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Actresses knew that becoming pregnant was against most studios’ rules, and, as a result, some women, like Ava Gardner, had abortions to prevent penalties. “MGM had all sorts of penalty clauses about their stars having babies,” Gardner revealed in her autobiography, Ava: My Story.
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SAINT PETER PORT, UK—Indicating that the passenger liner was unlikely to ever sail again, a full 3D scan conducted by deepwater seabed mapping company Magellan revealed Friday that the Titanic was completely ruined. “Unfortunately, after several exhaustive high-resolution, 360-degree scans of the famous ship, it’s clear that the Titanic is absolutely trashed,” said Magellan director Richard Parkinson, whose submersibles had yielded evidence that there was extensive structural damage to the bow and stern that would affect the ill-fated vessel’s seaworthiness. “The rust on the surface was not as superficial as we expected, and it appears to have penetrated deep into the hull. We were hoping we could get away with installing a new engine and updating the paint job, but the damage seems too great. That’s not even to mention that the boat is full of skeletons.” At press time, the completely totaled Titanic was sold for scrap.
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I was on board with Lego 2K Drive the moment I learned we were getting an open-world Lego racing game, complete with the ability to build your own vehicles. And having played nearly 12 hours so far, I’m still having a lot of fun with the game. But it’s impossible to ignore a nagging feeling that it really wants me to spend money in its in-game store.
Announced in March, Lego 2K Drive is the first game to come from a deal struck between 2K and Lego back in 2022. The two companies apparently decided to glue their names together and add “drive” to the end to create what might be the most boring video game title of 2023. Thankfully, the video game itself is much, much more fun than its drab title, which sounds less like a wacky open-world racer filled with cool power-ups and more like a bad sports game featuring a sport I’ve never heard of but which is nonetheless popular.
Get past the bland name and Lego 2K Drive comes right out of the gate firing on all cylinders with an exciting CG cutscene and a fairly short but fun tutorial. It makes a good first impression. And the moment the game gave me full control, I was in awe of what I saw. Lego 2K Drive is set in a brick-built world filled with side missions, mini-games, collectibles, and so, so many Lego vehicles. It’s very colorful and gorgeous. And massive! The open world of 2K Drive is split into a few different biomes, each with its own theme, characters, missions, and vehicles. Playing this game is like getting to play in the basement of the rich kid you knew in elementary school who had every Lego set. Lucky bastard. But now I, Zack, have all the bricks and cool sets to play with!
The basic setup behind the main story mode is that an evil racer hates you—for reasons the game jokingly doesn’t elaborate on—and you have to win the big trophy to prove yourself the better driver. To get a chance at that big win you’ll have to earn a bunch of flags by beating rivals, leveling up to unlock new races, rank up, and eventually gain access to the big final tournament. There’s not much to the actual story, but the writing is similar to the recent Lego movies, occasionally making me smile and rarely annoying. And I think kids will enjoy the zanier moments.
But to win the big trophy and prove yourself to your evil rival, you’ll need to do more than race Lego-built cars around various tracks, as piloting boats and mastering off-road vehicles are on your agenda, too. And like the cars, all of these are brick-built. However, you don’t actively choose between each type of vehicle. Instead, as you race around, the game auto-swaps between either your car, boat, or off-road ride of choice. This streamlines what could have been an annoying part of 2K Drive, and also means that you can explore the entire Lego-filled world of Bricklandia as you please.
Driving real fast and reach a river? Keep driving and you’ll just turn into a boat! Take a sharp turn off a paved road and onto some dunes? Don’t worry, the game will swap your car out for a jeep without missing a beat. It takes the open-world driving of Forza Horizon and makes it even more arcadey and exciting as you can literally go anywhere at any time.
All the bricks and cool stuff in the world can’t save a racing game with bad driving physics or poor controls, and luckily, Lego 2K Drive avoids those pitfalls and is a blast to play. Once I mastered the drifting and jumping controls, I was masterfully swooping, swinging, and gliding around the world like a Lego pro. And on Xbox Series X performance was smooth as butter, making it easy to enjoy all the high-speed action.
The moment bricks start to fall off this creation is when you start to dig around the menus, where you’ll encounter a store complete with a season pass. While the game does feature an amazing, in-depth, and easy-to-use vehicle builder—letting you make nearly anything you can imagine—it also features some disappointing microtransactions.
Technically, you can just drive around, have some fun, unlock some cars, build your own creations, and never really interact with the in-game store. But, if you don’t want to (or can’t) build something like an ambulance or a giant hamburger car, the store offers official Lego builds that you can buy and use in-game. However, all of these cars cost $10,000 Lego Bux. And after playing for 12 hours I’ve only reached around $8,000.
This is the part where 2K Games would, while twirling its mustache, likely say: Don’t worry, you can buy some Bux if you want to. This is true, sure, but it’s so out of place in this otherwise colorful romp of creativity and wackiness.
And the way the economy is balanced, it really feels like you’ll need to fork over some cash if you want to buy more than one of these pre-made cars without grinding for hours. It’s also sad that the in-game store contains Lego part packs for sale. These are cheaper than the cars (thankfully) and the builder in-game does come with a lot of parts available for free (and you earn more by completing missions), but the fact that some bricks and bits are locked behind a paywall—even one that you can bypass via grinding—is frustrating.
The other big part of Lego 2K Drive is multiplayer, which I’ve only barely poked as there weren’t many other players online while I played the game before release. The online races play similarly to the single-player races, but with the added wrinkle that your opponents might have spent hours figuring out how to build the ideal, perfect race car. Or a giant dick. Or maybe they just spent some real cash and bought a car using Bux. Until the game is out in the wild, it will be hard to say how multiplayer will shake out, but I have some concerns.
It’s really a shame that such a lovely and fun open-world sandbox is tied to stuff like a season pass, premium currencies, and expensive in-game purchases. Perhaps 2K will tweak some levers to make it easier to earn and unlock new cars—which would be nice—but until then the specter of greed will always be there, nagging at me as I build, smash, and race.
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Zack Zwiezen
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SAN FRANCISCO—Emphasizing that she should get ready to have her mind absolutely blown, Elon Musk reportedly sat the new Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino down on Friday and had her watch The Matrix as part of her onboarding process. “Buckle up, because this movie will tell you everything you need to know about working at Twitter, and also the world and our society at large,” said Musk, who opened up a laptop, pressed play on the 136-minute-long film, and began excitedly watching, commenting on, and reciting the lines of his favorite scenes over her shoulder. “Okay, so this is how it works when you’re CEO: you’re like Neo and I’m your Morpheus. The machines are trying to control our minds, but luckily, we know the truth. In order to be in charge of Twitter, you must take the blue pill or the red pill. What will you choose?” At press time, Elon Musk had switched the onboarding movie to Andrew Tate’s Hustlers University after discovering that the Wachowskis identified as female.
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Every year, around about now, indie Japanese games retailer/shopfront Meteor holds an exhibition called Famicase. The goal? Showcase the design and illustration of cartridge art for games that do not exist. Artists from all over the world take part, sending in their submissions, and every year Meteor pick the best and display them live in their store.
The Week In Games: Return To Hyrule
Monday 3:53PM
Given the exhibition is in Tokyo, however, most of you reading aren’t able to go check it out. No matter! Meteor are also kind enough to post the submissions every year on their website, leaving us free to take a look at just how incredible every single one of them are
Like I have ever year for what feels like 1000 years, this post is going to highlight some of my favourite entries for the year, some of them from local artists, some of them from international ones, and some of them even from Kotaku readers who were kind enough to send in their own successful submissions.
If you want to check out every entry, there’s a gallery site here, while you can also buy a lovely book of the whole collection from Meteor for ¥1430 (or around USD$10). Anyway, without further ado: the submissions!
I should note here at the end that while the whole point of Famicase is to imagine games that don’t exist, and with the focus on simply making pieces of cartridge art that looks nice hanging on a wall (or displayed in a book), that doesn’t mean that these games don’t get made. As we’ve covered previously, the A Game By Its Cover jam takes place every year, and asks developers to turn some of these concepts into playable, actual games.
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Luke Plunkett
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Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is really, really good. You’ve probably heard this already. Our own review and other reviews of the game have praised it quite a bit. But this isn’t a review. Instead, this is just us reaffirming that, yeah, it really is as good as so many other people have claimed. In fact, some of us at Kotaku are already penciling it in for our Game of the Year list.
The Week In Games: Return To Hyrule
And don’t worry, no spoilers below.
For those just tuning in, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is the follow-up to 2019’s Jedi: Fallen Order. And just like before, in this latest adventure from Respawn and EA, players take on the role of Cal Kestis, a Jedi who survived the purge as a young boy and who now hangs out with his ragtag found family of misfits as they try to free the galaxy from the Empire. Oh and also try not to get caught by all the people hunting them down. (And there are a lot of people after them.) To bring down the Empire, outrun their enemies, and save the day, Cal has to do a lot of jumping, sliding, climbing, fighting, and exploring. And in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor all of this—every jump, lightsaber swing, wall climb, and more—feels great.
Jedi Survivor is one of those games that just feels fantastic to play. Controlling Cal quickly becomes effortless while either platforming or fighting. You stop thinking about pressing buttons or whatever and instead Cal feels like a natural extension of your own body. And to be clear: The first game played really well. But Survivor just feels more honed in, with every part of the game seemingly built to be fun and satisfying to play.
Whenever folks playing the game at Kotaku talk about Jedi: Survivor, it usually evolves into people just gushing about the latest sequence they experienced or just trying to describe how awesome combat or platforming felt during their last play session. A lot of the time people don’t even say full sentences, instead going “Ahhh, man… so good” or “Uhhh it’s sooo great” or making other noises that aren’t words but convey how much they are enjoying it.
I’ve heard some complaints about how animations look in the game, and I get that sometimes they might look janky, but this is just because Respawn has clearly prioritized input and feel over how it looks. So yes, watching someone play as Cal as he jumps around platforms might look odd, but playing it feels heavenly. I’m not sure about others, but I rarely fast-travel in this game because moving around the planets you visit is such a blast that fast traveling often feels like I’m missing out on one of the best parts of Jedi: Survivor. When simply moving and jumping in a game feels this good, you know you got something special.
It can be easy to assume that all the hype around this game is just because it’s Star Wars, but even some non-Star Wars fans around these parts are having a blast with the game. Again, when you start to drill down into why, it ends up coming back to how mechanically satisfying and fun Jedi: Survivor is to play. You don’t need to know or care about the Clone Wars or Jedi or the Force to enjoy Cal sliding down a cliff, leaping into the air, force-dashing further, and then grabbing onto a distant rope to swing over a group of enemies that you eviscerate in seconds with your laser sword. That’s just universally cool stuff.
And while I just said it’s great not just because it’s a Star Wars game, it’s still an awesome Star Wars game. I’ll have more to say about this in the near future, but something I appreciate about Survivor is just how Star Wars-y this game truly is. Crusty alien cantinas, weird but loveable characters, dangerous bounty hunters, cute droids, excellent music, genuinely charming friends, cool ships, and all the perfect sound effects.
This is Star Wars at its finest (and weirdest), and an example of how AAA games can be big and yet still feel like each aspect was designed with care. In other words, they can still be incredible if done right. Other devs, take note of sequences like everything leading up to and directly following the moment you get the crossguard stance, or the amazing escape sequence on Jedha. More of this, please!
Sure, the game has some performance issues, but even those can’t stop us (and the rest of the internet) from playing and enjoying this latest and possibly greatest Star Wars video game. Good luck to everything else coming out in 2023!
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Zack Zwiezen
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SAN FRANCISCO—Emphasizing that it was only offering an opinion and any choice made would be acceptable, a little voice reportedly whispered, “…or you could just get takeout,” Tuesday despite already knowing it had won. “Just offering my two cents here, but it’s been a tough day at work, and there’s always pad Thai from the place around the corner,” said the soft-spoken interior monologue, admitting that it was ultimately your decision, even as it knew full-well that the battle was over before it began. “The place is just a block away, and it’s only three button presses before it’s basically in your hands. But, hey, you could always make lentil soup or something. What would that take? Just 90 minutes or so, right? Huh, and then you’d just fall asleep immediately and go right back to your office when you wake up tomorrow. Totally up to you, if that’s what you want.” At press time, sources confirmed the small voice had grown slightly larger as it suggested maybe on the way back from getting takeout you could stop at 7-Eleven and grab one of those caramel drumsticks.
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Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 punctuated the ending to arguably one of Marvel’s best trilogy films (don’t @ me) with an emotionally gratifying final needle drop that had its titular characters, the fans, and even the musician behind the song ugly-crying with happiness. Minor spoilers ahead.
On Monday, Florence Welch, the lead singer of the popular indie rock band Florence and the Machine, uploaded a TikTok video of herself reacting to her song “Dog Days Are Over”, which served as the final song in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. If you’ve already seen the film, which came out over the weekend, listening to the song likely had you grinning with glee through tear-filled eyes just like Welch, because it served as a spectacular send-off to the comic book heroes’ nine-year cinematic journey.
“So I cried all the way through this movie but when The Guardians of the Galaxy started dancing to ‘Dog Days’ I really lost it,” Welch wrote in her TikTok caption. “Thank you so much for all the love for this moment. The superhero-obsessed little girl in me can’t believe it happened.”
Read More: PSA: Animal Lovers, Brace Yourselves For Guardians Of The Galaxy, Vol. 3
Each of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy films packs an emotional gut-punch with its poignant plotlines and an undeniably feel-good bop in its Awesome Mixes. In Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 1, we saw how Star-Lord’s relationship with his late mother affected his devil-may-care outlook on the universe and his place in it. In Vol. 2, we got to see how Star-Lord’s estranged relationship with his all-powerful father Ego didn’t define the man he could become. The first two movies accentuated key emotional beats with The Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back” and Cat Stevens’ “Father and Son,” respectively.
In Guardians 3, the camera took its focus off of Star-Lord and instead sheds some much-needed light on the trash-talking Rocket Raccoon, revealing how he came to be the standoffish anti-hero he is today. We’ll spare you any spoilers, but be warned, the two-hour and 30-minute movie does depict gruesome scenes of violence against animals while revealing Rocket’s harrowing backstory. But if you can get past that, the happiness emanating from Guardians 3’s finale will hit you like a train on a track, as Welch’s song puts it.
Read More: Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3 review: James Gunn’s trilogy ends with a big, brash blaze of glory
In non-crying-related news, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 has rocketed past Nintendo and Illumination Studios’ Super Mario Bros. Movie’s opening weekend haul with a total of $282 million at the box office. For those keeping track, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, also starring actor Chris Pratt, made a total of $137 million during its three-day domestic opening weekend, according to Box Office Mojo.
The dog days are over for Pratt as well, because after securing the Nintendo and Marvel bag, he’s coming for the Sony bag next year when he offers his voice to the sardonic orange cat, Garfield.
Correction 05/08/2023 Monday4:47 p.m.: Fixed a song attribution from the first movie.
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Isaiah Colbert
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The Little Mermaid live-action remake and Transformers: Rise of the Beasts—two of the biggest upcoming movies of 2023—don’t share much in common. However, an apparent film projector accident at a theater showing Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 led to the trailers for the two films playing at the same time. The end result might just be the best movie of the year.
I’ll say right now that while I’m excited to see the new Guardians film, I’ve got little interest in the live-action Mermaid remake and even less desire to see another Transformers movie that isn’t Bumblebee 2. So I wasn’t expecting to be dazzled when I saw a tweet claiming that a theater had screwed up and played the trailers for both upcoming blockbusters at the same time. I almost didn’t even click to watch the video. I’m so happy I did because what was created by mashing up these two teasers is fantastic.
In the video uploaded on Friday—which has already gone viral and been reshared all over Twitter—a theater in Tenesse appears to start playing trailers for both Transformers and The Little Mermaid at the same time, with audio of Ariel singing all that can be heard during the entire clip. The weirdest part about all of this is how well the two trailers sync up, which is probably a sign that movie trailers are following similar formulas and pacing guidelines and not some cosmic bit of content creation. But still, fun to watch!
At one point during the video, you can hear someone mention that “This looks like the best movie ever” and I’m inclined to agree. At the very least it would likely be more entertaining than Disney’s previous live-action misfires or most of the Transformers films. At the end of the video, you can even hear the audience start to applaud the odd concoction of Disney nostalgia and transforming animals.
The original poster of the video explained to Kotaku that this odd mashup happened during an evening showing of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 at an AMC theater in Franklin, Tennessee.
According to Blake Perry, the staff at the theater didn’t say anything afterward and the rest of the trailers were shown without issue. “It was just such a strange coincidence and everyone in my auditorium loved it!!”
Of course, the question now is if any studio or company involved in this weird bit of accidental crossover marketing will latch on to the viral moment and try to take advantage of it. I can see the Transformers-branded social media accounts posting some fan art of Ariel and Optimus Prime chilling and singing together. In a world where Fortnite brings characters like Batman and Luke Skywalker together with Ariana Grande and Master Chief, it’s not that wild to think the brands might come together to squeeze all the fun and joy out of this odd bit of accidental viral marketing.
Or wait, is this just a Fortnite teaser? Damn it.
Update 5/5/2023 4:55 p.m. ET: This story was updated to include more information from the original poster of the viral video.
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Zack Zwiezen
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I’m not a full-time comics guy, but I certainly have my favourites. And Hellboy might be my most favourite of all, so to have gone decades without knowing that its creator Mike Mignola worked on a Final Fantasy comic has blown my weekend wide open.
Famed comics author Kurt Busiek, best known for his superhero work on stuff like Superman and The Avengers, told a story over the weekend on Twitter about a comic he and Mignola teamed up for in the early 90s. “Every time someone starts talking about the unreleased FINAL FANTASY comic I wrote years ago”, he says, “there’s a spate on online news articles and discussion, and they all seem to get the story wrong.”
I somehow didn’t even know this was a story, so definitely enjoyed Busiek’s recounting of it, which for some will be a correction to older stories that got it “wrong”, but for me is one of the coolest “what if” tales in video game adaptation history.
Busiek’s retelling was over a number of Tweets, so I’ve pasted the full text below (with a couple of capitalisation edits), but if you want to read them as the site intended you can start here:
Mike Mignola did great-looking covers for it, but he didn’t draw the interiors. Dell Barras did, and he finished about an issue and a half before the plug was pulled. I think I got three (of four) issues written.
It was not an adaptation of the game. The project started as an original adventure set in the world of FINAL FANTASY I, but after Disney Comics had approved my outline for it, Squaresoft decided they wanted to tie in to the forthcoming game, now known as FINAL FANTASY IV. I was kinda saddened by this, because…..I liked the story I’d come up with, and I liked that it was about low-level characters who were basically trying to survive, and the new game was about high-ranking people who were in charge of armies and countries and such, which was more confining, but so it goes.
So they paid me a kill fee for my first outline, and I did a new outline that used the characters from the upcoming game but told a new story in that world, rather than adapting the game. They liked that fine.
Some folks have said that clearly I hadn’t played FFIV or I wouldn’t have wanted to make changes they didn’t like. That’s true, but it’s because FFIV wasn’t done yet. This was before it had even been released in Japan. I worked off an overall bible and character design art.
I’ve seen it reported that I’ve said it was a bad comic and that it’s good that it didn’t come out. I’m pretty sure that I said it wasn’t my best work (I had to put it in a hurry for reasons mentioned above) but it was a solid story. And I’ve said FINAL FANTASY fans would…..not like it if it was published today, because they’d bring all their knowledge of the FF lore that’s been built up over the past 30 years to it, and it wouldn’t match that; it’d seem like heresy. But I would have been fine with it coming out back then.
I’ve seen people saying I wanted to change the character names, because I didn’t understand who they were. The stuff they say I didn’t understand wasn’t in the character descriptions I was given, and for all I know didn’t exist yet. Maybe yes, maybe no. But I asked…..SquareSoft about the names, and they encouraged me to change them, with an eye toward using the new names in the US release of the game. So you can be grateful the comic never happened, or Cid might have been called “Lord Blast” for the past 30+ years!
SquareSoft started talking with me about hiring me to be their in-house “Americanizer,” because they liked the stuff I was doing. But I’d just moved to a new area, and the job would have meant moving to the Seattle suburbs, and I was ambivalent about that. They may have…..been, too, because for whatever reason, we didn’t talk about that job for very long.
But if it had come up in 1991, it’d have been part of the whole thing; if it was finished today it’d be this weird out-of-continuity thing that got everything “wrong.”
The idea these three guys (Barras is perhaps better known for his animation work, on everything from the original Transformers to Spider-Man) could have worked on a Final Fantasy comic, of all things, is interesting enough. The fact we could have had Busiek serve as some kind of Localisation Guy, naming and renaming characters, is even wilder. Lord Blast!
If you want to see some of Mignola’s covers, issue #4 is here, while another shared by Busiek is below:
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Luke Plunkett
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Back in March, legendary Elden Ring player Let Me Solo Her took on a challenge of unthinkable proportions: finishing a run in which every single enemy was Malenia. We’ve seen him slay this fearsome boss countless times, but surely this would be too much Malenia to overcome, even for him. Oh, who am I kidding? Of course he conquered the challenge. Roughly 24 hours ago, on April 25, Let Me Solo Her wrapped his 10-hour playthrough of the “Everything is Malenia” run, having documented the whole journey on stream for the world to watch.
Let Me Solo Her, as his name implies, made waves by appearing in other players’ games to take on one of the game’s most grueling bosses, Malenia, Blade of Miquella, on his own. His remarkable feats of Elden Ring mastery even earned him a sword from the game’s publisher, Bandai Namco. Having defeated Malenia so many times, Let Me Solo Her set his sights on beating the game using a mod that replaced every single enemy, from the easily dispatched Godrick Soldiers to the games toughest bosses, with Malenia. And of course he had to do so wearing nothing but the jar helmet and imposing other restrictions on his run, like a refusal to level up Vigor, which affects how much damage your character can take. Let Me Solo Her is now taking another victory lap and by god, he deserves it.
“Took about 10 hours,” Let Me Solo Her says in his victory tweet, “and probably more deaths than I’d like to admit but I finally finished the Everything is Malenia Run!”
While he admits that he died more than he would’ve cared to, and that the whole no leveling vigor thing may have been a bit much, you could tell he had fun doing it from the five-part stream documenting the journey.
The challenge proved tough even for someone as skilled and experienced as Let Me Solo Her, but it was even harder on his PC, which crashed a few times trying to keep up with such a wild and demanding mod. Things got particularly rough in part three of the stream, where Let Me Solo Her said he had to configure the game at “the lowest setting possible” to keep it running. And mind you, as he said when the game first crashed in part one, he’s running an RTX 4080 in his computer—that’s a $1,200 graphics card.
Watching the Malenia-only streams, it’s hard not to think that Let Me Solo Her enjoys being cruel to himself. I mean, you can hear the pain in his voice at the conclusion of stream two as he takes on Draconic Malenia, the mod’s replacement for the Draconic Tree Sentinel.
But Let Me Solo Her assured the chat in the following stream that this wasn’t an act of sadism. That said, he did say that the Malenia-only run was “hard, way harder than I thought it would be.” However, moments later he nonetheless told the chat, “You guys should try this by the way. It’s very, very fun.”
In the finale, Let Me Solo Her admitted that he had lost count of how many times he died. In the first stream alone, he said, “I think [I died] at least 20-something [times].”
Persisting through all those deaths, though, Let Me Solo Her finally took down Elden Malenia, the replacement for the game’s final boss: Elden Beast. Thanking all his viewers, he expressed excitement at the upcoming DLC…and we can’t wait to see what feats of stunning heroism he pulls off when that drops.
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Claire Jackson
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Some guy is currently suing Tolkien and Amazon to the tune of $250 million. That alone takes serious bravery. But what’s notable about this lawsuit is the reason he’s suing: Copyright infringement over his Lord of the Rings fanfic. Specifically, he’s arguing that Amazon lifted elements of his fan-fiction for its own Tolkien adaptation TV series, The Rings of Power.
Demetrious Polychron wrote a book, a work of fan-fiction set in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth, called The Fellowship of the King, which he copyrighted in 2017 and which later were published and made available for sale, including on Amazon. According to PC Gamer, Polychron sent a letter to the Tolkien Estate asking for a manuscript review. That’s right: This man asked J.R.R. Tolkien’s grandson Simon to sign off on his fanfic. Unsurprisingly, he did not get a response.
In September of 2022, the month that Polychron published The Fellowship of the King, Amazon also began airing its extremely expensive Lord of the Rings spin-off series, The Rings of Power. hundreds of millions of dollars on developing an adaptation called Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Now, Polychron is arguing that the Amazon TV show lifts elements from his novel.
According to RadarOnline, which has seen documents pertaining to the suit, Polychron alleges that characters and storylines he created for his book “compose as much as one-half of the 8-episode series,” and that in some cases the show “copied exact language” from his book. However, the claims seem spurious. For instance, the lawsuit purportedly points to the fact that both his book and the show feature a hobbit named Elanor, with the Elanor in his book being the daughter of Samwise Gamgee, while the Elanor featured in The Rings of Power is a Harfoot. Images purporting to be the lawsuit circulating online include a host of other circumstantial connections or similarities to back up Polychron’s argument that the writers of Rings of Power lifted ideas from his fanfic for their own story.
Polychron’s lawsuit for copyright infringement, filed on April 14, names Amazon and the Tolkien Estate as defendants in the U.S. District Court For The Central District of California. Polychron claims that his novel was “inspired” by LOTR, but is an “original” work. Nobody is convinced, not even the reviewers who had kind things to say about it. “While unabashedly derivative, The Fellowship of the King offers LOTR fans a fun, appropriately epic return to Middle-earth,” wrote Edward Sung for IndieReader. Ouch. It doesn’t sound like the book scores any points for originality, even if it’s a fun enough read.
At the time of writing, it appears that Polychron’s book has been delisted from Amazon. Kotaku reached out to Amazon to ask when it was removed, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
While no one believes that Polychron will win against the Tolkien Estate, there are concerns that the lawsuit might negatively impact the legality of fanworks in general. Hopefully, fanfic writers will be fine as long as they’re not trying to extort Tolkien’s grandson.
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Sisi Jiang
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Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, the upcoming online co-op action shooter from Rocksteady, has officially been delayed from its planned May release to February 2024. This follows a report of a previous delay in March and the release of new gameplay footage in February that was met with a flood of negative reactions from fans and critics alike.
First revealed way back in August 2020, Rocksteady’s Suicide Squad game stars popular DC villains like Harley Quinn and Captain Boomerang and is based on a long-running series of comics about villains being recruited by government agent Amanda Waller to take on wildly dangerous threats and complete ethically dubious missions. It’s also connected to the Arkham games, unlike 2022’s previous DC co-op flop, Gotham Knights. But if you were still excited to play Rocksteady’s next big game, you’re going to have to wait nearly a year.
On Thursday, following a March report about a possible delay from Bloomberg, WB Games and Rocksteady officially confirmed that their Suicide Squad game has been delayed until February 2, 2024.
We have made the tough but necessary decision to take the time needed to work on getting the game to be the best quality experience for players. Thank you to our amazing community for the continued support, patience, and understanding. There is so much more to share in the months ahead and we look forward to seeing you in Metropolis next year.
In March, Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier explained on Twitter that the then-reportedly short delay was likely not intended to “overhaul the core gameplay” and instead would be just about “polishing” what was already present. However, the delay announced today turned out to be much lengthier than first reported, and it seems that the devs are going to have a lot more time to possibly rip out some of the live-service aspects prospective players reacted cooly toward.
While I’m not sure you can expect WB and Rocksteady to rip out all the live-service crap, multiple currencies, or the game’s always-online requirement, I wouldn’t be shocked if some of that stuff got cut or streamlined by the time the game finally comes out in 2024. (Assuming no further delays, of course.) Fully expunging all live-service aspects seems unrealistic, and would require a much longer and more expensive delay.
Also, keep in mind, this isn’t the first time Rocksteady’s DC shooter has slipped. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League was originally scheduled to ship last year, but in early 2022 it got delayed until spring 2023. Now the troubled shooter will miss that planned release date, too. And while it’s not nearly as much of a saga as Ubisoft’s oft-delayed pirate game, it’s starting to feel like Suicide Squad might be the next AAA video game cursed to be forever stuck in development hell. Let’s hope it gets out soon for the sake of all the folks working on it.
Update 4/13/2023 4:35 p.m. ET: This post was originally published on March 9, 2023. It has been updated and expanded to account for the official announcement of the game’s delay into 2024.
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Zack Zwiezen
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The Marvel Cinematic Universe is in a weird phase right now, and no, I don’t mean Phase Five which began with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Over just a few short days, it became clear that the shared movie universe is undergoing a lot of change, and not for the best reasons. From actors to workers and even top leadership, Marvel’s going through it right now.
Marvel as a subset of Disney was just part of a huge set of layoffs earlier this week, with Mickey Mouse and friends slashing over 7000 jobs. Only the first wave of those cuts happened this week, and the final 7000 number is expected to come sometime in April. Company-wide, personnel is being dropped by one of the biggest corporations in the world, but even outside of egregious labor issues, Marvel has been dealing with a few more precise changes in its workforce.
Marvel recently fired Victoria Alonso, who AV Club describes as “one of the biggest architects of the Marvel Cinematic Universe,” having been with the connected universe project for over a decade before her leaving the company earlier in March. At the time of her departure, she was Marvel’s president of physical production, post-production, VFX and animation. According to a Variety report, this came as part of a joint decision between Disney’s human resources, legal department, and executives including but not limited to Disney Entertainment co-chairman Alan Bergman. Kevin Feige, president of Marvel Studios, reportedly didn’t intervene, and Alonso was “blindsided.” The entire situation is wading into legal territory. Disney says Alonso’s firing came as part of a breach of contract because of her production work on Argentina, 1985, a non-Disney film, though Alonso’s team claims she had permission to do so.
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On top of this, there seems to have been conflict between Alonso and Disney/Marvel in regards to queer issues within the company, according to Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. Alonso, who is gay, reportedly clashed over an issue where Disney wanted a scene in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania altered to blur out a shop window that included Pride memorabilia in Kuwait, which has anti-LGBTQ+ laws in place. This is after she publicly spoke out against then-CEO Bob Chapek at the GLAAD awards for Disney’s reaction to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, and was told she would no longer be allowed to do press for Marvel. Attorney Patty Glaser, who is representing Alonso, released the following statement to Variety:
“The idea that Victoria was fired over a handful of press interviews relating to a personal passion project about human rights and democracy that was nominated for an Oscar and which she got Disney’s blessing to work on is absolutely ridiculous,” Glaser says. “Victoria, a gay Latina who had the courage to criticize Disney, was silenced. Then she was terminated when she refused to do something she believed was reprehensible. Disney and Marvel made a really poor decision that will have serious consequences. There is a lot more to this story and Victoria will be telling it shortly—in one forum or another.”
While Alonso’s influence on the MCU is significant and dates back to the earliest films like the original Iron Man, she’s also been named in ongoing reports about the dire state of the animation industry as reported by Vulture and allegedly blacklisted artists working on Marvel projects that she took issue with. In general, Marvel’s animation and VFX workers have been coming forward about apparent toxic work environments and unfair contracts while working on the studio’s projects. This has reportedly been especially difficult on Disney+ projects like She-Hulk, with smaller budgets and shorter turnaround times still expecting movie-quality work.
Read More: Let’s Rank All The Spider-Man Games, From Worst To Best
Another high-profile departure is that of Ike Perlmutter, who was let go from the company this week. Perlmutter has had a long, storied history with Marvel, including a stint on the board of directors (as well as the chairman of the board), working as the vice chairman of the company in the early 2000s, moving up to the chief executive officer position in 2005, then remaining the CEO after Disney acquired the comic company in 2009. He oversaw Marvel Studios up until 2015 while reportedly being very tight on production budgets and also claiming Black people “look the same” regarding Don Cheadle’s replacement of Terrence Howard as James Rhodes in the MCU. He operated as a chairman from 2017 until his eventual layoff.
While executive departures will have an effect on things down the line, the most immediate problem Marvel movies have to contend with is the ongoing domestic violence case against actor Jonathan Majors. The actor, who plays Kang the Conquerer most recently in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, was arrested in Manhattan on assault, strangulation, and harassment charges. Majors’ legal team led by attorney Priya Chaudhry claims he’s innocent and released text messages allegedly sent by the victim in the case. The texts say this was “not an attack,” claim fault for the dispute because she was “trying to grab [Majors’] phone,” and disputed the strangulation charges. The alleged texts say the authorities were called due to the woman fainting, and that when there was a suspicion of a domestic dispute, Majors was arrested per mandatory arrest laws associated with domestic abuse cases in New York.
Majors’ future in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is unclear as the investigation is ongoing, but the U.S. Army has pulled ads featuring the actor until the investigation is complete. The reason this is so significant in Marvel’s view is Majors’ character, Kang the Conquerer, is essentially Marvel’s main villain right now. He’s only appeared in two projects thus far, one being the Loki Disney+ show, and the second being Quantumania. But the shared universe franchise is leading up to Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars, both of which are set to feature Kang as the primary antagonist. He’s a Thanos-style character that Marvel can’t simply pluck from the story. Should the investigation lead to a guilty verdict, it’s likely Majors will be recast.
While all of these developments have happened for different reasons, whether that be corporate greed, office politics, and a domestic violence case, Marvel as a production is seeing some serious shake-ups right now. Not all of it seems to be of the company’s volition, but things are changing for Marvel at a time when the brand has been losing a lot of its staying power. Quantumania is the last movie Marvel released in theaters, and it was one of the series’ most poorly received and is sitting at a 47 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
While Marvel movies still make more money than you or I will ever see in a room at once, the franchise has been trending somewhat downward at the box office. Quantumania still made $470 million in its theatrical run, but that’s significantly lower than Ant-Man and the Wasp made in 2018, which was around $623 million. Several Marvel movies have made below the half-a-billion mark in recent years, such as Eternals and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Black Widow is one of the lowest-performing movies in the franchise’s lifetime with $379 million but was notably hindered by the covid-19 pandemic making fewer people willing to head out to theaters in 2021. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever did manage to bring in over $859 million, but that was even down from the original’s $1 billion.
It’s unclear what, if any, changes this might bring to the franchise, but figureheads and workers that have been with the brand for a long time are gone. Reading over it all now, ultimately, I sympathize most with the workers who were subject to the layoffs. Alonso and Perlmutter will be fine, but the people who worked (and apparently suffered) under them are in a much worse position.
We’ve reached out to Marvel, Majors, and Alonso for comment on this story and will update it should we hear back.
Update: This piece has been updated with information about Alonso’s reported disputes with Disney regarding queer content in its movies.
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Kenneth Shepard
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The Last Ronin comic is being adapted into an action-focused single-player video game that will play similarly to God of War. The popular and gritty 2020 comic, a spin-off of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series, stars the last remaining turtle in a war-ravaged wasteland.
While most people think of TMNT as a cartoonish, family-friendly kids’ brand, the actual franchise is much more varied than that, with comics that get darker than anything you’d find on Nickelodeon. This isn’t a weird offshoot or an occasional one-off, either. The original comics that started it all were gritty and violent, featuring sharp black-and-white art and turtles who were less radical and more dangerous. And The Last Ronin, a limited-run comic series from 2020 written by the original co-creator of the franchise, returned TMNT to its grittier, more adult roots. Now, that fan-favorite comic is being turned into a big action-adventure video game by a yet-to-be-announced studio.
In an interview with Polygon, Doug Rosen, senior vice president for games and emerging media at Paramount Global, revealed the new, still-unnamed game’s existence. Rosen told Polygon that the upcoming third-person action role-playing game will be comparable to the recent God of War entries. He also assured fans that the story of the game will be “authentic” to The Last Ronin comic series.
This means that, unlike most other TMNT games, this upcoming adventure will star the lone surviving turtle in the dark, far future of the Last Ronin universe. So don’t expect all your favorite turtles and Splinter to be hanging out, eating pizza, and partying in the sewers in this upcoming game. Because all but one of them is dead. (The identity of the lone survivor is actually a big mystery in the comic and I won’t spoil it here.)
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Rosen also told Polygon that just because TMNT is a brand popular with kids, doesn’t mean the devs will have to “dial back” the upcoming Last Ronin game to make it “something it shouldn’t be.” He further explained that he sees “opportunities for multiple TMNT games aimed at both young and more mature age groups” and that TMNT owner Paramount will take different approaches to create content for each group. For example, TMNT villain Shredder is showing up in Call of Duty.
As for when you can play this new TMNT game, well, it’s not coming anytime soon. Rosen said the game is still a “few years off.” Rosen was also seemingly tight-lipped about where this game might land when it finally does release in the future. For now, you can go play TMNT: Shedder’s Revenge which is fantastic and out now.
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Zack Zwiezen
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CHICAGO—With dumbfounded question marks and astounded exclamation points littering the margins of almost every page, the handwritten annotations found Wednesday in a secondhand copy of The Autobiography Of Malcolm X made it painfully obvious that the previous owner of the book was white. “It’s amazing how many of the notes in here start with ‘But what about…’ or just say, ‘That’s going a little too far,’” the volume’s current owner, local man James Hawkins, told reporters as he flipped to a page in which Malcolm X is accused of reverse discrimination in a pencil scrawl underlined three times. “Every time the text refers to something like the ‘devil white man,’ the phrase has been circled and someone’s written ‘Hmm…’ off to the side. And when it starts mentioning the Nation of Islam, they just wrote ‘Terrorist?’” Hawkins went on to observe that the annotations don’t go past the first chapter.
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PALO ALTO, CA—Noting the eerie feeling of being surveilled, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly expressed concern Tuesday that Facebook was listening to him after he received a targeted ad for a shirt that read “I Just Laid Off 10,000 Employees.” “How could it even know I just said that? It’s got to be using my goddamn microphone,” said Zuckerberg, adding that he had all his privacy settings turned on, and yet Facebook was pushing this item perfectly suited to his tastes. “It must have been listening to the party I was having to celebrate the layoffs. Sheesh, I’ve got to delete my cookies more often. It’s so invasive to feel tracked like this. It’s a little dystopian how it just showed me a shirt that says ‘I went to HARVARD and destroyed my FRIENDSHIP and love hunting with SPEARS.’” At press time, Zuckerberg confirmed he had bought the shirt from the advertisement.
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Northampton, Massachusets officials have greenlit a plan to create and install four Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle-themed manhole covers to celebrate the fact that the massive franchise was originally created there. And to pay for it, the town is using funds intended to help rebuild towns and businesses affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The pandemic (which is still a thing, even if a lot of people are trying to pretend otherwise) devastated cities and businesses across the United States starting in March 2020. So in 2021, congress passed the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 aka ARPA. This was a nearly $2 trillion economic stimulus package that was designed to help the country recover faster from the various effects of the pandemic as well as to try to deal with the ongoing recession. After barely passing in congress, President Biden signed it on March 11, 2021. As a result, Northampton, Massachusets received $4 million that the town and its officials could put toward its Covid-19 recovery efforts.
And that’s, I guess, how we ended up here: With a city spending $20,000 on TMNT-themed manhole covers.
As reported by WCVB, the four manhole covers will be located along Main Street and each one will represent a different turtle. This isn’t just a random choice, as the city was the original home of Mirage Studios, the place where the TMNT franchise was born. Since their creation in 1984, the turtles have expanded beyond comics into movies, cartoons, games, toys, you name it. So, I get it. TMNT is a big deal to the town. But it still seems odd.
According to the city’s breakdown of where all the ARPA money is going, the idea behind the custom manhole covers is to “invigorate downtown arts” via a “public art tribute to the Northampton-born Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.” That’s all well and good and checking the list of other grants, it’s clear more important projects are getting far more resources from the city. But I can’t help but wonder if that $20,000 could be better spent on helping more people directly. Or creating a tribute to a far superior show, Disney’s Gargoyles.
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Zack Zwiezen
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Neo-noir comedy Pokémon: Detective Pikachu came out in 2019, and it was surprisingly good. In the era of risk-averse studios rebooting and remaking everything under the sun, a sequel seemed inevitable. Sure enough, one was already in development when the first debuted. No one’s heard about it since. Until today.
Deadline reports that Portlandia co-creator Jonathan Krisel is currently in “negotiations” to direct. Progress! Chris Galletta, the writer behind 2013 indie dramedy The Kings of Summer, is reportedly attached for the screenplay. Ryan Reynolds, who voiced Pikachu in the first movie, hasn’t said anything publicly about it, but will have “some part to play in the upcoming sequel,” according to Deadline’s sources.
Pokémon: Detective Pikachu was adapted from the 3DS game of the same name and told the story of a budding Pokémon trainer and a crime-solving Pikachu that try to unravel a vast pharmaceutical conspiracy. It takes place in a near-future world where computer animated Pokémon mingle alongside humans in ways both bizarre, mundane, and often funny. The film was lighthearted but not overly saccharine, and went on to post $433.2 million at the box office on a $150 million budget. So four years later, it’s not clear what the holdup is.
Legendary Entertainment, the film production company behind it, teased a sequel in early 2019 claiming 22 Jump Street writer Oren Uziel was signed on for the screenplay. Then in 2021, Justice Smith, who played Pikachu’s human side-kick, ominously told fans, “I think we have to just kind of bury our hopes.” Things seemed bleak. Last month, Polygon finally asked Legendary what was going on, and the firm claimed the project hadn’t been killed. Now at least we know they weren’t entirely full of it.
In addition to his work on Portlandia, an offbeat sketch comedy show about early 2010s hipsters, Krisel also co-created Baskets, a dramedy about a professional clown played by Zach Galifianakis. Both shows would no doubt have been improved by the inclusion of Pokémon.
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The Detective Pikachu 2 game is also still in the works. Who knows which one will end up seeing first.
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Ethan Gach
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