It’s a tough time to be a DC movie. In the inevitable upheaval involved in the changing of guards, several projects fell by the wayside, greatly underperformed, or, in the case of Batgirl, abruptly stopped production. Many of those decisions came before current co-CEOs James Gunn and Peter Safran took over. Still, with the exception of The Flash and the Aquaman sequel, not many other projects seem certain. That is, of course, with the exception of Blue Beetle. The project began as an HBO Max exclusive movie and got an upgrade to theatrical, in IMAX, no less! Not only that, but James Gunn confirmed that although Blue Beetle is not a full DCU movie, Blue Beetle, the character, is the first DCU character.

Here’s the first trailer for Blue Beetle, hitting theaters in August.

While a character called Blue Beetle has existed for decades, this iteration—young Jaime Reyes—didn’t appear until 2006. In that relatively short span of time, Jaime has become a standout favorite for comics fans. The movie will, as you might expect, take elements from several different comic runs of the character. As we see at the beginning of the trailer, Jaime (Xolo Maridueña) is a young man working at a resort in the fictional Palmera City. On a fateful day, his friend gives him a carton from Belly Burger containing an alien scarab. Presto chango, the Scarab fuses to Jaime (in a rather Cronenbergian scene) and he’s got a Blue Beetle suit.

One fun aspect of the character in the movie is that he definitely does not have a secret identity, as such. His family, including George Lopez as his uncle, see his first transformation. He’s like the anti-Spider-Man. Everyone he loves knows his secret to begin with. Also, his uncle thinks Batman is a fascist, which is very funny.

We don’t get a huge sense of the larger story of the movie aside from Susan Sarandon wanting the device for herself. The film’s IMDb lists her as Victoria Kord, a character who only first appeared in this current “Graduation Day” comics arc. Ted Kord, of course, is the first Blue Beetle from back in comics’ past.

We also recently learned that Harvey Guillén’s character works for Sarandon’s Kord, playing a doctor torn between his loyalties to his profession and to being a good person.

The synopsis for Blue Beetle is as follows:

Recent college grad Jaime Reyes returns home full of aspirations for his future, only to find that home is not quite as he left it. As he searches to find his purpose in the world, fate intervenes when Jaime unexpectedly finds himself in possession of an ancient relic of alien biotechnology: the Scarab. When the Scarab suddenly chooses Jaime to be its symbiotic host, he is bestowed with an incredible suit of armor capable of extraordinary and unpredictable powers, forever changing his destiny as he becomes the Super Hero BLUE BEETLE.

And we won’t have long to wait to see it on very large screens. Blue Beetle, directed by Angel Manuel Soto, will hit theaters and IMAX August 18, 2023.

Originally published on April 3, 2023.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

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Wes Anderson is a vibe. People always know what they’re going to get with a Wes Anderson movie, and a lot of people like to slag him off because of that. But what’s wrong with having a distinct style? Why shouldn’t filmmakers have their thing to make them stand apart? Almost since his very first film, 1996’s Bottle Rocket, he’s played with the inherently artificial nature of cinema as an artform. In the course of his next 10 films—and 27 years—Anderson’s filmography has gone ever further away from “realism,” into stories, performances, and aesthetic wholly borne out of finding the believable heart at the center of the weirdest of premises.

His latest film, Asteroid City, is not your typical Wes Anderson film. Or, maybe more accurately, it’s the most Wes Anderson film. It hides the real story under layers and layers of artifice and distance to give us a treatise on the American Theatre, UFO culture, and mid-century emotional stunting. It’s also super goofy and plays like a greatest hits of previous Anderson films.

Asteroid City has probably the most packed cast Anderson has ever worked with. His movies always draw attention to their star-studded ensembles. In this movie, he draws your attention to these stars who play characters within characters within framing stories within deliberate obfuscations. Asteroid City is not merely a movie; it’s a documentary about reenactments of behind-the-scenes stories of putting on a stage play called Asteroid City, which we then get to watch in a massive, real outdoor landscape set that couldn’t possibly exist on a stage. Get it?

Ostensibly, the story finds a number of families arriving in the impossibly tiny desert town Asteroid City for a special presentation for scientifically gifted youngsters. Among these families include Jason Schwartzman’s Augie Steenbeck, a grizzled war photographer who recently lost his wife, his genius son (Jake Ryan), and trio of blonde hellion girls. We also have screen star Midge Campbell (Scarlett Johansson) and her genius daughter (Grace Edwards). Tilda Swinton plays a scientist, Jeffrey Wright a military general, Steve Carell an enterprising motel manager, Matt Dillon a mechanic. Tom Hanks takes on what would probably be the Bill Murray role as Augie’s rich father-in-law.

In addition to all of these characters, these actors also play the actors playing these characters. Remember, this is meant to be a play from the mid-20th century. So we throughout see these people as the “real” versions of themselves. Unlike the actual play, which is in color and widescreen, the behind-the-scenes stories look more like stage play scenes, in black-and-white, and in Academy ratio. Additionally, people like Adrien Brody appear as the play’s beleaguered director, and Edward Norton as its ascot-adorned scribe. All of this comes with Bryan Cranston as a Rod Serling-esque narrator popping in and out to set various scenes.

Each of these different levels of unreality have their own narratives and character arcs. They overlap each other, vying for importance. It’s clear Anderson is playing with the ’50s Actor’s Studio-style living theatre stuff. We have a Thornton Wilder or Tennessee Williams playwright and an Elia Kazan-inspired director. Willem Dafoe plays the analog to a Lee Strasberg-esque acting teacher. These feel less like their own full movie and more like snapshots of the era to give you an understanding of and commentary on the “play” at the center. The way Anderson weaves these stories and characters and layers of reality together constantly reminds you, none of this is real.

And this is why I think, days later, I’m still thinking so much about Asteroid City. I keep thinking this movie will put off people with just how not-real the story at the center is. But that’s entirely the point. Narrative cinema is not real life. It’s fiction. The people in the story are actors. Why should we accept Scarlett Johansson playing Natasha Romanoff but get annoyed that she’s playing a character playing a character in this?

The movie constantly keeps us at arm’s length. It almost dares us to connect with the characters within the play Asteroid City as if they were just people in Asteroid City, even when outlandish things happen. Yet I still did care about the conversations they had, the hopes and dreams and fears. In spite of everything Anderson threw at me to make me not connect, I still did.

So, will Asteroid City work for you? I guess it depends how much you get on board with Anderson’s schtick of late. This seems a natural progression in his live-action work. It’s not just a fake-looking movie with weird characters; it’s a fake-looking movie with weird characters about a fake-looking movie with weird characters. Some people will find it insufferable, some will find it fascinating, others might get something more. But at the very least, you owe it to yourself to see how he peels this particular onion.

Asteroid City ⭐ (4 of 5)

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

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Look, nobody wants to be shipwrecked anywhere. If it’s a Cast Away situation, you end up talking to a volleyball. In a Swiss Family Robinson scenario, you have build treehouses and stuff. Who wants to do that! But if you end up on Skull Island, as the characters do in Skull Island, you have to contend with giant, bloodthirsty beasts. And you better hope Kong is in a benevolent mood that day. The new Netflix series from Powerhouse Animation will debut on June 22, but the streamer has just released a full-length trailer. Take a look!

The series takes viewers on a thrilling adventure as a group of kind-hearted explorers rescues Annie (Mae Whitman) from the ocean, unaware that their act of heroism will lead them to the treacherous Skull Island. This enigmatic place is home to bizarre creatures and terrifying monsters, including the mighty titan himself, Kong. As the trailer shows, the idea was always to go to Skull Island, but certainly not to strand themselves there. And it seems as though Annie isn’t as helpless as they initially feared.

Skull Island, from Legendary Television, is created, written, and produced by Brian Duffield. The series boasts an impressive ensemble cast, with Nicolas Cantu (Dragons Rescue Riders: Heroes of the Sky, The Fabelmans) lending his voice to the protagonist, Charlie. Joining him are talented voice actors Mae Whitman (Family Guy, DC Super Hero Girls) as Annie; Darren Barnet (Never Have I Ever, Samurai Rabbit: The Usagi Chronicles) as Mike; Benjamin Bratt (Poker Face, Coco) as Cap; and Betty Gilpin (Mrs. Davis, Glow) as Irene.

Skull Island‘s eight-episode first season will drop June 22 on Netflix.

Editor’s Note: Nerdist is a subsidiary of Legendary Digital Networks

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

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Five years later and I’m still in awe of how good and complete a Spider-Man story the PlayStation Spider-Man game is. A thorough experience all around, but add the three-part DLC and the spinoff game Miles Morales and you’ve got one of the best Spidey stories in any non-comic medium. Because of that, the hype for the sequel has been off the charts. Happily, we now know the Spider-Man 2 game will officially release on October 20. And with the news comes the reveal that Venom is not Eddie Brock in this universe. Venom’s origins in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 will be an original tale we haven’t yet seen before. Of course, interestingly enough, there was no denial of Harry Osborn becoming the villain.

As to what else the game will entail. Well, we’ve known for a while the Spider-Man 2 PlayStation 5 game will feature both Peter Parker and Miles as playable Spider-Mans. A new, lengthy gameplay video for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 from the latest PlayStation Showcase also gives us a lot more to chew on. Pun intended.

The first video begins with an introduction to Kraven the Hunter, the formidable new foe for the wall-crawlers. He’s bored hunting people in the literal jungle. Now he wants to hunt people in the concrete jungle, with his army of guys with massive weapons. Hardly sporting, but I digress.

The Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 gameplay footage (below) begins with Peter—now sporting a brand new black-goo suit. Hmm, wonder what that can be all about. He tries to stop the Kraven cronies from hunting Dr. Curt Conners, who has become fully, monstrously Lizardish.

We get to see some of Spider-Man’s new Venom skills before we swap to Miles. He now has a very good sense of his own powers. Stealth will still play a part in the new game, and one can hope they’ve upgraded the AI of the thugs to make it a bit more sporting. Not long after, Miles, Peter, and Miles’ friend-and-guy-in-the-chair Ganke control a drone as they chase down Conners and try to keep him (and everyone else in NYC) out of Kraven’s crosshairs.

As with the first Spider-Man game, a large amount of plot and character comes during dialogue during gameplay. Here we learn that Conners’ research is integral to helping with Harry Osborn’s condition. If you’ll remember, the end of the first game showed Harry deep in the throes of a debilitating disease. No way that will turn him into Green Goblin. Can’t imagine it will.

Those of us who know the Spider-Man mythos know the black suit and Peter’s gruffer attitude will lead to some problems for his loved ones. However, he’s not likely to remain John Goo for very long. And while Sony has confirmed the game will not be two-player co-op, we have full faith that Miles Morales will provide the player with plenty of opportunities to save Petey Pie.

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 will be out on October 20, 2023.

Originally published on May 24, 2023.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

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The following is less a spoiler for Transformers: Rise of the Beasts and more a spoiler for future movies.

Early on in Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, we learn Noah Diaz—the lead human character, played by Anthony Ramos—is a former soldier. Though just a private, we learn how highly decorated he was. He was forced to leave the Army because of his sick little brother. I wondered if this was just because of the rampant military propaganda present in the Transformers movies. It never seemed to matter too much in the movie; he definitely didn’t need to be a soldier to be brave enough to save the day. However, the end of the movie explained things a bit.

The final scene finds Noah going to another job interview for a security job. This one takes him to a seemingly normal shipping and/or laundry business. He goes into the back room for the interview, where he meets a character played by Michael Kelly (House of Cards). This character asks him about his thin resume and gets Noah to describe the work he recently did in South America. This guy reveals he knows all about Noah teaming up with the Transformers in Peru. He’s impressed.

So this guy, it turns out, works for a secret government agency and wants Noah to join. The normal-looking conference room then opens up and we see a massive hangar full of high-tech vehicles. The man hands Noah his card. On the front we see the name Agent Burke and when Noah flips it over we see the very familiar brand logo of G.I. Joe.

Following the release of the film, EW revealed quotes from producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura about the surprise crossover. “We’re introducing Joe characters into the world that we’re dealing with, on whatever our characters are gonna go do,” Di Bonaventura tells EW of the next planned film. “We’re also not through with the Maximals, so I imagine in the next movie we’ll have Maximals, Autobots, and Joes.”

“The idea of trying to do the whole Joe world at the same time is a little daunting,” Di Bonaventure confirms. “This is a way to bring them into our world, remind people of who they are, and they’ll have a role in the plot.”

Now this is both surprising and not at all surprising. Hasbro and Paramount have long desired to create a proper cinematic universe for its many toy properties. While three live-action G.I. Joe movies have come out in the past 14 years, none have even approached the success of the Transformers. So, establishing that G.I. Joe not only exists in the Transformers universe, but is the S.H.I.E.L.D.-esque agency which investigates the weirder entities makes a lot of sense. Talk for years has speculated that MASK, ROM, and Visionaries would join Transformers and Joe in a cinematic universe.

So, we now have not only a new G.I. Joe organization but evidently a new, more senior Duke leading the team. In the ’90s, too, since Rise of the Beasts takes place in 1994. We shall see where all of this goes!

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

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Montreal’s Fantasia International Film Festival is one of the best genre film festivals in North America. Its weeks-long celebration of international horror, sci-fi, action, and more will present its 27th such offering this July. The first wave of titles it’ll screen hit us last month. Among those films are vampire reinvention movie Empire V, time-bending sci-fi drama Aporia, and Larry Fessenden’s werewolf romp Blackout. Now Fantasia has its second wave of titles and they include a steampunk anime, a body-swapping romance, and Nicolas Cage! Here are some of our favorite standouts from this second list.

The festival’s opening night movie will be the North American premiere of Red Rooms from Quebec filmmaker Pascal Plante. The story follows the high-profile case of serial killer Ludovic Chevalier, which has just gone to trial. Kelly-Anne is obsessed. When reality blurs with her morbid fantasies, she goes down a dark path to seek the final piece of the case’s puzzle.

Next up, we have Sympathy for the Devil, which has Nic Cage opposite Joel Kinnaman from director Yuval Adler. The festival info says it’s one of Cage’s “most intense performances,” which is quite a claim. After being forced to drive a mysterious passenger at gunpoint, a man finds himself in a high-stakes game of cat and mouse where nothing is as it seems.

The aforementioned steampunk anime is Kurayukaba. Equal parts crazy cartoon caper, shadowy film noir, nostalgic escapade, and steampunk fantasy, the movie is a retro-flavored anime reimagining of the freewheeling Taisho era, Japan’s equivalent of the Roaring Twenties.

Filmmaker Zach Clark brings the fascinating, lo-fi sci-fi comedy The Becomers. This movie is a romantic tale of two body-swapping aliens trying to find their place on this big, dumb planet. As much a love story as a dark comedy satire on American life. Our favorite!

One of my very favorite Fantasia movies from 2021 was Junta Yamaguchi’s Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes, a one-take time-loop comedy. It really blew me away both with its ingenuity and its heart. He revisits the concept in River, which culminates into a multifaceted portrait of a place as the various guests, employees, and hosts band together to solve the mystery of the valley stuck in time.

I’ve become a huge fan of folk horror from around the world. This is why I’m so stoked to see the Bangladeshi folk horror movie Pett Kata Shaw. The movie is an anthology of stories of Bangladesh’s ghosts and unforgiving spirits, all tied to the country’s history of injustice and societal dread. Relatable, innit?

Filmmaker Joe Lynch (Mayhem) will pay tribute to the late, great Stuart Gordon with an H.P. Lovecraft adaptation featuring actress Barbara Crampton, producer Brian Yuzna and writer Stuart Paoli. Gordon had a trio of excellent Lovecraft movies with Re-Animator, From Beyond, and Dagon. Lynch’s Suitable Flesh will adapt Lovecraft’s “The Thing on the Doorstep,” starring Heather Graham and Judah Lewis. A psychiatrist falls into a downward spiral of sex, possession, and death when a young patient shows up at her door with symptoms that are of another world. This will be the Canadian premiere of the movie.

To see the rest of the second-wave titles for the film festival, check out Fantasia’s website. The festival will run from July 20 to August 9, 2023.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

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With the 60th anniversary of Doctor Who less than six months away, the production seems ready to pull out all the stops. Not only will David Tennant and Catherine Tate come back for a trio of specials—not to mention a host of cool guest stars—but another legacy companion will return to the series. The BBC today announced Bonnie Langford, who portrayed the Sixth and Seventh Doctor’s companion Melanie Bush in the 1980s, will come back to act alongside Ncuti Gatwa in the next full series.

Langford was a big stage actor prior to her casting in Doctor Who and continued to be so afterward. Mel was an interesting companion. Her first onscreen episode, as part of the season-long “Trial of a Time Lord” arc was not actually her first canonical story. That one never ended up on screen. After six episodes with the Sixth Doctor, she continued on as the Seventh Doctor’s first companion but left at the end of season 24. Her departure gave way to Ace, one of the most beloved companions of all time.

Langford reprised her role of Mel over the years in various Big Finish Doctor Who audio plays. She also appeared briefly on screen in “The Power of the Doctor,” the Thirteenth Doctor’s final story. That special also saw Ace, Tegan, Ian Chesterton, Jo Grant, and more companions return.

The actress said of her Doctor Who return as Mel:

I am absolutely thrilled to be bringing Melanie Bush back. To be part of the exceptional cast, crew and production team led by the force of nature that is Russell T Davies is a career highlight. I’m so privileged and proud to have been a member of the Doctor Who family since the classic era and to be included in the new generation is phenomenal.

Showrunner Russell T Davies added the following:

Open those TARDIS doors wide, because Bonnie’s back! What an honour, delight and hoot to welcome back the character of Melanie, after too long away. And this isn’t just a cameo, Bonnie is right in the thick of the action, battling monsters and chaos and cliffhangers, right at the Doctor’s side, just like the old days.

The Doctor Who 60th-anniversary celebration will begin in November. It airs exclusively on Disney+ outside of the UK and Ireland and on the BBC in those territories.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

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The novelty of seeing robots turning into cars and vice-versa on the big screen doesn’t seem to have worn off for people in the 16 years since the first Transformers movie. Despite the subsequent four movies having pretty paltry critical and audience appreciation, they still made grips of money for Paramount and Hasbro. They are toy commercials after all, so literally seeing toys fighting each other on screen seemed to be all they needed. 2018’s Bumblebee was a shot in the arm the franchise needed. While the five Michael Bay-directed movies got bigger and louder, Bumblebee made it smaller, and gave it more heart.

Now, for the seventh movie, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, they seem to try to split the difference a bit. It takes bits of what worked in Bumblebee and gives us another loud, Earth-ending plot. And the result is fine. It’s enjoyable enough; it’s a lot more of the same. But if you had hoped for either more of Bumblebee‘s tone, or a proper rise of Maximals, you will find yourself a bit disappointed.

The movie takes place in 1994, seven years after Bumblebee. Noah Diaz (Anthony Ramos) is a former decorated soldier who quit the Army when his little brother got sick. Now he’s having trouble paying medical bills and can’t catch a break in the job department. He finally agrees to help his lowlife friend Reek (Tobe Nwigwe) steal a fancy car. That car, a Porsche, happens to be a Transformer. Mirage, to be exact, who sounds exactly like Pete Davidson. New Yawwwwwk.

Seems the Autobots (Optimus, Bumblebee, and Arcee) have a problem. They need to find a way home and a beacon, recently uncovered by a museum intern named Elena (Dominique Fishback), is their key. Unfortunately, it’s literally a key to bring Unicron—the planet-eating Transformer—to Earth. Unicron’s number-one, Scourge (Peter Dinklage) has come to collect, and seems more than a match for the Autobots. Fortunately for them, Airazor (Michelle Yeoh), a Maximal, comes to aid. Together, all the goodies go to Peru to meet the other Maximals and try to thwart Scourge and Unicron.

Lotta names, lotta MacGuffins. It even has a big laser thing shooting up toward the sky. It’s all done well enough, with loads of action and destruction and most of the time enough focus on the characters so you can actually see what’s going on. We get to know a fair amount about our human characters, which I’m sure comes from director Steven Caple Jr. (Creed II). The Maximals, on the other hand, the titular beasts? They don’t factor in much at all. This is still an Autobot movie, for better or worse.

The biggest issues I had with Rise of the Beasts came down to clashes in focus. The movie seems to think the central relationship is Noah and his little brother; it also thinks it’s Noah and Mirage becoming buds. But then it also wants us to care about Noah and Elena, and Noah and Optimus, and Elena and Airazor kind of? None of them really seem to land aside from that first one.

The second biggest issue is that Pete Davidson is very prominent in the movie and just doing his usual schtick but this time as a big car robot. Mirage is a neat enough character, but making him a bro with a questionable romantic history was a strange choice. (Part of that is not in the movie.) And the third biggest issue, for me, a big fan of 1996’s Beast Wars, is just how little the movie actually has for the Maximals to do. Airazor is the exposition, and Optimus Primal (Ron Perlman) offers his namesake a different view on humanity. Other than that, they barely feature. Cheetor and Rhinox might as well not have been there at all. Also Unicron. It’s weird Unicron is in this.

Ultimately, I can’t be too mad at a Hasbro movie made to sell Hasbro stuff. It was probably a little much to ask for a ton of Beast Wars continuity, anyway. So Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is definitely not the worst Transformers movie. I had fun watching it, even if the final act devolves into a robot punch orgy. The soundtrack, made up of ’90s and late-’80s hip-hop absolutely rules. Ramos is good (too good, if I’m being honest) and your kids or younger relatives will have fun. And there’s no oil pee or car farting or whatever, so that’s a step in the right direction. Have I talked myself into liking it? Not really. I’m gonna go have a sandwich.

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts ⭐ (2.7 of 5)

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

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We knew Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse was going to have a lot of Spider-people. That much we saw in the trailers. What we didn’t know is exactly how many were going to be there. Nor did we know in what dimension they’d exist. Not alternate dimensions; physical ones. While the movie as a whole is gorgeously animated, utilizing a number of different styles and types as Into the Spider-Verse did, some Spider-Man cameos are even not animated. Have I been vague enough yet?

Okay, so there are real human people in this movie. Like live-action, real people. One of the pre-release marketing bits revealed the Spot (Jason Schwartzman) popping up in the convenience store from Venom. That’s pretty fun, but without Tom Hardy in it, it’s little more than that. Later, when Miguel O’Hara is trying to convince Miles about the tragedy necessary for timelines to exist properly, we see flashes of various Spider-peoples crying over Uncle Bens or Captain Stacys. This allows the movie to show both Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield clips in Across the Spider-Verse. No new footage appears, though, just clips from their respective movies.

But, the biggest, most fun, and potentially universe-collapsing human cameo comes when Miles sees the tubes of villains who’ve hopped dimensions. In one of them, we see a version of the Prowler, aka Miles’ uncle Aaron. Except this one is Donald Glover, the Childish Gambino himself. Yes, Donald Glover appears as a live-action Prowler in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. Let’s unpack.

This is fun for myriad reasons. First, it hearkens back to the initial groundswell of internet support for Glover to play a live-action Miles Morales several years ago. He’s obviously a bit too old now, but during the Community heyday, he was a favorite. That didn’t come to pass, obviously, but it did eventually lead to Donald Glover’s appearance in a Spider-Man movie. He played an unwilling informant in Spider-Man: Homecoming, named Aaron Davis. Yeah, the Prowler!

So when it comes to Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, you may have noticed, while a lot of different depictions of Spider-Man appear, we only ever get a passing mention of the Tom Holland one and what he did with Doctor Strange. This is, of course, a reference to Spider-Man: No Way Home. This is due to the very weird Marvel Studios/Sony deal. Sony owns Spider-Man film rights, but had to strike a specific deal to have Spider-Man in the MCU. Even the Sony-co-produced movies within the MCU have special dispensation to use the villains. Because Sony owns the rights to the villains and ancillary characters.

The Vulture, as seen in Homecoming, had to hop universes to appear in Morbius. This effectively cuts him off from appearing in further MCU movies. Or at least until it doesn’t anymore. So is the Donald Glover Prowler actually the same Aaron Davis from the MCU’s Spider-Man: Homecoming, or is it just a fun nod to that? The truth is, it doesn’t entirely matter. Donald Glover represents the MCU and the actor’s history with Miles Morales. We know Sony wants to make a Miles Morales live-action Spider-Man movie, so could Glover appear there? Only time and Amy Pascal can say for sure.

In any case, seeing Glover as the Prowler was one of the most enjoyable surprises in Across the Spider-Verse. It was right up there with seeing animated Spectacular Spider-Man and the one from the Insomniac video game universe. One can only imagine what kind of surprises we’ll get in the next movie next year.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

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I was inordinately excited for Hideaki Anno’s very long-awaited Shin Kamen Rider. Not only a 50th anniversary tribute to the 1971 original Kamen Rider series—delayed because of the darn pandemic—but another entry in the writer-producer’s reimaginings of Japanese pop culture legends. Shin Godzilla, which he co-directed with Shinji Higuchi, was the first truly singular Japanese Godzilla movie in decades. Shin Ultraman, which Higuchi solo directed, was a lovely and touching update of the 1966 original series. So a new take on the o.g. Kamen Rider, of which I’m a big fan, made me hope it would be the best yet. It isn’t. It’s not bad; but if you’re looking to get into Kamen Rider, or even see what it’s all about, this ain’t it.

The legendary mangaka Shotaro Ishinomori created Kamen Rider for TV in the early ’70s. During its initial 98-episode run, the style and tone changed pretty drastically. Starting as a dark, moody horror-inspired superhero show, it eventually lightened up considerably. The lead character changed, then changed back, and the legend of cybernetic, insect-themed motorcyclist grew. Anno tried to squeeze too much of that into a single two-hour film. The pace is about 20 mph over breakneck. As a result, the movie loses a lot of nuance, especially in the baddie department.

Shin Kamen Rider begins literally in the middle of a chase. Ruriko Midorikawa (Minami Hamabe) and Hongo Takeshi (Sôsuke Ikematsu) speed away on a motorcycle away from big semi-trucks. Only after they get away to a safehouse do we, and Hongo, get a sense of what’s going on. Ruriko is the daughter of Professor Hiroshi Midorikawa (cult filmmaker Shin’ya Tsukamoto). The professor is a scientist working for the SHOCKER organization, who had promised to help humanity but, go figure, are actually plotting to steal humanity’s life force via human cyborgs with animal themes.

Midorikawa and Ruriko have decided to thwart SHOCKER and designed the latest cyborg, Hongo, to fight them as the Masked Rider. From there, we begin a succession of Hongo and Ruriko attempting to fight the various other “Augs” with beast themes. These follow roughly the same order as the first 13 episodes of the series. A spider, bat, scorpion, chameleon, mantis, and wasp all trek through quickly. All the while, the pair get closer without ever really speaking above a low monotone.

Part-way through the movie, we meet Ichimonji Hayato (Tasuku Emoto), a second grasshopper-themed cyborg whom SHOCKER has successfully brainwashed. People who know the original series will know that he doesn’t remain brainwashed for long.

It’s entirely possible that via reading this you’ve realized one of the major problems with Shin Kamen Rider: way too much plot but almost no story. It’s just learning about the evils of SHOCKER, quick banter with the various kaijin one-by-one, a high-velocity fight sequence, rinse, repeat. On the surface, this is not entirely a bad way to do it, but this outline totally misses some of the best parts of every Kamen Rider episodes. The build up to the showdown, seeing the villain do villainous things is more than half the fun. Yes, the show hangs its hat on its hand-to-hand fight sequences, its monster designs, and the visceral thrill of seeing Kamen Rider in action. But we need to know the stakes and care about the characters for any of it to matter.

I don’t want to compare Shin Kamen Rider to Shin Godzilla or Shin Ultraman too much, but I think the other major problem is entirely down to them. This movie uses the same cinematographers as the previous two movies and has largely the same style of shooting. Government types sit around computers or talk in rooms while big monsters attack and/or a big alien hero fights them.

As a property, Kamen Rider does not lend itself to this type of depiction at all. The action sequences work decently, but are way too dependent on CGI rather than the hallmark of the franchise, which is martial arts battles heightened to a ridiculous degree. Hongo even finds himself tentatively working with anti-SHOCKER government types, which simply does not fit. The surveillance-style shooting that worked so well for Godzilla and Ultraman just doesn’t work here. We need more atmosphere, we need passion and scares. We need some kind of heart! It felt surprisingly cold.

This isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy it at all. The redesigns of the suits are excellent, the sounds and music are all spot-on. I really like the subtle way the beginning of the movie focuses on extreme violence and slowly it becomes less monstrous by the end, much the same way the show did. And moments certainly made the rabid fans I saw it with cheer. References and allusions to the classic series (and other Ishinomori creations) are fun for those who get them. Would it matter at all to anyone who doesn’t?

And maybe that’s ultimately the reason Shin Ultraman spent a year in the festival circuit before becoming a Fathom Event while Shin Kamen Rider bypassed festivals entirely. This isn’t the kind of movie that encapsulates the ethos of the show while replicating some of the best episodes. This movie is for people who know Kamen Rider already and just want to see people put on and take off helmets 500 times while punching viscera out of thugs like so many juiced memberberries.

Shin Kamen Rider ⭐ (2.5 of 5)

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

The post SHIN KAMEN RIDER Is a Fun Time for Fans, But Might Not Make Any New Ones appeared first on Nerdist.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse stars Shameik Moore (Miles Morales), Hailee Steinfeld (Gwen Stacy), and Daniel Kaluuya (Hobart ‘Hobie’ Brown) sit down with John Pirruccello ( @Johnny2Cellos ) to discuss the new film, preparing for their roles, and what they would do if they woke up with spider-powers on today’s episode of Nerdist Now!

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Stephen King’s short stories are some of the bleakest, most upsetting horror fiction of his career. And that’s really saying something. In the same stretch of the early ’70s that saw publication of some of his most celebrated, including “Trucks,” “The Mangler,” and “Battleground,” King gave us “The Boogeyman,” a riff on perhaps the classic nightmare monster. The story is excellent, depicting the titular menace attacking a family and picking it apart person by person. It’s a nasty, fun little story. Adapting it to a feature film, director Rob Savage (Host) keeps some of that, but not quite enough to make it stand out.

Story goes, in 2018 A Quiet Place screenwriting partners Scott Beck and Bryan Woods optioned the King story. After loads of Hollywood production nonsense, which saw other writers come on and leave, the eventual script comes to us from Beck, Woods, and Mark Heyman whose previous feature films are co-writing 2010’s Black Swan and co-writing 2014’s The Skeleton Twins. End of list. Directing duties fell to Rob Savage, the British filmmaker who made a splash in 2020 with the hour-long, shot-on-Zoom horror movie Host. The result feels a bit like A Quiet Place but in a house, with a bit of mental health stuff thrown in.

The movie follows the Harper family; father Will Harper (Chris Messina), a psychiatrist, is trying to solo parent his teenage daughter Sadie (Sophie Thatcher) and elementary-age daughter Sawyer (Vivien Lyra Blair) following the sudden death of their mother. Will has, as yet, been unable to open up to Sadie about his feelings, leaving her to mostly cope alone. One day, a disturbed man named Lester Billings (David Dastmalchian) comes into Harper’s home office and wants to tell him about the deaths of his children, seemingly at the hands of an unseen shadow force. Oops, now the monster wants the Harper family! Dang it, Lester!

The Boogeyman boasts some solid jump scare moments and a wholly otherworldly monster. It definitely feels more alien than demonic, and it has a similar long-arm-crawly thing that the Quiet Place aliens do. Except instead of attraction to sound, this guy has aversion to light. Savage handles the tension and thing-in-the-dark chills quite adeptly. We never fully get a sense of how this creature operates, but its methods—including warping the sound of loved one’s voices—works in the mix.

The problem is the story. It takes no chances at all in the Harper family drama. We’ve seen this a million times before. Following the death of a parent, the other parent closes off while the eldest child has to be the grown up and the youngest child has nightmares. It’s Horror Movie Setup 101. As good as the actors are, the plot follows such a rote path without taking risks or adding wrinkles. Dad doesn’t believe there’s a monster, so eldest daughter has to try to save the day.

For those who haven’t read the short story, it entirely focuses on Billings relaying the horrifying events to the psychiatrist. That’s where all the horror truly lies as it sees a man forced to watch his children succumb to this monster. That portion of the movie is incredibly brief and the rest feels so underwhelming. It’s like a bit of Insidious; a scosh of Poltergeist; even a little Haunting of Hill House. It never branches out into its own thing.

And I think its biggest failing is it doesn’t go as hard as last year’s Smile which attacked the mixture of demonic curse and mental health/trauma so much more effectively. The Boogeyman isn’t bad, it’s fine. It has a couple of nifty sequences, some good scares. It’s just nothing like as scary as it ought to be. It pulls too many punches, tries to explain too much and not enough. The monster in the closet, under the bed, in the basement—we’ve seen it all before. Without the punch of King’s original prose or macabre sensibility, it’s little more than a passing shiver.

The Boogeyman hits theaters on June 2.

The Boogeyman (PG-13) ⭐ (2.7 of 5)

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

The post THE BOOGEYMAN Gives the Requisite Family Angst and Jump Scares, Not Much Else appeared first on Nerdist.

2017 gave fans their first trip to Skull Island in the aptly titled Kong: Skull Island. The strange land introduced us to monsters of all varieties in a lush and mysterious jungle setting. Dangers? Oh of course there were dangers! But there was also the mighty titan Kong, there to protect his home and, eventually, the humans who arrived. Now viewers get to go back to the land that time forgot in the new Netflix animated series Skull Island from Powerhouse Animation, the folks behind Castlevania. Check out the first teaser.

The series, which will debut June 22, will take audiences to a whole new world of thrills and dangers. The story follows a group of kind-hearted explorers who rescue Annie (Mae Whitman) from the ocean, unaware that their act of heroism will lead them to the treacherous Skull Island. The rest of the star-studded cast includes: Darren Barnet (Never Have I Ever, Samurai Rabbit: The Usagi Chronicles) as Mike; Benjamin Bratt (Poker Face, Coco) as Cap; and Betty Gilpin (Mrs. Davis, Glow) as Irene. Together, they bring these vibrant characters to life and embark on a captivating journey.

The show’s poster art showcases not just Kong but many other giant monsters the crew will have to deal with. Everybody’s old pal the skull crawler is there, naturally; we also get giant lizards, birds, crabs, and what looks like a cute dog of some kind. Unclear. Either way, we can’t wait to check out Skull Island to see what adventures Kong and Co. get up to next.

Editor’s Note: Nerdist is a subsidiary of Legendary Digital Networks

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

The post First Teaser for SKULL ISLAND Anime Brings the Monster Action to Netflix appeared first on Nerdist.

If ever you needed to know how influential Hideaki Anno is in Japan, look no further. The creator of Neon Genesis Evangelion and its many reboots has more recently ushered in a new, unprecedented collaboration from some of Japan’s most popular cultural icons. Following the success of Anno and Shinji Higuchi’s Shin Godzilla in 2016, he produced and wrote Shin Ultraman and wrote, produced, and directed Shin Kamen Rider. The three of them, along with EVA Unit 1, the iconic main mech from Evangelion, formed the Shin Japan Heroes Project with Bandai.

Now the most ridiculous mashup you could imagine is here, which we first saw on Gizmodo. All four come together like a Megazord to fight a giant alien threat. Even though, chiefly, three of them are already giant sized and one of them is a tiny dude on a motorcycle. I… I haven’t the words.

That’s right; not only is this weird and silly, it’s also a toy advert. This tells you how much money Japan puts into toy advertisements in 2023. At any rate, seeing Godzilla fold open into a torso is breathtakingly strange. For most of the transformation sequence I was thinking “What is Kamen Rider going to do?” Then the Cyclone (his motorcycle) turns into the mecha’s head, and the man himself sits atop it might some kind of cybernetic Paul Atreides. Delightfully ridiculous.

The toy is a premium Bandai number, which will retail for 23,100 Yen. Don’t mortgage your house; that’s only about $170 US.

Very unlikely we’ll ever see this in a real movie, but it is fun to see. Shin Ultraman played the festival circuit last year and will get a Blu-ray release in North America later this summer. Meanwhile the long-awaited Shin Kamen Rider will play as a one-night-only Fathom Event on May 31. After that? Who knows! So soak in the Anno weirdness whilst you can.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

The post Godzilla, Ultraman, Kamen Rider, and EVA Unit 1 Form a Huge, Ridiculous Megazord appeared first on Nerdist.

Jan De Bont’s movie Twister is, by anyone’s estimation, an old movie. Is 27 years old for a person? No. But for a special effects movie? You betcha. Twister—which was a big disaster movie about tornado chasers—has the honor of being the very first movie ever on DVD. I haven’t thought about Twister in who knows how long. Until today, of course, when Deadline reports a sequel is on the way starring Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones. The name of the sequel? Why, Twisters, naturally.

Directing this new take will be Lee Isaac Chung, director of Minari and episode three of this season of The Mandalorian. (The Dr. Pershing one.) Writing the screenplay this go-around is Mark L. Smith, whose previous credits include The Revenant and Overlord. Per Variety, Anthony Ramos and Nope‘s Brandon Perea have also joined the cast of Twisters. The cast rounds out with Maura Tierney, Harry Hadden-Paton, Sasha Lane, Kiernan Shipka, Nik Dodani, David Corenswet, Tunde Adebimpe, and Katy O’Brian.

The original movie was an enormous hit in 1996, wracking up almost $500 million at the box office. The special effects at the time were groundbreaking, giving moviegoers the most impressive sense of scale of any CGI to date. Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt starred as a pair of divorced storm-chasers who reconnect amidst what we can only describe as the most act-of-godlike week of weather Kansas has ever seen. No word on if Hunt will appear in the movie. Paxton, sadly, passed away in 2017.

Powell is having a hell of a year, following the massive success of Top Gun: Maverick. He’ll next appear in Richard Linklater’s comedy Hitman (no relation to the popular game series). Edgar-Jones, meanwhile, has starred in the series Normal People as well as the movies Where the Crawdad Sings and Fresh.

Twisters will hit theaters once they make it.

Originally published on April 14, 2023.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

The post TWISTER Sequel to Star Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones appeared first on Nerdist.

In the 15 years since Iron Man came out, ushering in the behemoth that is the Marvel Cinematic Universe, we’ve had roughly four full phases, 32 feature films, around 20 TV shows (some de-canonized), and a veritable bord of smorgas of characters. It’s been a lot, folks. Some franchises are lucky to get to three movies, but the MCU is so vast it contains a number of trilogies in and of itself. But with another trio of movies recently wrapping, which of the MCU’s reigns supreme?

Below I’ve ranked the Marvel Cinematic Universe trilogies from worst (or my least favorite) to the best (or most favorite). But first, some ground rules.

• This will only be the trilogies (tetralogy in one case) pertaining to one character or separate team. Basically, I’m not counting the Avengers movies since they depend so much on all the other sub-franchises.
• I’m weighing each trilogy as a whole rather than which trilogy has the best individual film. So one might have a single movie that’s top three MCU, but if the other movies in the franchise don’t measure up, the average goes down.

Everybody ready? Then here we go!

6. Thor

I feel like people have already begun to draft their angry missives toward me. But listen. Look. Wait. Will ya wait? Just wait. Yes, 2017’s Thor: Ragnarok is outstanding. It reinvented the character of the Asgardian hammer god into the true God of Thunder. Taika Waititi allowed Chris Hemsworth to play to his strengths, offered up some of Mark Ruffalo’s best Hulk/Banner work, and paved the way for Loki’s redemption. But. The Thor series has four movies, doesn’t?

The rest of the Thor movies are just so much lesser. The first movie is fine; the second movie has its defenders but suffers, as many did, from having a lackluster villain. Then we had Ragnarok which was great, and set up Infinity War and Endgame in an amazing way. And then we come to Love and Thunder which proved even Waititi couldn’t do it again.

As a whole, the Thor tetralogy (not “quadrilogy,” which isn’t a word) is way too all-over-the-place to be really effective.

5. Ant-Man

The one thing the Ant-Man movies have over the Thor movies, in my view, is consistency. They are consistently fair-to-middling. A lot of fun to be had, certainly, but nothing super special. The first movie has a goofy charm to it that plays to Paul Rudd’s charms, though the plot and narrative kept it feeling rote. The second movie, 2018’s Ant-Man and the Wasp, perhaps because it aimed a bit lower than a lot of Phase Three movies, was a fun little movie, but again, hampered by a boring villain and some needless messiness.

Wanna talk about messiness? Let’s talk about Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. This movie could not decide what the hell kind of thing it was. Sure, for comic dorks who follow the MCU for its universe-expanding, the Kang stuff was very exciting. But did it need to be an Ant-Man movie? Aside from a couple decent effects sequences, did this do much to further Scott Lang’s story? It sure as heck didn’t further Hope Van Dyne’s.

Ultimately, the Ant-Man movies are a pleasant diversion at best.

4. Iron Man

The one that started it all! We cannot overstate just how much of a watershed moment in superhero movies Iron Man was in 2008. It’s not even that it’s a perfect movie or even Robert Downey Jr.’s finest hour as Tony Stark; more, it let us know this would be a franchise made of franchises. The Marvel Cinematic Universe exists because Iron Man did it right. And because of that, Iron Man was the unofficial (maybe even official) main character of the MCU. He got his trilogy first.

But here’s the thing about this trilogy. While it’s arguably the most cohesive, it also started too fast. Iron Man 2 came out before the first Thor or Captain America. It felt a lot like a “okay, we need to hedge our bets a bit before we dive in.” Probably a smart move. But as a result, Iron Man 2 doesn’t feel like it does a whole hell of a lot. It gives us Tony stuff, naturally, and it has him deal with some of his daddy issues, but it feels pretty pedestrian—aside from introducing War Machine, of course.

And I’m one of the weirdos who thinks Iron Man 3 is pretty good. It’s not amazing, but it’s fun and it has a lot to say about PTSD which I think is perfect for Tony, post-The Avengers. All in all, the first movie is doing a lot of the heavy lifting, but it still works very well as a trilogy.

3. Spider-Man

Okay, so here’s the thing about the MCU Spider-Man trilogy: they very rarely let Spider-Man be Spider-Man. Really, only No Way Home puts Spidey at the forefront, but it’s because it has all the previous versions’ villains and leads. It’s about Spider-Man as a franchise, not this Peter Parker. The first two movies are way too contingent on Tony Stark and his shadow over the whole thing.

That said, the overall quality of these movies, and especially Tom Holland’s amazingly winning performance, makes them worthy of this high ranking on the list. He manages, most of the time, to transcend the messy Sony-versus-Marvel-Studios-ness of the whole thing, and has very good repartee with the movies’ respective villains. Homecoming has Michael Keaton as a supremely sinister take on Vulture; Jake Gyllenhaal’s Mysterio is a fresh and fascinating take on the character; and look, Holland somehow manages to go toe-to-toe with the best baddies in superhero history in Dafoe and Molina.

I’m looking forward to the next Spider-Man trilogy, one after all the shoe leather of making him Spider-Man. But as it stands, the “Home” saga is a ton of fun and full of heart. (Far from Home is by far my least favorite of the three, for the record.)

2. Captain America

I’m a Cap guy, I’ll admit it. While RDJ’s Tony Stark takes a lot of the spotlight for the MCU, it wouldn’t work nearly as well if it didn’t have a true, stalwart hero at the center. Chris Evans rules, playing Steve Rogers with a mix of “aw shucks” and “don’t you effing dare” that is perfect for Captain America. The entire trilogy of his, plus the first Avengers movie, feels like explorations of the themes of the past versus the future. Literally a man out of time has to learn, not only about technology, but the complicated political and societal issues that were seemingly much simpler in WWII.

I very much love Captain America: The First Avenger, even though it feels the least in keeping with the rest of the MCU. I just dig that whole 1940s vibe. They got the director of The Rocketeer for a reason! It’s a blast. Red Skull, we hardly knew ye. Then we go in a completely different direction with The Winter Soldier, for a while my favorite MCU movie. The hard-hitting spy story with complicated political intrigue was one of the best action movies I’d seen in years. It still holds up amazingly well.

If Steve’s first two movies were about learning things are worse than Nazis, and the government isn’t to be trusted, by the time of Captain America: Civil War, he’s lost all hope. With Peggy dying, he has one piece of his former life around, and it’s his formerly brainwashed best friend. He’d do anything to protect him, even if it means fighting other heroes and ruining his good standing with Tony to do it. How easy it was for Baron Zemo to sow discord. Superb trilogy all around.

1. Guardians of the Galaxy

Did you think it would be something else? Did you maybe think I hadn’t concocted this whole article because I loved Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and how it pulled everything off? I know the third installment has its detractors—and certainly it’s much grimmer than the other two—but as a saga about these misfits learning to be both a team and a family, and fighting some huge cosmic threats, it succeeds in almost every department.

We’ve already written a lot on this site about paying off the character arcs, but all three Guardians movies—plus Infinity War and Endgame—make the case that these are the best written and realized of all the MCU figures. Certainly the most consistent (Angry Quill ruining the universe notwithstanding). Aside from the Ant-Man movies, this is the only trilogy to have the same director throughout. But more than that, this feels like we got James Gunn’s full vision on display. I doubt we’ll see the like of it again.

So yeah. Hands down, far-and-away, the Guardians of the Galaxy is the best trilogy (so far, he says knowing six million more movies are on the way) in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

The post Ranking All the Marvel Cinematic Universe Trilogies appeared first on Nerdist.

What a dang world. Roughly six months (we assume) until the 60th anniversary of Doctor Who and we already know a lot. We know David Tennant is back as the Fourteenth Doctor. Catherine Tate is also back, and Neil Patrick Harris is joining. We know there will be three specials with Tennant as part of the anniversary celebration, and now, as of this weekend, we also know the titles for all three of them! They’re interesting, for sure. And we got a little teaser to go along with the news.

The first special will be “The Star Beast,” which is, funnily enough, the initial title for the movie Alien when it was in spec script form. Special two will be “Wild Blue Yonder;” some of the bits of that part of the teaser have “redacted” and static added. Seems pretty TARDIS-y to me. The third one, “The Giggle,” has our man NPH in it. “Laughing at the human race.” We also see our first glimpse of live-action Beep the Meep, a very weird character who made the jump to TV from the old comics. The name of that comic? “Doctor Who and the Star Beast.” Sooooo, that’s fun, innit?

The little teaser also showed us a few shots of Yasmin Finney as a character named Rose. It’s all but confirmed, especially with the room of stuffed animals, that Rose is Donna’s daughter with her husband Shaun Temple, whom we last saw in “The End of Time.” But who knows. Who knows!

We still don’t know exactly when these specials will air or how frequently. Will it be one per month? One per week? Three days in a row? All we know for sure is the actual 60th anniversary of Doctor Who is November 23, 2023.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

The post DOCTOR WHO Reveals Titles for Its 3 Anniversary Specials appeared first on Nerdist.

The beauty of modern video gaming is all the many layers of fun players can make for themselves. You have the intrinsic joy of playing the game as intended. That is, after all, what the devs toiled over for sleepless nights on end. Next is the goofy fun of finding unintended styles of play that nevertheless work out in your favor. Then there are the people who are so godlike they manage to break the game the day it comes out. Yes, someone has already beaten Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, by most estimations a 70-80 hour game, in just over 90 minutes.

We saw this first at VideoGamesChronicle. The gamer gymnast86 posted their playthrough of the newest open-world Zelda game mere hours after release. In just that time, they already found a speedrun path to completion. They did not use an amiibo for this playthrough, either. The gamer notes that many of the glitches present in Breath of the Wild are not in Tears of the Kingdom. Those glitches helped speedrunners decimate that massive game in a matter of minutes. So while 94 minutes seems incredibly fast, especially in the first 24 hours, gymnast86 hastens to add this number will only go down.

Spoilers follow in the video:

The speedrunning community has come to the fore in the past decade-plus. People spend hundreds of hours practicing with games to get the runtime of any individual playthrough as low as it can get. It never ceases to amaze me. Any little misfire can end a run in failure. We should note, it is, like Breath of the Wild, possible to go straight to the final boss in Tears of the Kingdom. You can do it; just most people will die from under-leveling. But if someone can beat it in 94 minutes on day one, just think of how fast it’ll be next month.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

The post Someone Has Already Speedrun LEGEND OF ZELDA: TEARS OF THE KINGDOM in 94 Minutes appeared first on Nerdist.

Supernatural ran for a staggering 15 seasons and over 300 episodes. It started in 2005, the last year before The WB became The CW. That kind of longevity is exceedingly hard in the primetime television world (unless you’re a CSI or NCIS). More than sheer numbers, the fanbase for Supernatural is one of the most rabid and passionate in sci-fi/fantasy. It seemed, therefore, that the prequel series, The Winchesters, might have better than a fighting chance to find success. Not so, as the network has canceled the series after only one season.

According to Deadline, The CW has opted not to continue with the series, which premiered in October 2022. Set in the 1970s, The Winchesters followed the young love and monster-hunting of John (Drake Rodger) and Mary (Meg Donnelly), the eventual parents of Dean and Sam Winchester. Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Samantha Smith played the characters, respectively, on Supernatural. Jensen Ackles as Dean served as narrator for the show. He was also one of its executive producers.

Warner Bros. Television, the studio which produces The Winchesters, has vowed to shop the series around elsewhere. The first season ended in March after 13 episodes. They have the power of the Supernatural fandom at their back, too.

Ackles took to Twitter on Thursday evening with the #SaveTheWinchesters hashtag. The cast made a video, which Ackles shared, to ask for support from the fans—support, that would no doubt make the The Winchesters more appealing to other networks and streamers. You can’t underestimate the power of the Supernatural fans, so we can only imagine how fast this campaign will grow.

Featured Image: The CW

Originally published on May 11, 2023.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

The post Jensen Ackles and THE WINCHESTERS Cast Launch Campaign to Save the Series appeared first on Nerdist.

We continue unbidden into the age of digital streaming dominance in the entertainment industry. CEOs and studio heads, therefore, feel the need to clamp down even more on their beloved bottom lines. To that end, many of the majors have focused on combining their various streaming services into one. Take WBD, for example, which recently (and without anyone else wanting it) merged their HBO Max and Discovery+ services into Max. Not to be outdone (never to be outdone), Disney CEO Bob Iger announced something new during its investors call on Wednesday. Hulu—which Disney acquired in the Fox deal—will find its content combining with Disney+.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Iger says the new app will roll out by the end of the year. He hastened to add, however, that the services will still be separate. Essentially, it seems, it’ll be like how Showtime content is now on the Paramount+ app but you still need to pay for Showtime to see it. Tiers and whatnot. Iger said on the earnings call:

While we continue to offer Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ as standalone options, this is a logical progression of our DTC offerings that will provide greater opportunities for advertisers, while giving bundle subscribers access to more robust and streamlined content, resulting in greater audience engagement and ultimately leading to a more unified streaming experience.

Iger later said, ““The advertising potential of this combined platform is incredibly exciting.”

We should note, in countries, such as the United Kingdom, where Hulu never existed, the content of both platforms was always on Disney+.

At a time when the future of art as entertainment, and the viability of working in the entertainment industry, remains uncertain, one of the few things we can count on is enormous companies looking to make it easier for them to make billions of dollars. Consolidating Hulu, Disney+, and ESPN+ under one app won’t change too much for you, the consumer. But potentially making everything like old terrestrial cable packages might.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

The post Disney+ and Hulu to Combine Into a Single App appeared first on Nerdist.

The 1990s gave kids some of the very best action-adventure cartoons ever. I say this not only as an action-figure-buying ’90s kid, but as a consumer of all manner of animated media. Sure, a lot of them were just lengthy toy adverts, but they were no less exciting and deep. While Warner Bros. Animation’s Batman: The Animated Series stands as the very best of this crop of shows, which ushered in the DC Animated Universe, Marvel had a whole bumper crop of cartoons in the decade. Without those, as Nerdist‘s Eric Diaz posits, we wouldn’t have the MCU as we know it.

But not all of the ’90s Marvel cartoons are created equal! And it’s up to me (according to me) to rank all of them, from worst to best. It’s a more varied list than you might expect. Luckily, if you want to watch any of these, they’re all on Disney+ now.

9. The Avengers: United They Stand (1999-2000)

You very well might be saying to yourself, “What is this show?” And that’s not unreasonable. By the time the show debuted on Fox Kids, interest in these kinds of animated shows had started to wain. I actually didn’t know The Avengers: United They Stand existed until very recently. It consists of only a single, 13-episode season and, uhh, there’s kind of a reason it didn’t last beyond that.

For the series, the makers used largely the roster from the ’80s West Coast Avengers: Ant-Man and the Wasp led the team, while other members included Scarlet Witch, Wonder Man, Vision, Falcon, Tigra, and Hawkeye. A solid lineup, certainly. However, the characterizations of most of these characters just feels very off, especially Hawkeye who is supremely self-serious and angry. In order to compete with WB’s Batman Beyond, the series takes place in a non-specific future and all of the Avengers have borderline sci-fi costumes. It also doesn’t help that the animation was not nearly on the level of other shows at the time. It looks cheap and feels it.

8. Fantastic Four Season One (1994-1995)

Just like how the Fox movies never quite nailed its take on Marvel’s First Family, so too did the syndicated animated series have trouble finding its tone. So much so that its two seasons may as well be two separate shows. And so that’s how I’ve delineated them!

Now, your mileage may absolutely vary on this choice, but the first season of the Fantastic Four animated series just really doesn’t work for me. Despite having a very respectable roster of villains and storylines, the tone is way too goofy. It feels at times much more like a sitcom than an action-adventure show, and that also holds for the animation style. Much swimmier and more elastic than the other “realistic” shows in the lineup. Hell, just watch the first episode where Gary Owens plays a talk show host interviewing the FF about how they got their powers. It’s just not great.

7. Spider-Man: Unlimited (1999-2001)

Remember what I was saying about the above Avengers series trying to be like Batman Beyond? Well that was the second attempt. The first attempt was much more overt, and more successful. In a particularly weird twist, Peter Parker from our present gets flung into a dystopian Counter-Earth and resumes his Spider-Manning with different versions of his villains while also aiding in the war between the humans and the Beastials.

This is a very weird cartoon, surely, and it felt like they were trying to do Spider-Man 2099 without doing anything that that comic did. The result is a radically different, while still at times painfully repetitive, take on the Spider-Man story. The designs are pretty good and Spider-Man having a nanotech suit is pretty neat, but it all feels a bit grimdark for no reason and was definitely trying too hard to ape Batman Beyond. This one also only lasted 13 episodes, but had a huge gap in the middle of airing.

6. The Incredible Hulk (1996-1997)

This is the just-okayest cartoon on the list, in my humble opinion. The Incredible Hulk might arguably have the best, smoothest animation of any of the shows, but its formula is a particularly tired one, even for only 21 episodes. It follows everything you’ve probably assumed; Dr. Bruce Banner is on the run from the U.S. military and General Thunderbolt Ross, his Hulk side too dangerous to be left alone. Along the way, as Banner/Hulk destroys millions of dollars worth of government property, he also helps people and fights some heavy hitting villains, such as Abomination, Doctor Doom, and the Leader. It’s all very bog standard.

The second season, which is only eight episodes, saw a full-time team-up with Jennifer Walters/She-Hulk and the plots became a bit sillier. While the quality of the series never really dipped during its run, it never quite hit the heights of series further down the list either. The best part of the whole thing was probably Lou Ferrigno, who played the Hulk in the ’70s live-action series, voicing the Hulk here. And we got some fun crossovers with other UPN series of the bunch. But yeah, it’s fine, nothing more.

5. Fantastic Four Season Two (1995-1996)

Both the Fantastic Four series and another one we’ll get to in a moment had drastic retooling in their second seasons. I’ve already said how much the overt comedy of the first season didn’t work for me. The second, however, I think is a legitimately good show. It still keeps the fun and exuberance you want from a Fantastic Four show, but it takes its topics, and characters, much more seriously.

While the first season had introduced the big FF villains Doctor Doom and Galactus in multi-episode arcs, the second season did much more with both of them, plus introduced Daredevil, Black Panther, and the Inhumans. I was fully prepared to put both seasons of this show pretty low on my list, but after my recent rewatch, I have to bump this one up. It’s a good season. Not perfect, but it does justice to the characters which, again, seems very hard to do for some reason.

4. Iron Man (1994-1996)

I would argue—and I might not even need to do it that emphatically—that when the Iron Man movie came out in 2008, an entire generation only really knew him from this two-season cartoon. Despite him being one of the most important Marvel Universe figures, he’d not really gotten much push outside of comics since the mid-’60s with the terrible “animated” series. It’s certainly how I knew about Tony Stark, Rhodey, Hawkeye, Mandarin, and a dozen or so other Marvel heroes and villains.

This is another series that got a drastic revision between its first and second season, but while the second season is better than the first (which I’ll get to in a minute), I actually like both seasons well enough to put them comfortably here on the list as a whole. The first season is a bright kind of villain-of-the-week series, with Tony, Rhodey, and a number of other heroes working together to fight bad guys. Each episode is standalone and the resolutions are neat and tidy. The second season sees Tony dealing with a season-long injury, upgraded armor, and serialized storytelling. It’s much more serious and has a darker look to boot.

Definitely personal biases showing, but I thought this show was incredible when I was a kid, and it’s the reason I like War Machine as a character so much. Sure, Iron Man was the main character, but War Machine was the real badass.

3. Silver Surfer (1998)

I knew this show existed at the time, but I never watched it as a kid. It wasn’t until the early days of quarantine back in 2020, when I was looking for something to watch to take my mind off of everything, that I finally watched the 13-episode Silver Surfer cartoon. Boy, do I both wish I’d watched this at the time, and that I’d been millions of people so that they could have kept making it. I was so impressed by this series—which followed Norrin Radd from family man on the planet Zenn-La to Herald of Galactus to galaxy-roaming cosmic hero. The cel-shading look really made the space adventures pop, even if it retained the limited mobility of some other series of the time.

Not only that, but in only 13 episodes we got a bevy of other Marvel Cosmic characters. Galactus, of course, but also Thanos, Adam Warlock, Gamora, Drax, Nebula, Pip the Troll, Beta Ray Bill, Ego the Living Planet, and Uatu the Watcher. Legitimately the only negative thing I can say about it, other than its abbreviated length, is its CGI is a bit dated. Big whoop.

2. Spider-Man: The Animated Series (1994-1998)

The top two are pretty much no-brainers; the only real question is the order. It’s definitely down to a question of preference, but in either case, no one can dispute the quality and influence of Spider-Man on future superhero shows. This series, especially on rewatch, feels so packed with story, character, and action that you could easily double the seasons just to fit in everything. The story of college student Peter Parker and his never-ending fight against New York City’s billion villains made a major impression on me as a young and burgeoning comic fan, and this series gives you just about everything you could hope for, with a couple of network-mandated caveats.

Spider-Man wasn’t allowed to punch anyone, for fear kids would emulate it. Instead, he only kicks or swing-kicks, or throws things using his webbing. I never noticed as a kid. Another weird mandate was that Morbius (you know, the Living Vampire) was not allowed to drink blood. He instead sucked “plasma” out of people using a lamprey-like sucker in the palm of his hand. It’s weird more than anything. Also what’s Blade doing if he’s not hunting vampires? I dunno, man.

At any rate, the Spider-Man series followed its villain-of-the-week first season with a series of very lengthy serialized adventures. By the end of the show’s surprisingly consistent five-season run, we got everything from Secret Wars to Spider-Verse precursors, and all the villains you could imagine. It’s a great show, just great.

1. X-Men: The Animated Series (1992-1997)

Come on, did you think it could be anything else?! The first, the best, the reason the rest of the ’90s cartoons got a chance. X-Men may not have the animation quality of some of the other shows on the list—and heaven knows the last season looks pretty darn bad—but not a more iconic show exists in the canon. Utilizing the then-mega-popular Jim Lee redesigns and adapting a ton of Chris Claremont’s classic comics arcs, X-Men gave us mature stories and characters dealing with heavy, real-world allegories and a complex, unfolding narrative.

Honestly, I’m not sure what more I can say that hasn’t already been said by a million other people. I’ll just say, the same way Kevin Conroy’s voice rings in my head when I read a Batman comic, the Canadian voice cast of X-Men: TAS rings when I read any X-title. Especially Lenore Zann as Rogue, Cal Dodd as Wolverine, Cedric Smith as Professor X, and John Colicos as Apocalypse. For whatever reason, those are the ones that remain unchanged in 30 years.

It’s not perfect, but it’s perfect, ya know?

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

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One of the movies responsible for the creation of the PG-13 rating—too scary for PG but not graphic enough for R—is getting turned into an animated series. Joe Dante’s 1984 film Gremlins is getting a cartoon some 35 years later. The news broke back in 2019, when WarnerMedia ordered a 10-episode prequel to the 1984 classic. The animated series will focus on Gizmo and a young version of his original owner, Mr. Wing, played in the original film by Keye Luke. Tze Chun, a veteran of TV series like Gotham and Once Upon a Time, will write and executive produce the show. Check out the trailer for Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai. It promises magic is all around us, but we have to find it for ourselves.

The Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai reveals an adorable and yet intense first trailer. Although Gizmo is a cute Mogwai, the species itself does lean towards chaos. And there are other dark and destructive forces at play, of course… The worst kind of all, humans. Ultimately, the world is at stake, but it feels like we can rely on our heroes to save it.

Max (formerly HBO Max) also gave us a few additional looks at the Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai series and its characters, as well as its guest stars. In fact, Zach Galligan, the star of the original Gremlins will guest-star in the series.

Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai‘s Guest Stars

A release shares more about Secrets of Mogwai‘s guest stars, noting:

Zach Galligan, who starred as the hero “Billy Peltzer” in the Gremlins films, will have a recurring guest role on Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai.
 
Sandra Oh, Randall Park, George Takei and Bowen Yang were also announced as series guest stars. They join an all-star lineup of Asian American actors lending their voice talents to the series which include Ming-Na Wen, James Hong, BD Wong and Izaac Wang.

That is quite the line-up of guest stars for this new Gremlins show. It’s sure to please long-time fans of the franchise and first-time viewers. This show is shaping up to be excellent.

Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai‘s Main Characters

In addition to guests, here’s who will take center stage in Gremlins: Secrets of Mogwai.

First up, we get to see what our animated Gizmo will look like.

What a cutie… Although still a bit terrifying.

We also know who’ll be voicing the characters on the animated series. As reported by Variety (via Gizmodo), the cast will include Izaac Wang as young star Sam Wing; TV and film vets B.D. Wong (of Law & Order and Jurassic Park fame) and Ming-Na Wen (of ER, The Mandalorian) will play his parents. According to an official site for the series, A. J. Locascio will voice Gizmo. And Gabrielle Green will voice Sam’s friend, Elle.

Max has also officially shared our first look at the Wing family.

The streamer offered a bit more information about Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai‘s main characters to go with their character designs:

Fong Wing (voiced by Ming-Na Wen)—Fong Wing is Sam’s mother and a doctor of Chinese medicine. She’s resourceful, slyly funny, and fiercely protective of her family, even her frequently troublesome father.  She’ll do anything to aid and protect her son.

Grandpa (voiced by James Hong)—A free spirit and self-proclaimed expert in Chinese myth and magic, Grandpa is the elder of the Wing family. He claims to have traveled the world on grand adventures, but nobody really believed him… until now. He alone knows the true power (and secrets) of the Mogwai and the importance of protecting them.

Hon Wing (voiced by BD Wong)—Hon Wing is Sam’s father and the family’s calm rock. He’s never believed his father-in-law’s tales of magic and adventure. But when he and Fong become separated from Sam, he realizes the world is stranger than he thought, and that he’ll need to become braver to reunite his family.

Sam Wing (voiced by Izaac Wang)—Sam Wing is a naïve 10-year-old boy who will one day become Mr. Wing, the mysterious shopkeep and Gizmo’s guardian in the original Gremlins films. Young Sam lives with his family in the tiny apartment behind their struggling medicine shop. Sheltered and cautious, Sam will be thrown into the adventure of a lifetime when he promises his Grandpa he’ll get Gizmo home.

On the other side of the good-and-evil spectrum, Matthew Rhys (of The Americans and Perry Mason) will voice the series’ main antagonist; he’s an “English industrialist and treasure hunter who wields black magic,” and who aims to seize li’l Gizmo.

Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai‘s synopsis

Here is the show’s official synopsis:

In the animated television adaptation, we travel back to 1920s Shanghai to reveal the story of how 10-year-old Sam Wing (future shop owner Mr. Wing in the 1984 movie) met the young Mogwai called Gizmo. Along with a teenage street thief named Elle, Sam and Gizmo take a perilous journey through the Chinese countryside, encountering, and sometimes battling, colorful monsters and spirits from Chinese folklore. On their quest to return Gizmo to his family and uncover a legendary treasure, they are pursued by a power-hungry industrialist and his growing army of evil Gremlins.

Amblin Entertainment will produce the series, written by Tze Chun and featuring producers of things like The Americans, Animaniacs, and Teen Titans Go! 

The series will head to HBO Max and Cartoon Network at a yet undisclosed date. Although, according to Variety, it will premiere at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival on June 13. Dante’s original film—produced by Steven Spielberg and written by Chris Columbus—was a massive hit, thanks in no small part to the amazing animatronic creatures by Chris Walas, and the adorable lead creature, Gizmo. Infamously, Columbus’ original script was a straight horror movie and had Gizmo turn into the lead evil Gremlin to be destroyed by Billy Peltzer, but Spielberg interceded and saved the little guy from the slaughter.

And it’s a good thing he did; though we haven’t had a new adventure featuring the cuddly Mogwai and its scaly green progeny since 1990’s Gremlins 2: The New Batch—itself a half-parody of the original—Gremlins remains a cult favorite. It’s still considered one of Warner Bros’ biggest success stories, grossing over $153 million against a budget of only $11 million. That’s equivalent to almost $400 million in today’s dollars. We guess that explains why a script for a third film keeps getting kicked around.

We’re gonna guess the animated series won’t be super scary, but the iconic design of the titular baddies would look pretty great in cartoon form. Maybe the series will finally explain the incredibly vague rule about feeding them after midnight. And, like, what about time zones?

This article was originally published on July 1, 2019.

Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Twitter!

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We’ve been looking forward to Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 for a very long time, and for several reasons. The first, of course, is to see the end of the journey for this iteration of the Guardians. Writer-director James Gunn has promised a tear-jerker of a finale. Rocket’s going to break our hearts, gosh darning. But moreover, we want to hear the third volume of needle drops to score the action and drama. And now the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 soundtrack is finally here and our ears are ready. James Gunn revealed the official mixtape, which includes all the music from all the films and the Christmas special.

Interesting to note, the Vol. 3 tracks include a mix of both the ’70s music we got in the first two volumes, plus a smattering of ’80s and ’90s hits. What can this mean?!?!

Only a James Gunn mix would start with Radiohead’s “Creep (Acoustic)” and go straight into Heart’s “Crazy On You.” Other fun standouts include Spacehog’s “In the Meantime,” The Flaming Lips’ “Do You Realize??” and “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” by the Beastie Boys. Vol. 3 has a really fascinating soundtrack, because you have Rainbow and Earth, Wind & Fire, but also stuff like Faith No More and X. Perhaps Peter Quill is diversifying his musical tastes this time around. Even Florence + The Machine makes an appearance. And judging by Florence Welch’s response to the musical cue in the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 soundtrack, we’ll all be sobbing soon.

We truly can’t wait to see how Gunn incorporates each of these tracks into the action. Between these movies and The Suicide Squad, Gunn might be in the pantheon of Quentin Tarantino and Edgar Wright as purveyors of merging great existing music with movie action.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (and its soundtrack) is now in theaters.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

Originally published on April 3, 2023.

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We had to wait ages to see Shin Ultraman here in the US. After its Japanese cinema release set box office records for the country, director Shinji Higuchi and writer-producer Hideaki Anno’s tribute to Ultraman played the festival circuit before eventually getting a Fathom Event screening nearly a year later. Not so for Anno’s Shin Kamen Rider. After its Japanese debut in March, we only have to wait until the end of May here in the States.

Shin Kamen Rider will make its US debut on Wednesday, May 31, as a national Fathom Events screening. Tickets will go on sale on May 5. This is good news for anyone who likes cool-ass-looking things.

The movie is the third in the Anno-produced Shin (Japanese for “new”) series, which began in 2016 with the award-winning Shin Godzilla. This one is a reimagining of manga writer and artist Shotaro Ishinomori’s Kamen Rider which premiered on Japanese TV in 1971 and has continued in some form or other ever since.

The film stars Sosuke Ikematsu as Takeshi Hongo, a young motorcyclist whose life is turned upside down when he is kidnapped by the Sustainable Happiness Organization with Computational Knowledge Embedded Remodeling (SHOCKER) cult. Newly transformed into a mutant cyborg, Hongo escapes from SHOCKER with help from Ruriko (Minami Hamabe)—vowing to exact his vengeance against the cult and finally put a stop to their sinister plans for global domination. 

Shin Kamen Rider, from writer-director-producer Hideaki Anno (of Neon Genesis Evangelion fame), will premiere on May 31. We cannot wait! For more info, head to Fathom Events.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

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I was an excited eight-year-old when Mighty Morphin Power Rangers premiered in 1993. It was colorful, action-packed, and endlessly entertaining to kids of the time. We didn’t need to know what Super Sentai was, or care that half the footage was obviously from Japan. For a generation of kids, the Power Rangers were the heroes we all wanted to be. And the franchise has continued apace ever since, but those original Mighty Morphin years remain the ones people remember fondest. And it’s for those people that the Once & Always special exists.

The Netflix special—which runs about 55 minutes—does not deal directly with anything the franchise has put forth after the first three seasons. So even though several of the characters went on to wear different suits and even have different colors depending on the season, it’s the original dinosaur-themed suits and Zords and villains we get. Basically, if it was in Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger, it’s here. But more than just the suits, this acts as a tribute to one specific member of the original cast.

The story features Billy Cranston (David Yost) accidentally reviving arch-nemesis Rita Repulsa and her subsequently capturing Red Ranger Jason, Pink Ranger Kimberly, and Green Ranger Tommy. (Austin St. John, Amy Jo Johnson, and Jason David Frank do not appear in the special.) Rita also, while attempting to kill Billy, instead kills Yellow Ranger Trini Kwan. In the series, actress Thuy Trang portrayed Trini, but left the show partway through season two. Trang subsequently lost her life in a tragic car crash in 2001.

The bulk of the special then deals with Billy and Zack Taylor (Walter Emanuel Jones) trying to rescue their captured cohorts while jointly raising Trini’s daughter Minh (Charlie Kersh). Minh, a fantastic martial artist, wants to get revenge on Rita much to her guardians’ chagrin. But they’ll definitely need more Rangers if they’re going to defeat her. To that end, they enlist second Red Ranger Rocky (Steven Cardenas) and second Pink Ranger Kat (Catherine Sutherland).

It’s a funny thing, this special. Because of the focus on the loss of Trini, it feels much less celebratory than a 30th anniversary special might. Sure, we have some fun jokes and references to past events, and the compulsory action. And yes, it’s fun to hear that Kat and Tommy have a son, and Zack used to be a congressman while Billy runs a Stark Industries-esque tech conglomerate. Rocky is a firefighter. Stuff like this brought a smile to my face. But it truly felt more like a special to highlight Yost and Jones and properly pay tribute to Trang.

Jason David Frank, as we know, also passed away recently. That must have been after this was filmed, though we do get his name and picture next to Trang’s in the special’s credits. Once & Always didn’t quite give me the shot of nostalgic adrenaline I was expecting. Maybe if more of the main cast had appeared, or if the scope was a little bigger, it would have given me that. Instead it was a somber, surprisingly intimate reflection on growing up and growing apart. The new generation must carry on while the older passes on what they’ve learned.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always is not a perfect special, but it does perfectly encapsulate why a generation of kids loved this show, and who it was that made us love it in the first place.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always is on Netflix April 19.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

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The whole of the pandemic has coincided with us learning about Rocksteady’s follow-up to their genre-defining Batman: Arkham game series. For Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, the developers have not given themselves an easy task. Not only is it a bigger and more frenetic universe, but players will take over four members of Task Force X. That includes favorites Harley Quinn, Captain Boomerang, Deadshot, and King Shark. As we see in the long-awaited first co-op gameplay trailer, each member has their own specialty.

This assault on the alien-overrun Metropolis is hyper frenetic and showcases the traversal aspect to their combat. Harley is acrobatic, Deadshot is precise, Shark is the strongest, and Boomerang is a goober. Just like you’d hope! We can glean from the above that Brainiac has overtaken the members of the Justice League, except for, it would seem, Wonder Woman. The Flash would make for a pretty scary villain, we have to admit.

We also got to see another video, this one with the developers explaining more elements of the game.

They let us know that, yes, these events take place in the same universe as the Arkham games, a few years after Arkham Knight. After Brainiac takes over and brainwashes the Justice League, Amanda Waller assembles Task Force X to fight them. Helping our core four are a number of other villains, like Toy Man. The devs promise even more playable characters, too, which is very intriguing indeed.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League‘s release date has been delayed from May 26, 2023 to February 2, 2024.

Originally published on February 23, 2023.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

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Matt Reeves’ version of Gotham City in The Batman was my favorite of all the cinematic outings. That movie got the mix of heightened comic bookery and crime drama, I think has been sorely missing. While the Riddler was the major supervillain of the film, and Carmine Falcone proved a sneaky sub-villain, it was Colin Farrell’s portrayal of Oswald Cobblepot that was the most fun. What a relief that the Max spinoff series The Penguin is still happening. The streamer shared an “in-production teaser” for The Penguin series, which will drop in 2024. It already has us hyped.

From this teaser, we can already see the power vacuum in place in Gotham’s criminal underworld after Falcone’s death. The Penguin wants to step in this teaser, but he’s by no means the only player. We know Cristin Milioti will play Sofia Falcone, Carmine’s daughter. She and Oz have a drink, and it’s possible she’ll back to play, or at least partner, with him. We also know mother-effing Clancy Brown will play Salvatore Maroni, the rival crime boss to Falcone and the one Falcone lied to Bruce Wayne about having killed his parents. Maroni also, in comics lore, was the one who tossed acid in Harvey Dent’s face.

The rest of the cast includes Rhenzy Feliz, Michael Kelly, Shohreh Aghdashloo, and Deirdre O’Connell, with Michael Zegen recurring. The series is executive produced by Matt Reeves, Dylan Clark, Colin Farrell, Lauren LeFranc, who writes and serves as showrunner, Craig Zobel, who directs the first three episodes, and Bill Carraro.

We cannot wait to see the powerplays, back-stabbing, and Sopranos-esque intrigue of The Penguin when it drops next year. Gotham will never be the same.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

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There’s a reason all of the promos and marketing material for Renfield highlight the seemingly bizarre yet perfect casting of Nicolas Cage as Dracula. Casting him was a genius move, as is the funny conceit of having Dracula’s familiar—the titular R.M. Renfield (Nicholas Hoult)—go to group therapy for toxic codependency. But the trouble is, these elements, good as they are, take up precious little time in the already brisk 93-minute runtime. Would you guess most of the plot has to do with corrupt cops and a drug-trafficking crime family? I wouldn’t, and didn’t. I wish that it did not.

One of the biggest issues for me when watching any kind of higher-concept studio picture is when I can see evidence of major recuts. It’s part of the reason Black Adam felt so off. Renfield is obscenely brief for all the things it wants to do. It boasts a lot of over-the-top, blood-soaked action, but the comedy and drama fall largely flat due to sheer speed. Three credited editors and the barest of stories.

The story follows Renfield who has, since his master’s last defeat, relocated the vampire prince to New Orleans. He has to provide the reconstituting Dracula with a steady supply of fresh blood. But, after so many years, the killing has gotten to him. He begins to attend a group meeting for people in toxic relationships where he gets advice on how to overcome his own from Mark, the therapist (Brandon Scott Jones). This is not good news for Dracula, of course.

At the same time, a traffic cop named Quincy (Awkwafina) is trying to take down the Lobo crime family after they murdered her hero cop father. Due to the family’s influence in New Orleans, and paying off part of the police, even the inept exploits of brash Teddy Lobo (Ben Schwartz) don’t result in meaningful convictions. Renfield and Quincy intersect as Renfield uses his Dracula powers (which he gets from eating bugs) to help her. The movie has a very murky sense of morality as it pertains to these, also. Killing innocent people is wrong. When he slaughters criminals or corrupt officers? He’s a hero. The movie never contends with the inherent hypocrisy of this.

The plot of this movie is a mess, I have to say. Based on a Robert Kirkman story with a screenplay from longtime Dan Harmon acolyte Ryan Ridley, you’d think the pedigree would be there for at the very least an entertaining movie. And let us not forget, you have Nicolas friggin’ Cage playing Dracula! That alone should have made this great. He is great, and all of the things having to do with Dracula directly are fabulous. The production design, costuming, and makeup are all top notch. Cage delivers a new but totally legitimate take on the character, which is impressive after 101 years in movies.

But beyond Cage (and Jones who got the only two actual laughs out of me), and a fine performance from Hoult, there is just a substandard cops-and-robbers narrative with a nigh-invulnerable superhero-type who tears people’s limbs off after eating a spider or some flies. It’s just so threadbare. What could have been a fun character study, a modern riff on classic Gothic characters, becomes a more lighthearted Morbius.

Many people—and certainly a lot of them were in the screening I attended—are perfectly content just to watch Cage revel in his Dracula fangs, but he’s hardly the main character, and everyone else is irritating or boring. Awkwafina can’t decide if she’s supposed to be funny or stoic. Schwartz is playing Jean-Ralphio without any of the charm. And I don’t care about corrupt cops or supremely annoying criminals. Get out of my Dracula movie!

Even the delightfully gruesome set pieces and Cage’s mastery can’t amount to more than a very dumb, not-funny comedy, a not-scary horror movie, and a not-exciting action movie.

Renfield will hit theaters April 14.

Renfield ⭐ (2 of 5)

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

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Beau Is Afraid is a deeply strange movie. You probably think you know that already after seeing the trailers, or just knowing it comes from Ari Aster. Hereditary and Midsommar are very weird, amidst the guttural terror they evoke. But Beau is a different beast. In some ways this feels very of a piece of those earlier movies, their uncomfortable and unsettling interactions and deep, disturbing revelations. At the same time, it’s miles and miles different; it’s an absurdist, surrealist take on everything from city living to overbearing mothers that still manages to have some true horror in its heart. I still have kind of no idea what to make of Beau Is Afraid and maybe that’s the point.

Aster clearly has some personal demons to work through, and to their credit, A24 allowed him to do that. It never once feels like the filmmaker needed to hold back or change things for audience appeasement or anything. Like all of his movies, Beau Is Afraid is not easy to watch. At a minute shy of three hours, it’s also the most arduous, but it never drags. We feel like we’ve been on a journey along with our main character. Aster has called the movie a “Jewish Lord of the Rings,” and that feels apt in a lot of ways. In other ways? Just emotional torture porn.

The movie follows Beau (Joaquin Phoenix), a middle-aged man who lives alone in a tiny little apartment in what I can only describe as hell on earth. Though we never 100% know if what we see is true to the film or only Beau’s perception, but his city block has drug addicts and lunatics and murderers mere feet away at all times. (The latter is a nude guy whom the TV news affectionately dubs “Birthday Boy Stab Man”.) Even more than all of the hilariously awful things all around him, Beau fears visiting his mother. He’s supposed to go tomorrow, however the world seems to have conspired against him.

So much of Beau Is Afraid is this poor guy stumbling from one absolutely terrible problem to the next. After losing his keys and locking himself out of his building, he gets hit by a truck. The drivers of which are a seemingly nice couple (Nathan Lane and Amy Ryan) who nurse him back to health. But they, like everyone Beau meets, seems oddly sinister. Beau’s paranoia grows and with it does the audience’s sense of unease. Aster has crowned himself the monarch of icky feelings, and he’s three for three. While you laugh at the escalating nightmare of Beau’s surroundings, you also tense up at what can only be the inevitable horror to follow.

And follow it does. Some truly WTF moments occur throughout, stuff that had my jaw on the floor and my hands on my face. But easily the scariest part of the move is the looming shadow of Beau’s mother. A luminary in some unknown field, the specter of Beau’s mother haunts everything in his life. We see bits of his upbringing, when she seems utterly devoted to him, but with an edge we can’t quite ascertain. When we see her in the present, she’s scarier than any Dracula or Frankenstein you might see. Zoe Lister-Jones and Patti LuPone play the character in different time periods and they are absolutely stellar, and truly terrifying.

Still, weeks later I can’t quite put my finger on why it didn’t quite work for me. Without the visceral punch of Hereditary or the folk-horror slow burn of Midsommar, we can see much more of Aster’s true intent. It’s less to tell a story and more to convey a grievance. Even the movie’s one true masterstroke—an extended fantasy sequence presented as an elaborate stage play—fades away quickly back to zany madcappery and on-the-nose metaphor. And while we definitely have the focus on familial trauma that his earlier features had, without the keening sorrow of those, we end up just watching a guy get kicked repeatedly while he’s down. It’s hard not to see the whole movie as an extended riff on Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown.

Beau Is Afraid is funny, scary, profound, upsetting, bizarre, and ultimately arduous. I’d love to say I love it as more than a filmmaker taking a massive swing with the full support of a studio behind him, but I can’t. It left me feeling upset and exhausted, which I think was the goal, but it’s a journey I’m not entirely sure I needed to take.

Beau Is Afraid hits cinemas April 21.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

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We could not be more excited for Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. The long-awaited follow-up to 2019’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order appears to have addressed many of the issues people had with the first game while ramping up everything that worked to…well, whatever the Aurebesh for 11 is. (Yes, I know I could look it up but I refuse.) The further adventures of Cal Kestis, BD-1, and the crew of the Mantis will take our heroes on their most dangerous missions yet. EA and Respawn have released the final gameplay trailer ahead of the game’s April 28 release. Enjoy!

We got the opportunity to play nearly four hours of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor at an event in Hollywood recently and it was absurdly fun. We found out, and this trailer certainly indicates as much, that Cal will get the opportunity to fight alongside various companions in his quest. Merrin, the reformed Dathomir Sister, appears in one scene in the trailer. We also know one of Cal’s friends he met between games will feature; we can see him punch a stormtrooper in the helmet. Now that’s a cool guy.

If you’d like to see more of what we found out on our hands-on playthrough—including fighting a Rancor in a pit—watch our 12 Things We Learned.

One character we met in our playthrough who shows up several times in the above gameplay trailer is the raider captain Rayvin. He’s the big guy in the red armor. Cal faces down against him in a gunslinger-style exchange but the crime boss smartly walks away. Apparently he doesn’t stay away for long (are you surprised?). He shows up in what looks like two separate boss fights in the trailer. How exciting!

We can’t wait to see what becomes of Cal and BD when Star Wars Jedi: Survivor drops April 28.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

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One of the casualties of David Zaslav’s draconian gutting of HBO Max has been upcoming DC animated series. Luckily, it seems, some of them have gotten reprieves from other networks. Bruce Timm’s highly anticipated return to Batman will head to Prime, for example. Another of these is My Adventures with Superman, a lighthearted take on Clark Kent’s first years in Metropolis getting to know Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen. That show will now air on Adult Swim, and we have a first look teaser for it below.

The Boys star Jack Quaid provides the voice of Clark/Superman in this series. Funny that in real life he’d absolutely play Jimmy Olsen, but I digress. The animation style is evocative of the old Fleischer cartoons from the ’40s while still having a distinctive modern edge. Fans of the animation style of things like Voltron: Legendary Defender and The Legend of Korra will likely enjoy this.

My Adventures with Superman from creator Jake Wyatt will debut on Adult Swim “soon,” which can’t come soon enough as far as we’re concerned. The world needs a new Superman cartoon.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

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It wouldn’t be a franchise movie without a post-credit tease! Even animated family films can’t resist the urge to tease. And as merely the first in a years-long plan for Nintendo films, The Super Mario Bros. Movie sets up a universe rather nicely. We already know a reported spinoff for Seth Rogen’s Donkey Kong is in the works. But what of a second Mario Bros. movie? Well, the very brief post-credits scene gives us a little idea of at least who to expect.

With Bowser captured, shrunk, and Peach’s royal pet, what problem could Mario and Luigi have to deal with in the sequel? After the credits, we the camera flying through the endless web of pipes in the sewers under Brooklyn. (I’d like to speak to the city planner about this, by the way. Seems like a labyrinth was a weird choice.) Eventually the camera finds the green pipe which sucked Mario into the Mushroom Kingdom in the first place. In front of it, we see a familiar white egg with green spots. It begins to crack open when we cut to black.

Now, obviously this points to Mario’s second green ally, Yoshi. The dinosaur conveyance first appeared in the 1990 game Super Mario World and has since been a mainstay of the franchise. That game moved the action from the Mushroom Kingdom to Dinosaur Land, which had its fair share of dangerous enemies and villains. This isn’t the only appearance of a Yoshi in the movie, of course. Earlier, during Mario, Peach, and Toad’s journey, they pass a herd of multicolored Yoshis out in a field. But none of them were the Yoshi.

Super Mario World, and Super Mario Bros. 3 before it, also featured Bowser’s seven kids as world bosses. It might be a good way to up the ante with all of them trying to free their dad and Mario and company needing a Yoshi for help. Not to try to write the next movie, but that’d be pretty rad.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie is in theaters now.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

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Nintendo has worked tirelessly over the past 30 years to fend off the grimy funk of the first Super Mario Bros. movie. Though that dark and drastic take on the material has its defenders (I like it), you can’t deny it’s not the same as the games at all. Ever protective of its enormous library of IP, Nintendo and Shigeru Miyamoto made sure the next Mario movie would be faithful. And Illumination’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie is absolutely a Nintendo game brought to dazzling life. It’s got the characters, world, and adventurous spirit right on the money. But those expecting something akin to The LEGO Movie might be left a bit cold.

Given the roster of comedy actors in the voice roles—especially Chris Pratt as Mario—one might be forgiven for thinking it would hew closer to the massively media literate humor of LEGO. But the jokes in the movie are much more straightforward and clearly aimed at a younger audience. Oh, old-school Nintendo fans will surely squeal at the sheer amount of Easter eggs and references to other titles and bits of Nintendo ephemera. But the story itself is right down the middle, true-blue hero stuff.

The movie opens with Mario (Pratt) and faithful if nervous brother Luigi (Charlie Day) trying like heck to get their new plumbing business off the ground. When a massive pipe bursts in the sewers of Brooklyn the brothers decide to fix it and make their name. Down in the bowels of the city, they find a pipe that sucks them into a magical new world. Luigi ends up in the realm of Bowser (Jack Black) and his Koopa army; Mario finds himself in the bright and cheerful Mushroom Kingdom. Bowser is en route to take over said kingdom and it’s up to Mario, a brave Toad (Keegan-Michael Key), and Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy) to retrieve Luigi and save the Toads. (Luigi is the damsel in this one rather than Peach, which is excellent.)

In order to achieve this goal, the Princess needs to recruit the Kong army. Cranky Kong (Fred Armisen), the ruler of the Jungle Kingdom, refuses unless Mario can defeat his son Donkey Kong (Seth Rogen) in single combat. Badda bing, badda boom, you get a Mario Kart sequence, you get platforming and power-ups, and you get all the sounds and sights you’d expect and hope for in an animated Nintendo movie.

Illumination is the perfect choice to make Mario movies. The animation is absolutely stunning, perfectly embodying the spirit of the games’ worlds. Several frenetic sequences bring what fans of the games know as core Mario stuff to life. We even get several fast-paced action beats that emulate the original 2D side-scrolling games. All of the settings look real—like it’s stop-motion. The colors pop, the action cooks, and you’ll never tire of looking at the whole frame.

Still, I was a bit surprised at how, sort of, unsurprising the movie is. At only 92 minutes, we don’t have much time for anything outside the main plot. The filmmakers packed a lot of Nintendo in that short runtime, and they want to make sure we see all of it. So we only have time for the broadest of story beats. Mario wants to make his family proud; Peach wants to save her people; Donkey Kong wants to prove he’s not just a meathead. It’s very by-the-numbers hero’s journey stuff. Not a complaint, just an observation. I’ll say it again: this isn’t The LEGO Movie. The most out-there stuff happens with Black as Bowser, who sings several love songs about Peach.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a very solid IP-driven animated movie. For Nintendo kids, I think it’ll scratch that itch very well. It’s got all the things. For anyone who doesn’t know or doesn’t care that much about Mario, you might find it little more than a colorful kids movie. And that’s fine! It’s fun, bring your children, bring your inner child, have a good time.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie ⭐ (3 of 5)

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

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After 2018’s Hereditary and 2019’s Midsommar, filmmaker Ari Aster has truly established his ability to make audiences feel both emotionally wrecked and supremely freaked out. A horror auteur, for sure, but one who seems not to want to pigeonhole himself. With his third feature, Beau Is Afraid, Aster keeps the disturbing imagery, and the strange family dynamics, but adds to it a very specific and strange variety of comedy. And Joaquin Phoenix in various bald-and-old-age makeup. The latest trailer for it definitely looks…well, weird.

We see a few things at play in this trailer that feature in all of Aster’s cinema. Generational trauma, seemingly normal people who are up to no good, scary things bubbling just under the surface. Aster adds some truly hallucinatory imagery to show off some of Beau (Phoenix)’s internalized terror. He’s afraid of everything outside, so it seems everything outside is worth being afraid of. It is much of the same from the initial trailer, which was equally as strange.

After embarking on a journey to visit his mother, perhaps to get some answers about his paternal predicament, Beau immediately finds himself in a bed. Amy Ryan ran him over with her car, and Nathan Lane has fitted him with a “little assistant health monitor.” This, to most people, would feel off, but to Beau, through Aster’s lens, it seems downright sinister. But during all of this, a mix of fantasy and heightened reality mix, while we see Beau in a number of different time periods. We’re supremely intrigued, and also not merely a little afraid. Fitting.

Beau Is Afraid also stars Stephen Mckinley Henderson, Hayler Squires, Denis Ménochet, Kylie Rogers, Armen Nahapetian, with Parker Posey, and Patti LuPone. The movie hits cinemas April 21, 2023.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

Originally published on January 10, 2023.

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We currently live in a world where video game movie and TV adaptations have finally, in most people’s estimation, reached their peak. HBO’s adaptation of The Last of Us broke ratings records; the Sonic the Hedgehog movies made all kinds of money. And hell, even the 30-year stink of Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros. live-action movie has given way to what looks to be a pretty excellent animated film. Another franchise with a bad 1990s movie will soon get a similar reprieve. Deadline has reported that Legendary has obtained exclusive live-action film and TV rights to Capcom’s Street Fighter franchise. What’s more, a Street Fighter movie is on the way.

No news or information yet on the movie, just that one is on the way. Legendary will co-develop and produce that and any future titles with Capcom. Capcom has had success with the Resident Evil movie franchise, though those aren’t particularly faithful to the games. Legendary, meanwhile, saw success with its live-action Pokémon Detective Pikachu movie in 2019.

One of the highest-grossing video game franchises in history, Street Fighter all but invented the fighting game as we know it today. From 1987, the games have introduced and perfected a particular kind of superpowered brawler and introduced memorable and beloved characters like Ryu, Chun-Li, and Guile. Dozens of anime adaptations grew the game’s lore and roster, showcasing a global fight tournament against the evil M. Bison. A 1994 live-action adaptation starring Jean-Claude Van Damme didn’t quite live up to anybody’s expectations, but is still fun if you’re into that particular mood. The latest game, Street Fighter 6, will drop in June.

Editor’s Note: Nerdist is a subsidiary of Legendary Digital Networks

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

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Every year feels like a big year for the MCU, but 2023 definitely has a case for bigger than usual. Not only will Kang the Conqueror prove to be a big thorn in our heroes’ side for a while, other baddies lie on the horizon who could shake things up to the core. The Skrulls are taking Earth by storm in the upcoming Disney+ series Secret Invasion, which will see Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) in a clandestine battle for supremacy. Recently, a show page on Disney+ revealed that the series would debut on June 21 of this year. But the Secret Invasion page and its release date then disappeared, but the date has since been officially confirmed!

The series, as the show’s description page said while it was still up, will follow Fury and Talos as they fight against a Skrull faction who have infiltrated the Earth for years. Those Skrulls will be led by Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir). Also joining the fracas is Game of Thrones’ Emilia Clarke as Abigail Brand, the head of S.W.O.R.D. Another new addition to the franchise is Olivia Colman, who will play a former colleague of Fury’s.

Returning MCU characters will include Cobie Smulders as Maria Hill; Don Cheadle as James “Rhodey” Rhodes; and Martin Freeman as Everett K. Ross.

Secret Invasion will drop on June 21 and the vanishing page and release date really add to its espionage feeling. We can’t wait to get a-Skrullin’!

Originally published March 27, 2023.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

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For a great many American horror folks, Italian horror means either slick Giallo murder mysteries or gory zombie carnage. Maybe with some cannibal grossness thrown in as well. But predating those, and with a much more fascinating pedigree, is the cycle of Italian Gothic films. Bolstered by the success of UK studio Hammer and its subversive, Victorian take on classic monsters, Italy launched its own slate of strange and sexy scares. Severin Films will release a box set of four such oft-forgotten films in their upcoming Danza Macabra Vol. 1 box set.

We spoke to author, critic, and one of the producers of the box set, Kat Ellinger, about the movies in the set, the Italian Gothic cycle itself, and how it differs (for the sexier) compared to British and American Gothic.

Nerdist: Growing up for me in the U.S., if it wasn’t Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, or Mario Bava, it was tough to see any Italian horror, and Gothic, the toughest of all. How did you first find it?

Kat Ellinger: Getting to it was difficult here in the UK. So, my first brush with Italian horror in the ’80s was all the video nasties stuff. It was the Fulci, it was Cannibal Ferox. I sort of did it ass backward because that was what everyone was trading at the time. And I guess one of the good things about that was that set up a solid network in the UK of collectors and traders where people were just swapping stuff and trying to find stuff.

Well, nothing was available here, but I guess it made this a life philosophy to keep looking for stuff. We weren’t ever lazy because we weren’t given anything. If we just stuck to what we could see, it was basically nothing. Or everything that we did have was heavily cut.

And so, it fostered, I guess, this spirit of adventure. But then, we were also really lucky in the ’90s. There’s a TV channel here called Channel 4, it launched in the mid-’80s, and it was the “art channel” or the “punk channel.” And they had a lot of counterculture stuff on there, music programs, art programs. I still don’t know how they got away with half of this because they showed [Paul Morrissey’s] Flesh for Frankenstein in 3D, which was on the nasties list.

That’s wild. On TV?

So, Suspiria was the first [Italian] one that I saw, so that was the real gateway for me. But it wasn’t really until the late-’90s when I was probably in my early twenties. And even though it’s not strictly Gothic horror, it sort of introduced me to the possibilities of European art, stroke horror. So, that was what really fostered my appetite. But then, the internet was just starting off. So, a lot of it was then stuff like Cinemageddon and Demonoid before that where people started then… Somebody opened the Pandora’s Box.

So, you see the sort of stuff that Severin put out, it’s the sort of stuff we were desperately wanting to get our hands on in 1989. So, it’s a dream now to have that almost cinema quality. It just blows my mind. It blows my mind.

This Severin box set has, I would say, lesser-known or at least lesser-circulated Italian Gothic films. What sets the Gothics from Italy apart from British or American Gothic?

So, I have this whole mad theory about this.

Oh, I love a mad theory.

You’ve got two strands of Gothic. You’ve got this what they call the Radcliffian tradition, which comes from Ann Radcliffe [author of The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne], which is more romantic and mystery oriented.

And then, you’ve got the Lewisite tradition, which I call Gothic terror, which stems from Matthew Lewis’ The Monk, which is one of the most transgressive books ever written. It’s got incest, Satanism, burning Nuns, necrophilia, you name it.

And so, the Italians were very adept at actually showing the Lewisite Gothic, whereas the British and Americans didn’t really do that. And Camille Paglia, who I realize isn’t the most popular for feminists. Well, she’s never been popular. But she wrote this book called Sexual Personae, where she basically, it’s an insane book.

But it’s one of the most beautifully written things I’ve ever read and very passionate. I don’t agree with all of it. But she studies the entire Western art canon, art and literature. And her theory is that, basically, men are from the Apollonian. And so, they’re all about logic because they fear the feminine, which is the Chthonian, which is closer to the earth.

It hit me that Hammer and the American Gothics are the Apollonian Gothic. They’re very male. They’re very formal. They are all about good triumphs over evil because… Because Van Helsing or whatever is a super professor. Whereas the Italians are always Chthonian. Even the men in Italian Gothic are innately Chthonian, even the so-called good guys. There’s something very queer about Italian Gothic, but also, really female-centric as well.

Oh, that is very different. Women in Hammer are very rarely more than damsels or T&A.

So, that’s always been the appeal to me. Italian Gothic is much more perverse. It’s much more Lewisite. And right off the bat, even, Monster of the Opera, which is in this set, is very perverse. But early on, they’re doing stuff like The Horrible Dr. Hichcock [directed by Riccardo Freda], which is about a necrophile. A necrophile who’s snooping around dead bodies and having kinky sex with his wife, getting her to fake being dead.

I mean, this was 1963, [Mario Bava’s] The Whip and the Body, which is all about a woman’s sexual fantasy. A masochist is so misread, that film, it always makes me laugh, but a lot of classic horror guys read it the other way around. It’s like, “No, this is her sexual fantasy.”

You mentioned Monster of the Opera, so I was wondering if you could talk a bit more about that and the other films in the set.

I was really lucky actually because I got to help create the set, so I worked really closely with Severin, this is basically what I’d like to see. And obviously, there’s more coming as well.

Yeah, you put “volume one” right on the box, which is very bold.

Yeah! So, Monster of the Opera is directed by Renato Polselli. Polselli, I’ve been a longtime fan of, and you know one of his films when you see it. The problem with Polselli is the only way you could see a lot of his work was through bootlegging because, for some inexplicable reason, nobody releases his films. He didn’t do a massive amount of horror, so this is the first time the Monster of the Opera has been restored, and it was just really exciting to see they got that.

It’s kind of like a Giallo, but it’s really psychosexual really, which is absolutely bonkers, and that’s pure Polselli. But none of his earlier stuff, nobody even talks about Polselli, which is disappointing. So, I’m really hoping this will give people a taste for the stuff that he was doing, especially seeing it restored.

So yeah, you’ve got that. Then, you’ve also got Lady Frankenstein, which I love, and I did a commentary on that with Annie Rose. It was obscene, that commentary, I can’t wait for you to hear it.

I also can’t wait to hear that!

Because the whole thing of Lady Frankenstein. She’s the daughter. And so, he creates the normal monster, but then she takes over from daddy. And he wanted this acclaim from science. She just wants to make a good-looking, living sex toy. She likes the one doctor, but he’s a bit old, so she wants to put his brain in a younger, fitter body, and it is just outrageous. It is an entirely outrageous film.

That sounds amazing.

The Seventh Grave. Now, this one gets totally slagged off by everyone. It’s trying to be more of a traditional Gothic, but it’s all about these people; they go off to this… It’s supposed to be in Scotland, but it’s clearly not. They go off to this Scottish castle and there’s an inheritance and it’s got a bit of a mystery… But it’s so bonkers. It’s so absolutely bonkers. Not loads of sex in it like the later ones, but just so bonkers that I love it. And then, again, seeing it restored, I hope, fingers crossed, people will be a bit kinder to it.

And finally, we got Scream of the Demon Lover, which is as bonkers as Lady Frankenstein, very much in that same vein because you’ve got the female scientist in it. Erna Schurer was in Strip Nude for Your Killer, and a bunch of other stuff. She’s in it, and she goes to this house. So, it’s got a bit of a Jane Eyre thing going on and also, a mad science thing going on and a bit of a Virgin of Nuremberg thing going on; it’s just nuts. And just the extent to which Severin went to restore this is insane. They even got a second scanner in.

Giallo has gotten so much reappraisal, and re-releases, lately; do you think there’s room for that kind of reappraisal for the Gothic?

This is my thinking. Obviously, I love the Giallo as well, it’s one of my specialized subjects, but we’ve had so much Giallo for so long now. Stuff that I never thought would see the light of day. It’s like, “Oh, my God, they’re releasing this!” But it did used to annoy me a bit, I think; where’s the Italian Gothic? It would just be Bava there, and that was it. And nobody seemed that interested in doing the Italian Gothic, so I’m really glad that Severin was totally on board.

Danza Macabra vol. 1 is available from Severin Films beginning March 28.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

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Part of the mystery of Yellowjackets is not only what terrors transpired but when. We know the younguns and their coach spend 19 months in the wilderness, but how much of that have we seen in the show? With season two’s premiere, we have a pretty decent idea of Yellowjackets timeline given a few factors, the likes of which I will divulge in subsequent utterances.

Yellowjackets Season One Timeline

The Past Timeline

In 1996, the soccer team, coaches, and two sons of one of the coaches get on the plane to nationals. They, as you know, crash land in the woods. This is around May. The school year is still going on, and it’s approaching prom season. While the first few episodes seem to take place over just a few days, lots more time transpires as the season goes on. First of all, there’s the fact that it goes from relatively warm weather to bitter cold and snowy by season’s end. Second, Shauna learns of her pregnancy and begins to show, helping us to cement Yellowjackets timeline. We can assume it’s probably around six months from when they crash to Jackie’s death. May to November, probably.

2021 Timeline

In “the present” timeline on Yellowjackets, hardly any time at all has passed from when Travis died to where season one ends up. We see Halloween, and Taissa’s political campaign is nearing election day; the investigation into Travis’ death barely gets going. It’s only a very brief time from when the Yellowjackets begin receiving blackmail demands, Shauna has her affair with Adam, then kills him, and the ladies cover it up. All told, it’s unlikely more than a month passes in Yellowjacket‘s present-day timeline.

How Much Time Between Yellowjackets Seasons One and Two?

Much like within the first season, a lot of time passes in the past while hardly any passes in the present. Two months have passed in the past timeline when we pick up in Yellowjackets season two. We know this, A) because they tell us outright, but 2) because we see the meat from the bear Lottie killed has dwindled to almost nothing. Travis and Natalie have nearly mapped the entire surrounding wilderness looking for both more food and Javi.

That also means Shauna has been going into the shed and talking to dead Jackie for two months, which is…not a little disconcerting. I mean, her ear does fall off, after all.

Meanwhile, in 2021, only a few days have passed since the season one finale. Adam is missing, and according to the post Misty reads on the Citizen Detectives forum, Adam paid for the mini-golf date with Shauna a week ago. Plus, Natalie’s only been gone a short time and has only just made it to the Lottie retreat. That sounds like she went of her own accord; they kidnapped her in the middle of the night and took her against her will. The present timeline continues to be compact.

The 1998 Yellowjackets Timeline

We glimpse an entirely new timeline in Yellowjackets season two’s first episode. The show flashes forward a little to 1998 to show us the survivors being rescued from the wilderness. This tracks with what we know about the rest of the timeline. Because 19 months from late spring of 1996 takes us to approximately 1998. We don’t yet know if we’ll spend any time in the 1998 timeline on Yellowjackets, but it officially exists.

How Much Time Will Yellowjackets Season Two Take?

How would we know?! In 2021, it’s anyone’s guess. In the ’90s, we know it’s roughly January 1997, which means they have just under a year before the Yellowjackets’ rescue. And we know they have to do a LOT of bad stuff before then.

Yellowjackets season two drops on Paramount+ with Showtime every Friday and airs on Showtime, the cable network every Sunday.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

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Ah yes! Another franchise superhero movie, which means more teases for possible future installments. It’s easily one of the MCU’s most indelible gifts to blockbuster cinema. Shazam! Fury of the Gods is the latest DC Comics movie, and that means new post-credits scenes to dissect. The interesting thing about this one is its unclear connection to any future DCU movies once the DCEU officially fades away like a polaroid in the sun. If you don’t want the ending to be spoiled for you, leave now. Otherwise, hop down to spoiler city!

For a movie with unclear future canonicity, Shazam! Fury of the Gods definitely doesn’t skimp on the connective tissue. The scene of Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) appearing toward the end of the movie already appeared in ads, but that’s by no means the only DCEU bit you’ll find.

The mid-credits scene opens on two familiar faces. Emilia Harcourt (Jennifer Holland) and John Economos (Steve Agee) of Team Peacemaker. They walk through what looks like an old forest or something and talk about going to recruit someone and not wanting to spook them. Economos complains about wearing new boots that make his feet hurt.

Eventually they come upon Shazam (Zachary Levi) using his lightning powers to zap empty bottles at an abandoned gas station. Harcourt says she knows he’s Billy Batson and they know everything else about him. They want to know if he’s interested in joining the Justice—. Before she can finish, Shazam says “yes, yes, a thousand times yes” and gets way too amped about working with Wonder Woman. Unfortunately for Billy, they weren’t going to offer him a spot in the Justice League, but rather the Justice Society. Shazam then gets his phone and looks up other words besides “Justice” to avoid confusing. One of those being “Avengers Society,” which makes no sense, but is a funny joke.

If you were unfortunate enough to have seen Black Adam, you know that the Justice Society featured prominently. Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) somehow became the handler for the JSA and that continues here. Now, we certainly have no idea if that thread will continue in any future films or shows. James Gunn announced a Waller series in the works, which will of course feature Harcourt and Economos. But will they handle JSA stuff? Who can say?

As for the post-credits scene…well, it’s not much of anything. It’s more a continuation of the bit from the post-credits scene from the first Shazam! Doctor Sivana (Mark Strong) still sits in prison with the tiny caterpillar-like Mister Mind there with him. Sivana complains that it’s been two years and still nothing, and Mister Mind says he’s little and it takes him a while to get places. That’s it.

Surely this was merely because they decided not to continue the tease from the first movie into the second film’s main story. And it’s always nice to see Mark Strong, even in such a brief appearance. But this really didn’t feel like much of anything, especially considering the already shaky standing the Shazam characters have in the future of the DCU.

Will Shazam join the proper Justice Society? Will Doctor Sivana and Mister Mind ever leave the prison? Only time (and box office returns) will tell.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

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The behind-the-scenes uncertainty regarding the DCEU/DCU changeover has been far more intriguing than the bulk of the films released under the DCEU banner. I’m supremely excited for the future projects new co-CEO James Gunn announced in January. More interesting has been the fact that several films are still due to come out before this change officially happens. Black Adam was not good, and despite what its star maintains publicly, it didn’t perform well enough to continue on. But Shazam! Fury of the Gods might. And the movie itself is charming and harmless enough to remain relevant to the DCU, even though it doesn’t work nearly as well as the first one.

The first Shazam! from 2019 wasn’t quite a breath of fresh air for the DC Extended Universe, but it was a whole lot more fun than most of them. Telling the relatively small story of a kid who gets super powers, and moreover becomes an adult man with super powers, was a delightful comedic spin. Just a kid from Philadelphia who doesn’t know what he’s doing. It had something of a ’90s vibe to the tone and it worked for the most part.

A sequel seemed inevitable, because of course it did. Shazam! Fury of the Gods picks up a few years after the first one. Billy Batson (Asher Angel) and his foster family all have super powers and seem to cause more mayhem than help people. Billy spends most of his time in his super alter ego (Zachary Levi) guise, and tries to hold his five super-sibs together. While some, like Mary (played in both iterations by Grace Caroline Currey), wants to finish college and get a job, Freddy (Jack Dylan Grazer and Adam Brody) just wants to fly solo, or at least with only Billy.

Trouble arises when the Daughters of Atlas (Helen Mirren, Lucy Liu, Rachel Zegler) appear on the scene, demanding the not-dead wizard (Djimon Hounsou) re-forge the broken staff from the first movie so they can steal back their father’s powers from the Shazamily. Each of the Daughters has a different, deadly power, and each has a different level of contempt for humanity. Through the course of the movie, Billy will have to re-learn what it means to be a hero while everyone else has to learn other things.

First the good stuff. This movie mostly retains the level of humor of the first, which was its best feature. The movie smartly pairs Hounsou and Grazer together for large portion of the story and their comedic repartee is consistently good. Freddy got by far the best character arc in the movie. The youngest sister Darla (Faithe Herman) and her superhero counterpart (Meagan Good) is another standout. Hilarious with their upbeat naivete at every turn. A particular moment toward the end got me to blurt-laugh.

I also had a lot of fun with the movie’s big evil creatures. Director David F. Sandberg’s horror roots came through a lot in the first movie and I had assumed they’d be a bit watered down in this one. However, toward the end, we get some huge, gnarly mythical creatures for the family to fight and they scratched that tonal itch.

Unfortunately, the part that worked the least for me was Billy/Shazam himself. We get shockingly little of Asher Angel this time around (who honestly could be a superhero himself) and instead we have Levi’s teen-in-a-man’s-body schtick which I think has just worn a bit thin. He was far more annoying than I remember in the first movie. His ineptitude and emotional immaturity, while occasionally funny, just seemed so much more out of place here. I didn’t buy his arc, all the way up to the end. The villains, well played as they are, also didn’t do much to play off of Billy’s insecurities. Dr. Sivana in the first movie was much more a foil to Billy. The Daughters of Atlas are just angry demigods.

So, despite the humor, the story didn’t grab me the way the first film’s did. With the exception of Freddy, who was the best. Shazam! Fury of the Gods is still entertaining enough and definitely isn’t stupid or badly cobbled together like Black Adam was. And hey, if they make some more Shazam! movies, it wouldn’t be the worst thing. But if you’re hoping for “the first movie but bigger and better,” only one of those is true, and definitely hampers the other.

Shazam! Fury of the Gods hits theaters March 17.

Shazam! Fury of the Gods ⭐ (3 of 5)

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

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Once Russell T Davies was announced as taking over Doctor Who again, wheels turned about what else might be in the pipeline. During RTD’s first regime (2005-2010), fans saw two successful Doctor Who spinoffs: the adult-oriented Torchwood and the kid-focused The Sarah Jane Adventures. And with a new Doctor, and a new distribution deal with Disney+, we wondered what other shows we’d see in the Whoniverse. Now, according to a report from Deadline, we have an idea. The lastest Doctor Who spinoff will be a show focused on UNIT and star Jemma Redgrave as Kate Stewart.

Kate first debuted on screen in 2012’s “The Power of Three,” the daughter of fan-fave classic ally Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. She has acted as head of Doctor Who‘s UNIT, the Unified Intelligence Taskforce, in all of her appearances. Most recently, Kate appeared in “The Power of the Doctor,” Jodie Whittaker’s final story.

Recently, Davies spoke in a BBC Radio 2 interview that one of the episodes of Series 14, of which they’re midway through filming, is “one of the greatest things I’ve ever made in my life.” That is high praise for someone with as illustrious a career as Davies to say. Kate Stewart will likely show up in this year’s Doctor Who Christmas special, with Ncuti Gatwa. This will be after the 60th-anniversary specials starring David Tennant and Catherine Tate.

A UNIT/Kate spinoff is perhaps the biggest no-brainer for a new Doctor Who show. It has the potential to do what Torchwood tried to do; that show couldn’t decide how adult it wanted to be. “The Power of the Doctor” introduced the idea that Kate had been recruiting past companions. What a great way to have legacy characters pop in and out for various missions? Plus, we just love Redgrave! Yes, give her a show.

More information as it develops.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

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One of the joys of this season of HBO’s The Last of Us is seeing just how much Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann were able to change things up from the game. It’s certainly supremely faithful, but the changes have been welcome. And while the season one finale is pretty darned true to the game’s final section, the episode’s prologue is a whole big new section which gave Ellie some fascinating backstory. It all but explains how and why she’s immune.

The episode opens with a pregnant woman running through the forest, trying to evade an infected person. It’s not going well, as you might expect. This person is Anna (Ashley Johnson, who of course played Ellie in the game). She makes her way into an abandoned house but the infected pursue her. She fights for her life and eventually stabs the infected in the head, only then realizing she’d given birth in the struggle.

Anna cuts the umbilical cord with the same knife she used to kill the infected. She has also received a bite. This does not bode well for the new mother. Some time later, Marlene enters. Marlene and Anna know each other, evidently have been friends for years. Anna begs Marlene to take her newborn daughter, lying that she didn’t use the knife on the infected before the umbilical cord. Eventually, Marlene accepts, and Anna tells her the baby is named Ellie.

So from this we learn a few things. First and foremost, we know why Marlene knew who Ellie was. She was clearly aware of Ellie, but she put two and two together when the girl they discovered in the mall wasn’t a raving fungus monster despite her bites. Second, this all but confirms the very specific set of circumstances that led to Ellie’s immunity. A pregnant woman gives birth the second she’s bit, uses an infected knife to cut the umbilical. It’s unrepeatable.

Is this addition to the story strictly necessary? Certainly not. Most people were perfectly happy just to accept that Ellie was immune. Who knows why, she just is? The show, on the other hand, has spent a great deal of time, especially early on, pondering this question. Could there be other people like her? This makes it much clearer that Ellie is a unicorn. She isn’t just the first immune person they discovered; it’s possible she’s the only immune person there is or ever will be.

Therefore, it also makes the ending more profound. It shows us that even Ellie’s mother’s friend looks at the girl more as a means to a cure versus a real person. Conversely, we know that Ellie is the only one who even possibly could provide a cure, but Joel views her as a human first. He fought to keep her alive, and she made him more alive as a result. It’s a morally ambiguous ending even without this context, but Joel officially doomed the world so he could have his daughter back. That’s a hell of a tragedy, and damn compelling TV.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

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For anyone who’s played The Last of Us, which splits the narrative into seasons of the year, you know the “Winter” section is pretty rough. Not only is the terrain and visibility incredibly treacherous, it leads Ellie to perhaps the most infamous confrontation in the entire first game. For the corresponding episode of the HBO series, they somehow managed to make it even more horrific and intense while entirely removing a major set piece. You probably didn’t even miss it.

This section of the game is the first in which players take control of Ellie rather than Joel. Joel is still, as he is in the show, largely incapacitated from the wound he suffered in Colorado. For the entirety of the game to this point, Joel has been the player, and Ellie the escorted supporting character. So when we see the “Winter” chyron in the game, we’re surprised to see it’s Ellie we control. She has a bow and arrow and hunts for wild game. The solitude the player and Ellie feel is palpable. As Joel, we always had Ellie cracking jokes and keeping us honest; here, Ellie has no one, and that’s precisely what leads her to the horrors later in the story.

After shooting a deer—in the show, it’s just with a rifle—she comes across two weary looking hunters. One is David (Scott Shepherd) and the other is James (Troy Baker). Now anyone who has played the game knows David is bad news, but the TV show, I think, does a much better job of making David truly terrifying rather than video-game terrifying.

As voiced by Nolan North, Game David is scraggly, unshaven, seems to wear dirty rags, and speaks with what I can only describe as “evil creep whimpering.” In short, it’s no surprise when we learn David is a cannibal. This works just fine in a video game, and it’s no shade on North or the game designers. By this point in the game, we’ve met tons of weird creeps, and it’s really more of a question of whether Ellie can trust David for even a short period of time.

In the show, David is much subtler in his creepiness. While Shepherd plays him with the requisite shadiness, he’s clearly much more put together. His hair is short, he’s wearing a sweater, he looks like a guy. James, on the other hand, still looks much more in line with Game James, and we quickly learn why. More on that in a moment.

The first interaction plays out much like in the game. David tries to convince Ellie that he leads a bigger group and they need food. Ellie lies and says she does too, but eventually David convinces her that they can split the deer. James goes off to get the cutting implements while David stays with Ellie as collateral.

It’s here in the game when we get a big gameplay moment. Ellie and David have to fend off their position from a horde of infected. Waves of clickers and runners come into their little atrium of supposed safety and Ellie and David work together to stop them. It’s through this little action set piece that Ellie lets her guard down ever so slightly. She never fully trusts David, but she thinks they might be of similar level of desperate. Little does she know.

In the show, the same scene plays out very differently. We get no infected and instead we have a conversation where David talks about finding his way through religion after the fall of society. He has made a promise to his people, and wants to be a good person. Or so he says. It’s not entirely obvious that he’s up to some horrifying shiz, and this gives Ellie the briefest moment of guard-dropping when James returns.

Ellie has not that long ago seen Jackson, the thriving, safe, well-run community of survivors in Wyoming. David’s resort town-turned-sanctuary could easily have been the same kind of place. In fact, when we go back to the town with David, it certainly shows signs of what it could be. However, they were not blessed with the resources or the gumption of the Jackson compound, as evidenced by the slowly starving members of David’s flock.

What truly makes Show David scarier than Game David is that he believes he’s doing the right thing, and the power of his position has gone well to his head. We see everyone else pale and gaunt but David is well fed. Sure, it’s because he’s eating people, but in the same way we saw Kathleen’s followers trust her blindly to their own detriment, David’s people just want someone to believe in. They shouldn’t have done that. In the game, David feels like a psycho leading the Donner Party. In the show, he’s a monster who exploited lost souls.

By episode’s end, when Ellie goes feral in her final victory over David, both she and we have met the worst of The Last of Us. It’s not just people put in tough situations forced to do despicable things. Nor is it only an “us or them” mentality. David effectively gave Ellie the choice “Sell out Joel and become my next child bride or I’m going to eat you.” If the previous episode showed us the last hours of Ellie’s childhood, this episode showed us Ellie’s quick education on a what a world without Joel could hold for her. The winter of her innocence.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

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Franchises refuse to die. Like some kind of alien spore species, they stick around and evolve and adapt ad infinitum for the purpose of money. Anyway, there’s going to be another Alien movie. The Hollywood Reporter reported that Fede Alvarez, the director behind Don’t Breathe and 2013’s Evil Dead, will write and direct an original standalone movie in the 43-year-old franchise. Ridley Scott, who directed the original Alien as well as the prequel films Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, will produce. Mare of Easttown‘s Cailee Spaeny will star in the movie.

Also joining the cast are David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Isabela Merced, Spike Fearn, and Aileen Wu. The movie, from 20th Century Studios, will evidently go directly to Hulu to compete in the streaming space. A short synopsis shares:

In this ninth entry in the immensely popular and enduring film series, a group of young people on a distant world find themselves in a confrontation with the most terrifying life form in the universe.

The Hollywood Reporter says 20th Century plans to make more than 10 movies a year for the Disney-owned streaming service. Alien, a proven worldwide quantity, would likely entice people to subscribe to Hulu. Disney has a track record of sending prestigious movies to its streaming services; Turning Red will mark the third Pixar movie in a row to debut exclusively on Disney+.

This movie will not, as far as we know, have any direct connection to the upcoming Alien TV series set to debut on FX on Hulu in 2023. Hulu is, of course, the more adult side of Disney’s streaming machinations, keeping Disney+ mainly to family-friendly fare.

The Alien franchise has a total of eight films, including the two very bad Alien vs. Predator films. Though the news describes Alvarez’s movie as “standalone,” we don’t know if that means it will have absolutely no connection to any of the previous entries, or if it’ll just be outside the Ripley or David sagas. Alvarez’s most recent directorial work was as the writer and director of the animated horror series Calls on Apple TV+.

Regardless of which direction Alvarez goes for the film, we can be sure we’ll never have to wait too long again for a facehugger or Xenomorph to grace a screen.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Twitter!

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Kang, Kang, Kang. So many Kangs, so little time. But actually a ton of time, yet still a lot of Kangs. Anyway, we live in the age of Kang in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Kang the Conqueror has stepped in to fill the villain vacuum left in the wake of Thanos’ double deaths. And while Jonathan Majors is a super muscular dude, it’ll take a number of him—across many universes and timelines—to give the growing number of Marvel heroes a proper run for their money. Phase Five just began and we’ve already met several Kangs. Avengers: The Kang Dynasty won’t come out until May 2025, so that’s plenty of time for even more Kangs!

Here are the Kang variants we’ve met in the MCU so far.

He Who Remains

Our first blush with the Conqueror wasn’t even with the name Kang. Stuck at the very end of time, one particular variant, seemingly in an effort to protect reality from himself, pruned all other timelines of any would-be Kang variants. This is He Who Remains, the final “villain” in season one of Loki. A much more humble (to a degree) version of Kang, he may have done a lot of bad things but for, it seems, the right reasons. However, he seemed to know Loki and/or Sylvie wouldn’t have agreed to take over for him because his final words “See you soon” are far too portentous to be coincidental.

Exile Kang

The main Kang from Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, we learn, is actually an exile from the Council of Kangs we see at the end of the movie. This Kang is, evidently, the worst possible Kang. Too cruel or something even for the rest of the Kangs. We learn precious little about him in the movie but he seems to have fought the Avengers previous (or perhaps later?) and killed several of them. Whether that’s in a different universe or a future within Marvel’s 616 Universe is still unknown.

We also know that this Kang is extremely powerful, enslaving the whole of the Quantum Realm in relative ease. He built an army so he doesn’t have to get his hands dirty, but we see in the movie’s third act that he’s more than capable. Totally ruthless, he disintegrates fleeing Quantumanians just because he’s angry. He also turned Darren Cross into M.O.D.O.K. which is maybe his cruelest act ever.

Is Exile Kang the Same as Prime Kang?

This is an interesting question. The end of Quantumania has Kang sucked into the imploding/exploding multiversal engine. It sure seems like he’s dead, and even the later Kangs assume as much. But the movie—for all its faults—did a very good job of establishing Kang the Conqueror as a threat and a force to be reckoned with. The rest of the Kangs all seem to think he’s bad news, and despite his possible remorse of his actions, he knows there’s no other way for him. (Remorse because he seems to weep openly at what he must do.)

It’s entirely possible that this Kang will return, and remain the main Kang of the MCU. His costume and general demeanor seem to indicate he’s Prime Kang, and it would be a shame if he’s gone for good. Now will we see other Kangs as main villains of movies and shows? Certainly. But the first Kang of Phase Five should definitely come back.

The Pharaoh Rama-Tut

At the end of Quantumania we see the Council of Kangs. There are, roughly, 19 million of them. The movie features three of these variants specifically, and each corresponds to the most famous of Kang’s variants. First is Rama-Tut, who is actually the very first version of the character we ever saw in Marvel Comics. The villain in 1963’s Fantastic Four #17, he’s a time traveler from the future who uses his advanced tech to conquer Ancient Egypt. It wasn’t until Giant-Size Avengers #2 in 1973 that we learn Rama-Tut was a future version of Kang.

Immortus

Another variant of Kang who debuted long before anyone knew he was Kang. Immortus first appeared in Avengers #10, only two issues after Kang. Immortus is, in most continuities, a Kang variant who took over as emissary and keeper of time at the end of all things. In a lot of ways, Immortus has traditionally done things that He Who Remains did in Loki. Here, with his wizened, distant look and headwear, he seems more like the ruler of the Kangs than of some benevolent future Kang. But time will tell! (Get it?)

Immortus is also the Kang who informs the others that the Avengers killed “the exile” and that they need to prepare for more conflict. Like Gary Oldman in The Professional, Immortus summoned EVERYONE.

The Scarlet Centurion

It wasn’t entirely clear in the film which variant of Kang was the third of the Council’s triumvirate. This Kang seems younger than the other two, with his Snagglepuss-like voice. He also seems to have received a number of cybernetic upgrades, making him partially, if not mostly, mechanical.

We thought this Kang seems to evoke either the Scarlet Centurion variant from the comics (despite being silver rather than red) or Iron Lad (though, again, certainly not obviously Iron Man-adjacent). Turns out, thanks to an interview with director Peyton Reed for ET Online that it was indeed Scarlet Centurion. Or “Centurion” as Reed called him. This makes sense, as Centurion really is the third biggest Kang variant following Rama Tut and Immortus.

However, unlike the other two, there is no one definitive beginning for the Scarlet Centurion. He’s often a distant future offspring of Kang, or just a younger Kang from a different universe. Either way, Snagglepuss voice.

Victor Timely

In the post-credits scene for Quantumania, we see Loki and Mobius have ended up in the early 1900s where someone named Victor Timely is giving a demonstration of his technological achievements. We see this Victor Timely is, in fact, Jonathan Majors sporting a period hairstyle and facial hair. In the comics, Victor Timely was a Kang variant who first appeared in Avengers Forever #9. After a humiliating defeat in the comics, he traveled back in time to the early 20th Century, set himself up as a Thomas Edison-esque inventor and created a business and tech empire.

Perhaps this version of Kang is the big villain of Loki season two, or perhaps it’ll end up being yet another variant in disguise. Who can say?

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

Originally published February 23, 2023.

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Ah, a new phase. Feels good to break off a new one. And with the first movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Phase Five, we get a lot of things to chew on. We meet Kang and M.O.D.O.K. and spend a lot of time in the quantum realm in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. But arguably the most meat occurs in the final moments and the mid-credits and post-credits scenes. So much to discuss! But in order to do that, we’re going to have to spoil the end of the movie. So if you’d like to wait until you see Quantumania, this is your jumping off point. Everyone else, join me below to learn about Quantumania‘s ending and credits scenes!

Ant-Man the Wasp: Quantumania‘s Ending

The movie, which has all of the members of the Lang/Pym/Van Dyne conglomerate in the Quantum Realm, ends with Scott and Hope defeating Kang the Conqueror by sucking him into his exploding/imploding multiversal engine core. The end of Kang, right? Well, no. As Scott narrates the denouement, a mirror to the movie’s opening, he starts to worry they didn’t actually stop Kang. You see, this Exiled Kang kept saying he wanted revenge on those who exiled him. They, it seems, were even worse than he was.

Scott shrugs it off as the credits roll. But the mid-credits scene shows him exactly why he was right to worry.

Ant-Man the Wasp: Quantumania‘s Mid-Credits Scene

The mid-credits scene shows us something I did not expect to see so soon: the Council of Kangs! That’s right, we know Kang has a million variants but I thought Marvel Studios might hold off on showing them. But no. We first see Rama-Tut, the version of Kang who appeared first in Marvel Comics. He cross paths with the Fantastic Four in Fantastic Four #19. He speaks with two other Kang variants. The most prominent of these is Immortus, who actually first appeared only two issues after Kang Prime, in Avengers #10.

The third of these is less clear. It’s a bald Jonathan Majors with a silver metal body. It’s possible this is a version of Scarlet Centurion (without the red hue, of course). It could also be the MCU’s take on Kid Immortus or Iron Lad, though that’s much less likely.

At any rate, they talk about how outsiders killed the exile variant. The Avengers have started to touch the multiverse and this is potentially very bad for Kang-kind. Immortus has called all the other Kangs together. We then cut to an arena where Kang upon Kang appears and all seem to holler and carouse together, waiting for the meeting to commence.

This final collage of Kangs hearkens back to the first appearance of the Council of Kangs in Avengers #292. We even see a shouting lizard Kang who appeared in that panel.

Pretty good mid-credits, setting up the entire roster of Kangs… almost.

Ant-Man the Wasp: Quantumania‘s Post-Credits Scene

The post-credits scene finds us in the early 1900s with someone showing off some very futuristic tech to the Victorian crowds. We see it’s Jonathan Majors with a wild hairstyle and facial hair and little round glasses. We also see a banner which says he’s Victor Timely.

Victor Timely was a Kang variant who first appeared in Avengers Forever #9. After a humiliating defeat in the comics, he traveled back in time to the early 20th Century, set himself up as a Thomas Edison-esque inventor and created a business and tech empire.

As Timely speaks, we see Loki and Mobius whispering about how this is the man Loki met and was subsequently warned about. He’s terrifying, Loki says. This lets us know this post-credits scene is actually a scene from Loki season two, a fact that director Peyton Reed has now officially confirmed. Thus, we will not have long to wait for more Kang, in any of his many guises. Season two of Loki will air some time mid-2023.

So many Kangs, so little time!

Originally published on February 16, 2023.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

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In Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, we get a funny moment during M.O.D.O.K.’s “death” scene where he says “at least I died an Avenger,” having turned coat and helped the Ant-Clan against Kang. Obviously this elicits a chuckle from the audience and a funny look from Scott Lang. No, of course M.O.D.O.K. isn’t an Avenger. But what exactly makes one an Avenger in the MCU? Traditionally in the Marvel Comics, just helping some or all of the Avengers doesn’t give you full membership. And yet, with very few exceptions, we never really see any kind of induction ceremony. So how exactly does one become an Avenger in the MCU?

The For-Sure Avengers

The ones we know for absolute certain count as Avengers are the OGs from The Avengers. Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Thor Odinson, Bruce Banner, Natasha Romanoff, and Clint Barton. They have a gif, they’re definitely the Avengers.

We also pretty much know the second wave of Avengers from the end of Avengers: Age of Ultron. Wanda Maximoff, Vision, Sam Wilson, and James “Rhodey” Rhodes. Cap assembles them, which seems like it’s a pretty major indicator of membership. Hmm. We’ll see.

The First Maybe Avengers

Once the Avengers disassembled during the events of Captain America: Civil War, it was unclear if there even was a proper Avengers roster anymore. Half the team (save Thor and Hulk; they were busy in space) fought the other half. They also had some help. Cap’s side recruited people like the Winter Soldier and Ant-Man, while Iron Man’s side recruited Black Panther and Spider-Man. At this point, neither of those additions could realistically hope to be official Avengers.

Spider-Man, interestingly enough, was offered membership at the end of Homecoming and turned it down.

The Thanos-Fighting Avengers

The events of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame both complicate and clarify the membership of many characters. Dr. Strange, Wong, the Guardians of the Galaxy, Spider-Man, Black Panther, Winter Soldier, Okoye, Shuri, and M’Baku all help fight off Thanos in Infinity War. Are all of them Avengers? Or are they merely allies? Plus, most of them get dusted before anyone can officially receive an invite anyway.

Post-Snap, we have a much better sense of who is an Avenger. Why? Because we see a functioning Avengers team after the five-year time-jump. Steve, Natasha, Okoye, Carol Danvers, Rocket, Nebula, and Rhodey. Smart-Hulk seems to have left the team, as has Tony Stark. However, once Scott Lang returns from the Quantum Realm and gives everyone hope to undo the snap, they both return to the fold. Clint Barton, too, who’d been away for many movies, and Thor who went into hiding following his failure.

So the Endgame Avengers are as follows: Steve, Tony, Natasha, Clint, Thor, Banner (hey, the originals!), Nebula, Rocket, Rhodey, and Scott. We feel pretty confident calling all of these characters full members.

What About All Those Heroes in Endgame?

Honestly, this one is a bit of a who-knows. The end of Endgame has roughly 19 million good guys returning to fight against Thanos and his forces. Are all of them Avengers? Cap does say “Avengers….assemble” and it rules. But Is that enough to say they all have membership?

Naturally, some of these are Avengers by default. Hope Lang was never an Avenger before, but Scott is and her parents were, so it seems reasonable that she’d be in. Wong was the Sorcerer Supreme during the Blip and, it seems, he has worked with the Avengers on some level. So he’s in. Valkyrie, also, never fought with the Avengers, though she did fight with Thor and Hulk. Spider-Man, Dr. Strange, Black Panther, and Winter Soldier I think are all officially in based on general heroism.

But what about the entire Wakandan army? What about the returning members of the Guardians? What about all those Kamar-Taj sorcerers? And what about Pepper Potts, who had nifty Rescue armor? Are they all Avengers just because?

Are the Avengers Even a Thing Anymore?

Following Endgame, it sure seems like the Avengers as a functioning team no longer exists. Nick Fury’s in outer space with the Skrulls; Tony, Nat, and Vision are dead. Steve went back in time and lived himself to geriatric status. Thor went off with the Guardians of the Galaxy and is now in outer space too; T’Challa sadly passed away. Pretty sure Wanda lost her Avenger status by turning evil, if she didn’t die at Mount Wundagore. Sam and Bucky seem to just be working for the US government, not even S.H.I.E.L.D. Dr. Strange seems uninterested in Avengering, and nobody can remember Spider-Man anymore. That pretty much only leaves Clint, Scott, and Banner and all three are effectively retired.

We know there will be an Avengers team by the time of The Kang Dynasty and Secret Wars, but by that point there won’t have been an Avengers movie in two full phases. I doubt many, if any, of the Thunderbolts will get Avengers status.

Who Definitely Are Not Avengers in the MCU?

Besides M.O.D.O.K.? Well, actually quite a few heroes aren’t Avengers. Shang-Chi, Shuri as Black Panther, White Vision, and Jennifer Walters all could receive Avengers invitations but they haven’t yet. Kamala Khan and Monica Rambeau will team up with Carol Danvers in The Marvels but will she recruit them? Same holds true for any of the other “Young Avengers” they’ve set up thus far; this includes Yelena Bolova, Cassie Lang, and Kate Bishop.

Loki isn’t. Daredevil isn’t. Nobody even knows who Moon Knight is, so he isn’t. The Eternals almost assuredly will never be Avengers. Howard the Duck is absolutely not.

Part of the fun of Avengers comics is shaking up membership and roster every so often. But there needs to be someone in charge. Otherwise people can just say they’re Avengers, William Nilliam. Until Sam Wilson becomes fully vested as Captain America, we kind of don’t think the Avengers in the MCU will exist as it has in the Infinity Saga.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

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Growing up in North America, you might assume the entirety of Italian horror movies are either proto-slasher giallo films or gory zombie flicks. But not so! While giallo owned the ’70s and zombies devoured the ’80s, the ’60s saw a much more austere and traditional spate of horror in the form of a cycle of Gothic horror. These fascinating and varied films have seen a renaissance on home media in the past few years, and boutique distributor Severin Films have been at the forefront. Now we have a brand new, all-Gothic, all-Italian box set coming our way: Danza Macabra Volume One.

Sure, Gothic horror has castles, crypts, and candelabras, but the genre—especially in Italy—also includes lots of other delicious, devilish delicacies. You’ve got repressed sexuality, family secrets, violence, and growing madness. The four films in Danza Macabra Volume One might not be super well known; however, they have wall-to-wall examples of the best of the genre.

In 1964’s The Monster of the Opera, director Renato Polselli and screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi craft a surreal erotic shocker set within a contemporary dance troupe. Perhaps the genre’s rarest film, the berserk supernatural narrative of 1965’s The Seventh Grave also makes it among the strangest. For 1970’s Scream of the Demon Lover, director José Luis Merino gathers classic traditions, then strips them naked and ties them to a torture rack. And 1971’s Lady Frankenstein delivers iconic EuroCult talent on both sides of the camera for one of the most luridly entertaining shockers of the decade.

As with all of Severin’s recent box sets (like The Eurocrypt of Christopher Lee; The Lenzi/Baker Collection; and especially their amazing All the Haunts Be Ours folk horror compendium), Danza Macabra will have tons of great special features. Each film will have at least one commentary track from authors and critics such as Kat Ellinger; Rachael Nisbet; Rod Barnett and Robert Monell; Annie Rose Malamet; and Alan Jones and Kim Newman. Video essays, interviews with filmmakers and luminaries, and documentaries round out the set.

Complete list of extras below.

Special Features for MONSTER OF THE OPERA

• Audio Commentary With Kat Ellinger
• Terror At The Opera – Interview With Screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi
• Capodimonte Gothic – Interview With Mark Thompson-Ashworth
• Radio Polselli – Archival Audio Interview With Director Renato Polselli
• French Trailer

Feature Specs for MONSTER OF THE OPERA

• Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
• Audio: Italian Mono
• Subtitles: English
• Region: A

Special Features for SEVENTH GRAVE

• Audio Commentary With Rachael Nisbet
• Seven Graves And A Mystery – Interview With Film Historian Fabio Melelli
• English Aesthetic With Giallo Blood – Video Essay By Rachel Knightly

Feature Specs for SEVENTH GRAVE:

• Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
• Audio: Italian Mono
• Subtitles: English
• Region: A/B/C

Special Features for SCREAM OF THE DEMON LOVER

• Audio Commentary With Rod Barnett And Robert Monell
• Scream Erna Scream! – Interview With Actress Erna Schurer
• In The Castle Of Blood – Video Essay By Stephen Thrower, Author of Eyeball Compendium
• Trailer

Feature Specs for SCREAM OF THE DEMON LOVER

• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
• Audio: English Mono, Italian Mono
• Closed Captions: English SDH
• Region: A

Special Features for LADY FRANKENSTEIN

• Audio Commentary With Kat Ellinger And Annie Rose Malamet
• Audio Commentary With Alan Jones And Kim Newman
• Meet The Baroness – Featurette With Actress Rosalba Neri And Film Historian Fabio Melelli
• Piecing Together LADY FRANKENSTEIN
• The Lady And The Orgy – Documentary Short On Director Mel Welles
• The Truth About LADY FRANKENSTEIN (2007) – German TV Documentary
• Clothed Insert Shots
• Video Short Illustrating BBFC Censorship Cuts
• Italian Opening Credits
• Bigfilm Magazine (1971) – Italian LADY FRANKENSTEIN Photo Novel
• Extensive Image Gallery
• Home Video Gallery
• Radio Spots
• TV Spot
• Trailers

Feature Specs for LADY FRANKENSTEIN

• Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
• Audio: English Stereo, Italian Stereo
• Subtitles: English
• Closed Captions: English SDH
• Region: A/B/C

Danza Macabra Volume One will arrive on March 28. You can never start Gothic season too early.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

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It’s a new phase in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Phase Five, they tell us. Phase Four, despite a couple decent movies and some quite good TV series, felt a little half-baked. No clear goal or thrust aside from the fallout of Avengers: Endgame. Many outside the dedicated nerd sphere might be forgiven for not realizing the final feature in Phase Four was Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, its final entry period the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special. Hardly a rousing culmination. Phase Five, however, at least begins with a booming statement. The movie may be Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, but we are in the Age of Kang.

The Thanos of it all has given folks a major question mark going forward. Such a compelling and intimidating villain is hard to follow. And, let us not forget Marvel Studios’ long history of lackluster villains (or great villains who die too soon). They needed to make their next Big Bad just as interesting as Thanos but markedly different. Jonathan Majors’ Kang, it appears on first blush, is just such a villain. Scary, cruel, confident, yet deep and almost remorseful at times. Majors’ glassy-eyed moments between evil deeds gives Kang so much more heft than he might have otherwise.

The usual problem is a villain who seems out of step with the movie; here it’s a hero who feels at odds with the tone of his own film. Paul Rudd is just as charming as ever and moments of Quantumania showcase the dry humor that made his Scott Lang and the first two Ant-Man movies so fun. Here, he and the other main heroes are completely outmatched by the baddies, the colorful and weird Quantum Realm, and the strange characters we meet within it.

Years after the Blip, Scott Lang has written a memoir about his adventures and, though happy, seems rudderless and content to live off his celebrity. Not true for his partner Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) who has relaunched her father’s company and become a pillar of the scientific community. His daughter Cassie (now played by Kathryn Newton) has become a proponent of civil rights, entering the film in jail for trying to prevent police from breaking up an unhoused encampment. She’s fighting for her beliefs, and has become a scientist in her own right. She, along with Hope and Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), have created a satellite to the Quantum Realm.

This news comes to the chagrin of Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) who still has not told her family the horrors she witnessed during her 30 years within the Quantum Realm. And she’s right to be afraid; not two seconds after they turn on the satellite does the device suck all five of them into it. Someone has a score to settle with Janet and doesn’t care who else gets hurt along the way. Kang, it’s Kang.

Unlike the first two Ant-Man movies, which balanced family comedy-drama with goofy superheroics and a helping of quantum weirdness, here it’s all quantum. Yes, we have some humor, and a lot of it is really funny. William Jackson Harper, who plays a mind-reading denizen of the Quantum Realm, has a particularly funny few scenes. Bill Murray plays a wealthy former associate of Janet’s and does his Bill Murray thing.

I also need to give special commendation to M.O.D.O.K., aka the former Darren Cross (Corey Stoll). Director Peyton Reed and the actors understand how silly the Mechanized Organism Designed Only for Killing actually is and steer into it beautifully. Stoll’s giant, stretched face is as goofy as it gets and yet they make it work within the context of the movie. As much as I generally dislike when the movies take the piss out of the comic books’ inherent out-thereness, it needed to happen with M.O.D.O.K.

The problem is, despite some very nifty set pieces and some laughs, the meat of the movie is Kang and not with any of the heroes. Is this a problem in general? No. But it seems as though the script attempts to give Scott and Cassie a throughline that sort of fizzles out; Hank Pym gets to do some fun stuff but doesn’t have much in the way of an arc; Janet and Hope likewise seem to start from a place of conflict and it doesn’t go where it should. And for a movie called Ant-Man and the Wasp, Rudd and Lilly share shockingly few meaningful scenes.

As a movie to properly foist Kang the Conqueror onto the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania succeeds and then some. I can’t wait for the next appearance of Kang and/or his many proposed variants. As a movie for the Pym/Lang/Van Dyne family of size-changing heroes? It’s only just fine.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania ⭐ (3 of 5)

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania hits theaters February 17.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

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HBO’s upcoming series The Last of Us looks like a pretty darn faithful adaptation of Naughty Dog’s groundbreaking 2013 action-adventure game. The game itself, though full of great set pieces and gameplay elements, was very much story-first, so adapting it to screen will not be that difficult. So if you haven’t played the game, you’ll be able to enjoy as it goes. But that also means you might just assume that The Last of Us‘ zombies are the typical undead shufflers. Not so! The once-human monsters of The Last of Us have a distinct progression and backstory that set them apart. Here’s everything you need to know!

The Last of Us Zombies Aren’t Zombies

I suppose, the first big thing about the zombies in The Last of Us is that they aren’t really zombies. At least, not zombies in the traditional, Romero-Kirkman way we think about them. The outbreak that causes the entire world to collapse in The Last of Us comes from a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus, and our non-zombie zombies come from this fungus and the infection it causes.

Cordyceps are parasitic fungi that usually attack insects, arthropods, or other fungi. Essentially, the Cordyceps fungus doesn’t tend to bug us too much in real life. However, in The Last of Us, a mutated version of the fungus enters human bodies via airborne spores and nestles itself in our brains.

In The Last of Us‘ universe, spores grow fungus in human brains until they eventually take over, creating a kind of zombie. The infection can also transmit via the saliva of those infected, so your typical bite. In this way, The Last of Us‘ zombies do offer us some traditional zombie aspects.

With that in mind, here are the stages of infection and consequent types of zombies at play in The Last of Us.

Jump to: Runners // Stalkers // Clickers // Bloaters // Shamblers // Rat King

Stage One of the Infected: Runners

The first stage of the Last of Us‘ zombie-creating infection is what survivors call “Runners.” These people will begin bleeding from their eyes, nose, and mouth, and run quite fast due to the fungus controlling their nervous systems. The base impulse of those at the Runners stage is to attack other people, often in hordes. While The Last of Us‘ Runners don’t possess any extra strength, their pain threshold is greater due, again, to fungus brain. (The answer to most questions of “Why can they do that?” is “Fungus Brain.”)

Stage Two of the Infected: Stalkers

Stalkers are people who’ve been infected anywhere between two weeks and a year. The fungus, by this point, will have sprung out of their head and body parts, creating a barnacle look. The Last of Us‘ Stalkers, as their name suggests, don’t run toward their prey but will instead wait in dark corners and wait for unsuspecting people to walk by. Those at this stage of infection also may prop themselves up near a wall and allow the fungus to grow into it. They can then pop out of the fungus when someone traipses by.

When in the Stalkers stage, The Last of Us‘ zombies also tend to moan and cry in pain as the fungus takes over their muscles. So that’s a lot of fun.

Stage Three of the Infected: Clickers

Probably the most distinctive type of infected in The Last of Us are the Clickers. These are people who’ve been infected for over a year. The fungus will have broken completely out of the top of their head, removing the victim’s eyes and replacing them with a sort of coral shape. The Last of Us‘ Clickers shamble around, emitting distinctive clicks which bounce off of walls and objects, allowing these infected zombie creatures to echolocate prey. The fungus will also have reinforced their muscles and calcified their skin, making the much stronger and more durable than in the earlier stages.

A consequence of the Clickers’ method of hunting is sound warfare, creating a terrifying portent of doom for people who walk into their general vicinity on The Last of Us.

We’ve seen a few Clickers throughout The Last of Us‘ episodes. The show’s creators share, “If you’ve survived long enough, eventually the Cordyceps grows through your face, cracks it open, takes away your eyes, your vision, and you become what’s called a ‘Clicker,’ because now these infected use echolocation to find their way.”

It’s not a pleasant infected state, but there’s a long way still to go.

Stage Four-One of the Infected: Bloaters

Yeah, it just keeps getting grosser, folks. After a person has been infected for many years, their bodies bloat and become entirely overrun with fungus. In this stage, The Last of Us‘ zombies are slow and can’t see, but the fungus has reinforced their bodies to the point that they’re basically tanks. Taller, wider, sturdier. Even shotgun blasts to the head won’t stop Bloaters. Only fire can topple these guys. They can also break off pieces of fungus from their epidermis and throw them as projectiles. Seriously, just disgusting.

HBO Max’s Live-Action Bloaters

We’ve now seen a Bloater appear on HBO’s The Last of Us, and this infected was not messing around. Every bit as gross as its game counterpart, the live-action Bloater was oozing and crushing. This zombie-like Bloater made short work of anyone in its way, including tearing someone’s head off.

Series co-creator Neil Druckmann shares more about The Last of Us, “There are certain people that are so strong and big that can survive even longer, and those are the Bloater… That’s why you’re seeing this person is so tall and massive in their strength. And it just becomes that much scarier, again as we go forward, there’s just these new types of infected.”

Craig Mazin, the series other co-creator shares, “We also thought, look, whatever this thing is and however it got that way, there was this notion that it might be scarier that at some point you realize, you’re not killing it… No one’s killing it, ever.” And the Bloater can only become something worse.

Stage Four-Two of the Infected: Shamblers

In areas of heavy water, like swamps and reservoirs, rather than turn into Bloaters, people infected for over a year will continue to shamble around relatively lithe. With the excess of moisture, the infected bodies of these infected zombies don’t calcify or grow in The Last of Us, but will instead emit and expel spores into the air. They also remain much quicker than those who are in either the Clickers or Bloaters stage.

Rare Infected Stage: The Last of Us‘ Zombies Form the Rat King

If you’ve heard of the horrifying natural phenomenon of a rat king, you might have an inkling of what this would mean in the context of The Last of Us‘ Cordyceps zombies. Rat kings are when several rats in a confined space will get their tails inexorably entwined and move together as one to survive. This The Last of Us phenomenon is pretty similar to a rat king infected except with zombies.

If enough Stalkers group together for a long enough time, their fungal growths will connect up. At that point, whichever member of the collective is the strongest will act as the ambulatory legs. In The Last of Us Part II, this only happens after 20 years of infection.

Why Are The Last of Us‘ Infected Violent?

It’s an interesting question. If the fungus is only trying to grow and spread, why do the infected zombies act violently toward the people that surround them? Speaking to Variety, The Last of Us‘ creators addressed this question as it pertains to the series.

Discussing Tess infected “kiss” in episode two of The Last of Us, Craig Mazin shares:

We were already talking about tendrils coming out and we were asking these philosophical questions, “Why are infected people violent? If the point is to spread the fungus, why do they need to be violent?” We landed on that they don’t. They’re violent because we resist, but what if you don’t? What does it look like if you just stand perfectly still and let them do this to you?

So, it turns out, maybe the zombies of The Last of Us aren’t actually violent by nature. But they don’t appreciate humanity’s desire to remain human either.

Final Stage: The Last of Us‘ Zombies Don’t End with Death

Even after an infected body dies, the fungus will continue to grow and spread spores out into the air. This is why survivors tend to wear gas masks when they enter abandoned buildings; it’s best to burn bodies of the infected, rather than let them rot.

Although spores don’t yet feature in HBO’s The Last of Us, the series brings a new level of fearsomeness to the fungus. The fungus is all connected by tendrils that grow underground and it shares something of a hive mind. If you interact with a patch fungus or an infected in one area, you could alert tons of infected zombies to your location.

So that’s fun, right? Lots to look forward to in The Last of Us series when it comes to zombies and fungus. We haven’t seen a ton of the infected in the show thus far, however, we did see a Bloater in one of the recent trailers for the series, so that’s some good nightmare fuel for you.

The Last of Us will premiere on HBO on January 15, 2023.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

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