It would seem that audiences did not, in fact, want to get nuts. Despite the return of Michael Keaton’s Batman, DC Studios’ The Flash wound up as one of 2023’s biggest box office disappointments. To date, the film has grossed only $107 million in the United States and $267 million worldwide. Barbie — from the same studio, Warner Bros. — just made more money than that in its opening weekend alone. And The Flash reportedly cost at least $50 million more than Barbie to produce.
We can debate the reasons why, but I think one of the big issues was that while Keaton himself was terrific reprising his role as Batman, the character within the film did not make a ton of sense. The Flash alters the timeline, which results in the Ben Affleck Batman being wiped out of existence, replaced instead by Michael Keaton’s Batman — not just a different actor, but a whole different generation of actor. The reasons why are never entirely clear.
On top of that, Keaton’s Batman has long since retired from his role as Dark Knight of Gotham City when the Flash finds him. Wayne Manor is lying in ruin. And when the Flash arrives there, Keaton’s Bruce Wayne is like a hermit; his hair is long, he’s got a beard, he’s living alone. Why? What happened?
The Flash doesn’t really explain. They mention that Gotham City is peaceful now, and apparently that left Batman without a purpose or something? Why doing a good job destroy Batman’s life? That was not made clear — and within a few scenes, Bruce is back in his old costume helping the Flash, and there’s very little time to dwell on character motivations after that.
A new featurette just released by Warner Bros. finally explains the backstory that clearly got cut at some point during the The Flash’s development process. In the video below around the 3:00 mark, The Flash director Andy Muschietti details a whole unseen, unmentioned past that was supposed to explain Batman’s retirement.
Here is what Muschietti says:
I always said something should have happened to Bruce Wayne to want to stop being Batman. And my idea was he did something that goes against his code. He killed a criminal in front of this child. Unknowingly, but he still did it. Which is an exact mirroring situation of what happened to him when his parents were killed in front of the Monarch Theater, and that created that ‘monster’ that Batman is. And so he just couldn’t cope with it, and that’s why he decided to shut off his other side, Batman.
I have no idea why this was cut from the film. Maybe they didn’t want to portray Batman as a killer. Maybe they felt the movie was too long and it needed to be shortened, and this was something that was deemed superfluous. Maybe they realized that Michael Keaton’s Batman totally killed a whole bunch of guys in Tim Burton’s Batman and he didn’t seem too choked up about it back then. (Remember how he blew up Axis Chemicals with all the Joker’s goons inside?)
Whatever the reason, none of Muschietti’s explanation for Bruce Wayne’s hermit-like existence wound up in The Flash. It wouldn’t have solved all of the movie’s problems, but it would have least explained this Batman a little bit better. It’s a shame it was cut out.
The Flash is available on Digital now; the 4K, Blu-ray, and DVD will all be available on August 29.
Every DCEU Movie Ranked From Worst to Best
From Man of Steel to The Flash, we ranked every movie in the DC Extended Universe.
After months of anticipation, it looks like Barbie is going to win Barbeinheimer weekend pretty handily, at least from a box office perspective. The film grossed $22 million in its Thursday preview night — a massive number, and the best first day for any 2023 movie to date. Oppenheimer had a good first day too, grossing roughly $10.5 million. When all is said and done, it’s expected to earn about $50 million for the weekend. (It looks like Barbie will earn at least twice that much, and possibly more.)
Cinephiles — and now regular old folks who are just curious about pop culture — have had a lot of fun pitting these two movies that are so different but happen to be opening in theaters on the same day against each other. They’ve made memes. They’ve sold bootleg T-shirts on Etsy and Instagram. They’ve contemplated how to see them both as a deranged double feature. (My advice having seen both on back to back days: Start with Barbie.)
Now that paying customers are seeing the films for themselves, they will inevitably start comparing the two; debating which is better, and which will have the larger and longer impact. And these are fun things to do! No moviegoing is complete without a discussion about what you saw afterwards.
But I do think it’s important to take a step back and observe: It doesn’t matter whether Barbie or Oppenheimer is better. It doesn’t matter which one makes more money at the box office. What does matter is that there are two big and worthwhile movies opening in theaters this weekend, and that theaters around the country are going to be packed with people going to see one or the other or both. And they’re not going to be there to see the latest Marvel Cinematic Universe movie or Star Wars sequel.
Granted, Barbie is based on one of the most popular toys of all time, and generally speaking a movie based on a mass-market product is not exactly the sort of thing that gives a person hope for the future of cinema. But in this case, Barbie is not just a feature-length commercial for Mattel. In fact, Mattel is basically Barbie’s villain, and director Greta Gerwig mercilessly mocks the company, along with many of the weirder or more ill-advised Barbies they have released through the years. She also uses Barbie as an opportunity to consider the evolution (or lack of evolution as the case may be) of gender roles in our society, and to reckon with what it means to sell “girl power” to little women (pun intended) in the form of a fashionable doll. Love it or hate it — and I am sure audiences will be split on it — Barbie is a legitimate, thoughtful movie. Maybe the most legitimate and thoughtful ever made out of a kids toy line.
It may not be as thoughtful as Oppenheimer though. At three hours long, with multiple timelines and dozens of speaking roles, Oppenheimer is not just the polar opposite of Barbie, it’s the polar opposite of almost every movie released by major Hollywood studios during the summer for the last few decades. It’s Christopher Nolan’s dark three-hour meditation on the nature of atomic power. And it just made more money on its opening Thursday night in theaters than Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.
The timing of both movies is noteworthy as well. This weekend marks not only ground zero for Barbenheimer, but also ground zero for San Diego Comic-Con, the annual celebration of all things nerdy and geeky. Typically, that means people would stop paying attention to the movies they could actually watch in theaters right now, so they could instead speculate about and obsess over films that haven’t even been finished yet. Instead, all anyone is talking about is Barbie and Oppenheimer.
Again, there’s a caveat here; the writers and actors strikes mean a lot of talent that might have attended Comic-Con to promote their future projects stayed home. (One colleague attending San Diego this year told me that while the convention floor remains as crowded as ever, Hall H, where studios typically present their upcoming slate at star-studded panels, is half empty.) On another year, Barbenheimer could have gotten overwhelmed by the Comic-Con hype machine. This year, that didn’t happen.
Movies and movie theaters and film lovers needed this. In an era of so-called peak TV, when streaming has become so prevalent but also diffused the mass audience, the Barbenheimer phenomenon has proved there’s still nothing quite like power of opening a big, interesting movie in theaters around the country. Or, in this case, two at the same time. So enjoy the Barbenheimer debate — but remember that the debaters are the real winners here.
Surprising Movies Released on the Same Day
These movies debuted in theaters on the same day, giving cinephiles a tough choice of which to watch first.
ˆWe cannot escape the past. Some of us are doomed to repeat it.”
That’s a line from Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, and it is a fitting one. The two-part Dead Reckoning is rumored to be the final two entries in the series, at least in this form. Whether Dead Reckoning is really the final farewell for Tom Cruise’s super spy Ethan Hunt, or whether Cruise goes on to make eight more of these, Dead Reckoning plays like a kind of greatest hits compilation for the Mission: Impossiblefranchise, with characters, dialogue, sequences, locations, and even specific shots and camera angles that are heavily inspired by each of the six movies that preceded it.
The list below contains all of the allusions to the earlier Missions inserted into Dead Reckoning Part One. Some are pretty obvious, others are quite subtle. But they are all part of Cruise and writer/director Christopher McQuarrie reckoning (sorry) with the franchise’s long history. (Please be aware that it does contain some spoilers for Dead Reckoning.)
Every Reference to the Past Mission: Impossible Movies in Dead Reckoning Part One
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two is scheduled to open in theaters on June 28, 2024. I expect even more references to the earlier movies. In fact, I wouldn’t be shocked in the slightest if Ethan Hunt needs to hang from a ceiling on a wire to defeat “The Entity,” a la the Langley heist from the first Mission: Impossible. We cannot escape our pasts. And some of us are doomed to repeat them.
Movies That Changed Genres Halfway Through
These movies looked like one thing — only to shift into a totally different genre in the middle.
One of the essential skills of a successful actor is the ability to shape-shift into characters far removed from oneself. Sometimes, that character has been meticulously crafted by the screenwriter — but other times, it’s pulled directly from the pages of history. Perfecting a portrayal of a real person is no easy feat, however. While there’s certainly a set of guidelines to follow, embodying someone from recent (or not so recent) history comes with all sorts of pitfalls and expectations.
An actor’s main challenge when playing a real-life person on screen is avoiding mimicry. Obviously, the audience is supposed to suspend disbelief and imagine that the actor is that historical figure. But simply copying one’s mannerisms and vocal inflections isn’t enough to craft a compelling performance. It’s one thing to coincidentally look like someone from history, and it’s another to embody them from the inside out. There needs to be an element of surprise, a revelation of the iconic figure’s spirit. It’s not all about striking every pose or hitting every mark. When the actor is feeling the essence of the character, we can tell.
Throughout the years, there have been countless biopics and dramas that bring some of history’s most famous figures to life. While many are serviceable, few stand out as truly extraordinary. And with talks of Cillian Murphy’s groundbreaking performance in Oppenheimer — which hits theaters July 21 — let’s take the time to review 10 of the best portrayals of real-life people to ever grace the silver screen.
The Best Onscreen Portrayals Of Real-Life People
These actors pulled off incredible transformations to play real-life figures from history.
12 Actors Who Did Crazy Things To Get Into Character
These actors stopped at nothing to transform into their onscreen roles.
A big-name producer. A talented director. A cast that includes the star of a major Hollywood franchise. And it all added up to a film that Disney took down from its own streaming service in a matter of weeks.
That’s the strange and sad story of Crater, a live-action Disney movie starring Ghostbusters: Afterlife’s Mckenna Grace and produced by Stranger Things and Free Guy’s Shawn Levy. The movie was directed by Kyle Patrick Alvarez, a gifted filmmaker whose previous efforts include The Stanford Prison Experiment and Easier With Practice. Crater was added to Disney+ on May 12. Less than two months later, it’s already been pulled from the service, the latest title taken off streaming in a string of cost-cutting measures by Disney and many of its competitors.
The title’s removal was spotted by What’s On Disney+, who noted that Disney revealed in an SEC filing that “it would be doing another smaller wave of cuts at the end of the financial quarter, to remove another $400 million dollars worth of content.” Those cuts include the short-lived series The Company You Keep and Alaska Daily, as well as Crater.
Here was Disney’s official synopsis for the project, a sci-fi film for family audiences:
“Crater” is the story of Caleb Channing (Isaiah Russell-Bailey), who was raised on a lunar mining colony and is about to be permanently relocated to an idyllic faraway planet following the death of his father (Scott Mescudi). But before leaving, to fulfill his dad’s last wish, he and his three best friends, Dylan (Billy Barratt), Borney (Orson Hong) and Marcus (Thomas Boyce), and a new arrival from Earth, Addison (Mckenna Grace), hijack a rover for one final adventure on a journey to explore a mysterious crater.
And here is the trailer for the film — a film which, as of this writing, you cannot actually watch.
There is this misconception amongst some film and TV fans that we live in an unprecedented golden age of accessibility; that everything ever made is now available instantly at our fingertips. While many things are easier to find and watch than ever before, what is available on streaming represents a tiny fraction of all the movies and shows that have ever been made.
One of the major benefits of streaming subscriptions is supposed to be its seemingly endless access to content; as long as you pay your $10 or $15 a month, you can watch something an unlimited amount of times. But with moves like Crater, and comparable moves by Max, we see that “unlimited” is not as “endless” as it always seems. In the olden days, if you missed something in the theater, it was all but assured you could still watch it when it was released on VHS or DVD. When a streaming movie gets pulled down, it’s just gone.
We can hope it might earn some other sort of home video or digital release eventually. Maybe it will. But there’s also a chance in this current environment that a movie gets released one month and then is gone without a trace six weeks later. Which is definitely disheartening. I guess the lesson here is if something looks good on streaming, don’t wait to watch it.
The fifth Indiana Jones movie sends Harrison Ford’s intrepid archaeologist on the hunt for what the title refers to as the “Dial of Destiny.” Nobody in the movie calls it that, though; Indy and his friends refer to it as “Archimedes’ Dial.”
In Dial of Destiny, Indy finds this artifact in the waning days of World War II. The Germans are rounding up various historical objects of value and transporting them to Berlin via train. Indy sneaks onboard in order to recover the Lance of Longinus — supposedly the spear that stabbed Jesus Christ during his crucifixion.
During his pursuit for the Lance, Indy stumbles on one half of Archimedes’ Dial, recognizing it immediately as part of an object built by the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes. Supposedly, once the two halves of this dial are merged and activated, they can predict the future — and even locate “fissures in time.” Someone who controls this dial would have the capability to find those fissures, and then to use them to travel into the past and potentially alter the course of history.
The Indiana Jones movies always blend authentic history with myth and legend. This dial is nowhere near as famous as some of the other artifacts Indy has sought out, like the Holy Grail from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, or the Ark of the Covenant from Raiders of the Lost Ark. But Dial of Destiny’s dial of destiny is a real object — sort of.
The historical facts are fascinating, if a lot less sensational than the ones in the film. Some have speculated that the real dial was created by Archimedes, but that’s just one theory among many about who created it, and where and why. Hence historians don’t call it Archimedes’ Dial; they refer to as the “Antikythera mechanism,” named after the Greek island near where the artifact was first discovered. (In the film, the characters do occasionally call it “The Antikythera.” Maybe writer/director James Mangold decided it sounded cooler and more mysterious that way, sans “mechanism.”)
The story of the mechanism’s discovery, somewhat surprisingly, is not too far removed from the details recounted in Dial of Destiny. Divers found it, along with an assortment of other antiquities, in a shipwreck off the coast of Antikythera in 1901. But unlike the dial in the film, which is in pristine, still-functioning shape, the real mechanism was heavily damaged from its centuries spent at the bottom of the sea.
Instead of two intact halves that can be combined into a whole and switched on, the Antikythera mechanism, which is believed to date to around 200 BC, now exists in 82 different fragments — and there are more pieces thought to be missing. So even if you could get your hands on all of those pieces and reassemble it, you couldn’t just turn it on and start flying off in search of fissures in time.
In reality, it took decades for historians to fully examine the mechanism in detail, and to begin to piece together its meaning and origin. According to Smithsonian.com, “X-ray imaging in the 1970s and 1990s revealed that the device must have replicated the motions of the heavens” in order to chart the movements of celestial bodies.
Here is how that article describes the real mechanism:
The Antikythera mechanism was similar in size to a mantel clock, and bits of wood found on the fragments suggest it was housed in a wooden case. Like a clock, the case would’ve had a large circular face with rotating hands. There was a knob or handle on the side, for winding the mechanism forward or backward. And as the knob turned, trains of interlocking gearwheels drove at least seven hands at various speeds. Instead of hours and minutes, the hands displayed celestial time: one hand for the Sun, one for the Moon and one for each of the five planets visible to the naked eye—Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. A rotating black and silver ball showed the phase of the Moon. Inscriptions explained which stars rose and set on any particular date. There were also two dial systems on the back of the case, each with a pin that followed its own spiral groove, like the needle on a record player. One of these dials was a calendar. The other showed the timing of lunar and solar eclipses.
Although the mechanism does not possess magical abilities to predict the future (or to locate “fissures in time,” which are not a real thing), the real Dial is now considered to be the world’s first computer — so advanced for its time of origin that some have even argued it “came from an alien spaceship.” (Indiana Jones once saw one of those, so he might be into that theory.)
The fact that this thing from several millennia ago is the one of the ancient ancestors of the same device that enabled Harrison Ford to play his younger self in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny more that makes the Antikythera mechanism worthy of pursuit by Indiana Jones. But if you want to see the real Antikythera mechanism, you don’t need to trot all over the globe. The surviving pieces — along with replicas of what the completed dial may have looked like — are displayed at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, Greece.
Spider-Man Co-Creator Steve Ditko’s Run on Indiana Jones
During the 1980s, Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko contributed artwork to Marvel’s Indiana Jones comic book.
The worst Indiana Jonessequel could have been the best one.
I don’t mean this in a vague woulda-shoulda-coulda sort of way. I mean that the worst Indiana Jones, 2008’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,evolved (or maybe devolved) out of a vastly superior version of the same concept. This iteration of the fourth Indiana Jones — which features nearly all of Crystal Skull’s key characters and settings, along with an identical MacGuffin — was written a few years prior by an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter in close consultation with Steven Spielberg. But it was never produced.
It would have been titled Indiana Jones and the City of the Gods. It was written by Frank Darabont, the screenwriter and director of The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, and later the developer and executive producer of The Walking Dead TV series. In his early days in Hollywood, Darabont worked as a writer on The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, the short-lived television series that revealed Indy’s childhood adventures encountering great figures of history.
When Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was made in 1989, the franchise’s key players — director Spielberg, producer/writer George Lucas, and star Harrison Ford — all assumed itwould conclude the series. But within a few years, all three men were inundated with requests from fans to make another movie. Throughout the 1990s, when Lucas wasn’t work on Star Wars Special Editions or prequels, he tinkered with ideas for a fourth Indiana Jones, and he brought in various co-writers to develop the material with him.
Feeling they had exhausted the 1930s adventure serials milieu that had served as the basis for the original Indiana Jones concept — and recognizing that their leading man was getting older — Lucas felt a fourth movie needed to draw inspiration from a new source. So he relocated the series from the 1930s to the 1950s, and decided that just as the original Indy trilogy borrowed from Saturday matinee action pictures, this fourth Indiana Jones would steal from the pulp fiction of the 1950s: Namely paranoid sci-fi movies about atomic horror and alien menaces. Accordingly, while Lucas cycled through multiple co-writers on the project, he kept instructing them to return to the same batch of ideas: Indiana Jones battling Russians and encountering evidence of alien life amongst ancient civilizations.
Those instructions lead, in 1995, to Jeb Stuart’s Indiana Jones and the Saucer Men From Mars script, which featured some of the same elements that wound up in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull — including Indy surviving a nuclear bomb test by hiding inside a lead-lined refrigerator — but was much more directly about Indy combating aliens and flying saucers. But then Independence Day opened in theaters, and stole the project’s thunder before it got off the ground. At Spielberg’s behest, Lucas tabled the project for a while.
Enter Darabont, who joined the movie in the early 2000s and, according to him, wound up spending an entire year of his life focused on crafting an Indiana Jones script while he “worked very closely with Steven Spielberg.”
“[I] applied all my passion and skill, and gave [Spielberg] a script that he loved,” Darabont later said.
To read this script, is to understand why. (You don’t have to be a crusading archaeologist to find it; just Google the title and it comes right up.) What is fascinating about Darabont’s Indiana Jones and the City of the Gods screenplay is not just how good it is — and it is great – but how much better it is than Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (at least on paper) with an almost identical batch of story and thematic elements.
Here are some of the most interesting differences between the two…
The Greatest Indiana Jones Movie That Was Never Made
A few years before Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was released, Frank Darabont wrote a very similar (but vastly superior) script called Indiana Jones and the City of the Gods. Here are some of its most notable differences from the version that was made.
Indiana Jones and the City of the Gods is a great script. So why didn’t Lucas, Spielberg, and Ford make it?
According to Darabont, Spielberg wanted to. Years later, Darabont said Spielberg “was ready to shoot it … it was going to be his next film. He told me it was the best script he’d read since Raiders of the Lost Ark. That’s a quote, and I’ll always treasure it.”
Lucas, however, had reservations. “George Lucas read it, didn’t like it, and threw ice water on the whole thing,” Darabont recalled. “The project went down in flames. Steven and I looked like accident victims the day we got that call. I certainly don’t blame Steven for it. He wasn’t in a position to overrule George, and wouldn’t have overruled him even if he could. He and George have been close friends for a long time, and they’ve had an agreement for years that no Indiana Jones film will ever get made unless they both completely agreed on the script. It was just such an awful surprise, after all my hopes and effort.”
Darabont also said that the failure of City of the Gods was “emotionally devastating” and called it a “main reason” he stopped doing work-for-hire writing gigs and began to focus entirely on projects he could control. So not only did we lose out on a potentially great Indiana Jones sequel, we also missed out on other scripts Darabont might have written afterwards. Instead they remain lost forever, like the Ark of the Covenant in an enormous Army warehouse filled with unmarked crates.
12 Surprising Character Cameos In Disney Movies You Might Have Missed
These iconic Disney characters showed up in other Disney movies — did you spot them?
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is the fourth Indiana Jones sequel — at least the fourth movie sequel. Cinema’s most famous archaeologist has been the subject of an enormous number of projects in other media, designed to keep his story going in between big-screen installments. He was the star of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles on television, and the hero of a series of acclaimed computer games including Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. Indy also stars in at least a dozen novels, and he’s been turned into several theme park rides, including Disneyland’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Forbidden Eye.
Since the earliest days of his development, Indiana Jones has also been tied to comics. Some of the most important pieces of concept art for the character were painted by Jim Steranko, the legendary artist behind Marvel’s first Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. series. Later, comics then became like a second home to Indy, although some of his illustrated adventures there have already begun to slip into obscurity.
For example: Few realize that Steve Ditko, the mercurial and intensely private co-creator of Spider-Man, had one of his longest post-Spidey runs at Marvel on an Indiana Jones series.
Spider-Man Co-Creator Steve Ditko’s Run on Indiana Jones
During the 1980s, Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko contributed artwork to Marvel’s Indiana Jones comic book.
Indiana Jones fans have talked for years about trying to track down the unpublished 35th issue of The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones. While there are hints a story was already in production prior to the book’s cancelation, if any pages were illustrated for it by Ditko, they have never been published. If any of Further Adventures #35 exist, they remain another dusty artifact lost to history, like the Ark of the Covenant or the Holy Grail.
Futuristic Sci-Fi Movies That Are Now Set In The Past
When these sci-fi movies came out, they offered predictions for the future of society — years later, they’re officially set in the past.
The following post contains SPOILERS for The Flash. At least for the version playing in our universe.
At this point, I think most audiences have seen enough multiverse movies to understand that each one comes with a set of rules. They intuit that these movies exist in a reality where there are multiple versions of famous characters. Sometimes, those characters are physically identical — like the variants of Doctor Strange in Multiverse of Madness all played by Benedict Cumberbatch.Sometimes, the characters can look a little bit different; Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield, and Tom Holland all have roughly the same height and build, but you could pick each of them out of a lineup in Spider-Man: No Way Home without any confusion.
But The Flash features a variation of at least one character that’s so jarring it’s a little bit confusing. In its initial universe (known to extremely formal nerds as the “DC Extended Universe”), Batman looks like Ben Affleck, a ruggedly handsome, brown-haired, middle-aged billionaire.
Then Ezra Miller’s Flash goes back in time to his own childhood, and saves his mother (María Verdú) from dying. When he returns to the present, she is still alive, and his home life is happy — but the rest of the world is in deep trouble. The Justice League no longer exists, and General Zod just arrived to conquer the planet. With nowhere else to turn, Flash turns to a retired Batman — only this guy doesn’t look like Ben Affleck, he looks like Michael Keaton, the man who played Batman more than 30 years ago — and who is technically a senior citizen, along with the gray hair and wrinkles to match. (Ben Affleck is 50; Michael Keaton is 71.)
It’s easy to understand how a small change to the past could have enormous consequences to the future. (Remove even one consequential person from the world — Abraham Lincoln — and all of history gets rewritten.) But again, those consequences are on the future. Flash’s changes in the past take place about 15 years ago — after Ben Affleck’s Batman would have been born as, y’know, Ben Affleck. In his timeline, he might have already been Batman at that point!
Even if we accept that Flash’s mom not dying rippled out and affected the world in enormous ways, they seemingly would not turn a 50 year old man into a 70 year old one. How could a woman’s life or death in, say, 2005 affect whether a baby was born in, say, 1945 or 1965?
The Flash wonders the same thing. Keaton’s Bruce Wayne explains it all to him using a bowl of spaghetti.
This is DC’s multiverse, not Marvel’s or Sony’s, and they’re playing by their own rules. Keaton says some people (like Doc Brown, along with the folks who make those other multiverse movies) think of the multiverse as branches in time. Someone travels to the past and changes something — like whether the Flash’s mom lives or dies — and from that point on, events differ. To illustrate that example, he takes two pieces of uncooked spaghetti and holds them together. Then he places a finger in the middle of the two pieces and stretches one spaghetti strand away from the other. That’s a branch in time.
But time, says Keaton’s Batman, is not linear. (Are you going to argue with him? He’s Batman!) He says that when you reshape a point in history, it impacts not only what will occur after it but what has already occurred before it. He illustrates this idea by taking his two pieces of spaghetti and rotating them so they only touch in the middle, like an intersection between two streets.
Keaton doesn’t explain how the past was refashioned so that Bruce Wayne is born 20 years earlier, or why he now looks like the dude from Johnny Dangerously instead of the guy from Good Will Hunting. But, then, how could he? Keaton’s Batman has no idea how it happened. And ultimately those specifics are kind of unimportant. What is important is the principles of time travel logic. And those he lays out clearly.
The other way you could think about all of this are to imagine the way Flash travels through time as a pebble being dropped into the surface of calm water. The pebble causes a ripple, and that ripple expands out in every direction, not just one. And so when the Flash is dropped into the moment in the past when his mother was killed, and he prevents her death, it affects all of time in every direction. And somehow that transforms Ben Affleck into Michael Keaton. To figure out any more than that from just The Flash, you’d have to be the world’s greatest detective.
The Weirdest Marvel Comics Ever Published
Of all the thousands of comics published by Marvel, these are far and away the strangest.
It took 13 years for James Cameron to make Avatar: The Way of Water. It only took me six months to find Avatar: The Way of Water cereal. So the way I see it, I’m actually ahead of schedule.
“Pandora Flakes,” as the box calls them, were introduced last year during the frenzy of hype surrounding the long-awaited Avatarsequel. For whatever reason, I never saw them in any of my local grocery stores during The Way of Water’s theatrical release. But last weekend, I popped my head into a dollar store that was going out of business, and wouldn’t you know it? There, amongst the discounted soaps and knockoff toys, was a few boxes of Pandora Flakes (of Corn). Best of all: They were marked down to $1.99.
Two bucks for Avatar cereal that won’t technically expire for three more months? How could I not try them?
And so today I traveled — spiritually, via Kellogg’s breakfast cereal, if not literally — to Pandora, to sample the local alien cuisine. Which, it turns out, is a standard box of Frosted Flakes (of Corn) with additional “Blueberry Flavored Blue Moons.” Somewhat alarmingly, the box claims that it is “Naturally Flavored With Other Natural Flavors. Why doesn’t calling it “Naturally Flavored” cover all natural flavors? Why repeat the words “natural flavors” twice? I’m honestly a little afraid to find out, lest I chicken out and decide not to put this rapidly decaying cereal into my body.
Just looking at this product, it’s clear this is a low-effort movie tie-in; they didn’t even color the standard Frosted Flakes (of Corn) blue; they just mixed in some blueberry moon pieces and called it a day. They had 13 years between Avatar and Avatar: The Way of Water to engineer a true Pandoran breakfast food. Surely Jake Sully and his family eat much more exotic cereal than this.
As for the taste, well, I documented my first bites of Pandora Flakes on Instagram, for the whole world (and Pandora) to enjoy:
Years ago, I wrote a history of movie-related breakfast cereals, from C-3PO’s to Ice Age: Continental Drift Cinnamon Cereal. Pandora Flakes would certainly not rate amongst the finest achievements of this niche culinary sub-category. (They’re no E.T. Cereal, that’s for darn sure.) But at least as of this writing, I’m not violently ill and my skin hasn’t turned blue. So that’s a win in my book.
Next time: I say Kellogg’s should go weirder. Instead of just adding new pieces to an existing cereal, they should make something totally bizarre. This is supposedly a cereal from an alien planet! They would not eat frosted flakes (of corn) on Pandora; they have no corn! So go for broke. How about breakfast pasta? Why not make cereal that’s flavored with Tulkun brain juice? Or cereal with the milk already packaged inside? Do something wildly outside of the box. And then keep getting weirder and weirder with new flavors every year between now and 2031 when Avatar 5 will supposedly be released.
Popular Movies That Were Supposed To Be Way Darker
Things might have turned out differently for these hit films if they’d stuck with their original (darker) scripts.
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts represents a significant turning point in the Transformers franchise — and it marks the first meeting between the movie version of the Transformers and their counterparts from the old Beast Wars cartoon, the Maximals like Optimus Primal, Airazor, and Cheetor. But the film’s ending also sets up an even bigger meeting of Hasbro properties.
The film’s surprising finale involves Rise of the Beasts’ human hero, Noah Diaz (played by Anthony Ramos) on a job interview where it turns out he is actually being recruited to join … G.I. Joe, another one of Hasbro’s signature toy properties (turned movie franchises) of the 1980s. That scene would seemingly set up a massive Transformers vs. G.I. Joe movie at some point in the future.
In an interview with Geek Culture, Transformers producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura talked about the surprising twist, which he credited to Rise of the Beasts director Steven Caple Jr. As he put it:
[Caple] very early on brought up G.I. Joe and my reaction was ‘Listen, we’ve thought about it. I’m very open; how do you think it works?’ And he wasn’t sure at that point. So what happened was as we were developing the script, and including his world point-of-view, how he looked at the Beasts, for instance, because he grew up with them. He had a very specific thing. What happened was, we kept coming back to G.I. Joe.
Di Bonaventura said the main hurdle to launching this crossover was figuring out how G.I. Joe would know about the Transformers in a world where they have consistently emphasized throughout the franchise that no one knows the Autobots exist on Earth.
“Why would any organization know? And actually what was cool about it was we suddenly went ‘Because they’re G.I. Joe! They would know,’” di Bonaventura explained. He also admitted that this explanation is “not entirely logical, but it’s emotionally logical.”
Even if this Transformers vs G.I. Joe movie comes together down the line, it won’t be the first time the two longtime Hasbro properties have met. Hasbro itself has made a number of G.I. Joe vehicles that transform into Transformer characters, and both Marvel and IDW have released their own Transformers/G.I. Joe crossover comics. Still, a massive $100 million+ crossover film would be a much bigger endeavor than anything the company has ever attempted before.
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is now playing in theaters. You can watch di Bonaventura’s full comments on a potential G.I. Joe and Transformers crossover below.
The Weirdest Marvel Comics Ever Published
Of all the thousands of comics published by Marvel, these are far and away the strangest.
Spider-Man debuted in the pages of the Marvel comic book Amazing Fantasy #15. The issue sold well enough to spin the Web-Slinger off into his own series, The Amazing Spider-Man. In its debut issue — Spider-Man’s second-ever appearance — he tried to join a superhero team.
It didn’t go very well.
Desperate for cash to help his dear Aunt May, Peter Parker thinks he might be able to get a salaried gig with the Fantastic Four. Spidey has no way to contact the F.F., so he breaks into their headquarters, which sparks a fight with the group. Despite Peter’s inexperience and youth, he manages to hold his own against the team. So then he asks for a job, at which point they inform him that the Fantastic Four is actually a non-profit organization; they don’t get paid by the government for the work, and whatever money they do earn funds their research and elaborate equipment. Crestfallen and broke as ever, Spidey sulks away from the Baxter Building.
It would be years before Spider-Man even attempted to join another superhero team. Through all of that time, Spider-Man remained Marvel’s ultimate loner. That suited the stories stories Stan Lee, Gerry Conway, Roger Stern, and so many other Marvel writers wanted to tell; melodramatic action tales about a confused kid who felt like an outsider everywhere he went.
Hunted by the police, hounded by J. Jonah Jameson and his Daily Bugle newspaper, Spidey could never catch a break, and had very little in the way of a support system to deal with his problems. Those who loved him as Peter Parker didn’t know his secret; those who fought alongside him as Spider-Man had no clue what he was dealing with as a high school student. Everywhere he turned, his isolation deepened.
For hundreds of Spider-Man comics, that was how the story went: Peter Parker struggling to maintain his double life, and often finding that any success in one identity directly hurt the other. You could practically set your watch to it. Oh, is it the first Wednesday of the month? Well then Peter is going to have to stand up Gwen Stacy in order to save New York City from the Sandman, and so on. That was the way things were done, because that’s the way things had always been done.
That’s changed in recent years. In 2005, Spider-Man became a full-fledged member of the Avengers. A few years after that, the Fantastic Four finally let him in to the group as well. (I’m not sure if he ever got that salary.) For a while, Peter Parker revealed his secret identity to the world; a couple years after that he became a world-famous scientist and the head of his own multinational corporation.
And little by little, Marvel Comics started to fill up with dozens of alternate versions of Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Spider-Gwen, Spider-Woman, Spider-Man, Noir, another Spider-Woman, Spider-Girl, Spider-Man India, a third Spider-Woman, Spiders-Man (a bunch of spiders that think they are a human being), Spider-Ma’am (Aunt May, bitten by a radioactive spider), and even a gigantic Spider-Man dinosaur named Spider-Rex. Marvel began publishing a series of Spider-Verse comics, which in turn inspired the animated movies Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and now Across the Spider-Verse.
Into the Spider-Verse played with that notion, drawn from early Amazing Spider-Man comics, of a “one and only Spider-Man.” That’s how Peter Parker (voiced by Chris Pine) introduces himself in an opening voiceover. Later, he discovers that Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) has been bitten by a radioactive spider and gained similar powers. Soon additional heroes like Spider-Ham and Peni Parker show up to help Miles in his quest to defeat the Kingpin.
Each one of these Spider-Men (and hams) previously thought they were the only Spider-Man alive. Into the Spider-Verse’s story about this group of outsiders collectively finding common ground was a lovely metaphor for the way so many of people feel isolated and alone in the real world, only to find that sense of belonging they’re searching for in communities like comic-book fandom.
Across the Spider-Verse complicates that lovely, simple message by actively questioning that sense of community. In the new film, Miles meets a whole “Spider Society” of heroes from across the Spider-Verse, led by Oscar Isaac’s Miguel O’Hara. This futuristic Spider-Man has taken it upon himself to protect the entirety of the multiverse from “anomalies” that hop between worlds and threaten to destroy individual dimensions. Miles is desperate to join the group; Miguel staunchly refuses to let him in.
The Spider-Society concept is not that all that dissimilar from the multiversal stories currently unfolding in Marvel Cinematic Universe titles like Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness or Spider-Man: No Way Home, a film that Miguel actually alludes to in one of his lines of dialogue. But when Miguel talks about saving the “Web of Life and Destiny” that makes up the multiverse, he doesn’t mention “sacred timelines” or preserving history.
He calls himself the guardian of “the canon.”
As Miguel describes it, the canon is what connects all of these various Spider-Men from multiple dimensions. While each Spider-Man has a unique story, they all share certain important “chapters.” Stories that supposedly “need” to happen to preserve the structural integrity of a dimension are referred to as “canon events.”
The example Miguel gives is called “ASM-90,” in which a police captain close to Spider-Man dies heroically, lending even sadder dimensions to Spidey’s already tragic existence. The ASM-90 designation refers to The Amazing Spider-Man #90, written by Stan Lee and illustrated by Gil Kane and John Romita Sr. In that issue, Captain George Stacy — the father of Peter Parker’s girlfriend, Gwen Stacy — is killed saving a little boy from falling debris during a fight between Spider-Man and Doctor Octopus.
As it turns out, Miles’ dad Jefferson (Brian Tyree Henry) is about to be made police captain — and when that happens, the evil Spot (Jason Schwartzman) is going to kill him. Miguel and his Spider-Society — including some of Miles’ close friends from Into the Spider-Verse like Peter B. Parker — know this is going to happen, but they refuse to stop it because, according to Miguel, Jefferson’s death is one of the “canon events” that must occur in a Spider-Man’s story. Disrupting it could break the canon, and cause Miles’ entire universe to unravel. (“Break enough canons, save enough captains,” Miguel tells Miles, “and we could lose everything.”)
Miles refuses to sit by watch his dad die, setting up Across the Spider-Verse’s big third-act chase and driving a wedge between the Spider-Men that will continue into the upcoming sequel, Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse.
Miguel’s explanation of the canon’s rules is informed by personal experience. He attempted to insert himself into a universe where an alternate Miguel O’Hara had died, leaving behind a family — a subtle echo of the Kingpin’s motivation from Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse to find alternate reality versions of his dead loved ones. Miguel meant no harm, but his selfish actions inadvertently caused the collapse of the entire dimension.
Or so Miguel believes. It’s not entirely clear how Miguel can be so sure his relatively benign choice led to a universe’s destruction, a choice that makes him seem a little overzealous in quest to protect the sanctity of this suppose canon. With an entire Spider-Verse movie still to go, I have a feeling Miguel will eventually realize he’s not quite as responsible for all those deaths as he believes — or at least that Miles will teach him that there is more than one way for a Spider-Man’s story to unfold.
That presumption of a “canon” that must be defended at all costs — and with it, a certain set of narrative prescripts that must occur in order for someone to be considered a “true” Spider-Man — is far and away the most interesting aspect of Across the Spider-Verse. It’s also the one that welcomes the most interpretations.
One could argue that Miguel and his Spider-Society enforcing the rules of what is “supposed” to happen in a Spider-Man story is analogous to the self-policing that goes on in the angrier corners of niche fandoms — the dark side of the communal allegory from Into the Spider-Verse — whose members sometimes lash out at films, filmmakers, or other fans that they perceive have not followed the “correct” way to make or appreciate a new version of a classic intellectual property they love. Miguel and his team pursuing Miles through the futuristic Nueva York is like an internet mob trying to chase off “fake fans” it feels have not earned the right to join them brought to unsettling life.
You can also read Miles’ fight against Spider-Society and their emphasis on rigid, well-worn storytelling tropes as one big parable about the struggle to make boundary-pushing art within the confines of the conservative studio system, with Miles and his allies refusing to acquiesce to the folks in charge of “the canon” (i.e. studio executives) who only want to recreate what’s worked in the past and are terrified of new ideas. “Everyone keeps telling me how my story is supposed to go,” Miles tells Miguel in their big confrontation, before adding, “Nah. Imma do my own thing.”
In other words, the story of Miles fighting to live his own life isn’t all that different from the story of Across theSpider-Verse’screative team pushing to tell Miles’ story in a unique way. (The presence of controversial artist Jeff Koons’ work in the prologue — along with Spider-Gwen and Vulture’s argument about whether Koons’ balloon animals constitute true art — really enhances this reading.)
I think there some legitimate complaints you can make about Across the Spider-Verse. It’s a 130minute long half of a story, and it feels like it. I also think the subtext about protecting the legacy of Spider-Man stories would hit even harder if the guy in charge of the Spider-Society was an older version of Peter Parker rather than Miguel O’Hara.
Still, I find it very difficult to dislike a movie that not only looks as phenomenal as Across the Spider-Verse looks, but is as thoughtful about its own design as this one. There probably hasn’t been a sequel this interested in (and self-referentially engaged with) the process of its own creation since Ocean’s 12, another film about characters upending its audience’s expectations while forced by a supremely skilled adversary to recreate and outdo their first movie’s success. (“We’re forcing it,” George Clooney’s Danny Ocean mumbles to Brad Pitty’s Rusty Ryan during one of Ocean’s 12’s many metatextual moments.)
Nobody in Across the Spider-Verse feels like they are forcing it. But it does seem like the filmmakers are openly encouraging the audience to consider how this Spider-Man movie is different than others — and why some of the characters find that difference so dangerous.
Across the Spider-Verse: The Coolest Easter Eggs
The best Marvel and Spider-Man references in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse you might have missed.
The following post contains several 42-related spoilers for the Spider-Verse movies.
There were 42s all over Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. There was a 42 written on the back of the spider that bit Miles Morales and gave him the powers of the ultimate Spider-Man. There were 42s hidden in backgrounds of numerous scenes. When Miles fell off a building and banged into a sign on the way down, the numbers “4” and “2” fell precisely so they made a 42 on the ground.
42s were everywhere in that movie. But Into the Spider-Verse never fully explained what all those 42s meant. The viewer could guess, but the filmmakers never made their intentions explicit — until the sequel.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Versefinally reveals the truth about the mystery of the 42s. It’s not just a random number, it’s not just an homage to baseball great Jackie Robinson, it’s not a reference to a specific issue of a Spider-Man comic meant as an Easter egg. It’s actually the number of one of the many Earths that make up the Spider-Verse. And for Miles Morales, it’s probably the most important Earth other than this own.
That’s because Earth-42 is the alternate reality where the spider that bit him came from. The spider was plucked from its home dimension by the scientists at Alchemax, using the supercollider that was the focal point of Into the Spider-Verse. In that movie, the Kingpin is using this experimental machine to try to find an alternate reality where his wife and daughter are still alive. When Peter Parker gets shoved into the collider, it inadvertently drags the other Spider-Heroes like Spider-Gwen, Spider-Man Noir, and Spider-Ham out of their home dimensions and into Miles’.
When you think about it, that explanation was always the most obvious one. In Marvel Comics, alternate realities are differentiated with numeric designations. The home of Marvel‘s original Spider-Man — along with Marvel Comics’ classic Fantastic Four, X-Men, and Avengers — is known as Earth-616. The world where Tom Holland’s Peter Parker hangs out with the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is called Earth-199999. Spider-Gwen hails from Earth-65. Miles Morales calls Earth-1610 home. So having the spider with a giant 42 written on its back originate on Earth-42 makes a lot of sense.
At the end of Across the Spider-Verse, when Miles tries to return to his home dimension from the realm of Spider-Man 2099, he’s accidentally sent to Earth-42 by mistake. It turns out to be a bleak reality where there is no Spider-Man — because its radioactive spider wound up biting Miles instead. On Earth-42, Miles’ dad is dead and his Uncle Aaron is still alive, and he works for that dimension’s version of the Prowler: Miles Morales.
As for how Miles will get home, that’s the big mystery that Across the Spider-Verse leaves for the next movie, Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse,to resolve. It’s scheduled to open in theaters on March 29, 2024.
Every Spider-Man Movie, Ranked From Worst to Best
With great power comes great Spider-Man movies. (Sometimes.)
Harrison Ford has played Indiana Jones for more than 40 years, establishing the archeologist as a legendary hero in the process. Often forgotten in his history portraying the character is a brief television appearance in 1993.
After the initial Indiana Jones trilogy – Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) – had come to a close, George Lucas decided to create a prequel television series designed around the character’s early adventures.
The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles debuted on ABC in 1992. Corey Carrier, played a pre-teen Indy, Sean Patrick Flanery played the heroic archaeologist during his 20s, and George Hall often appeared as the 90-year-old version of Indy to serve as narrator and bookend the episodes.
The series had a decidedly family-friendly feel. Indy still engaged in hair-raising adventures, but he indirectly gave younger viewers a history lesson as he interacted with famous figures of the past.
Despite debuting with strong ratings and earning several Emmy Awards, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles suffered waning popularity by its second season. Desperate to revive public interest, producers were able to lure Ford back into his famous role for a single episode.
Watch Harrison Ford’s Scenes From ‘The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles’
Airing March 13, 1993, the episode “Young Indiana Jones and the Mystery of the Blues” finds Ford (as Indy) hiding out in a snow-covered Wyoming cabin. He stumbles upon an old saxophone, which leads him to reminisce about his adventures in Prohibition-era Chicago.
The episode then goes into a flashback, leaving Ford behind. Indiana (now played by Flanery) learns jazz from Sidney Bechet, gets caught up in a murder investigation alongside his roommate, Eliot Ness and encounters a young freelance journalist at the Chicago Tribune named Ernest Hemingway.
Several future-familiar faces appear in the episode, including Jane Krakowski (30 Rock, Ally McBeal, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt), Nicholas Turturro (Blue Bloods, NYPD Blue) and Frank Vincent (The Sopranos). Still, it’s Ford’s star power that steals the attention, even though he appears in only the opening and closing scenes that bookend the show. The actor’s appearance is also notably different than any other time he played Indy, as Ford sports a full beard that he’d grown for the film The Fugitive, which was shooting at the same time
Thanks to the star’s appearance, “Young Indiana Jones and the Mystery of the Blues” gave the series a brief ratings boost. The episode saw an increase of more than 10 million viewers compared to the previous one, but the success was fleeting. With production costs high and viewership low, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles aired its final episode in July 1993 (though a few made-for-TV movies would follow).
Following the cameo, Ford wouldn’t don Indy’s fedora and bullwhip again until 2008 for the much-maligned fourth film of the franchise, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Interestingly, the actor’s brief 1993 return to Indiana Jones marked an incredibly rare occurrence: Ford’s appearance was his only scripted TV credit across more than 40 years (not counting voiceover work), a streak that ended in 2022 with his role in the drama 1923.
If heaven exists, I’d like to think it looks like Kim’s Video.
The legendary New York City video store, founded by businessman Yongman Kim, operated numerous locations around Manhattan from the late 1980s to the 2010s, but the best and biggest was the one on St. Mark’s Place, also known as “Mondo Kim’s,” which was three floors of pop-culture nirvana. The ground level was a record shop; the second floor sold movies and TV shows. The top level was the mother lode: A enormous video store with tens of thousands of titles — some of which were incredibly rare.
Besides the snobbiness of its clerks (which I know from first-hand experience, as both a Kim’s customer and an employee for about a year in the mid-2000s), Kim’s was best known for its mind-blowing rental selection — and for the hyper-specific way it categorized its movies, which were divided up into hundreds of sections. Most video stores had areas devoted to horror, but how many had 18 different horror sections, including shelves dedicated to Frankenstein, Mummies, Stephen King movies, and “Little Bastards” (i.e. scary movies featuring creepy kids)?
While all the Kim’s outlets went belly up by 2014, the massive collection from Mondo Kim’s was recently rescued (from a tiny town in Italy … it’s a long story) by the Alamo Drafthouse, which now offers free rentals from the Kim’s library at its Lower Manhattan theater. At the grand opening of the new Kim’s last year, guests were given a goodie bag packaged inside an old VHS clamshell box. The back of the case lists all 461 of Kim’s genre categories in alphabetical order.
I recently came across my Kim’s clamshell, and I realized: For video store and physical media aficionados, this is kind of a valuable document. I’ve tried looking up Kim’s genres before, but there isn’t a comprehensive list online, at least that I can find. So I’m reprinting it here. Take note that while the box claims it contains “461 lurid genres!” I only count 454; the listing mistakenly includes several entries twice. But who am I to argue with the greatest video store in history?
Kim’s Video Genres
’80s Teen Classics Action-Asia Actionne Rigatoni (Italian Action) Action Action-Comic Books Action-Italy Action-Spy Adventure Adventure-Disaster Adventure-Tarzan Animation Animation-Adult Animation-Pixar Anime Art Arts Australia/Ozploitation Blaxploitation Comedy Comedy-Abbott and Costello Comedy-Classic Comedy-Early Cinema/Silent Comedy-European
Dir: Carpenter, John Dir: Cassavetes, John Dir: Castellari, Enzo Dir: Castle, William Dir: Chabrol, Claude Dir: Chang Cheh Dir: Chaplin, Charles Dir: Chen Kaige Dir: Clair, Rene Dir: Clark, Bob Dir: Clement, Rene Dir: Clouzot, Henri-Georges Dir: Coen Brothers Dir: Cohen, Larry Dir: Coppola, Francis Ford Dir: Corbucci, Sergio Dir: Corman, Roger Dir: Cox, Alex Dir: Craven, Wes Dir: Cronenberg, David Dir: Cukor, George Dir: Curtiz, Michael Dir: D’Amato, Joe Dir: Dante, Joe Dir: Dardennes Brothers Dir: Dassin, Jules Dir: De La Iglesia, Alex Dir: De Ossorio, Amando Dir: De Palma, Brian Dir: De Sica, Vittorio Dir: Del Toro, Guillermo Dir: DeMille, Cecil B. Dir: Demme, Jonathan Dir: Demy, Jacques Dir: Denis, Claire Dir: Di Leo, Fernando Dir: Dmytryk, Edward Dir: Donen, Stanley Dir: Dreyer, Carl Theodor Dir: Eastwood, Clint Dir: Edwards, Blake Dir: Egoyan, Atom Dir: Eisenstein, Sergei Dir: Fassbender, Rainer Dir: Fellini, Federico Dir: Ferrara, Abel Dir: Ferreri, Marco Dir: The Findlays
Dir: Ford, John Dir: Fosse, Bob Dir: Franco, Jess Dir: Frankenheimer, John Dir: Frears, Stephen Dir: Friedkin, William Dir: Fukasaku, Kinji Dir: Fulci, Lucio Dir: Fuller, Samuel Dir: Gance, Abel Dir: Gilliam, Terry Dir: Godard, Jean-Luc Dir: Gordon, Stuart Dir: Gosha, Hideo Dir: Gray, F. Gary Dir: Green, David Gordon Dir: Greenaway, Peter Dir: Griffith, D.W. Dir: Haneke, Michael Dir: Harrington, Curtis Dir: Hartley, Hal Dir: Hathaway, Henry Dir: Hawks, Howard Dir: Haynes, Todd Dir: Hellman, Monte Dir: Herzog, Werner Dir: Hill, Jack Dir: Hitchcock, Alfred Dir: Hooper, Tobe Dir: Hou Hsiao-Hsien Dir: Hu, King Dir: Hung, Sammo Dir: Huston, John Dir: Ichikawa, Kon Dir: Jackson, Peter Dir: Jaglom, Henry Dir: Jarman, Derek Dir: Jarmusch, Jim Dir: Jeunet & Caro Dir: Jewison, Norman Dir: Jodorowsky, Alejandro Dir: Kaurismaki, Aki Dir: Kazan, Elia Dir: KiaroStami, Abbas Dir: Kieslowski, Krzysztof Dir: Kim Ki-duk Dir: Kitano, Takeshi Dir: Kopple, Barbara Dir: Korine, Harmony Dir: Kramer, Stanley Dir: Kubrick, Stanley Dir: Kurosawa, Akira Dir: Kurosawa, Kiyoshi Dir: Lang, Fritz Dir: Larraz, Jose Ramon Dir: Lean, David Dir: Leconte, Patrice Dir: Lee, Ang
Dir: Lee, Spike Dir: Leigh, Mike Dir: Lelouch, Claude Dir: Lenzi, Umberto Dir: Leone, Sergio Dir: Lester, Richard Dir: Levinson, Barry Dir: Lewis, Herschell Gordon Dir: Linklater, Richard Dir: Loach, Ken Dir: Losey, Joseph Dir: Lubitsch, Ernst Dir: Lumet, Sidney Dir: Lynch, David Dir: Maddin, Guy Dir: Malle, Louis Dir: Mamet, David Dir: Mann, Anthony Dir: Margheriti, Antonio Dir: Martino, Sergio Dir: Maysles Brothers Dir: Melville, Jean-Pierre Dir: Merchant & Ivory Dir: Metzger, Radley Dir: Meyer, Russ Dir: Miike, Takashi Dir: Milestone, Lewis Dir: Miller, George Dir: Milligan, Andy Dir: Minnelli, Vicente Dir: Misumi, Kenji Dir: Miyazaki, Hayao Dir: Mizoguchi, Kenji Dir: Moore, Michael Dir: Morris, Errol Dir: Murnau, F.W. Dir: Nair, Mira Dir: Nichols, Mike Dir: Nolan, Christopher Dir: Ozon, Francois Dir: Ozu, Yasujiro Dir: Pal, George Dir: Park Chan-Wook Dir: Parker, Alan Dir: Parks, Gordon Dir: Pasolini, Pier Paolo Dir: Peckinpah, Sam Dir: Penn, Arthur Dir: Perry, Tyler Dir: Plympton, Bill Dir: Polanski, Roman Dir: Pollack, Sydney Dir: Powell, Michael
Dir: Raimi, Sam Dir: Rankin & Bass Dir: Ray, Nicholas Dir: Ray, Satyajit Dir: Reed, Carol Dir: Resnais, Alain Dir: Richardson, Tony Dir: Riefenstahl, Leni Dir: Rivette, Jacques Dir: Roeg, Nicolas Dir: Rohmer, Eric Dir: Rollin, Jean Dir: Romero, George Dir: Rossellini, Roberto Dir: Rozema, Patricia Dir: Rudolph, Alan Dir: Russell, Ken Dir: Sarno, Joe Dir: Saura, Carlos Dir: Sayles, John Dir: Schlesinger, John Dir: Schlondorff, Volker Dir: Scorsese, Martin Dir: Scott, Ridley Dir: Scott, Tony Dir: Shinoda, Masahiro Dir: Sidaris, Andy Dir: Siegel, Don Dir: Silver, Joan Micklin Dir: Singleton, John Dir: Sirk, Douglas Dir: Soavi, Michele Dir: Soderbergh, Steven Dir: Sokurov, Aleksandr Dir: Solondz, Todd Dir: Spielberg, Steven Dir: Steckler, Ray Dennis Dir: Stevens, George Dir: Stone, Oliver Dir: Sturges, John Dir: Sturges, Preston Dir: Suzuki, Seijun Dir: Szabo, Istvan Dir: Tarantino, Quentin Dir: Tarkovsky, Andrei Dir: Tarr, Bela
Dir: Tati, Jacques Dir: Tavernier, Bertrand Dir: Taviani Brothers Dir: Techine, Andre Dir: Teshigahara, Hiroshi Dir: To, Johnnie Dir: Tornatore, Giuseppe Dir: Truffaut, Francois Dir: Tsai Ming-liang Dir: Tsui Hark Dir: Tsukamoto, Shinya Dir: Vadim, Roger Dir: Van Sant, Gus Dir: Varda, Agnes Dir: Verhoeven, Paul Dir: Visconti, Luchino Dir: Von Trier, Lars Dir: Wajda, Andrzej Dir: Walsh, Raoul Dir: Warhol & Morrissey Dir: Water, John Dir: Watkins, Peter Dir: Weir, Peter Dir: Welles, Orson Dir: Wenders, Wim Dir: Wilder, Billy Dir: Winterbottom, Michael Dir: Wise, Robert Dir: Wishman, Doris Dir: Wong Kar-wai Dir: Woo, John Dir: Wood, Ed Dir: Wyler, William Dir: Zeffirelli, Franco Dir: Zemeckis, Robert Dir: Zhang Yimou Dir: Zulawski, Andrzej
Disney Documentary Documentary-Biography Documentary-Cinema Documentary-esque Documentary-Mondo Documentary-Nature Documentary-Science Documentary-Sports Documentary-War Drafthouse Films Drama Drama-British Drama-Classic Drama-Indie Drama-International Drama-Romance Early Cinema/Silent Emanuellesploitation Erotica Experimental Exploitation Exploitation-Asia Exploitation-Biker Exploitation-Drugs Exploitation-Tough Women Family Family-Muppets Fantasy Fantasy-Harryhausen, Ray Fantasy-International Fantasy-Jungle Thrills Film Noir Film Shorts Found Footage Party Genre Giant Bikini Lady Covers
For the first time in his 50+ year career in Hollywood, Arnold Schwarzenegger is starring in a fictional TV series. In Netflix’sFUBAR, Schwarzenegger plays Luke Brunner, an elite CIA operative who has kept his professional life secret from his family for decades. Now on the verge of retirement, Luke makes a shocking discovery: His daughter Emma (Top Gun: Maverick’s Monica Barbaro) is also a spy working for the CIA. And she just learned he’s a spy too. After a lifetime of deception, they have to figure out how to work together in order to take down a bad guy from Luke’s past before he can get his hands on a doomsday weapon.
So far, I’ve watched six of FUBAR’s eight episodes. I like it; it’s got witty dialogue, a good cast, and fun cliffhangers — something that’s sorely lacking from a lot of TV shows in the streaming age. In its best moments, FUBAR reminded me of a more comedic take on Alias, another spy series about a father and daughter working for the same secret government agency, navigating their complex personal issues as they travel the world stopping terrorists.
FUBAR doesn’t have the large-scale action of Schwarzenegger’s classic ’90s movies; it is a TV show, after all, and it’s scaled accordingly. (In that regard, it also reminds of Alias, which had frequent set pieces, and also a lot of talky scenes featuring the characters wearing disguises, executing elaborate deceptions, and attending briefing meetings.) But what really appeals to me about FBUAR as a longtime Schwarzenegger fan is the way it draws heavy inspiration from both his professional and private lives.
I have long maintained that Arnold is a serious filmmaker who has spent his career sneaking personal ideas and deeply-felt themes into his “dumb” action movies. The movies he made after his time serving as the Governor of California, might not have been huge hits, but they’re amongst the most interesting things he’s ever made, and they brought the subtext that was buried in a lot of his earlier work right up to the surface. And FUBAR continues that tradition in a major way.
With all of that in mind, I’ve created a guide to the show, one that examines how it incorporates Schwarzenegger’s most famous characters, and even his own life story, into the character of Luke Brunner. Yeah, FUBAR is an entertaining series that should please action fans. But if you want to look at it a little more closely than that, you might be surprised by how much you find…
The Schwarzenegger Fan’s Guide to FUBAR
All the references to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s life and career hidden in his Netflix series FUBAR.
FUBAR is now streaming on Netflix.
Every Arnold Schwarzenegger Movie, Ranked From Worst to Best
Bitten by a radioactive hamburger bun, student Peter Parker gained the proportionate strength and agility of a cow! Armed with his wonderous soda-shooters, the reluctant superhero struggles with sinister super-villains, making ends meet, and maintaining some semblance of a normal life! Stan Lee Presents: The Amazing Spider-Burger.
Or something like that; it’s been a while since I read Amazing Fantasy #15. But I have to assume that somewhere in there was some sort of role for a strange-looking burger, because that is precisely how Burger King is promoting the new Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Versefilm: With a “Spider-Verse Whopper” that comes on a bright red bun topped with black sesame seeds.
It all sounds like some sort of rejected storyline from Skrull Kill Krew to me, but I ate it anyway. Because that is what I do. Any time a major Hollywood production teams up with a fast food chain (or fast casual chain, I’m not picky) for some sort of tie-in movie food. I try it. All of it.
In the past, that has led to some digestively unadvisable imbroglios, like the time I ate the entire Fantastic Four menu at Denny’s, and the time I ate the entire Addams Family menu at IHOP. (My stomach was mysterious and spooky for days after that one.) Mercifully, Burger King created just two items for Across the Spider-Verse: The Spider-Verse Whopper and the Spider-Verse Sundae. So in theory, this shouldn’t be too painful. But let’s find out together, shall we?
I Ate Burger King’s Red Spider-Verse Whopper
In honor of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Burger King has a new “Spider-Verse Whopper” and a “Spider-Verse Sundae.” I ate them. This is my story.
I spared you from watching me eat the entire thing, but here’s a video of my initial reaction to the Spider-Verse Whopper (dutifully shot by intrepid photojournalist Jordan Hoffman):
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse opens in theaters on June 2. The Burger King Spider-Verse Whopper is available for a “limited time.” Presumably that means until they run out of red buns.
Movie Theater Horror Stories Involving Smelly Food
You’re not supposed to sneak food into the movie theater, but sometimes satisfying your hunger is more important than following the rules. Here are some real-life theater food horror stories from social media. (The names have been removed to protect the guilty.)
The poster for Fast X is an enormous web of heads and torsos; Vin Diesel is the biggest and most prominent, of course, but around him stand 13 other big-time stars. A couple of the faces are newcomers to the franchise, like Jason Momoa who is the Fast & Furious’ latest villain. Other faces, like Michelle Rodriguez and Jordana Brewster, have been appearing in these movies from the beginning — which now makes them 20+ year veterans of the Fastsaga.
Diesel or Rodriguez or both have appeared in all but one of the Fast movies (or all but two if you count the spinoff, Hobbs & Shaw). And through the years, this series has developed an enormous cast of recurring characters. Sung Kang’s Han, for example, debuted in a supporting role in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, and made a big enough impression that he was brought back for the fourth movie, Fast & Furious — even though he had died in Tokyo Drift. Then he came back in Fast Five and Fast & Furious 6, where he died a second time. Then he came back again in F9: The Fast Saga, where it was revealed he had faked his death all along (both times).And he’s back as a key member of Dom’s team once again in Fast X. And that’s just one example!
Almost everyone who appears in a Fast & Furious in a meaningful role winds up hanging around for at least a few movies — almost everyone, and there are exceptions. That’s what this list is about. It contains 15 characters who, for one reason or another, never got to become part of the Fast family. Please note that I did not include any characters who died, because that felt like a fairly reasonable explanation why they did not return for more Fast movies — although, as the Han example proves, death is not particularly meaningful or final in these films.
Fast & Furious Characters Who Only Got One Appearance
Few franchises have a bigger lineup of characters, and a more dense web of relationship between them than Fast & Furious. But these characters are the rare ones who never returned for additional appearances.
Popular Movies That Were Supposed To Be Way Darker
Things might have turned out differently for these hit films if they’d stuck with their original (darker) scripts.
Not all heroes wear capes. Some prefer sleeveless T-shirts.
Take Dominic Toretto, the central protagonist of the Fast & Furiousfranchise, as played by Vin Diesel. When first introduced way back in 2001’s The Fast and the Furious, Dom was a tough street racer and thief. As the years progressed, and the Fast franchise evolved from crime thriller to globetrotting blockbusters, Dom also evolved from canny criminal to master spy, and his physical and mental abilities expanded until he arguably became a superhero in every conceivable way except for having a code name.
(What would Dominic Toretto’s superhero name be? That’s a good question, and I have spent the better part of the last six years thinking about it. I feel like given Dom’s temperament, love of old cars, and tendency to punch through walls with his bare hands, it might just be “Muscle.”)
I would not be the first person to posit that Dominic Toretto is a secret superhero; everyone who’s watched the last couple Fast & Furious movies has recognized his gradual transformation from humble street racer to borderline demigod. But it’s worth noting just how many uncanny magical abilities Dominic Toretto has displayed as the Fast saga enters its two-part finale, starting with 2023’s Fast X. A case could be made that no actual comic-book character other than Superman possess more different individual powers than Dom. And let’s face facts: Superman is more powerful than a locomotive, but has he ever beaten a locomotive in a race? Has he ever jumped a car from one skyscraper to another, and then to a third building? No. No, he has not. Advantage: Dominic Toretto.
Below, I have put together a list of all of Dom’s super powers, starting with the ones that can almost be explained and concluding with the ones that only make sense if Dominic Toretto is some kind of Highlander or something.
All of Dominic Toretto’s Super Powers in Fast & Furious
Dominic Toretto is a superhero. Or possibly an alien. Either way, he’s definitely not human. And here is a list of all of his magical powers.
The following post contains SPOILERS for the post-credits scene of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. The galaxy’s spoilers shall be guarded no one sentence further. My preemptive apologies.
Phew. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 promised to give us one last ride with the title characters — and when the movie is over, that seems true.
To a point.
The Guardians themselves have splintered, with several characters quitting the group and others joining. We almost certainly won’t see this team of Guardians onscreen again. But the trailers for Guardians Vol. 3 really hammered home the idea that one or more of the Guardians might die in the film. Dave Bautista, who plays Drax, has already said he’s ready to hang up his space knives and, Zoe Saldana, who plays Gamora, has made similar statements about her desire to move on from Marvel movies.
Instead, all the Guardians made it through okay — physically, if not emotionally. That includes Peter Quill, the half-Earthman hero played by actor Chris Pratt, who has led the Guardians since their introduction to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The first scene in the first Guardians reveals Quill’s origin. Shortly after his mother dies of cancer, a pre-teen Peter gets abducted from Earth by Yondu and a group of space pirates known as the Ravagers. He grows up as a member of Yondu’s crew and eventually hooks up with Gamora, Drax, Rocket, and Groot while they are all chasing after “The Orb,” a magical space MacGuffin that turns out to contain an Infinity Stone.
Orphaned by his mom’s death — his dad turns out to be a Celestial god named Ego, and also a major jerk who lives up to his name — Peter Quill never returned home to Earth. But strictly speaking, Peter wasn’t alone. When he was taken into space, he left behind a grandfather whom he never saw again. While Peter lost his mom, his grandfather lost his daughter and his grandson on the same day. That’s rough.
So at the end of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Peter finally returns to Earth for the first time since he was a kid. He finds his grandfather (played by Gregg Henry), who is quite a bit older but still alive, and the two share a tearful embrace. And then, at the end of the closing credits, Peter and his granddad appear in a second scene, a quiet sequence around a breakfast table. Peter mumbles a complaint about doing some yard work for an unappreciative neighbor. And then a final title card reads “The Legendary Star-Lord Will Return.”
Which is news to us! As of this writing, Marvel has not announced any sort of Legendary Star-Lord movie or television show. That title comes from a comic of the mid-2000s by writer Sam Humphries and artist Paco Medina. But that comic is largely about Peter Quill in outer space having adventures with Kitty Pryde (who joined the Guardians of the Galaxy during this period, and also got into and out of a relationship with Peter). That Legendary Star-Lord doesn’t seem to have an obvious connection to the events of Guardians Vol. 3.
But a later Marvel series from a few years later, simply titled Star-Lord, does feature a premise similar to the one that appears in this Guardians Vol. 3 post-credits scene. That book, which only lasted for six issues, involved a storyline titled “Grounded” by writer Chip Zdarsky and artist Kris Anka, where Peter Quill temporarily leaves the Guardians and becomes stranded on Earth, where he is totally oblivious to the customs, fashions, and technology.
Star-Lord’s Earthbound adventures in this comic would need to be heavily altered for any sort of Legendary Star-Lord show or movie that Marvel Studios might produce. For one thing, the comic series involved, among other people, Daredevil and the older version of Wolverine from the alternate future that inspired the movie Logan. The odds of either of those characters hanging out with Chris Pratt and Gregg Henry seems unlikely. But the basic idea of of Peter Quill as this fish out of water on his own planet could easily serve as the focus of a movie or (probably more naturally) as the subject of a one-off MCU Disney+ series or special.
But, again, Marvel has not announced any such project so far, and with Guardians writer/director James Gunn off to make movies for DC Studios, it’s possible that title card was meant as a ludicrous joke. On the other hand, Marvel only tends to throw in these “______ Will Return” messages to the ends of movies where they really mean it. So it seems like Chris Pratt will show up somewhere down in the line in his own Star-Lord project.
It could take a while though. Marvel’s 2024 film lineup is already set, and likely their 2025 lineup is as well. It’s not until you get to 2026 that the company has a lighter schedule, with just a single movie (Avengers: Secret Wars) currently announced. If Legendary Star-Lord is going to be a TV show, it could come sooner — although Marvel has also slowed way down on their TV output; after releasing a combined eight Disney+ shows in 2021 and 2022, they’ve yet to release a single episode of TV in 2023. (Secret Invasion is currently scheduled to debut on Disney+ next month.)
With Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 now out in theaters, and that title card popping up in thousands of theaters around the country, we expect to hear word one way or another about the project very soon. The Guardians of the Galaxy may be done for now, but it looks like Star-Lord is going to be sticking around.
