Tag: longform

It is one of the most famous scenes in the history of cinema. Luke Skywalker arrives in Cloud City to confront Darth Vader. A lengthy lightsaber battle ensues. Vader gains the advantage and corners Luke on a structure looming over an endless abyss.

And then, when all hope appears to be lost, a little girl in overalls appears, bests Darth Vader in saber conflict, rescues Luke, and restores peace and order to the entire galaxy.

Not how you remember the climax of The Empire Strikes Back? There’s a good reason for that. While the scene played out differently on the big screen, the alternate version I described above served as the grand finale of a forgotten 1993 touring show titled George Lucas’ Super Live Adventure. It is truly one of the strangest stage productions of the 20th century, one that combined all of Lucas’ biggest film franchises — Star Wars, clearly, but also Indiana Jones, Willow, American Graffiti, and even the auto inventor biopic Tucker: The Man and His Dream — into a single narrative.

The backstory: In the early 1990s, Lucasfilm executives approached Kenneth Feld — a theatrical producer whose company runs Ringing Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, Disney on Ice, and Monster Jam — with the idea of creating a show that would celebrate the 20th anniversary of Lucasfilm.

The show was initially planned for Japan, where not only was Star Wars very popular, but George Lucas himself was a well-known figure thanks to his status as the star of a series of Japanese commercials for Panasonic. (If you would like to go down a very pleasingly weird YouTube rabbit hole, I recommend searching “George Lucas Japanese commercials.”)

Obviously George Lucas himself was not going to appear in a lavish touring show filled with stunts and special effects. But he did lend his name to its title, along with most of his movies to that time as a director or producer. (Most, but not all — Howard the Duck was a no-show.)

“The concept,” recalled Super Live Adventure production designer Douglas Schmidt in 2013, “was to make a gigantic arena show based on the plotlines of [Lucas’] films. And combine them all together into a big spectacular event.”

He’s not overselling it. The Super Live Adventure was massive. According to TheRaider.net, the stage was “over one-quarter acre wide and the height of a five-story office building” with a cast and crew over around 150 people. It utilized 76 custom speakers, a score recorded by 140 musicians, and “more than 1.000 laser beams … fired from 23 separate locations” over the course of the show.”

Oh, but there was so much more. There was a gigantic castle set with a working drawbridge. There was a gigantic inflatable jukebox as part of Mel’s Drive-In from American Graffiti. There was a nearly ten minute musical number involving a self-driving vintage car in the Tucker sequence. There was a recreation of the infamous melting faces scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark. There was at least one onstage beheading. There was a humongous Millennium Falcon that descends from the ceiling and lands on the stage.

Also there was a live horse and a live Bengal tiger for some reason?

The clothesline of a premise upon which George Lucas’ Super Live Adventure hangs each of these disparate elements: A plant in the crowd disguised as a young audience member is chosen by Willow — yes, Willow from Willow — to help him in his quest. The “audience member” is given a magic wand, and then pursued through a series of George Lucas movies, arranged seemingly at random.

After escaping the swords and sorcery of Willow, she wanders into one of Preston Tucker’s car presentations, then gets attacked by giant snakes and rescued by Indiana Jones. (But why did it have to be snakes??) Indy brings the young woman along for a genuinely impressive creation of the suspension bridge battle from Temple of Doom, then to Club Obi-Wan from the start of Temple of Doom, where the “Anything Goes” musical number really captures the vibe of the entire show. Then Indy, Willie Scott, and the girl wander into a composite of scenes from Raiders of the Lost Ark, before she makes her way into the American Graffiti and Star Wars portions of the evening.

According to the same interview with the show’s production designer, George Lucas’ Super Live Adventure took nearly two months to rehearse inside an empty arena. But once completed, it only ran for a single summer in Japan; inexplicably, there wasn’t much demand for a show that combined the bombastic action of Star Wars with Tucker’s clear-eyed critique of capitalism. After performances from April to September of 1993, the show closed forever.

Bootlegs and grainy VHS videos of the Super Live Adventure have appeared online in the past. But a few months ago someone uploaded the most complete version I have ever seen. The video runs over 100 minutes, with only one obvious jump cut in the entire thing. It’s also from a better angle than I’d seen before; dead center in the middle of the orchestra, so you can really appreciate the scope of the production and the intricacy of the fight and dance choreography.

Bear in mind that the video is in Japanese with no subtitles. Still, if you pay attention, you can make sense of what’s happening — at least as much as anyone on Earth could make sense of a stage show that combines Willow and Raiders of the Lost Ark into a single fictional reality.

See for yourself below.

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The most upsetting part is the show the end, when the little girl gets a medal from Admiral Ackbar. Chewbacca didn’t get a metal but the Super Live Adventure audience plant got one?!? I guess she did defeat a Sith Lord but still…

It does not seem as if Lucas himself had much involvement in the development and creation of the Super Live Adventure beyond lending his name and famous characters to it. Still, with “George Lucas” in the title, and Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Indiana Jones, Willow, and, uh, that one guy from American Graffiti all running around, the show does feel like a glimpse into the famous filmmaker’s mind — if only when he’s got a 104 degree fever and the aspirin hasn’t kicked in yet.

Having this near-complete copy to watch is great, but I it’s still not enough. I want a subtitled version so I can fully appreciate how that young woman goes from sitting in a Japanese theater somewhere to stabbing Darth Vader with a lightsaber. I want an HD print so I can appreciate all the best stunts and bits of stagecraft. I want a commentary track by George Lucas where he gives his unvarnished thoughts on this madness.

Come to think of it: George Lucas has a museum dedicated to narrative art opening soon in Los Angeles. To coin a phrase, this thing belongs in a museum — that one specifically.

More on the History of George Lucas’ Super Live Adventure:

Marvel kicked off their year-long marketing push for Avengers: Doomsday, the company’s most anticipated blockbuster in half a decade, with a clock.

Their YouTube channel now includes a video titled “DOOMSDAY CLOCK,” counting down the months, days, hours, minutes, and seconds until the film’s release. At least as of this writing, the video’s image — the Avengers’ logo backlit by green light — never changes. It’s literally just a digital clock ticking down to December 18.

This comes on the heels of Marvel’s big social-media stunt to introduce the cast of Avengers: Doomsday, when they spent an entire afternoon slowly (and I mean very slowly) panning down an enormous row of chairs arranged inside an empty soundstage, gradually revealing, one by one, the names of the actors in the film. After more than five hours and 20 minutes of this, Robert Downey Jr walked into frame, sat in his chair, shushed the camera, and left.

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The overarching message of this campaign: We can’t you anything about Avengers: Doomsday. Be grateful we’re showing you the backs of these chairs. You’re just going to have to show up on December 18 and see the rest for yourself.

Marvel has a long track record of obsessively guarding its spoilers. The one time I visited a Marvel set, for Spider-Man: Homecoming, and they brought our group of journalists visit the production offices, there were multiple signs hung in every hallway and near every elevator reminding employees about maintaining the strictest level of security.

And why not? The air of mystery around Marvel’s movies helps stoke anticipation for them, fueled by theorists (including this website’s) who speculate wildly about every tiny clue and tease, amplifying fans’ excitement in an internet echo chamber.

I am sure this approach will work for Avengers: Doomsday just like it worked for Spider-Man: Homecoming and so many other MCU films. But the brazen nothingness of these teases (An endlessly ticking clock!) really struck me in this case, because it stands in such stark contrast to the way earlier generations of blockbusters were hyped.

20 years ago, for example, Peter Jackson fans could follow the progress of his remake of King Kong online thanks to regular video updates from the set. Jackson himself appears in nearly every single one, providing information about what day of the shoot they’re up to and what they’re working on at that particularly moment.

These “Production Diaries,” which typically ran around five minutes each, were shared regularly on the (now-defunct) website KongIsKing.net. Some of the diaries were superficial — one featured Jack Black, Adrien Brody, Andy Serkis, and Colin Hanks jokingly arguing over the value of on-set video playback — but their subject matter was surprisingly wide-ranging and often quite comprehensive.

One update explains the ins and outs of 35mm cameras; how to load a film magazine, how to “check the gate.” One is just about the steam on King Kong’s New York City set; how it’s created, how it’s supplied through a series a pipes, and where the hell the real steam in the real New York City comes from. (Or is it just a cliché of period fiction?) Another video is about the one member of the production whose entire job involved warning the rest of the crew when a plane was about to take off from a nearby airport and ruin their sound recording.

A second batch of diaries follows post-production week by week up to the film’s world premiere, taking viewers into the process of visual effects, compositing, pickups, sound re-recording, mixing, and more.

Cumulatively, the King Kong production and post-production diaries run nearly six and a half hours of behind-the-scenes content. I’m not sure all the Blu-rays and digital copies of new releases I purchased in 2025 collectively had six and a half hours of behind-the-scenes content.

Now obviously, this is an extreme example. King Kong was a remake of one of the most famous films ever made; most people were familiar with its plot and characters already. He didn’t need to stress out about spoilers. Jackson was also in a unique position in the film industry when he made King Kong thanks to his enormously successful Lord of the Rings trilogy. Still, documentaries about the making of almost any movie in 2026 are nearly as extinct as the dinosaurs that Kong fights with on Skull Island.

One reason why is obviously the collapse of the home-video market. Jackson didn’t just make his diaries to promote the movie’s theatrical release; he knew, thanks to The Lord of the Rings, that he could then repackage that content as bonus features for the King Kong DVD. But he made so much behind-the-scenes content for King Kong he was able to collect them into their own DVD called King Kong: Peter Jackson’s Production Diaries. It came in a giant box that looked like Carl Denham’s briefcase.

This thing didn’t even include the actual movie! It was a box comprised entirely of special features! 2005 was a wild time.

Again, this is an extreme example. But almost none of the Hollywood studios put money into special features anymore. All of their focus is on streaming — and I guess bonus materials don’t do perform on streaming, because none of the streamers invest in them either. Technologically, there’s no reason these companies couldn’t offer commentary tracks or extra supplementary features. They simply choose not to.

There are very rare exceptions. Disney+ recently uploaded a documentary miniseries about the Avatar franchise, Fire and Water: Making the Avatar Films. Like Jackson’s old diaries, these films offer fascinating insights into an extremely high-tech film production. (Like Jackson’s diaries, they were also timed to promote a new film; in this case Avatar: Fire and Ash.) Director James Cameron and his team explain how motion capture technology works, and how they adapted it to work underwater, something no one else had ever done before.

Maybe I’m just an old man yelling at clouds. But I miss the days this sort of content was the rule, rather than the exception; when you could watch your favorite movie and then immediately dip into the DVD or Blu-ray to find out how the coolest moments were conceived and conjured into reality.

And yes, I can (and do) buy old Blu-rays, and discs from companies like Criterion, Kino Lorber, Arrow, and Vinegar Syndrome, who are producing new bonus features on their excellent home video releases. But there’s only so much these companies can do, given their budgets, and the modern market for physical media. And there is a really big difference between retrospective content made years or decades later and the you-are-there immediacy of the old King Kong approach, which sadly seems to have been almost entirely abandoned now that home viewing has shifted from discs to streams.

I am sure Marvel is recording some behind-the-scenes material on the Avengers: Doomsday set. I am not sure we’ll ever get to see much of it beyond the vaguest and most cursory featurettes they can toss on YouTube or whatever meager selection winds up on the 4K. They could use that stuff to help promote Avengers: Secret Wars next year, but I would bet on Forbush Man showing up to save Earth’s Mightiest Heroes before I would expect Marvel to pursue that sort of strategy.

Worst of all, I’m not sure anyone but me even cares. After all, if Marvel lifted the curtain on Doomsday, fans wouldn’t get to speculate about what they are doing. They wouldn’t be able to theorize about Doctor Doom’s plans, or how the Fantastic Four hook up with the Avengers. And that, more than anything, seems to be the name of the game these days. Ignorance is not only bliss; it’s a pastime.

It doesn’t feel like a long time ago. But it’s now been ten years since Star Wars: The Force Awakens debuted in theaters.

I’ll remember that date — December 18, 2015 — as long as I live. It wasn’t just the day J.J. Abrams’ The Force Awakens opened in multiplexes around the world. It was also my oldest daughter’s due date. My freaking out about the birth of my first child was magnified by my additional freaking out about whether she’d wait long enough to be born so I could help ScreenCrush cover what was not only the first Star Wars movie in a decade, but also probably the most anticipated movie of any kind over that same stretch of time.  

Thankfully, my daughter waited to arrive until December 21, so it all worked out — for me, at least. For Lucasfim and its new corporate overlords at Disney, the return of Star Wars was a bit more complicated. The Force Awakens itself was an unqualified triumph; people forget that it’s still the single highest-grossing film in the history of the U.S. box office. ($936.6 million — roughly $150 million more than the first Avatar.)

The reason they tend to forget that is because two years later Rian Johnson’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi followed, and proved so divisive that Disney and Lucasfilm then brought back Abrams to conclude the trilogy (and ignore some of the changes made by Johnson in The Last Jedi) in 2019’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. That sequel, in turn, proved so unpopular that it basically soured all of fandom on Star Wars movies in the short-term. Disney hasn’t released a new Star Wars film since. (The first one in seven years, The Mandalorian and Grogu, premieres next spring.)

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Watching The Force Awakens ten years later, it’s impossible to completely separate the film from the controversial chapters that followed. We know now that this story does not exactly end happily (for the audience, at least, if not the characters). But viewed on its own, The Force Awakens really does take you back to that time a decade ago when the return of Star Wars felt exciting and fresh.

Yes, the film closely follows the structural blueprint of George Lucas’ 1977 Star Wars. It’s got a trio of young heroes in a battle with a villain clad in black and his vast army of Stormtroopers. Yes, there is an all-important MacGuffin robot stranded on a remote dessert planet. Yes, there are wise older heroes to impart wisdom and guidance to the new generation. Yes, there is a giant space station shaped like a moon that shoots world-breaking lasers. Yes, the female character gets kidnapped and yes the rest of the heroes rescue her and yes, the older member of their party dies in the process, and yes, the good guys succeed in destroying the giant space station, giving hope to their little galactic rebellion.

Okay, when you put it like that, The Force Awakens is pretty close to the first Star Wars. The reason it works anyway is because those familiar beats work in concert with Abrams’ ultimate goal: Crafting an unabashed love letter to vintage Star Wars. Lucas’ prequel films of the late 1990s and early 2000s presented a high-gloss, heavily digitized update of the franchise. They were visually impressive — and totally antiseptic. They looked every bit what they were: Films made with enormous computer-generated imagery.

But the first wave of Star Wars fans loved the old movies for their tactility. They existed in a futuristic world (a long time ago) that felt gritty and lived in. That’s what Abrams restored to the series with The Force Awakens. It’s a movie with dirt under its fingernails, and almost literally.

For example, all three new Force Awakens heroes receive introductions that accentuate the grit and grime of their worlds. Oscar Isaac’s hotshot pilot Poe Dameron gets captured by the First Order, and then beaten to a bloody pulp. He’s still covered in blood and bruises when he’s rescued by John Boyega’s Finn, who was marked as different from the rest of his squad by a bloody handprint on his Stormtrooper helmet.

Next Abrams shifts to the dusty world of Jakku and Daisy Ridley’s Rey, who is first seen scavenging and cleaning scrap metal from the ruins of an old Star Destroyer to sell to junk dealer Unkar Plutt. On this viewing, I was particularly struck by how often in The Force Awakens Ridley’s skin looks slick with sweat, and her hair gets slightly out of place, with flyaways flapping in the wind  — again accentuating the grimy imperfect reality of life in the Star Wars galaxy.

For better or for worse, Disney’s sequel trilogy was the first generation of Star Wars movies made by Star Wars fans. And for better or worse, The Force Awakens is particularly imbued with enthusiasm for this specific brand of Star Wars. Its complicated villain, Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren, is basically a Darth Vader fanboy, cosplaying in his own homemade homage to his favorite Star Wars character. When no one’s looking, he prays to Vader’s charred skull.

But then Poe is something of a fanboy too; when he escapes from Kylo Ren’s ship with Finn‘s help, he takes a moment to explain “I’ve always wanted to fly one of these things!” before he commandeers a TIE fighter. The same goes for Rey, whose response to meeting Han Solo for the first time is the same one a lot of hardcore Star Wars fans would have if they bumped into Harrison Ford at the airport: “You’re Han Solo!”

That excitement for the franchise is pretty infectious, especially in the film’s early scenes. The Force Awakens still looks very good for a ten year old movie, perhaps because Abrams emphasized practical sets, costumes, and droids wherever and however he could. There are more long takes in the movie than I remembered, and they mostly emphasize the magical nature of Star Wars — like when the camera lingers on a bowl as Rey dumps in one-quarter portion of food from Unkar Plutt. The concoction stirs, fizzles, settles, then somehow morphs into a grubby green-brown roll, all without a single cut.

All that giddiness dissipates in the third act, which includes the buzzkill murder of (ten-year-old spoiler alert) Han Solo by Kylo Ren. Death is an intrinsic part of Star Wars, and in The Last Jedi Luke Skywalker offers the poignant observation that “no one’s ever really gone” in their world — a point underlined by Harrison Ford’s brief appearance as Han’s ghost in The Rise of Skywalker. But, again, watched on its own, Kylo killing Han does sort of suck all the air out of the film. The Force Awakens’ whole visual palette darkens at that moment, and it only gets a little brighter in its epilogue, when Rey finds the long-missing Luke and tries to coax him back into the Resistance by offering him his father’s lightsaber.

Those of us who have been following Star Wars for the last ten years (and the 35-odd years before that) know what happened next. It wasn’t always great. (Star Wars is kind of like life in that way.) But the exhilaration we felt for The Force Awakens — and that The Force Awakens felt for Star Wars — need not be forgotten because some of the subsequent movies didn’t quite live up to expectations. If we remember how we felt ten years ago, those sorts of emotions are never really gone either.

I don’t have a lot of memories from my childhood birthdays. But I vividly remember my 14th birthday party.

My parents took me and a dozen or so of my best buddies to Movie City 5 in East Brunswick, NJ to see Street Fighter. For a video-game loving child of the 1990s, the Street Fighter movie was a pop-culture event somewhere on magnitude of a Squid Game/Stranger Things crossover. This wasn’t just exciting; it was important. It was the culmination of something. It was an action movie starring one of the hottest action stars at the time, Jean-Claude Van Damme, plus the great Raul Julia, a favorite amongst ’90s kids thanks to the two live-action Addams Family movies, as M. Bison.

And the Street Fighter movie was written and directed by Steven E. de Souza, the guy who wrote Commando, Die Hard, and The Running Man. It was like God himself had seen it in His almighty beneficence to create a movie as a birthday gift for me personally. There was no conceivable scenario where Street Fighter didn’t instantly become an all-time favorite.

Or so me and my buddies thought. I remember the movie, but what I really remember is the drive home from the theater, in which a bunch of befuddled high-school freshman all simultaneously came to the stunning realization that a movie they really wanted to see could turn out to be a total piece of s—.

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Julia was sort of funny, we all agreed, but what was going on with Van Damme? Some of the characters looked reasonably close to their counterparts from the game, but others were just … odd. (Who was the shrimp who played Ken? Why was Chun-Li a TV reporter? Why did Dhalsim have clothes and hair?!?) The film’s plot involved a civil war in the Asian nation of “Shadaloo.” The street-fighting tournament of the game was nowhere to be seen.

Accordingly, while the film concluded with a Street Fighter II-esque brawl between Van Damme’s Guile and Julia’s Bison, the film wasn’t exactly the non-stop martial-arts spectacular we expected. The fights was intermittent during the first two acts, and a lot of them were brief and awkwardly assembled. (It’s always a good sign when your movie has five credited editors, right? Quantity over quality!) Forget about de Souza’s action movies, my peer group had already discovered Jackie Chan, John Woo, and the burgeoning world of ’90s Hong Kong action. Compared to the caliber of martial arts we’d come to expect by the mid-’90s, Street Fighter just didn’t measure up.

The world largely agreed. The film did okay at the box office but was lambasted by critics. It went down in history, along with Super Mario Bros., as the early proof that Hollywood did not understand video games and was utterly incapable of successfully adapting one to film. 30 years later, Paramount has produced a full-scale Street Fighter reboot, one that at least based on the first trailer, really embraces the game’s fight-heavy structure and colorful 16-bit aesthetics.

The excitement around the new Street Fighter’s first teaser and over-the-top (but game accurate) character designs gave me the itch to revisit the 1994 film for the first time in a while. My expectation was I’d be groaning and laughing inside of ten minutes and eventually turn it off in favor of a better film.

That’s not what happened at all.

Okay, I did laugh — but mostly at material that was intended to be funny. Today you would never see a big-screen adaptation of a coveted IP with this much disdain for its source material. As a Street Fighter-loving kid, that annoyed me to no end. As an adult, I really admired de Souza’s IDGAF attitude toward the whole thing. He refused to take this nonsense seriously for even one single second, and all of the overt, intentional mockery of the concept played really well for me now — at least as compared to that first viewing 30 years ago. (Oy.)

The centerpiece of that material is Julia, who is great as M. Bison. Wikipedia (which is never wrong) tells me he took the role because his kids were Street Fighter II fans. That may be. But he was also totally on board with de Souza’s approach — namely to turn M. Bison in to a figure of outright comedy. Take, for instance, his line readings in this scene. (Also: Watch the way he replaces his work evil dictator hat for his casual evil dictator hat.)

Incredible stuff. There are only a few people in the history of cinema who could successfully deliver a line like “Tell you what: After I’ve crushed my enemies, we’ll see about getting you published. That should cheer you up, eh?” Raul Julia was one of them.

Did I mention M. Bison’s command console for world conquest looks like the Street Fighter II arcade cabinet? I had no memory of this, but boy did it make me laugh.

Van Damme is hilarious too, although admittedly that’s for more unintentional reasons. He uses this strange voice; very quiet and whispery, almost like a bad comedian’s impression of JCVD doing Dirty Harry.

It makes absolutely no sense … but when I noticed that Guile’s uniform has a big U.S. flag on the shoulder (he’s got a flag tattoo on his shoulder too), and I realized we’re meant to believe this man is a red-blooded American, I suddenly hit upon the notion that Van Damme thinks he’s speaking with an American accent. Which really unlocked the whole performance for me. (That final scene also shows that while the character designs weren’t strictly faithful, by the end of the movie most of the key Street Fighter II fighters had basically evolved into their signature looks.)

I do hope the new Street Fighter is good. I am sure it will take a more dutiful approach to its source material — as all adaptations of big IP do in the 2020s. The financial rewards of these projects are too enormous to task any risks whatsoever. When fans revolted against the look of Sonic the Hedgehog in the first Sonic movie trailer, and then Paramount responded by totally redesigning the character, and then the film became an enormous hit (with two sequels and a TV spinoff and counting), that doomed any chance of getting a weirdo, winking, self-satirizing adaptation like 1994’s Street Fighter any time soon.

Maybe that’s why I had such a positive reaction to the movie this time around. It’s got a very similar vibe to the 1960s Batman TV show, which embraced and also gently poked fun at the absurdity of its premise as well. And sure, if that was the only adaptation of Batman in live-action, maybe it would look a little smug and annoying. But in a world where there are half a dozen gruff big-screen Batmen to choose from, the Adam West Batman is a delightful alternative.

That’s how I look at Street Fighter (1994) now. Those who demand an “accurate” adaptation will have one next fall. The rest of us will have Raul Julia showing off briefcases full of money with his face on it, hissing lines like “For you, the day Bison graced your village was the most important day of your life. But for me, it was Tuesday!”

The Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise is set in a haunted pizzeria and arcade, where the sins of the past return in the form of creepy animatronics possessed by the spirits of murdered children — sort of like what manifests inside a man’s stomach a few hours after he consumes an entire promotional tie-in menu for a blockbuster movie. Said man (i.e. me) committed a grievous error, and now they must pay for it.

Precisely how much he (I) will pay is what he (I) am here to find out. Today I’m at my local Popeyes, the beloved chicken chain that has, somewhat counterintuitively, partnered with Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 for what they are calling “The Freddy Fazbear Crunch Menu.” Why a crunch menu? I don’t know. All I know for certain is I am about to undertake the culinary equivalent of an animatronic robot attack.

(Also: Did you know it’s spelled “Popeyes” and not “Popeye’s”? I did not. No possessive! Popeyes welcomes all Popeyes, whether they are a sailor man or a no-nonsense New York detective.)

The Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 menu contains a special limited-time varietal of Popeyes’ chicken tenders coated in a “savory garlic parmesan rub” as well as “garlic crusted” cheese curds. (Haunted animatronics are famously partial to garlic.) They’ve also got a special dessert called a “cupcake cup,” which feels like one of the more redundantly named food items I have ever encountered during my travels through the world of movie tie-in food.

Nonetheless, I ate it and everything else on this Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 menu. Here are my findings.

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I had just turned 10 when The Mummy came out in May of 1999, and I remember cowering, wide-eyed, behind my giant bag of popcorn topped with Sno-Caps as man-eating CGI scarabs terrorized the characters on screen. I couldn’t sleep that night when we returned home from the movie theater, as visions of decrepit mummies and deadly, ancient bugs and men shriveling up as they got the life sucked out of them flashed in my little girl brain. I was so scared! I was hooked.

The Mummy has long been one of my favorite films, partly due to my undying ’90s nostalgia but also because it’s just a great time. It’s a movie that feels like a movie, as Harry Styles might put it. And what’s not to love? The film pays tribute to the classic adventure films of years-gone-by without feeling like an uninspired retread.

It’s got action! Fantasy! Romance! It’s a little spooky, too! (For a 10-year-old, anyway, in that entry-level, gateway-horror way.) It’s the kind of movie I can watch over and over again, any time, no matter what mood I’m in. It’s like the cinematic equivalent of a comfort meal, but with some actual nutrition — not necessarily the guilty pleasure fast-food kind.

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Plus, the cast is absolutely stacked. Arnold Vosloo is menacing and empathetic as the mummy Imhotep, breathing fresh life into the classic Universal Pictures monster. Brendan Fraser is the perfect leading man: Handsome, funny, and oozing effortless charisma and swashbuckling charm as adventurer Rick O’Connell. Meanwhile, Rachel Weisz channels the spirit of Old Hollywood’s leading ladies with her charming portrayal of bookish, beautiful, brave Egyptologist Evelyn Carnahan. Together, their chemistry is electric.

Following recent news that Fraser and Weisz are (finally, thankfully) in talks to reprise their roles as Rick and Evie for a new Mummy adventure, as a longtime fan of the the 1999 film and its 2001 sequel I’ve got some thoughts (let’s call them polite requests) about what I’d love to see in this long-awaited sequel — as well as what I desperately hope the filmmakers will avoid.

Below, here are five things I hope to see in The Mummy 4. (Or The Mummy 3, I guess, if this next one retcons the forgettable Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.)

1. Rick and Evie Still Happily Married

Much like Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as Ed and Lorraine Warren in The Conjuring series, the ’90s/’00s Mummy films (the first two, anyway) truly wouldn’t be the same without Fraser and Weisz’s undeniable chemistry as Rick O’Connell and Evelyn Carnahan. Rick and Evie’s unconditional love for each other serves as the beating heart of the series, anchoring all the fantasy and adventure and horror with something palpable and earnest. Their relatable romance, which began with the ol’ enemies-to-lovers trope, gives the audience something to care about far beyond the action on screen.

That said, there might be some misguided notion to have Rick and Evie divorce or break up between films just so they can do the whole fall-in-love-again thing, or have Rick work to win Evie back from some sleek new suitor, or — Egyptian gods forbid — introduce a brand new love interest entirely. And to this I say: Don’t you dare.

We’ve seen it time and time again in movies: Han and Leia, Gale and Dewey, Indiana and Marion. But we don’t need to do the whole on-again, off-again plot device, or that tired thing where the male lead spirals away from his longtime love due to some trauma or personal unraveling (typically involving some strong liquor), only to find himself again and win her back. Please, leave Rick and Evie happily, passionately married. As fans saw in The Mummy Returns, they’re just as sexy and interesting married with a kid as they were single and flirting with each other in the first movie.

2. David Corenswet as Alex (Why Not?)

Evie and Rick’s son Alex is an important character in The Mummy universe. He plays a big role in The Mummy Returns, as well as Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, the latter of which attempted to set the character up to take the mantle from Fraser’s Rick for future films. (As we know, that sure as hell never happened.)

Unfortunately, actor Luke Ford, who played adult Alex in that film, wasn’t the right fit. Now don’t get me wrong: Ford is a competent actor, and was hardly the worst part about the movie, but his portrayal of Alex lacked the charisma characters in this particular franchise are known for. He failed to capture the bright-eyed curiosity and vibrant personality Alex displayed in The Mummy Returns, traits inherited no doubt from his parents.

If Alex were to return (which would make sense), might I present an inspired recasting opportunity? If ever there were an actor who not only looks like, but embodies the energy of a young Fraser, it’s Superman star David Corenswet. As Clark Kent, Corenswet nails the whole charming, heroic dork vibe I’d expect from the son of Rick and Evie O’Connell. Plus, if the franchise were to continue with Alex, Corenswet’s actually got the chops to carry the series forward. Someone get his agent on the line ASAP!

3. Jonathan Back in Action, Of Course

In a film absolutely stacked floor-to-wall with charismatic characters and memorable performances (Fraser! Weisz! Arnold Vosloo! Oded Fehr! Jonathan Hyde!), you might think the sibling of the romantic lead would get lost in the shuffle as a throwaway comedic relief. But John Hannah’s Jonathan, brother of Evelyn, doesn’t just hold his own; he’s a standout and fan-favorite in his own right.

Evie’s gambling, treasure-hunting brother steals many of the scenes he’s in. A gold-hearted scoundrel in business, his playboy charm and penchant for a lazy life of luxury are betrayed only by his unexpected bravery in the face of undead peril and his fierce loyalty to his family. His presence was a welcome comfort in Tomb of the Dragon Emperor — aside from Fraser, he was the only original actor to return for the maligned third installment — and another Rick and Evie adventure just wouldn’t be the same without him inadvertently causing trouble (and, to be fair, helping get everyone back out of trouble, in his own bumbling way). That said, I firmly expect Hannah will be getting a call from producers soon.

4. Imhotep (Hear Me Out…)

Arnold Vosloo is a magnetic presence in the first two Mummy movies, bringing Imhotep (back) to life with a unique blend of pathos, sex appeal, and intimidating swagger. He infuses the role with gravitas and vulnerability while managing to be menacing and intense. And even though Imhotep is technically dead at this point (uh, again), it’s nothing a little reading from the Book of the Dead couldn’t fix!

Following Imhotep’s resurrection in The Mummy Returns, the larger-than-life villain, tragically betrayed by his lover Anck-Su-Namun, abandons his quest for world domination and returns to the underworld, heartbroken. Before he does so, he shoots Rick and Evie — the latter of whom refuses to desert Rick during a moment of mortal peril — a pained look of sorrow and longing for what they have, humanizing the once-mortal man behind the monster.

It’s the perfect setup for Imhotep to eventually return as an antihero who must help Rick and Evie face off against an even bigger, badder undead threat. We’ve seen it work in many films before, from Barbossa in the Pirates of the Caribbean series to Loki in the MCU and the T-800 in the Terminator movies. While it’s a well-used trope, it would provide an opportunity for the character to return to screen in a way that makes sense for the story, potentially to redeem his legacy as he helps save the world this time around.

5. Lots of Levity … Keep It Fun!

There’s a number of reasons 2017’s Mummy reboot starring Tom Cruise was a big, fat dud that critics and audiences hated. Its worst offense? Taking itself way too seriously. Bo-ring!

The Mummy (1999) embraced its inherent campiness, and also leaned into the silliness of the ‘30s and ‘40s serial films that inspired it. It was, in every sense of the word, a blast from start to finish, toggling between fun-filled fantasy adventure, high-energy action flick and spooky, supernatural gateway horror with style and ease. In contrast, Cruise’s Mummy was too action-focused, too somber and middling in tone; neither fun enough as an adventure movie nor scary enough to be an effective horror film. Let’s not make that mistake again.

Fraser’s Mummy series was also very, effortlessly funny, something the new film would greatly benefit from—especially considering Lee Cronin’s upcoming 2026 film based on the classic monster will be a dark horror film, so those bases are well-covered. For Fraser’s return I’d like to see more light-hearted levity. It’s why certain scenes from the 1999 film (“Hey, Beni! Looks to me like you’re on the wrong side of the river!” … “I am a librarian!”) are still so memorable for fans to this day.

The following post contains SPOILERS for One Battle After Another. Do you find that to be be true?

With a 95 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, and awards prognosticators calling it a clear frontrunner in multiple categories at next year’s Oscars, I’m not sure Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another needs much defending at this point. Its richly detailed performances, live-wire VistaVision cinematography, and nerve-jangling score are plainly self-evident. Most people I’ve talked to about it agree: This Paul Thomas Anderson guy, he, y’know, he might actually be a pretty decent director.

For the best evidence of that, I recommend studying the film’s ending, a kinetic chase through the California desert. I have read and heard some minor criticisms of the sequence, even from people who otherwise liked One Battle After Another — criticisms mainly focused around on the fact that the lead characters played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn never actually square off after the latter’s pursuit of the former spans the rest of the film, rendering the conclusion a bit anticlimactic. As a result, after three hours of political commentary, stoner humor, and a web of intense onscreen relationships, the film just kind of stops after a car chase.

But what a car chase, one that uses action, setting, and camerawork to wrap up every major storyline and theme in the film in a beautiful little bow, one compact enough that Leonardo DiCaprio’s Bob Ferguson could use it to tie up his crappy little ponytail to keep his hair out of his face.

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The film’s finale is the culmination of a 16-year-old grudge held by Penn’s Col. Steven J. Lockjaw, a member of the U.S. Military who wants to join a secret society of white supremacists called the Christmas Adventurers. Unfortunately for Lockjaw, he had a dalliance 16 years prior with an African American militant named Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), apparently a big no-no in white supremacist clubs that worship Santa Claus. Lockjaw and Perfidia’s tryst might make him the biological father of her daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti), so Willa’s very existence imperils his application for membership in the Christmas Adventurers.

Willa lives with Bob (DiCaprio), Perfidia’s former lover and (Bob assumes) the father of her child. After 16 years of searching, Lockjaw finally finds and grabs Willa, and is able to confirm via a DNA test that she is his daughter. He tries to pay a mercenary (Eric Schweig) to kill her (his own child!) but the bounty hunter refuses. Instead, he reluctantly agrees to deliver Willa to a militia group that will accept the contract, no questions asked. The mercenary drops Willa off with the militia then has a change of heart and frees her, which allows her to escape in his car.

That sets up a three-way chase: Willa pursued by Tim (John Hoogenakker), one of the Christmas Adventurers, with Bob desperately trying to reach her before he does. The three cars follow one another through an mountainous expanse of Southern California, on a desert highway filled with a series of enormous hills. Willa cleverly stop her car right at the apex of one blind summit; by the time Tim spots her car parked in the middle of the road, it’s too late to prevent a crash. After he stumbles out of the wreck and can’t properly respond to her secret French 75 passwords, she shoots him. That’s when Bob finally arrives and the two drive off together into a literal and proverbial sunset.

Astonishingly, this bombastic conclusion was not in One Battle After Another’s original script. According to Anderson on The Big Picture podcast, the film went into production not quite knowing how the conflict between Bob, Willa, and Lockjaw would resolve. It wasn’t until Anderson discovered the hilly stretch of road featured in the finale on a location scout — an area near Highway 78 and Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in Southeastern California the crew dubbed “The River of Hills” — that he realized how vertiginous point-of-view shots from the perspective of a driver in this area looked.

Anderson told The Credits he viewed the location as “a gift from the movie gods” because “after years of driving and looking for something, anything, it had emerged to us, and we just ran with it.” At that point, he began to build One Battle After Another’s entire climax around it. If that’s true, it surely ranks among the most brilliant feats of improvisatory filmmaking in recent history.

The River of Hills fits seamlessly into the tale Anderson tells throughout One Battle After Another. Most obviously, its quick succession of peaks and valleys mimics the film’s title, and with the endless series of small but infuriating hassles Bob faces throughout the film: A phone with a dead battery he can’t find anywhere to recharge, a French 75 password he can’t remember because he’s swaddled his brain in drugs for the last decade and a half. The whole film is one battle after another. Life for Bob — and really for all of us — isn’t a mountain we must climb. It’s more like a series of countless ups and downs on a road that stretches all the way to the horizon.

But the importance of the River of Hills goes deeper than that. Some viewers have reported feeling queasy during One Battle After Another’s chase, especially during those POV shots through the trio of cars’ windshields. That}s actually where the name came from; those shots made some people seasick, hence a river of hills.

And it’s true; those shots visually resemble what you might see from the front of a boat passing through rough water. That connects the location back to the final words of advice Bob receives from Sensei Sergio (Benicio del Toro), Willa’s karate instructor who becomes something of a zen spiritual guru to Bob as he searches for his missing daughter.

Shortly before Sergio shoves Bob out of his car at about 30 miles an hour so he doesn’t get arrested for the second time in 24 hours (don’t drink and drive kids), the frazzled ex-revolutionary asks Sergio “This is the end of the line, huh?” To which Sergio responds “Not for you! Ocean waves, ocean waves…”

A few minutes later, Bob is piloting a car through the choppy asphalt waters of the River of Hills. The name PTA coined — “The River of Hills” — even evokes Willa’s mother, Perfidia Beverly Hills, who is absent from One Battle After Another after its first act, but whose actions 16 years prior loom over everything happening on that road.

It’s also hugely important that after all the chasing and jumping out of cars and drinking and driving Bob does not really save Willa; she saves herself. Most of One Battle After Another’s middle third focuses on Bob after he gets the call from the French 75 confirming that Lockjaw has finally found him. When Bob answers the phone, he’s smoking a joint on his coach and watching The Battle of Algiers.

Although Bob was an explosives expert and revolutionary before Willa was born, 16 years later he’s a borderline shut-in. He lives in a shack in the woods, doesn’t own a cell phone or a computer, and spends his time playing Steely Dan covers with his buddies. (Relatable.) It feels wrong to call Bob a “helicopter parent”; Bob is way too scared to ever let Willa near a helicopter. He‘s more like a wet blanket parent, smothering his daughter and doing whatever he can to diminish her contact with the outside world and with anything fun or remotely dangerous.

That attitude is totally understandable given Bob’s past, especially his abandonment by Perfidia. And it’s also clear that Bob is a good dad, at least as far as his neuroses and substance abuse allows. The karate classes Willa takes from Sergio, for example, come in handy when she’s kidnapped by Lockjaw. The way she fires a gun while hiding out with a sisterhood of revolutionary nuns just before Lockjaw catches up with her suggests it’s not the first time she’s held an assault weapon.

In other words: Bob prepared her well for this moment. But the moment wouldn’t have nearly the same emotional impact if Bob managed to track down Tim, or somehow killed Lockjaw himself. In order for the film’s ending to mean something, Willa has to apply the knowledge she’s been given by Bob to stop them herself — which is exactly what she does.

That’s makes what Bob does even more powerful: He simply keeps showing up. After being abandoned by Perfidia, Bob hung around. When Willa’s in trouble, he leaves his house, even though he really wanted to watch The Battle of Algiers and he’s stoned as f—, and he can’t remember any of the passwords he needs, and his one safe phone is dead, and he falls off a roof, and he gets arrested, and he has to break out of police custody, and he gets shot at. He just never quits.

When Bob rolls up after Willa kills Tim, she screams the French 75’s passwords at him, and he eventually responds. After all of the trials and tribulations, she asks him the most important question: “Who are you?” And he gives her the only appropriate response, true in every way that matters. “It’s your dad.”

In One Battle After Another’s epilogue, Bob takes a few tentative steps towards reengaging with the world. He allows cell phones into his home and even uses one to take a couple of selfies. When they receive some sort of distress call on their French 75 radio, Willa sets off to help without Bob, who stays behind to smoke some more weed and play around with his new phone.

Hope for the future, One Battle After Another tells us, won’t be found in a heroic father slaying a mythic enemy. Fatherhood is not about winning; it’s about surviving to fight another battle. That’s why it’s crucial Bob and Lockjaw never interact during that final chase. Although Lockjaw dies, the organization he so desperately wanted to join has not been beaten, or even diminished. The Christmas Adventurers are still out there.

Despite that fact, Anderson still finds reason for optimism in the image of a dad so devoted to his daughter that he gave her the tools she needed to survive in a dangerous world, and found the confidence to let her head off into it to find her own way in stormy seas.