A famous character of the stage once remarked there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy. It’s a truism which holds for our world, as well as that of Hawkins, Indiana. Sure, Lucas, Dustin, Eleven, and the rest of the gang might have faced the Demogorgon in the Upside-Down, and the Mind Flayer and Vecna too, but there are so many other horrors the writers have dreamed up for this poor town that no single TV show can contain them. These days even Broadway appears to be straining to its technical limit in assisting the effort, as gleaned during the opening prologue of Stranger Things: The First Shadow, a new original play written by Kate Trefry, a veteran of Stranger Things’ writers’ room since season 2 and a co-author of the story for First Shadow alongside series creators Matt and Ross Duffer, and The Cursed Child’s Jack Thorne. Their story, like so much else of Stranger Things, also begins with a mind-bending spectacle: an American battleship during World War II vanishing before a live audience’s eyes and being transported into hell. Into the Upside-Down. “It’s something that we had been floating around in the writers’ room for a long time in Stranger Things,” Trefry admits with a wry smile a few weeks after The First Shadow’s premiere at the Marquis Theatre on Broadway. “The Philadelphia Experiment is like the Montauk Project and MKUltra, one of those touchstones of American conspiracy theory heavy hitters.” First Shadow’s theatrical cold open is indeed informed by the supposed real-life cover up of an American naval ship that is said to have accidentally discovered teleportation, much to the physical and mental horror of its crew. Trefry muses that this old story plays out a little like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, albeit if Mike Teavee’s atoms were reassembled with his brain stuck between a wall. It’s a concept she and the Duffers always wanted to work into the show, and it became the first thing Trefry wrote down when asked to pen the Stranger Things “They challenged me to write whatever I want, and they’d figure out how to make it into a play,” Trefry recalls. “So I was like, ‘Okay, let me just throw down this gauntlet.’ I was kind of testing to see what the limits of the stage were, because it seemed so impossible what I wanted to do. But they went crazy for it because it was so audacious.” Audacity might be the guiding star for every aspect of The First Shadow. Obviously co-directors Stephen Daldry and Justin Mark immediately warmed to the idea of doing a riff on the Philadelphia Experiment, complete with the familiar silhouette of the Mind Flayer, yet everything about this production is massive, with stars of the production comparing it to doing an Olympic marathon on stage every night. This ranges from the massive ensemble cast of 34 players to a veritable village of costumers, stagehands, techies, and various other crew members always scrambling behind the scenes. “Physically, what this show requires of us, does not feel like a normal play,” says Alison Jaye, who stars in the show as a young Joyce Maldonado (later Byers). “If anything it feels closer to a musical, but even then, like a steroid version of anything you’re seeing on stage.” It is in fact one of the most spectacular theatrical experiences this writer has viewed in terms of stagecraft and visual illusion. As writer Trefry surmises, “The images, if they were strong enough, would catch on like a disease. And once everyone was infected, every department couldn’t help but get obsessed with trying to make it work.” Yet what might be more impressive is that for as much obvious visual panache as a Stranger Things production must sport, there is a similar narrative ambition at work in First Shadow as well. Not only is the play an original story set in 1950s Hawkins—back before Eleven, Max, and Steve the Babysitter—but it is one suffused with as much emotional pathos and dread as the series. It even centers its narrative on the most monstrous creation from Season 4, if not the whole series: young Henry Creel, the boy who would grow up to be Vecna, played on stage by the now Tony-nominated Louis McCartney. “Knowing where the TV show goes, it was fun to conceive a play that is in its heart a tragedy, which is so different tonally from the show,” Trefry says of her Vecna protagonist. It’s a subtle but profound aesthetic detour, and one which invites even the staunchest Stranger Things into the truly unknown. Here the shadows are deep—and perhaps revealing about the still developing season 5. At the beginning of The First Shadow’s second act, a young man and woman share a flirtation and daydream anyone who was ever young might recognize: two kids imagining what it would be like to leave their small town and escape to a better life. Most audience members will understand the yearning to be free, but in the show it comes with the bitterest of bittersweet edges. If you’ve watched Stranger Things the TV series, you know the destinies of this would-be couple, a slouching high school cool guy named Hopper (Burke Swanson) and a boundlessly optimistic go-getter they call Joyce. And that future’s a million miles away from their fantasy life in sunny Mexico. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! “That scene feels as serious to me and honest in terms of what their love is as anything you see in season 4,” says Joyce performer Jaye of the moment. “A lot of people can connect to the love of your life; a single person following you through the world, or in your head and in your body, never being able to let go of that person, whether or not you’re able to live the story with them.” It’s a scene that also was developed in tech only days and weeks before Stranger Things: The First Shadow’s earliest bow in New York City. While the play opened last year in London’s West End, Trefry and directors Martin and Daldry have been tinkering with and perfecting the hitherto unknown backstories of Joyce and Hop ever since, as well as other fan favorite characters like Bob Newby (Juan Carlos) and Dr. Brenner (Alex Breaux). “We did about a month of workshops in London in November before we came over to America in January,” explains Trefry, “Almost every page has had some tweak to it. We strengthened storylines; we made things better; we cut 20 minutes; it was actually an amazing opportunity to get another crack at it.” It heightened the inherent opportunity in The First Shadow which always appealed to Trefry: digging into the lives of the many adult characters in Stranger Things, and perhaps tweak our very understanding of who they are—from an innocent like Bob (Sean Astin’s character from season 2 who Trefry half-jokes “we did pretty dirty”) to the play’s central protagonist: Henry Creel. Despite being the seemingly most irredeemably evil character in the TV series (#JusticeForMax), Henry is introduced here as a scared adolescent haunted by horrible images in his head that he cannot control. “His story is very personal to me, being somebody who’s struggled a lot with bad thoughts,” Trefry says. “I have very hardcore OCD, so the life of Henry Creel being inundated with dark imagery is close to my heart.” The playwright admits that when they first developed Vecna for season 4, they imagined him as a “Michael Myers” type. Someone born bad. But she and the Duffers saw the chance to go beyond a bad seed backstory when legendary theater director Daldry first approached about doing a Stranger Things play. Hence the stage’s story of young Henry moving to Hawkins with his ill-fated family, and genuinely hoping to start a better life at a new school. In fact, one of the many complex scenes of the play is how the production uses three rotating turntables to introduce an entire cast of ‘50s high school archetypes in the show. It’s a marvel of stagecraft that Bob actor Juan Carlos reveals is so complex that if audiences applaud or laugh too long, or on an odd beat, it can throw the entire watchlike timing off. This technical feat can also prove illuminating for the whole Stranger Things universe. For example, we discover that Joyce and Bob knew each other in the drama club, which surprise, surprise, Joyce is the president of. “There’s a couple of off the cuff references to Joyce being a communist [in the TV series],” muses Trefrey. “To me [that means] she’s a champion for the underdog. And who other than the theater kids are bigger underdogs?” Her Broadway performer certainly thinks it makes sense. “Oh my God, I feel like she’s such an obvious theater kid!” Jaye enthuses. “I feel like there is a kind of a cool girl, tough exterior that then underneath it all is like, ‘no, no, no. She is as weird as everybody else.’” It also allows Stranger Things the play to tap into some of the same meta joys of Stranger Things the TV series. “I think one of the lovely things about the series is how it pays homage to the movies of the ‘80s,” Carlos acknowledges of the setup. “We’re kind of paying homage to theater in a very similar sense and I think it fits right in.” Whereas the TV show centers on the type of nerd who obsessed over Dungeons & Dragons and Ghostbusters in the ‘80s, it is likely a theatrical audience of young people can relate to a Bob Newby who seems to be at least initially excited about doing Oklahoma! at his school. “We [theater kids] are kind of outcasts,” Carlos says, “especially in high school and middle school when it’s like, ‘Oh there goes the drama geek.’” Or as their writer observes, “A little inside baseball isn’t necessarily a bad thing.” Hence there are quite a few laughs about a play within a play at Hawkins’ high school. Hopper actor Swanson even ruefully concedes he can relate a bit since like Hawkins, his school put on Oklahoma! back in the day where he played Curly and did “a pretty spot on impersonation of Hugh Jackman’s version.” Yet so much of the humor and pleasure of this side of the play is derived from the familiar characters we think we know in suddenly new contexts. “There’s this really beautiful balance that we’re all trying to play in,” Swanson notes. “These characters are so iconic and they’re so beloved by so many that to ignore completely what’s been done before would be, I think, a disservice to the fans and to those who are hoping to see a taste and new version of those people. But at that same exact point, it is a new version… Jaye, for instance, drew as much inspiration from watching Winona Ryder in her 1988 breakout film, Heathers, as Stranger Things, citing the unlikely angst of Ryder’s popular (and arguably murderous) high schooler in that dark comedy as informative. Nonetheless, the actor believes “the way to do justice to that is to tell the story, be truthful, and people will give you endless flowers for that because they believe you.” Ultimately they are trying to get you to believe these characters in a different context that takes on shadings of a ‘50s adventure story, particularly as Hopper, Bob, and Joyce eventually investigate the darker side of the play like a veritable Nancy Drew novel. But no matter the setting, their seemingly innocent adventure still exists in the emotionally mercurial world of Stranger Things. Says Swanson, “This sort of Scooby-Doo element of our story in First Shadow, with Bob, Joyce, and Hopper trying to investigate something that they really don’t fully understand and won’t fully understand for 30-plus years, adds to this level of tragedy that Stranger Things does so well—in the most painful, beautiful sense of the word.” Going into Stranger Things 5 When we catch up over Zoom with Trefry, the writer says she is in her “floating” stage after completion of production on an extremely anticipated season of television. She has just come back from checking in with the Duffers in the edit bay for Stranger Things 5. In one sense, it’s a million miles away from the 1950s setting she and those same brothers settled on for the play. (Mind you, one reason the setting worked in Trefry’s mind is that, like the 1980s, the ‘50s were hotbed for science fiction cinema and literature, plus the cynical paranoia that breeds conspiracy theories.) Nevertheless, the two creative endeavors are interwoven. While the playwright strongly insists First Shadow is intended to stand on its own for newcomers, and is not meant to be a preview of Stranger Things Season 5, overlap becomes inevitable when one realizes it is exploring what Hopper and Joyce might remember of a boy named Henry Creel. “It’s interesting because Joyce and Hopper are sequestered all of season 4 in Russia,” Trefry says. “We did talk about what the implication is. If Henry Creel lived in Hawkins during this time, then ostensibly they would have encountered him. But because they were sequestered, it gave us an opportunity to have the teenagers [of the TV show] discover all of this information and not just have it be told to them by the adults.” It also invites tantalizing possibilities for season 5. For instance, might Hopper and Joyce tell Eleven or Will about that kid they knew in their drama club with a strange shine about him? As signaled by the writer’s tight smile toward the question, no one is going to directly answer the question. However, there would appear to be some intersection. “Knowing some of the gifts that will go on for the audience in season 5, [Trefry] lines it up perfectly,” Jaye teases. Her co-star Swanson would agree. “I really don’t think folks who have come to see the show, and who will see the show, realize how integral and irrevocably linked it is to season 5 and to the show itself,” Swanson says. “We get to plant the seeds that we see starting to sprout and come to fruition within the TV show. And from a sense of season 5, it is my opinion that you will not be able to see season 5 without seeing this show, and I think that when people do see season 5, they’re going to come back to this show in droves because they’re going to realize how laid out it was actually for you.” Still, for the play’s writer who has lived with these characters for nearly a decade, and can relate to all her beloved outsiders, from Eleven to the boy who became Vecna, it is about more than lore and all that visual razzle dazzle. “The spectacle is amazing,” Trefrey considers, “but selfishly from a personal angle I hope that there is emotional resonance. I have put a lot of emotion into the play, and I hope that that reads past all the incredible illusion work. That there’s a real story at the core of it that people can connect to and feel seen by.” Audiences can see for themselves right now at the Marquis Theatre in New York, as well as the Phoenix Theatre in London.

Warning: contains spoilers for Doctor Who episode “The Interstellar Song Contest.” Surprise! Carole Ann Ford is back on Doctor Who as the Doctor’s granddaughter Susan. In a vision experienced by the Doctor while unconscious and floating in space in new episode “The Interstellar Song Contest”, Susan appears inside the current TARDIS, calls Fifteen “Grandfather” and repeatedly tells him to “go back” and find her. Is it a surprise? Last year on Doctor Who, all we seemed to hear was the name “Susan”. In the run-up to series 14’s two-part finale, speculation abounded that the mysterious, multi-character entity Susan Triad, played by actor Susan Twist (a fortuitous cast name), would turn out to be a regeneration of that other Susan, the Doctor’s granddaughter. That all turned out to be misdirection, a trap set by God of Death Sutekh and showrunner Russell T Davies to lure in the Doctor and the fans both. Despite the hints, Susan Triad was not the Doctor’s granddaughter, and Ford’s classic Who character did not make her long-awaited return to the show. Until now. So, who is Susan? Simply put, she’s the Doctor’s first companion, played by Ford in two seasons between 1963-4. She travelled with the First Doctor, played by William Hartnell, until she was left behind on Earth to marry a dishy freedom fighter named David. Since then, she popped back up in 20th anniversary special “The Five Doctors”, in Children in Need comedy EastEnders crossover “Dimensions in Time,” and in a great many prose and audio adventures. Read more about all of those here. New Doctor Who fans were primed for Susan’s existence in 2024 episodes “The Devil’s Chord,” and “The Legend of Ruby Sunday.” In the former, the Doctor takes Ruby to a 1960s London rooftop and points in the direction of Shoreditch, saying: “In the past, right now, I live in a place called Totter’s Lane. 1963, I parked the TARDIS in a junkyard and I lived there with my granddaughter Susan. […] We could go and have a look but you know, timelines [makes explosion sound]”. The Totter’s Lane junkyard is where Doctor Who began, when Susan was followed home by Barbara and Ian (Jacqueline Hill and William Russell), two teachers at her school – specifically Coal Hill School, where Clara Oswald and Danny Pink later taught, and the setting for short-lived spinoff Class – and all four of them became travelling companions in time and space. In “The Devil’s Chord,” when Ruby asked where his granddaughter was now, Fifteen told her he didn’t know. “Time Lords were murdered. Genocide rolled across time and space like a great big cellular explosion, maybe killed her too.” Apparently not – if this latest vision is bonafide Susan and not, say, another trap set for the Doctor by a trickster god. According to what the Doctor saw in his mind, Susan is alive and in his TARDIS and calling him to go back and find her. Go back where? To their home planet of Gallifrey, which was destroyed in The Time War when the Time Lords were exterminated? That would be a finale-appropriate development. In “The Interstellar Song Contest”, the Doctor’s vision of Susan recurs to him when he’s telling Belinda about Gallifrey, as a reason for having tortured Hellion terrorist Kid (played by Freddie Fox), who planned to commit mass murder on a gargantuan scale: Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! “The death of three trillion people triggered me. It made me think of my home planet. ‘Cause they all died. In a single second. Every last Time Lord. But I got this image… [of Susan in the TARDIS].” To any new fans still pondering the biological nature of the Doctor’s grandfatherly relationship to Susan, keep going because there isn’t yet a real answer. In “The Legend of Ruby Sunday,” UNIT boss Kate Lethbridge-Steward suggests that Susan’s existence presupposes the existence of the Doctor’s child or children, to which he responds: “Well, not quite – not yet.” Kate asks, “You can have a granddaughter before a daughter?” to which the Doctor replies, “Life of a Time Lord.” Speaking to Radio Times about her Susan’s War audio drama series in 2024, Ford teased a potential meeting between Susan and the Fifteenth Doctor, saying: “The mind boggles with all the many ways Susan could come back, where and when. But I think she would love reuniting with her grandfather in his new form.” Now, it seems as though Ford’s wish is coming true. Doctor Who airs on Saturdays on BBC iPlayer and BBC One in the UK, and on Disney+ around the world.

This article contains full spoilers for every Final Destination movie, INCLUDING Bloodlines. For more than a decade, we thought we’d finally made it. It’s been 14 years since the last Final Destination film, the last time Death started killing off those who escaped its plan in exceedingly gruesome fashion. We thought we were free to go to theaters in safety once more. But as the mortician William Bludworth, played by the late great Tony Todd, has taught us, there’s no escaping Death. The franchise is back with one of its best entries: Final Destination Bloodlines, written and directed by newcomers to the franchise Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein. Bloodlines has a shinier look and a different approach, focusing on a family instead a group of random teens. But it follows the well-established principles of a Final Destination movie, especially in its incredible kills. In celebration of Bloodlines bringing Final Destination back to screens, we’re ranking all of Death’s achievements across the franchise. Because Final Destination movies are ultimately about good, gory fun, we’re ranking them from the most boring to the most enjoyably incredible. Like Death itself, we do have a few rules here. We aren’t counting any deaths in the premonitions that open each movie, nor the mass casualties that occur in the actual events, which means that you won’t see the infamous pile-up from Final Destination 2 or the incredible tower sequence that opens Bloodlines. Also we’re focusing on Death’s kills, so kills done by human beings don’t count. Even with those restrictions, Final Destination gives us plenty of memorable kills, as Death always makes a show of getting even. 40. Alex Browning’s Off-Screen Demise (Final Destination 2) Is it a mark of respect that the first movie’s protagonist Alex Browning (Devon Sawa) doesn’t die on screen? Or is it the ultimate insult that we learn via newspaper clipping in Final Destination 2 that he was knocked in the head with a brick? Interpretations may vary, but no one can disagree that Alex’s death deserves the bottom spot. Played by comedy great David Koechner, paper plant boss Dennis Lapman of Final Destination 5 has one of the gnarliest premonition deaths. Dangling off a collapsing bridge, Dennis almost pulls himself back up when he’s doused with hot tar, burning alive as he lets go and drops to the water. That incredible end makes his actual expiration all the worse, as he goes out when a loose wrench on a shop floor gets hurled into his head, no real setup involved. 38. Wendy Cristensen, Julie Cristensen, and Kevin Fischer Crash Off-Screen (Final Destination 3) With the exception of the original Final Destination, the protagonists end their films thinking they’ve beaten Death only to realize that the Grim Reaper has one more trick up his sleeve, and the movies end with shocking cuts. The worst of them comes in Final Destination 3, one of the weaker entries overall, in which Wendy Cristensen (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), her sister Julie (Amanda Crew), and pal Kevin Fischer (Ryan Merriman) all perish in a train crash. Technically we see them meet their end in impressive carnage, but that all happens in a premonition, which this list rules out. So we have to go with the death that happens onscreen—well, on soundtrack, as the movie cuts to black with the sound of the crash. 37. Janet Cunningham, Lori Milligan, Nick O’Bannon Death By X-Ray Truck (The Final Destination) Easily the worst of the series, the fourth entry The Final Destination also ends with a sudden attack on the protagonists. In this case, Nick O’Bannon (Bobby Campo), his love interest Lori Milligan (Shantel VanSanten), and her friend Janet Cunningham (Haley Webb) meet in a coffee shop to celebrate life, only for a truck to crash into the building. It’s a lot like the third movie’s ending, but at least this movie gives us neat x-rays to look at and imagine what horrible things happened to our heroes. 36. George Lanter and the Very Quiet Ambulance (The Final Destination) Played by the great Mykelti Williamson, George Lantner is the only character who acts like a human being in The Final Destination. So it’s a bit lame that the movie kills him off with a gag when he steps onto the road and gets flattened by an oncoming ambulance. He mentions “deja vu” right before it happens because his end is a callback to a similar one from the first film, which will be talked about shortly. It’s an unimaginative death and a mean joke at the expense of a likable character, which lands it toward the bottom of the list. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! 35. Nadia Monroy Makes Nick’s Dream a Reality (The Final Destination) For the most part, this list is ignoring both the premonitions and the mass casualties that occur after a premonition. The one exception comes with Nadia Monroy (Stephanie Honoré) of The Final Destination, who dies in the immediate aftermath of a premonition. After Nick has a vision of a massive Nascar wreck, he panics, which gets a group of people kicked out of the race just as the accident begins. As the survivors try to make sense of what happened, a tire flies out of the stadium and through Nadia’s head, replicating her death from the vision. 34. Perry Malinowski Salutes the Flag (Final Destination 3) Final Destination loves its out-of-nowhere surprise kills. A character thinks they’re safe, they make some ironic statement and, bam, they’re immediately dead. Usually, these kills aren’t nearly as funny or clever as the movies think they are, especially compared to the elaborate sequences that have become the franchise’s calling card. One of the worst comes when Perry Malinowski (Maggie Ma) gets unceremoniously offed when a loose horse breaks of a flagpole that goes through her chest, a forgettable death for a forgettable character. Horse looks cool though. 33. Darlene Campbell Stays at the Cabin (Final Destination Bloodlines) Although not as meta as, say, a Scream movie, the characters in Final Destination: Bloodlines know how Final Destination movies work. To the filmamkers’ credit, the knowledge adds tension to the movie, underscoring how knowledge doesn’t give them power to evade Death. Nowhere is that more clear than at the climax of Bloodlines when Darlene Campbell (Rya Kihlstedt)—a mother who has estranged herself from her children—decides to hide in her own mother’s bunker, thereby stalling Death’s hit list and saving her children. Noble though the sentiment may be, Darlene’s proclamation of love for her children distracts her, and she gets smashed by a falling pole, rendering her heroism moot. 32. Carter Horton Finally Sees the Sign (Final Destination) Played by Kerr Smith, Carter Horton is the onscreen antagonist of the first film, an annoying preppie who bullies Alex and the others and somehow gets to survive. So while we don’t actually see Carter get killed before the screen cuts to closing credits, his demise does rank above those from the third and fourth movies just because we wanted to see this guy get it for so long. 31. Samantha Lane Has Her Eye on a Stone (The Final Destination) The overwhelming majority of Final Destination victims are obnoxious, good-looking teens who mostly deserve to die. Wife and mother Samantha Lane (Krista Lane) certainly isn’t a saint but she doesn’t irritate us like every other jerk in The Final Destination. So we’re a bit annoyed that she gets such a cruel death when a lawn mower kicks up a rock that flies through her eyes while her young kids watch in horror. The kill does get a few extra points, however, for all of the playfulness before it actually happens, as Death sets up a few options to off Sarah before finally picking the rock. 30. Ian McKinley Splits the Fair (Final Destination 3) The franchise has never done great with its human antagonists, the regular guys who get tired of all the dying and take things into their own hands by killing the other characters. Ian McKinley (Kris Lemche) stands out a little bit more than the others. Instead of showing all the things that could off him, the camera simply follows Ian through a crowd while he rants about his immortality. That’s a bit dull, but it pays off when a firework shoots by him, apparently sparing him, only for the explosion to knock over a cherry picker that splits him in half. That extra beat is enough to make his sudden surprise kill a bit more satisfying. 29. Stefani and Charlie Reyes in a Logjam (Final Destination Bloodlines) Although a bit glossier and a bit kinder with its characters, Final Destination Bloodlines follows the beats of most entries in the franchise. In fact, its final moment, in which protagonists Stefani (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) and Charlie Reyes (Teo Briones) realize that they did not, in fact, stop Death and are about to die, feels like a callback to the infamous log premonition in Final Destination 2. However, Bloodlines ups the stakes with a lucky penny leading to a train derailment. The amazing shot of Stefani and Charlie goes bigger than any of the other movies’ shock ending, undone some by the cheap effects when two logs from the train car come loose and flatten our heroes. 28. Sam Lawton and Emma Bell Die in a Callback (Final Destination 5) Final Destination 5 has the best ending of the series, in which protagonists Sam Lawton (Nicholas D’Agosto) and Emma Bell (Molly Harper) survive the ordeal and board a plane to celebrate. It’s only then that we realize that the movie has taken place in 2000 and that they’re boarding Flight 180, the one that explodes at the start of the first movie. Thus we have to watch as the characters who have gone through so much die, but we also get to see the original disaster that started it all. Emily splatters when she gets sucked out of the plane and sliced by the wing, but Sam’s death isn’t that spectacular outside of the fact that he burns up in the same manner as Alex did in his vision. 27. Tod Waggner Hung Out to Dry (Final Destination) The first “real” death of the series, Tod Waggner’s (Chad E. Donella) end feels like a first draft to the spectacular kills to come. When water leaks from a toilet, Todd slips into the tub and gets a laundry cord wrapped around his neck. Todd’s desperate attempts to stand up and save himself, frustrated by the slick tub floor, give the death a level of pathos rarely seen in the series, but outside of that, it’s a fairly rote kill for the overall franchise. 26. Iris Campbell Gets to the Point (Final Destination Bloodlines) Bloodlines gives Tony Todd a glorious final scene as Bloodworth, but it’s the elderly Iris Campbell (Gabrielle Rose) who tells her granddaughter Stefani the rules of Death’s design. Throughout the exposition dump, the camera points to various classic setups, but Iris catches them all. So when Death does finally take her, using a flying fire extinguisher to send a weathervane point through her face, it’s because Iris wants to show Stefani how Death operates. That intentionality makes Iris’ end stand out, even if it isn’t the most elaborate on this list. 25. Rory Peters Goes Fencing (Final Destination 2) Final Destination 2 has the best premonition in the series, an incredible accident and pile-up filled with ghastly incidents. Toward the climax of the movie, that road destruction gets sort of recreated when a series of events launched by a car crash suddenly kill off other characters. It’s mostly fun, and wide shots let us see Death’s composition, but it’s hard to get too excited when stoner Rory Peters (Jonathan Cherry) gets split into thirds by flying fencing. 24. Clear Rivers and Eugene Dix Go Up in Flames (Final Destination 2) It was a nice reveal to show Clear Rivers (Ali Larter) had survived even the post-credit carnage of the first Final Destination to provide information to the victims of the second film. But that surprise was completely undercut by the film then killing Clear in a sudden hospital explosion, taking teacher Eugene (T.C. Carson), one of the more compelling characters in the movie, out along with her. Multi-victim kills always feel like a bit of a cheat, but at least this one had a nice build-up. 23. Carter Daniels’ Hate Crime Backfires (The Final Destination) The Final Destination‘s unlikable cast goes to the extreme when white supremacist Carter (Justin Welborn) singles out George Latner as the cause of his wife’s demise. So it’s especially satisfying when Carter, in the midst of burning a cross on George’s lawn, gets dragged behind his truck and burned alive. Carter may not get the most creative of kills, but rarely do we see such an awful person get their full and just reward like that. 22. Isaac Palmer Meets the Buddha (Final Destination 5) Unlike most entries, Final Destination 5 limited its nastiness to one character, and even then, actor P. J. Byrne knows how to find light notes in his depiction of smarmy exec Isaac Palmer. Byrne sleezes it up as Isaac steals a spa coupon from recently-deceased co-worker, leers at spa workers, and then condescend to the worker who performs upon him. From then on, it’s a classic Final Destination sequence, as a fallen candle ignites spilled oil to send Isaac pin-first onto the ground, crawling away until he inadvertently pulls a Buddha statue on his head, his karma fully earned. 21. Kat Jennings and the Jaws of Death (Final Destination 2) Nervous wreck Kat Jennings (Keegan Connor Tracy) gets one of the better sudden deaths in the series, largely because Death puts all the pieces in place for a symphony of chaos and then sets it off suddenly. Kat initially survives the car crash, avoiding the pointy pipe that ran through her back window and continues to stick out behind her head. When firefighters use the jaws of life to pry open her car door, however, the impact is enough to set off the airbags, slamming Kat’s head into the spike and setting off more carnage. 20. Lewis Romero Loses Weight in the Gym (Final Destination 3) A lot of the kills on this list are preceded by a character declaring their immortality, but few do it with as much apblomb as Final Destination 3‘s aggro jock Lewis Romero (Texas Battle). Like many Lewis responds to Death’s machinations by asserting his own free will… loudly. At the end, he does it while pumping iron in the gym, and his protestations shake the walls, knocking free swords used as part of his team’s decor. The swords cut the bands of his machine as they fall, freeing the weights to smash his head. Given that it was his actions that made the swords drop, Lewis did kind of control his own fate. 19. Nora Carpenter and the Creepy Hook Hand (Final Destination 2) Of all the kills on this list, the death of nervous mom Nora Carpenter (Lynda Boyd) seems the easiest to avoid. Well, at first anyway, when she rushes into an elevator and gets her hair caught on a hook, part of the prosthetic limbs that a creepy guy holds in a box. If Nora just settled down for a moment, or if the creepy guy would put as much effort into untangling her as he does smelling her hair, then she probably could have wrestled free before the elevator decapitated her. All that aside, it’s a pretty amazing and gory kill, one that has enough shock value to overcome any logistical leaps. The Final Destination movies are big on dying, but not so big on suffering, which is a good thing. We don’t want to think of these people as human beings, because that would ruin the fun of watching them go out. Erin Ulmer’s (Alexz Johnson) end in Final Destination 3 veers a bit too much toward suffering, as the camera holds on her as she moans in her last moments. Up until that point, though, the scene has fun with misdirection, making us think that we’re about to see Ian McKinley get crushed by boards until Erin gets knocked into a nail gun, which perforates the back of her head. 17. Jonathan Groves Takes a Bath (The Final Destination) On one hand, Jonathan Groves (Jackson Walker) feels like he was added to The Final Destination late in production because the producers found out the movie’s running a bit too short. Groves does show up in the opening crash scene, but we lose track of him and assume he’s dead until Nick sees him on the news. But we can forgive the shoehorning for the purely absurd way that Groves goes out, with an overfilled bathtub from the hospital floor above crashing down onto his bed. 16. Nathan Sears and Flight 180’s Landing (Final Destination 5) In addition to its fantastic kills Final Destination 5 also has the most well-rounded characters in the series, characters like junior executive Nathan Sears (Arlen Escarpeta). Nathan is fundamentally a nice guy but he gets caught up in a dispute with an older union leader, a dispute that ends when the leader accidentally dies during a fight. Thinking that was Death coming for him, Nathan comes to the leader’s wake to pay respects, secure in the belief that Death has skipped him. That assumption adds some pathos to the moment with gear from Flight 180 falls from the sky and crushes him, taking both good people and bad people. 15. Frankie Cheeks Trapped in the Drive Thru (Final Destination 3) Frankie Cheeks (Sam Easton) is one of the most unlikable characters in the franchise (which is saying something) and we don’t even know that he’s dead until after it happens. So why does it rank relatively high on this list? Because of the way it’s set up, looking very much like protagonists Wendy and Kevin are going to get killed in an unbelievable but well-orchestrated drive-through accident. While our heroes escape in time, a collision still occurs, sending a huge engine fan into the back of Frankie’s head. At first it seems like the duo passed their death onto an innocent bystander until we see a bloody necklace in the shape of a naked lady, and we all breathe a sigh of relief that Frankie Cheeks walks the Earth no more. 14. Tim Carpenter Gets Squished By Glass (Final Destination 2) Tim Carpenter may be the weirdest character in the entire series. The script says he’s 15, and actor James Kirk sometimes plays him as a teen and sometimes as an eight-year-old, which ends up feeling like he’s the MadTV character Stuart. That childlike nature leads to Tim’s end when, like a dumb kid, he just decides to chase after some pigeons because… they were there? The pigeons take flight, knocking a giant pane of glass off of a crane and sending the glass on top of Tim, smooshing the little weirdo. 13. Andy Kewzer Goes Through a Chain Link Fence… in Tiny Pieces (The Final Destination) The biggest problem with The Final Destination is its reliance on CG blood, a scourge of 2000s horror. Still, sometimes the kills are so outrageous that we can forgive the poor effects. Such is the case when mechanic Andy Kewzer (Andrew Fiscella) gets blown into a chain link fence. It looks silly when his body collapses into goopy chunks, but the setup is satisfying, as is the sight of him getting blasted out of his garage into the instrument of his doom. 12. Terry Chaney Hit By a Silent Bus (Final Destination) For the first viewers of Final Destination, Terry Chaney (Amanda Detmer) had the standout death. Freaked out by Alex’s talk of Death coming for them all, Terry tells her friends to drop dead, steps into the street and gets splattered by a bus. It’s a funny moment, as long as you don’t think about it for a second (none of her friends have peripheral vision? The bus driver doesn’t see the gesticulating lady backing into the street?), and it got cheers in the theater. Over time, however, the sudden shock death has become a series trope, dulling the impact (pun intended) of Terry’s end. 11. Howard Campbell Gets a Trim (Final Destination Bloodlines) Patriarch Howard Campbell (Alex Zahara) gets the first classic-style death in Bloodlines, and what a glorious one it is. Occurring after the film has clearly laid out Death’s rules and process, the filmmakers luxuriate in the setup, taking time to highlight all of the things that could kill someone in Campbell’s well-appointed suburban backyard: a rake under a ripping trampoline, a shard of glass in an iced drink, a hose about to explode. After several minutes of anticipation, all of those things come together to set-off something we never saw coming, an electric self-propelled lawnmower, which runs over the face of the prone Howard. Iconic as it may be, Terry’s isn’t the best sudden shock death in the first Final Destination movie. That honor belongs to New York Rangers superfan Billy Hitchcock (Seann William Scott), who also dies without much obvious setup from Death. Billy goes after he and Alex confront the ever-jerky Carter, who decides to defy Death by parking on train tracks. Carter survives, but Billy can’t take it and starts having an angry meltdown, a meltdown cut short when the train kicks up a piece of shrapnel and sends it flying through Billy’s neck. Tod may be the first death in the Final Destination series, but Valerie Lewton (Kristen Cloke) gets the first great death of the franchise. Still shaken up over the explosion of Flight 180, teacher Mrs. Lewton spills some alcohol on the ground while making dinner. When her cooking goes awry, the alcohol ignites, setting her house ablaze. But it’s not the fire that kills her. Rather she dies when she accidentally pulls a knife down from the counter, which embeds itself in her chest. 8. Evan Lewis Slips on Spaghetti (Final Destination 2) Sometimes Death orchestrates events in such an improbable manner that we can almost see a physical hand onscreen, manipulating events. Sometimes dumb people do dumb things and pay for it. It’s the latter event that brings down lottery-winning bro Evan Lewis (David Paetkau) in Final Destination 2, who just tosses a pot of spaghetti out the window. That decision proves disastrous when Death’s meddling leads to a fire in Evan’s apartment. Evan climbs out to make an escape, but he slips on his own spaghetti, which leaves him vulnerable to the falling ladder that pierces his eye. 7. Brian Gibbons BBQ Bomb (Final Destination 2) Although it’s a sudden kill with little setup, the death of Brian Gibbons (Noel Fisher) ranks so high because of how funny it is. At the end of the movie, survivors Kimberly Corman (A.J. Cook) and Thomas Burke (Michael Landes) join the Gibbons family at a BBQ where they all let off a bit of steam. No sooner does Brian joke about his and his father’s near-death experience than the grill he’s using explodes, sending his severed arm flying through the air. The arm lands on his mother’s plate, a darkly funny beat that makes it one step better than the average out-of-nowhere kills in the series. 6. Erik and Bobby Campbell Bond in the Hospital (Final Destination Bloodlines) Erik Campbell (Richard Harmon) is truly a unique character in the Final Destination franchise. First of all, he seems to survive his own elaborate death, a hilarious incident in a tattoo parlor (featured heavily in teasers). Secondly he and his brother Bobby (Owen Patrick Joyner) actually like each other, which makes their end so poignant. Off of Bludworth’s information, Erik decides to send the highly allergic Bobby into anaphylaxis so he can revive him, thus satisfying Death. But Erik gets too cute with his plan, and his action accidentally turns on and revs up an MRI machine in the room where the brothers are working. The intensified magnification first pulls in and crushes Erik, with his piercings in front and a wheelchair in back, and then snags a coil from a vending machine, sending it through Bobby’s head. 5. Olivia Castle’s Laser-Guided Fall (Final Destination 5) Okay, technically Olivia Castle (Jacqueline MacInnes Wood) dies when she falls out of a window. But that’s not the part that sticks out in our mind. Instead we remember everything before that moment when Olivia gets laser eye surgery. As if torn from the worst thoughts of anyone about to get the surgery, we watch as Death shorts out the laser while the tech is out of the room and starts burning out Kimberly’s eye. No sooner does she escape than she slips on her beloved teddy bear and falls through the window, a somehow merciful end to the suffering. 3. Ashley Freund & Ashlyn Halperin’s Tanning Session Gone Wrong (Final Destination 3) As this list shows, great Final Destination deaths fall into one of three categories: memorably mean, patently absurd, or impeccably designed. Ashley Fruend (Chelan Simmons) and Ashlyn Halperin (Crystal Lowe) are the prime examples of the first category. A pair of stock mean mall girls, Ashley and Ashlyn go to their favorite tanning spa, giant-size sodas in hand. Death ups the condensation on the drinks, which creates enough water to short out the beds, which turns up the heat, while a fallen shelf keeps them trapped inside. The sight of them burning alive is nasty enough, but the real kicker is the match cut at the end, which replaces two tanning beds with two coffins. 3. Julia Campbell Takes Out the Trash (Final Destination Bloodlines) Final Destination movies love a good fake-out and Bloodlines has the best one yet. Armed with knowledge from Iris, Stefani walks down a suburban street with a skeptical Erik, Death’s next probable victim. As the two walk, Stefani points out all of the things that could kill him: leaves from a blower, a soccer ball kicked by kids, a trash compactor. But to Erik’s mocking glee, nothing happens. Nothing, that is, until Erik’s sister Julia (Anna Lore) goes for a run. In the background. And out of focus, all of those things come together to knock Julia into a roadside dumpster, which is then emptied into the garbage truck where Julia is compacted while Stefani watches. 2. Hunt Wynorski’s Guts in a Pool Pump (The Final Destination) The best patently absurd kill in the entire franchise occurs to obnoxious bro Hunt Wynorski (Nick Zano). After getting into an altercation with a little kid at a public pool, Hunt sits down to catch some rays when he hears his lucky coin fall into the water. Hunt dives in after it, just as Death starts messing with the equipment, causing the pump to malfunction and raise the pressure. The pump traps Hunt at the bottom and he gestures wildly for help, but no one sees him. Instead of drowning, Hunt gets his guts sucked out through his butt, a kill so wonderful that we don’t even care about the CGI viscera that caps off the scene. 1. Candace Hooper Doesn’t Stick the Landing (Final Destination 5) Easily the most glorious and well-composed kill of the entire franchise occurs early in Final Destination 5, when a standard routine for gymnast Candice Hooper (Ellen Wroe) goes horribly wrong. Director Steven Quale takes the time to show viewers the tools and space in which Death works, highlighting dripping water, a shaking girder, spilled dust, and other elements, before bringing them together as Candice goes through her flips. As a result, we understand every step in the system of catastrophes that leads to a ghastly end, with Candice’s crumpled body shuttering on the gym floor.

Warning: contains spoilers for Doctor Who episode “The Interstellar Song Contest” The Doctor and Belinda find themselves on Harmony Arena during the 803rd Interstellar Song Contest. But an evening of camp cosmic fun becomes a nightmare when horned aliens take over the space station – and the Doctor starts having strange visions. Spoilers ahoy. With “The Interstellar Song Contest”, Doctor Who might have given us its most blatantly self-selecting episode ever. When you hear the description ‘episode set during the Interstellar Song Contest featuring Rylan as himself’, you probably already know, broadly, whether it’s going to gel with your sensibilities. This puts a reviewer in a somewhat tricky position. I try as much as possible to take every episode on its own terms, and I’m very much of the view that Doctor Who contains more multitudes than most TV series, so there is always a place in the show for big, silly, populist spectacle. That being said, this is probably the episode I was looking forward to the least this season. I have no affection for the Eurovision Song Contest, especially in recent years. And while Rylan and Graham Norton admittedly acquit themselves pretty well here, as with the first Russell T Davies era, the showrunner’s enthusiastic engagement with contemporary TV and British celebrity culture can feel awkward, even slightly cringeworthy. Not only does it instantly date things, but it actually makes it harder to suspend disbelief and engage with the stories – having the likes of Davina McCall doing their familiar schtick puts the show that much closer to our reality, which I find just makes me ask questions I don’t want to be asking. All that being said, the idea of Rylan being frozen in stasis and unfrozen every year to host the Interstellar Song Contest is… kind of delightful. So, in conclusion, “The Interstellar Song Contest” is a land of contrasts. Actually, Bart Simpson’s immortal line has rarely felt more apropos. There is a lot going on here, arguably too much. Writer Juno Dawson has said that Davies pitched the concept as ‘Eurovision meets Die Hard’, with disaster movie elements, and the episode broadly fulfils that brief – it’s a perfectly workable concept, and if it had simply been allowed to be that, it might have hung together more cohesively. Ironically enough, the Eurovision / Rylan parts of the episode broadly work. It’s some of the other elements that unbalance proceedings, and while it’s pointless to speculate about which ideas were Dawson’s and which were imposed by upper management, it’s hard to believe that a guest writer would have been allowed to independently include the first appearance of Carol Anne Ford as Susan Foreman in proper mainline continuity televised Doctor Who since 1983. The Doctor’s sudden, unexplained visions of his long lost granddaughter are an absolutely huge curveball to throw into the episode, and they immediately suck all the oxygen out of the room. For viewers who know the significance of the character – and the actress, one of the last surviving links to the program’s very first episode, more than half a century go – it’s likely going to be a massive distraction. Why is this suddenly happening, where is she, when will they reunite, and oh yeah, why hasn’t the Doctor ever gone back for her (a continuity scab probably best left unpicked)? Meanwhile, viewers who aren’t familiar with Susan, even accounting for last season’s oblique mentions, are probably just thinking… huh? Presumably she’s going to feature in the two-part finale in some way – her appearance here will be even more confusing if not – but it feels like kind of an unfair requirement to foist on what should be the fun romp before the season’s concluding fireworks. The other big aspect of the episode that feels jarring is the Doctor’s rage. We’ve seen the character in vengeful mode before, punishing characters in far more baroque and existentially terrifying ways for comparatively less serious crimes. But not only does the Hellions’ plan feel like a gratuitous raising of the stakes that isn’t really earned – surely saving the one hundred thousand people floating in space would have been sufficient – the episode doesn’t really map out a solid trajectory for the Doctor to arrive at the point where he’s enthusiastically torturing Kid. We know it’s not because he thinks Belinda is dead – he’s aware that the people in space can theoretically be saved. Later he awkwardly describes being “triggered” because of the genocide of his own people, which just makes you wonder why trying to kill three trillion people wasn’t bad enough on its own, without the personal associations. The “ice in my heart” line is nice on paper, and delivered with appropriate contempt by Ncuti Gatwa, but it kind of implies that the Doctor is angry because he ended up briefly frozen in space himself, which feels weirdly petty. And the “I think it’ll be there forever now” at the end just feels bizarre. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! There’s also the issue that Kid has precious little juice as a villain. It’s unfortunate, as Freddie Fox has shown in Slow Horses that he can play a deliciously hissable piece of garbage, but the character isn’t threatening enough to be an effective antagonist and his plan is too psychotically over-the-top for us to feel any real sympathy for his plight. It ends up feeling like a waste of a huge dramatic move – one the show can’t exactly pull regularly – to have the Doctor’s uncontrollable rage unleashed on some random sneering emo, and it then feels jarring for the episode to flip almost instantly back into romp mode with the peppy rescue montage. It also contributes to the feeling that the episode can’t settle on a consistent tone – like the moment where Belinda and Cora are interrupted by the Dugga Doo alien. In theory it’s a fun black comedy beat to puncture the tension, and the kind of thing you should definitely do in an episode called “The Interstellar Song Contest”. But then, after the amusing “where’s that” exchange, Belinda has a tearful emotional moment with Cora, and the score swells, and clearly we’re supposed to now be taking things seriously again, but the Dugga Doo alien is still audibly singing in the background. It’s a comparatively small thing, but it adds to the feeling that the production doesn’t have enough control over the tone. There are bright spots, of course. Gary and Mike are very likeable everyman characters – it’s fun that they’re both instantly smitten with the Doctor, and that they both find it unexpectedly sexy seeing each other being competent at their jobs. The songs could generally stand to be a lot weirder and more alien, but Cora’s final ballad is soaring enough to land the final emotional beat (although the presumably accidental subtext that this is the only legitimate way for an oppressed people to make their voices heard is a tad awkward). The still, silent shot of all the bodies floating in space above the station is incredibly arresting. The Doctor and Belinda bonding over Eurovision is cute, even if it feels like the third episode in a row where Varada Sethu doesn’t get a massive amount to do. The Doctor flying through space propelled by a confetti cannon is just the kind of camp excess this sort of episode needs. And of course, there’s the ending, which leads directly into the first part of the finale. The TARDIS lights going red, combined with the portentous tolling of the Cloister Bell, is more than enough to sell the mavity of the situation – arguably more so than Mrs Flood stage whispering about Vindicators – and the doors being blown inward is an appropriately fiery full stop. Onward to “Wish World”. I love a good show. Grape? Doctor Who continues with “Wish World” on Saturday May 24th on BBC iPlayer and BBC One in the UK, and on Disney+ around the world.

Gladiatorial combat where naked warriors fight atop dinosaurs, alien octopus invasions, and tyrannical felines are just the tip of the iceberg in the fourth installment of Love, Death + Robots. Netflix’s genre-blending animated anthology series adeptly highlights science fiction’s versatility with stories that embrace horror, comedy, melodrama, and other label-defying tales. It’s a rare example of a project that becomes more confident and ambitious over time.  Love, Death + Robot’s executive producer, Tim Miller, and supervising director, Jennifer Yuh Nelson, open up on the animated anthology series’ electric fourth season, which science fiction story would be their white whale of adaptations, how David Fincher’s ludicrous string puppet music video came together, and which of this volume’s segments were supposed to be directed by Zack Snyder. DEN OF GEEK: How do you figure out the stories that you’re going to tell and how do you approach the source material that you adapt? Is it a case of finding source material that you’re passionate about from the start or are there stories that are being suggested to you? JENNIFER YUH NELSON: Well, pretty much all the shorts done in all the seasons have been based on short stories that Tim’s read throughout his life. And the reason why they stuck with him is because they’re great stories. And so we have hundreds of these stories just piled up. That’s sort of the pile that we go through and say, “That’s a great one. Let’s try that one,” and we just curate a gigantic, different list and try to find stories that can live together in a nice sort of album of narratives, tones, and looks. TIM MILLER: There’s a lot of different stories, but once we get the vibe for the season, there’s a lot of like, “Let’s swap this one in for that one because it’s a little too much like this other one.” We try to curate the perfect mix. So we have a little something for everybody, although we always seem to end up with too many cats. But I can’t explain that. I don’t really notice it until after the fact. Have there been any short stories that you wanted to adapt, but weren’t able to, whether it’s been for rights issues or just not being able to figure out the best way to adapt it? TM: Oh, tons. Tons. Johnny Mnemonic, the original short story. There’s another one by William Gibson called Dogfight that I would love to do. It took me forever to get Drowned Giant, the J.G. Ballard one that I did in the previous season. Vanni Fucci Is Alive and Well and Living in Hell by Dan Simmons. There’s just a lot and sometimes we just can’t get to it. Sometimes the authors don’t want to let their works go for some reason. I don’t know, but I keep trying. Bound for Glory by Lucius Shepard is another one. It’s always so exciting when you watch a season and you do recognize some of the stories, or even if it’s just the author behind it. There is a real rush to that. I love it. TM: We do publish the stories, too! There’s two volumes. There will be a third soon. All the money goes to the authors. We want people to read the stories! Forget about making them into movies. What does the process of finding the right animation style for each story entail? Are the aesthetics and artistic choices your call or that of the animation studio? JYN: Often we choose the director in the animation studio according to their specialty and making sure that it fits for us. If we have two tentpole episodes that look a certain way then we want to make sure that those episodes are going to look vastly different from each other. So you’ll go to a studio that, say, if you have a realistic science fiction one, then you want to go to a studio that might be able to do stop motion for another story instead. Not every studio does all these different things well. You need to find their thing. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! It’s important for us, especially for this series, to make sure that we’re really showcasing the whole breadth of animation. What you can do with it and to see the limits and beyond of what these new innovative styles can be. And sometimes these directors are very much pioneers in what they do and no one else is doing what they do. That’s why we end up working with them. TM: We push it in the initial direction and then the directors come in and do their pitch. They’ll build off of the initial concept. So when it comes to, let’s say, design the characters, we let them take their best shot at doing that and try to give them as much freedom or rope to hang themselves – if you prefer – as we can.  Building off of that, Tim, your “Golgotha” segment is really wonderful, but also has the series explore live action territory. How did live action fall on this segment and is that something that you could see more of in Love, Death + Robots’ future? MILLER: Part of it is me just saying, “Look, we can do anything we want, motherfuckers!” So it’s just planting a stake there, but I’d love to do a whole series of, like a live action version of Love, Death + Robots because I like that format. I love animation, but I also like visual effects and I think you could make a case for doing a story that required some really innovative and cutting-edge visual effects to tell the story. But that one just felt right. You know, a lot of times the story speaks to you in a–not in a mystical way, but just a way that feels right to tell that story. Live action felt like the most grounded, right way to tell “Golgotha.” Jennifer, one of the exciting things about a show that’s now in its fourth batch of episodes is that there’s an opportunity to tell sequels and return to past worlds, like with “Spider Rose.” How did you decide that this specific story was an old idea that you wanted to build upon, rather than another past entry? JYN: Well, “Spider Rose” was batting around for a while on the story wall. We wanted to make it for a while. And with Tim’s episode, “Swarm,” those were always like two sides of the same struggle in Bruce Sterling’s world of the Shapers and the Mechanists. And so Tim’s episode, “Swarm,” had the investor aliens, which are making a reprise in “Spider Rose.” The same aliens show up, but Tim’s story focuses on the side of the Shapers, which are humans sort of manipulating themselves and evolving through biotechnology, whereas the Mechanists on the other side are the ones that are more mechanical. They’re actually cybernetic enhancements. “Spider Rose” is that side of civilization. So it is not a direct sequel, but it’s happening in the same world. It’s such a rich world, but we only have like 14 or 15 minutes. You get this little slice of a view into this world that’s so rich. That was just a fun way of just getting back into something that’s already so well thought out.  TM: But I have to say, Jennifer – if she and I were both kids and you took us to Toys “R” Us, I’m the kid that runs in and goes to the toy he knows he wants exactly. Jennifer is the kid that peruses all the aisles and makes a considered choice about what she wants, looks at every toy she could get, and then chooses the one she really wants, after much consideration, because she can choose anything she wants to put in the show. And she really thinks about it. It’s usually after the lineup comes together that she’s like, “I want that one!” It’s quite different the way our brains work. Yeah. Well, like “Screaming of the Tyrannosaur” feels like a very good example of that. Of just being like, “Who doesn’t love gladiator dinosaurs at the end of the day?” It’s just so much fun. TM: That one was written for Zack Snyder! Zack wanted to do one, but then he didn’t have time. I had written it so, normally, it wouldn’t have been one I picked, but I was invested in it, because I’d written it and I enjoyed it. When I write something, I’m working it out in my head; how I would direct it, really.  JYN: Was it really one you wouldn’t have normally done? Nelson laughs TM: I don’t know. If you look at “Drowned Giant,” which was the one I had done before that, could anything be more different than that? Although that was a weird one for me to do too. I’m not sure. I don’t think I have a style for, better or worse. David Fincher’s “Can’t Stop” is such a fun experiment, but I also really just loved to see him ostensibly returning to his music video roots. Was this an idea that he previously wanted to do in the series? How did this decision on his part come about? TM: He had mentioned a while ago about wanting to do a Chili Peppers music video with puppets. But when I called and said, “Hey, would you do an episode?” And he said, “What do you want me to do?” I said a music video for two reasons. One, because he is essentially the master of masters in that field. And then secondly, because I knew he was limited with his time. Like, he couldn’t make a 20-minute music video. So it built a box around him that I knew he couldn’t get out of. But he immediately said, “Yeah, I want to do the Chili Peppers as puppets.” Directors get fixated on ideas and then they just kick around in the attic until they get a chance to do them. You’ve talked about the rich world that all of these stories create, but sometimes you only spend a very brief time in them. Has there been any consideration for full-length spinoffs – or even a movie – that take one of these ideas or worlds and turn them into their own series?  There are certainly plenty that could sustain it. Does that idea interest you at all? TM: We pitched a “Three Robots” series. Netflix – I’m not gonna say they said no, I’m just gonna say that they haven’t said yes. And then there have been others. But you know, the beauty of the show is that we’d never get some of these ideas made if we were asking to do a feature. If I said, “Yeah, I want to do naked gladiatorial slaves riding dinosaurs in space, they’d go, ‘No.’” But if I say it as part of a short, nobody cares, right? Nobody even questions it as part of the show, which is the greatest thing about the show ever.  And even if you’re not wildly into an idea, you’re still going to do it if it’s only a five-minute buy-in. There’s such a good setup to what you guys are doing. JYN: Sometimes – and I don’t mean this in a bad way – but sometimes that’s all that’s required. You know what I mean? It’s great for five minutes, but you wouldn’t enjoy it If you made it 90. You’ve accomplished so much across the first four volumes of Love, Death + Robots, but what are your aspirations for future volumes? Is there anything that you haven’t done that you’d like to attempt? TM: We’ve got a lot of stories. I have the next season – seasons, actually – picked out. There’ll be wrangling of them if we are fortunate enough to do it, but there’s no lack of great material. And there’s no lack of different types of things. We occasionally go back to something like the tilt-shift of “Night of the Mini Dead” sort of thing or “Three Robots,” which I think is fun. There’s still a lot of room to do new and innovative things that we haven’t done before.  JYN: Absolutely. One thing that I think the show does really well and I hope really continues on  forever is that this is a way to show new ideas and new looks and new innovation by different directors and studios around the world. Rarely do you see such a showcase of animation like this. So I think that sort of beauty, shared with everyone, I hope that continues forever.  Off of that, I am such a huge animation fan. I love the different studios  that you have involved with the show. Animation has just made such huge leaps over the past few years. It’s so exciting to see the kind of stuff that’s getting nominated at the Academy Awards. Has there just been anything over the past few years that’s really excited you guys in particular?  JYN: Do we have time to watch anything, Tim?  TM: Not really, but I will say on our other show, Secret Level, one of the shorts we did was with Unreal Engine. I really think that a large part of the future of animation is going to be real-time and the tools that come with that. I think it opens up the filmmaking process to a lot of people. My studio, Blur, was started at the dawn of the PC desktop age, and it was great because it opened up the business of making animation to people that didn’t have millions of dollars. I started Blur with $24,000, but now things are even better and people can do more really highly polished stuff in their bedroom, in their underwear. I think that’s fantastic, and it’ll open up bigger stories for us to tell.  It’s too soon to say what AI is going to do to the whole industry. I’m terrified, fascinated, and excited, but I think we’re going to see a lot of changes. This means taking on bigger stories, which is what I want. It shouldn’t cost $100 million to tell a story and I hope we can do more with less. Not people, but time. All four volumes of Love, Death + Robots are now streaming on Netflix.

Nintendo closes out the end of an era in 2025 with the introduction of the Nintendo Switch 2 and gradual sunsetting of the original Nintendo Switch. This shift in focus to the new console won’t be overnight, of course, and rarely is whenever console publishers transition to a fresh generation. The first Switch generation was an especially prosperous one for Nintendo, with over 150 million units shipped worldwide and counting, making it Nintendo’s best-selling home console of all-time and second only to the PlayStation 2 as the best-selling home console overall. With a player base that large, Nintendo has to be tactful how it eventually phases out its support for the Switch and maintains continued interest in its overarching brand. That makes us nostalgic too for how previous major home consoles eventually made their respective final bows, wrapping up fondly remembered eras. Here’s a look back on how each major console from the past several decades ended their fan-favorite runs. Nintendo Entertainment System The NES not only revived the video game industry in North America after its cataclysmic crash in 1983, but completely dominated it into the early ‘90s. By 1990 the NES—along with its Japanese counterpart, the Famicom—was the best-selling console ever at that time with more American households having the console than PCs. As such, Nintendo’s support for the NES continued long after the launch of the Super Nintendo, with Japan going as far as to continue manufacturing Famicoms for its domestic market until September 2003. Many of the last games released in the twilight years for the NES were ports of Super Nintendo titles with a significantly less intensive technical presentation. These include NES ports of Mario’s Time Machine, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters, and Wario’s Woods, all released in 1994 and the last of which being the final game released for the console in North America. Over 30 years later, the NES’ tenure remains one of the longest-running and most triumphant generations for any console. Sega Genesis/Mega Drive Also known as the Mega Drive outside of the U.S., the Sega Genesis was the console that gave Sega a prominent foothold in the North American market. In trying to gain a technical edge against its competitors, Sega began producing console peripherals for the Genesis, most notably the Sega CD in 1991 and Sega 32X in 1994, each with their own game libraries. Though Sega continued to produce games for the base Genesis, it saw the 32X as a stopgap effort until the Sega Saturn could be launched in 1994 in Japan and ‘95 in the U.S. Unfortunately for Sega, savvy gamers already knew that the Saturn was coming. So when combined with the high price point for the 32X peripheral, they discreetly avoided it. This meant the library of 32X games released in the Genesis’ final months, which included early 3D Sega games like Virtua Fighter and Star Wars Trilogy Arcade, went largely ignored. The final 32X game was 1996’s The Amazing Spider-Man: Web of Fire while 1997’s NHL 98 closed out the Genesis on a whimper. Super Nintendo The Super Nintendo Entertainment System reaffirmed Nintendo’s place atop the worldwide video game industry, even as it faced stiff competition from Sega and Sony. Even as the Nintendo 64’s 1996 launch loomed, Nintendo continued to support the SNES in its final years. Indeed, some of the most beloved SNES games were originally released in 1996 and 1997, giving the console the fond farewell that cemented its vaunted place in gaming history. Among the memorable games released in the final stretch for the SNES were Super Mario RPG, Donkey Country 3, Harvest Moon, and The Lost Vikings 2. The last licensed game ever released for the SNES was a 1998 port of Frogger, almost as an afterthought for the console. As far as endings go, the Super Nintendo, like the SNES before it, had a great conclusion to its best-selling run. Sega Saturn Between the original success of the Genesis and loving reappraisal of the Dreamcast, the Sega Saturn remains something of the overlooked middle child. This is in no small part because of how badly Sega handled the console’s rollout for the North American market, from a surprise announcement that caught developers outside of Japan off-guard, an uncompetitive price point in comparison to the original PlayStation, and Sega of America deciding not to localize hundreds of games created by Japanese developers. With that in mind, the Saturn generation lasted four years, as Sega rushed to replace it with its successor, the Dreamcast. This fast-tracked decision effectively hobbled the Saturn in its final year when news about the Dreamcast’s development leaked while Sega was still nominally supporting the Saturn in public. Console and game sales in North America cratered with only seven Saturn games released in the territory for the entirety of 1998, the last being a localization of Magic Knight Rayearth. Given the Saturn’s greater success in Japan than overseas markets, Sega continued to support the Saturn after the Dreamcast’s November 1998 launch, primarily through third-party titles and boxed sets, with the last game released for the console in Japan being 2000’s Final Fight Revenge by Capcom. PlayStation The PlayStation, later rebranded as the PSX and then PS1, marked Sony’s triumphant entry into the home console industry in 1994. Buoyed by its games published on compact discs, as opposed to expensive cartridges, and strong third-party developer support, PS1 became the bestselling console of its generation and the bestselling overall for its time. The PS1 continued to sell well into the subsequent generation, even well into the lifespan of its 2001 successor, the PlayStation 2. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! Given the sheer number of its player base and continued flourishing third-party support, the PS1 saw multiplatform sports and licensed titles published for it through 2006, though the last North American title was published for it in 2004. The last major title for the console was arguably 2002’s Final Fantasy Origins, which was just a compiled remaster of the first two mainline games in the series. Sony officially ended support for the PS1 in 2006, the same year it launched the PlayStation 3. Nintendo 64 Though the Nintendo 64 launched strongly and revolutionized the gaming industry in shifting to 3D games, it also saw Nintendo lose its global top spot in the console wars. Surpassed commercially by PlayStation, Nintendo spent the final years of the N64 focusing on development of the GameCube while extending the life and power of the N64 through its crimson Expansion Pak peripheral. This upgrade in technical performance led to some of the most impressive N64 or console games in its final years on the market. The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, Perfect Dark, and Banjo-Tooie were all released in 2000, each taking advantage of the Expansion Pak boost in their own way. By 2001 Nintendo completely reprioritized its strategy to support the launch of the Game Boy Advance and GameCube, but still put out bonafide bangers like Mario Party 3 and Conker’s Bad Fur Day. By 2002 Nintendo officially pulled the plug on the N64, releasing a handful of sports titles to close out the generation. Dreamcast Sega’s final home console came out the gate swinging with a launch window that included Power Stone, Sonic Adventure, Soulcalibur, The House of the Dead 2, and NFL Blitz 2000. However, the Dreamcast faced continued stiff competition from the original PlayStation along with news about development on the upcoming PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube, and something Microsoft was calling Xbox. With the incoming generation of home consoles reputedly more powerful than the Dreamcast, support for Sega continued to waver, with a remodeled, cheaper PS1 outselling the Dreamcast during the 2000 holiday season as a final nail in Sega’s console coffin. Sega ceased releasing new Dreamcast games in North America by February 2002, closing out its support for the market with NHL 2K2 almost as an afterthought. Like the Saturn, the Dreamcast saw longer support in its native Japan, with March 2004’s puzzle party game Puyo Puyo Fever closing out the generation for good. By December 2001, Sega began developing games for its former competitors, signaling a significant shift to focus on software development rather than hardware, releasing both Sonic Advance for the Game Boy Advance and Sonic Adventure 2: Battle for the GameCube that month. Xbox Though Microsoft’s first foray into the home console industry was off to a shaky start with a hilariously oversized controller and weak launch library, it eventually outsold the GameCube. That said, the console also stands as the shortest generation to date from Microsoft, with the company rushing out its successor, the Xbox 360, almost exactly four years after the original Xbox’s November 2001 launch. That means games initially intended for the Xbox were reconfigured as 360 titles, sometimes late in development, to bolster the next console’s launch library. 2004 saw the strongest first-party games released for the original Xbox, including Halo 2, Fable, and Ninja Gaiden Black before Microsoft shifted its priorities. The majority of games released for the original Xbox after 2005 were multiplatform sports titles, with only three games released for the console in the entirety of 2007 and only Madden NFL 09 released for it in 2008. The original Xbox was, comparatively, a flash in the pan, with Microsoft quickly looking ahead to the future. GameCube The GameCube era was a dark one for Nintendo as the company slid behind Sony and Microsoft in the home console industry in terms of units shipped. This decline, coupled with difficulties in developing games for hardware, meant the console saw dwindling third-party support. As Nintendo readied to launch the motion sensor-oriented Wii in the 2006 holiday season, it repurposed games originally planned for the GameCube for its successor instead. One highlight in the GameCube’s closing window was Resident Evil 4, released at the beginning of 2005 as a GameCube-exclusive before Capcom decided to port it to the PlayStation 2 by the year’s end. A handful of movie tie-in games, like Ratatouille and TMNT, along with the usual multiplatform sports games, filled the gap. As the Wii quickly gained momentum following its breathtakingly successful launch, Nintendo quietly pulled the plug on the GameCube by 2007. However, one major highlight was The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, a fan favorite developed as GameCube’s swan song in 2006… before being delayed so it could simultaneously release as a launch title on the Wii. PlayStation 2 Still the best-selling home console of all time, the PlayStation 2 significantly outsold its immediate competition and helped push Sega out of the hardware console industry for good. This success was also in small part due to the console featuring a built-in DVD drive and being priced competitively compared to other DVD players on the market at the time. Like its predecessor, the PS2 had an especially long lifespan, one that endured through the eventual launch of the PlayStation 4. Leading up to the PS3 launch in late 2006, the PS2 saw the release of some of its most acclaimed games, including its port of Resident Evil 4, Shadow of the Colossus, Gran Turismo 4, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Guitar Hero, Ōkami, Devil May Cry 3, and Final Fantasy XII. The last game ever released for the PS2 was Pro Evolution Soccer 2014, released in 2013. Sony ended post-release support for the PS2 in Japan in 2018, closing out its most successful era to date. Wii After losing industry dominance in its previous two generations, Nintendo catapulted itself back on top with the Wii, which replaced the GameCube as its main home console in late 2006. With its intuitive motion controls and a robust library of games, many of the most acclaimed being console exclusives, the Wii became Nintendo’s bestselling console at the time. By 2013, one year after the launch of the Wii U, Nintendo began ceasing production on new Wii consoles and cutting back online services, with the last major services discontinued in 2019. The Wii’s last real banner year was 2011, which saw the release of Kirby’s Return to Dream Land and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, the latter of which being the last major console exclusive. That said, Nintendo was really focused on launching its last handheld console, the Nintendo 3DS, that year and preparing for the Wii U. Amusingly, the Wii kept receiving third-party support and new installments of Just Dance from Ubisoft until 2019. Xbox 360 The most successful Xbox console to date is Microsoft’s sophomore effort, the Xbox 360, which launched a full year ahead of its generational counterparts in 2005. Though outsold by the Wii, the 360 closed the gap between Microsoft and Sony—even as it was also ultimately outsold by the PS3. What the 360 revolutionized was a digital marketplace for games, allowing players to purchase and download titles straight to their consoles, a feature that became an industry standard. In the years and months leading up to the launch of the Xbox One, the 360 saw its firmware updated to match Microsoft’s other user interfaces while the console began incorporating its own motion sensor gameplay. Branded the Kinect, the peripheral was launched in 2010 to lukewarm response for many of its titles. Though Microsoft continued to support the 360’s online capabilities until 2024, the last two major games for the console were 2012’s Halo 4 and 2013’s Gears of War: Judgment. PlayStation 3 The PlayStation 3 stumbled at its 2006 launch with its significantly higher price point than the competition and complex hardware architecture, making development for the console particularly difficult. Though price cuts and cheaper models of the PS3 improved its standing, it never got close to catching up with Nintendo’s highly successful Wii. As a result, Sony ended its support for the PS3 faster than it had the PS2 or PS1, shifting its focus to the PlayStation 4. Despite Sony quickly reprioritizing itself for the PS4’s 2013 launch, the PS3 saw some of its most iconic titles released in its final years. The Last of Us, Journey, and multiplatform titles like Mass Effect 3 and Grand Theft Auto V closed out the PS3 era. By 2017 Sony ceased hardware production on the PS3 and, while planning to close the PlayStation Store for the platform in 2021, fan outcry led Sony to reverse this decision, leaving online support running. Wii U After completely revitalizing itself and reclaiming its spot at the top of the console industry, Nintendo endured a follow-up slump with the Wii U. From its confusing launch, insistence on gameplay using the console’s GamePad controller, and limited third-party support, the Wii U squandered the lead Nintendo built during the Wii era. With its muted commercial performance, Nintendo quickly got to work with the console’s successor, the Nintendo Switch, which was released in 2017, five years after the Wii U’s ignominious debut. By 2015 just three years after its launch, Nintendo quietly began to reduce production of Wii U hardware, to cut costs and better prepare for the eventual Switch launch. An HD remaster of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, which was originally released to jointly close the GameCube era and launch the Wii, was the last major Wii U-exclusive release. Mirroring its initial Twilight Princess strategy, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was released concurrently for the Wii U and Switch, with Nintendo ending production on Wii U consoles in early 2017 and terminating online support for it in 2023. Xbox One As alluded to in its name, the Xbox One was intended to be an all-in-one entertainment center for owners, through its broadcast television and streaming-friendly interface. It also marked the point where Microsoft lost the console market gains it enjoyed during the Xbox 360 era, outsold by both the PlayStation 4 and the Nintendo Switch. In its final years, Microsoft offered alternate models of the Xbox One, culminating in the Xbox One S All-Digital Edition in 2019, at a significantly reduced price point to entice one last wave of hardware purchases. There wasn’t a lot by way of console exclusives for the Xbox One in its sunset stages prior to the launch of the Xbox Series X|S at the end of 2020. The console saw a number of multiplatform titles, including games developed by Microsoft’s subsidiaries, with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 being a major exception. Instead Microsoft was already focused on developing titles for PC and the Series X|S while further bolstering the library of its premium subscription service Game Pass. PlayStation 4 Sony reclaimed its market dominance beginning in 2013 with the PlayStation 4, outperforming both the Wii U and the Xbox One by significant margins as the PS4 became Sony’s second best-selling home console of all time. To put things into perspective, the PS4 sold more units than the Wii U and Xbox One combined and was second only to the Nintendo Switch in its generation. And with Sony still manufacturing PS4 hardware while major developers continue to publish games for it, one could argue the PS4 era is still thriving. In terms of the last console exclusives released for the PS4 before the launch of the PlayStation 5 at the end of 2020, the PS4 had a particularly stacked final year. The Last of Us Part II, Final Fantasy VII Remake, and Ghost of Tsushima all came out in 2020, following Death Stranding the previous year. The PS4’s online support services are still very much active and the console continues to receive new games regularly, five years into the PS5 era. Nintendo Switch That just leaves the Nintendo Switch, which launched in 2017 before growing to become the second best-selling console of all time, second only to the PS2. With the Nintendo Switch 2 coming out in June 2025, that will make the original Switch Nintendo’s dominant console for over eight years, its longest console generation to date. And Nintendo has already phased out significant first-party development for Switch titles, with much of the 2020s Switch games being remasters of previous titles, like Donkey Country Returns and Xenoblade Chronicles X, or compilations like Harvest Moon. It was 2024 that saw the last major push of console exclusives for the original Switch, predominantly from its marquee franchises. Super Mario Party Jamboree and The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom were the last first-party titles of note for the Switch era, both released in the back half of the year. Nintendo has been building to the Switch 2’s launch for some time, and it’s looking to hit the ground running with one of its strongest launch libraries yet. The Nintendo Switch 2 will be released on June 5.

Recently a friend mentioned how much of a shame it was that, generally speaking, there are few of those backdoor “classic” reimaginings today like the ones we had growing up. And after thinking for a moment, I agreed. Children and teens of the ‘90s were treated to an embarrassment of riches when it came to the Bard and Bard-adjacent films. Nearly every week seemed to offer another modernization of William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, or Geoffrey Chaucer, all retrofitted with a wink and a nudge to appeal to teenagers reading much the same texts in high school or university. But then when looking back at the sweep of 1990s cinema beyond just “teen movies,” it was more than only Julia Stiles and Heath Ledger vehicles that were getting the classical treatment. In fact the ‘90s, and to a large extent the ‘80s as well, was an era ripe with indie studios and Hollywood majors treating classic literature (if largely of the English variety) with the sanctity nowadays reserved for comic books and video games. It was a time when some of the most exciting or ambitious artists working in the industry sought to trade in the bullets and brutality of New Hollywood from a decade or two earlier in favor of the even more brutal constraints of corsets and top hats. Shakespeare was arguably bigger business in tinsel town than at any other point during this period, and we saw some of the most faithful and enduring adaptations of Austen or Louisa May Alcott make it to the screen. Why is that and can it happen again? Let’s look back at the golden age of period piece costumed dramas and splashy literary adaptations… Mozart and Merchant Ivory Since the beginning of the medium, moviemakers have looked back at well-worn and familiar stories for inspiration and audience familiarity. Not too many years after making his enduring trip to the moon, Georges Méliès adapted Hamlet into a roughly 10-minute silent short in 1907. And of course before Kenneth Branagh, Laurence Olivier had Hollywood falling in love with the Bard… at least as long it was Larry in the tights. Even so, literary adaptations were often constrained, particularly in Hollywood where filmmakers had to contend with the limitations of censorship via the Hays Code and preconceived notions about what an American audience would enjoy. The most popular costumed dramas tended to therefore be vanity projects or something of a more sensational hue—think biblical or swords and sandals epics. So it’s difficult to point to an exact moment where that changed in the 1980s, yet we’d hazard to suggest the close together Oscar seasons of 1984 and 1986 had a lot to do with it. After all, the first was the year that Miloš Forman’s AmadeusA Room with a View. Considered by Forster scholars one of the author’s slighter works, the film had critics like Roger Ebert swooning that it was a masterpiece. In the case of Amadeus, the director of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)—a zeitgeist-shaping portrait of modern oppression and control from about a decade earlier—was taking the story of Mozart and making it a punk rock tragicomedy. Based on a Peter Shaffer play of the same name, Forman and Shaffer radically reimagined the story, making it both funnier and darker as Forman strove to pose Mozart as a modern day rebel iconoclast with his wig resembling as much Sid Vicious as the Age of Enlightenment. Located atop Tom Hulce’s giggling head, it signaled a movie that had all the trappings of melodrama but felt accessible and exciting to a wide modern audience. It went on to do relatively big business and win Best Picture. While not the first period film to do so, it was the first in a long while set in what could be construed as the distant past (Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi won the year before but that was based on a subject matter in the living memory of most Academy voters). Otherwise, most of the recent winners were dramas or dramedies about the modern world: Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), The Deer Hunter (1978), and Annie Hall (1977). They reflected an audience that wanted to get away from the artificiality of their parents’ cinema, which in the U.S. associated historical costumes with the (grand) phoniness of Ben-Hur (1959) or Oliver! (1968). Yet perhaps the movie that proved this was the beginning of a popular trend came a few years later via the British masterpiece A Room with a View. To be sure, the partnership of Merchant and Ivory had been going for more than 20 years by the time they got to adapting Forster, including with several other costumed dramas and period pieces. However, those films were mixed with modern comedies and dramas like rock ’n roll-infused The Guru (1969) and Jane Austen in Manhattan (1980). More importantly, all of these films tended to be art house pictures; small chamber pieces intended for a limited audience. Yet as the marketing campaign would later trumpet about A Room with a View—the ethereal romantic dramedy which introduced Daniel Day-Lewis and a fresh-faced Helena Bonham Carter to the U.S.—this movie had the “highest single theatre gross in the country!” (It’s fun to remember a time when a movie just selling out in New York every day could make it a hit.) The film’s combination of Forster’s wry satire and cynicism about English aristocracy in the late Victorian and early Edwardian era, coupled with the sweeping romance of Puccini arias and Tuscan countrysides, made it a massive success. It also defined what became the “Merchant Ivory” period piece forever after, including in future Oscar and box office darlings like the Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, and Carter-starring Howard’s End (1992), and Hopkins and Thompson’s reunion in The Remains of the Day (1993). These were all distinctly British and understated pictures, with Remains being an outright tragedy delivered in a hushed whisper, but their relative success with a certain type of moviegoer and Academy voter signaled to Hollywood that there was gold up in ‘em hills. And soon enough, more than just Forman on the American side was going up there to mine it. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! 20th Century Studios Martin Scorsese, Michael Mann, and the Auteur’s Costumed Drama In 1990, Michael Mann was one of the hottest creatives working in Hollywood. As the executive producer and sometime-director on NBC’s edgy (by ‘80s standards) police drama, Miami Vice, he played a direct hand in proving American television could be “gritty” and artistic. Even the episodes he didn’t helm were defined by the standards he insisted upon—such as never putting cool guys Crockett and Tubbs in a red or brown car. It would clash with the neon-light-on-celluloid aesthetic that Mann developed for the series. As that series was winding down by 1990, Mann was more in demand than ever to make any film project he might have wanted—something perhaps in-keeping with Vice or gritty crime thrillers he’d made in the ’80s like serial killer thriller Manhunter (1986). Instead he sought to adapt a childhood favorite for the screen, James Fenimore Cooper’s 19th century American frontier novel, The Last of the Mohicans. Certainly a problematic text in its original form with its imperial-fantasy riff on the French and Indian War (or Seven Years War) where Indigenous tribes in what is today upstate New York were either reduced to the noble or cruel savage stereotypes, the text proved a jumping off point for Mann to craft a gripping, primal, and prestigious film. He also made a movie that far exceeded its source material with The Last of the Mohicans being an often wordless opera of big emotions played in silence by Day-Lewis, Madeleine Stowe, and Wes Studi, all while Trevor Jones and Randy Edelman’s musical score looms like thunderclouds across the mountainous landscape. It is an elevated action movie, and a beautiful drama that did bigger business in the U.S. than Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and Tom Cruise vehicle A Few Good Men in the same year. It also would create a precedent we’d see followed time and again throughout the rest of the decade. Some of the biggest and most respected filmmakers of the moment, many of them praised under auteur theory, were looking to literary classics for an audience that craved them. After the one-two genre punch of Goodfellas (1990) and Cape Fear (1991), Martin Scorsese made one of his most ambitious and underrated films: a stone-cold 1993 masterpiece inspired by an Edith Wharton novel, The Age of Innocence. It’s a story that Scorsese argues is just as brutal, if not more so, than his gangster pictures. Indeed, The Age of Innocence remains the best cinematic representation of the Gilded Age in the U.S., capturing the lush pageantry of the most elite New Yorkers’ lifestyles in their robber baron heyday, as well as how class snobbery metastasized into a ruthless tribalism that doomed the romantic yearnings of one conformist attorney (again Daniel Day-Lewis) and this would-be divorcée love of his life (Michelle Pfeiffer). It might not have been a hit in its time, but Ang Lee’s breakout in the U.S. a year later definitely was. The Taiwanese filmmaker was already the toast of international and independent cinema via movies like The Wedding Banquet (1993) and martial arts-adjacent Pushing Hands (1991), but it is when he directed a flawless adaptation of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility in 1995 that he became a Hollywood favorite who would soon get movies like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) and Hulk (2003) greenlit. Sense and Sensibility benefits greatly, too, from a marvelous cast with Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant, Kate Winslet, and Alan Rickman among its ensemble. It also captured the sophisticated satirical and melancholic underpinnings of Austen’s pen that most previous Hollywood adaptations never scratched. It set a standard that most of the best Austen adaptations to this day are measured by, be it Joe Wright and Keira Knightley’s cinematic take on Pride and Prejudice a decade later, various attempts at Emma from the 1990s with Gwyneth Paltrow to this decade with Anya Taylor-Joy, or even Netflix’s recent Dakota Johnson-led Persuasion adaptation. Columbia / Sony A Dark Universe of Gods and Monsters Meanwhile, right before Columbia Pictures greenlit Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence and later Gillian Armstrong’s still delightful (and arguably definitive) interpretation of Little Women in 1994, the same studio signed off on its first period piece with Winona Ryder attached to star. And it was Dracula. Considered a folly of hubris at the time by rivals who snickered to Variety it should be renamed “Bonfire of the Vampires” (in reference to a notorious Brian De Palma bomb from 1990), Bram Stoker’s Dracula was Francis Ford Coppola’s lurid and magnificent reimagining of Stoker’s definitive Victorian novel. Published in 1897 with on-the-nose metaphors for London society’s anxieties over foreigners, sexual promiscuity and disease, and the so-called “New Woman” working in the professional classes, Coppola saw all of that potential in the well-worn and adapted vampire novel. He also correctly predicted there was a box office hit if he could bring all those elements out in an exciting and anachronistic fever dream for the MTV generation. Love or hate Coppola’s looseness with Stoker’s novel—which is pretty audacious since he put the author’s name in the title—Coppola crafted one of the most sumptuous and expensive depictions of Victorian society ever put onscreen, winning costume designer Eiko Ishioka an Oscar for the effort. He also made an unexpected holiday hit that played like bloody gangbusters alongside Home Alone 2 and Aladdin that winter. It set a standard for what can in retrospect be considered a pseudo “dark universe” of classic literary monsters getting ostensibly faithful and expensive adaptations by Hollywood. Coppola himself produced Kenneth Branagh’s Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994), a film that is actually in many ways closer to the thematic letter of its author than Bram Stoker’s Dracula ever was. It was also a worse movie that flopped, but it looked spectacular as the only major Frankenstein movie to remember Shelley set the story during the Age of Enlightenment in the late 18th century. Yet while Frankenstein failed, Tom Cruise and Neil Jordan would have a lot of success in the same year adapting Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire. The book admittedly was recent, having been published in 1976, but the story’s roots and setting in 18th and 19th century bayou occultism were not. It was also a grandiose costumed drama where the guy who played Top Gun’s Maverick would sink fangs into young Brad Pitt’s neck in a scene dripping in homoeroticism. This trend continued throughout the ‘90s with some successes, like Tim Burton’s wildly revisionist (and Coppola-produced) Sleepy Hollow in 1999, and some misses. For instance, did you remember that Julia Roberts at the height of her stardom appeared in a revisionist take on Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde where she played the not-so-good doctor’s maid? It’s called Mary Reilly (1996), by the by. The Samuel Goldwyn Company The Resurgence of Shakespeare Of course when talking about classic literature and storytelling, one name rises above most others in the schools and curriculums of the English-speaking world. Yet curiously it was only in the 1990s that someone really lit on the idea of making a movie directly based on the Bard tailored almost exclusively for that demographic: Baz Luhrmann in 1996, who reconfigured the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet into the visual language of MTV. He even stylized the title as William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet. That proved the tip of an anachronistic iceberg whose cast included Leonardo DiCaprio at the height of his heartthrob powers as Romeo and real-life teenager Claire Danes as his Capulet amore. Their Verona was a Neverland composite of Miami, Rio de Janeiro, and the nightly news, with hyper music video editing and frenetic neon-hued melodrama. Some older scholars viewed Luhrmann’s anachronisms as an abomination, but as a Millennial, I can attest we loved this thing back in the day. Many still do. But it was hardly the first box office breakout for Shakespeare in the ‘90s. When the decade began, the helmer of another cinematic Romeo and Juliet classic from a different era, Franco Zeffirelli, attempted to make Hamlet exciting for “kids these days” by casting Mel Gibson right in the midst of his Lethal Weapon popularity as the indecisive Dane. To the modern eye, it is hard to remember Gibson was a heartthrob of sorts in the ‘80s and early ‘90s—or generally viewed as a dashing star worthy of heroic leading men roles. Nonetheless, there is quite a bit to like about Hamlet (1990) if you can look past Gibson’s off-screen behavior in the following decades, or the fact Zeffirelli cuts what is a four-hour play down to less than 2.5 hours. Gibson actually makes for a credible and genuinely mad Hamlet (perhaps not a surprise now), and Zeffirelli mines the medieval melancholy of the story well with production design, costumes, and location shooting at real Norman castles. Plus, Helena Bonham Carter remains the best Ophelia ever put to screen. Hamlet (1990) would eventually be overshadowed, though, both by Gibson’s awful behavior and because of a much grander and bombastic adaptation from the man who became the King of Shakespeare Movies in the ‘90s: Kenneth Branagh. Aye, Branagh might deserve the most credit for the Shakespearean renaissance in this era, beginning with his adaptation of Henry V (1989), which featured the makings of Branagh’s troupe of former RSC favorites turned film actors: Derek Jacobi, Brian Blessed, and of course his future wife (and ex), Emma Thompson. Together the pair would mount what is in this writer’s opinion the best film ever based on a Shakespeare play, the divine and breezy Much Ado About Nothing (1993), a perfect encapsulation of perhaps the first romantic comedy ever written that features Branagh and Thompson as the sharp-tongued, dueling lovers Benedict and Beatrice. It also features Denzel Washington as a dashing Renaissance prince, Kate Beckinsale in her breakout role, and a gloriously over-the-top score by Patrick Doyle. It would define the style of Branagh’s following ‘90s efforts, whether they went off-the-rails like in the aforementioned Frankenstein, or right back on them in the 70mm-filmed, ultra wide and sunny adaptation of Hamlet he helmed in 1996. Avoiding the psychological and Freudian interpretations of the Danish prince chased by Olivier and Zeffirelli, Branagh turns Hamlet into a romantic hero spearheading an all-star ensemble cast. At the play’s full four-hour length, Hamlet (1996) is indulgent. Yet somehow that befits the material. Branagh would also star as Iago in Oliver Parker’s Othello (1995) opposite Laurence Fishburne and reconfigure the Bard as a musical in his own directorial effort, Love’s Labour’s Lost (2000). It paved the way for more outside-the-box Shakespeare movies by the end of the decade like Julie Taymor’s deconstructionist Titus (1999) and the A Midsummer Night’s Dream from 1999 where Kevin Kline turns into an ass and makes out with Michelle Pfeiffer. CBS via Getty Images The Birth of the Teenage Shakespeare Remix (and Austen, and Chaucer, and…) As popular as the Shakespeare movie became in the ‘90s, what’s curiously unique about this era is the simultaneous rise of movies that adapted either the Bard or other highly respected literary writers and turned them into a pure teenage dream. We’re talking moving past modernizing Romeo and Juliet like Luhrmann did, or repurposing it for high New York society like Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim aimed with West Side Story. These were straight, unapologetic youth films that also proved clever reworkings of classic storytelling structure. Among the best directly derived from Shakespeare is the movie that made Julia Stiles and Heath Ledger Gen-X icons, 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), a happily campy update of The Taming of the Shrew set in a fairytale high school also populated by future Christopher Nolan favorites like Joseph Gordon-Levitt and David Krumholtz. Stiles would, in fact, do this kind of remix a number times in the more serious-faced modernization of Othello, O (2000), which also starred Mekhi Phifer as a tragically distrusting high school sports star instead of warrior, and Michael Almereyda and Ethan Hawke’s own Hamlet (2000), the third Hamlet movie in 10 years, albeit this one set in turn-of-the-century NYC. Ledger also returned to the concept by adapting another, even older literary giant, in this case the medieval poet Geoffrey Chaucer, for A Knight’s Tale (2001), an anachronistic blending of the medieval and modern where peasants grooved in the jousting tournament stands to Queen. There was also the strange attempt to turn Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ Dangerous Liaisons from 1782 into an erotic thriller for teens (the ‘90s were weird, huh?) via the lusty Cruel Intentions However, easily the best of these remains Amy Heckerling’s CluelessEmma from the Regency period to a fairytale version of 1990s Beverly Hills. Foregoing modern fads and simply inventing her own—with the assumption anything she wrote in 1994 would be dated by ’95—Heckerling create a faux yet now authentically iconic language and fashion style via Cher (Alicia Silverstone), a charmed SoCal princess who is so well-meaning in her matchmaking mischief that she defies any attempts to detest her entitlement or vanity. You kind of are even low-key chill that the happy ending is she hooks up with her step brother (Paul Rudd). It’s a classic! And the Rest There are many, many more examples we could examine from this era. These can include the sublime like the Gillian Armstrong-directed Little Women of 1994 starring Winona Ryder, Claire Danes, and Kirsten Dunst; and they can include the wretched like the Demi Moore and Gary Oldman-led The Scarlet Letter (1995). There were more plays adapted, a la Arthur Miller’s The Crucible (again with Ryder and Day-Lewis!), and then those that just had some fun with playwrights, as seen in the over-celebrated Shakespeare in LoveBraveheart (1995). More than a few of these won Best Picture Oscars as well, including Braveheart, Shakespeare in Love, and James Cameron’s little 1997 movie you might have heard about elsewhere: Titanic. And yet, this type of film has by and large gone away. Once in a while one comes along that still works, such as Greta Gerwig’s own revisionist interpretation of Little Women. That beautiful film was a good-sized hit in 2019, but it did not exactly usher in a new era of literary adaptations. Now such projects, like everything else not considered four-quadrant intellectual property by studio bean counters, is mostly relegated to long-form stream series. Which in some cases is fine. Many would argue the best version of Pride & Prejudice was the BBC production… also from the ‘90s, mind. But whether it is original period piece films or adaptations, unless you’re Robert Eggers (who arguably isn’t making films for the same mainstream sensibility the likes of Gerwig or, for that matter, Coppola were), period piece storytelling and “great adaptations” have been abandoned to the small screen and full-on wish fulfillment anachronisms like Bridgerton. This seems due to studios increasingly eschewing anything that isn’t reliably based on a brand that middle-aged adults loved. But in that case… it might be worth reminding them that ‘90s kids are getting older and having children of their own. There may again be a market beyond the occasional Gerwig swing, or Eggers take on Dracula, for classic stories; a new audience being raised to want modern riffs inspired by tales that have endured for years and centuries. These stories are mostly in the public domain too. And recent original hits like Sinners suggests you don’t even need a classic story to connect with audiences. So perhaps once again, a play’s the thing in which they can catch the conscience of the… consumer? Or something like that.

In every generation there is a chosen one, and Generation Alpha’s has just been announced. 15-year-old American Horror Story and Star Wars: Skeleton Crew actor Ryan Kiera Armstrong will be joining OG Buffy the Vampire Slayer star (and reboot producer) Sarah Michelle Gellar in the series revival Hulu pilot. No further character details have been announced for the new role – including a name or whether or not Armstrong is actually playing a new slayer as is being reported elsewhere. Deadline report that her character will be “an introverted high-school student”. Will she come into her Slayer powers in the pilot, or could she be playing, say, Buffy’s teenaged daughter? Time will tell. Whatever the specifics of the role, it’s being touted as the new lead. On a video call with Ryan and her actor-producer father Dean Armstrong, Gellar welcomed the youngster to “the new Sunnydale,” telling her that ever since she saw her audition tape, that “there was only one girl that [she] wanted by [her] side”. She had one question for the 15-year-old (who’s a few years off the age that 19-year-old Gellar was when she first started playing Buffy Summers): are you ready to save the world? A tearful yes was the answer. Armstrong has already been acting for over a decade, with movie appearances in IT: Chapter Two, Black Widow, and the Firestarter remake under her belt. On television, she played the spirited and mischievous Minnie-May Barry in Canadian Netflix series Anne With an E, violinist child prodigy Alma Gardner in American Horror Story: Double Feature, was recently seen as Fern in 2024 Disney+ series Star Wars: Skeleton Crew (pictured above), and will soon be seen alongside Ethan Hawke in FX series The Lowdown.

This article contains spoilers for Hacks season 4 episode 7. Hollywood changes people. But rarely has the glitz and glamor of Tinseltown changed somebody more quickly than Dance Mom on Hacks. In the fourth episode of the fourth season of this beloved comedy on HBO Max (Hey, we get to call it “HBO Max” again!), Julianne Nicholson’s unnamed character is introduced as a humble, middle-aged TikTok content creator from rural Alberta who just wants to dance…hence: Dance Mom. Recognizing that Deborah Vance’s (Jean Smart) late night show has a female demographic problem, her co-manager Kayla Schaeffer (Megan Stalter) identifies Dance Mom as a potential solution. Dance Mom might as well have been constructed in an Ellen DeGeneres laboratory to appeal to middle America. Her humble Canadian origins and inoffensive personality shine through in her first meeting with Jimmy LaSaque (Paul W. Downs) and Kayla as they show her around some major Los Angeles landmarks like Rodeo Drive, Sunset Boulevard, and, of course, the Ripley’s Believe It or Not on Hollywood Boulevard. “I feel like the Beverly Hills Chihuahua!” Dance Mom exclaims as she takes in all the beautiful people wearing makeup in the daytime. This is only her second time in the States, with the first being a trip to the Heinz (as in Ketchup) History Center in Pittsburgh as a child. It takes some convincing but Dance Mom agrees to try out for Deborah’s show. She’s then invited on to perform that same day after Deborah and lead writer Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder) alienate the studio audience with an argument. Thankfully, Dance Mom’s wholesome routine wins the audience back and she becomes a mainstay for the show, counterbalancing Deborah’s caustic sense of humor with a cheerful smile. Two episodes later Dance Mom is living in Adam Levine’s 12-bedroom mansion; has blown through $1 million in 48 hours on cars, clothes, and whippets; and has lost a crucial Old Navy brand ambassadorship. Oh, and she doesn’t have any kids by the way. The rapid rise and fall of Dance Mom represents the kind of fun a long-running comedy can have when it’s firing on all cylinders. Through three (very heavily-awarded and acclaimed) seasons, Hacks has its most important dynamic down pat. The creative push and pull between platonic soulmates Deborah Vance and Ava Daniels give Hacks all the energy it needs to drive multiple seasons of comedic storytelling. With the time it has left over for B-plots and C-plots, the show can afford to get experimental. While a less confident series might have spread the dancing Albertan’s degeneracy across a whole season, Hacks maximizes its impact with a two-episode whip cut. One day Dance Mom is respectfully declining sparkling water (“Not for me, too spicy”), the next day she’s yeeting a spent “Astro Gas” canister while yelling “Steve Nash!,” which is obviously the Canadian version of “Kobe!”* *It must be pointed out that someone on the Hacks writing staff really knows ball. Of course, the saga of Dance Mom wouldn’t hit quite as hard without the right performance. Thanks to Julianne Nicholson, series showrunners Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs, Jen Statsky have found exactly that. Even before Hacks gave her the opportunity to lounge around Adam Levine’s place, Nicholson has been having a hell of a year. Hulu subscribers may recognize her Samantha “Sinatra” Redmond, the creative lynchpin of sci-fi/thriller Paradise. Before that, the Massachusetts-born actress won an Emmy for playing beleaguered mother Lori Ross in Mare of Easttown. As evidenced by her most notable characters’ hyper-regional specificity (Delaware County, Alberta, and a post-apocalyptic underground bunker), Nicholson is a versatile performer. Through many of her roles though, she brings a similar sense of impishness. Lori Ross, Sinatra, and Dance Mom all possess a child-like sense of frustration and disappointment to varying degrees, as though they woke up one day in adult bodies without their consent. In that way, Nicholson brings a welcome Carrie Coon vibe to the table. And anyone who knows anything about Den of Geek knows we don’t make that comparison lightly. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! Nicholson brings not only an offbeat gravitas to the role but a sense of pure joy at being able to cut loose. With only three episodes left to go in Hacks season 4, it remains to be seen how much further Dance Mom can fall. If this is it, however, one can’t say that Dance Mom didn’t go out her way: by doing a lot of drugs and dancing…but mostly the drugs. New episodes of Hacks season 4 premiere Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET on (soon-to-be HBO) Max, culminating with the finale on May 29.

Lena Dunham–following the success of her 2012 comedy-drama series Girls–is my Roman Empire. Everyone knows the story: the published essays dissecting the sudden end of her long-term relationship with producer Jack Antonoff; the widespread criticisms of Girls for its lack of diversity; the poorly received comments about abortion. We witnessed the public turn on Dunham, branding her one of the most controversial writers of her time. But what was she feeling during that wave of backlash?  On July 10, Dunham and her husband, Luis Felber, will offer a loose interpretation of what life was like when they first met in 2021. If it’s anything like her past work, the series will be packed with comedy, emotional honesty and sharp introspection. As Dunham put it in a Variety interview about meeting Felber: “When I met my husband, I was dazzled by just how much baggage two people could bring to the table.” The highly anticipated series, Too Much, co-written by Dunham and Felber, premieres on Netflix on July 10.  “Co-created by Dunham and Luis Ferber, Too Much centers on Jessica (Meg Stalter) a New York workaholic in her mid-thirties, reeling from a broken relationship that she thought would last forever and slowly isolating everyone she knows. When every block in New York tells a story of her own bad behaviour, the only solution is to take a job in London, where she plans to live a life of solitude like a Bronte sister. But when she meets Felix (Will Sharpe) – a walking series of red flags – she finds that their unusual connection is impossible to ignore, even as it creates more problems than it solves. Now they have to ask themselves: do Americans and Brits actually speak the same language?” Read more at Deadline A period romance about two young artists that fall in love in Paris just before becoming recognized as cultural icons– yes, please; plus, the Bill Pohlad directed project, Miles and Juliette, will be produced by none other than Mick Jagger– double yes!  Just in time for the recent wave of buzz surrounding new movies during the Cannes Film Festival, Damson Idris, who is currently filming opposite Brad Pitt in Paramount’s upcoming fantasy film Children of Blood and Bone, has been set to play Miles Davis, alongside Anamaria Vartolomei as Juliette Gréco in Pohlad’s latest project.  “According to the project’s description, Miles & Juliette follows ‘22-year-old Miles Davis (Idris) on a transformative trip to Paris in 1949, where he falls into a passionate romance with Juliette Gréco (Vartolomei), the French singer, actress, and Left Bank icon. What begins as an intimate affair blossoms into a profound connection between two young artists — just before they became cultural legends.’” Read more at The Hollywood Reporter On Sunday, Sony Pictures Television was able to secure global distribution rights to Jennifer Ames and Steve Turner’s relationship comedy series, The Miniature Wife.  The series features a star-studded cast of regulars and recurring characters, with Elizabeth Banks and Emmy-winner Matthew Macfadyen in the leading roles. You’re probably thinking: What do Ames and Turner mean by the miniature wife? The Media Res produced comedy series is actually based off of author Manuel Gonzalez’s short story of the same name about a man who accidentally shrinks his wife.  Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! “The relationship comedy series explores the shifting power dynamics between spouses as a technological mishap triggers the ultimate marital crisis, pitting them against each other in a battle for dominance. It will air on Peacock in the U.S.”  Read more at Variety Tuesday marked the start of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. Long-awaited projects from Wes Anderson and Ari Aster are set to premiere as well as six female directed films in the Official Competition.  Last year, Sean Baker snagged the Palme d’Or (Golden Palm), which is the highest prize awarded to the director of the Best Feature Film of the Official Competition, for Anora– which later won the Academy Award for Best Picture on March 2. Who will win this year’s Palm d’Or, and will the films featured at Cannes be an early indicator for the 2026 awards season like last year? We’ll have to see, but for now, even if you can’t attend the festival, keep a close eye on the daily happenings in Cannes over the next two weeks.  “Pundits complained last year’s Cannes was a light affair, but that had to do with the bottleneck created by the strikes, for one. Many auteurs return to the Croisette this year to make for a highly anticipated festival.” Read more at IndieWire The film that I’m the most excited to hear about following its premiere at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival is by far Ethan Coen’s upcoming dark comedy, Honey Don’t! The film follows Margaret Qualley as Honey O’Donahue, a small-town private investigator, who looks into strange deaths tied to a mysterious church. Who’s the priest of that deadly church? Captain America, of course!  Though it’s not in competition, the film will premiere in Cannes on the final day of the festival, as part of the midnight screenings. Though I’ll have to wait until Aug. 22 to see the dark comedy in theaters, I have a feeling there will be a lot of buzz surrounding the film following its premiere.  “Once again starring Margaret Qualley, this time as a lesbian private investigator on the trail of a cultist played by former Captain America Chris Evans, Ethan Coen’s latest, co-written alongside longtime collaborator and wife Tricia Cooke, looks to be a dark comedy through and through, firmly of a piece with Drive-Away Dolls.”  Read more at Empire Watch the trailer of HONEY, DON’T! below:

This Duster review contains no spoilers. Would you look at that? Actor Josh Holloway and creator J.J. Abrams have reunited for the first time since Lost crash-landed onto ABC 20 years ago. I have slight memories of the series — I was more of a Heroes watcher — but never felt inclined to revisit. Nonetheless, I can understand the joy in seeing them collaborate on a new project after all these years. But this time, they’re trading vehicles and genres. Abrams and LaToya Morgan’s Max period crime thriller series, Duster, in which Holloway portrays a getaway driver tapped to be a mole by the FBI, bears a pulpy and cartoonish exterior, though its constant tonal whiplash prevents its engine from roaring as loud as it should. Jim Ellis (Holloway) is the quintessential getaway driver men don’t want to mess with and women want to be with. He’s a cool, alluring, charming dude whose business varies between wheelman, courier, and blackmailer. Most of his jobs are for his crime lord boss, Ezra Saxton (Keith David), who has the Southwest crime strip on lock and whom he’s loyal to thanks to the friendship his dad Wade (Corbin Bernsen) shared with him. Whenever he’s not under Saxton’s thumb, he’s a supportive uncle to his fellow courier driver ex-girlfriend Izzy’s (Camille Guaty) daughter Luna (Adriana Aluna Martinez). Although Jim leads a low-key lifestyle, it’s evident that he is going through a transition brought on by the unresolved death of his beloved brother, Joey who was also a wheelman in the past and died in an explosion.  Enter the driven and hard-working Nina Hayes (Rachel Hilson), who makes it into the FBI as the first Black woman agent. Because it’s the ‘70s, all the white males within her unit, whether it be her peers or superiors, do their best to belittle her. The sole person she establishes a friendship with is Awan (Asivak Koostachin), a comic book-loving Navajo nation-based agent who is assigned as her partner.  Hayes and Ellis’ worlds collide, and she propositions him to be her mole for the FBI to take down Saxton and his entire crime syndicate. Unknown to her FBI allies, Hayes has additional motivations for wanting to bring Saxton down. Jim’s loyalty to his boss is frequently put to the test during the season’s perilous assignments, causing him to question his loyalty to Saxton. Hayes faces the same moral compass challenge as she is compelled to work outside the law and actively pursue information.  Despite the serialization of the plot, Duster bears a high-spirited eccentricity that works in its favor for most of the series. At least on Jim Ellis’ part, where it adopts the “mission of the week” episodic format. Every episode follows Jim going job to job for Saxton, which results in him either facing off against assassins or crime lords straight out of an ‘80s animation. Jim’s quests get unabashedly cartoonish to the extent that one episode features a stunningly animated dream sequence where Jim envisions himself in a Looney Tunes cartoon. When he’s not fighting in his orange Plymouth Duster, Jim’s wheelman missions involve him interacting with icons of 1970s pop culture, such as Colonel Tom Parker and Adrienne Barbeau. Abrams and Morgan’s use of campy worldbuilding is largely attributable to the charismatic supporting actors who confidently embellish their roles, as opposed to the straight-laced nature of the two leads. Jim’s smooth persona, in particular, bounces off quirky characters, resulting in strong comedic moments. Some of my favorite scenes are when Jim fights with his stepmother Charlotte (Gail O’ Grady), who despises him to no end even though they both have a close bond with Wade the patriarch. Duster‘s heart simply lies in how Jim and Nina navigate this kooky, crime world and their reliance on each other to thrive in their paths. Holloway’s smooth wit and personable bravado contribute to the show’s welcoming gravitas. Hilson on her part excels with a tough, self-assured backbone that adds so much charm to the conventional cop-criminal dynamic she and Holloway share.  It’s clear that Duster is a different engine from Lost, but Holloway hasn’t lost his star touch. The series thrives on being brainless, fast-food TV that is often wildly entertaining, accompanied by stylish and cool action sequences. Whether it be combat or car chase sequences with adrenaline-inducing practical crashes, it feels like a remnant of pulpy action thrillers with an adult edge not often around in modern television. Much of that credit is attributed to director Steph Green, who keeps the energy buoyed throughout each episode despite elements of the overarching investigation Nina and Awan feeling like a chore to get through.  Some episodes have trouble keeping a consistent tone. Mostly when it tries to make timely social commentary about workplace diversity, racial identity, and equality, especially within Nina and Izzy’s subplot. It’s a good attempt, if not absolutely necessary, especially since many studios are cutting back on diverse content in a Trump 2.0 administration. But it all contradicts the ridiculous scenes that follow, like Jim facing an assassin whose shtick is throwing projectile blades or a ceiling fan landing on a racist patron’s crotch. Duster is an all-around enjoyable and engaging historical thriller, supported by a warm, campy energy and wit, incredible action scenes, and strong performances from Josh Holloway and Rachel Hilson. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! The first episode of Duster premieres Thursday, May 15 at 9 p.m. ET on Max. New episodes debut Thursdays at the same time, culminating with the finale on July 3.

Iron Man was a resounding success when it opened in 2008, earning more than half a billion dollars and declaring in no uncertain terms that Marvel Studios—and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as it later came to be known—had arrived. Although Marvel was also developing movies about Thor, Captain America, and Ant-Man at the time, Iron Man 2 was pushed to the front of the line and set for release in May 2010, just two years after the first film. The idea was to cash in on the surprise success of Iron Man and give the other movies a little more time to breathe and develop, with the ultimate goal of teaming all the characters up in The Avengers. But perhaps due to its rushed production schedule, studio growing pains, and the need to lay down breadcrumbs for the stories to come, Iron Man 2 was a shaky affair when it eventually came out. Not that this hurt its box office potential. It grossed more than the first film. Still, it did not escape the notice of critics and hardcore fans, resulting in a film that still regularly lands near the bottom of MCU movie rankings. Strangely, however, Marvel Studios has repeated many of the same mistakes it made on Iron Man 2 in later films while also taking some of the wrong lessons from the troubled production of the MCU’s first sequel. A Rushed Development With Iron Man 2 announced days after the release of Iron Man (even before the relative failure of The Incredible Hulk that same year), Marvel had to scramble to come up with a story and lock down its principal players. Robert Downey Jr., of course, was signed to reprise the role of Tony Stark at a much higher salary. Gwyneth Paltrow was also confirmed to return, as was director Jon Favreau (who would also once again play Stark security chief Happy Hogan). Also returning were Samuel L. Jackson and Clark Gregg as Nick Fury and Agent Phil Coulson, respectively, expanding the presence of S.H.I.E.L.D. that was briefly established in the first film. Downey and Favreau tapped writer/actor Justin Theroux to pen the screenplay, which would introduce villains Justin Hammer and Whiplash (actually a sort of hybrid of that character and the Crimson Dynamo) into the story after comic book arch-nemesis The Mandarin was nixed as both too fantastical and potentially racist. Also slated to make her debut in the movie: Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), a nod to the impending creation of the Avengers but one of the many elements of a movie that was potentially piling up too many plot threads. Although initial reports suggested that at least part of the film would adapt the famous “Demon in a Bottle” storyline, in which Tony Stark becomes a full-blown alcoholic, that aspect of the narrative was toned down due to concerns over toy sales and younger viewers’ perception of Iron Man. The movie reportedly began filming without a finished script, something that would hamper future Marvel movies and lead the studio to make reshoots a permanent part of every film’s production schedule. This necessitated Theroux having to do daily rewrites on the set with Favreau and Downey, with the latter’s ad-libbing and improvisatory style of acting further muddying what was already a confusing and tonally uneven plot. New Faces, New Problems As mentioned, Downey, Paltrow, Favreau, Gregg, and Jackson (the latter after some torturous negotiations) all returned to their roles in Iron Man 2, but Terence Howard, who co-starred in Iron Man as Tony Stark’s best friend, Col. James “Rhodey” Rhodes, did not. Depending on who you ask, Howard was either too difficult or too expensive—or both—to keep around for the sequel. He was replaced by Don Cheadle, who’s played Rhodey (and become a fan favorite, at least until Secret Invasion retconned him as a Skrull) ever since. Ironically Marvel should have learned from this and the recasting of Bruce Banner (from Edward Norton to Mark Ruffalo) that it was okay to recast a major role once in a while. But the biggest mistake Marvel made in this regard was arguably announcing that T’Challa/Black Panther would not be recast after the tragic death of Chadwick Boseman, which left the MCU without one of its most potentially important superheroes (Marvel has since seemingly eased up on this, with Harrison Ford replacing the late William Hurt as “Thunderbolt” Ross and rumors circulating that a new T’Challa from a different universe will soon appear). Still, the casting of Iron Man 2’s villains, Justin Hammer and Ivan Vanko/Whiplash, set some precedents that would later haunt the MCU in a different way. Hammer was played by Sam Rockwell (an early candidate for Iron Man himself) and acquitted himself well, but his role was in some ways superfluous to a story already packed with new characters and themes and his function in the movie was not always clear (he’s also yet to reappear in the MCU). But it was Mickey Rourke being courted to play Whiplash that perhaps caused the most angst. With Rourke coming in hot off his Oscar-nominated, Golden Globe-winning comeback performance in The Wrestler, Marvel wanted to seize a prestige casting coup—a move similar to its hiring of recent Oscar winner Brie Larson years later to play Captain Marvel. It could be argued that neither Rourke nor Larson was ultimately the right fit for their roles, but luring award winners to a comic book universe was too tempting for Marvel to pass up. In retrospect, they might have even dodged a bullet when Joaquin Phoenix passed on playing Doctor Strange given the actor’s reportedly mercurial methods. Rourke allegedly made bizarre demands to Marvel on Iron Man 2. This included that Vanko have a pet bird and wear his hair in a bun. He also reportedly clashed with Favreau during filming. Later he would say publicly he was unhappy with the final product, claiming that a lot of his performance was left on the cutting room floor. Whiplash in the finished film is certainly a strange character and the first of many undercooked Marvel villains to come. But that didn’t stop the studio from pursuing other actors and filmmakers basking in the glow of a high-profile awards run. Too Much of Everything Whereas the first Iron Man was a sleek, crisply told origin story, Iron Man 2 was, narratively speaking, a mess. The film dealt with Tony Stark’s inability to reconcile his personal identity with his new public persona as Iron Man, his lingering issues with his father, Howard Stark (John Slattery), his burgeoning drinking problem (less visible in the finished film, but still there), and his discovery that the core element in his arc reactor was slowly poisoning him. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! And that was just Tony; the rest of the film introduced Black Widow and the beginnings of the Avengers, put Rhodey in his War Machine armor for the first time, expanded the role of Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D., set out easter eggs for Thor and Captain America, and tried to balance the roles of two villains whose motivations and tones were not at all well-defined or complementary. It was, in short, a hodgepodge of ideas, plot points, and hints at future movies that all but dragged itself over the finish line without a coherent structure—a problem that would crop up again in the MCU. The franchise’s obsession with world-building at the expense of focus and logic reared its head in Avengers: Age of Ultron, which brought four new characters into an already crowded ensemble (Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, Vision, and the title villain) while also planting seeds about Asgard, Wakanda, and the Infinity Stones (some of which, to be fair, did pay off later). Even the underrated Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, released years later, acted partly as a commercial for the still-unaired Ironheart TV series (ironically The Marvels worked in reverse, requiring audiences to watch two TV shows to understand some of what was happening). Part of the charm of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, of course, is watching out for those many easter eggs, post-credit scenes, and surprise cameos that remind us that it is indeed a universe, one that’s constantly evolving and expanding. But some of those universe-building elements have worked better than others over the years, and with Iron Man 2, it felt like sensory overload—not that that stopped Marvel from doing it again and again in the years since. Iron Man 2: The Gift That Keeps on Giving? Iron Man 2 was an even bigger success at the box office ($624 million) that its predecessor ($585 million), but it also cost more ($200 million as opposed to $140 million) and was less enthusiastically received by critics. It was a troubled, patchwork project from the start, but even as Marvel Studios went on to hit heights of success no one could have possibly imagined for a filmed comic book universe, the studio continually made the same mistakes that dogged the production of Iron Man 2 and kept it from being the sequel it could have been. In some cases those mistakes may have temporarily dinged the brand (Age of Ultron), but in the long run, their impact has not done permanent damage to the MCU or the vast majority of its output. Still, with the last few years being particularly rocky ones for the MCU in terms of quality and coherence, it might not hurt Kevin Feige and company to fire up Iron Man 2 once in a while and remember it as a cautionary tale of what not to do.

Warning: contains spoilers for Bridgerton seasons one to three. Bridgerton’s creators have shown keen instincts when it comes to rearranging their adaptation of Julia Quinn’s book series for a TV audience. Instead of keeping in step with Quinn’s chronology and following Anthony Bridgerton’s love story up with that of his brother Benedict, they skipped ahead in season three to show us Colin and Penelope Featherington’s scandal-and-blackmail-hit romance. It was the right move, not just because Nicola Coughlan’s Penelope had quickly become a fan favourite and it makes sense to meet the audience where they are, but also because it drew the show’s Lady Whistledown storyline to a welcome close. In the TV show, it was revealed that Penelope was the Ton’s gossip columnist in the finale of season one. In Quinn’s novels, that mystery was stretched out until book four. Pen and Colin’s story leapfrogging Benedict’s meant that the Whistledown scandal could be put to bed at the right time for the TV show without the search for her true identity becoming too repetitive or dragged out. Now that Netflix has officially picked up Bridgerton for seasons five and six, the showrunners face a new choice: to stick with one sibling’s love story per season, or to run two concurrently. The latter makes much more sense for TV. In a book series, it’s less apparent that the rest of the characters are standing around with nothing much to do while the leads get on with their plot; on TV, that would be much more visible and much more of a problem. After Benedict’s romance is told in season four, which is due to arrive in 2026, next up in the book chronology is Eloise’s story, followed by Francesca’s. However, there are already signs that the showrunners are planning to rearrange things. Michael Stirling, a pivotal character in Francesca’s story who isn’t introduced until book six in Quinn’s timeline is already on screen as the gender-swapped Michaela in the season three finale. That suggests Francesca’s story will come in season five, or will perhaps begin as early as season four. Once again, that would be the right move for TV. Michaela’s arrival has piqued interest in Francesca’s story, and it would be a waste to stall for two seasons to deliver on that promise. The needs of the TV show are better served by overlapping the siblings’ stories than by continuing to separate them out into one per season. Season five could be both Eloise and Francesca’s, with season six telling the (aged-up) stories of remaining Bridgerton kids Gregory and Hyacinth. But where would that leave the showrunners’ oft-stated goal of making the full eight seasons of Bridgerton? There is, of course, one solution that Bridgerton’s creators are already showing signs of setting in motion: use the older women. Introduce non-book romances for TV characters who are better loved and more central on screen than they ever were in the books. We’ve already seen it with Violet Bridgerton, whose frisson with Lord Anderson had a promising start in season three. Why not spend the next four seasons also relighting the fires of Lady Danbury, Lady Featherington, or even Queen Charlotte herself? By weaving in romantic plotlines for women at a different stage in their lives to the debutantes and twentysomethings, Bridgerton can serve the needs of its TV audience and its characters both. Bridgerton season four is due to arrive on Netflix in 2026.

Science fiction has become one of television’s most reliable genres and audiences have no shortage of options when it comes to progressive sci-fi storytelling. Anthology series have also never been more popular as they’ve proven to be an easy, noncommittal way to draw in audiences with unrelated, standalone storytelling. Love, Death + Robots has quietly done dependable, delightful work for three seasons, but it’s not just a sci-fi anthology. It’s a challenging animation showcase that goes to brave, impossible places for an anthology series. Despite the seemingly selective nature of its title, it feels like nothing is off limits in Love, Death + Robots season 4. This season is more playful than ever as it asks the audience to consider technology and eternity through endlessly diverse lenses. This energy is palpable here, with another collection of impressive, intelligent, and unpredictable animated short films. Love, Death + Robots excels with its original stories, but this season also ambitiously expands upon some of its previously built universes. Jennifer Yuh Nelson’s “Spider Rose” is a masterful follow-up to Volume 3’s “Swarm,” which follows a grieving Mechanist who receives a new companion and another shot at vengeance against the assassins who killed her husband. This is a sequel story that doesn’t just repeat the hits or gratuitously give fans what they want. “Spider Rose” instead finds a fresh, justified angle to return to this world. It’s a surprising yarn about unexpected motherhood as a conflicted character reconsiders everything she thought she knew about herself. Stories like “Spider Rose” challenge the audience and prompt them to change and grow. There’s an emotional throughline to this, but the installment is also rich in chaotic aerial dog fights, ultra gory deaths, and creative, indulgent extremes The Love, Death + Robots episodes that lean into hard science fiction are often the season’s most gripping installments and the entries that will stick with the audience long after they’ve finished. That being said, there are plenty of installments from this fourth batch that are just unabashedly silly. These may be seen as frivolous stories to some audiences, but they’re a testament to Love, Death + Robots’ versatility and that the trio of topics in its title are universal ideas that everyone can enjoy. In addition to “Can’t Stop,” ABGO’s “The Other Large Thing” and “Smart Appliances, Stupid Owners” from The Aaron Sims Company are some of the more overt examples of comedy this season. They’re a welcome balance for the more nihilistic and dour stories from this season that often hit with a ton of bricks. The successful tonal and genre balance that’s achieved across these 10 episodes takes the audience on a fascinating journey. There’s a little bit of everything here in this passionate sci-fi celebration, including a rare live-action segment. One of the season’s most entertaining episodes is the truly unhinged Red Hot Chili Pepper-starring “Can’t Stop.” Not only does this episode mark David Fincher’s directorial return to Love, Death + Robots, but through the conduit of his original love: music videos. “Can’t Stop” looks incredible and turns to an effective marionette aesthetic that’s unlike anything that’s previously been in the anthology series. “Can’t Stop” will ultimately find the audience asking not if Fincher could do this, but why he would want to. It’s such a gonzo experiment that simultaneously is the perfect showpiece for why a series like Love, Death + Robots is necessary. You’re not going to get a piece of storytelling like this on Black Mirror. There’s such a ridiculous, nonsensical energy that governs this short, but it’s also undeniably entertaining and such a fun time. The reason that a series like Love, Death + Robots works is that it makes space for “Can’t Stop” in addition to bleak, dramatic showpieces and action spectacles such as “Spider Rose” and “400 Boys.” Nothing is off limits in this series – this season even incorporates dinosaurs – and this freedom results in remarkable storytelling that’s worth the big swings that get taken, even when they don’t work. “Can’t Stop” is just five silly minutes that aren’t afraid to get weird and indulge in vibes. It also doesn’t hurt that David Fincher is behind this installment, but any chaotic mish-mash music video of this nature is still going to stand out in a series that’s more likely to reference J.G. Ballard and Harlan Ellison than MTV. Love, Death + Robots is a satisfying exploration of science fiction, but it’s also a series that prides itself in its groundbreaking visuals. Every season of Love, Death + Robots has been visually sumptuous, with these new episodes being no exception. Love, Death + Robots seems to be the proudest of its lush, photorealistic segments, like the work that Blur Studio does in “Spider Rose.” These segments don’t disappoint, but Love, Death + Robots has the most fun when it’s willing to indulge in more ambitious and stylized imagery “For He Can Creep” from Japan’s Polygon Pictures or Passion Animation Studios’ “400 Boys” are especially gorgeous.  The latter of these adopts a really impressionistic visual style that’s reminiscent of The Big O’s Art Deco quality. This complements the supernaturally heightened story that’s being told in a hyperbolized universe where gang warfare and a strict bushido-like code are the norm. Factions fight with psychic, electric powers in a world that feels ripped out of a Stephen King story. “400 Boys” is visually rich, but the art style also thematically resonates with the story’s deeper message. It goes to town with its exaggerated aesthetic and creates some truly gorgeous visuals and landscapes in this broken world. The post-apocalyptic wasteland that it crafts is like The Warriors meets Mad Max meets Escape From New York. Destruction plays out on such a massive scale that looks like gorgeous splash panels from a comic. There are setpieces in which warriors rollerblade under the legs of giant babies that they proceed to hack to bits that feel like they’re inspired by Attack on Titan’s epic battles. It’s the complete opposite style of no-holds-barred gladiatorial combat that gets treated like entertainment in “The Screaming of the Tyrannosaur.” Love, Death + Robots triumphs with its fourth season, the likes of which prove that there’s still plenty of gas in this tank. If anything, Love, Death + Robots is willing to get even weirder and break some of its older rules for the sake of fresh storytelling. There are few misfires in this season of 10 episodes, although some certainly hit harder than others. It’s appreciated to get this many episodes and that Volume 4 is longer than the two previous seasons. However, it seems increasingly less likely to return to the cornucopia of content that was the 18-episode Volume 1. It’s also worth pointing out that, while the visuals this season remain immaculate, there are only two animation studios from outside of the United States. Love, Death + Robots’ aim has never specifically been to spotlight international animation. That being said, Love, Death + Robots is at its best when there’s a truly eclectic style to each of its installments.  Love, Death + Robots has another win with Volume 4 and hopefully there are more surreal science fiction stories to come. The season begins with the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Anthony Kiedis singing “Can’t Stop” and by the end of these 10 episodes you’re left hoping that mantra is also true for Love, Death + Robots. All four volumes of Love, Death + Robots are now streaming on Netflix. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox!

Look, up on the internet! It’s a clip, it’s a teaser… No! It’s the full Superman trailer we’ve been waiting for! After giving us bits and pieces, DC Studios has finally released a massive three-minute trailer for this summer’s Superman, written and directed by James Gunn. The sizzle reel finally gives a sense of the central conflict of the movie, in which Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) takes advantage of public opinion turning against Superman when he stops a war in foreign lands. We also are hinted that these actions create ripples within the Daily Planet newsroom and cause friction with the movie’s pseudo-Justice League. Also somehow Lex Luthor is able to invade the Fortress of Solitude where he wrecks things with a character called the Engineer! And if you don’t know who the Engineer is, boy do we have some details to reveal to you… “Ms. Lane,” 2025 Style For all the kaiju and extra meta-humans that he’s including in Superman, Gunn has always insisted that the movie is primarily about Superman and the triangle between Clark, Lois, and Lex. The trailer makes that point in its first scenes, which also call back to a beloved moment in the original Superman movie from 1978. Once again, we have Lois (Rachel Brosnahan) interviewing Superman (David Corenswet) to satisfy the world’s curiosity. But the tone is quite different from any version we’ve seen in the past. Owing perhaps to the already comfortable relationship between a Lois and Clark where she knows he is Superman, we see a feistier version of the Man of Steel. He almost gets defensive at Lois’ questions, with the hero insisting that he did good because it needed to be done, and that matters more than issues of international law. More importantly though, we get to see one of the most crucial parts of any Superman performance, the transformation between mild-mannered Clark Kent and the Man of Steel. That transition was pulled off beautifully by Christopher Reeve in the original movie where he became a totally different person within one unbroken shot. It is a favorite moment for many in that movie, including Gunn. Cut to 2025 and Corenswet does the same thing here, albeit it’s much more subtle. He’s slouched and sitting back when Clark agrees to let Lois interview Superman. But when it’s time for the interview to begin, he sits up and squares his shoulders. He gives a confident, hopeful look and drops his voice by an octave to begin. While not as pronounced as Reeve’s changes, the subtly matters. As demonstrated by the emphasis on Smallville here, with Pa Kent (Pruitt Taylor Vince) giving an inspirational voiceover, a job usually reserved for Supes’s Kryptonian father Jor-El, this Superman is both a son of Krypton and a son of Kansas. Neither is a fake. Both are his real identity and thus the lines between them will blur. Photo: DC Studios The trailer underscores Lex Luthor’s role as the ultimate big bad. Driven by jealousy and refusing to respect an alien, Luthor thinks his mistrust has been proven correct when Superman stops a war. However, the well-groomed CEO has got a lot of other heavy hitters to help him out, including a woman in black leather whose hands turn into blades as they destroy the Fortress of Solitude. That is the Engineer, played by María Gabriela de Faría, and she takes some explaining. The Engineer first debuted in 1999’s The Authority #1, written by Warren Ellis and penciled by Bryan Hitch. Part of the Wildstorm Universe, a comic book universe separate from the DC stable, the Authority were a collection of heroes who set themselves to making a better world by enforcing their will. Under the pen of Ellis and other writers, including Mark Millar and Grant Morrison, the Authority applied amoral realpolitik to superheroes, something antithetical to heroes such as the Justice League. In fact, the famed Superman story “What’s So Funny About Truth, Justice, and the American Way” saw Superman stand up to and rebuke a team modeled on the Authority. However, when DC took full control of the Wildstorm line, they integrated the Authority into the DC Universe where they are heroes with questionable tactics. Judging by the trailer, Gunn plans to use the Engineer as more of a villain or at least antagonist. As in the comics, the Engineer has nano technology that allows her to change her body into a weapon, not unlike the T-1000 from Terminator 2. She’s clearly working alongside Lex here, but it’s hard to imagine that Gunn won’t have Supes teach the Engineer something about how to create a better world through inspiration instead of force. Photo: DC Studios Is That Ultraman? Bizarro? Joining the Engineer in the fight against Superman is a hulking male figure in all leather. We’ve seen this figure before, duking it out with Superman in a stadium. But this is the best look that we’ve had at him so far, and the best look we’ve gotten at the emblem on his chest. That “U” shaped design is familiar to comic book readers who recognize that as the emblem of Ultraman, the Superman of Earth-3. In the DC multiverse, Earth-3 is the evil dimension, in which Ultraman, Owlman, and Superwoman lead the Injustice League of America, taking the place of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman of the Justice League of America. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! However, Ultraman usually has no problem showing his face and often runs around in a blue and red getup, not this leather number. And he certainly wouldn’t take orders from a weenie like Lex Luthor. So who is that guy? Given his massive powers and his hidden face, smart money suggests that the figure is in fact Bizarro, a flawed but super-strong clone of Superman. It would follow that Lex would make his own version of Superman and, in a blow against his hubris, get it wrong. That origin has been used for Bizarro in the comics, and it would fit within the themes that Gunn seems to be exploring. Photo: DC Studios Rick Flag Sr. of the Creature Commandos One of the more confusing parts about James Gunn’s tenure as the co-head of DC Studios is that he’s doing only a partial reboot of the now defunct DCEU. Sure, Henry Cavill is out as Superman and it seems that the events of Justice League and Batman v Superman: The Dawn of Justice didn’t happen. But The Suicide Squad and Creature Commandos, or at least some version of them, did happen. Thus far the only bridge between these worlds is Rick Flag Sr., who is played by Frank Grillo. We first met Flag in animated form in Creature Commandos, where he was assigned by Amanda Waller to lead Task Force M. Throughout that series, Flag expresses sorrow at the death of his son Rick Flag Jr., who was played by Joel Kinnaman in Suicide Squad and The Suicide Squad. Flag doesn’t get to do much in this trailer other than look very serious and escort Superman into custody, alongside the Engineer and maybe-Bizarro. But his sober expression suggests that he still has a mistrust of guys who take things into their own hands, owing perhaps to his anger at Flagg’s death at the hands of Peacemaker during the mission to stop the Thinker from exploiting Starro the Conqueror in Corto Maltese. Remember? Photo: DC Studios The scenes of Superman in custody apparently lead to images of him in a sort of prison made of cubed glass, reminiscent of Magneto’s holding pen in X-Men or the monster cages in The Cabin in the Woods. Initially we see soldiers beating on Superman within the prison. Later he seems to have gained the power to bust out. In between we get a shot of Metamorpho, one of the more highly-anticipated characters in the movie. Played by Anthony Carrigan, Metamorpho has the ability to turn himself into any element (including Kryptonite, maybe?), and we see a bit of that power at work when his hands start to dissipate in a strange way. Metamorpho is just one of the heroes who show up in the trailer, which also gives us better looks at Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced) flying through the sky, Mister Terrific (Edi Gathegi) using his T-spheres, and the Green Lantern Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion) using his power ring in a particularly jerky way. But we also see glimpses of other figures in the prison, suggesting that there are somehow even more metahumans than we realized. It’s hard to see any of the others, save for the woman imprisoned in the cube to Superman’s left. There we see a blond woman in a pink dress who reacts in horror. On one hand, that might just be a regular lady in a pink dress who, for some reason, gets sent to the same jail as Metamorpho and Superman. However, the outfit doesn’t look too different from the one worn by a C-list fantasy hero called Amethyst. Created by writers Dan Mishkin and Gary Cohn and artist Ernie Colón, Amethyst first debuted in 1983’s The Legion of Super-Heroes #298 and was soon spun off into her own comic. Amethyst is the princess of a magical place called Gemworld where she has high fantasy adventures. Amethyst has carried her own series from time to time but doesn’t enjoy the same level of popularity as even Guy Gardner. But if Gunn’s going to delve into different genres for his version of the DC Universe, Amethyst is a great way to bring more fantasy into the world of superheroes. Superman flies into theaters on July 11, 2025.

The old school action movie hero, like the old school movie star, is a dying breed. Tom Cruise is acutely aware of this since pretty much all of his franchised efforts in the 2020s have been about the glories of the fading old days and ways. Top Gun: Maverick, for example, explained why we still needed Cruise up on that wall, protecting us with one piece of superb blockbuster cinema at a time. But in the interim between Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning and this month’s long anticipated Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, even the rare company he keeps on those ramparts has shrunk. Indiana Jones is again retired (and presumably for good after the box office receipts for Dial of Destiny came in); and not only has James Bond died onscreen with the last of the Daniel Craig movies, but perhaps off as well since the franchise’s “one at a time” bespoke family business model was consigned to the dustbin of movie history. Still, there remains Cruise and his handful of beloved onscreen personas, who are only too cognizant of how lonely they are high up on their barricade against the rising tide. And it appears to at last be getting to them in Final Reckoning, the allegedly last Mission: Impossible movie that feels the weight of the world on its shoulders, and a lot less of the deft spontaneity that previously made this franchise among the best in the Hollywood canon. Just to clear, there is yet quite a bit to enjoy in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, our eighth and most interconnected adventure with Cruise’s Ethan Hunt to date. Ever since filmmaker Christopher McQuarrie took over the directorial duties of the franchise beginning in 2015’s Rogue Nation, and even beforehand as a writer via Ghost Protocol, the series has widely been recognized for its creative ingenuity, emotional intelligence, and of course eye-popping spectacle and stunt work wherein Cruise channels his inner Buster Keaton or Douglas Fairbanks by putting his life on the line for our amusement. Those elements stay at play in Final Reckoning, but there is just a lot less playfulness to it in a film that ostensibly asks us to treat its story as a grand finale to Ethan Hunt’s impact on cinema—even as the film simultaneously and awkwardly resists that impulse. Less of a full-stop for the series than a trailing off question mark, Final Reckoning fights against itself and the notion of closing the book or bidding farewell to almost anything, especially Cruise, which makes its ever-growing bombast as much of a hindrance as help in this reluctant swan song. From the opening recap of his assignment, wherein Ethan receives the choice to accept or decline his mission via an appropriately ‘90s VHS cassette tape, Final Reckoning is intent on celebrating the past while turning the screws of self-importance in the present. Consider that this time Ethan’s mission brief is delivered not only by a familiar voice, but the newly elected President of the United States (Angela Bassett’s welcome return as Erika Sloane). The former CIA director turned commander-in-chief is heard pleading with Ethan to come in and deliver the cruciform key from the last movie, which is the secret to unlocking the source code to a world-ending AI threat called the Entity. Yes, despite the title change, Final Reckoning is very much Dead Reckoning Part 2, albeit now with the stakes clearly having been tinkered with off-screen. In the last movie, the Entity represented the abstract but insidious threat of AI and the internet itself, with a sentient algorithm commandeering the power to shape truth and our perceptions of reality. Well, in Final Reckoning, it has apparently decided to go full Skynet. President Sloane reveals the evil AI has corrupted the hydrogen bomb capabilities of most of the nuclear powers in the world, and within three days will have the ability to destroy all life on Earth for no discernible reason. However, should Ethan go rogue and attempt to turn off the Entity without surrendering control over the AI’s source code back to the American government, it could kill the internet and plummet the world into an economic dark age. It’s grim, technologically complex stuff, but in practice is actually incredibly simple. The world will literally end if either the Entity or any government gets its way. So it is all up to Ethan Hunt and his beloved team—which consists here of Luther (Ving Rhames), Benji (Simon Pegg), and recent additions Grace (Hayley Atwell) and Paris (Pom Klementieff)—to save the world via some spectacularly unsafe looking stunts and poker-faced brinksmanship. Ethan indeed has to enter into multiple staring contests with various admirals, generals, and presidents when they dare question whether he really is the smartest guy in the room. The fools. However, for all the press about this being the most expensive Mission ever made, Final Reckoning is arguably more intimate in scale than the last couple of entries. There is plenty of globe-trotting, but other than a jaw-dropping climax involving two biplanes that wouldn’t have looked out of place in 1933’s Flying Down to Rio, and the long teased underwater sequence in which Ethan discovers the wrecked SevastopolTop Gun territory. As in Maverick, Cruise once again has steely tete-a-tetes with various naval officers on what appears to be the real frigid waters of the Bering Sea. This unfortunately undercuts a bit of the travelogue fun of so many spy movies, including the previous Dead Reckoning which was at its best when Cruise and Atwell got to flirt in Rome while smashing a banana-colored Fiat along the Spanish Steps, or Cruise and the missed-but-not-forgotten Rebecca Ferguson simply smoldered in the Arabian deserts outside Dubai while trashing an army of NPCs. In an attempt to reach for the rhapsody of other blockbuster swan songs like The Dark Knight Rises or No Time to Die, Final Reckoning foregoes the lighter touch and mischievousness that made Fallout and Rogue Nation such all-time crowdpleasers. Yet McQuarrie’s play-it-by-ear looseness and story structure clashes with the dour-faced histrionics of Final Reckoning’s setup, particularly during the film’s multiple exposition dumps where characters spew utter nonsense about what the Entity wants at each other, or what to do about what remains one of the worst villains in the franchise, Esai Morales’ exhausting Gabriel. He’s back, and his cackling dastardliness is louder than ever. It also still feels beneath the amount of emotional trauma the film wishes to credit him with inflicting on Ethan. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! Still, it would be a disservice to what is ultimately an entertaining popcorn flick to dwell only on the shortcomings. This remains a Tom Cruise stunt spectacular that for the most part maintains McQuarrie’s uncanny ear for sharp, knowingly grandiloquent dialogue and clever shorthand characterization. When Cruise and McQ are focused on the smaller beats, like the interplay between Ethan and a team of deep sea divers, or the endlessly endearing bickering between teammates like Benji and Luther, it never ceases to charm. Grace and Paris likewise prove worthy permanent additions to the team. The chemistry between Atwell and Cruise during one arctic sequence is particularly giddy. Furthermore, there is a wonderful callback to the first Mission: Impossible that I will not spoil here, but it’s better than any simple cameo or easter egg. It retroactively adds McQuarrie’s humanist optimism from these later movies to De Palma’s ‘90s era cheeky chic. And did I mention that IMAX biplane sequence that’s all over the trailers and posters? It really cannot be oversold. It’s only when the sum of these sequences are compared to the taller heights the franchise has recently scaled, particularly in Fallout, which Final Reckoning not so covertly attempts to remake during the third act, that it’s left a little wanting. The film might be marketed as the final Mission: Impossible Mission: Impossible: The Final Reckoning opens on Friday, May 23. Learn more about Den of Geek’s review process and why you can trust our recommendations here.

This article contains spoilers for Andor season 2 episodes 10, 11, and 12 and Rogue One. It feels like the Tony Gilroy-created Andor Star WarsAndor season 2 would tie directly with the start of Gareth Edwards’ Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Though we all know how that tragic tale goes, the fact that a number of Andor’s major players are nowhere to be seen in the 2016 war epic had us worrying about their fates. After the shocking death of Kyle Soller’s Syril Karn during the Ghorman Massacre of episode 8, the final arc of episodes quickly whittled down the Andor cast to make room for the Rogue One crew. The inclusion of Ben Mendelsohn’s Orson Krennic, Forest Whitaker’s Saw Gerrera, and Diego Luna’s titular Cassian AndorRogue One, the same couldn’t be said for Stellan Skarsgård’s Luthen Rael and Anton Lesser’s Lio Partagaz. However, it’s arguably Andor’s greatest villain who gets a fate worse than death.  Denise Gough’s Dedra Meero seemed like the perfect little Imperial drone after being raised in an Imperial Kinder-block and being molded into a high-ranking supervisor in the Imperial Security Bureau (ISB). Unfortunately, this put her on a collision course with Krennic, who’s never been afraid to show he’s only looking out for himself. Things started to unravel in Andor episode 10, and after having dispatched ISB mole Lonni Jung (Robert Emms), Luthen set about erasing his existence as the Rebel spy known as Axis. It was too late for Luthen, but when Dedra arrived at his antiquities shop to confront him, things didn’t go the way she’d planned. It’s here that Dedra unveiled the Imperial N-S9 Starpath Unit that had put her on Luthen’s trail four years earlier. It’s her obsession with Axis that brings her here, and just like Syril’s vendetta against Cassian Andor sealed his fate just a few episodes earlier, she’s the architect of her own downfall. Luthen was never going to go quietly, but having achieved his goal of spreading the rebellion across the galaxy, he tries to take his life by stabbing himself with a Nautolan bleeder. Although he survives his injuries, the fact that a smug Dedra thought she could take him in and claim the glory for himself by making an unsanctioned arrest attempt without backup has riled Krennic. Things only got worse when Krennic learns Lonni had accessed Meero’s files regarding the Death Star, and although she bats off his (incorrect) assumption that she’s a Rebel spy, the catalogue of errors sees her sent to one of the Narkina moons where Cassian was locked up in season 1.  Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Gilroy expanded on how Meero served as an unwilling way for the Rebels to access the information on the Death Star, which ultimately catapults the story into Rogue One. “The whole ISB is coming to an end. If you think about it, if that was the CIA or any intelligence bureau,” mused Gilroy. “With those kinds of breaches and that kind of disaster happening simultaneously, it would be a cleaning of house. So she’s definitely going to go down.” Speaking to TV Line, Gough described how she was “so happy” for the audience for Dedra to end up where she is. Discussing how she’s left locked up in an Imperial prison, Gough cheered: “It’s so gratifying” to see Dedra’s location because we know what goes on in Narkina 5. Saying it’s “a perfect little button at the end of this season. You can’t have a character like that just get away with [the things she did].” As for the idea that Dedra could’ve gone the way of so many other iconic Star Wars villains, she concluded, “I’m glad she wasn’t killed. I’m really glad that we get to see her in that uniform, in that Narkina 5 [cell].” Soller similarly reflected on Dedra’s indefinite incarceration, saying how it’s poignant to see “someone who’s been so about control being put into the ultimate controlled space.” Star Wars has a habit of killing off its villains, with everyone from Emperor Palpatine (twice) to Count Dooku getting their comeuppance. Darth Maul (twice) and Jabba the Hutt all met their makers, while Grand Admiral Thrawn faced a similarly dismal fate to Dedra when he was marooned in space – although he returned in Ahsoka to presumably be killed further down the line. Just like how Syril, Partagaz, and eventually Krennic were chewed up and spat out by the system, Dedra’s fate was written in the stars as the Emperor put his plans for the Death Star into play. Even though the repeated imagery of Meero feeling choked after she was assaulted back in the season 1 finale had some believing we’d get a last-minute cameo from Darth Vader to kill her off with one of his iconic Force chokes, she gets a much better send-off.  Knowing that Dedra is presumably forced to help finish the Death Star or construct the second Death Star when the first is destroyed is equally ironic. It’s a tragic arc akin to Cassian helping build the weapon that will kill him in Rogue One, but more than this, Dedra will likely never know what happens to the ISB or the Empire. Taking Andor and Rogue One as a complete story, the high body count leaves a handful of characters like Dedra, Bix (Adria Arjona), Kleya (Elizabeth Dulau), and Vel (Faye Marsay) alive when Rogue One’s credits roll. Whereas the others get something of a happy ending, Dedra’s is far from it.  While leaving Dedra on one of the Narkina moons leaves the door open for her to return further down the line, there’s no need to. What happens to these prisons in the aftermath of the Empire’s fall is also unknown, but leaving her to rot Both seasons of Andor are available to stream on Disney+ now. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox!

Most of the first trailer for Ironheart reminds viewers of what we learned in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever: that Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne) is a genius. Under pressure and threat of danger, she figures out a way to escape an elevator death trap, establishing her credibility as the greatest engineering mind since Tony Stark. But there’s one thing that Riri Williams has in common with most people, including those watching the trailer at home. As her friend puts it, “You know nothing about this man.” The man in question is Parker Robbins, played by Anthony Ramos. He appears in the trailer as a sort of morally dubious benefactor to Riri, but the most notable part of him is his unique style of dress. In most scenes, Robbins wears a leather cloak, which appears to have mystical powers. Marvel Comics readers (and Marvel Snap players) recognize Robbins as “The Hood,” a relative newcomer to the world of comics but a character with the power to shake up the MCU. Robbins made his debut in 2002’s The Hood, written by Brian K. Vaughan (Y: The Last Man, Saga) and penciled by Kyle Hotz. As part of Marvel’s mature-readers MAX line, The Hood took a sideways glance at the Peter Parker archetype, giving us a likable everyman who operated in the world of Marvel’s criminals. When Parker took a burglary job to pay for his sick mother’s treatment, he discovered a mystical cape and pair of boots, clothing that granted him the powers of flight and invisibility. While that initial story made Parker more of a normal guy who makes bad choices in difficult situations, subsequent tales have leaned into soap opera, transforming him into more of an unrepentant supervillain. In Daredevil, he sought to become the new Kingpin of Crime and he regularly butted heads with the New Avengers. During the Secret Invasion and Secret Wars storylines, Parker became a member of the Cabal, a sort of evil Illuminati, alongside villains such as Norman Osborn and Doctor Doom. Later, he joined the Thunderbolts and clashed with Hawkeye, then the team’s leader. More recently, stories about the Hood have emphasized his mystical powers, tying him to Ghost Rider and Doctor Strange’s arch-enemy Dormammu. And that’s where Parker has real potential to change the MCU. Magic has always been a key part of the MCU, ever since Thor and the first scene of Captain America: The First Avenger. More recently, movies such as Spider-Man: No Way Home and shows such as Agatha All Along have explored the magical side of the universe, indicating how it underpins everything the characters do. As seen briefly in the Ironheart trailer, the MCU version of the Hood has those same mystical powers and, if the brief shot of Parker writhing as runes form on his back is any indication, the powers may overwhelm him. Clearly, the abilities are greater than even he realizes. Furthermore, rumors have once again suggested that Mephisto, the Marvel Universe’s equivalent to Satan and a character tied to the comic book version of the Hood, will finally appear in Ironheart, played by Sacha Baron Cohen. Yes, people have been saying that since WandaVision but, given the recent Mephisto name drop in Agatha All Along, it now seems more likely. All of which raises a question: Why all this magic in Ironheart, a show about a technical genius who uses her science skills? The answer is that this clash between technology and magic has long been a theme in the Marvel Universe, going back to Iron Man‘s battles with the Mandarin, a far more magical (and far more racist) character in the comics. The bigger question involves the show’s depiction of Parker Robbins. A veteran of Hamilton and, more recently, Twisters, Ramos knows how to play a fresh-faced and likable character. Will he be able to keep audiences on his side, even as he goes deeper into the dark arts? Or will he quickly become an unrepentant villain, like his comic book counterpart. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! Ironheart comes to Disney+ on June 24, 2025

The Star Wars franchise has always been about rising up against fascism. We’re supposed to root for the Rebel Alliance to destroy the Death Star in A New Hope and for the fall of the Empire in Return of the Jedi. The prequels show us how easily fascism can infiltrate a government and take over from the inside. And now Andor shows us the power of rising up and fighting for freedom on a more grounded level.  Andor isn’t a happy story, nor is there going to be a happy ending for Cassian – his fate has already been written in Rogue One. But without the people in this series willing to fight for a sunrise they’ll never see, the events of A New Hope and the Rebels’ ultimate victory may have never come to pass.  Andor reminds us how powerful we can be when we work together toward a common goal. There’s power in community and fighting for what you believe in. If this show lights a fire within you to make your world a better place, here are some other shows about rebellion and resistance that encourage us to leave this world better than we found it. The Handmaid’s Tale The Handmaid’s Tale may be a fictional dystopia, but as a show that began and is now ending during Trump presidencies, it is also a terrifying look at what can happen if a Christofascist regime is allowed to fully take control of the United States. As bleak as this series can get at times, it’s also about how June (Elisabeth Moss) and other women in this world do what they can to support each other and resist their oppressors. It’s never a good thing to underestimate women, but underestimating an angry woman with nothing left to lose might as well be like digging your own grave. The Owl House The Owl House may technically be considered a children’s show, but I say you’re never too young to learn how to fight for the rights of others. On the surface, The Owl House looks like another fun take on the fantasy genre, with protagonist Luz, a human, finding her way to the mystical Demon Realm full of witches, wizards, monsters, and more. But as the series goes on, Luz discovers that she’s not the only human that’s made their way to this realm. It turns out that The Boiling Isles’ emperor is really a Witch Hunter who came through a portal centuries before. He has been playing the long game, slowly subjugating witches and controlling how they use their magic over time, all as a ploy to eventually gain even more power for himself and wipe out all other uses of magic entirely. The Expanse The Expanse is another grounded look at what a space rebellion can look like, and this one is set a lot closer to home. In this world, humanity has expanded its reach beyond Earth to Mars and the Asteroid Belt, colonizing much of the solar system and taking capitalism into the stars. With this increase in opportunity for enterprise also, of course, comes an increase in opportunity for oppression. Despite the wealth of resources in the Belt, the people who actually live there are among the poorest in the solar system. When a mysterious new substance is discovered, Belters race to be the ones to claim it so that Earth and Mars will finally take them seriously as their own sovereign power, setting off a chain of events that changes humanity forever. Station Eleven Station Eleven may not seem like an obvious choice for this list. It’s not so much a show about rebellion as it is about survival. But there’s still a lot to learn from this beautiful post-apocalyptic drama. In Station Eleven, a deadly virus has wiped out so much of the population that society as we know it has collapsed. And yet, there’s a group of people known as the Traveling Symphony who have taken it upon themselves to keep art and drama alive through their performances of Shakespeare plays. For 20 years they have crafted costumes, composed scores, and poured their hearts and souls into their performances just so they can bring these pieces of the old world back to life for the settlements around Lake Michigan. The Traveling Symphony is proof that art has the power to bring us together, even in the most tragic times. The Symphony’s motto is “survival is insufficient,” meaning that simply surviving in this world isn’t enough, we need the arts and community to truly thrive. The Good Place Throughout its four seasons, The Good Place has shown us how hard it is to be a good person in this world. Our afterlife may or may not have the points-based system depicted in the show, but that doesn’t mean that all of our choices and actions don’t still have unintended consequences. It may feel impossible to truly do good in this world when the odds are stacked against us, but The Good Place also reminds us that small acts of good can go a long way. We may not see any outright rebellions in The Good Place, but what we do see is a group of people fed up with an unfair system doing what they can to change it from the inside. They all learn a lot about each other and the world they live in, and instead of just accepting their fate, they risk their own afterlife to try and make the process fair for everyone. Along the way, they learn that most people, if given the opportunity, will eventually want to help others and do good. Arcane Set in both the opulent city of Piltover and its run-down undercity of Zaun, Arcane shows what happens when both try to grow in power unchecked. Piltover has a long history of subjugating the people of Zaun, forcing them through mandatory checkpoints just to visit the city while at the same time dumping their waste on them and making the community ill. Zaun has tried their best to keep the peace, most resorting to violence only when necessary to survive, but escalating tensions between more radical parties on both sides nearly launches the two cities into war. Arcane is a heartbreaking story about two sisters trying to make the most of the cards they were dealt. They both end up on different sides of this fight, for a time, making it hard to choose which side to root for. Arcane is all about what can happen to people who spend generations oppressed by a wealthier party and the cycle of violence that often ensues. Silo While Silo is inherently much more grounded than Andor, quite literally, they both have a similar retro-futuristic style that makes it easy to get sucked into their worlds. Silo is set on Earth in the future after a cataclysmic event has made the surface uninhabitable and deadly. Humanity has been sent underground, living out generation after generation in a massive silo. However, the silo that we’re first introduced to has essentially outlawed artifacts from the outside world and punishes those who dig too deeply into the silo’s origins. The people of the silo believe that a rebellion from long ago destroyed the majority of the silo’s history up until that point, leaving them to rebuild as a society and forge their own path forward. However, as a conspiracy rooted in the mysterious IT department becomes uncovered, as does information about the silo’s past, more and more people start to wonder how much of their history is a lie meant to keep them complacent. Rebellion starts to brew once again with the silo’s future, and the future of humanity, hanging in the balance. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox!

Warning: contains spoilers for The Handmaid’s Tale season six episode eight “Exodus”. In the early days of The Handmaid’s Tale, the pre-Gilead flashback episodes were eagerly awaited. Who was June Osborne before she was captured and enslaved? Who had Commander and Mrs Waterford been before they played a part in the coup that destroyed America? It took three seasons before we saw one of the show’s most anticipated flashbacks – that of Aunt Lydia. Before Gilead, had its cruel enforcer been a prison warden? An army captain? A police officer? Nothing so authoritarian: Lydia Clements was an elementary school teacher with a background working in family law. She’d been married, we learned, but it hadn’t worked out and now she lived alone and relied on her faith for comfort and self-esteem. In flashback, we saw Lydia befriend Noelle, the single mother of one of her pupils, and allow herself to be pushed into the dating world at her young friend’s encouragement. Humiliated by a romantic rejection from a colleague, Lydia lashed out and reported Noelle to the authorities as an unfit parent, sending her son into foster care. Foreshadowing her role in Gilead, Lydia told herself that she had acted out of love, saved the child, and put his wayward mother on the path to salvation. Love has always been Lydia’s purported motivation. Love for God and for the tainted-but-redeemable souls of her “girls” has been her justification for meting out acts of outrageous cruelty. Having Janine blinded, or Emily mutilated, or June tortured, were all done for the girls’ own good, Lydia told herself. Everything she did was for the righteous love of the lord, as hallowed by the holy republic of Gilead. Now, in season six, Lydia has made a move that was genuinely motivated by love. When she arrived unexpectedly at Serena Joy and Commander Wharton’s wedding and discovered the Handmaids mid-rebellion, June asked her not to further punish the women, but to let them escape. Deep down, said June, Lydia must know that the Handmaid system was glorified rape, and that the women and girls she had delivered to the Commanders over the years did not deserve their abuse. It wasn’t until Lydia’s “special girl” Janine entered to make her appeal that Lydia finally thawed. She apologised for sending Janine into the home of the abusive Commander Bell, held her, and let the women leave. Speaking to US Weekly, actor Ann Dowd explains that Aunt Lydia is where she is “because she loves Janine as her daughter.” Lydia clearly saw similarities between Janine – who was also a young single mother – and Noelle in their early interactions, and over six seasons, has come to a genuine, familial love for Madeline Brewer’s character. Lydia is “a softer human being,” says Dowd, “because she has come to love in a real way – Janine and the girls.” Co-showrunner Yahlin Chang agrees. “In that moment, she can’t see what to do other than let them go. She does it out of love for Janine. She just goes over to Janine and says, ‘I’m sorry I hurt you.’” As the Handmaids, led by June, Janine and Moira, leave the Red Centre, Aunt Lydia sinks to her knees. “She understands what she’s done,” Dowd tells US Weekly. “She can’t bear it. I’m sure she’s begging for forgiveness. She’s not going to deny anything. When it comes to what she’s done, she would do it again.” We leave her praying for divine help. And she’s going to need it, according to co-showrunner Eric Tuchman, who told US Weekly: “Now we know she’s made that decision to liberate the Handmaids. She’s aligned with them in the eyes of Gilead. She has betrayed her duties to Gilead, so I can’t spoil what happens with her, but she’s on very shaky ground moving forward.” Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! The Handmaid’s Tale streams on Hulu on Tuesdays in the US, and airs on Channel 4 on Saturdays in the UK.

This article contains spoilers for Andor season 2 episodes 10-12 and Rogue One. The final three episodes of Andor may not pack quite the same emotional punch as the Ghorman arc, but they definitely bring this story together in an impactful way. It was revealed fairly early on that this season was going to lead up to the events of Rogue One, but how it did so was still very much a surprise. From the reveal of Krennic’s secret weapon program, to Bail’s arrival on Yavin 4, and so much more – the last three episodes have lined things up perfectly and added new context to the events of Rogue One in the process. Here’s everything you need to know about the Andor finale and how it connects to Rogue One. Luthen and Lonni’s Sacrifice This arc begins a year after the last, as all the others have, in 1 BBY. Kleya (Elizabeth Dulau) and Luthen (Stellan Skarsgård) receive an urgent message from Lonni (Robert Emms) asking to meet. For the first time, Luthen and Lonni meet in public rather than in their secret elevator hideout in the depths of Coruscant.  Lonni begs for safe passage for him and his family in exchange for the information he has, claiming that he’s been burned and that the Empire will likely be after him soon. Luthen agrees to take them to Yavin, giving Lonni just enough hope to spill what he knows. Lonni starts by warning Luthen that Dedra Meero (Denise Gough) knows he’s Axis and is trying to covertly assemble a team to apprehend him.  Then Lonni reveals what really has him shaken up – the truth about the Emperor’s Energy program. After holding on to Dedra’s code cert for a year, he finally dug through her files and found out about Krennic’s (Ben Mendelsohn) secret weapon program a.k.a. the Death Star. He says that the massacre on Ghorman, and the Imperial occupation of Jedha and Scarif are all connected. He tells Luthen all about the Kyber crystals on Jedha, Galen Erso’s involvement, everything that the Rebel Alliance needs to start looking into this. Luthen kills Lonni after he shares this information, presumably paranoid about the Empire finding out what he now knows. He relays all of this to Kleya and urges her to flee and get this information to the others as quickly as possible. He stays behind and starts destroying their comms relay when Dedra appears. She comes alone, cocky and confident that she has him on the ropes, but Luthen isn’t going to go out so easily. While Dedra is waxing poetic about how she finally has him, Luthen stabs himself with a nearby relic. Dedra attempts to keep him alive by transporting him to a hospital, but Kleya is able to sneak in and take him off life support, as she knows he would want. Dedra’s Folly Even though Dedra is finally successful at capturing Luthen, we find out that her “victory” came at a cost. As soon as she gets Luthen to the hospital, she’s arrested by the ISB and Krennic is brought in to interrogate her. He asks who she told about the secret project and how she heard about Galen Erso’s involvement. He also assumes that she gave Lonni her code cert. She denies this, but also admits that there were intel bundles that were forwarded to her office by mistake. Instead of reporting them, she sifted through them for information that could lead her to Axis. But that also left the information readily available for Lonni to steal. In the final moments of episode 12, we see Dedra is now a prisoner in an Imperial prison like Cassian once was. We don’t know for sure that this is Narkina 5, the Empire is a fan of uniformity after all, but it’s pretty safe to assume that it’s at least a similar work camp environment. The Empire turned on her as soon as she outlived her usefulness and because her desire to capture Axis put the Death Star plans at risk. Rescuing Kleya and Knowledge of the Death Star Meanwhile, Cassian (Diego Luna), Melshi (Duncan Pow), and K-2SO (Alan Tudyk) are bonding on Yavin when Wilmon (Muhannad Bhaier) hears a mysterious transmission that Cassian recognizes from his time with Luthen. Cassian, Melshi, and K-2SO immediately set off for Coruscant despite the protocols on Yavin forbidding them from doing so. Wilmon tells Draven (Alistair Petrie) why Cassian left, and he isn’t too thrilled about it. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! On Coruscant, Supervisor Heert (Jacob James Beswick) is put in charge of finding and capturing Kleya. He seeks advice from Dedra, which she begrudgingly gives from behind bars. The ISB is able to get Kleya’s comm table functioning enough to track her distress signal, arriving at the Coruscant safe house right after Cassian and Melshi do. At first it seems like the ISB might have them cornered, but K-2SO puts his brute force to work taking out the Imperial agents and helping them get Kleya out of Coruscant. A Meeting On Kafrene When Cassian returns to Yavin, he relays the information about Krennic’s program and the Death Star that Kleya and Luthen got from Lonni to Rebel leadership. Kleya was injured in the ISB attack and is still recovering, and Cassian knows that they need to act on this information as soon as possible. Luthen died for it, after all. The Rebel council isn’t sure if they can trust this information, but Mon wants to believe Cassian. One of Saw’s men, Tivik, has put out word that he has information, but will only speak to Cassian about it if he comes to Kafrene. Mon and Draven try to convince Bail to let Cassian follow this lead even though he’s currently being reprimanded for sneaking off Yavin to go rescue Kleya. He relents, sending Cassian and K-2SO off to Kafrene, which is where we first meet them in Rogue One. What Happened to Bix? In the final moments of the finale, we return to Mina-Rau, the planet that Bix, Brasso, and Wilmon sought refuge on after Ferrix. B2-EMO is still there, playing with the children. Finally we see Bix, standing in a field holding a child that we can probably assume is Cassian’s, and part of the reason she left a year ago. She knew that he would leave the rebellion for both of them, and she didn’t want him to do that. But now she and their child look out into the distance, at a sunrise that Cassian is currently fighting for, but will never see for himself. Both full seasons of Andor are available to stream on Disney+ now.

News Avatar: Braving the Elements Podcast Teases Korra Revelations in Season 4 Trailer Nickelodeon's Avatar: The Last Airbender rewatch podcast is set to provide a behind the scenes look at The Legend of Korra. By Alec Bojalad | May 13, 2025 | | Photo: Nickelodeon Through three seasons and well over 100 episodes, Avatar: The Last Airbender companion podcast Avatar: Braving the Elements has faithfully recapped episodes of and expanded upon the lore for the all-time classic Nickelodeon animated series. Since the show finished covering The Last Airbender‘s third and final season last October, however, it’s been radio (or podcast) silent. After all, three seasons of Avatar: The Last Airbender, the TV show, means three seasons of Avatar: Braving the Elements, the podcast, right? Well, in the immortal words of Lee Corso: not so fast, my friend! Nickelodeon has now announced a May 20 release date for Avatar: Braving the Elements season 4, which will begin to delve into Avatar: The Last Airbender‘s first sequel Avatar: The Legend of Korra. Of course, Avatar: Braving the Elements moving on to Avatar: The Legend of Korra was always a part of the podcast’s long-term plan, as evidenced by the fact that Korra herself, Janet Varney, serves as the show’s co-host alongside Dante Basco. What fans couldn’t have fully anticipated though, is the lineup of Avatar stars, fans, and other luminaries that make up the guest list of this new season. Check them out below in the first trailer for Avatar: Braving the Elements season 4. The season’s first episode will feature Avatar: The Last Airbender creators Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko as they set the table for the four “books” of Korra to come. After that, things go in some pretty unexpected directions with Minnesota Twins pitcher Pablo López (who is boasting an impressive 2.18 Earned Run Average at press time) joining the discussion. Other guests include: Zach Tyler Eisen (voice of Aang), Steve Blum (voice of Amon), Mindy Sterling (voiced of Lin Beifong), Mick Foley (voice of the Boulder), Seychelle Gabriel (voice of Asami), Jeremy Zuckerman (music composer), Joaquim Dos Santos (director), Levon Hawke (Blink Twice, Avatarverse superfan), Maya Hawke (Stranger Things, Avatarverse superfan), and of course: the legendary cabbage merchant James Sie. While Varney should undoubtedly have a lot of compelling behind-the-scenes tidbits to share this time around, don’t sleep on Basco’s ability to crack the Korra code. The Zuko voice actor didn’t return for the sequel (with a more age-appropriate Bruce Davison taking over the role) and as such has not seen The Legend of Korra. It looks like the show will put that virginal status to good use, breaking out a “FORESHADOW REPORT” every time Basco stumbles upon something prophetic. Avatar: Braving the Elements season 4 premieres May 20 and will rollout weekly with video episodes on YouTube and audio episodes wherever podcasts are available. There is no word on how long this season will run but before you know it, Braving the Elements will be ready for its Seven Havens’ era.

Theoretically, Suits LA had a lot of things going for it. It was released on the heels of Suits’ Netflix renaissance, it came from the same creator as the original series, Aaron Korsh, and even promised the return of fan-favorite original characters like Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht) and Louis Litt (Rick Hoffman). But unfortunately, none of those were quite enough to make Suits LA worth the watch. And viewers concurred, with NBC canceling the show after one season. To start, Suits LA just doesn’t have as compelling of a hook as its predecessor. The inciting incident in Suits involves Mike Ross (Patrick J. Adams) being hired by Harvey Specter to the prestigious Pearson Hardman law firm, despite the fact that he doesn’t have a law degree. We spend the entire first season wondering if Mike and Harvey’s ruse will be discovered all the while watching Mike outperform his peers who actually went to Harvard law. Now the first season of Suits is by no means perfect, but it has enough of a draw to keep us watching. Aside from the gripping premise, the characters have phenomenal chemistry – it’s not hard to believe that many of them have worked together for years. In Suits LA, on the other hand, the series begins with an unexpected betrayal between law partners Ted Black (Stephen Amell) and Stuart Lane (Josh McDermitt). Lane shuts Black out of a merger with another law firm, and essentially leaves him to fend for himself. It’s an interesting idea, and certainly a shocking way to begin the series, but with very little context of who these people are and why we should care about them, the betrayal ultimately falls flat. Suits has done this kind of thing multiple times. Pearson Hardman goes through a number of mergers and restructurings throughout the series’ nine seasons. But the series does so once we’re familiar enough with these characters to recognize the stakes. The underhanded deals and betrayals hit harder because we know what they have to gain and lose. The characters of Suits LA also fail to match the level of chemistry the original cast had. Even though there were plenty of characters in Suits who didn’t get along, they still had a compelling rapport with each other. In Suits LA, it just feels like everybody hates each other, but not in any way that’s remotely interesting. Erica (Lex Scott Davis) essentially gets mad at Leah (Alice Lee) for having work boundaries just because she doesn’t know how to say no herself. Guest stars Patton Oswalt and Brian Baumgartner have beef not once, but twice in a season for some reason. Ted and Stuart have a somewhat similar relationship to Harvey and Louis – Stuart feels like Ted constantly belittles his skills but also considers Ted to be his best friend and like a brother to him. But despite the fact that the series brings in both Harvey and Louis to try and get that idea through to us, Ted and Stuart still can’t escape their shadow. Bringing Harvey and Louis into Suits LA reminds us how good we had it with the original series, and that no matter how hard this show tries it just can’t capture that same magic. “There can be many, many reasons why [Suits LA isn’t resonating], people are speculating why it hasn’t resonated, but it’s just not really showing the potential to grow for us in the future, unfortunately,” Jeff Bader, the president of program planning strategy at NBCUniversal Entertainment told reporters after the show’s cancellation. “We had to look at the performance of the shows, both on linear and on digital. We had to see the ones that looked like they had growth potential in the future.” It is a shame that TV shows don’t have as much room to grow as they once did. Who’s to say that Suits LA wouldn’t have found its stride in a second season as so many other network shows have before? But at the same time, the show should have been able to stand on its own. Its ties to Suits should be enough to bring fans in, but it’s up to the show itself and its new characters to keep them tuning in.  It seems pretty clear now that not even bringing back fan favorite characters was enough to give Suits LA the viewership numbers it needed to keep up with its predecessor nor was it enough to make the series worth tuning into. Watching Harvey and Louis interact with these characters just reminds how good we had it, and how badly Suits LA missed the mark.

There’s a routine, but profoundly telling moment when many visitors complete their first walkthrough at Future Pastime, the exhibition of paintings by the visionary artist and visual futurist Syd Mead currently on display in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. “His outlook on the future is so positive. I thought Syd Mead was dystopian,” many attendees exclaim, as if on cue.  Space Wheel Interior (1979) This perception is heavily guided by the work that—-for many—is the single most widely known reference point for Mead’s impact as a visual futurist: Director Ridley Scott’s 1982 rain soaked, techno-dystopian masterpiece, Blade Runner, whose visual landscape was largely Mead’s creation. In Blade Runner, Mead’s dystopian Los Angeles is so sleek, so complex, so rich with detail, one cannot blame audience members for confusing him with being a master of the morose. However, to quote Blade Runner 2049 director Denis Villeneuve (and another Mead collaborator): “[Syd] traveled in dystopia only once, and it was because of Ridley Scott. Syd’s first drawings of Los Angeles for Blade Runner were pure, bright and peaceful, but Ridley wanted his new world to be more claustrophobic and oppressive. And Syd dived into the darkness.”  One would reasonably expect Mead, with his fluent visual language of darkness so ably on display in Blade Runner, to be a committed future-cynic. However, it was quite the opposite. Mead was, in Vileneuve’s words, “one of the last great utopians,” a tidbit often lost on audiences raised on a steady diet of apocalyptic scenarios, dismal futures, and collapsed civilizations—the same narrative requests made often by Mead’s commissioning directors. In fact, Mead’s output outside the world of cinema—which in fact represents the lionshare of his more than 65-year professional career—is a replete and uniform world of robust optimism and hopeful aspiration. The future of Syd Mead is a bright and gilded one; the fulfillment of our greatest hopes and aspirations. It exists on the distant end of realism, yet is still somehow within reach.  The son of a Baptist minister (and part time art teacher), Mead gathered the strands of a childhood crowded by poverty and increasing world strife and instead formulated a unique worldview and artistic direction that was irrepressibly optimistic, often in spite of (and in stark contrast to) the current affairs and fortunes of the time.  To Mead, the prospect of an optimistic future was not a question of chance but of preparation. “Why wouldn’t you rehearse for a good future?” he often said. “I think that we should celebrate and rehearse for a bright future, and maybe it will come true. I don’t have time to illustrate misery or dystopian scenarios because they’ll happen. If you let everything go, they’ll happen anyway.” This outlook was successfully channeled into a singular career as an industrial futurist, becoming one of a rare group of individuals kept on speed dial by titans of industry to predict and illuminate likely future outcomes across myriad disciplines: architecture, urban planning, engineering, automotive, aeronautics, mass transit, spaceflight, technology, innovation, consumer goods, media, and more. Mead took it a step further by assuming the mantle of “visual futurist,” delivering his results not in research papers or dissertations, but via vivid, dynamic artworks, most principally paintings in his medium of choice: gouache.  Running of the 200th Kentucky Derby (1975) What he never anticipated was that the language of his industrial forecasting work would escape its enclosure and go on to define the visual identity of modern science fiction storytelling and cinematic futurism.   Mead entered professional life with nary a thought nor desire to work in the movies. In fact, movies were banned in the Mead household until he was 13 years old, with his earlier years filled with a potent mixture of his father’s chief obsessions: end-times religion, study and practice of painting and fine arts, and the pulp science fiction adventures of Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon (which Kenneth, his father, would buy family friendly editions so they could read together). Syd’s personal contributions to this percolating artistic concoction—an obsession with automobiles, the vibrant creations of contemporary illustrators as diverse as Maxfield Parrish and Chesley Bonestell, and the constant desire to innovate and improve one’s artistic craft—provided the ingredients to a simmering brew that one day would synthesize into the poetic future seer we celebrate today. By his mid-teens, Mead distanced himself from the old time religion of his parents as a new devotion emerged:bright future. The works of his adolescence and early adulthood burst with an almost unbridled gusto of color and life as potential futures were considered. Cowboys draped in pastel tour rural ranch grounds on horseback and bi-copter. Flying transport, early prototypes of Blade Runner-esque vehicles to come, twenty five years before the fact, are wrapped in chrome and almost seem to lift off the page. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! After his 1959 graduation from the Art Center in Los Angeles where he majored in industrial design, word quickly spread of this young man with a “future touch:” the uncanny ability to conceptualize and render achievable futures with the dexterity of an industrial engineer, the functionality of a city planner, and the poetry of a master painter. His first post-college berth at Ford’s Advanced Car Styling studio—where he worked on futuristic concept cars like the Gyron—lasted all of 26 months. The “thinness of purpose” got to him, he said. “If the company decided to stop making cars and start making washing machines next week, the process would not change at all—you just start doing sketches of washing machines.”  Mead departed Ford in 1961, and it was a providential overture made by industrial giant U.S. Steel shortly prior that which truly set the stage for the budding visual futurist to prove his worth. Aluminum, both lighter and cheaper, had been steadily eating into U.S. Steel’s profits, as well as the public’s romance with the once iconic alloy. The task for Mead was clear: to portray steel as a material of the future. Fifty years. One hundred years. Beyond. To make it relevant again today by showcasing its dreamy successes of tomorrow.  It was the assignment he had been practicing for his whole life, and Mead did not disappoint. Essentially given carte blanche, he remarkably completed the entire book—text and images—in just 30 days. While first intended as a product marketing catalogue aimed squarely at U.S. Steel customers, clients, and manufacturing partners, his work was such a sensation that the company commissioned four more books through 1969, and expanded the distribution of the volumes, running adverts for free copies in young people’s magazines, and seeding editions to all of the major art and design schools across the country. The result was the 1960s equivalent of a viral sensation; the books “went horizontal through the design community,” as Syd put it himself. Blossoming directors, designers, technologists, and innovators sought out the books and cherished them as cult objects. Sacred windows into the future of both technology and design. Acclaimed genre director Joe Johnston, who cut his teeth as art director on the original Star Wars Wheeless Truck (1969) As a result, the “Syd Mead look” is all over Star Wars, very specifically in the case of the AT-ATs, the iconic tall legged imperial transports featured in The Empire Strikes Back, which were derived by Johnston and the Lucasfilm team directly from Mead’s “Wheelless Truck” Despite his overwhelming influence on the series, Mead was not involved directly in Star Wars. He wasn’t even asked. It’s an understandable oversight. The concept of calling up Syd Mead in 1975 (by then an acclaimed industrial designer and futurist) to work on a motion picture is equivalent to asking Zaha Hadid in her prime to design buildings for an episode of Dynasty. Requests like these were simply not made, and as the 20th anniversary of Syd Mead’s professional career approached, he had yet to work on a single motion picture, let alone even be asked. This all changed when a fortuitous thought entered the mind of Star Wars VFX director John Dykstra in early 1979. Dykstra, who had attended Long Beach State alongside Johnston, and maintained a personal collection of Mead’s U.S. Steel books, now found himself as the visual effects lead on Star Trek: The Motion Picture. With the design of the film’s central antagonist—a leviathan entity of “unimaginable scale” named V’ger—suddenly in jeopardy, Dykstra took a leap of faith and reached out to Mead, uttering 12 words that would change both film and futurism forever:  “Syd, would you like to work on a science fiction motion picture?” Syd replied, “Sure.” In this one moment, the circuit was completed, and the board lit up. Suddenly alerted to the fact that their favorite futurist was down to do film, the entire town pivoted to Mead in unison. Ridley Scott, Steven Lisberger, Peter Hyams, James Cameron, and John Badham all reached out in quick succession. By 1986, via Blade Runner, Tron, 2010, Aliens, and Short Circuit, the very aesthetic of science fiction was altered forever… not by the hand of an imaginative production designer, but an actual futurist trained on developing real world futures to be built.     Elon Solo is the co-curator of Syd Mead: Future Pastime, an exhibition exploring the original artwork of Syd Mead, currently on display in NYC through May 21.  City on Wheels (1969)

“Wherever I go, the wind follows. And the wind smells like rain.” If those words came from the mouth of Humphrey Bogart or Edward G. Robinson in a crime flick from the 1930s or ’40s, they would sound like the cry of a tortured soul, living in the dregs of society. But because they come from the mouth of Nicolas Cage in the movie Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, they sound like melodramatic jokes, just as silly as anything said by the Looney Tunes-esque Spider-Ham, voiced by John Mulaney. And Cage is now reprising his role as Spider-Man Noir for the upcoming series Spider-Noir. But as the show’s first teaser reveals, the live-action Amazon MGM series has done away with the goofy tone of the movie that preceded it. Presented in black and white, the show is all moody visuals and implications of violence, in which a morally conflicted Spider-Man, still in his fedora and trench coat, does battle with the 1930s criminal underworld. As surprising as this shift may be to those who love the Spider-Verse movies, Spider-Noir is drawing its inspiration from the comics, and that’s a good thing. Marvel’s Great Depression The first issue of the 2008-2009 miniseries Spider-Man: Noir, written by David Hine and Fabrice Sapolsky and illustrated by Carmine Di Giandomenico, sees the police busting into the offices of Daily Bugle editor J. Jonah Jameson, only to find Spider-Man standing over him. Images such as this are well-known to fans of the wallcrawler, but this one is different. It’s not just that this scene takes place in 1933, nearly 30 full years before Spider-Man makes his first appearance in Amazing Fantasy #15. It’s also that Jameson has been shot to death and Spider-Man, dressed in a black trench coat (no fedora here), is holding the gun. Of course Spidey didn’t do it, and the series follows his investigation into Jameson’s murder. But the very shock of the image does underscore the tone of Spider-Man: Noir. Gone is the quippy Spidey, with his relationship problems and lovable hard-luck. In its place is a Spidey who dwells on the edges of society. He’s still Peter Parker, but he now lives among the downtrodden who lost everything in the Great Depression, listening to the socialist speeches delivered by his Aunt May, reimagined here as an Emma Goldman-type figure. Surprising as that description sounds, it follows the original appeal of Marvel Comics, described by Stan Lee as taking place in “the world outside your window.” 1933 was a period of great social change, with the excesses of the Roaring ’20s still enjoyed by some while others were consumed by the ravages of the stock market crash. Hitler has just become the German Chancellor, but a mistrust of the institutions that had failed them and a general nativism and xenophobia kept most Americans from seeing yet another world war on the horizon. Instead most Americans turned their attention to more immediate enemies, which include the upper classes who wanted to cling to Gilded Age power (and the institutions who supported them), as well as immigrants who continue to make their way to the U.S. All of those tensions inform Spider-Man: Noir, making for a more morally complex story than one would expect. The teenage Peter Parker is still the pure-hearted kid we know and love, but the general cynicism of the world gives him no clear moral standing as he fights Norman Osborn, aka the Goblin, and his thugs. Seriously Dark The Spider-Man Noir of Into the Spider-Verse played more like a parody of a film noir, which literally translates to “black film,” as coined by French critics analyzing moody American crime pictures of the 1940s and ’50s made in the wake of this era. In those films, the hero was a a hardboiled cynic, a la the detectives in The Big Heat or The Maltese Falcon. But in Spider-Verse, he’s a buffoon to be laughed at for his melodrama and inability to understand color. It’s a good joke, but not the sort of thing that can sustain an entire television series. So it’s a good thing that Spider-Noir seems to be taking its cues from the comics instead of the movie. Granted, though, that some things need to be changed. Even if Spidey remains masked, Cage sounds every bit like the 61-year-old he is, and no amount of digital de-aging will make him into the young teen from the comics. Thus he can’t quite be the same innocent he was in the comics, nor can he have a firebrand Aunt May. She and Ben would be long gone by the time sexagenarian Spidey is working. However, she could still have been a leftist, perhaps a union organizer or suffragist. More than a matter of political preference, though, the depiction of Spider-Noir’s Aunt May matters because the series cannot be a bunch of winking nods at movies and literature of the ’30s and ’40s. That worked for maybe 10 minutes of screen time in Spider-Verse, but it won’t hold a series—in part because modern audiences don’t know enough about film noir to get the reference. Instead it needs to be a story grounded in a type of reality, especially because it has a fantasy character at the center. Spider-Man: Noir and its sequel miniseries The Eye of the Beholder are a great model for the show and, if this first teaser is any indication, the model that Spider-Noir intends to follow. Spider-Noir will stream on MGM+ in 2026.

It’s been 25 years since the original Final Destination film hit screens and began terrorizing audiences with its deeply memorable (and memeable) Rube Goldberg-like murder tableaus, which get more and more intricate and anxiety-inducing as the franchise goes on. Yet it’s somehow been 14 years since the last entry into the series—the campy, fun, and sort-of-prequel Final Destination 5—and with the appetite for inventive horror as ravenous as ever, and chaos all around us in 2025, we seem perfectly primed for another entry into the series.  Final Destination: Bloodlines thus begins like every other installment in the series: with a terrible disaster. Intriguingly though, this time it’s one that happened decades before the events of the majority of the film. It is in this context we meet Iris (Brec Bassinger), a young woman who after being proposed to on the top of the immense Skyview Tower defies Death with a horrific premonition that allows her to save the lives of hundreds of people who would have fallen and been burnt alive had Iris not alerted the would-be victims.  These setpieces are iconic— like the generation-traumatizing log truck in Final Destination 2 or Mary Elizabeth Winstead versus a rollercoaster in the third installment—so the first new one in 14 years is highly anticipated to say the least. And Bloodlines delivers, as the aesthetically pleasing practical set adds an epic scope to the opening and it manages to feature one of the film’s most horrifying moments that will send shivers up the spines of even the hardiest audience member.  It’s an opening that showcases the love and care that directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein channel throughout the film, with easter eggs aplenty, deep cut references, and some expansive new lore that impacts characters both old and new. Afterward the film pivots to the still-kicking legacy sequel/requel trend and recenters itself around a new family. Thanks to the return of Tony Todd and an expansion of his fan-favorite character William Bludworth, there’s connective tissue to the past. The directors weave that near seamlessly in with the central plot which follows Iris’ family in the modern day as Death finally catches up with them. Our would-be final girl is Stefani (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) who has been dreaming about Iris’ premonition and immediately throws herself into solving the gory family mystery that has presented itself. Along for the ride is her brother Charlie (Teo Briones) and the pair have great chemistry, working as leads that you can actually root for.  Along with a new cast of soon-to-be dead family members the film also introduces Iris’ long relationship with Death. Here we get an expansion in our understanding of Death, who has an almost playfully antagonistic relationship with the woman who managed to escape its grasp all those decades ago. Some of the movie’s best and most unique scenes come from the push and pull between the pair, and Gabrielle Rose’s brilliant performance as the older Iris.  Bloodlines also acts as a send off to legendary Candyman star and genre movie icon, Todd, who has been the sinewy heart of every entry into the Final Destination Todd gives his all, creating a rare and powerful heartfelt moment in the midst of the carnage. And Lipovsky and Stein bring that carnage to life beautifully. There are deaths here that will go down as some of the most terrifying in franchise history, as well as some of its biggest laughs. It’s a balance that makes the movie a perfect popcorn flick that you just have to see on the big screen. After all, if someone is going to get (SPOILER) by a (SPOILER) in their (SPOILER), don’t you want to see that and every other gruesome death as big as possible?   Speaking of big screens, the film was shot for IMAX, and the directors have a ton of fun playing with the ratio and what it can tell us about how deep into the peril we and the characters are. Likewise it features a big ensemble cast, meaning we get more death and destruction and casting director Tiffany Mak deserves a big shout out, as the chemistry is strong. We also get some instant new franchise classic characters like Erik (Richard Harmon), Stefani and Charlie’s burnout cousin who works at a sharps-filled tattoo shop. Why yes that setting will become important later in  a sequence that left my audience gagging in the best possible way.  Final Destination has always been one of the best horror franchises and this is a return that will not only please old fans but will also introduce and terrorize an entirely new audience into discovering these absolutely wild movies that are still going strong 25 years after the first entry. Thanks to an array of talent behind the screen—including Scream VI’s Guy Busick and the MCU Spider-Man’s Jon Watts—this is a witty, hilarious, and grotesque start to the summer blockbuster season.  Final Destination: Bloodlines is out in theaters on May 16. Learn more about Den of Geek’s review process and why you can trust our recommendations here. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox!

Warning: contains spoilers for The Handmaid’s Tale season six episode eight “Exodus”. It wasn’t a red wedding; it was more subtle than that – subtler than bloodhungry fans were probably hoping. Who else was waiting for the Handmaids to unleash screaming frenzy in that chic ballroom and set upon the commanders in an anime-style storm of blades, blood and bared teeth? ‘Is it now?’ I kept asking myself as the careful, quiet wedding scenes stretched on. ‘Is it now?’ Now never came. Instead of a cloud of noise and violence, we saw individual Handmaids silently peel away from their platoon and steal towards a sleeping commander in his own home. Rather than witness Calhoun and co. vomit up a waterfall of guts onto the dancefloor as their eyeballs burst red after eating a slice of Rita’s cake, they all simply went to sleep, like the inhabitants of fairyland under a spell. The commander massacre was quiet, controlled and efficient. Even the putting down of prize pig Bell was muted. No expressive relish was taken in his death, just the assassin-cool exchange: “June Osborne?”, “Nice to meet you” and a knife to the eye. June may as well have been handing Bell a discount leaflet outside a supermarket for all the emotion she betrayed. The meaning was clear: this was work, not fun, and it was carried out with the meticulous professionalism of a perfectly choreographed army. Had my wish for a wedding melee been granted, of course, June and Moira’s soldiers wouldn’t currently be running to freedom, they’d be slumped limply in the bucket of an industrial digger as their bodies were tipped into a mass grave after being gunned down like the women at the Penthouse. This was the better plan.  It was a better episode too from director Daina Reid and writer Yahlin Chang, than the one I’d originally hoped to see – less visceral but no less rousing, and built around two pivotal character moments that have been a long time in the coming. Aunt Lydia finally stopped barking bible verses and accepted her place on the wrong side of history. And after all that pursed lip equivocation about her derailed social experiment, Serena finally got it right: there’s no such thing as a good man who’s also a Gilead commander. The existence of one precludes the other. Now she’s right back where she started the season, on the run with a babe-in-arms.  Lydia’s capitulation was the headline act, and acted like a dream by Ann Dowd. June appealed to her faith, Janine appealed to her unsettling maternal obsession with her “special girl”, and between them, they got the job done. Every suppressed twitch of Lydia’s eye over the years at an act of cruelty or abuse from a commander to her girls added up to her finally acknowledging that Gilead was not God’s way. She’s always seen herself as the Handmaids’ saviour rather than their prison guard. Now, by not standing in the way of their escape, she can almost justify being called both. “Exodus” was minutely focused as a story. The phone call received by Commander Bell aside, there was no sense of the wider attack on Gilead or whether Luke’s bombs had detonated and Mark’s troops had driven over the border. It was almost all contained inside that royal-scale wedding. (A quiet word on taste, Serena: even Harry and Meghan would have balked at wheeling in a cake so oversized that most of this show’s cast could have jumped out of it doing the can-can.) Serena did not hold back on the staging. Chandeliers, thrones, pennants… Queen of Gilead was about right. She certainly addressed her subjects with royal condescension. Like a school counsellor sitting backwards on a chair, Serena was trying so hard yet getting it so wrong. Her address to the Handmaids wasn’t just a moment of high-tension while June tried to hide among the crowd, it was almost a cringe-comedy scene out of The Office. She self-importantly assumed that Lawrence was jumpy because he feared the loss of her invaluable collaboration post-marriage. In reality, Lawrence’s nerves were our own. Forced to sit nicely through the ceremony, dinner and speeches, he was waiting for revolution.   And revolution came, in this show’s controlled, symmetrical, Kubrickian signature style. With powerful writing and stylish imagery, the Boston Handmaids have revolted and it feels like the beginning of the end for Gilead. That final monologue from June as the women ran out of the Red Center and into the snow could easily have closed out this whole series, but for the fact that we have two episodes still to go, and Hannah still to find. The Handmaid’s Tale season six streams on Tuesdays on Hulu in the US and airs on Saturdays on Channel 4 in the UK. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox!

Hayley Atwell and Tom Hiddleston recently concluded a run on the West End of William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. This is perhaps not a surprise. Both thespians have multiple Olivier nominations to their names and are veterans of the Bard, with Atwell at one time being a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. And yet, it was lost on perhaps no one that by casting these actors in Shakespeare’s frothiest comedy, iconoclastic theater director Jamie Lloyd was uniting the MCU’s Loki and Peggy Carter on the stage. In typical Lloyd fashion, there are even fourth-wall breaking winks to the fact, with at one point performers acting opposite a cutout of Hiddleston as Loki, and Hiddleston acting across a cutout of Atwell as Captain Carter… the super-powered version of Peggy from an alternate universe or two. It was both amusing and ironic, especially since it was later confirmed that Hiddleston is headed back to the Marvel trenches for next year’s anticipated Avengers: Doomsday with the actor cast as Loki despite multiple variants of the character being killed off—and the one we last saw on the Disney+ series condemned to watch over the whole multiverse. Hence while preparing to sit down with Atwell ahead of her latest upcoming action movie, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, this connection got us wondering whether we might see not only Atwell again in the MCU but also as the hero in the cutout glimpsed in Much Ado. Might we see Captain “I would love that,” Atwell says when asked if she’d like to see Captain Carter specifically in either of the upcoming Avengers sequels. “There are so many things that she could do, there’s so much more I feel I can bring to a character because I’ve developed as time’s gone on. What’s so great about having time behind you and having had a 20-year career so far is the development of skill, and I think there’s so much more that Peggy can do. She’s very much an underserved character.” Captain Carter certainly has been underserved despite being a favorite among fans. This variant of the MCU’s Peggy received in alternate timelines the super serum formula that made Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers Captain America—hence the English Carter’s shield being Union Jack-bespoked. She appeared to great popularity in the animated Disney+ series What If… ? where Atwell voiced the character, and again in live-action, albeit as a bit of a punchline, in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness where another version of Captain Carter—plus Patrick Stewart’s Charles Xavier and John Krasinski’s Reed Richards—got wrecked by the Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen). But the thing about timelines is no one is really ever gone (Stewart is already confirmed to come back as presumably a more regal Xavier in Doomsday). And as Atwell points out, in all versions of Peggy’s story, there is a constant theme of being overlooked or underappreciated—such as working as a woman in Allied intelligence during World War II. Atwell even reminds us of a line Peggy had in Agent Carter. Says Atwell, “When she says ‘I know my value and everyone else’s opinion doesn’t really matter,’ it’s because she hasn’t been given the platform that she knows she deserves and that she’s really capable of doing in the world. And so I just think there is just so much more that she can do, and I think she speaks to a modern time, so to be able to take her to that next level as Captain Carter would be phenomenal. Especially with all my Mission: Impossible training. I am ready, let’s go!’” Atwell has indeed become a highlight of the most recent M:I films where she plays the enigmatic and mysterious Grace, a one-time pick pocket in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning who ends that film becoming a member of the IMF, the beloved and almost perpetually rogue spy group led by Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise). This also leads to Grace having a larger role in this month’s Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. We’ll have more of our conversation with Atwell regarding that film closer to its release on May 23.

Ever since James Gunn announced the full cast for Superman, people have been scratching their heads. Sure, we expected that the cast would include Superman, Lois Lane, and Lex Luthor–played by David Corenswet, Rachel Brosnahan, and Nicholas Hoult, respectively. But as the cast list grew, so did the names of other superheroes. Edi Gathegi and Mister Terrific? Isabela Merced as Hawkgirl? Nathan Fillion as Guy Gardner? Is this a Superman movie or a Justice League movie? Gunn has clarified on social media that Superman focuses on the central triangle of Clark, Lois, and Lex, but also that his movie sees the Man of Steel joining a world already populated with superheroes, superheroes who have lost their way. And in the first teaser for season two of Peacemaker, a show all about those lost superheroes who preceded Superman, we get a sense of what that main team might be. The Secret Gospel of Maxwell Lord The teaser begins with an embarrassing moment for Peacemaker a.k.a. Christopher Smith, played by John Cena. He visits a shabby studio to interview for a part in a superhero team. His interviewers include Hawkgirl and Guy Gardner, but they’re flanked by a face familiar to anyone who has seen a James Gunn project, Sean Gunn. Although he’s already appeared in DC projects, voicing G.I. Robot and Weasel in Creature Commandos and cameoing as the Calendar Man in The Suicide Squad, here he’s got a different job, playing Maxwell Lord. DC movie fans may remember Maxwell Lord as the enterprising businessman that Pedro Pascal played in Wonder Woman: 1984. There, his greed turned him into a villain who almost destroyed the world, only saved when Wonder Woman appealed to his better side at the end of the movie. However, Gunn’s Lord functions much more like his original comic book counterpart. First introduced in 1987’s Justice League #1, written by J. M. DeMatteis and Keith Giffen and penciled by Kevin Maguire, Maxwell Lord was the opportunistic businessman who assembled his own Justice League after the long-running team had disbanded in disgrace. Thanks to his maneuvering and business acumen (and, it must be said, light mind-control powers introduced later in the run), Lord put together an unconventional team that featured longtime mainstays like Batman and Martian Manhunter, but mostly oddballs such as Guy Gardner, Booster Gold, and Fire and Ice. The DeMatteis/Giffen/Maguire League (known colloquially as Justice League International [JLI], due to the title of the book during its most formative issues) has long been a fan-favorite thanks to its humorous and character-driven approach to mainline superheroics. The JLI would battle huge baddies like the alien conqueror Despero or the mind-controlling Gray Man, but they would also get involved in failed get-rich-quick schemes or devote an entire issue to the crass Guy Gardner going on a date with the demure Ice. In other words, JLI is exactly the type of book that informs James Gunn’s approach to the DC Universe, in which C- and D-list heroes spend more time bickering than they do saving the day. I Can’t Believe It’s Not the Justice League However, the Peacemaker season 2 trailer is the first time we’ve really seen how Gunn plans to integrate the JLI into his version of the cinematic DC Universe. As demonstrated in this clip, Lord is recruiting new members into his team, ultimately serving as the deciding factor. Guy Gardner and Hawkgirl are once again wearing matching outfits, costumes that look quite different than their comic book versions, suggesting that they are all part of the same team. Given the black and white motif worn even by Guy Gardner, a Green Lantern who usually has more of an emerald look, many have speculated that the team would be a variation of the Terrifics, a group led by Mister Terrific. Some have also speculated that the team would work at the behest of Simon Stagg, another millionaire in the DC Universe, whose building is prominently displayed in the Superman teaser. While both of these elements may still be integrated into the Superman line-up, the Peacemaker trailer makes it clear that the main team will be a variation of the JLI, complete with Max Lord at the head. And, as demonstrated by the barbs that Lord and co. unwittingly toss at Peacemaker, they’ll be the same unserious group that we initially saw in the comics. Inspiring the Heroes What does this mean for Superman? Within the pages of DC Comics, the JLI were unusual, but they were still heroes, and earned the respect of even Batman, who often served alongside them. However, the team largely trusted Maxwell Lord, at least until a retcon in the mid-2000s turned him into a powerful mind controller and maniacal villain, who shot his buddy Blue Beetle in the head. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! Superman may very well seek to split the difference between the two depictions. The pseudo-JLI of the movie may have the potential to be great, but that potential has been hampered by cynicism. They can only do good if they have the support of a rich guy like Lord. It would fit with the inspirational tone that Gunn is striking in his Superman marketing materials for Superman to inspire the JLI to become greater heroes. Will they actually become the Justice League? While that would be fun, one hopes that the League of Gunn’s DC Universe will be more in line with the classic team, with Batman, Wonder Woman, and Superman at the core. But there’s always been room for more teams in the DC Universe, especially when they’re being written by James Gunn, a guy who loves his little-known weirdos. Superman takes flight into theaters on July 11, 2025.

In news that will come as comfort to traditionalists, the finale of the current series of Doctor Who (which we’ve stubbornly been calling series 15 for consistency, but almost everywhere else is called season two, so take your pick), won’t be released early on BBC iPlayer. As confirmed on the official Doctor Who website, the first time anybody will be able to see the episode will be in an as-yet-unannounced primetime evening BBC One slot on Saturday, May 31. That means no ducking and hiding from potential spoilers in the daytime. The release strategy means that the episode will be simultaneously available around the world, on BBC One, Disney+ and in the select UK cinemas holding special showings of the current run’s final two episodes, “Wish World”, and “The Reality War”. Previously, the Disney+-distributed episodes have been made available to stream on BBC iPlayer either at midnight on Fridays (for last year’s series 14) or at 8am on Saturdays (for series 15). Hardcore fans wanting to see the episodes at the earliest opportunity therefore had to stay up late, or get up early and watch them with a bowl of breakfast cereal. Not for the finale. There are new plot details about that finale, too, straight from showrunner Russell T. Davies: “The Doctor is doomed, Belinda is lost, Ruby is trapped, UNIT is powerless, the Unholy Trinity rule supreme and the Underverse is rising. And now we can all experience this devastating climax together, all at the same time, with a unique worldwide premiere. I can promise shocks, scares and revelations off the scale. Come and have fun!” Mention of “The Unholy Trinity” and “the Underverse” is a new tease, and makes it sound like the Doctor and co. will be facing suitably god-like forces. Will the mysterious Mrs Flood be among them? Anita Dobson’s character has followed in Susan Triad’s footsteps by popping up in every episode so far this run, and the true nature of her character is destined to be revealed come the finale. We also heard from actor Millie Gibson on The One Show around the publicity for “Lucky Day” that villainous podcaster Conrad Clark (Jonah Hauer-King) will be returning for the final episode. Could he form one of the Trinity, or is that trio reserved solely for actual deities? Time will tell. “Wish World” and “The Reality War” are both written by Russell T Davies and directed by Alex Sanjiv Pillai, who also called the shots on the 2024 Christmas special “Joy to the World,” guest-starring Nicola Coughlan and Joel Fry. Find out more about the special Doctor Who cinema screenings here, and read our latest review of Inua Ellams and Makalla McPherson’s episode “The Story and the Engine”, with spoilers, here. Doctor Who airs on Saturdays on BBC One in the UK and streams on Disney+ around the world.