Donald Trump’s military parade in Washington this weekend — a show of force in the capital that just happens to take place on the president’s birthday — smacks of authoritarian Dear Leader-style politics (even though Trump actually got the idea after attending the 2017 Bastille Day parade in Paris).Yet as disconcerting as the imagery of tanks rolling down Constitution Avenue will be, it’s not even close to Trump’s most insidious assault on the US military’s historic and democratically essential nonpartisan ethos.In fact, it’s not even the most worrying thing he’s done this week.On Tuesday, the president gave a speech at Fort Bragg, an Army base home to Special Operations Command. While presidential speeches to soldiers are not uncommon — rows of uniformed troops make a great backdrop for a foreign policy speech — they generally avoid overt partisan attacks and campaign-style rhetoric. The soldiers, for their part, are expected to be studiously neutral, laughing at jokes and such, but remaining fully impassive during any policy conversation.That’s not what happened at Fort Bragg. Trump’s speech was a partisan tirade that targeted “radical left” opponents ranging from Joe Biden to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. He celebrated his deployment of Marines to Los Angeles, proposed jailing people for burning the American flag, and called on soldiers to be “aggressive” toward the protesters they encountered.The soldiers, for their part, cheered Trump and booed his enemies — as they were seemingly expected to. Reporters at Military.com, a military news service, uncovered internal communications from 82nd Airborne leadership suggesting that the crowd was screened for their political opinions.“If soldiers have political views that are in opposition to the current administration and they don’t want to be in the audience then they need to speak with their leadership and get swapped out,” one note read.To call this unusual is an understatement. I spoke with four different experts on civil-military relations, two of whom teach at the Naval War College, about the speech and its implications. To a person, they said it was a step towards politicizing the military with no real precedent in modern American history.“That is, I think, a really big red flag because it means the military’s professional ethic is breaking down internally,” says Risa Brooks, a professor at Marquette University. “Its capacity to maintain that firewall against civilian politicization may be faltering.”This may sound alarmist — like an overreading of a one-off incident — but it’s part of a bigger pattern. The totality of Trump administration policies, ranging from the parade in Washington to the LA troop deployment to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s firing of high-ranking women and officers of color, suggests a concerted effort to erode the military’s professional ethos and turn it into an institution subservient to the Trump administration’s whims. This is a signal policy aim of would-be dictators, who wish to head off the risk of a coup and ensure the armed forces’ political reliability if they are needed to repress dissent in a crisis.Steve Saideman, a professor at Carleton University, put together a list of eight different signs that a military is being politicized in this fashion. The Trump administration has exhibited six out of the eight.“The biggest theme is that we are seeing a number of checks on the executive fail at the same time — and that’s what’s making individual events seem more alarming than they might otherwise,” says Jessica Blankshain, a professor at the Naval War College (speaking not for the military but in a personal capacity).That Trump is trying to politicize the military does not mean he has succeeded. There are several signs, including Trump’s handpicked chair of the Joint Chiefs repudiating the president’s claims of a migrant invasion during congressional testimony, that the US military is resisting Trump’s politicization.But the events in Fort Bragg and Washington suggest that we are in the midst of a quiet crisis in civil-military relations in the United States — one whose implications for American democracy’s future could well be profound.The Trump crisis in civil-military relations, explainedA military is, by sheer fact of its existence, a threat to any civilian government. If you have an institution that controls the overwhelming bulk of weaponry in a society, it always has the physical capacity to seize control of the government at gunpoint. A key question for any government is how to convince the armed forces that they cannot or should not take power for themselves.Democracies typically do this through a process called “professionalization.” Soldiers are rigorously taught to think of themselves as a class of public servants, people trained to perform a specific job within defined parameters. Their ultimate loyalty is not to their generals or even individual presidents, but rather to the people and the constitutional order.Samuel Huntington, the late Harvard political scientist, is the canonical theorist of a professional military. In his book The Soldier and the State, he described optimal professionalization as a system of “objective control”: one in which the military retains autonomy in how they fight and plan for wars while deferring to politicians on whether and why to fight in the first place. In effect, they stay out of the politicians’ affairs while the politicians stay out of theirs.The idea of such a system is to emphasize to the military that they are professionals: Their responsibility isn’t deciding when to use force, but only to conduct operations as effectively as possible once ordered to engage in them. There is thus a strict firewall between military affairs, on the one hand, and policy-political affairs on the other.Typically, the chief worry is that the military breaches this bargain: that, for example, a general starts speaking out against elected officials’ policies in ways that undermine civilian control. This is not a hypothetical fear in the United States, with the most famous such example being Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s insubordination during the Korean War. Thankfully, not even MacArthur attempted the worst-case version of military overstep — a coup.But in backsliding democracies like the modern United States, where the chief executive is attempting an anti-democratic power grab, the military poses a very different kind of threat to democracy — in fact, something akin to the exact opposite of the typical scenario.In such cases, the issue isn’t the military inserting itself into politics but rather the civilians dragging them into it in ways that upset the democratic political order. The worst-case scenario is that the military acts on presidential directives to use force against domestic dissenters, destroying democracy not by ignoring civilian orders, but by following them.There are two ways to arrive at such a worst-case scenario, both of which are in evidence in the early days of Trump 2.0.First is politicization: an intentional attack on the constraints against partisan activity inside the professional ranks.Many of Pete Hegseth’s major moves as secretary of defense fit this bill, including his decisions to fire nonwhite and female generals seen as politically unreliable and his effort to undermine the independence of the military’s lawyers. The breaches in protocol at Fort Bragg are both consequences and causes of politicization: They could only happen in an environment of loosened constraint, and they might encourage more overt political action if gone unpunished.The second pathway to breakdown is the weaponization of professionalism against itself. Here, Trump exploits the military’s deference to politicians by ordering it to engage in undemocratic (and even questionably legal) activities. In practice, this looks a lot like the LA deployments, and, more specifically, the lack of any visible military pushback. While the military readily agreeing to deployments is normally a good sign — that civilian control is holding — these aren’t normal times. And this isn’t a normal deployment, but rather one that comes uncomfortably close to the military being ordered to assist in repressing overwhelmingly peaceful demonstrations against executive abuses of power.“It’s really been pretty uncommon to use the military for law enforcement,” says David Burbach, another Naval War College professor (also speaking personally). “This is really bringing the military into frontline law enforcement when. … these are really not huge disturbances.”This, then, is the crisis: an incremental and slow-rolling effort by the Trump administration to erode the norms and procedures designed to prevent the military from being used as a tool of domestic repression. Is it time to panic?Among the experts I spoke with, there was consensus that the military’s professional and nonpartisan ethos was weakening. This isn’t just because of Trump, but his terms — the first to a degree, and now the second acutely — are major stressors.Yet there was no consensus on just how much military nonpartisanship has eroded — that is, how close we are to a moment when the US military might be willing to follow obviously authoritarian orders.For all its faults, the US military’s professional ethos is a really important part of its identity and self-conception. While few soldiers may actually read Sam Huntington or similar scholars, the general idea that they serve the people and the republic is a bedrock principle among the ranks. There is a reason why the United States has never, in over 250 years of governance, experienced a military coup — or even come particularly close to one.In theory, this ethos should also galvanize resistance to Trump’s efforts at politicization. Soldiers are not unthinking automatons: While they are trained to follow commands, they are explicitly obligated to refuse illegal orders, even coming from the president. The more aggressive Trump’s efforts to use the military as a tool of repression gets, the more likely there is to be resistance.Or, at least theoretically.The truth is that we don’t really know how the US military will respond to a situation like this. Like so many of Trump’s second-term policies, their efforts to bend the military to their will are unprecedented — actions with no real parallel in the modern history of the American military. Experts can only make informed guesses, based on their sense of US military culture as well as comparisons to historical and foreign cases.For this reason, there are probably only two things we can say with confidence.First, what we’ve seen so far is not yet sufficient evidence to declare that the military is in Trump’s thrall. The signs of decay are too limited to ground any conclusions that the longstanding professional norm is entirely gone.“We have seen a few things that are potentially alarming about erosion of the military’s non-partisan norm. But not in a way that’s definitive at this point,” Blankshain says.Second, the stressors on this tradition are going to keep piling on. Trump’s record makes it exceptionally clear that he wants the military to serve him personally — and that he, and Hegseth, will keep working to make it so. This means we really are in the midst of a quiet crisis, and will likely remain so for the foreseeable future.“The fact that he’s getting the troops to cheer for booing Democratic leaders at a time when there’s actually [a deployment to] a blue city and a blue state…he is ordering the troops to take a side,” Saideman says. “There may not be a coherent plan behind this. But there are a lot of things going on that are all in the same direction.”See More: Politics

Guided by visual effects supervisor John Knoll, ILM embraced continually evolving methodologies to craft breathtaking visual effects for the iconic space battles in First Contact and Rogue One. By Jay Stobie Visual effects supervisor John Knoll (right) confers with modelmakers Kim Smith and John Goodson with the miniature of the U.S.S. Enterprise-E during production of Star Trek: First Contact (Credit: ILM). Bolstered by visual effects from Industrial Light & Magic, Star Trek: First Contact (1996) and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) propelled their respective franchises to new heights. While Star Trek Generations (1994) welcomed Captain Jean-Luc Picard’s (Patrick Stewart) crew to the big screen, First Contact stood as the first Star Trek feature that did not focus on its original captain, the legendary James T. Kirk (William Shatner). Similarly, though Rogue One immediately preceded the events of Star Wars: A New Hope (1977), it was set apart from the episodic Star Wars films and launched an era of storytelling outside of the main Skywalker saga that has gone on to include Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018), The Mandalorian (2019-23), Andor (2022-25), Ahsoka (2023), The Acolyte (2024), and more. The two films also shared a key ILM contributor, John Knoll, who served as visual effects supervisor on both projects, as well as an executive producer on Rogue One. Currently, ILM’s executive creative director and senior visual effects supervisor, Knoll – who also conceived the initial framework for Rogue One’s story – guided ILM as it brought its talents to bear on these sci-fi and fantasy epics. The work involved crafting two spectacular starship-packed space clashes – First Contact’s Battle of Sector 001 and Rogue One’s Battle of Scarif. Although these iconic installments were released roughly two decades apart, they represent a captivating case study of how ILM’s approach to visual effects has evolved over time. With this in mind, let’s examine the films’ unforgettable space battles through the lens of fascinating in-universe parallels and the ILM-produced fleets that face off near Earth and Scarif. A final frame from the Battle of Scarif in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (Credit: ILM & Lucasfilm). A Context for Conflict In First Contact, the United Federation of Planets – a 200-year-old interstellar government consisting of more than 150 member worlds – braces itself for an invasion by the Borg – an overwhelmingly powerful collective composed of cybernetic beings who devastate entire planets by assimilating their biological populations and technological innovations. The Borg only send a single vessel, a massive cube containing thousands of hive-minded drones and their queen, pushing the Federation’s Starfleet defenders to Earth’s doorstep. Conversely, in Rogue One, the Rebel Alliance – a fledgling coalition of freedom fighters – seeks to undermine and overthrow the stalwart Galactic Empire – a totalitarian regime preparing to tighten its grip on the galaxy by revealing a horrifying superweapon. A rebel team infiltrates a top-secret vault on Scarif in a bid to steal plans to that battle station, the dreaded Death Star, with hopes of exploiting a vulnerability in its design. On the surface, the situations could not seem to be more disparate, particularly in terms of the Federation’s well-established prestige and the Rebel Alliance’s haphazardly organized factions. Yet, upon closer inspection, the spaceborne conflicts at Earth and Scarif are linked by a vital commonality. The threat posed by the Borg is well-known to the Federation, but the sudden intrusion upon their space takes its defenses by surprise. Starfleet assembles any vessel within range – including antiquated Oberth-class science ships – to intercept the Borg cube in the Typhon Sector, only to be forced back to Earth on the edge of defeat. The unsanctioned mission to Scarif with Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) and Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) and the sudden need to take down the planet’s shield gate propels the Rebel Alliance fleet into rushing to their rescue with everything from their flagship Profundity to GR-75 medium transports. Whether Federation or Rebel Alliance, these fleets gather in last-ditch efforts to oppose enemies who would embrace their eradication – the Battles of Sector 001 and Scarif are fights for survival. From Physical to Digital By the time Jonathan Frakes was selected to direct First Contact, Star Trek’s reliance on constructing traditional physical models (many of which were built by ILM) for its features was gradually giving way to innovative computer graphics (CG) models, resulting in the film’s use of both techniques. “If one of the ships was to be seen full-screen and at length,” associate visual effects supervisor George Murphy told Cinefex’s Kevin H. Martin, “we knew it would be done as a stage model. Ships that would be doing a lot of elaborate maneuvers in space battle scenes would be created digitally.” In fact, physical and CG versions of the U.S.S. Enterprise-E appear in the film, with the latter being harnessed in shots involving the vessel’s entry into a temporal vortex at the conclusion of the Battle of Sector 001. Despite the technological leaps that ILM pioneered in the decades between First Contact and Rogue One, they considered filming physical miniatures for certain ship-related shots in the latter film. ILM considered filming physical miniatures for certain ship-related shots in Rogue One. The feature’s fleets were ultimately created digitally to allow for changes throughout post-production. “If it’s a photographed miniature element, it’s not possible to go back and make adjustments. So it’s the additional flexibility that comes with the computer graphics models that’s very attractive to many people,” John Knoll relayed to writer Jon Witmer at American Cinematographer’s TheASC.com. However, Knoll aimed to develop computer graphics that retained the same high-quality details as their physical counterparts, leading ILM to employ a modern approach to a time-honored modelmaking tactic. “I also wanted to emulate the kit-bashing aesthetic that had been part of Star Wars from the very beginning, where a lot of mechanical detail had been added onto the ships by using little pieces from plastic model kits,” explained Knoll in his chat with TheASC.com. For Rogue One, ILM replicated the process by obtaining such kits, scanning their parts, building a computer graphics library, and applying the CG parts to digitally modeled ships. “I’m very happy to say it was super-successful,” concluded Knoll. “I think a lot of our digital models look like they are motion-control models.” John Knoll (second from left) confers with Kim Smith and John Goodson with the miniature of the U.S.S. Enterprise-E during production of Star Trek: First Contact (Credit: ILM). Legendary Lineages In First Contact, Captain Picard commanded a brand-new vessel, the Sovereign-class U.S.S. Enterprise-E, continuing the celebrated starship’s legacy in terms of its famous name and design aesthetic. Designed by John Eaves and developed into blueprints by Rick Sternbach, the Enterprise-E was built into a 10-foot physical model by ILM model project supervisor John Goodson and his shop’s talented team. ILM infused the ship with extraordinary detail, including viewports equipped with backlit set images from the craft’s predecessor, the U.S.S. Enterprise-D. For the vessel’s larger windows, namely those associated with the observation lounge and arboretum, ILM took a painstakingly practical approach to match the interiors shown with the real-world set pieces. “We filled that area of the model with tiny, micro-scale furniture,” Goodson informed Cinefex, “including tables and chairs.” Rogue One’s rebel team initially traversed the galaxy in a U-wing transport/gunship, which, much like the Enterprise-E, was a unique vessel that nonetheless channeled a certain degree of inspiration from a classic design. Lucasfilm’s Doug Chiang, a co-production designer for Rogue One, referred to the U-wing as the film’s “Huey helicopter version of an X-wing” in the Designing Rogue One bonus featurette on Disney+ before revealing that, “Towards the end of the design cycle, we actually decided that maybe we should put in more X-wing features. And so we took the X-wing engines and literally mounted them onto the configuration that we had going.” Modeled by ILM digital artist Colie Wertz, the U-wing’s final computer graphics design subtly incorporated these X-wing influences to give the transport a distinctive feel without making the craft seem out of place within the rebel fleet. While ILM’s work on the Enterprise-E’s viewports offered a compelling view toward the ship’s interior, a breakthrough LED setup for Rogue One permitted ILM to obtain realistic lighting on actors as they looked out from their ships and into the space around them. “All of our major spaceship cockpit scenes were done that way, with the gimbal in this giant horseshoe of LED panels we got from [equipment vendor] VER, and we prepared graphics that went on the screens,” John Knoll shared with American Cinematographer’s Benjamin B and Jon D. Witmer. Furthermore, in Disney+’s Rogue One: Digital Storytelling bonus featurette, visual effects producer Janet Lewin noted, “For the actors, I think, in the space battle cockpits, for them to be able to see what was happening in the battle brought a higher level of accuracy to their performance.” The U.S.S. Enterprise-E in Star Trek: First Contact (Credit: Paramount). Familiar Foes To transport First Contact’s Borg invaders, John Goodson’s team at ILM resurrected the Borg cube design previously seen in Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987) and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993), creating a nearly three-foot physical model to replace the one from the series. Art consultant and ILM veteran Bill George proposed that the cube’s seemingly straightforward layout be augmented with a complex network of photo-etched brass, a suggestion which produced a jagged surface and offered a visual that was both intricate and menacing. ILM also developed a two-foot motion-control model for a Borg sphere, a brand-new auxiliary vessel that emerged from the cube. “We vacuformed about 15 different patterns that conformed to this spherical curve and covered those with a lot of molded and cast pieces. Then we added tons of acid-etched brass over it, just like we had on the cube,” Goodson outlined to Cinefex’s Kevin H. Martin. As for Rogue One’s villainous fleet, reproducing the original trilogy’s Death Star and Imperial Star Destroyers centered upon translating physical models into digital assets. Although ILM no longer possessed A New Hope’s three-foot Death Star shooting model, John Knoll recreated the station’s surface paneling by gathering archival images, and as he spelled out to writer Joe Fordham in Cinefex, “I pieced all the images together. I unwrapped them into texture space and projected them onto a sphere with a trench. By doing that with enough pictures, I got pretty complete coverage of the original model, and that became a template upon which to redraw very high-resolution texture maps. Every panel, every vertical striped line, I matched from a photograph. It was as accurate as it was possible to be as a reproduction of the original model.” Knoll’s investigative eye continued to pay dividends when analyzing the three-foot and eight-foot Star Destroyer motion-control models, which had been built for A New Hope and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1980), respectively. “Our general mantra was, ‘Match your memory of it more than the reality,’ because sometimes you go look at the actual prop in the archive building or you look back at the actual shot from the movie, and you go, ‘Oh, I remember it being a little better than that,’” Knoll conveyed to TheASC.com. This philosophy motivated ILM to combine elements from those two physical models into a single digital design. “Generally, we copied the three-footer for details like the superstructure on the top of the bridge, but then we copied the internal lighting plan from the eight-footer,” Knoll explained. “And then the upper surface of the three-footer was relatively undetailed because there were no shots that saw it closely, so we took a lot of the high-detail upper surface from the eight-footer. So it’s this amalgam of the two models, but the goal was to try to make it look like you remember it from A New Hope.” A final frame from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (Credit: ILM & Lucasfilm). Forming Up the Fleets In addition to the U.S.S. Enterprise-E, the Battle of Sector 001 debuted numerous vessels representing four new Starfleet ship classes – the Akira, Steamrunner, Saber, and Norway – all designed by ILM visual effects art director Alex Jaeger. “Since we figured a lot of the background action in the space battle would be done with computer graphics ships that needed to be built from scratch anyway, I realized that there was no reason not to do some new designs,” John Knoll told American Cinematographer writer Ron Magid. Used in previous Star Trek projects, older physical models for the Oberth and Nebula classes were mixed into the fleet for good measure, though the vast majority of the armada originated as computer graphics. Over at Scarif, ILM portrayed the Rebel Alliance forces with computer graphics models of fresh designs (the MC75 cruiser Profundity and U-wings), live-action versions of Star Wars Rebels’ VCX-100 light freighter Ghost and Hammerhead corvettes, and Star Wars staples (Nebulon-B frigates, X-wings, Y-wings, and more). These ships face off against two Imperial Star Destroyers and squadrons of TIE fighters, and – upon their late arrival to the battle – Darth Vader’s Star Destroyer and the Death Star. The Tantive IV, a CR90 corvette more popularly referred to as a blockade runner, made its own special cameo at the tail end of the fight. As Princess Leia Organa’s (Carrie Fisher and Ingvild Deila) personal ship, the Tantive IV received the Death Star plans and fled the scene, destined to be captured by Vader’s Star Destroyer at the beginning of A New Hope. And, while we’re on the subject of intricate starship maneuvers and space-based choreography… Although the First Contact team could plan visual effects shots with animated storyboards, ILM supplied Gareth Edwards with a next-level virtual viewfinder that allowed the director to select his shots by immersing himself among Rogue One’s ships in real time. “What we wanted to do is give Gareth the opportunity to shoot his space battles and other all-digital scenes the same way he shoots his live-action. Then he could go in with this sort of virtual viewfinder and view the space battle going on, and figure out what the best angle was to shoot those ships from,” senior animation supervisor Hal Hickel described in the Rogue One: Digital Storytelling featurette. Hickel divulged that the sequence involving the dish array docking with the Death Star was an example of the “spontaneous discovery of great angles,” as the scene was never storyboarded or previsualized. Visual effects supervisor John Knoll with director Gareth Edwards during production of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (Credit: ILM & Lucasfilm). Tough Little Ships The Federation and Rebel Alliance each deployed “tough little ships” (an endearing description Commander William T. Riker [Jonathan Frakes] bestowed upon the U.S.S. Defiant in First Contact) in their respective conflicts, namely the U.S.S. Defiant from Deep Space Nine and the Tantive IV from A New Hope. VisionArt had already built a CG Defiant for the Deep Space Nine series, but ILM upgraded the model with images gathered from the ship’s three-foot physical model. A similar tactic was taken to bring the Tantive IV into the digital realm for Rogue One. “This was the Blockade Runner. This was the most accurate 1:1 reproduction we could possibly have made,” model supervisor Russell Paul declared to Cinefex’s Joe Fordham. “We did an extensive photo reference shoot and photogrammetry re-creation of the miniature. From there, we built it out as accurately as possible.” Speaking of sturdy ships, if you look very closely, you can spot a model of the Millennium Falcon flashing across the background as the U.S.S. Defiant makes an attack run on the Borg cube at the Battle of Sector 001! Exploration and Hope The in-universe ramifications that materialize from the Battles of Sector 001 and Scarif are monumental. The destruction of the Borg cube compels the Borg Queen to travel back in time in an attempt to vanquish Earth before the Federation can even be formed, but Captain Picard and the Enterprise-E foil the plot and end up helping their 21st century ancestors make “first contact” with another species, the logic-revering Vulcans. The post-Scarif benefits take longer to play out for the Rebel Alliance, but the theft of the Death Star plans eventually leads to the superweapon’s destruction. The Galactic Civil War is far from over, but Scarif is a significant step in the Alliance’s effort to overthrow the Empire. The visual effects ILM provided for First Contact and Rogue One contributed significantly to the critical and commercial acclaim both pictures enjoyed, a victory reflecting the relentless dedication, tireless work ethic, and innovative spirit embodied by visual effects supervisor John Knoll and ILM’s entire staff. While being interviewed for The Making of Star Trek: First Contact, actor Patrick Stewart praised ILM’s invaluable influence, emphasizing, “ILM was with us, on this movie, almost every day on set. There is so much that they are involved in.” And, regardless of your personal preferences – phasers or lasers, photon torpedoes or proton torpedoes, warp speed or hyperspace – perhaps Industrial Light & Magic’s ability to infuse excitement into both franchises demonstrates that Star Trek and Star Wars encompass themes that are not competitive, but compatible. After all, what goes together better than exploration and hope? – Jay Stobie (he/him) is a writer, author, and consultant who has contributed articles to ILM.com, Skysound.com, Star Wars Insider, StarWars.com, Star Trek Explorer, Star Trek Magazine, and StarTrek.com. Jay loves sci-fi, fantasy, and film, and you can learn more about him by visiting JayStobie.com or finding him on Twitter, Instagram, and other social media platforms at @StobiesGalaxy.

Xando Member Oct 28, 2017 37,943 In an interview with GamesMarkt, Omega Forcedirector and producer Tomohiko Sho – who produced this year's Dynasty Warriors: Origins – was asked how successful the series is in the West, given that most of the Steam user reviews for the game are written in Chinese. Sho replied that, in his view, Dynasty Warriors is not yet a successful series in the West, but that it's possible for this to change in the future. "I believe that the 'Dynasty Warriors' series is not yet in a position to be called a success in the West," Sho said. "On the contrary, I believe that there is a great potential for the series to gain many fans in the future. "With our latest title, Dynasty Warriors: Origins, we were able to attract new fans in addition to those we have had since the PlayStation 2 era. The Western market is very important, and I believe that if there is a next title, we will gain even more new fans." Click to expand... Click to shrink... Dynasty Warriors producer says the series still can’t be called a success in the West | VGC The latest game, Dynasty Warriors: Origins, has sold more than 1 million copies worldwide… www.videogameschronicle.com Origins was the first game in the series i played and i absolutely loved it so i hope it can continue to grow in the west.  --R Being sued right now, please help me find a lawyer Member Oct 25, 2017 15,658 Origins is a must play for everyone that likes action games. A masterpiece from beginning to end.   PlanetSmasher The Abominable Showman Member Oct 25, 2017 133,345 I think he's being modest more than anything else. This is less "the series is a failure" and more "I think we can do even better".   Glio Member Oct 27, 2017 27,882 Spain I honestly think what limits the franchise most in the West today is the setting of Three Kingdoms, not the gameplay. It's a fascinating historical period, but I don't think it'll be very popular here.  Dekuman Member Oct 27, 2017 21,144 Glio said: I honestly think what limits the franchise most in the West today is the setting of Three Kingdoms, not the gameplay. It's a fascinating historical period, but I don't think it'll be very popular here. Click to expand... Click to shrink... it's why spin offs of the formula like Hyrule Warriors do considerably better.   Richietto One Winged Slayer Member Oct 25, 2017 26,133 North Carolina Glio said: I honestly think what limits the franchise most in the West today is the setting of Three Kingdoms, not the gameplay. It's a fascinating historical period, but I don't think it'll be very popular here. Click to expand... Click to shrink... Unfortunately this. Obviously it did really well on Steam and what not but there's a reason Hyrule Warrios can do so damn well on a single platform. It's the setting.   fiendcode Member Oct 26, 2017 26,412 We saw this from the CCUs tbh, overwhelmingly tilted towards Asia.   LAA One Winged Slayer Member Oct 28, 2017 3,264 Origins I haven't tried, more tempted seeing impressions here, but I read Steph Sterling's review on it and they weren't happy with realism essentially removing personality from it. I think the other thing that puts me off is they just seem very heavy handed with DLC too, and seemingly for pretty basic things, I want as complete of a game as possible. Really I'm kinda surprised they haven't done more collabs with more IPs. I think Hyrule Warriors was really the first I truly played and loved. Other collabs since I've enjoyed too like P5 Strikers. Berserker was fine. AOT I enjoyed too and that's actually very different from the others. I'd love a KH Musou eventually.. so many characters and abilities they could use, and enemies are pretty simplistically designed, and there's already been moments where you had to kill 1000+ Heartless, seems a perfect fit, ha.  PlanetSmasher The Abominable Showman Member Oct 25, 2017 133,345 Dekuman said: it's why spin offs of the formula like Hyrule Warriors do considerably better. Click to expand... Click to shrink... Do they really do that much better?  OP OP Xando Member Oct 28, 2017 37,943 Glio said: I honestly think what limits the franchise most in the West today is the setting of Three Kingdoms, not the gameplay. It's a fascinating historical period, but I don't think it'll be very popular here. Click to expand... Click to shrink... You're probably right but for me the three kingdoms setting made it even more interesting. Don't think a medieval europe or a more western fantasy approach would catch me in the same way.  Disco Stu Member Oct 27, 2017 2,557 Glio said: I honestly think what limits the franchise most in the West today is the setting of Three Kingdoms, not the gameplay. It's a fascinating historical period, but I don't think it'll be very popular here. Click to expand... Click to shrink... Totally agree and this is coming from someone seeks out other Three Kingdoms content because of KOEI. Someone the other day mentioned using the engine for an Avengers or Superman style game. I could see that catching on if done right.  Glio Member Oct 27, 2017 27,882 Spain PlanetSmasher said: Do they really do that much better? Click to expand... Click to shrink... Not all of them, but some, yes. Age of Calamity is the best selling musou at 4M.  Rosebud Two Pieces Member Apr 16, 2018 51,357 I want Origins but still too pricey unfortunately. I love Samurai Warriors, Pirate Warriors, Persona 5 Strikers...   TheAggroCraig This guy are sick of the One Winged Slayer Member Nov 6, 2017 7,354 I'll show up for the franchise again when they bring back Dynasty Warriors Gundam   Dekuman Member Oct 27, 2017 21,144 PlanetSmasher said: Do they really do that much better? Click to expand... Click to shrink... Here's what i can find from the Nintendo million seller list Hyrule Warriors - Age of Calamity 4+ million units as of March 2021  MetalKhaos Member Oct 31, 2017 2,228 PlanetSmasher said: I think he's being modest more than anything else. This is less "the series is a failure" and more "I think we can do even better". Click to expand... Click to shrink... That's my take. Origins was first DW game I enjoyed in a really long time. Solid entry, and I feel a game like this is made all the better with this current gen due to how incredibly fast the loading times are.  SlasherMcGirk Member Oct 27, 2017 4,429 Cincinnati Glio said: I honestly think what limits the franchise most in the West today is the setting of Three Kingdoms, not the gameplay. It's a fascinating historical period, but I don't think it'll be very popular here. Click to expand... Click to shrink... It's not even that I think its the fact that they have done the same setting and characters 20 times over. It's an interesting period and story with great characters but you can only add and stretch the same story so many times without diminishing returns.   PlanetSmasher The Abominable Showman Member Oct 25, 2017 133,345 SlasherMcGirk said: It's not even that I think its the fact that they have done the same setting and characters 20 times over. It's an interesting period and story with great characters but you can only add and stretch the same story so many times without diminishing returns. Click to expand... Click to shrink... I think the other problem is there aren't that many periods of time across history that can support this kind of game structure with such a heavy emphasis on specific heroes. Like, they tried Troy once and it didn't really catch on, nor did Bladestorm. For better and for worse, the Three Kingdoms and Sengoku eras are kind of the time periods that have A) a level of ubiquity in Asia that makes East Asian players interested in them and B) an emphasis on character substantial enough to support the Musou gameplay format. By comparison, I don't think a Musou game based on (for example) the American Revolution would sell particularly well outside of the US, and that war was A) not that long and B) took place in an era where firearms had largely supplanted melee combat so the movesets would wind up feeling very samey.  Ltn_Esteves Member Feb 4, 2021 213 Dekuman said: Here's what i can find from the Nintendo million seller list Hyrule Warriors - Age of Calamity 4+ million units as of March 2021 Click to expand... Click to shrink... And I think that is without japan sales, since Nintendo is only the publisher in the west   Astral Member Oct 27, 2017 33,463 TheAggroCraig said: I'll show up for the franchise again when they bring back Dynasty Warriors Gundam Click to expand... Click to shrink... Man I would love this. Did they stop for licensing reasons or something? Origins was amazing and I can't wait for what's next.  PlanetSmasher The Abominable Showman Member Oct 25, 2017 133,345 Astral said: Man I would love this. Did they stop for licensing reasons or something? Origins was amazing and I can't wait for what's next. Click to expand... Click to shrink... They stopped because the third game sold almost no copies. People got sick of the concept after the second game.  Glio Member Oct 27, 2017 27,882 Spain PlanetSmasher said: I think the other problem is there aren't that many periods of time across history that can support this kind of game structure with such a heavy emphasis on specific heroes. Like, they tried Troy once and it didn't really catch on, nor did Bladestorm. For better and for worse, the Three Kingdoms and Sengoku eras are kind of the time periods that have A) a level of ubiquity in Asia that makes East Asian players interested in them and B) an emphasis on character substantial enough to support the Musou gameplay format. By comparison, I don't think a Musou game based on (for example) the American Revolution would sell particularly well outside of the US, and that war was A) not that long and B) took place in an era where firearms had largely supplanted melee combat so the movesets would wind up feeling very samey. Click to expand... Click to shrink... It doesn't really need to be historical. There are One Piece, Zelda, Dragon Quest, Gundam... They could do something sci-fi or fantasy with their own setting and characters if they want. But, hey, if they like three kingdoms, they don't need to change it, but it's going to be very hard to grow in the West.   Dreamboum Member Oct 28, 2017 23,942 How are they gonna find an audience in the west when the game is 80 *euros* on all platforms? Their biggest discount is 64 euros. Come on man  MarvelousIntent Member Aug 13, 2019 3,936 LAA said: Origins I haven't tried, more tempted seeing impressions here, but I read Steph Sterling's review on it and they weren't happy with realism essentially removing personality from it. I think the other thing that puts me off is they just seem very heavy handed with DLC too, and seemingly for pretty basic things, I want as complete of a game as possible. Click to expand... Click to shrink... I'd recommend watching some gameplay to see how you feel about it. I understand Steph's gripes with Origins, but it is legitimately the best game in the series and it isn't even close. Like, the combat is actually good. Enemy officers actually put up a fight. Lu Bu is an actual boss fight and hard as hell to beat. Origins three greatest faults are where it chooses to end, the silent protagonist you can't customize, and that there are only like 9 weapons. The weapons issue also isn't that bad because each weapon has functions different and has plenty of abilities to choose from. It feels fantastic to play and blows every other game out of the water. Also, as far as I'm aware, Origins doesn't really have DLC. It had some pre-order bonuses, but thats it. As it is, the game is complete.  PlanetSmasher The Abominable Showman Member Oct 25, 2017 133,345 Glio said: It doesn't really need to be historical. There are One Piece, Zelda, Dragon Quest, Gundam... They could do something sci-fi or fantasy with their own setting and characters if they want. But, hey, if they like three kingdoms, they don't need to change it, but it's going to be very hard to grow in the West. Click to expand... Click to shrink... I don't think a bunch of anime Musou spinoffs are going to grow the franchise in the West. They've been doing anime spinoffs for 20 years and they just sell to people who are already Musou fans who happen to like that particular anime. It's a concept that only works on fanbase overlap. And I don't think an original setting is going to interest people who aren't already fans either.  General Tso Member Jan 10, 2018 540 Dynasty Warriors Origins was an excellent refresh, and I hope they continue to build off it (like they did DW2 through DW5), because the fundamentals are all there.   DontHateTheBacon Unshakable Resolve Member Oct 27, 2017 14,618 It was my first Dynasty Warriors game and I had a complete blast with it. I'm in if this is what they'll be like going forward. I hope the dust settles well for it in the west.   Dale Copper Member Apr 12, 2018 24,363 Glio said: Not all of them, but some, yes. Age of Calamity is the best selling musou at 4M. Click to expand... Click to shrink... One Piece Pirate Warriors 4 is also at 4 million sales. Spinoffs are more popular if they push them.  thewienke Member Oct 25, 2017 19,345 "If there is a next game" I hope they're being deliberately evasive there considering Origins ends half way through the story Although I do think the story is more interesting before the Three Kingdoms are established since there are more players and more going on  Pyro God help us the mods are making weekend threads Member Jul 30, 2018 18,900 United States Glio said: I honestly think what limits the franchise most in the West today is the setting of Three Kingdoms, not the gameplay. It's a fascinating historical period, but I don't think it'll be very popular here. Click to expand... Click to shrink... This is definitely part of it. I'm more into Samurai Warriors because the setting is more interesting to me.  LiquidDom Avenger Oct 27, 2017 2,729 I bought Origins on day one but have so much else on my plate. I'd like to get to it soon, might be a good palette cleanser after Death Stranding 2   OP OP Xando Member Oct 28, 2017 37,943 Dreamboum said: How are they gonna find an audience in the west when the game is 80 *euros* on all platforms? Their biggest discount is 64 euros. Come on man Click to expand... Click to shrink... I bought a key for like 43€ a few months ago so you can definitely get it cheaper if you're looking for it.   Kyrios Member Oct 27, 2017 19,152 --R said: Origins is a must play for everyone that likes action games. A masterpiece from beginning to end. Click to expand... Click to shrink... Yup, still a frontrunner for my personal GOTY.  OP OP Xando Member Oct 28, 2017 37,943 Only thing i wished they would improve on really would be that the MC has more of a personality   DyCy Member Oct 25, 2017 587 I loved Origins as my first real DW (I played the first Hyrule Warriors) but as interesting as it was for a first timer I do wonder how much I'd want to revisit the Three Kingdoms story over and over again in sequels so I do think the setting is limiting the potential of the franchise. Would love a spin off based on Star Wars, Marvel or Final Fantasy though.  Astral Member Oct 27, 2017 33,463 PlanetSmasher said: They stopped because the third game sold almost no copies. People got sick of the concept after the second game. Click to expand... Click to shrink... Aw damn. I honestly didn't even know there was a third one. I think they have the potential of making a really good one with the current formula.   Glio Member Oct 27, 2017 27,882 Spain PlanetSmasher said: I don't think a bunch of anime Musou spinoffs are going to grow the franchise in the West. They've been doing anime spinoffs for 20 years and they just sell to people who are already Musou fans who happen to like that particular anime. It's a concept that only works on fanbase overlap. And I don't think an original setting is going to interest people who aren't already fans either. Click to expand... Click to shrink... I'm going to be cynical because it's an idea that doesn't appeal to me personally, but I'm pretty sure if they made a dark fantasy setting with fallen knights, ruined kingdoms and cursed battlefields; and marketed it as "the Dark Souls of musou," it would sell. And I feel almost dirty just proposing it.  PlanetSmasher The Abominable Showman Member Oct 25, 2017 133,345 Glio said: I'm going to be cynical because it's an idea that doesn't appeal to me personally, but I'm pretty sure if they made a dark fantasy setting with fallen knights, ruined kingdoms and cursed battlefields; and marketed it as "the Dark Souls of musou," it would sell. And I feel almost dirty just proposing it. Click to expand... Click to shrink... I don't...really think it would work? Like the entire fantasy of Musou is "being an unstoppable killing machine", trying to focus it around super-hardcore grimdark difficulty would kind of defeat the purpose of it being Musou at all. Dark fantasy doesn't just succeed by default, and I don't think audiences would be tricked by that either. The Berserk musou flopped catastrophically badly.  MaxAugust Member Jan 28, 2018 3,573 thewienke said: "If there is a next game" I hope they're being deliberately evasive there considering Origins ends half way through the story Although I do think the story is more interesting before the Three Kingdoms are established since there are more players and more going on Click to expand... Click to shrink... The secret is everyone throughout time has felt that the pre-Three Kingdoms phase of the Three Kingdoms is the interesting part. Pretty much every adaptation stalls out a bit after things solidify. Hard to make the decades long stalemate and then abrupt anticlimactic (although poetic in an "everyone fails" way) denouement satisfying as a conventional narrative.  

A standalone spin-off from FromSoftware’s incredibly successful yet mostly single-player dark role-playing game Elden Ring, the multiplayer-oriented Elden Ring Nightreign is a curious beast, often feeling like an amalgamation of several different experiences all at once.Each session begins with players, either solo or in teams of three, dropping into a small but dense world, working to urgently gain as much strength as possible as a rapidly closing ring tightens around them – a very Fortnite experience. Rather than other players, they fight a variety of monsters and explore locations lifted directly from the Elden Ring universe. After each match, they also gain upgrade materials to modify future runs and advance the game’s story, similar to a rogue-like game … so it’s a Fortnite/Elden Ring/Hades experience? This is getting complicated.Race against time … Elden Ring Nightreign. Photograph: Bandai NamcoEvery session is an engagingly frantic race against time to craft an on-the-fly strategy that takes you across the whole map. Each match is split into three days: on the first two, you pick areas to rush through, besting local bosses to gain minor buffs to your strength or loot weapons with powerful passive abilities, before escaping the rapidly closing ring that saps your health and is sure to end your run. Each night culminates in a larger and far more challenging fight than you’ve faced thus far, amping up the pressure even further.It’s quite the stressful slog, but day three is what you’re battling towards. As the day dawns, you step into a barren arena, ready to face one of several tough-as-nails mega bosses specifically designed to be tackled by multiple players.Nightreign is overwhelmingly designed for three-person teams. You can choose to head out on your own, but doing so is a severe challenge. There’s no one to get you back up if you accidentally die rolling into a boss’s attack, and many of the enemies designed to be tackled by a team of allies frequently overwhelm you.Best not to tackle this on your own … Elden Ring Nightreign. Photograph: Bandai NamcoUltimately, this is a game all about momentum. The feeling of pressure as you navigate the world is palpable. Every second, you’re constantly questioning yourself: am I wasting too much time by checking what’s around this corner? Can we take down this boss quickly enough to warrant the reward? It’s an incredibly stimulating experience, as you rush to analyse your equipment and make build-defining decisions on the fly, but so much has been modified for the sake of speed that the nuance typical to FromSoftware games is somewhat lost.There’s no choice of stats when levelling up, for example, with levelling now reduced to the mash of a button when you reach a rest point. And while the world has been painstakingly populated with smaller enemies, beyond taking down a couple in the first few seconds of a run to hit level 2, there’s little point engaging with them, since tackling bosses is the main way to get more powerful.This momentum gives Nightreign its “just one more run” feel, but the pace feels more rapid than necessary, reducing much of the world to a distraction that wastes your precious time. It’s also why the bugs present in the review version we played feel particularly frustrating. Spending five minutes tackling a dragon that then flies through a wall and ends up being untargetable feels particularly unfair.One of the more loathed mechanics from the Dark Souls series is the requirement for you to run back to the boss arena every time you die. When this was updated for Elden Ring, allowing you to respawn right outside the arena, fans rejoiced. Yet the Nightreign experience is such an extreme move back in the other direction that it feels almost Sisyphean. Every run requires you to spend around 35 minutes to reach the final boss, but those bosses often have unique mechanics that can wipe out unsuspecting teams in just a couple of hits. Dying to a new move you’ve not seen before, requiring you to spend another 35 minutes rolling that boulder back up the hill, feels grossly disrespectful.Considering the success of Elden Ring in applying FromSoftware’s dense level design ethos to an open world, it’s disappointing that the developer appears to have missed the mark with Nightreign. Where that game iterated, Nightreign takes shortcuts. It is billed as a standalone release, yet so much environmental content is carbon-copied from Elden Ring – often thrown in haphazardly – that the world feels more like a particularly polished fan-created mod than a whole new title.FromSoftware’s experiment in upending its established gameplay formula is admirable, and taking down gargantuan foes alongside friends really adds to the joy you feel at finally besting what at first felt like an insurmountable task. It’s just a shame that the game’s skewed pacing and overreliance on Elden Ring’s pool of assets so greatly mars the experience.

In a video as scary as it is stupid, a Cybertruck driver has filmed himself playing Grand Theft Auto V while roaring down a highway in full self-driving (FSD) mode.Initially posted on Instagram by a user that calls himself "CTJesu55," the unsettling FSD clip has since made its way to other social networks as folks watch on in awe and fury as the postercontrols a virtual Cybertruck in GTA — a franchise, in a meta twist, that's largely centered around the satirical celebration of reckless driving — while ignoring the real one he's supposed to be monitoring.So egregious was this FSD display that even some Tesla stans were upset by the antics of the poster, whose real first name is apparently Adeel."This is the kind of crap that will ruin it for everyone... Company, shareholders, other Tesla FSD users, everyone," one X user wrote in reply to the video, which was posted by the TeslaDashCams account. "Please be a responsible driver.""Stick to air guitar, please," another implored.Others still wondered how the self-styled "Cybertruck Jesus" managed to get away with holding a PlayStation controller while in FSD — a feat that should, per the rules for the misleadingly-named feature, garner a loud warning from Tesla's operating system.(It seems, per online consensus and the fact that the sensor is blacked out by a big circle in the CTJesu55 video, that he used some sort of device to block Tesla's eye-sensing cameras that can detect when drivers aren't paying attention to the road. Another user noted that they block theirs with a condom.)"Meanwhile," one X user joked, "my FSD screams at me if I try to change the radio station."Elsewhere, the comments were overwhelmingly derisive."This is literally what GTA would make a satire about," wrote one user on the video game's subreddit.The most stinging burn, however, might go to blogger Cooper Lund."I don’t think it’s a particularly hot take," Lund lamented on Bluesky, "to say the person who posted a timelapse of themself playing GTA V on the interstate in their Cybertruck should be in prison."The future, apparently, is here — and it's way, way dumber than we ever expected.More on Cybertrucks tricks: Cybertruck Guy Makes Mocha Frappuccino While Cruising on Self-Driving ModeShare This Article

May 27 Manchu Prince Dorgon 1644 – Manchu regent Dorgon (depicted) defeated rebel leader Li Zicheng of the Shun dynasty at the Battle of Shanhai Pass, allowing the Manchus to enter and conquer the capital city of Beijing. 1799 – War of the Second Coalition: Austrian forces defeated the French Army of the Danube, capturing the strategically important Swiss town of Winterthur. 1954 – The security clearance of American nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, head of Project Y, was revoked. 1967 – Australians voted overwhelmingly to include Indigenous Australians in population counts for constitutional purposes and to allow the federal government to make special laws affecting them in states. 1997 – A destructive F5-rated tornado tracked through a subdivision of homes northwest of Jarrell, Texas, killing 27 people. Diego Ramírez de Arellano (d. 1624)Julia Ward Howe (b. 1819)Cilla Black (b. 1943)Gérard Jean-Juste (d. 2009) More anniversaries: May 26 May 27 May 28 Archive By email List of days of the year About

writing without writing In 3.5 years, Notepad.exe has gone from “barely maintained” to “it writes for you” AI features in Windows are gradually becoming more widespread and inescapable. Andrew Cunningham – May 22, 2025 6:46 pm | 0 Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more By late 2021, major updates for Windows' built-in Notepad text editor had been so rare for so long that a gentle redesign and a handful of new settings were rated as a major update. New updates have become much more common since then, but like the rest of Windows, recent additions have been overwhelmingly weighted in the direction of generative AI. In November, Microsoft began testing an update that allowed users to rewrite or summarize text in Notepad using generative AI. Another preview update today takes it one step further, allowing you to write AI-generated text from scratch with basic instructions (the feature is called Write, to differentiate it from the earlier Rewrite). Like Rewrite and Summarize, Write requires users to be signed into a Microsoft Account, because using it requires you to use your monthly allotment of Microsoft's AI credits. Per this support page, users without a paid Microsoft 365 subscription get 15 credits per month. Subscribers with Personal and Family subscriptions get 60 credits per month instead. Microsoft notes that all AI features in Notepad can be disabled in the app's settings, and obviously, they won't be available if you use a local account instead of a Microsoft Account. Microsoft is also releasing preview updates for Paint and Snipping Tool, two other bedrock Windows apps that hadn't seen much by way of major updates before the Windows 11 era. Paint's features are also mostly AI-related, including a "sticker generator" and an AI-powered smart select tool "to help you isolate and edit individual elements in your image." A new "welcome experience" screen that appears the first time you launch the app will walk you through the (again, mostly AI-related) new features Microsoft has added to Paint in the last couple of years. Snipping Tool gets two new features. One is a color picker that will let you see the hex, RGB, or HSL values of colors in a given screenshot. The other is a "perfect screenshot" option that will attempt to automatically crop app windows or other elements onscreen without requiring you to edit it manually after you capture it. The perfect screenshot feature appears to use local processing rather than cloud processing, because it requires a Copilot+ PC. This means using it doesn't require AI credits, but it will also only function on brand-new PCs with certain Qualcomm Snapdragon, Intel Core Ultra, or AMD Ryzen AI processors inside. These updates are rolling out to Windows Insiders in the Canary and Dev channels, which get new features faster than the Beta or Release Preview channels but are also less stable. Not all of these features will make it to the general public, but the ones that do should be released in the next few weeks or months. Andrew Cunningham Senior Technology Reporter Andrew Cunningham Senior Technology Reporter Andrew is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica, with a focus on consumer tech including computer hardware and in-depth reviews of operating systems like Windows and macOS. Andrew lives in Philadelphia and co-hosts a weekly book podcast called Overdue. 0 Comments

Start SlideshowStart SlideshowWe all know there is no Mission: Impossible without Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) ultimately saving the world from a nuclear disaster, a bombing, or anything some nutcase came up with that day. He is the central figure, one whom an entire universe revolves around. But, it would be a shame if you watched years of Mission: Impossible films and didn’t realize that it’s truly the cast of characters around Hunt that make him who he is, and thusly, made this franchise what it has become.Hunt would’ve been dead years ago if Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) and Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) weren’t opening prison doors for him, or monitoring the security systems inside the world’s most secure buildings. Beyond their operational importance, villains like Owen Davian (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) and August Walker (Henry Cavill) give powerhouse performances while also pushing Hunt to the edge of his limits. Some of the best lines are uttered by people other than Hunt. And the emotional stakes of each film typically are from these side characters.In honor of the unsung heroes, here are the most irreplaceable supporting characters in Mission: Impossible history.Previous SlideNext Slide2 / 21List slides19. Rick Meade (Aaron Paul) List slides19. Rick Meade (Aaron Paul) Image: Paramount PicturesAaron Paul was in Mission: Impossible? Yes, I’ve seen every movie multiple times and still have that reaction sometimes. A weaselly slacker-looking version of him briefly appears as the brother of Julia Meade-Hunt (Michelle Monaghan) at her engagement party to Hunt. His main contributions are to appear slovenly next to Hunt and unintentionally aid in her kidnapping. The energy that would make him famous as Breaking Bad’s Jesse Pinkman is tightly bottled up and kept under wraps for his few lines of dialogue. -Ethan GachPrevious SlideNext Slide3 / 21List slides18. Declan Gormley (Jonathan Rhys Meyers)List slides18. Declan Gormley (Jonathan Rhys Meyers)Image: Paramount PicturesOne of the biggest missed opportunities of the Mission: Impossible franchise is abandoning Ethan Hunt’s most charismatic teammate ever in Declan Gormley (Jonathan Rhys Meyers). In the underrated Mission: Impossible III, he avoided gunfire and the blades of gigantic wind turbines while piloting a rescue helicopter with the same cool he displays while charming angry drivers in a traffic stop he’s created as a diversion with the smoothest Italian you’ll ever hear in this franchise. Was he memorable? Yes. But, since Ethan and his team went on to thwart bigger threats without him, he wasn’t what you’d call an essential part of the franchise.Previous SlideNext Slide4 / 21List slides17. Mission Commander Swanbeck (Anthony Hopkins)List slides17. Mission Commander Swanbeck (Anthony Hopkins)Image: Paramount PicturesA virtuoso acting talent such as Sir Anthony Hopkins being near the bottom of any movie list has nothing to do with his performance and everything do with his character’s utility. Appearing briefly in Mission: Impossible II as the sly and wise Mission Commander Swanbeck, Hopkins’s standout scene with Cruise is one of the coolest mission briefings in the history of the franchise. You can feel the confidence Swanbeck exhibits when he tells Hunt, a man who previously broke into Langley, “This is not Mission Difficult, Mr. Hunt. It’s Mission: Impossible.” Alas, Hopkins’ talents were wasted on a character so replaceable he was only used for one scene.Previous SlideNext Slide5 / 21List slides16. Jane Carter (Paula Patton)List slides16. Jane Carter (Paula Patton)Image: Paramount PicturesDitching MI3's JV squad of expendables, Ghost Protocol put Paula Patton in the shoes of operative Jane Carter, a woman who’s out for revenge against the hitwoman who killed her partner. The movie doesn’t give her a lot to work with but she matches Cruise’s energy with a physical performance that sees her go toe-to-toe with assassin Sabine Moreau (Léa Seydoux) assassin on the 130th floor of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa and seduce feisty telecoms billionaire Brij Nath (Anil Kapoor). She completed the mission with full marks but failed to leave much of a memorable impression on the series beyond that. - Ethan GachPrevious SlideNext Slide6 / 21List slides15. Franz Krieger (Jean Reno)List slides15. Franz Krieger (Jean Reno)Image: Paramount PicturesI’ve always felt that any globe-hopping espionage movie that lacks a grizzled Frenchman is missing something, that certain je ne sais quoi. Maybe that’s because I first fell in love with spy movies in the ’90s thanks to the one-two punch of 1996’s Mission: Impossible and 1998’s Ronin. As Mission: Impossible’s Franz Krieger, although we’re initially meant to think he’s a basically good member of Ethan Hunt’s new crackerjack team, he feels like bad news from the beginning and only confirms our suspicions before the end. Reno skillfully gives off just enough of a sleazy vibe to set off our alarm bells, and his presence makes us wary of possible threats to Ethan not just from outside the team, but from within it as well. Most importantly, though, with Reno’s presence in the mix, it gives the film that authentic espionage movie flavor, the stuff of cigarette-smoke-filled safehouses, narrow European streets, and potential treachery lurking around every corner. — Carolyn PetitPrevious SlideNext Slide7 / 21List slides14. Max Mitsopolis (Vanessa Redgrave)List slides14. Max Mitsopolis (Vanessa Redgrave)Image: Paramount PicturesIn order to clear his name and identify the real mole in the original Mission: Impossible, Ethan must track down an enigmatic figure known only as Max with whom the mole had dealings. Given that Max is a shadowy and powerful arms dealer, we might be expecting a Keyser Söze type—a menacing, larger-than-life underworld kingpin who you feel would just as soon put a bullet in your head as let you walk away from a meeting alive. So it’s a wonderful surprise when the hood is pulled from Ethan’s head at his first meeting with Max and we instead see the great Vanessa Redgrave, who plays Max as enigmatic, yes, but also effervescent—a woman who can both fix Ethan with a cold intellectual stare as she asks him probing questions and gush about how much she adores his brazen confidence. Redgrave gives Max tremendous depth; she’s fiercely intelligent, deeply private (“I don’t have to tell you what a comfort anonymity can be in my profession; it’s like a warm blanket.”), and not without warmth herself. She establishes in that very first film that this franchise’s take on the world of international intrigue won’t just trot out the usual stereotypes for its villains but will offer something smarter and more surprising—figures whose power comes not from their skills with firearms or the ruthless deployment of violence but from their intellect and ability to negotiate with others to secure what they want. — Carolyn PetitPrevious SlideNext Slide8 / 21List slides13. John Musgrave (Billy Crudup)List slides13. John Musgrave (Billy Crudup)Image: Paramount PicturesYou can usually see a double cross coming a mile away in Mission: Impossible. Not when John Musgrave is silently mouthing instructions only a restrained Hunt can understand, and before he slips him a knife to set himself free. With Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s overwhelmingly dastardly performance as Owen Davian distracting us, and Laurence Fishburne’s ambiguously snarly depiction of IMF director Theodore Brassel misdirecting us, Crudup’s slick performance slipped his nefarious intentions through our detection like a snake in the grass. Without Crudup, Mission: Impossible III is predictably one-dimensional, and the outstanding torture scene fake-out with a captured Hunt and his wife Julia (Michelle Monaghan) has less of a punch. Musgrave is the logic behind the madness, and also an essential part of the film. He just isn’t as integral to the franchise as the 12 characters ahead of him.Previous SlideNext Slide9 / 21List slides12. Nyah Nordoff-Hall (Thandie Newton)List slides12. Nyah Nordoff-Hall (Thandie Newton)Image: Paramount PicturesMission: Impossible II doesn’t work without Thandie Newton being seductive while maintaining her agency, and being cunning without being unrealistically fearless. As Nyah Nordoff-Hall, she’s a professional thief who carries the emotional weight of a pretty emotionless action flick featuring more gunfire than kisses. Nyah held her own whether she was feigning attraction to a psychopathic capitalist looking to profit off killing people with the Chimera virus, or she was dangerously flirting with Ethan Hunt by racing cars with him along a cliff. Few characters not named Ethan Hunt mean as much to any Mission: Impossible movie working as Nyah Nordoff-Hall.Previous SlideNext Slide10 / 21List slides11. Solomon Lane (Sean Harris)List slides11. Solomon Lane (Sean Harris)Image: Paramount PicturesSolomon Lane is probably the smartest Mission: Impossible villain ever. The rogue MI6 agent disillusioned with the global power structure was always one step ahead of Ethan Hunt, an agent so capable, he’d previously infiltrated both Langley and the Vatican without being detected. From the moment he appeared onscreen as the man who’s infiltrated Hunt’s mission delivery system and trapped him, we knew we were witnessing a rare villain. He framed the IMF, manipulated CIA double-agent August Walker (Henry Cavill), and formed the shadowy Syndicate of former agents. Beyond being evil, he sounded evil, with a gravelly whisper that made every threat feel like a dark premonition. He was so good at being bad that he was the villain for two separate Mission: Impossible movies, making him one of the most invaluable baddies in the franchise’s history.Previous SlideNext Slide11 / 21List slides10. Theodore Brassel (Laurence Fishburne)List slides10. Theodore Brassel (Laurence Fishburne)Image: Paramount PicturesTo be honest, IMF director Theodore Brassel would’ve made this list simply for uttering the two coldest sentences I’ve ever heard in a Mission: Impossible movie. With Ethan Hunt strapped to a gurney after being suspected of going rogue and getting IMF agent Lindsey Farris (Keri Russell) killed, Brassel can see the disdain shooting out of Hunt’s eyes and doesn’t blink in the face of it. Instead he tells him, “You can look at me with those judgmental, incriminating eyes all you want. But, I bullshit you not: I will bleed on the flag to make sure the flag stays red.” Even as a one-off in the Mission: Impossible franchise, Fishburne’s incredible performance as Brassel made him a character you could never forget. Without him, Mission Impossible 3 wouldn’t be what it was.Previous SlideNext Slide12 / 21List slides9. Julia Meade-Hunt (Michelle Monaghan)List slides9. Julia Meade-Hunt (Michelle Monaghan)Image: Paramount PicturesYou can’t possibly think you can replace the only woman to ever make globe-trotting, death-defying secret agent Ethan Hunt settle down for even a second. Julia’s irresistible appeal had a man known for jumping off motorcycles and escaping car explosions helping with a dinner party like a suburban dad with a license to kill. Depending on how you view Ilsa Faust, Julia is arguably the most important woman in Hunt’s life, and thus the most important woman in this male-dominated action film franchise. She’s Hunt’s emotional weak point, one that Owen Davian presses on to bring him out of hiding in Mission: Impossible III, the only person Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) goes out of his way to train to be a spy, and one of the main reasons the water supply of a third of the world’s population wasn’t poisoned in Fallout. Beyond that, Michelle Monaghan plays her with a grounded realism that makes her the most relatable character in a movie franchise full of people meant to be extraordinary in the best and worst ways. Without Monaghan’s performance as Julia Meade-Hunt, Ethan Hunt would be nothing more than a means to an end for the audience. With her, he’s a fully formed man with stakes beyond the mission he chose to accept.Previous SlideNext Slide13 / 21List slides8. Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny)List slides8. Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny)Image: Paramount PicturesThe screenplay for 1996’s Mission: Impossible was co-written by David Koepp and Chinatown scribe Robert Towne, and while I have no way of knowing exactly which elements of the script each was responsible for, I’ve always suspected that it was Towne who made the character of Kittridge so memorable. If any character in Mission: Impossible speaks with the kind of hard-boiled language that made 1974's Chinatown a neo-noir classic, it’s Eugene Kittridge. Kittridge is a higher-up at the IMF who believes Ethan is a mole and a traitor, and he will seemingly do just about anything, including making life much more difficult for Hunt’s family, to get him to surrender. At one point, he coldly tells Ethan that “dying slowly in America can be a very expensive proposition” and later, he pragmatically informs a subordinate that “everybody has pressure points. You find something that’s personally important to him, and you squeeze.” But it’s more than the great dialogue he gets to spout that makes Kittridge so compelling; it’s the performance by Henry Czerny, who plays Eugene as a tense, tightly coiled bureaucrat whose ruthless dedication to following the letter of institutional procedure has blinded him to Ethan’s innocence and humanity. After his knockout appearance in the first film, Kittridge disappeared for decades, finally resurfacing in Dead Reckoning, though he didn’t have any moments that reminded us the crackling tension he and Hunt generated when they butted heads way back in 1996. Here’s hoping Final Reckoning rectifies that. — Carolyn PetitPrevious SlideNext Slide14 / 21List slides7. William Brandt (Jeremy Renner)List slides7. William Brandt (Jeremy Renner)Image: Paramount PicturesOut of everyone who’s been on Ethan Hunt’s team, there have only been two who I felt could match his tactical skills: Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) and William Brandt, played by Jeremy Renner. His spy skills are so embedded into the core of who he is that when he was pretending to be an analyst, he instinctively ripped a gun out of Hunt’s hand and pointed it at him quicker than you could sneeze. Without him, Hunt would’ve been captured by the CIA when he was on the run in Rogue Nation and the entire fake meeting to intercept a nuclear launch control codebook would’ve failed in Ghost Protocol. Outside of Hunt, he’s the only person who can both play the bureaucracy game, explaining to the government why the IMF is essential when the need arises, and get his hands dirty by beating up terrorists. To put it plainly, William Brandt isn’t someone you can replace easily.Previous SlideNext Slide15 / 21List slides6. August Walker (Henry Cavill) List slides6. August Walker (Henry Cavill) Image: Paramount PicturesThe man jumped out of a plane and got knocked unconscious by a bolt of lightning, all to keep his double agent cover intact. How the hell do you replace someone like that? On the right day, August Walker is the second most villainous character in Mission: Impossible history for his mixture of unflinching stoicism and charismatic yet radicalized ideological thinking. First off, he’s probably the only villain in the entire series that physically pushed Hunt to the limit in a fight across multiple rooftops. Secondly, he fools multiple government officials and agents whose entire jobs are to be intelligent. Lastly, he might be the single most handsome person to ever step foot on a Mission: Impossible set, which makes his dastardly double cross so jarring to some. He’s also the central antagonist in the greatest Mission: Impossible stunt ever. His presence only lasted one movie, but his impact will never be forgotten.Previous SlideNext Slide16 / 21List slides5. Jim Phelps (Jon Voight)List slides5. Jim Phelps (Jon Voight)Image: Paramount PicturesJon Voight’s Jim Phelps is the only character in the Mission: Impossible films to be directly carried over from the television series that inspired it, though on the show, as played by Peter Graves, Phelps was never anything less than virtuous and dedicated to the job. This let the film subvert the expectations of viewers in 1996, who wouldn’t have anticipated that the noble Phelps would be revealed as the double-crossing villain behind the deaths of nearly every member of Ethan’s team. Jon Voight plays both sides of the coin to perfection, believably projecting the seasoned, fatherly veteran in the opening scenes before everything goes sideways, and then making us understand how Phelps could have fallen so far and grown so disillusioned with the institutions to which he’s given so much of his life after Ethan puts the pieces together. Though it’s been nearly 30 years since that fateful betrayal, it remains the most memorable and emotionally affecting plot twist reveal in the entire series. One gets the sense that it haunts Ethan still, that perhaps part of what spurs him on to be such an extraordinary agent is having witnessed firsthand, in the fall of Jim Phelps, what he might become if he were to stop prioritizing other people’s lives over his own. —Carolyn PetitPrevious SlideNext Slide17 / 21List slides4. Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson)List slides4. Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson)Image: Paramount PicturesNo one has provided a better foil for Hunt, or a better match for the gravity well around Cruise’s onscreen presence, than Rebecca Ferguson. Her double-crossing femme fatale Ilsa Faust consistently keeps everyone off balance, bringing an undercurrent of chaos and intrigue to every scene she’s a part of. Ferguson also managed to go three movies without ever fading into the background as simply another prop to assist in Cruise’s one-man action star show. She’s the cold, unbending edge the series sometimes lacks, and the only person who managed to consistently keep up with Cruise and often outpace him. It’s a crime she won’t be back for Final Reckoning. - Ethan GachPrevious SlideNext Slide18 / 21List slides3. Owen Davian (Phillip Seymour Hoffman)List slides3. Owen Davian (Phillip Seymour Hoffman)Image: Paramount PicturesLet’s get this out of the way: Owen Davian is the greatest villain in Mission: Impossible history, and Mission: Impossible III is criminally underrated. Phillip Seymour Hoffman plays a maniac with an air of inevitability. He rarely gets flustered, and always speaks with the calm, self-assured tone of a doctor that already knows that all of your options for survival are in their hands. The opening scene alone, in which he threatens to shoot Ethan’s wife in front of him and isn’t the least bit persuaded by Hunt’s trained trickery, is the most intense scene in all of Mission: Impossible. He made you believe he was going to find Hunt’s wife and make her bleed. He made you believe he was going to escape seemingly impenetrable law enforcement custody. He made you believe he was real. That is the highest honor any actor can receive. The late Phillip Seymour Hoffman turned Mission: Impossible III into an acting masterclass.Previous SlideNext Slide19 / 21List slides2. Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) List slides2. Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) Image: Paramount PicturesPegg’s Benji Dunn and his nervous wit feel so integral to the DNA of Mission: Impossible now that it’s hard to believe the character wasn’t even introduced until MI3. From the lab to the field, Pegg’s perfect comedic timing and effortless guilelessness give every increasingly bonkers scheme and highwire stunt the all-important “oh my god I can’t believe we’re doing this!” sidekick energy. He’s the innocent, wide-eyed Kombucha face to Ving Rhames’ exhausted eye-roll and Tom Cruise’s winning smile. From MI5's “A minute ago you were dead!” to casually telling Hunt to jump off a cliff in Dead Reckoning, Pegg can turn from traumatic shock to deadpan Brit on a dime. No matter how bad the writing gets, it always works when it’s coming out of Pegg’s mouth. - Ethan GachPrevious SlideNext Slide20 / 21List slides1. Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames)List slides1. Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames)Image: Paramount PicturesLuther Stickell is the rock-solid and dependable foundation of the Mission Impossible franchise, showing up in every film. Whenever Ethan needs help unlocking a secure door or hacking a mainframe, Luther is there to do the job and make a few jokes. It’s clear that Luther deeply trusts Ethan and likewise, Ethan sees Luther as probably his closest ally and confidant. Plus, it’s pretty awesome to be friends with one of the coolest dudes around. -Zack Zwiezen

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