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

This article contains spoilers for Digger.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Terror of the Baby Hands

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

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

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

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

The Devil’s Due

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

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

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

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

Weird Rebirth

That is, until they found M’Kraan.

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

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

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

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

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

VisionQuest streams new episodes every Wednesday on Disney+.

VisionQuest Doesn’t Address the MCU’s AI Problem

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

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

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

Not-So-Marvelous Optics

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

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

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

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

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

Artificial Integrity

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

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

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

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

A Lack of Vision

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

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

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

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

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

VisionQuest streams new episodes every Wednesday on Disney+.

15 Actors That Were Older Than You Thought They Were

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

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

Stockard Channing in Grease

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

Alan Ruck in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

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

Rachel McAdams in Mean Girls

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

Jason Earles in Hannah Montana

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

Keiko Agena in Gilmore Girls

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

Bianca Lawson in Pretty Little Liars

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

Gabrielle Carteris in Beverly Hills, 90210

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

Shirley Henderson in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

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

Andrew Garfield in The Amazing Spider-Man

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

Stacey Dash in Clueless

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

Thomas Brodie-Sangster in The Queen’s Gambit

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

Ben McKenzie in The O.C.

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

Judd Nelson in The Breakfast Club

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

Charisma Carpenter in Buffy the Vampire Slayer

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

Paul Rudd in Wet Hot American Summer

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

15 Actors Who Allegedly Didn’t Get Along On Set

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

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

Bill Murray and Lucy Liu on Charlie’s Angels

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

Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams on The Notebook

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

Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron on Mad Max: Fury Road

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

Wesley Snipes and Ryan Reynolds on Blade: Trinity

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

Richard Gere and Debra Winger on An Officer and a Gentleman

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

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

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

Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson on The Fate of the Furious

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

Shannen Doherty and Jennie Garth on Beverly Hills, 90210

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

Chevy Chase and Bill Murray on Caddyshack

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

Julia Roberts and Nick Nolte on I Love Trouble

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

Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey on Dirty Dancing

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

Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic on Castle

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

Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe on Some Like It Hot

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

Claire Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio on Romeo + Juliet

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

Isaiah Washington and Patrick Dempsey on Grey’s Anatomy

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

14 Actors Who Chose Quality Over Quantity

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

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

Daniel Day-Lewis

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

Leonardo DiCaprio

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

Tom Hanks

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

Jodie Foster

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

Denzel Washington

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

Frances McDormand

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

Gene Hackman

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

Michelle Pfeiffer

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

Cate Blanchett

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

Cillian Murphy

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

Amy Adams

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

Philip Seymour Hoffman

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

Tilda Swinton

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

Viggo Mortensen

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

Movies Everyone Quotes Without Having Actually Seen Them

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

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

The Godfather

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

The Terminator

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

Jaws

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

Forrest Gump

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

Jerry Maguire

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

A Few Good Men

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

Casablanca

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

Gone with the Wind

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

The Wizard of Oz

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

Star Wars

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

Dirty Harry

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

Taxi Driver

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

Field of Dreams

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

Apollo 13

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

Sudden Impact

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

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

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

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

William Fichtner

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

Clancy Brown

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

Zeljko Ivanek

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

David Dastmalchian

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

M. C. Gainey

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

Titus Welliver

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

J. T. Walsh

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

Xander Berkeley

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

James Rebhorn

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

Miguel Sandoval

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

Al Leong

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

Tommy Flanagan

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

Kevin Dunn

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

Peter Stormare

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

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

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

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

Cats

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

Movie 43

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

Battlefield Earth

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

The Last Airbender

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

Dragonball Evolution

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

The Emoji Movie

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

Son of the Mask

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

Gigli

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

Foodfight!

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

Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore

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

The Love Guru

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

Batman & Robin

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

Norbit

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

After Earth

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

Transformers: The Last Knight

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

VisionQuest Episode 1-2 Premiere Review: Coming Into Focus

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VisionQuest streams new episodes every Wednesday on Disney+.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How Greta Gerwig Got Led Zeppelin’s Support and THAT Song in Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew

Greta Gerwig was pitching a Chronicles of Narnia movie to Netflix before she realized she wanted to make it.

The year was 2019 and her frequent collaborator/husband Noah Baumbach was in the midst of the Netflix rollout for his own passion project, Marriage Story. Meanwhile Gerwig was fresh off the release of her solo directorial debut, Lady Bird, and on the eve of her second feature opening: Little Women. She was a renowned filmmaker with two Oscar nominations to her name, but she was also still an indie maven who simply wanted to corner Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos. At the time, it was just to enthusiastically advise him that Netflix should absolutely begin its recently acquired Chronicles of Narnia adaptations by making The Magician’s Nephew first. It’s technically the sixth published fantasy novel by C.S. Lewis set in the mythical realm of Narnia, but it’s also the first chronological book in the narrative, acting as a prequel to The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.

“Would you like to write it?” Sarandos asked Gerwig on the spot. The filmmaker was floored, and yet also undeniably intrigued as a lifelong fan of Lewis’ fantasy series and the magic they represent to many, many generations.

A Universe Begins. See how Narnia was created in Narnia: The Magician's Nephew, a film by Greta Gerwig – only in theaters February 12. pic.twitter.com/jwxksCL0N7
— Netflix (@netflix) October 13, 2026

She recounted as much during a heartfelt presentation of The Magician’s Nephew’s first trailer Tuesday morning in New York City. Sitting beside fellow Lewis and fantasy enthusiast Stephen Colbert, Gerwig recounted both her earliest passions for the books, as well as how that was shared by everyone she collaborated with. Hence in the below trailer, you can even hear the shocking strains of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” an iconic 1971 rock anthem that Gerwig said spoke to her with its narrative poetry about faith, as well as the danger of following false idols—a menace that any fan of Magician’s Nephew or the later Narnia books would recognize.

Famously, though, Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant and Jimmy Page do not let any filmmaker or movie use their music, especially that song. And yet—like Gerwig—they grew up with Narnia and granted permission for “Stairway to Heaven” after she showed them a cut of Magician’s Nephew months ahead of the film’s February release.

The use of the song in the trailer (and presumably the film) certainly signals a bold vision for the adaptation, anachronistically combining a story set in London circa 1900 with post-‘60s rock ’n roll. Similarly, Emma Mackey’s White Witch in her go-go minidress looks like she’s ready for a night out in Soho London during Zeppelin’s heyday. But the anachronism—and vote of confidence from a notoriously film-shy rock band—makes an unmistakable promise: this interpretation of Narnia will be much more personal and filmmaker-driven than the Disney iterations that tackled the first three published Narnia novels in the early 2000s.

Indeed, during the presentation Gerwig spoke eloquently, and even tearfully, about how important these books were to her growing up. “They were read to me before I could even read,” Gerwig told the audience (in a presentation where no recording was allowed, so our quoting is done by memory). “My mother read them to me, and then I read them and reread them after I learned to read.” Her parents even got the first television set Greta knew so their daughter could watch the BBC version of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe on PBS (“I have no notes for BBC!” the director said.)

She later surmised that the Chronicles of Narnia as a collective were “one of the two books that made me,” noting that the most significant childhood novels shape who we are. “For me, those books were just as much C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia as Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women.” Getting to interpret both in her own voice on the big screen is something the filmmaker seems visibly thankful for and, perhaps, still a little awed with responsibility by.

Yet that is why she felt so strongly about beginning with The Magician’s Nephew. Like most children, her original exposure to Narnia is through Lewis’ first published fantasy novel, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, which she read as a kid, followed by Prince Caspian. She didn’t get to The Magician’s Nephew until near the end of the series, as the penultimate story ahead of The Last Battle. However, as a young adult she discovered in a letter Lewis wished new readers to start with Magician’s Nephew, which chronicles the genesis of Narnia.

“I love the idea of beginning with the start of a universe,” Gerwig explained, and setting a stage for a movie saga that can run the entire cycle from Narnia’s rise (Magician) to its eventual end (The Final Battle). “The image of Aslan singing a universe into existence” specifically stuck with Gerwig. As did the sense of faith in the novels, something Gerwig grew to appreciate after attending Catholic School as a child (hence Lady Bird). She admitted she always conflated the communal experience of going to church with the only other she knew growing up: the movies.

Now as a filmmaker, she sought to literally walk in Lewis’ footsteps. Not only did she reread the Narnia books, but much else of what Lewis wrote, including Mere Christianity and The Problem of Pain. Additionally, she traveled to Oxford, Cambridge, and Belfast in order to try to see the world through his eyes.

Netflix, meanwhile, seems to be peering at it through Gerwig’s, backing her way into this saga and also supporting her to the hilt more than any previous filmmaker by making Narnia a theatrical event. When Magician’s Nephew opens next February, it will be the first Netflix-produced movie to have a 50-day theatrical window in wide release, including on IMAX screens.

“I can only write for the big screen,” Gerwig explained and she expressed gratitude for Sarandos and Netflix supporting that instinct. The Netflix CEO apparently encouraged Gerwig to write it for the biggest screen she could, and now it’s about to make history for the streamer at the largest theatrical venues in the world. Maybe a new universe really is beginning.

Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew opens in theaters on Feb. 12.

Wuxia, Anime, and Giant Hair: Street Fighter Director Explains ‘90s Influences

It’s one of the most recognizable silhouettes in video game history. With six-plus feet of beefy muscle squeezed into a tight, sleeveless green shirt, the character they call Guile cut a towering figure over arcade cabinets via his blonde flattop haircut, not least of all because the do reached sizes larger than most men’s heads. This ludicrous-looking sprite is one of the many design choices that made Street Fighter II a staple of ‘90s childhoods, alongside iconography like Blanka’s green-hued skin and Chun-Li’s impossible thighs. And he was among the first things fans saw in the earliest Street Fighter movie teaser, with wrestler-turned-actor Cody Rhodes adorned in an upright, platinum wig roughly the size of a Shih Tzu on his head.

“We went through a lot of iterations,” director Kitao Sakurai confides with a weary grin. “A lot. There was some debate of ‘okay, are we really going to do this?’ But I think at that point, we’re like, ‘Yes! We have to do this.’” There were apparently versions of the design more outlandish, scaled to a size where even the filmmaker/lifelong Street Fighter super-fan could concede “that’s too far.” (The biggest being a full six inches taller than the wig in the finished movie.) But in a weird way, getting to that very threshold is a kind of mission statement for the new video game movie: they are going for “maximum fidelity,” and taking it right to the point where it strains credulity.

When Street Fighter opens Friday, it will be the second major Capcom video game adaptation of the year after Zach Cregger’s winning take on Resident Evil, and the second this year riffing on 1990s glory days in arcade style tournaments (the other being Mortal Kombat II). Yet perhaps more than any other video game adaptation in recent memory, Sakurai’s appears to be leaning into the sheer visual lunacy of its game—and away from the instincts of so many Hollywood movies that often seek to ground the absurd of comic books or video games into something approaching reality.

“I think that for a lot of years we’ve been getting adaptations that feel like, ‘Okay, what’s the gritty, real world version of this game or IP? How do ground it into the real world?’” Sakurai explains. In fact, that was one of the directions Paramount Pictures was considering when entertaining pitches on a new Street Fighter movie. “I was like, ‘Look, to do that for Street Fighter just feels wrong.’ There needed to be a different approach, and I think that more vibrant, ‘90s, having fun with the [interpretation], that embraces the colorfulness of the game and embraces the boldness of the world, felt like a fresher swing on this material.”

It also felt in line with Sakurai’s own muses. Forty-three years old and a child of both Japan and the U.S.—he was born in Kyoto but grew up in Cleveland, Ohio—Sakurai has vivid memories of playing Street Fighter II at friends’ homes on Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo. His favorite character to play “in beast mode” was Blanka, for the record, and Dhalsim when he wanted to get silly. “The way he stretched, and the floating and levitating, there was just something so unique about him that drew me in.”

But the future filmmaker also grew up aware of the differences between Western and Eastern action cinema; it was an era when Hong Kong martial artists were going to insane, sometimes dreamlike places that Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone would never dare venture.

“I grew up on Japanese anime and manga, and that was my kind of bread and butter of what I was watching growing up,” says Sakurai. “So I wanted to make a movie that did bridge those gaps. My favorite action movies were Jackie Chan and Jet Li movies, and Wuxia wirework sort of things where people are flying across the room and it doesn’t look real but it’s great, so who cares? It’s awesome! I wanted to make a movie that could support that style of filmmaking and embrace the sort of fun of that era and try to bridge the gap between Eastern and Western action filmmaking.”

Indeed, as revealed over this past weekend, Street Fighter will even feature a deliberately retro throwback to ‘90s anime styles, infamous for their colored line work and physical imperfections created by hand-brushed strokes and analog photography. Street Fighter, which is largely set in 1993, homages those techniques in a prologue that reveals the ‘80s backstory of the film’s central heroes Ryu and Ken (Andrew Koji and Noah Centineo).

Says Sakurai, “In prep, we’re like, how are we gonna actually shoot these flashback sequences? Are we going to de-age the actors? Are we gonna hire child actors? None of that felt great.” That’s when the director lit on the fact that Street Fighter already has a rich history with anime in Japan. So “the more interesting choice is let’s go ahead and do these sequences as fully hand-drawn ‘90s style animation.”

“It’s an incredibly difficult process,” he adds. “Every frame of animation is fully drawn by hand by an artist in a ‘90s throwback way. We fully went for it, and it was an incredibly expensive and painstaking thing, but I think you feel the love and effort that goes into it.”

Like the anime component, the film’s entire ‘90s setting was a “layer” that Sakurai found himself really championing. The film is of course based on a video game franchise best associated with that era of arcade cabinets, however the film embraces this fact by occurring in a 1993 that’s more neon day-go more outlandish than the actual 1994 Street Fighter movie made at the time with Jean-Claude Van Damme and Raul Julia. Granted, the modern director almost sheepishly admits he really wasn’t “close” to that movie growing up, instead favoring the 1995 Mortal Kombat movie directed by Paul W.S. Anderson. “Tonally, I thought it just rocked. And then that was so close to the game, to the spirit of the game, so I always had that in the back of my mind, a movie that embraces the game.”

With that said, his Street Fighter in some ways is every bit as ridiculous, if not more so, than the video games. Although it pulls its punches in carefully chosen ways as well.

“I didn’t want to devalue certain elements like the hadouken,” says Sakurai. “In the game, you can shoot hadoukens a lot, but in the movie if you showed that a bunch of times, it would kind of lose its meaning. If everybody had energy attacks all the time, it starts to be a different thing… So I wanna be really purposeful about how these moves and energy attacks are being portrayed and when they come, how they come, and assigning real meaning to them. But as far as a character like Blanka, I was like yes. That was kind of a more is more thing. Let’s really lean into making this absurd character real.”

There are of course a lot of characters in the film, as well as the tournament structure that fans expect from the games (and which was curiously absent in the 1994 adaptation). Sakurai is acutely aware that fans need that competitive format onscreen, but he also is trying to balance that with the demands of building central character arcs for his three principles: Ryu, Ken, and who might just be the film’s breakout, Callina Liang as Chun-Li. The actress has indeed gone viral on social media even before the movie’s release, with the star revealing she gained six centimeters of muscle in each leg for the film.

“I was surprised [she did that],” her director laughs, “but I also kind of had this inkling when I met her and just understood what this meant to her. She’s also a hardcore gamer, and I could just tell that she had this level of unbelievable commitment. She was just the most—you could not stop her from training, day in and day out. As soon as she got the role, it was like a crazy person training.”

But there are many performances that Sakurai savors in the film, and those he’d like to expand on if given a chance. That goes for even the man underneath the comically wide flattop.

“I want everybody back,” the director says. “It was such an incredible experience with everybody. But I was very surprised by, to be honest, Cody’s performance as Guile. He’s so funny and so unexpected, and I think a lot of people are going to be really surprised by what he brings.” The hair, however, won’t be a surprise. That’s a promise.

Street Fighter opens on Friday, Oct. 16.

Mike Flanagan on Carrie White’s Place in the Stephen King Multiverse

This article contains spoilers for Prime Video TV series Carrie.

Carrie White was never alone.

While the titular teenager of Stephen King‘s debut novel may have felt isolated under the burdens of high school bullies, an abusive mother, and burgeoning telekinetic powers, in reality she was but one of many experiencing those same trials and tribulations… yes, even the “telekinetic powers” bit. That’s made apparent in the pages of King’s epistolary text and it’s something that showrunner Mike Flanagan wanted to make even clearer in Carrie, Prime Video’s eight-episode modern update to Carrie White’s story.

“[King] is pretty explicit about the fact that Carrie is not unique in this ability,” Flanagan tells Den of Geek. “She’s very rare, but she’s part of a sorority of other gifted women that have this ‘TK gene,’ as King calls it. An opportunity we had that a lot of the other adaptations didn’t have was we had the real estate to really explore that. There’s a much larger world that Carrie belongs to that she doesn’t know about. And I think one of the tragedies of King’s story is she never finds out. We had a chance to change that.”

Carrie does indeed change Carrie White’s (Summer H. Howell) perception of her own world, and in grand fashion too. The series features multiple other “TK” individuals who lurk in the background of the narrative before (quite literally) bursting onto the scene of a familiar climactic prom night at Thomas Ewen Consolidated High School. Emaline West (Thalia Dudek) astral projects to the gym to encourage Carrie’s fiery revenge, eventually going so far as to get her permission to “take the wheel” of her consciousness and ratchet up the mayhem. Meanwhile members of a telekinetic cult Cara (Ruth Codd), Caitlin (Delainey Hayles), and Sable (Cassandra Naud) also arrive on scene to maximize the shadowy ambiguity of what actually happened that night. Masterminding these events is Adelaide (Kate Siegel), the leader of said cult who interviews survivors in the wake of the prom night massacre and eventually kills Carrie’s mother Margaret (Samantha Sloyan).

Even before all that violence, however, Carrie finds a creative, less explosive way to communicate the true scope of the show’s supernatural universe. Episodes two through seven of the series feature cold opens that depict supposed real life instances of women displaying telekinetic powers. These range from a woman lifting up a car in 1982 Georgia to a woman levitating in 2010 Hebei, China, to a mysterious teleporting young sleepwalker in 2015 Iowa.

According to Flanagan, these scenes were not only fun to research and shoot but they also placed Carrie in an important larger context.

“We named some real historical figures who can very easily be viewed as potentially part of Carrie’s world. That was a blast to research but it also kind of helps it on the biggest themes of the show, which is a young woman finding out the legacy of the community to which she belongs. The one thing about our Carrie is that she’s been sequestered away from any community her whole life in an effort to protect her. So getting to expand that world, it’s a very Stephen King thing to do.”

While the real life instances of suspected paranormal activity tie Carrie into our world, there’s another, arguably more important world that Carrie White needs a connection into: Stephen King’s. The horror maestro and undisputed heavyweight champion of pop culture has been playing with storytelling multiverses long before the Marvel Cinematic Universe made them a household concept, something that frequent King adaptor Flanagan believes often goes under-appreciated.

“He started [a multiverse] when he was 19 and he doesn’t get enough credit for that. It’s become the engine of so much of our pop culture – the connected universe, the multiverse. You’ve got studios falling over themselves to build a universe from scratch. King’s had one the whole time. If you grow up reading his stories, the joy of finding the connections is completely unique and wonderful.”

Carrie White does not physically appear in any further Stephen King books (which makes some sense given that she’s, you know, dead). But the tragic events of Chamberlain, Maine are referenced in multiple other King works like The Dead Zone and It. If King’s Carrie can operate as the de facto beginning for a larger storytelling universe on the page, then can Flanagan’s Carrie serve a similar function on the screen? It’s a question worth asking, especially since Flanagan has received King’s explicit blessing for this adaptation and others and has access to a lucrative overall deal with Amazon that includes some ambitious plans for King’s epic Dark Tower saga.

“[King] certainly plays with that in everything. There’s a lot of talk in The Shining about the ‘other people.’ Danny Torrance isn’t alone in that world. He meets one other in The Shining, and then the growing world of that is hinted at pretty explicitly. Doctor Sleep blows the lid off of it and then you get into The Institute and Firestarter and everything else. This felt like a really wonderful way in that extended Stephen King universe to acknowledge that too and say, Carrie only ever felt like a loner. She was never really alone.”

By the end of Carrie‘s eight episodes, Carrie counts Emaline, Adelaide, and more among her peers. Perhaps one day she’ll count Roland Deschain, Danny Torrance, and other King favorites among them too.

All eight episodes of Carrie are now available to stream on Prime Video.

The 10 Best Time-Travel Movies of All Time

Why in the world would anyone make a time-travel movie? As soon as a character steps out into the past or the future, even by a matter of minutes, it raises huge questions that most filmmakers don’t want to answer: Is this a new reality? What happens at a physics level? Is the future different now? And yet, when we’re watching a great time travel movie, we don’t ask any of those questions. We just go along for the ride.

The ability of the best movies to overcome those fundamental questions and grip the audience make time travel one of the most exciting and interesting genres, which is why we’re ranking the best in the canon here. But two quick notes: first, we’re mostly concerned with time-travel movies here, as distinct from time-loop movies. The distinction can be a fine one, but we’re intentionally leaving off stories about people forced to repeat the same segment of time, as in Groundhog Day and Palm Springs. Second, we’re most concerned with movies that tell compelling stories, with interesting characters and thought-provoking themes, and not with movies about the mechanics of time travel. Which is to say, Primer isn’t on this list.

But, hey, if you don’t like it, you can always go back in time and keep this list from ever being written!

10. Avengers: Endgame (2019)

On one hand, the “time heist” section of Avengers: Endgame feels more like a victory lap than it does its own story. As Marvel’s heroes rewatch scenes from The Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy, one can almost hear the characters slap each other on the back, like cast members hugging at the end of a Saturday Night Live episode.

That should be absolutely exhausting, but somehow, Endgame pulls it off. Endgame was indeed a capstone for the first three phases of the MCU (if not the entire franchise, as superhero fatigue suggests). And so we do allow them the victory lap, cheering along as Captain America rolls his eyes at his younger self or Bruce Banner blushes to see himself Hulk out. If good time-travel movies are never about the science, and always about the feelings they can evoke. then Endgame ranks among the best.

9. About Time (2013)

Given his penchant for big, emotional swings, it’s kind of surprising that Richard Curtis hasn’t returned to the trope more often (he did, of course, write the Doctor Who weepy “Vincent and the Doctor”). About Time follows the meek Tim Lake (Domhnall Gleeson), who learns from his father (Bill Nighy) that the men in his family have the ability to travel through time. How, you ask? By going to a quiet spot and concentrating really, really hard.

If that explanation bothers you, then wait until you learn about what Tim does with his powers: going through a trial and error process to make himself into the type of person who wins the love and affection of the girl of his dreams, Mary (Rachel McAdams). Yes, if you stop and think about it, About Time makes no sense and has icky implications. But unlike the other McAdams romantic time-travel movie of the era, The Time Traveler’s Wife, About Time‘s charming cast and open-hearted emotion overcomes all of those objections, making it much easier to just go with the (time) flow.

8. Timecrimes (2007)

Time-travel stories tend to have one of two themes: either that the future is unwritten (yes, that will come up more later), or that we can change the future by reliving the past. Spanish filmmaker Nacho Vigalondo’s lean thriller Timecrimes falls into the latter category, and advances the theme through a clever circular plot structure.

Timecrimes stars Karra Elejalde as a bored, rich creep named Héctor, whose afternoon spent ogling women in the woods nearby his impressive house is interrupted when he’s attacked by a man whose head is covered in red bandages. Héctor eludes the attacker by ducking into a laboratory, where a scientist offers to help by putting him into what turns out to be a time machine, sending Héctor back by one hour. As Héctor tries to escape his fate, the situation gets increasingly more deranged, leading to a fun (if somewhat telegraphed) climax.

7. 12 Monkeys (1995)

In Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys, written by David Peoples and Janet Peoples, the theme of inescapable fate carries emotional weight in addition to being a clever plot mechanic. A loose remake of the French short film La Jetée, 12 Monkeys seems to offer hope that humanity can improve and learn from its mistakes. But instead, the characters find themselves locked in an unbreakable chain of events.

What sets 12 Monkeys apart, besides Gilliam’s gonzo visual style, is the film’s genuine heart. Bruce Willis tones down all of his cool confidence to play Cole, a convict living in the post-apocalyptic 2020s who is sent back to 1996 to learn about the virus that wiped out much of humanity. While he does indeed search for the secret of the Army of the 12 Monkeys and meets charismatic mental patient Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt), Cole also gets put in an asylum, where he bonds with psychiatrist Kathryn Railly (Madeleine Stowe). That bond gives 12 Monkeys a pathos that goes deeper than the mind-bending plotting of the average time-travel film.

6. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)

Star Trek loves a good time-travel story, and the franchise has no qualms about wrestling with the heady questions the sub-genre raises. And the Enterprise crew’s fourth cinematic adventure does certainly touch on those ideas, as Kirk leads his team back to 1986 San Francisco to find a whale who can communicate with the probe attacking Earth in the future. But with The Voyage Home, director Leonard Nimoy and his team of writers (including Nicolas Meyer, whose H.G. Wells vs Jack the Ripper movie Time After Time just misses this list), lean almost entirely on fish-out-of-water comedy.

And that’s exactly what makes The Voyage Home a delight. By 1986, the stars of Star Trek had grown fully comfortable in their roles and established an unshakable camaraderie with one another. Nimoy gives his longtime cast mates moments to show off their comedic skills: James Doohan’s Scotty talking into a computer mouse, Walter Koenig’s Chekov looking for nuclear wessels, and William Shatner’s Kirk shouting “double dumb ass on you!” The Voyage Home isn’t Star Trek at its most thoughtful or exciting, but it is the most fun.

5. Interstellar (2014)

Given his obsession with time, it’s shocking that Interstellar is Christopher Nolan‘s only real time-travel movie (though an argument can be made for Tenet). From his breakout Memento all the way to The Odyssey this year, Nolan has loved playing with timelines and timeframes to create mesmerizing effects. While some find his approach too formal to elicit a genuine emotional response, others find Nolan’s study of time deeply effecting, especially in Interstellar.

Interstellar begins in the future, when former NASA pilot Joseph Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) is called back into service to undergo a mission to go through a wormhole and find a new planet for humanity to inhabit. But various mishaps result in the mission taking decades instead of the two years he had planned, forcing the single father Cooper to miss the opportunity to raise his children. We won’t go into detail here about how time-travel plays into Interstellar, but if you’ve seen a Nolan movie before, you know that Cooper will do anything to get back to his family.

4. Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989)

Just because time-travel mechanics are boring to discuss doesn’t mean that they can’t be fun to play with. Case in point: the build to the climax of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, in which Bill S. Preston, Esq. (Alex Winter) and Ted “Theodore” Logan (Keanu Reeves) get cornered by the latter’s stern cop dad. “Trash can, remember the trash can,” Ted tells himself, prompting a trash can to fall from the sky and land on his dad’s head.

How did that happen? Bill and Ted realized that they could solve any problem by going back in time after the event to fix it, which means that their future selves were also in the scene, waiting to drop the trash can and allow their past selves to go to the future and drop the trash can and… Obviously, it’s confusing. But that’s the genius of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, written by Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon and directed by Stephen Herek. The plot can cook your brain and we’ll accept it, because we’re already following a couple of brain-dead (complimentary) metal-heads.

3. Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie (2025)

As highlighted by the titular group’s name, Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie constantly forces viewers to ask, “How did they do this?” From the original web shorts that Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol made together, through the 16-episode TV series that ran on Viceland, up to last year’s feature film, Johnson and McCarrol common sense and copyright laws to create incredible comedy that blends real-life with absurd fiction.

Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie continues the tradition. When Matt puts a flux capacitor in their camper, and when Bird accidentally uses it to go back to 2008, they use the outrageous situation to finally realize their dream: playing the Rivoli, a mid-size club in Toronto. As always, that meager ambition leads to outrageous bits, including direct riffs on Back to the Future, and mixtures of real world reactions with planned stunts, some of which are achieved by incorporating unused footage from web shorts form 2008. More than the audacious filmmaking, the pleasure of NTBTSTM comes from its emotional heart. At the end of the day, the movie’s just about two guys who love each other, and who want to play the Rivoli.

2. The Terminator (1984)

James Cameron fans will spend the rest of their lives debating the merits of The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, with some praising the first movie’s lean horror vibe, while others extolling the spectacular virtues of the blockbuster follow-up. But on a list of time-travel movies, the original terminates every sequel.

Inspired by a fever dream about a metallic man pulling himself from an explosion, The Terminator stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as the T-800, an android sent from the future to kill Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), the woman whose son John will lead the human resistance against machines. To protect Sarah, those humans send back Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), a loyal soldier who eventually becomes a greater part of John Connor’s story. Cameron’s film directly addresses questions about fate and free will, but never at the expense of the action, making The Terminator one of the most purely entertaining time-travel movies.

1. Back to the Future (1985)

Back to the Future isn’t the first time-travel movie, but it is the most important. At least half of the films on this list pay homage to it, either by direct reference, or by just building on that movie’s structure. The movie does lots of things right: Robert Zemeckiss fantastic work with special effects, the memorable lead performances by Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd, and especially that awesome Delorian time machine.

But the secret to the success of Back to the Future stems from the relatable emotions that prompted its creation, when co-writer Bob Gale looked at his dad’s old yearbook, and wondered if he and his father would have been friends. So even though, as John Mulaney famously observed, Back to the Future has plenty of nonsensical and unsavory moments, the central idea of a kid learning that his parents weren’t what he expected them to be carries the story through, always couching the time-travel conceit in real emotions.

CBS Comedy Eternally Yours Examines the 500-Year Itch of Vampire Marriage

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

They say love never dies, but after 500 years, it might at least need a nap. CBS’s newest supernatural comedy asks what happens when forever starts to feel a little too long.

Eternally Yours follows Charles (Ed Weeks) and Liz (Allegra Edwards), vampires married for five centuries who’ve long since lost their spark, going through the motions of eternity alongside their eccentric coven in modern-day Seattle. Their stagnation gets upended when their daughter Emma starts dating Max, a well-meaning human, forcing the couple to reckon with whether their marriage—and forever itself—is worth holding onto.

The series’s pilot has an against-the-odds origin story, originally being written in 2015 by Joe Port and Joe Wiseman, the same writing duo behind Ghosts. Weeks first read the script in 2019 for the podcast Dead Pilots Society, which stages readings of pilots that were bought but never picked up.

Seven years later, the script resurfaced, with CBS greenlighting the project after the success of Ghosts. As Weeks recalls, “I guess in the interim, Ghosts had become a huge success, and CBS had given Eternally Yours another chance, and we’re all so relieved they did because it’s been a dream.”

The long wait didn’t dampen the rest of the cast’s enthusiasm once the script landed in their hands. “Anything that makes me laugh out loud while I’m reading it is always a good sign, and that happened every page,” Edwards says.

Helen J. Shen (Emma), a longtime fan of vampire lore, appreciates that humor, admiring how the show took something dark and was able to “spin it and have a heartwarming element to it” as well. Parker Young (Jesse) feels similarly, sharing that he “was so thrilled just to have the opportunity” to be part of the project. Having such a fun script to work with, Jaren Lewison (Max) summed up the resulting bond the ensemble shares now: “We have kind of become a bit of a coven.”

That camaraderie extended beyond the Eternally Yours cast. Asked if the Ghosts cast offered any advice on working with CBS, Lewison recalls, “I think the biggest thing is they said, ‘You’re just going to have the best time.’ They were like, ‘You’re going to be so taken care of. You’re going to have so much fun; just enjoy it.’”

The connection naturally raised the question of a crossover between the two CBS supernatural comedies. Edwards (who guest starred as Donna on Ghosts) doesn’t rule out a visit, saying, “I would love to go to Woodstone as a family. A little traveling vacation to Woodstone! They could put us anywhere.”

Eternally Yours premiered Oct. 8, 2026 on CBS. New episodes debut Thursdays at 8:30 p.m. ET on CBS.

Minus Zero Director Reveals Why He Brought Back Godzilla’s Greatest Enemy (Exclusive)

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

The release of Godzilla Minus One in 2023 marked a watershed moment for the legendary giant monster, whose screen exploits began nearly seven decades earlier with the original Japanese release of Ishirō Honda’s Gojira (1954). Written and directed by Takashi Yamazaki, Minus One was the first Godzilla movie since the original to be set in the immediate aftermath of World War II, when a defeated and traumatized Japan was left with nothing and forced to rebuild in the wake of the devastating atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Perhaps even more explicitly than any other Gojira follow-up, the monster was once again positioned as a metaphor for the emergence of nuclear weapons and their devastating physical and psychological toll. Yamazaki also added not just fully fleshed-out human characters to the mix, but also approached Godzilla’s attacks on the populace with an intensity and realism previously unseen in the franchise. Audiences around the world responded, with Minus One becoming the highest-grossing Japanese Godzilla film ever made and the Academy awarding it Best Visual Effects, a first for both the Oscars and the Big G.

Now the King of the Monsters is back, and Yamazaki has returned to write and direct Godzilla Minus Zero, picking up the story of the found family comprised of former kamikaze pilot Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki), his partner Noriko (Minami Hamabe), and their adopted daughter Akiko (Sae Nagatani).

“I’m very attached to the family,” Yamazaki explains, even as he acknowledges revisiting human characters in this franchise is rare. “I wanted to see what was going to become of this family going forward… I also wanted to see how people would try to deal with a situation where an even fiercer catastrophe befalls them.”

Not that it should be a surprise, but just as the Shikishima family and their compatriots attempt to return to a normal life after the events of the first film, a still-recovering Japan is threatened once again—but not by a re-emergent Godzilla. At least not initially.

In the opening moments of Godzilla Minus Zero, Yamazaki boldly introduces his version of another reigning kaiju from the Shōwa era of Toho Studios: King Ghidorah, the gigantic, three-headed, dragon-like beast from space whose history with the franchise goes back more than 60 years.

“I have a special sentiment toward this kaiju, because Ghidorah first appeared on the screen in 1964, and I myself was born in 1964,” says Yamazaki, who notes that Ghidorah was his first and only choice for the film out of Godzilla’s long list of monstrous enemies. “It was also the first time a kaiju came [on-screen] to my hometown of Matsumoto. So I have particular memories about this, and a sense of nostalgia for the kaiju. It had always been in my mind to have Ghidorah appear if I were to make a second film, and I never really strayed from that idea.”

While Godzilla has been and continues to be a metaphor for human-made nuclear horrors, Ghidorah represents something different for Yamazaki. “The way in which he interacts with or affects the weather is a metaphor for a natural disaster … which Japan suffered a lot,” the director explains. “There were a lot of disastrous typhoons that we had to survive through in our postwar era, which is also a reason that our postwar recovery was a bit delayed as well. So it does symbolize the turmoil and catastrophe that we had to survive in that era in Japan.”

A towering monster capable of flattening cities with its sheer size, lightning breath, and massive disruption of the skies themselves, Ghidorah seems unstoppable until a regenerated Godzilla rises from the ocean. The question thus becomes: can human beings somehow point Godzilla toward Ghidorah and force him into battle on Japan’s behalf?

The answer to that question is far from straightforward in Godzilla Minus Zero. Without spoiling too much, it involves direct references to the tragedies at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, certain plot strands left unresolved at the end of Minus One, and even ideas first hatched all the way back in the original 1954 film. It also reexamines a concept that Yamazaki touched on in Minus One: Godzilla is not just a monster, but in some ways, a god. A coldly indifferent one.

“I didn’t want to depict Godzilla as a being that is on the side of humanity,” Yamazaki says. “He is not our friend. Here he is depicted not as a complete god, but as a presence somewhere between beast and god. Therefore the human beings who are left to battle against him have to resort to certain methods and means that are absolutely taboo for human beings… That we as humankind should not step into this taboo is the idea that I’m depicting here, and I wanted to portray the internal conflict that comes with that.”

It’s this rich brew of metaphor, subtext, character study, and, of course, giant monster battles that has allowed Yamazaki to reach a whole new audience with his vision of Godzilla, and should he have the opportunity to direct a third film—for which he muses he might create his own original kaiju to battle the title character—he’s more than ready to move forward and carry Godzilla and his legacy into an astounding eighth decade on screen.

“As a filmmaker and a Godzilla fan myself, given that Godzilla has had a very long history of 70 years, to be part of the continuation of this tradition and this history gives me a sense of immense responsibility,” Yamazaki says with reverence. “I want to make Godzilla a very spiritual and sublime figure. And because of my absolute love for this kaiju, going forward, it makes me very happy to have so much support, and I’m very thankful for that.”

Godzilla Minus Zero opens in U.S. cinemas on Nov. 3.

Clayface Will Show That Gotham City Is Bigger Than Batman

In a few weeks, the DCU will finally take us to Gotham City for Clayface. But don’t expect to see Gotham’s Caped Crusader as we watch actor Matt Hagen’s strange transformation into a shapeshifting monster. When asked about the prospect of a Batman appearance in Clayface, director James Watkins told SFX Magazine, “You’re in a city called Gotham. So I guess you feel the shadow of the Bat inherently.” In other words, no, Batman in Clayface.

But that’s alright, because Watkins is right. It’s not just that Batman casts a shadow all over Gotham. It’s that Gotham City is a rich, multifaceted place, a setting for all types of stories—not just stories about Batman.

Clayface stars Tom Rhys Harries as up-and-coming actor Hagen, whose face gets disfigured by gangsters who catch him with one of their girlfriends. Desperate to keep his career, Hagen agrees to an experimental procedure by scientist Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie), which allows him to restore his good looks—as long as he concentrates to keep from becoming an amorphous blob of goo. As Hagen slips further into supervillainy, his case is investigated by Corr’s boyfriend John Borrelli, a detective in the Gotham City police.

Clayface will be the first movie set in Gotham City since James Gunn and Peter Safran took over as heads of DC Studios, but it isn’t the first time the infamous metropolis has come up. We saw people leaving for Gotham City during the escape scene in Superman, Leota and Keeya Adebayo mention moving from Gotham in Peacemaker, and, most recently, Sheriff Kerry Kane of Lanterns came to Rushville, Nebraska from Gotham. Moreover, we actually spent some time with Gotham in the Doctor Phosphorus origin story episode of Creature Commandos, an episode that featured a shadowy cameo from Batman.

Moreover, the comics have shown that good stories can be told in Gotham without Batman’s interference. The city hosts other superheroes, including the Golden Age Green Lantern Alan Scott and Ragman, to say nothing of interesting figures in Batman’s supporting cast. In fact, the excellent series Gotham Central by Ed Brubaker, Greg Rucka, and Michael Lark follows various officers in the city and only contains, in Watkins’ words, the shadow of the Bat, with very little of Batman himself.

That series inspired the TV show Gotham, which certainly had more superheroes and villains than the comic, but still managed to move Batman out of the spotlight. Then there was the short-lived sitcom Powerless, which featured office drones working at a Wayne-owned business in Gotham City.

As these examples demonstrate, Gotham can play host to police procedurals, horror stories, tales of magic, comedy, and wacky melodrama. None of them require Batman’s presence to be interesting.

And that’s a good thing, because with the official DCU entry, The Brave and the Bold, still in pre-production and The Batman: Part II delayed once again, shadows of the Bat may be all we’re going to get for a long, long time.

Clayface comes to theaters on October 23, 2026.

Carrie: Mike Flanagan Reveals How He Changed Stephen King’s Mind

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Mike Flanagan understands your skepticism when it comes to modern horror reboots. After all, the prolific horror auteur already had to address one notable genre fan’s qualms before embarking on Carrie, Prime Video’s TV miniseries based on the classic Stephen King novel.

“I went to Stephen King and said, ‘We’re talking about doing Carrie. I of course won’t do it without your express blessing,’” recalls the TV showrunner and King aficionado. And King, ever the veteran of screen adaptations himself, was quick to ask the obvious question: why? It’s been done. “I said, ‘I know, but what if we make some pretty fundamental changes?’ I walked him through the proposal, and he got very excited.”

Few in Hollywood have a better understanding of why the industry feels compelled to return to the ghosts of horror past than Mike Flanagan, especially when it comes to King. After jump-scaring onto the scene with indie horror darlings like Oculus and Hush, the Salem-born writer/director became the go-to guy for any and all things King: from psychological thriller Gerald’s Game to the unlikely Shining sequel Doctor Sleep, and even the miraculously feel-good The Life of Chuck.

But despite that impressive portfolio, adapting Carrie presents a much steeper challenge than your typical TV transfer. Originally released in 1974, Carrie was the soon-to-be legendary author’s first-ever published novel. It tells the story of Carietta “Carrie” White, a naïve 16-year-old girl dealing with an extreme mother, high school bullies, and her own burgeoning telekinetic powers. The book was adapted into the massively successful 1976 film directed by Brian De Palma and starring Sissy Spacek as the titular telekinetic firestarter. Several cinematic sequels and reboots followed, with the most recent offering being a 2013 remake starring Chloë Grace Moretz.

That’s why when presented with the opportunity to reboot Carrie as part of his overall deal with Amazon MGM Studios, Flanagan initially balked before considering a fresh approach. The only way to remake Carrie was to remix it, he realized, in a similar fashion to Flanagan’s Netflix horror shows The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor, and The Fall of the House of Usher, which drastically updated the works of Shirley Jackson, Henry James, and Edgar Allan Poe, respectively.

“The themes in Carrie about human cruelty and empathy feel more relevant today than they did 50 years ago,” Flanagan says. “So why not put those characters through the looking glass into these familiar but unfamiliar distortions of the characters we expect, and see what story grows out of that? That became a bit irresistible for me.”

Finding Carrie White

Many of those distortions start with Carrie herself. While the TV iteration of the character is every bit as naïve as her literary counterpart, she’s also much more hopeful, optimistic, and bright. Following the death of her father Ralph at his construction job, Carrie is discovered by the state’s child protective services and forced to attend a public school for the first time in her life, an opportunity the secret bookworm cherishes.

After an audition process that screened more than 1,400 young actors, Flanagan and casting director Anne McCarthy honed in on Summer H. Howell, a young actress with the ability to capture Carrie’s sense of wonderment at a modern world long kept hidden from her.

“I’m a sensitive girl, and I like to use that when I can in my acting. Luckily, Carrie is sensitive as well,” Howell tells us. “She’s excited for the world and to experience things because she’s been kept in her home her whole life. So I connected with that a lot, just growing up and wanting to get out there as a teenager, so eager and wanting to experience new things.”

In both King’s book and De Palma’s film—in which she’s played with intense religiosity by Piper Laurie—Carrie’s mother Margaret looms large over the White household and feels like the real locus of power in a story that features literal telekinetic powers.

For Flanagan, the choice of who to embody the conspiracy-minded Margaret was among the easiest he had to make. “It was instant. It was: ‘We’re doing Carrie. Sam Sloyan is Margaret White.’ There was never another candidate for me.”

A Flanagan collaborator since 2016’s Hush, Samantha Sloyan is best known for playing villainous church busybody Bev Keane in his 2021 Netflix series Midnight Mass. On paper, Bev and Margaret have much in common, including a penchant for bending religious doctrine toward their own selfish means. But according to Sloyan, there’s a key difference between the two.

“Beverly has complete belief in what she says because she needs that authority. Margaret wants Carrie to love her, but she just keeps going. She expects to be able to behave the way that she’s behaving and still have the love and respect of her daughter, and she can’t have both.”

Carrie and Margaret’s relationship forms the creative and emotional backbone of the proceedings as the pair lead a cast that’s a mix of high school characters (Siena Agudong, Alison Thornton, Joel Oulette) and the adults who supposedly have their best interests in mind (Matthew Lillard, Amber Midthunder, Rahul Kohli).

The world of Carrie isn’t confined solely to Ewen High School, however. As Flanagan points out, King’s original text is explicit about the fact that Carrie isn’t the only person in the world to exhibit telekinetic abilities. The show explores some of the other carriers of the so-called “TK gene.”

“There’s a much larger world that Carrie belongs to that she doesn’t know about,” Flanagan says. “I think one of the tragedies of King’s story is that she never finds out. We had a chance to change that. It also helps with one of the show’s biggest themes: a young woman discovering the legacy of the community to which she belongs. Our Carrie has been sequestered away from any community her whole life in an effort to protect her.”

Mean Girls

Many of the other changes involved in remixing Carrie are simply inherent to taking a story from 1974 and updating it for 2026, especially when it comes to high school.

Himself the father of three children, one of whom is a high school sophomore, Flanagan invited teenagers into the writers’ room to get their perspective of what a modern-day high school looks like. Their input helped inform the look and feel of the show’s high school set (filmed on location in a real, out-of-use high school in Vancouver)—from Gen Alpha lingo to metal detectors at the doors to intense active-shooter drills.

The depiction of the lattermost moment is sure to be one of the series most horrifying scenes for anyone who has not yet witnessed someone posing as an armed intruder pointing a terrifyingly realistic gun in a child’s face. Not only has the previously home-schooled Carrie never experienced such a drill, but neither had the Canadian actor who portrays her.

“That was one of the scenes I was most nervous for, actually, because I’ve never been in that situation,” Howell says. “It added this extra bit of pressure. We had certain drills when I was younger but nothing like somebody banging on the door and trying to scare the children.”

And then there’s that damned internet. While Stephen King has always been known to craft a particularly vicious brand of literary bully, even Carrie’s tormentors had to clock out at the end of the day in 1974. Now social media makes the bullying of our nation’s youth a 24/7 proposition, as the miniseries’ iteration of Carrie discovers to her horror when frenemy Chris Hargensen (Alison Thornton) launches an “@CarrieRed_” Instagram handle full of compromising material.

The profile photo of said account is a snapshot of Carrie’s pained face, amid an updated version of the original’s devastating locker room scene. When the undernourished 16-year-old experiences her first period in the locker room after gym class and believes she is injured or dying upon the sight of blood, her classmates, naturally, prove to be less than empathetic to her ignorance. The moment is not only a turning point for Carrie, her classmates, and her teachers, but for everyone else on set that day.

“Mike does a really beautiful job of making sure we all pause and acknowledge what a big deal a moment is before it passes by,” says Amber Midthunder, who plays supportive gym teacher Rita Desjardin. “I mostly witnessed the locker room scene and what an intense day that was. I think it’s one of the most upsetting scenes I’ve ever experienced just because of the nature of it.”

Of course, even a remixed version of Carrie wouldn’t be complete without the tale’s fiery prom finale. By now, the sight of Prom Queen Carrie White in a high school gymnasium, wide-eyed, vengeful, and covered in pig’s blood from a prank gone wrong is as American as apple pie and about as sticky.

“I don’t know if I even want to know what’s in the blood,” Howell reports of the red concoction she was doused in. “I’d have to stand in the perfect spot, and they’d lower a tennis ball to my head to make sure it’s lined up. The blood knocked off my tiara once, and they were like, ‘Oh, we can’t use that one.’”

Filmed over the span of two weeks, the bloody prom and its equally bloody aftermath serve as the union between the classic King version of Carrie and the blended elements that Flanagan seeks to incorporate. The series’ star didn’t fully appreciate that synthesis until seeing De Palma’s film for the first time at a special screening in Vancouver that the showrunner put together for the cast, crew, and locals.

“It was the coolest way I could have seen the film, having just filmed a whole series based on it,” Howell says. “We capture the iconic moments, but just slightly differently because we have more time. Seeing the differences was very jarring but super cool. Sissy Spacek is clearly an incredible actor, and it’s hard to fill her shoes, but I hope I made her proud.”

All eight episodes of Carrie are available to stream on Prime Video now.

Hunger Games’ McKenna Grace and Joseph Zada Give Exclusive Look at Sunrise on the Reaping

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The Capitol has always been good at making murder look pretty.

That contradiction is baked into the Hunger Games, in which children are sent to die, but first they get costumes, parades, interviews, constructed reality-TV storylines, and an audience trained to consume suffering with indifference. In Sunrise on the Reaping, that structure will be operating at full capacity. The world is brighter, grander, more colorful. Even the arena is resplendent…this makes the whole ordeal much, much worse to witness.

For Joseph Zada and Mckenna Grace, filming the 50th Hunger Games (or: the second Quarter Quell) against beautiful, mountainous terrain on location in remote Spain was something closer to watching a horror movie take place in the daytime, like Midsommar, than a traditional YA fantasy. That deceptively chilling image gets to the heart of what makes the film’s story so messed up. There is no dark corridor obscuring the violence in this arena. Everybody can see it. The Capitol just makes sure you see it the way the Capitol wants you to.

More unsettling still, audiences already know where our hero Haymitch Abernathy ends up. Sunrise on the Reaping isn’t just about watching someone survive; it’s witnessing a hopeful, vibrant boy turn into the haunted, bitter old man Woody Harrelson introduced to us in the original films.

Director Francis Lawrence calls Sunrise on the Reaping “by far the most emotional story that Suzanne Collins has written,” precisely because tragedy and hope are allowed to exist at the same time. That emotionality matters because young Haymitch is nothing like the man audiences first met in The Hunger Games. Producer Nina Jacobson describes original series hero Katniss Everdeen as “a much more stoic character” than Haymitch. Whereas Haymitch is “a heart on his sleeve boy,” Katniss survives partly by compartmentalizing. Haymitch arrives without that armor.

That is already a lot to ask of a young actor; luckily, Zada was hardly doing it all in a vacuum. In addition to the vast travelogue scale of the arena, Zada and Grace also found themselves surrounded by a ridiculous amount of acting firepower, including Jesse Plemons, Glenn Close, and Elle Fanning. The funny part is that neither actor knew just how stacked the ensemble would become when they signed on.

Grace reveals that she discovered many of her castmates through The Hunger Games social accounts, at one point reacting, “Elle Fanning’s in our movie!” Zada similarly recalls watching the announcements roll out online day after day, remembering it as “a crazy way to find out you’re working with some of the best actors in the world.” For two young actors stepping into roles carrying enormous franchise baggage—with Zada especially tasked with making audiences believe this boy becomes Harrelson’s burned-out drinker—there is something poetic about Sunrise pairing its new generation with performers who already come with serious star power.

As Lawrence notes, we first encountered Haymitch as “a drunk, bitter, dissolute, and cynical man who appears to have thrown in the towel” a decade ago. Sunrise asks the obvious question: What did it take to turn that boy into that man? The answer is not just the games, but the entire system surrounding them.

Author Suzanne Collins has never been particularly subtle about the politics of Panem, nor should she be. Lawrence says Collins begins with questions about “the consequence of war and PTSD, and even propaganda,” but Sunrise pushes further than ever before for this franchise. “This time around,” Lawrence says, “Collins became interested in this idea of implicit submission,” asking why people simply accept being told what to do even when they are unhappy with those making the decisions.

That enigma changes how the Games function. Jacobson describes the Games as a manufactured product, pointing to the hidden hand that shapes what audiences see in order to keep people in their place. It’s a product designed to tell people they have no power to take on the Capitol. Even Haymitch himself becomes complacent.

“You’re not necessarily seeing what really happened,” Lawrence adds. And he’s right. The Capitol shows people what it wants them to see, not the way things are. They create a carefully crafted narrative for Haymitch in the new movie, but nothing about it is based on his life in District 12 or who he is as a person. It is not enough to control someone’s body; the Capitol wants ownership over the story of what happens to that body afterward. Hence even the clothing becomes part of the cruelty.

Grace and Zada note that the tributes’ 1970s-inspired costumes are their own form of torture: tight pants, capes, pristine white outfits, and Doc Martens, all while these kids are preparing to fight to the death. Grace sums up the absurdity perfectly: “I feel like it’s very President Snow and very Capitol how impractical those costumes are, and just like, the ridiculousness of it to send out all of these kids in these pristine white outfits.” It is funny until you think about what she is actually describing. These children are being dressed for somebody else’s entertainment. Literal human sacrifices to an elite’s passing distraction.

Lawrence wanted the physical suffering underneath all that pageantry to remain visible. Zada remembers that whenever the cast performed a stunt sequence, the director would sometimes have them do the entire sequence again even if production only needed a small piece of footage, forcing them to carry the characters’ exhaustion into the shot.

“It felt like a punishment at the time,” Lawrence says, “but you watch it, and it looks incredible.” That distinction between looking incredible and feeling terrible might as well be the Capitol’s mission statement. The thing is, Sunrise on the Reaping is not interested in suffering for suffering’s sake. Its larger argument is about what happens when resistance fails to produce immediate gratification. That may be where Haymitch differs most significantly from Katniss. She eventually gets to lead a revolution; Haymitch doesn’t.

Jacobson describes resistance as something where participants may make “profound sacrifices” without ever knowing whether anything changed. The point, she argues, is that resistance itself sets an example that, eventually, somebody else will follow and respark. It inspires the next era of resisting, until circumstances finally allow that resistance to threaten the status quo.

The young cast reached almost the exact same conclusion. Zada says he hopes audiences understand that “change takes longer than that a lot of the time and not to give up.” Grace takes the idea even further, pointing directly toward the franchise’s future. “Standing up for what you believe in may not reward you immediately,” she says, but “you may be paving a way for somebody later down the line.”

That is Haymitch’s tragedy, and maybe his victory? He does not get to be the Mockingjay. He does not get the posters or the armies. He gets absorbed by the Capitol system he fought to survive and then perpetuated for decades. Yet somewhere underneath it all, something survived. Katniss becomes the face of resistance. Something she wouldn’t have been able to do without Haymitch.

Haymitch belongs to the generation that had to keep the damn thing alive long enough for her to exist. Sunrise on the Reaping is the story of what that kind of survival actually costs when you are the one forced to carry the spark before anyone knows it will become a fire.

The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping is in theaters on Nov. 20.

VisionQuest: Paul Bettany and Terry Matalas Talk Ultron’s Return, Mindspaces, and Robot Families

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The last time audiences saw Vision and Ultron together, the two of them disagreed. Convinced that humanity was doomed to destroy itself, Ultron (a synthetic big bad voiced by James Spader) tried to save the world by starting it over. Conversely, Paul Bettany’s altruistic Vision saw something beautiful in humanity despite—or due to—our failures. When Ultron sneers, “You’re hopefully naive,” Vision responds, “Well, I was born yesterday.”

Many days have passed since that conversation at the end of 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron, but that question lingers over Vision and Ultron’s reunion in the Disney+ series VisionQuest.

“That conversation is very much the launching point for the show,” series creator and showrunner Terry Matalas tells us. “In Age of Ultron, Vision wanted to be ‘a real boy.’ In VisionQuest, he’s not so sure it’s a good idea to be a real boy.”

The star, and a steward of Vision’s journey for more than a decade now, would agree. “VisionQuest is a mash-up of the Pinocchio and Frankenstein stories,” explains Bettany. “Vision’s having an existential crisis at the beginning of the show. He’s asking questions like, ‘Who am I? What am I for? What is my purpose? Who made me?’”

Set after the events of WandaVision, VisionQuest finds Vision (still Bettany) unsure of who he is. He was killed by Thanos, rebuilt as a mindless automaton by S.W.O.R.D., and received the memories of the Vision conjured back to life by the magic of Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen). But this new Vision doesn’t feel like his old self. Hence the journey to determine a different identity. Helping him along is a collection of AIs he keeps in his Mindspace, a virtual mansion where he lives with the butler J.A.R.V.I.S. (James D’Arcy), personal assistant F.R.I.D.A.Y. (Orla Brady), security expert E.D.I.T.H. (Emily Hampshire), and handymen U (Jonathan Sayer) and D.U.M.-E (Henry Lewis).

And then there’s Ultron (James Spader), whose consciousness Vision has been keeping in the Mindspace since the events of Age of Ultron. Why does Vision keep Ultron around, and why does he consult the supervillain when going on his journey of self-discovery?

“Ultron’s been imprisoned for a long time and has been consuming humanity’s artistic efforts. He has a slightly different perspective,” points out Matalas. “But he’s also considering that maybe burning everyone to ash is still the best call.”

“Vision just thinks Ultron is interesting,” Bettany adds. “Vision is fascinated by Ultron’s chaotic impulses.”

As much as VisionQuest involves sentient robots, relentless bounty hunters, and the spirit of a magical boy possessing a speedster, at the center it’s about a guy trying to figure out his identity, all while dealing with his tumultuous father. In other words, VisionQuest is a very human story.

Pre-Visions

Fundamentally, every Vision story is a human story. Created by Roy Thomas and John Buscema for 1968’s Avengers #57, Marvel Comics’ Vision was an update of the Golden Age Human Torch, an advanced android that burst into flames when exposed to oxygen. When the evil robot Ultron wanted to emulate his creator, Dr. Henry Pym, a.k.a. Ant-Man, by making his own robot, he repurposed the Human Torch’s body into the red-skinned Vision.

Moreover, Ultron copies the “brainwaves” of the fallen Avenger Wonder Man, giving Vision the capacity to feel emotions. Of course, the plan backfired, and Vision turned against his creator, becoming a mainstay among Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.

Vision’s MCU origin more or less follows the same structure, just swapping out Hank Pym and Wonder Man with Tony Stark and J.A.R.V.I.S. 1.0. In both comics and live action, Vision is a thoughtful, inquisitive synthezoid… whatever that is.

“A synthezoid is an artificial human being!” Bettany declares with confidence. Matalas would agree with some added context.

“A synthezoid means that he’s not just a robot. There’s a consciousness and self-awareness to him that goes beyond your typical android,” the creator affirms. “He’s a self-aware artificial intelligence with a quantum computer for a brain, but he had human parents in some ways, with Stark and Bruce Banner. He also has a robot dad in Ultron. It’s a complicated question, which is the point of our show. He’s a character who is trying to decide how human he is and how much he’s still his older versions.”

It’s a question that Matalas has dealt with before, having come to VisionQuest from the highly successful third season of Star Trek: Picard, which brought back the android Data (Brent Spiner) and his positronic brain.

“I started having meetings at Marvel because Kevin Feige’s a huge Star Trek fan. It set up a great back and forth that continues to this day. Same thing with Brad Winderbaum [head of Streaming, Television and Animation at Marvel Studios],” notes Matalas. “Star Trek is your way into so many kinds of stories, because it offers reference points to big ideas.” That said, he does distinguish differences between each brand’s synthetic lores. “Data wasn’t a big influence on VisionQuest because, in a lot of ways, Vision is the anti-Data. Data always wanted to be human, whereas Vision’s a little bit more uncertain about it, especially when we meet him.”

Vision may be uncertain about his own humanity, but the person who plays him is not.

“I haven’t really troubled myself with trying to play a robot because they give me a costume and prosthetics that make me look like a robot. I’m quite lazy, so if the job’s done for me by the costume and makeup, then I get on with the stuff I have to do,” Bettany laughs.

Bettany makes that job sound easy enough. But then you remember his work involves going toe-to-toe with James Spader, and you realize the daunting task before him.

The Second Age of Ultron

Much of the first episode of VisionQuest involves Vision once again facing off with Ultron. But where they previously argued about the relative merits of mass genocide, Ultron and Vision now disagree mostly about the latter’s tendency to shut himself off from the world.

“You’re meeting the two characters when they’re on the fence about humanity. And Ultron might have a better perspective than Vision on what it means to be human at this point,” Matalas teases.

For that reason, Ultron had to be the central antagonist of VisionQuest, at least as far as Matalas was concerned. “I really didn’t know what else it could be,” he admits. “It was vital that Paul have someone of equal adult stature to play off against, and we didn’t have Elizabeth Olsen’s Wanda. So the only answer was Ultron.”

However, to get Ultron, Matalas had to get Spader, the performer who brought him to life 11 years ago but hasn’t returned to the MCU since.

“I flew to New York to have lunch with James and tell him this gonzo idea. I was told that I would be met with reservations about him returning,” Matalas confesses. “Whether or not that was true, I did go in with the fear that I could easily screw this up. But I just gave him my honest enthusiasm and started pitching some scenes. James immediately jumped into the process and started adding ideas. We immediately hit it off, and by the end of the lunch, he wanted to do it.”

Matalas’ commitment to bring back Vision paid off as soon as Bettany and Spader got on set together. “This show is a delivery system for everything you love about Paul Bettany,” Matalas promises. “Paul is a highlight in everything you see him in, and it felt so natural putting him front and center. It’s about time he’s been the focus, because he wears the hero’s cape so well.”

Indeed, Bettany has been part of the MCU since the very beginning, voicing Tony Stark’s original AI J.A.R.V.I.S. in 2008’s Iron Man. Yet Bettany’s characters have always been in a subordinate or supporting role, whether that’s advising Iron Man, standing alongside Wanda, or serving with the Avengers.

However, Bettany sees the Vision of VisionQuest as a new person with a different relationship from his previous incarnations. “Vision was really a big reset from J.A.R.V.I.S., because there was a birth in Age of Ultron,” he explains. “VisionQuest feels like a major reset too. When Vision was first born, he was both omnipotent and entirely naive, like a sort of omnipotent ingénue. That was fun to play, yet this is something different,” he observes. “I did go back and watch Vision’s previous appearances to remember his mindset.”

VisionQuest also offers a new challenge for both Bettany and Spader since Vision and Ultron often take human form, allowing the actors to share the screen without capes or robot prosthetics.

“There is a significant amount of time in the costume, and with new costumes and new makeup,” Bettany points out. “But it is more comfortable to play the part without the costume, and I think it’s a big part of Vision’s quest in the series. He’s trying to figure out who he is and to understand human beings. It makes sense that he would move through the world incognito, disguised as a human to further that quest.”

“You’ll definitely see plenty of robot action,” Matalas concurs. “But I just love it when you get to see Vision look like Paul Bettany. It’s a way to access the human side of these characters. There’s a story reason for Vision and Ultron to look like people, but ultimately I wanted to watch Paul and James chew the scenery, so that’s what we did.”

In fact, that desire to let his actors show off informed many of Matalas’ creative decisions. When it came to writing Ultron’s dialogue, the showrunner asked himself, “What do I want to hear James Spader talk about?” He adds with a laugh, “The best part of a James Spader performance—whether it’s Boston Legal, The Practice, or The Blacklist—is hearing him monologue about humanity and the things that plague us. [He] has a relentless enthusiasm for stirring the pot. I was ready for grenades, but he always had a ‘yes, and’ spirit of improvisation. James, Paul, and I never had a real, strong creative disagreement.”

Joining the Quest Party

It’s a good thing that everything is so copacetic behind the scenes of VisionQuest, because on the screen it’s all turmoil and chaos. Vision’s attempts to hide out and define his identity on his own terms get disrupted by the arrival of the relentless mercenary Paladin (Todd Stashwick).

Matalas promises, “Paladin’s going to be a really interesting point-of-view character because he allows us to consider what it means to be a bounty hunter in the MCU. It’s not an easy life, so we want to know what makes him tick.”

Joined by his sarcastic assistant, played by Diane Morgan of Cunk on Life fame, Paladin has potential to be a comedic buffoon, but Matalas insists that’s not the case. “He’s a guy with his own code. He’s committed to this bounty hunter life, for better or worse. But he doesn’t know how many years he has left to do this, and he’s thinking about what he wants to be and what he wants to pass down.”

Paladin actor Stashwick previously worked with Matalas on 12 Monkeys and Star Trek: Picard, and was the only choice to portray a morally complicated tracker. “Todd can play a monster, someone ruthless and by-the-book,” Matalas adds. “But he can still be likable and maybe even understandable. He has a dry sarcasm that grounds big ideas about hunting a robot, and that makes him easier to write.”

Further complicating things is the arrival of Thomas Shepherd (Ruaridh Mollica), a.k.a. Speed, a.k.a. Tommy Maximoff. Like his twin brother Billy, Tommy was created by Wanda’s hex to be her son with Vision. As we saw in Agatha All Along, when Wanda’s hex dissipated and the twins disappeared at the end of WandaVision, Billy’s soul entered the body of young William Kaplan, who became the superhero Wiccan. A similar thing happened to Thomas Shepherd in VisionQuest, something the show addresses head-on.

“We lean into the zaniness of Thomas’ story. It would be pretty screwed up to have the soul of some made-up entity drop into you,” Matalas observes.

More than just a matter of canon-keeping and faithfulness to the source material, Thomas’ plight ties into the central themes of VisionQuest. “This show has a lot of characters going through identity crises,” the showrunner notes. “You have Vision asking if he’s who he used to be, or if he’s something new. You’ve got Ultron wondering if he really wants to destroy the world, and you have this kid, Thomas Shepherd, who suddenly has all these memories of a life he didn’t live. I think that gives you a great family that’s trying to find itself.”

According to the writer, those questions of family, identity, and especially maturity drew Spader back into playing Ultron again: “James’ perspective was that the Ultron of Age of Ultron was a bit of a teenager, wrestling with others and petulant. The Ultron of VisionQuest is slightly older and wiser. That doesn’t mean he’s any less villainous, but it does mean that he has a more erudite and sophisticated take on humanity than he had previously.”

For Bettany, those themes also give VisionQuest a pressing urgency, especially to adolescents and young adults in the audience. “Vision has all these memories and no ability to connect them to himself. He feels alienated, and I think that’s what makes him interesting to young people. When you’re a kid, it is urgent business to discover who you are. Vision’s always in the process of change because of his super-intelligence and having a dizzying array of options. Young people today are faced with a dizzying array of options for how they identify themselves. So the major contract with the audience that the character of Vision makes is that he must always be in a moment of decision.”

That contract with the audience matters because VisionQuest doesn’t just set out to be a simple superhero story; it wants to tackle the ultimate mystery of what it means to be human.

Envision the Big Picture

Even though the series involves AIs figuring out how to be human beings, VisionQuest isn’t going to grapple with the real threat of artificial intelligence in our current society.

“This isn’t really the show to debate whether or not AI is going to take our jobs or siphon off our creativity,” Matalas says. “We’ve been working on this for almost two and a half years. By the time you write something, it’s immediately obsolete by the technology that’s come out. Just look at the advances in artificial intelligence in the last week. We would never be able to keep up, so it was never going to be that show.”

He continues, “VisionQuest does focus on our role as parents of this creation, and how it’s up to us to bring them into the world in the right way. There’s a family tree here from humanity to AI.”

Bettany also keys into the familial connection of this whole unlikely trilogy as one of its greatest appeals.

“This is a show about grandfathers, fathers, and sons,” the actor muses. “It asks big questions about identity and purpose in a really fun, adventurous way.” For him, the appeal of the MCU has always been balancing the big questions with the fun.

He adds, “I often think about the big swing that Captain America: Civil War took, asking whether the Avengers needed a governing body like the United Nations or if they had the right to unilaterally decide to invade another country and affect its political outcome. As we were going around the world doing press, Robert Downey Jr. would always come out on stage and ask who was Team Cap and who was Team Iron Man. Everywhere we went in America, two-thirds of the crowd were on Cap’s side. They believed we absolutely have the right and, indeed, we have the onus to police the world. And everywhere else in the world, it was two-thirds on Iron Man’s side. That’s fascinating. Of course, these are entertaining movies, but they also are a really broad church to have these kinds of discussions, in a fun way that I think was quite revealing.”

As Bettany’s observation reveals, messiness and complexity are essential parts of his character. Vision and Ultron may not know how they feel about themselves, each other, or humanity, but such disagreements aren’t flaws. It’s just who they are.

The first two episodes of VisionQuest premiere Wednesday, October 14 on Disney+.

Ben Affleck’s Batman v Superman Comments Revive Age-Old Questions About Superhero Audiences

In a recent interview with Variety, Ben Affleck shared some thoughts about his time playing Batman for Zack Snyder, and the superhero movie genre in general. Recalling the criticisms leveled at the dark tone of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Affleck observed, “It seems to be an ongoing question, and I don’t know the answer: Do you go all the way to a hard-R rating like Joker? Or do it like Marvel, which does something broad, unless you’re talking about Deadpool & Wolverine?” He continued, “There seems to be more tension between ‘Are we doing the grown-up version or the one that’s open to kids?’”

Leaving aside the actual variety of DC Studio’s offerings over the past few years, Affleck raises a good point. Are superheroes for kids? Or can they tell stories for adults? It’s such a good question, in fact, that people have been asking it since the birth of the comic book industry… and no one has come up with a good answer yet.

Judging by the cover of 1938’s Action Comics #1, one could argue that superheroes were invented to appeal to kids. That cover introduced Superman, the world’s first superhero, as pure power fantasy, dressed in blue and red togs and smashing a car over his head, while a scared bystander runs away. Even the story by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster seems to teach a simple moral lesson. Bully Butch thinks he can push around Clark Kent and Lois Lane because he’s stronger, and it takes Superman and his superior strength to put him in his place.

Throughout that issue and most of the issues that follow, Superman does the same thing, leaping over buildings and outrunning locomotives to tell powerful people to make better decisions. However, the specific details in the story spoke to issues more complicated and adult than one would expect. Superman’s first enemies weren’t just tough guys who wanted to duke it out with him; they were governors sentencing innocent men to the electric chair, or landlords who let their tenants live in squalor. Superman’s feats of strength were less power for the sake of power and more fantasies to imagine simple solutions to real problems.

That tension only intensified when America entered World War II. Comic books became a hit among GIs, thanks to the fact that they were cheap, easy-to-read, and easy to transport. Superheroes followed suit, going to war with their audience, either defending the home front from saboteurs attacking our factories or battling super villains like Red Skull and Captain Nazi, who weren’t that different from Hitler and Mussolini.

Yet, as crucial as adult readers were to the origins of the genre, soldiers put superhero comics so firmly behind them when they returned from the front that the larger public forgot they existed. Even to this day, people talk about superhero comics as if they were originally created just for kids, and that adult readers are immature deviants, clinging to a genre they should have long outgrown. Or, they talk about more mature comics as something new that creators such as Alan Moore and Frank Miller brought to medium, creating a split that wasn’t there before.

To be sure, the loss of a military readership meant that superheroes became sillier in the 1950s, with Batman and Superman more likely to battle alien invaders than economic inequality. But until the moral panic caused by psychologist Frederic Wertham’s 1954 book The Seduction of the Innocent, adults regularly read sci-fi, horror, and even romance comic books. The mind-bending stories that Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko made for Stan Lee at Marvel only drew those audiences back to superheroes, setting the stage for the moral complexity of the Bronze Age.

Such moral complexity happened within the genre’s established tropes. For example, the 1988 Batman storyline A Death in the Family, by Jim Starlin and Jim Aparo, does indeed add stakes by having the Joker murder Robin. But it also involves the Joker becoming Iran’s delegate to the United Nations under Ayatollah Khomeini. And, of course, the entire story is built around a gimmick in which readers called a 900-number to vote on Robin’s fate.

Silly? Absolutely. Immeshed in current politics and themes? Undeniably.

Stories like A Death in the Family draw attention to an uncomfortable truth about superhero comics, that the line between childish and adult isn’t nearly as clear as we assume. Affleck’s own work in Batman v Superman illustrates the point. He may play a man driven to action after a 9/11-like incident, but the movie doesn’t have anything to say about the nature of terrorism, vigilantism, or the role of leaders in responding to a crisis. Lex Luthor may babble about theodicy, wondering why a good and all-powerful god would allow bad things to happen, but his observations sound less like Erasmus and more like a thirteen-year-old internet edgelord.

So what is the answer? There is none. Superheroes are inherently silly. They are about people in bright costumes with fantastic powers who punch people in the face. But they come from a place of real conflict and real concern. Adults concern themselves with questions of power as much as anyone else, and if superheroes are the medium through which they ask those questions, then so be it. Such has been the case for as long as comics have been around, entertaining children and giving adults space to think about big questions, with no easy answers.