. pic.twitter.com/O6Q6fn7iT2
Avatar: Fire and Ash has some fun action set pieces but boy if it isn’t mostly a repetitive bore. Virtually identical to The Way of Water and feels pointless. Liked the legacy Oona Chaplin brought but a pretty generic villain. These movies also never need to be three hours long. pic.twitter.com/DOIh25gIDC
Avatar: Fire and Ash will be released on December 19.
This Christmas, Give Yourself the Gift of Seeing a Skarsgård Fight Naked on a Volcano
When you’re buying gifts for everyone else during the holidays, don’t forget to get yourself something special. You deserve a little treat! Our humble suggestion? Nothing says “’tis the season!” quite like Alexander Skarsgård fighting naked on a volcano. Luckily, Netflix has you covered, as Robert Eggers’ Viking film The Northman is streaming from December 3.
We won’t lie to you, the journey up until the moment Skarsgård fights naked on a volcano is a brutal one. The Northman is set in a world that’s ruled by things we don’t really truck with anymore, like blood oaths and such. Not that we’re here to yuck anyone’s yum! Obviously, if you have a blood oath going right now, please just stay safe and proceed with caution.
The movie’s story follows Skarsgård’s Amleth, whose princely life is upended when his dad is murdered, and his mother becomes his aunt (it’s complicated). Naturally, Amleth sets out on a bloody revenge mission to mete out justice for all the ways he and his family were wronged, but any standard revenge tale is slowly muddied here by pesky Norse rituals, incest, and odd supernatural occurrences.
It’s an epic, violent movie with some truly unnerving scenes, so you might find yourself wondering whether you should keep watching. Right around the time Björk shows up, you might find yourself wondering again.
You must. Because even though there’s much to recommend in The Northman, from its beautiful cinematography to its meticulous detail and authenticity, it ends with Skarsgård having a sword fight naked on a volcano. And that’s cinema.
For Skarsgård, this scene was about authenticity. “It was essential to be naked,” he told Indiewire. “There are a lot of stories about the Vikings taking their clothes off before a fight for many different reasons. One being to intimidate the opponent. When you’re completely naked, you’re completely vulnerable. It is a way of showing fearlessness, and also to potentially to shock your opponent.”
That’s why we recommend you also show fearlessness this holiday season by watching The Northman on Netflix in the comfort of your own pajamas: for realism, for cinema, and for the sight of Alexander Skarsgård fighting naked on a volcano – the greatest gift of all.
Fortnite Is a Good Cinema Supplement, Not a Cinema Replacement
“Somehow, Palpatine returned,” Oscar Isaac’s Poe Dameron famously declared in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. What Damreon didn’t say was how exactly he and the resistance learned that the Emperor had come back. Because all of that happened in 2019’s Star Wars X Fortnite, a four-week series within the massively popular Battle Royale game. Players who completed the event, in which their characters blasted away at one another while collecting Star Wars-style skins and guns, were treated to a recording of Darth Sidious calling for revenge, declaring that the day of the Sith is imminent.
The decision to put such a major plot point in a video game certainly raised eyebrows back in 2019, but it was overshadowed by the many, many, many other problems with The Rise of Skywalker. But more and more studios and even filmmakers are collaborating with Fortnite. Most recently Quentin Tarantino went so far as to make a short film within the game, the Kill Bill spinoff “The Lost Chapter: Yuki’s Revenge.” To some movie fans, the idea of a devoted cinephile like Tarantino making a movie in Fortnite spells the end of the theatrical experience. But as long as Fortnite is just another promotional technique, such fears are unfounded.
A History of Exploitation
American cinema has always been entangled in capitalism, going all the way back to Thomas Edison demanding payment for anyone who used the early film camera and projectors that he and W. K. L. Dickson created. Just as much a product as they are an art, movies must be sold to audiences and distributors and, thus, marketing is heavily involved.
For example, actor-turned-director Emory Johnson promoted his 1922 pro-police melodrama In the Name of the Law by inviting local law enforcement to attend for free and handing out plastic badges and whistles to youngsters. Twenty years later, Howard Hughes pushed back against Hays Code enforcer Joseph Breen’s demands to downplay the emphasis on star Jane Russell’s chest in his movie The Outlaw by hiring a skywriter to display the film title in the sky, accompanied by two huge circles. In 1960, theaters filled their lobbies with standees of Alfred Hitchcock informing audiences that they will not be permitted entrance to Psycho after the film had begun, which only increased interest in the early slasher. It’s no wonder that studios used the word “exploitation” instead of “promotion” to describe their marketing techniques.
It’s not hard to draw a straight line from Nolan promoting The Dark Knight through an alternate reality game and the way he released a trailer for his 2020 movie Tenet. The first people who got to see the teaser for that Bond-influenced sci-fi flick were those playing Fortnite, where the trailer played in an online theater.
Nolan’s participation in the Fortnite promotion helps put the current craze into perspective. Few filmmakers are as devoted to the theatrical experience as Nolan. Not only does he remain committed to film over digital and not only has he pioneered the use of IMAX cameras for narrative movies, but he held back Tenet to prevent it from going to streaming before theaters during the pandemic. Clearly, he knows how to use Fortnite to get attention for his movies while still upholding the sanctity of the movie theater.
That said, one can sympathize with moviegoers worried about Fortnite‘s effects on cinema as an art. It’s quite unnerving to see how the game uses skins based on famous characters and figures from all over pop culture, including the movies. Any given game may feature David Corenswet’s Superman shooting Zendaya‘s Chani from Dune in the face while dodging sniper fire from Art the Clown from Terrifer, who happens to be controlled by a six-year-old who has no business watching those movies. Whatever genuine feelings these respective movies invoke seem cheapened when they become stuff kids can buy for a game.
And yet, when Chani shows up in Denis Villeneuve‘s Dune 3 next year, none of us are going to be wondering how she escaped the clutches of Superman and Art. The situations in Fortnite are so ridiculous that they stand apart on their own, completely divorced from the narratives that spawned them.
The Theatrical Standard
No question, it is strange that you can only watch “Yuki’s Revenge” in Fortnite, which is a huge bummer for cinephiles who don’t care about video games. And there is the fact films such as Inception did stream for a while within Fortnite, attempting to undo the division between the actual film and the video game.
As of yet, the movie-watching experience within Fortnite is pretty substandard, which means that even the biggest gamer understands the theater to be superior to whatever Epic Games has constructed. And as long as we keep movies within Fortnite to a minimum, then the promotions and goofy skins can continue without worrying film fans. Fortnite isn’t a threat to cinema; it’s its own weird thing.
But if Palpatine’s return taught us anything, it’s that you can never keep a bad idea down. So we’re sure that, somehow, the idea of movies within Fortnite will return. Until then, we’ll keep watching movies in theaters and using King Kong to shoot Poe Dameron with a laser rifle.
Resident Evil Dives Into Strategic Survival Horror with Resident Evil Survival Unit
This article is presented in partnership with JOYCITY
Survival horror goes mobile with the release of Resident Evil Survival Unit, a new strategy game co-developed by Aniplex Inc. and JOYCITY Corporation for iOS and Android devices. Based on Capcom’s iconic video game franchise, Resident Evil Survival Unit is a love letter to the game series and mythos, bringing in some familiar faces to get in on the intense fun, while telling its own original tale that both longtime and new Resident Evil fans will love.
The game has players wake up in a mysterious hospital as the latest test subject for the sinister Umbrella Corporation. As the player searches for other survivors to ally themselves with against the hordes of undead and other ghastly monsters, they can also improve upon their impromptu defenses while getting to the bottom of what Umbrella has been up to with their gruesome experiments.
Resident Evil has often expanded upon expectations regarding survival horror games, with Resident Evil Survival Unit revolving around base building and tactical battles as core elements of its gameplay. Like other Resident Evil games, exploration, puzzle-solving, and character development and weapon upgrades are important factors in Resident Evil Survival Unit. And as players build and train their team to take on Umbrella’s monstrosities and other enemies, fans will be thrilled to see who they can team up with to become the ultimate zombie-slaying squad.
Resident Evil mainstays Leon S. Kennedy, Claire Redfield, and Jill Valentine are among the most famous franchise heroes who can be recruited, trained, and deployed as part of the player’s squad. These characters are joined by more deep-cut figures that are sure to have hardcore Resident Evil fans happily surprised by their inclusion, immediately recognizable from their classic appearances and with their own signature traits to contribute to the team. This mix of characters clearly underscores that Resident Evil Survival Unit is made by Resident Evil fans, for Resident Evil fans.
And then, of course, there is the matter of the gameplay, which provides players with an engrossing new way to experience Resident Evil and more than just a title developed for mobile platforms. With characters each possessing a variety of traits that fall into distinct classes, players must be strategic in how they train and deploy their team into defensive positions to take on waves of enemies to increase their chances of survival. As a base of operations, players convert an abandoned mansion, restoring and repurposing the building while carefully managing resources to both effectively establish a strong defensive base and better equip the team.
While Resident Evil Survival Unit offers an in-depth single-player experience, like so many fan-favorite Resident Evil games, it also provides competitive real-time online multiplayer for those looking to put their team to the ultimate test. There are a variety of tactical battle game modes for players to try out, meticulously plotting hero formation and field deployment as they make alliances and clash in strategy arena settings to see whose survivor squad will emerge triumphant.
Since its announcement in July 2025, Resident Evil Survival Unit has fueled widespread excitement from fans worldwide who have responded in kind. By the time the game’s November 18 launch date was officially announced, over 2 million players had pre-registered for it on the App Store and Google Play in preparation for its release. Positive buzz has only grown since then, with players eager for a completely fresh take on the classic trappings and characters from Resident Evil through a new title optimized for mobile platforms.
In addition to its beloved survival horror source material, Resident Evil Survival Unit boasts the creative contributions of celebrated Japanese artist Yoshitaka Amano, known for his work on classic franchises like Final Fantasy and Vampire Hunter D. For Resident Evil Survivor Unit, Amano served as a guest designer, creating the original creature Mortem, who symbolizes the terrors of the unknown in this parallel Resident Evil universe. So much of the fear from Resident Evil is derived from the unknowable and Amano channels those primal sensibilities in creating Survival Unit’s original monster.
With an all-new strategy mobile game experience that celebrates the storied legacy of Resident Evil while delivering gripping tactical battle gameplay, Resident Evil Survival Unit is the most hyped mobile game release of 2025. Capcom, Aniplex Inc., and JOYCITY have come together to bring a varied and immersive mobile title that lets players explore a parallel universe take on Resident Evil, complete with its most beloved characters ready to join the fight for survival against hordes of monsters. Intuitive, accessible, and endlessly rewarding to play, Resident Evil Survival Unit proves that there are plenty of innovative directions and experiences to be had from the biggest franchise in the survival horror genre.
Resident Evil Survival Unit will be released Nov. 18 for iOS and Android devices through the App Store and Google Play.
Fire and Ash Could Be James Cameron’s Final Avatar Film
By this point, no one in Hollywood would bet against James Cameron. For decades, Cameron has raised eyebrows by racking up enormous budgets for weird ideas like “a gigantic sequel to a grimy movie about a killer robot from the future” or “Fern Gully but in 3D.” And each and every time, Cameron is proven right, turning out movies that thrill critics and make tons of money at the box office. But there is one person who is showing doubt in James Cameron: James Cameron himself.
“I have no doubt in my mind that this movie will make money,” Cameron said of Avatar: Fire and Ash in an interview with The Town (via Inverse). “The question is, does it make enough money to justify doing it again?” And if it does not reach that level of profit, Cameron admitted that he’s “absolutely” prepared to walk away from the franchise.
That’s a shocking admission from a guy known for his force of will. It’s not just that Cameron projects garner huge price tags. It’s also that he does things that Hollywood common sense considers crazy. That’s how he made Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Titanic into such spectacles, and it’s why he put an Avatar sequel into theaters 13 years after the first one.
Even now, before Fire and Ash has even hit theaters, Cameron has two more movies in production, one slated to release in 2029 and the other in 2031. Those are big plans for a 71-year-old.
But Cameron is right to say that Hollywood budgets are massive, and Disney—which acquired the Avatar franchise when they bought 20th Century Fox—certainly has expectations that blockbusters turn a profit. As Cameron so colorfully put it on The Town, Fire and Ash cost “one metric fuck ton of money, which means we have to make two metric fuck tons of money to make a profit.”
As admirable and rare as Cameron’s introspection is, one has to wonder if he really needs to worry. After all, both of the previous Avatar films did indeed make several two metric fuck tons of money. The 2009 film is the highest-grossing movie of all time, and The Way of Water is the third highest grossing movie all time, with Avengers: Endgame tucked between. Given the excitement already building around Fire and Ash, it’s hard to believe that the third entry won’t continue the trend.
For his part, Cameron isn’t waiting to find out. If Fire and Ash proves to be the final outing for Jake Sully and his family of Na’vi, fans won’t be left hanging. In addition to assuring viewers that most major plot points will be revolved, Cameron has a plan for dealing with any remaining questions. “There is one open thread,” not resolved in Fire and Ash,” he explained, “and if [the story] ends there theatrically, I’ll write a book.”
And so, in classic James Cameron fashion, even when he doubts himself, James Cameron still has a plan to bet on himself.
Avatar: Fire and Ash releases December 19, 2025.
Noah Hawley’s Canceled Star Trek Movie Actually Understood Star Trek
Noah Hawley might be the weirdest fan in show business. He makes shows about well-established and beloved properties, tackling the X-Men in Legion, the Coen Brothers’ filmography in Fargo, and xenomorphs in Alien: Earth. And while he fills those shows with the sort of attention to detail that usually marks fan-centric works—see the pseudo-Nostromo in Alien: Earth or the flying saucer from The Man Who Wasn’t There in Fargo‘s second season—Hawley also has wild takes on the source material.
So it’s a little surprising to learn that Hawley’s now-canceled Star Trek movie sounds like, well, Star Trek. Speaking with the Smartless podcast (via TrekMovie) hosted by Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett, Hawley explained his approach to property. “I thought, everything [in franchises] is war, right? Star Wars is war, and Marvel is war,” he explained. “But Star Trek isn’t war. Star Trek is exploration, right? It’s people solving problems by being smarter than the other guy.”
Those words are music to the ears to Trekkies everywhere. As much as new Star Trek as we’ve had over the past 16 years, “Trekking” hasn’t always been the focus. We’ve had people running up and down hallways in the J.J. Abrams movies, lots of crying it out on Discovery, and so much insight into Spock’s love life on Strange New Worlds, but despite the last example’s title, not a whole lot of seeking new life and new civilizations.
On one hand, the franchise has to grow and evolve as times change, and we don’t necessarily need TOS‘s over-reliance on meeting god-like beings on another planet that looks like Earth or all of TNG‘s beigeness. There’s nothing inherently wrong with season-long arcs, exploring the emotional stakes of characters, or even references to classic series. But as demonstrated by its need to keep doing prequels or simply remix existing alien races, as Star Trek: Academy seems to be doing, the franchise has forgotten how to boldly go.
And if there’s one thing Hawley loves to do, it’s to go boldly. He made the xenomorph just one of several monsters in Alien: Earth (all hail Eyetopus!) and Legion had more surreal dance numbers than it did mutant on mutant battles.
By all accounts, his Star Trek movie would have done the same. His movie was rumored to involve an all-new crew, investigating a virus that wiped out various planets. “It was an original story that was not Chris Pine-related, nor was it Captain Kirk-related,” Hawley recently told Men’s Journal. The only connection to established stories would have involved “an unboxing of Data, the idea of the android. And that was to become an element in the films.”
On Smartless, Hawley said Paramount loved the idea and gave it the greenlight, but then a regime change stalled things. A new head took over Paramount‘s movie division and “the first thing they did was kill the original Star Trek movie,” Hawley explained. And they killed for one reason: it went too far into new territory, straying from the Kelvin movies that fans already knew. “They said, ‘Well, how do we know people are going to like it? Shouldn’t we do a transition movie from Chris Pine, play it safe?’ And so [the movie] kind of went away.”
At this point, we don’t know what Goldstein and Daley plan to do. And with season two of Alien: Earth now in production, we know that Hawley is busy making the world of xenomorphs weird again. But whatever happens, we can’t help but mourn the loss of a Star Trek story that put trekking first, that cared more about smart people using their training and competence to help others than it does explosions or name drops or whatever the heck Section 31was.
Until then, we can just hope that Goldstein and Daley remember that Star Trek is about astronauts on some kind of star trek, even if they don’t get quite as weird as Hawley surely would have been.
The Most Highly-Anticipated Marvel Movie Stuck in Limbo “Just Unraveled”
It’s been over six years since Marvel announced a rebooted Blade movie, but it still hasn’t gone into production. The project, which initially snagged Mahershala Ali (Moonlight) to star as the fan favorite Daywalker, has repeatedly stalled since 2016 after getting hit with multiple script and director changes.
Right now, we have no idea what stage Marvel is at with developing the highly-anticipated superhero movie, despite some eagerness to promote the character outside of it. Wesley Snipes briefly returned as Blade in Deadpool & Wolverine last year, and a multiversal version of Blade also appeared in this year’s well-received animated series, Marvel Zombies, but in terms of any solo Blade action, there’s no start date on the horizon.
Someone who does have some insight into how the project fell apart is Pearl star Mia Goth, who was attached to the movie as its villain, Lilith. During a recent episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Goth says things seemed to be going well with Blade behind the scenes. At least, for a while.
“The furthest that it got with me is that I auditioned,” she told host Josh Horowitz. “And I flew to Atlanta, and we did a chemistry test between Mahershala and I, and we did a costume fitting, and a wig fitting, and I was very excited in the direction that it was going. It was very cool, and Mahershala had such an interesting take on it. He was great. And then it just unraveled from there, unfortunately.”
Goth also confirmed that she doesn’t know what’s going on with Blade at the moment. She thinks Marvel still wants to make it, but doesn’t seem to have been given an update, rounding up her comments with “We’ll see if it comes back around.”
It would be great if it did. Fans are excited about a new Blade movie and seem happy enough to see a new take on the character, especially from Oscar-winner Ali. It would also be interesting to see how a darker, vampire-focused story would fit into the MCU’s larger superhero world, but it doesn’t look like we’re getting that story anytime soon.
Pluribus Poses a Hive Mind Dilemma The Expanse Never Got to Explore
This article contains spoilers for both Pluribus and The Expanse.
It didn’t take long for Apple TV’s Pluribus to use a nearly complete takeover of humanity to pose a philosophical question. Is the loss of individuality a price worth paying for the end of all the killing, lying, wastefulness, and greed that our species is responsible for? Wouldn’t the planet and all of its inhabitants be better off if the dominant life form stopped getting in its own way and started working for the common good, free will be damned?
Science fiction television has explored the idea of humans being part of a single mind before, whether it be the well-known Borg story arc in Star Trek or the more obscure Glorious Evolution in Arcane, but there’s one popular series that never got the chance to prove that personhood with all its foibles outweighs any utopia that involves human drones. The six seasons of The Expanse got two-thirds of the way through adapting James S.A. Corey’s space epic, but the final novel, which explored a hive-mind solution to the solar system’s woes, sadly never made it to the small screen.
In Leviathan Falls, the ninth and final book in The Expanse series, Winston Duarte went well beyond the ambition of his television counterpart, who had only begun establishing a totalitarian foothold while the Sol system was distracted by the Free Navy that he secretly funded. Using the protomolecule to grant himself near immortality, Duarte’s initial plan was to unite the gate worlds under his Laconian Empire, and hints of this in the series finale temper the celebration of the treaty being signed between Belters and Inners.
But whereas The Expanse television show leaves the rest to the viewer’s imagination, the books explore Duarte’s innovative solution to defeating the silent alien killers lurking inside the gates. His unique use of the protomolecule gives him the ability to merge the thoughts and experiences of every human inside the Ring space, and, as a single mind under Duarte’s control, humanity could succeed where the Ring makers failed in defeating the “dark gods.” That was the plan, anyway.
“I dreamed too small before,” Duarte says in a climactic Leviathan Falls scene in which the god-emperor has nearly achieved the deity status his title suggests. “I see that now. I thought I could save us by organizing, by keeping us together, and I was right about that… but I didn’t understand how to do it.”
The final solution presented in Leviathan Falls won’t be spoiled here, but the big difference in The Expanse is that the transformation was much more gradual than the viral spread in Pluribus. People in the Ring space had the chance to experience the horror of the loss of privacy and their sense of self while maintaining a tenuous hold on their individuality. All that the infected people in Pluribus could do before “awakening” was convulse a bit.
Zosia (Karolina Wydra) makes a big deal out of Carol (Rhea Seehorn) not knowing what it’s like to be “them,” and that she shouldn’t judge before experiencing the joy of a joined mind. For the Belters, Martians, and Earthers of The Expanse, however, that argument falls flat. While a merging might have brought unity to the warring factions of the solar system, the idea was universally rejected by the characters that experienced it, especially as the bond grew stronger.
Carol doesn’t get much cooperation from her fellow immune humans in Pluribus because the hive mind serves them willingly and even gladly plays the role of loved ones, like Lakshmi with her son, so that they can continue in their denial. Carol would find many more like-minded malcontents like herself in the world of The Expanse. It’s a shame we never got to see their rebellion on screen.
Buffy Revival Director Defends One of the Original Show’s Worst Characters
Hamnet director Chloé Zhao, who helmed the first episode of the upcoming Buffy the Vampire Slayer revival, has given her take on one of the show’s eternal questions: Team Spike or Team Angel?
Arguably, neither vampire is a good option for Buffy Summers. When Angel comes along, she’s 16, and he’s around 240. Plus, he can turn evil if he gets even a moment of pure happiness. Then there’s Spike. He’s also old as hell, violent, and abusive. But still, many fans have chosen their team.
While considering the choice, Zhao admitted she was a “massive” Buffy and Spike shipper in her teens and early 20s, but now that she’s older, she’s leaning towards picking neither Spike nor Angel.
“I actually, in my 40s, appreciated Riley more,” she told DC Film Girl. “When I was younger, I thought, ‘kind of boring. I prefer Spike.’ And now I’m older, go like, ‘You know what? Maybe a little less Spike, a little more Riley.'”
Riley Finn, played by Marc Blucas, was Buffy’s boyfriend during parts of seasons 4 and 5 of the original show. He was human, which was a good start for Buffy, but being a covert operative for the U.S. Army, Riley was fairly preoccupied with rules and regulations. He was also paranoid that Buffy didn’t love him and that she never would, which Buffy denied. Riley got so far in his own head about it that he started letting vampires feed off him just to feel needed.
Riley felt that Buffy was neglecting him. Y’know, between dealing with college, her mother’s sudden illness, having a magical sister, getting her ass beat regularly, and all the other things life was throwing at her, she didn’t have time to give him as much attention as he wanted. Will no one think of Riley’s fee-fees?! Ugh, he sucked. In a completely different way than Angel or Spike. But perhaps he could be viewed as the best of a bad bunch.
Riley appreciation aside, it looks like the first episode of the Buffy revival is in good hands. Zhao says when she found out that star Sarah Michelle Gellar hadn’t held on to the Class Protector umbrella prop Buffy was handed at the end of “The Prom” episode in season 3 of the original series, she had one specially made and gave it to Gellar when they wrapped filming, even performing Jonathan Levinson’s “We’re not good friends” speech in front of the gathered crowd. That’s a nice touch.
Looks Like We’re Going to Miss Ready Player One’s Deadline for an Important Event
We’ve finally caught up to a key moment in Ready Player One’s fictional history. Virtual reality platform the OASIS first went live on December 8, 2025, according to an entry in Ogden Morrow’s journal. Unfortunately, we aren’t quite ready for the OASIS just yet, though a few things are getting close to what we might have hoped Gregarious Games had in store for us.
There’s Zuckerberg’s metaverse, which we can access on a Meta Quest device. It’s an impressive piece of kit with some good ideas, but it’s not the OASIS. His VR and AR dreams haven’t fully embraced the concept of legs yet, let alone a truly immersive, realistic world where anything can happen.
Then, there’s Fortnite. Without the VR element, the Epic Games mainstay comes as close as possible to replicating a place where worlds collide; where you can fight Jason Vorhees in a Bob Belcher skin and find treasure playing duos with Sabrina Carpenter, while Christopher Nolan implores you to watch Tenet.
Despite the OASIS lingering out of our reach, December 8, 2025, isn’t quite as important as today, because on December 2, 2025, its co-creator, James Halliday, went on a date with Kira. This failed date is one of the most important moments in Ready Player One, even though it transpires long before the story’s main events. The painfully awkward meeting between the brilliant but socially inept James and the charming Kira sets the stage for everything that comes after.
Dec 2nd 2025 – Six days before OASIS went live, James Halliday told his colleague Ogden Morrow (#SimonPegg), about a date he went on with Karen Underwood aka "Kira".📽️📅 Ready Player One (2018)
James has done well to even invite Kira on the date, but when she gets there, he freezes up and can’t really even hold a conversation with her. Kira is uncomfortable and leaves early, and James never gets the courage to ask her out again or express his feelings towards her. She then begins a romance with his best friend, Ogden, and James is left wallowing in regret, growing more insular and focusing solely on building the OASIS.
The date’s importance in Ready Player One isn’t really about love or romance. It symbolizes all of Halliday’s struggles to connect with other people. It’s why he designs the OASIS’s intricate egg quest in the first place. It’s a warning to other players that choosing isolation over vulnerability will only end in regret.
Today, of all days, let’s consider taking a moment to think about what James Halliday was trying to tell us. Perhaps log off, get some fresh air, and go tell someone you care about them.
Wondering when your favorite shows are coming back and what new series you can look forward to? We’ve got you covered with the Den of Geek 2025 TV Premiere Dates Calendar, where we keep track of TV series premiere dates, return dates, and more for the year and beyond.
We’ll continue to update this page weekly as networks announce dates. A lot of these shows we’ll be watching or covering, so be sure to follow along with us!
Please note that all times are ET.
Note: These are U.S. releases. For upcoming British releases, head on over here.
DATE
SHOW
NETWORK
Wednesday, December 3
Ripple
Netflix
Wednesday, December 3
Stranded with My Mother-in-Law Season 3
Netflix
Wednesday, December 3
With Love, Meghan: Holiday Celebration
Netflix
Wednesday, December 3
The Hunt
Apple TV
Thursday, December 4
The Abandons
Netflix
Thursday, December 4
The Believers Season 2
Netflix
Thursday, December 4
Fugue State 1986
Netflix
Thursday, December 4
The Great Christmas Light Fight (9:00 p.m.)
ABC
Thursday, December 4
Next Level Baker (9:00 p.m.)
Fox
Friday, December 5
The Price of Confession
Netflix
Friday, December 5
Owning Manhattan Season 2
Netflix
Friday, December 5
Surely Tomorrow
Prime Video
Friday, December 5
Spartacus: House of Ashur
Starz
Monday, December 8
Midsomer Murders
Acorn TV
Monday, December 8
Here Come the Irish Season 2
Peacock
Tuesday, December 9
Badly in Love
Netflix
Tuesday, December 9
Blood Coast Season 2
Netflix
Tuesday, December 9
Fixer Upper: Colorado Mountain House
HGTV
Wednesday, December 10
The Accident Season 2
Netflix
Wednesday, December 10
Record of Ragnarok Season 3
Netflix
Wednesday, December 10
Percy Jackson and the Olympians Season 2
Disney+
Thursday, December 11
Had I Not Seen the Sun Part 2
Netflix
Thursday, December 11
Man Vs. Baby
Netflix
Thursday, December 11
Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft Season 2
Netflix
Thursday, December 11
The Town
Netflix
Thursday, December 11
The Game Awards (8:00 p.m.)
Prime Video
Thursday, December 11
Little Disasters
Paramount+
Friday, December 12
City of Shadows
Netflix
Friday, December 12
Home for Christmas Season 3
Netflix
Friday, December 12
Taylor Swift: The End of an Era
Disney+
Friday, December 12
Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Paramount+
Monday, December 15
The Creature Cases: Chapter 6
Netflix
Tuesday, December 16
Culinary Class Wars Season 2
Netflix
Wednesday, December 17
The Manny Season 3
Netflix
Wednesday, December 17
What’s In the Box?
Netflix
Wednesday, December 17
Fallout Season 2
Prime Video
Thursday, December 18
Emily in Paris Season 5
Netflix
Thursday, December 18
Human Specimens
Prime Video
Friday, December 19
Born to Be Wild
Apple TV
Friday, December 19
Adult Swim’s The Elephant (11:00 p.m.)
Adult Swim
Monday, December 22
Sicily Express
Netflix
Monday, December 22
The Wonderfully Weird World of Gumball Season 2
Hulu
Tuesday, December 23
King of Collectibles: The Goldin Touch Season 3
Netflix
Thursday, December 25
Stranger Things Season 5 Volume 2
Netflix
Thursday, December 25
Sanctuary: A Witch’s Tale Season 2
AMC+
Saturday, December 27
The Copenhagen Test
Peacock
Monday, December 29
Members Only: Palm Beach
Netflix
Wednesday, December 31
Stranger Things Season 5 Volume 3
Netflix
Thursday, January 1
RunAway
Netflix
Thursday, January 1
The Cult of the Real Housewife
TLC
Monday, January 5
The Wall Season 6 (9:00 p.m.)
NBC
Tuesday, January 6
Finding Your Roots Season 12 (8:00 p.m.)
PBS
Tuesday, January 6
Best Medicine (8:00 p.m.)
Fox
Tuesday, January 6
Will Trent Season 4 (8:00 p.m.)
ABC
Tuesday, January 6
High Potential Season 2 (9:00 p.m.)
ABC
Tuesday, January 6
The Rookie Season 8 (10:00 p.m.)
ABC
Wednesday, January 7
The Masked Singer Season 14 (8:00 p.m.)
Fox
Wednesday, January 7
Hollywood Squares Season 2 (8:00 p.m.)
CBS
Wednesday, January 7
The Price Is Right at Night Season 7 (9:00 p.m.)
CBS
Wednesday, January 7
Harlan Coben’s Final Twist (10:00 p.m.)
CBS
Thursday, January 8
His & Hers
Netflix
Thursday, January 8
The Traitors Season 4
Peacock
Thursday, January 8
The Hunting Party (10:00 p.m.)
NBC
Friday, January 9
A Thousand Blows Season 2
Disney+
Sunday, January 11
The Night Manager Season 2
Prime Video
Sunday, January 11
Miss Scarlet Season 6 (8:00 p.m.)
PBS
Sunday, January 11
All Creatures Great and Small Season 6 (9:00 p.m.)
PBS
Sunday, January 11
Industry Season 4 (9:00 p.m.)
HBO
Sunday, January 11
Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal Season 3 (11:30 p.m.)
Adult Swim
Tuesday, January 13
Tell Me Lies
Hulu
Wednesday, January 14
Hijack Season 2
Apple TV
Thursday, January 15
Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials
Netflix
Thursday, January 15
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy
Paramount+
Thursday, January 15
Ponies
Peacock
Thursday, January 15
Animal Control Season 4 (9:00 p.m.)
Fox
Thursday, January 15
Going Dutch Season 2 (9:30 p.m.)
Fox
Sunday, January 18
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (10:00 p.m.)
HBO
Wednesday, January 21
Drops of God
Apple TV
Wednesday, January 21
Steal
Prime Video
Saturday, January 24
Kingdom
BBC America
Monday, January 26
American Idol Season 24 (8:00 p.m.)
ABC
Monday, January 26
Wild Cards Season 3 (8:00 p.m.)
The CW
Monday, January 26
Extracted Season 2 (9:00 p.m.)
Fox
Monday, January 26
Memory of a Killer
Fox
Tuesday, January 27
Wonder Man (9:00 p.m.)
Disney+
Wednesday, January 28
Shrinking Season 3
Apple TV
Thursday, January 29
Bridgerton Season 4 Part 1
Netflix
Monday, February 2
Below Deck Down Under Season 4 (8:00 p.m.)
Bravo
Sunday, February 8
Super Bowl LX (6 p.m.)
NBC
Wednesday, February 11
Cross Season 2
Prime Video
Sunday, February 15
Like Water for Chocolate Season 2 (8:00 p.m.)
HBO Max
Sunday, February 15
Dark Winds Season 4 (9:00 p.m.)
AMC
Friday, February 20
The Last Thing He Told Me Season 2
Apple TV
Friday, February 20
Strip Law
Netflix
Monday, February 23
The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins (8:00 p.m.)
NBC
Monday, February 23
The Voice Season 29 (9:00 p.m.)
NBC
Monday, February 23
CIA (10:00 p.m.)
CBS
Wednesday, February 25
Survivor Season 50 (8:00 p.m.)
CBS
Wednesday, February 25
Scrubs Season 10 (8:00 p.m.)
ABC
Wednesday, February 25
The Greatest Average American (9:00 p.m.)
ABC
Thursday, February 26
Bridgerton Season 4 Part 2
Netflix
Friday, February 27
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2
Apple TV
Friday, February 27
Celebrity Jeopardy! All-Stars Season 4 (8:00 p.m.)
ABC
Sunday, March 1
Actor Awards (8:00 p.m.)
Netflix
Sunday, March 1
Y: Marshals (8:00 p.m.)
CBS
Friday, March 4
Daredevil: Born Again Season 2
Disney+
Friday, March 4
America’s Culinary Cup (9:30 p.m.)
CBS
Sunday, March 6
Outlander Season 8
Starz
Tuesday, March 10
One Piece Season 2
Netflix
Wednesday, March 11
Scarpetta
Prime Video
Sunday, March 22
The Bachelorette Season 22 (8:00 p.m.)
ABC
Sunday, March 22
The Faithful (8:00 p.m.)
Fox
Sunday, March 22
The Forsytes (9:00 p.m.)
PBS
Sunday, March 22
The Count of Monte Cristo (10:00 p.m.)
PBS
Friday, April 3
Your Friends & Neighbors Season 2
Apple TV
If we’ve forgotten a show, feel free to drop a reminder in the comment section below!
Want to know what big movies are coming out in 2025? We’ve got you covered here.
Quentin Tarantino Should Do a Kill Bill Prequel
After dispatching Vernita Green a.k.a. Copperhead (Vivica A. Fox) early in the first Kill Bill, the Bride Beatrix Kiddo (Uma Thurman) comes face-to-face with her enemy’s young daughter Nikkia (Ambrosia Kelley). “You can take my word for it, your mother had it coming,” Beatrix tells the girl. “When you grow up, if you still feel raw about it, I’ll be waiting.”
For years, that exchange has had people waiting for Kill Bill: Volume III, in which the adult Nikkia comes for her revenge. While Quentin Tarantino did toss around the idea of part three, lately he’s been thinking about looking to the story’s past instead of its future. “I had a whole Kill Bill idea in my mind when we were doing it, and then I was so wiped out from doing the movie,” Tarantino recently said (via EW). “I like the idea of a Bill origin. A story of Bill, about how Bill became Bill and the three godfathers that made Bill: Esteban Vihaio, Pai Mei, and Hattori Hanzō.”
In most cases, it’s a bad sign when a filmmaker goes back to their old work instead of forging ahead, but this is a special circumstance. First of all, Tarantino has always been an allusive filmmaker, who fills his films with references to other works. See, for example, the aforementioned Hattori Hanzō, who takes his name from the mythical figure and the character from martial arts movies that Tarantino loved as a kid. It’s fitting that Tarantino would reference himself, especially if he can do it with the same level of skill and spectacle he brings to pastiches of other works.
Second, Kill Bill is suited toward the type of expansion that an origin story would entail. Bill was an elusive figure in the first two movies, kept off screen until late in the second film, existing only as an unseen man in flashbacks or the subject of conversation. There’s much about Bill that we don’t know and could make for an interesting story. And the episodic nature of the movies invites flashbacks just as much as it invites the aforementioned Kill Bill: Volume 3.
Perhaps the best reason for Tarantino to do a Kill Bill prequel is that it would force him to reconsider his arbitrary 10 movie rule. As every cinephile knows and laments, Tarantino has claimed that he would only make 10 movies before retiring, for fear of continuing past his prime. Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood is movie number nine, which means the next one will be his last.
Several possible 10th films have been pitched including, most infamously, a Star Trek film that riffs on the Original Series gangster episode “A Piece of the Action.” But for a long time, Tarantino has said that his last film would be The Movie Critic. Set in the 1970s, The Movie Critic would have focused on a writer for a pornographic magazine and would have likely involved some of the revisionist history he brought to Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained, and Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood.
Originally slated for a 2025 release, The Movie Critic failed to materialize. While that means we don’t get to enjoy a new Tarantino movie this year, it also means that the director has to rethink his strategy—and possibly rethink his 10 movie rule at the same time.
Or will he? We know that he’s making a sequel to Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, with Brad Pitt returning as stunt man Cliff Booth. But while the film, tentatively titled The Adventures of Cliff Booth, will have a Tarantino script, he’s turned directing duties to another top-level talent, David Fincher. Perhaps another filmmaker will be the one to bring the Kill Bill origin film to fruition.
Or maybe it won’t be a movie at all. After all, Tarantino’s comments about the origin film came during a screening of “Yuki’s Revenge,” a short film that he wrote and directed, and which stars Uma Thurman as the Bride, created entirely within Fortnite. One would assume that “Yuki’s Revenge,” developed on a script fragment from the original movie, was just part of the promotional cycle for Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair—the film that combines both parts of Kill Bill and adds a new section—which releases this week. But the event clearly has Tarantino thinking about more stories he can tell.
Stories he can tell… eventually. “I’ve got other things to do right now,” he admitted when talking about the prequel, and he ended his discussion by asking, “Will I live long enough to do that? That remains to be seen.”
But if he decides to do a Kill Bill prequel, or if he decides that Kill Bill: Volume 3 is the way to go, we’ll be waiting, just like Beatrix Kiddo waits for Nikkia Green.
Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair releases in theaters on December 5, 2025.
Stranger Things Star Explains Vecna’s Latest Alternate Identity
This article contains spoilers for Stranger Things season 5.
Who is the big bad of Stranger Things? The answer most would give is “Vecna,” but who is Vecna? Sure, he’s the ruler of the Upside Down who kidnapped Will Byers way back in season 1 and who ends 5’s first volume of episodes with an attack on Hawkins. But over the preceding seasons, and the stage play Stranger Things: The First Shadow, we’ve learned that Vecna was at one time misunderstood teen Henry Creel, who became the first test subject in the program that led to Eleven.
Season 5 introduces yet another identity for Vecna, the seemingly kind Mr. Whatsit. Viewers may think that Mr. Whatsit’s a complete divergence from the skeletal monster we know, but they’re all the same to actor Jamie Campbell Bower. “They’re all varying entities of himself,” Bower explained to The Hollywood Reporter. “Mister Whatsit, I’d say, is obviously a presentation of who he considers, and wishes, himself to be. But it’s a memory for him more than an actual human being. It’s a performance; an amalgamation of all the things he’s known and of what he thinks would make people safe.”
The name Mr. Whatsit helps reinforce this self-assessment. He’s given the name by Holly Wheeler (Nell Fisher), one of many children who Whatsit visits throughout the first four episodes of Stranger Things‘s fifth season. The name comes from Holly’s favorite book A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle, which features the kindly witch Mrs. Whatsit. In the same way that Mrs. Whatsit brings a group of outsider children on a cross-dimensional trip, the Mr. Whatsit of Stranger Things appears to be gathering kids in Hawkins to protect them.
The first four episodes of season 5 end before we get any answers about the full relationship between Vecna and Mr. Whatsit, but for his part, Bower’s just happy to have the opportunity to do such varied acting.
“I felt like I’d bitten off a large amount of something when I was asked if I could join the show for season 4” Bower admitted. “I spent so much time considering [Creel] as a child and considering his childhood, his environment and his upbringing when he was more human.” Thanks to that approach, Bower could find something human inside of even the monstrous Vecna, whom he describes as “pure resentment. No sooner did Bower become comfortable with his take on Vecna than the Mr. Whatsit persona is added, offering yet another challenge.
“That was quite a meaty bite to have because as an actor,” Bower said of this other identity. “There are so many times where what you want to be doing is playing the truth, and the truth in this scenario is clearly that Holly Wheeler is being used in some way, and he’s not telling her. And that is a terrifying thing to sit opposite a child and have to lie; that means it’s really, really scary.”
We’ve already seen bits of that scariness even in Mr. Whatsit, particularly when he takes Holly to the childhood home of his memories. But if Bower is being honest, we’ve only begun to see what Creel and his identities can do, which means we’re in for even scarier stories to come.
Stranger Things season 5 episodes 1–4 are now streaming on Netflix.
Jeri Ryan Defends Seven of Nine’s Star Trek: Voyager Costume
As much as we all love ’90s Star Trek, there is one thing that’s hard to defend. Each of the four series produced in the era features one female cast member who wears a skin-tight cat suit instead of the uniform: Troi on The Next Generation, Major Kira on Deep Space Nine, T’Pol in Enterprise, and Seven of Nine in Voyager. As galling as the look can be for viewer, one of the actors who had to wear it defends the suffocating costume, or at least her decision to wear it.
Speaking at the ST: CHI convention in Chicago (via TrekMovie), Voyager star Jeri Ryan explained her role in creating the character and her look. “I was involved in all the costume fittings, all of the discussions. I knew what this was. And I was okay with the costume,” she revealed. “I knew it was sexy. I knew what they were going for. I was okay with that because the way the character was written.”
As most Trekkies remember, Ryan joined the Voyager cast at the end of the show’s third season, replacing original cast member Kes, played by Jennifer Lien. A human woman who had been part of the Borg collective since childhood, Seven of Nine allowed Voyager to explore one of Trek’s favorite tropes, in which an outsider discovers what it means to be human.
Of course, Seven of Nine was also designed to insert sex appeal into the series, which has always been a part of the show since the days Uhura wearing a miniskirt and Kirk taking off his shirt. And for her part, Ryan accepted that aspect of the character. “The character was added to break Star Trek into the mainstream media. That was the publicity angle of the character,” she said of Seven’s look. “And they made no bones about that. They were very clear about that from the beginning, with me.”
Yet, as comfortable as she was with Seven’s look, Ryan refused to see her character as just an object to ogle, which explained her own interest in playing the former Borg. “Because the way the character was written, she was the complete antithesis of [being a sex object],” Ryan explained. “She was not that [catsuit]. So because of how she was written, and because it was so opposed to way the physical appearance of the character was, I was all right with it.”
But as much as Ryan understands the character’s role in the 1990s, she does consider that type of character push to be appropriate today. When asked if she would take a similar role today, Ryan had a blunt answer: “No, I wouldn’t. But then, whatever.”
So it makes sense that when she reprised the role of Seven of Nine for Star Trek: Picard, Ryan wore regular clothes, just like everyone else. And when Seven rejoined Starfleet and became first officer aboard the USS Titan, she was indeed in a Starfleet uniform, breaking the ’90s cycle.
James Cameron Explains Difference Between Avatar and AI Actors
In just a few weeks, James Cameron will once again make us all care about weird-looking blue people as Avatar: Fire and Ash hits theaters. Even by Cameron’s standards, a guy who often seems to embark on crazy and expensive projects only to turn out blockbuster hits, the Avatar films seemed like a risk, thanks to their obvious themes and reliance on digital actors. And yet, both Avatar and the 2022 sequel The Way of Water were smash hits in the United States and worldwide.
Obviously, that type of success draws imitators. And with Avatar‘s use of digital performers, one could imagine that those imitators would include entrepreneurs looking to sell AI actor programs. But doing so misses the entire point of Cameron’s process, as the filmmaker recently made clear to Deadline. “That’s horrifying to me,” Cameron declared. “That’s the opposite. That’s exactly what we’re not doing.”
For Cameron, the difference lies in his movies’ treatment of the original actor’s work. “For years, there was this sense that, ‘Oh, they’re doing something strange with computers and they’re replacing actors,’” he pointed out; “when in fact, once you really drill down and you see what we’re doing, it’s a celebration of the actor-director moment, and the actor-to-actor moment. It’s a celebration of, I call it, the sanctity of the actor’s performance moment.”
Of course someone like Cameron would have a nuanced take on special effects as they relate to performances. He got into the film industry after watching Star Wars and particularly was drawn to technological advances in the field, working as a model maker for Roger Corman and eventually moving from special effects to directing for Piranha II: The Spawning (a film he disowns today).
Even as he moved into directing bigger features, Cameron still put technological innovations first. Terminator 2: Judgment Day was the most expensive movie ever made when it debuted in 1991, with much of the cost going toward spectacular set pieces and the innovative CGI used for the T-1000. Six years later, Titanic became the most expensive movie ever made, thanks to its faithful recreation of not just the titular boat but also its infamous sinking.
Amazing as movies are, they aren’t just about the technology. Cameron is an emotional filmmaker, sometimes to a fault. It’s not just Titanic that has soaring romance; similar pathos can be found in the parent/child relationships in Aliens and Avatar: The Way of Water, or the bond between John Connor and the T-800 in Terminator 2.
And that’s what people miss when they look at Avatar as a model of technology-focused movies: Cameron’s connection with his actors. “I don’t want a computer doing what I pride myself on being able to do with actors,” he declared. “I don’t want to replace actors, I love working with actors.”
Cameron goes so far as to call generative AI “the other end of the spectrum” to what he does, “where they can make up a character, they can make up an actor. They can make up a performance from scratch with a text prompt.”
That practice may have the technological innovations that Cameron loves, but it has none of the human element, and it’s that human element that has made the Avatar films such hits and has so many people excited about Fire and Ash.
Avatar: Fire and Ash releases December 19, 2025.
Sadie Sink Hints Max Could Return After Stranger Things Season 5
This article contains spoilers for Stranger Things season 5 episodes 1-4.
Sadie Sink isn’t ready to say goodbye to Max Mayfield.
The actress, who is currently filming an undisclosed role in Sony’s upcoming Marvel fourquel Spider-Man: Brand New Day before reprising it in Avengers: Secret Wars, has been reflecting on the end of Netflix’s hit sci-fi series Stranger Things, which will be streaming its final episodes over the holiday period.
In a new interview with THR, Sink says the cast bonded much more in season 5, and that it seemed like a tribute to the decade they’ve spent together. She also hinted that she could be willing to return to the character of Max in the future.
“By the end, I felt like I could do another season,” she explained, adding, “I’m so happy with the way it ends. I feel like we’ve left it all out on the table, and it’s at a good closing point, but I don’t know. I could do it again. Because I love that set so much, and I love the character. I don’t think I really said goodbye to Max yet. I don’t think I ever really will.”
Sink didn’t have a lot to do until the third episode of Stranger Things 5, when Max finally appeared to little Holly Wheeler after hiding out in a weird part of Henry Creel’s mindscape. Having been called to attend a nerve-wracking table read with the rest of the cast before they started shooting, she says she found herself “knitting a scarf or something” until it came time to say her big episode three line. Even then, she didn’t feel as anchored to the character as she had before.
“This season, there was nothing,” Sink said. “It was clothes that didn’t feel like Max, crazy hair that was grown out and tangled, and dirt all over my face. She’s in a rough, feral state. It was pretty bizarre. It was weird to feel like Max and then look like that and be in that environment, and working with a new actor.”
Whether there’s more in store for Max Mayfield remains to be seen, but it’s clear that Sink hasn’t quite let go of her yet. Netflix is reportedly pushing forward with a Stranger Things spinoff focused on brand-new characters, but there’s always a chance that Max could return in a different project if fans are persuasive enough.
Marty Supreme Review: Timothée Chalamet Scores Big in Spiritual Uncut Gems Prequel
For four millennia, the Pyramids of Giza have captured the imagination of any and all travelers who wandered into their plateau. As someone who’s crossed those sands, I can attest that words fail to convey their ancient allure. It’s a sight filled with solemnity and awe. And in Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme, one of the best gags occurs when Timothée Chalamet takes a hammer to them with a smile.
Just to be clear, there is nothing malicious about Chalamet’s eponymous Marty Mauser going full Thor on the famed building blocks. As he tells his Jewish mother back in New York—where he’s gift-wrapped her a chunk of limestone—“we built that!” Still, one cannot help but suspect the hard-swaggering and harder-living Marty views the appropriation as a kindness too. Here is a relic from legend which has outlived its original purpose. But now, thanks to Marty, the stone enjoys new meaning by what our hero unquestionably views as the start of another myth that’ll live through the ages. The trick about Safdie’s film is that it’s likewise convinced of that good word and spreads it with the zeal of a proselytizer. On the surface Marty’s story and film has all the markings of a familiar sports yarn, this one about a table-tennis hustler from the Lower East Side; in practice, it’s an epic with the chutzpah of Moses.
This is also one of the tamer examples of how radically arrogant and aggressively ingratiating Chalamet’s best performance to date can be. Whether it’s holding up a co-worker at gunpoint in order to withdraw a paycheck early—he needs the money to finance a trip to the UK for table tennis’ 1952 British Open—or telling the press that he’ll finish what Auschwitz started against his Holocaust-surviving rival in the same tournament, Marty is a big skillset with a bigger mouth; an addict drunk on the ego of youth and the delusion that talent and charm will always be enough. As a piece of cinema, it sure as hell is. For our protagonist… well, that remains the great tension of the movie.
Set entirely during a tumultuous year in Marty’s life beginning in ’52—while also giving the impression that every other would be much the same—Marty Supreme tracks Marty’s travails from that British Open to the World Table Tennis Championships in Tokyo. But while Safdie and Chalamet shoot the eventual ping-pong matches with electricity and flash to match the star’s showmanship, this is not really a sports movie. Rather it’s another Safdie film about a hustler who bites off so much more than he can chew that it is only by the virtue of never finding time to shut his mouth and swallow that he avoids asphyxiation.
A day in the life of Marty’s exploits include—but are not limited to–both wooing and insulting the deep pockets of a prospective patron who would fly him to Tokyo (Kevin O’Leary at his most WASPy), sleeping with the said patron’s older movie star wife (Gwyneth Paltrow), scamming a bunch of hicks in a New Jersey bowling alley with good pal Wally (Tyler, the Creator), pressuring another more gullible buddy (Luke Manley) to invest in Marty’s vision for cornering the market on orange ping-pong balls, generally taking years off the life of his mother (Fran Drescher), and absolutely, positively refusing to settle down with his childhood best friend Rachel (Odessa A’zion). Who, by the by, is eight months pregnant with Marty’s child for much of the story and has been cast out of the home of her abusive husband. And I haven’t even mentioned the mafia yet.
Safdie apparently based much of the fictional Marty Mauser on real-life table-tennis champ Marty Reisman, a figure so infamous in mid-20th century NYC ping-pong halls that he was known as “the Needle” for both his sharp frame and sharper tongue. But truthfully, other than what I just nicked off Reisman’s Wikipedia page, I have no idea how much of the real-man’s biography Safdie drew on for this film. Given the increasingly incredulous scenarios and now-familiar viselike dread that director and co-writer Ronald Bronstein cultivate in their narrative, I would hope not much.
For all intents and purposes, Marty Supreme is a spiritual prequel and heir to Josh Safdie’s last film, Uncut Gems, which he co-directed with his brother Benny. Since that picture, it would seem the Safdie Brothers have gone their separate ways, but whereas Benny chose to make a traditional sports biopic devoid of the bizarre tragicomic tension that underlay Uncut Gems and the even earlier Good Time, Josh and Bronstein (who also co-wrote Uncut Gems) have doubled down like their onscreen gamblers on tracing the mania and terror that comes from living life at constant full-tilt.
What makes Marty Supreme such a worthwhile and unique companion, then, isn’t that it just duplicates Uncut Gems’ peculiar marriage of suspense and gallows humor, but that it comes at it during an entirely different stage of life. In Uncut Gems, Adam Sandler’s Howard Ratner is also boastful, high-handed, and living his life at the constant inflection point between survival and cardiac arrest. The thing is that Sandler’s middle-aged and hunching Howard knows his house of hustled cards will probably collapse soon.
Chalamet’s perpetual youthfulness betrays the naiveté beneath Marty’s egomania. At 23 years old, this kid never seems aware there’s a good chance he won’t make it to 24 when he’s ripping off the mob to scrounge together enough money for a plane ticket to war-torn Tokyo. And when he woos Paltrow’s bored Kay Stone, Marty is just fresh-faced enough to never consider that he’s more her distraction than any kind of transgressive revenge against the blue-blood ruling class on 5th. If this point were not blunt enough, Safdie scores the film’s opening credits sequence to a souped-up rendition of Alphaville’s “Forever Young.” Furthermore, those credits mirror Uncut’s elegiac opener, which turned out to be a microscopic, but galaxy-brained vision of Howard’s colonoscopy (and mortality); Marty’s, by contrast, is of a determined sperm making a triumphant swim toward the endzone.
It is easy to imagine Chalamet’s Marty one day becoming another Howard Ratner, should he live so long, yet by grace of bloom, not to mention Chalamet’s own indefatigable charisma, such a destiny seems eons away. In the meantime, viewers are asked to bask in the type of performance Chalamet has been waiting for. A little older and more seasoned now that he’s near 30, or just doing a decent job of hiding beneath a will-o’-the-wisp’s worth of facial hair, Chalamet indulges Marty’s rough edges and vanities with the glee DiCaprio similarly displayed when he finally shook off coming-of-age parts to play one of Hollywood’s most storied bastards in The Aviator.
Chalamet likewise revels in this protagonist’s seediness while employing the same bouncy joie de vivre that turned him into a star in the first place during Call Me By Your Name. You cannot help but like this guy, no matter how much of a prick Marty consistently proves to be with his friends, enemies, and even lovers. That spark could dim one day, but for this narrative it never drops beneath a defiant roar.
It is Chalamet’s show, with the actor in nearly every scene during the two and a half hour movie, and the narrative is never anything less than addictive, even when it purposefully twists the anxiety knife. Chalamet gets a lot of help, however, from a supporting cast that includes a couple of great supporting turns. A lot will be made out of Paltrow conjuring some Old Hollywood glamour (and weariness), but it is A’zion who lingers in the memory as a woman who is as tenacious as Marty, but whose sometimes sad, and other-times calculating, eyes deserve so much better.
All parties, plus many NYC locals and non-actors, are harnessed by Safdie to create a period drama that feels of a piece with its post-World War II setting but vitally alive in the here and now for its audience. The anachronistic soundtrack filled with 1980s synthesizers and pop ballads probably doesn’t hurt in that regard. In fact, it heightens the Tears for Fear-like mania for world domination in Marty’s compulsions. Somehow, these disparate elements complement and converge, serving Sadie’s larger impulse to match and exceed Uncut Gems’ magic trick by keeping folks on the edge of their seats for now 149 minutes. If Uncut was a feature-length heart attack, Marty Supreme is a just as expansive dopamine-hit of euphoria; and it’s so strong one doesn’t notice the knife being slipped in between bouts of nervous laughter.
Marty Supreme premiered at the New York Film Festival on Oct. 6 and opens in the U.S. and UK on Dec. 25.
