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  • Wait, C-3PO Had a Silver Leg This Whole Time?

    Wait, C-3PO Had a Silver Leg This Whole Time?

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    When Star Wars: The Force Awakens opened in theaters in December of 2015, it broke almost every box-office record on the books. It had the biggest Thursday preview in history. It had the biggest Friday in history. It had the biggest single-day gross in history. It was the first film to gross more than $100 million in a single day. It was the fastest film in history to $100 million and $200 million. It was — and remains, even after Avengers: Endgame — the top-grossing movie in U.S. history. In this one writer’s purely subjective opinion, it did reasonably okay in theaters.

    The Star Wars prequels were hugely successful, but their ticket sales weren’t in the same league as The Force Awakens, in large part because it had something the prequels never did: The returning cast from the original Star Wars trilogy. Fans were intensely curious to see what the old heroes were up to 30 years later — and to see what they looked like decades after Return of the Jedi. They found a Han Solo who’d gone gray, but still maintained his closet of space rogue fashions. Princess Leia was now a regal general of the Resistance. And Luke Skywalker had grown a hermit’s beard and long hair while living in isolation on a distant planet.

    Even though robots don’t age, some of the franchise’s familiar droids looked different too. Cowardly, bumbling C-3PO spent The Force Awakens doddering around with a red arm. No explanation was provided for the arm swap — you had to read a Marvel comic book for that — nor was an explanation given for why he was back to his more familiar gold in the film’s final scene.

    Some fans got upset about the seemingly pointless change; I joked in my 2015 review of The Force Awakens that Disney slapped that red arm on Threepio so they could sell “two C-3PO toys; one with a gold arm and one with a red arm.” And that surely didn’t hurt. But I have to admit I did not realize in 2015 — or at any point in my nearly 40 years on this planet — that a precedent existed for C-3PO’s appendage adjustment. Unbeknownst to me and to many people I’ve consulted since I made this discovery, C-3PO had a mismatched limb through the entire original Star Wars trilogy.

    C-3PO has a silver leg — the right one, below the shin.

    The silver leg is visible in C-3PO’s very first appearance in Star Wars. The first time Threepio appears in A New Hope, the silver leg is onscreen:

    He keeps the silver leg all through A New Hope and still has it in The Empire Strikes Back. It’s particularly visible in the Rebels’ Echo Base on the ice planet Hoth. (This shot is zoomed in so you can see it a little more clearly; all these screengrabs were taken from the current prints on Disney+.)

    And Return of the Jedi? Silver leg city:

    C-3PO even made publicity appearances with his silver leg. Here he is at the premire of the Star Wars Special Edition in 1997.

    Ron Galella Collection via Getty

    Although randomly swapping out a character’s gold leg for a silver one 15 years later sounds like something George Lucas would have done, this is not a recent change made to Star Wars. C-3PO had a silver leg back in 1977. Just ask the man who plays him, Anthony Daniels. In this recent video for Wired, Daniels talks about how the C-3PO costume evolved, and how the silver leg was part of the design from the beginning. The intent, he explains, was to show that C-3PO had a history long before the particular adventure in A New Hope. At some point along the way — like the red arm, it’s never explained — he lost his original right leg and settled for this imperfect replacement:

    As Daniels notes, even Star Wars’ onset photographer didn’t notice his one silver leg for weeks into production. On or off the set, the silver leg seems to reflect whatever is around it — including the gold from the other leg and the rest of the C-3PO costume. Plus, C-3PO spends a lot of time  wandering the deserts of Tatooine, whose light brown sands make the silver leg almost impossible to spot, as in this shot:

    There are a few other reasons C-3PO’s silver leg is so obscure that some writers have attributed their personal discovery of it to the Mandela Effect. For one thing, it’s only the lower part of the leg that’s silver — and there’s not that many full-body shots of Threepio in the movies. He’s usually filmed from the waist up, like in the Rebel base at the end of A New Hope.

    He’s also typically flanked by R2-D2, and he tends to block C-3PO’s legs, like it in this shot from Return of the Jedi.

    It’s also worth mentioning that most of the adults discovering Threepio’s silver leg today were probably watching this movie at home on VHS — whose resolution pales in comparison to modern technology like Blu-rays and high-definition streaming. My childhood copies of Star Wars weren’t even commercial VHS tapes — they were homemade dubs recorded from television, rendering them even blurrier. I was lucky I could see C-3PO at all, much less make out the fine details like a vaguely silver leg.

    Just look at this vintage Kenner Star Wars toy commercial featuring C-3PO and R2-D2. Is Threepio’s leg silver here? Maybe! It’s impossible to tell at this resolution.

    That brings up another reason — maybe the single biggest reason — this whole silver leg thing comes as a shock to me and to many people: The Kenner toys, both in 1977 when the original films were released, and the Power of the Force toys that appeared in stores in the 1990s in the run-up to the movies’ Special Editions, had two gold legs.

    Kids might have watched the movies a dozen times — but they played with these action figures hundreds of times through the years. And the toys had gold legs. When I close my eyes, that little plastic guy on the left is the first thing that comes to mind when I think of C-3PO. My personal toy was a little duller because of all the attention he got from me and my brother — but he was still all gold.

    But what about you? Did you always know C-3PO had two different color legs? Did you learn it recently, say when the Star Wars movies premiered on Blu-ray? Or are you just hearing it from me for the very first time? Be honest, there’s no shame here.

    Whatever you thought before, now you know conclusively. Before he had a red arm, C-3PO had a silver leg. And now that you’ve seen it, you’ll never not see it.

    Every Star Wars Movie, Ranked From Worst to Best

    Here is every theatrical Star Wars movie, ranked from the worst to the best.

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    Matt Singer

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  • Indiana Jones Is a Great Hero Because He Is a Total Failure

    Indiana Jones Is a Great Hero Because He Is a Total Failure

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    If you asked 100 people to name one moment from an Indiana Jones movie, I would bet at least 95 of them would pick the exact same one: Indy, with a golden idol tucked under his arm, chased through a tunnel by an enormous boulder in the opening sequence from 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark.

    The boulder scene is one of the classics of American action cinema. As directed by Steven Spielberg — who helmed the first four Indiana Jones movies — it’s pure cinema kineticism. The boulder used in this scene was made made of wood, fiberglass, and plaster and supposedly only weighed a couple hundred pounds. With frenetic editing, sweaty close-ups, and booming sound design, Spielberg makes it look like it weights about 20 times that.

    The sequence immediately establishes several core aspects of the Indiana Jones character, including his courage and the dangerous nature of his profession. It also establishes perhaps the single most important component of Indiana Jones’ personality, albeit one that is rarely acknowledged or discussed.

    Indiana Jones, the guy we will follow throughout the film and then eventually four other movies, is a complete failure.

    Lucasfilm

    READ MORE: The Best Single-Take Action Scenes Ever

    The boulder coming to smoosh Indy in that tunnel is no one’s fault but his own. He’s the one who triggered its release when he tried and failed to swipe a Chachapoyan fertility idol without triggering a booby trap. He attempted to replace the idol with a bag of sand, but bungled the exchange, releasing the boulder.

    Indy manages to narrowly escape the boulder. But in doing so, he winds up captured by a local tribe and rival archaeologist René Belloq, who takes the idol and chases Indy some more. Our hero escapes — but he doesn’t recover the fertility idol.

    And in fact, he never retrieves the fertility idol. Instead, Indy spends the rest of the movie pursuing the Ark of the Covenant, the famed carrying case of the original stone tablets upon which Moses supposedly carved the Ten Commandments. Hired by the Army, Indiana Jones hopscotches the globe, hoping to locate the Ark before it can be acquired and exploited by the Nazis, who are working with Belloq.

    Indy fails again. Miserably.

    Not only does he not stop the Nazis from getting the Ark, he essentially leads them right to it. Having interpreted a clue incorrectly, the Nazis are searching for the Ark in the wrong spot. Jones finds the Ark’s true resting place, locates it, then is forced to hand it over to the Nazis when they catch him in the middle of its excavation. Indy manages to recover the Ark, then loses it again, and ultimately refuses the chance to destroy it because of his own fascination with it. He survives the Ark’s opening, but then loses the Ark to a government warehouse where it will presumably be stored for eternity.

    That’s Raiders of the Lost Ark. The only sliver of a victory you might find in the film is Indy’s renewed relationship with Karen Allen’s Marion — but in true Indiana Jones fashion, Marion was gone by the next movie, a prequel, and didn’t return for the third. (She did at least reappear in the fourth.) And every Indiana Jones film to date has repeated this pattern: Indy, the dogged historian adventurer, wandering the globe in search of ancient artifacts that he almost never recovers, joined by beautiful women who almost inevitably leave him before the next adventure begins.

    In Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, for example, the cold open sees Indy double-crossed by a Shanghai gangster. Jones only barely survives the encounter, and escapes without the diamond he had been promised.

    Indy makes a getaway — on a plane that turns out to be owned by the gangster, who sabotages the flight and leaves Indy and his companions stranded in India. There, Indy agrees to help a village recover a sacred stone and their missing children — ostensibly in the pursuit of “fortune and glory.” Indy returns the kids and the stone, and walks away with nothing; no fortune, no glory. The movie’s final image is Indy embracing the movie’s heroine, Willie Scott (Kate Capshaw) — who was never seen in the franchise again.

    Lucasfilm

    Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade reveals the title character’s origin as an adventurer; it too involves a colossal failure. As a teenager (River Phoenix), Indy tries to keep Coronado’s cross out of the hands of a gang of thieves. He nabs the cross and leads the crooks on a wild chase, but is eventually caught and forced by the local sheriff to give the cross back to the men who took it.

    The Last Crusade jumps forward in time; Jones, now played once again by Harrison Ford, has tracked down the cross decades later. Improbably, he does manage to reclaim it, in basically the only moment in any of these movies that Indiana Jones successfully returns home with one of his treasures. But then the remainder of the film sends him off on yet another quixotic quest, this one to rescue his father (Sean Connery) and recover the Holy Grail.

    Eventually, the Joneses find the Grail. You’ll never guess what happens next. Jones retrieves the Grail and even uses to it to heal his wounded father. But then Indy leaves the Grail unattended — after all that work, Indy, you just leave it sitting on the ground?!? — where a Nazi picks it up, and tries to leave with it. That triggers a massive booby trap, collapsing the temple where the Grail was hidden. Indy, his dad, and their allies escape — but Indy once again lets an object of unimaginable value slip through his fingers — in this case, quite literally.

    When Indiana Jones returned almost 20 years later in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, he was reintroduced already defeated; captured by Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett) and her Soviet soldiers. They force him to find an alien corpse hidden in an enormous government warehouse. (It’s the same one where the Ark of Covenant is stored; the audience finds it once again but Indy, in typical Indiana Jones fashion, does not.)

    Indy escapes the Russians, but they get the alien. He heads to Peru and finds a crystal skull with strange powers, setting off a back-and-forth chase for this extra-terrestrial MacGuffin that recalls the tug of war over the Ark in Raiders. The outcome is familiar as well; Indy and his allies survive and the bad guys are defeated, but the skull eludes Indy, and all traces of the ancient city it led his party to vanishes in a massive flood. The only treasure Indiana leaves South America with this time is “knowledge.”

    Watching these movies back to back, it’s kind of shocking how often Indy screws things up. Perpetual setbacks are almost as intrinsic an aspect of his persona as his fedora and his bullwhip. But Indy’s tendency to fail doesn’t seem to get talked about very much; the only example of someone identifying something like this I could find online was a 2007 Entertainment Weekly article by Marc Bernardin where he calls Indiana Jones a “loser.” He’s not wrong; Indy loses much more than he wins in his movies. He gets beat up, trapped, brainwashed, and nuked in a fridge, and then staggers out of each film with a bunch of new scars and a love interest who probably won’t be back for the sequel.

    Lucasfilm Ltd.

    But Bernardin also writes that Indiana Jones is ”not a hero… he’s a bystander” because, at least in Raiders of the Lost Ark, “if you remove Indy from the film, the outcome is the same.” On that count, he’s not wrong either. Technically, if you took Indiana Jones out of Raiders of the Lost Ark, the Nazis would still get the Ark and they’d still open it and they’d still die. (On the other hand, without Jones there to hand it over to the U.S. government after the Nazis’ faces melt and/or explode, the Germans might have found the remains of the Ark and Belloq, figured out how to harness its power, and won World War II…)

    Regardless, I don’t think Indy’s ineffectualness makes him less of a hero, but more of one. In fact, I think it’s one of the essential aspects of his appeal: He is a fallible human constantly confronted by superhuman threats he is in no way equipped to handle. And yet he keeps on fighting. Even when he loses the Ark or the Crystal Skull, even when his love life is in shambles, he never quits.

    This tendency to fall short — and to push on regardless — is the same quality that makes long-running characters such as Spider-Man so enduringly popular. It can be fun to watch a hyper-efficient, ultra-successful, totally poised badass for a little while. But for most of us, that’s not a relatable character.

    Indiana Jones speaks more languages than we do, and he’s a very resourceful guy. He’s also a lot braver than we would be in his well-worn Alden model 405 boots. But beyond that, he’s not some gifted warrior. He’s a college professor! Even his cool name is not as cool as it seems; he stole it from a dog! What do we expect this guy to do up against dozens of Nazis or cultists or aliens?

    I know some people scoff at the idea of Harrison Ford playing Indiana Jones in his 80s. They insist the character doesn’t work as an older man. To me, aging makes Indy’s endurance even more poignant. That’s why I’m looking forward to Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. I just wouldn’t bet on Indy walking out of the movie with that dial hidden in his satchel.

    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.

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    Matt Singer

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  • ‘The Mandalorian’ Season 3 Was One Bizarre Choice After Another

    ‘The Mandalorian’ Season 3 Was One Bizarre Choice After Another

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    The following post contains SPOILERS for Season 3 of The Mandalorian. Spoilerphobic? This is not the way.

    The third season of The Mandalorian ends with an image of tranquility. Din Djarin and Grogu — excuse me, Din Grogu — now officially father and son, relaxing at their new homestead on Nevarro. There are undoubtedly more adventures to come; Din has already agreed to become a freelancer for the New Republic, using his roots as a mercenary to track down criminals. But for now, the two are together and at peace.

    It’s a nice final image for a season of television — just not this season of The Mandalorian, which was largely about Din and Grogu’s role in the wider Mandalorian society, and about that society’s push to reclaim its homeworld of Mandalore. At no point this season did the heroes give any indication that what they really wanted was to live alone, separate from the rest of their Mandalorian covert. In fact, Mando turned down an offer to live on Nevarro in the Season 3 premiere. Seven episodes later, after a lot of Mandalorian politics and a few side quests, Din and Grogu wound up right back where they started.

    In between, they worked closely together all year, helping support the Mandalorians’ return to their homeworld. (The main character — arguably the title character — of The Mandalorian Season 3 was really Bo-Katan Kryze, who reclaimed the all-important Darksaber and the mantle of Mandalorian leadership, and then led her people in a battle against the evil Imperial officer Moff Gideon.) Then, after all that work, Din and Grogu were sent off by the Armorer have “adventures” together. That’s why Din decides to become a mercenary for the New Republic, and to accept the offer for a piece of land on Nevarro he’d previously turned down.

    Lucasfilm Ltd.

    If, like me, you miss the early days of The Mandalorian, when it was much more an anthology western set in space, this ending could be a good omen; a sign that The Mandalorian Season 4 will go back to basics. If that’s the case, though, what was the point of spending eight episodes on Bo-Katan and all those Mandalorians if Din and Grogu were just going to leave at the end of it anyway? Why is it supposed to be such a big deal in the season finale that Mando formally adopts Grogu? Characters already referred to Grogu as Mando’s “kid”; I basically assumed they were father and son already.

    It’s questions like these that I keep returning to in the wake of The Mandalorian finale, and what was, overall, a very strange year of Star Wars television. Season 3 of The Mandalorian wasn’t necessarily “bad”; it still had some thrilling moments, a handful of fun episodes, and loads of interesting character and creature designs. But it was confusing; so much of the way it was structured was so baffling. After all is said and done, I’m less disappointed than confused.

    Lucasfilm Ltd.

    The season started in a confusing place too. Season 2 ended on what, at the time, seemed like a really interesting cliffhanger, with Din Djarin and Grogu going their separate ways. Mando continued on as a bounty hunter for hire, and Grogu joined Luke Skywalker at his new Jedi Temple to learn the ways of the Force. How would these two characters, whose lives are so deeply intertwined, fare without one another? That seemed like a really strong place to start a season of television.

    But then, in the first of a string of inexplicable decisions that really hasn’t let up since, Mando and Grogu were reunited in the span of two episodes stuck into the middle of the otherwise unrelated Book of Boba Fett series. Again, it wasn’t so much wrong or bad to shove this reunion onto another television show as it was a very odd choice. The real problem was how quickly and superficially this plot line was resolved, wherever it was going to happen.

    The only lingering fallout from their separation was the fact that Din chose to remove his helmet in front of Grogu, which meant he had to redeem himself via a Mandalorian baptismal ritual. But Din completed that ritual in Episode 2 of Season 3; he spent the rest of the year mostly as an observer and occasional muscle to Bo-Katan and the Armorer as they reassembled the Mandalorian people for a return to Mandalore.

    Lucasfilm Ltd.

    When he was asked to explain why he split up Din and Grogu only to reunite them so quickly, The Mandalorian creator Jon Favreau said in an interview that it became “clear” to him “as we were looking at what their lives would be like apart … I guess you could do Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as like Butch Cassidy a few episodes and the Sundance Kid separately. But they’re both bumming. They’re both not their best selves without the other person, but yet you want to have time spent apart.”

    If you wanted to feel like they’ve spent time apart, why reunite them so fast? If, as you’re meticulously planning this stuff out (Favreau has supposedly already written all of The Mandalorian Season 4), you realize that maybe Din and Grogu don’t work as well apart, why split them up in the first place?

    I was confused about these questions going into The Mandalorian Season 3, and now that it’s over, I find myself just as perplexed by the whole thing. If anything I’m more bewildered now, because before the season started I assumed Favreau had some epic story in mind that he needed Mando and Baby Yoda together to tell. That turned out not to be the case; there was very little of this season that required the presences of both Mando and Grogu, and their relationship was mostly relegated to the background while Bo-Katan, the Armorer, and assorted subplots and guest stars like Jack Black and Tim Meadows took center stage.

    Lucasfilm Ltd.

    If the show moving forward will be a return to its roots in more anthology-type stories on the outer space frontier, I’ll be glad. That still doesn’t explain why the show became Bo-Katan (Featuring The Mandalorian and Baby Yoda) this year. I’ve read some speculation that it has to do with the timing of Dave Filoni’s upcoming film, which will supposedly combine and conclude all the stories from the various Disney+ Star Wars shows like The Mandalorian, Boba Fett, and Ahsoka. That would make some sense of what we all watched these past two months. But it wouldn’t make what we watched any more satisfying from a story perspective.

    In hindsight, Season 3’s final image of Mando and Grogu home at last on Nevarro would have been a lot more satisfying if it had come at the end of a full eight episodes that built off Season 2’s great cliffhanger, and followed Mando and Grogu through a debilitating separation and joyful reunion. It’s almost as if that was the plan at some point, and then the entire season was rewritten except for that final pastoral image.

    Sign up for Disney+ here.

    All the Unanswered Questions After The Mandalorian Season 3

    It was an interesting season of The Mandalorian, but it also left us with a lot of questions about the future of Star Wars.

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    Matt Singer

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  • ‘The Mandalorian’: All of Season 3’s Unanswered Questions

    ‘The Mandalorian’: All of Season 3’s Unanswered Questions

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    The following post contains SPOILERS for The Mandalorian Season 3, as evidenced by the headline which specifies that this is all the stuff that wasn’t explained in Season 3. But I just want to be sure you understand that. 

    Well, it’s been quite a year on The Mandalorian. A second actor was added to the main cast (Katee Sackoff, who plays Bo-Katan). New alliances were forged. Darksabers were exchanged and wielded (and — gasp — broken). Old villains returned to menace our heroes for a second time. Dead allies were turned into vehicles for other characters to ride around in. A lot changed. Things happened. Stuff went down.

    But not everything was resolved; not even some of the new twists that this season introduced then seemed to forget about amidst a swirl of new storylines, settings, characters, and conflicts. And some of our biggest questions going into the season were not only left unanswered, they were never even addressed.

    Lucasfilm Ltd.

    READ MORE: The Mandalorian Season 3 Played Like a Bunch of Backdoor Pilots

    Now that The Mandalorian is back in a Bacta tank recharging for its eventual and inevitable Season 4, let’s take a look back at the past eight episodes, and all of the questions they left unresolved. Hopefully we’ll get some clarity in Season 4, or maybe even in the new Star Wars: Ahsoka show that’s coming later this summer. But in the meantime, here are The Mandalorian issues we can’t stop thinking about.

    All the Unanswered Questions After The Mandalorian Season 3

    It was an interesting season of The Mandalorian, but it also left us with a lot of questions about the future of Star Wars.

    The full season of The Mandalorian is now available on Disney+. Sign up for Disney+ here.

    10 Actors Who Turned Down Star Wars Roles

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    Matt Singer

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  • The Worst Sequels and Remakes Ever

    The Worst Sequels and Remakes Ever

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    Sequels and remakes have terrible reputations. “They’re all Hollywood makes anymore!” “They’re creatively bankrupt!” “They’re terrible!” You’ve surely heard these and other complaints many times before. They’re almost as old as movies themselves. (By the time movies had sound, they also had remakes and sequels.)

    In fairness, there are many good sequels, and arguably even more great remakes. (The Godfather Part II? The Departed? Dawn of the Dead? A Star Is Born? The Fly? We could go on and on and on.) Make no mistake; Hollywood produces these types of movies because they make money. To blame only producers and financiers for these films is to ignore the third crucial party worthy of blame: Ourselves. If audiences stopped showing up for sequels and remakes and IP extending franchises that continue unto infinity (or Infinity Wars), studios would surely try something else. All of that is to say that the constant complaints about sequels and remakes are somewhat overblown.

    But! Not in every case — and certainly not in the case of the sequels and remakes listed below. They are quite bad. In fact, they are the reason that sequels and remakes have such a bad reputation in the first place. If these are the sequels and remakes you watch, it’s hard to blame you for thinking they all stink. So think of this as the opposite of a to-do list; stay away from every thing you read about below, and you’ll find your opinions of sequels and remakes (and of cinema in general) will improve significantly.

    The Worst Sequels Ever

    These sequels ruined the reputations of some great movies.

    READ MORE: The Worst Movies Of the Century So Far

    The Worst Remakes Ever

    Remakes get a bad rap — and these terrible examples are the reason why.

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    Matt Singer

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  • 10 Marvel Actors Who Took Home Props From Their Movies

    10 Marvel Actors Who Took Home Props From Their Movies

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    Being an actor in a Marvel movie seems like a pretty sweet gig. You get to bring an iconic comic book character to life for millions of fans. And while the costume may not always be comfy — in fact, quite a few actors openly hated their ensembles — you sometimes get to take home a cool souvenir. Yes, that’s right. Some Marvel actors have been lucky enough to walk away from set with a piece of movie magic, whether it’s a prop, a wardrobe piece, or even a part of the set.

    In some cases, these tokens are given to the actors as presents to thank them for a job well done. But Marvel isn’t always so keen on handing props over to actors to keep for good. For example, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings star Simu Liu asked the producers if he could take home a pair of his character’s shoes, but his request was denied. That’s why some actors simply steal their desired prop and hope nobody notices. Many of them have even gotten away with it, too — until they confess to their stolen treasures in interviews. Of course, no Marvel actor has gotten in serious trouble from taking home a prop. After all, it’s quite hard to imagine an A-list actor such as Tom Holland or Ryan Reynolds getting in trouble for simply bringing home a bit of their character with them.

    READ MORE: 20 Actors Who Were Wasted in Marvel Roles

    Below, you’ll learn about all of the high-profile Marvel actors who currently have mementos from their movies in their homes.

    Marvel Actors Who Took Home Props From Set

    These actors commemorated their time playing a Marvel superhero or villain by taking home a piece of the production with them.

    Actors Who Turned Down Major Marvel Roles

    Not everyone wants to be a part of the Marvel universe. These actors all got offered high-profile gigs in Marvel movies and turned them down.

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    Claire Epting

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  • ‘The Mandalorian’ Season 3 Is a Like a Series of Backdoor Pilots for Other Shows

    ‘The Mandalorian’ Season 3 Is a Like a Series of Backdoor Pilots for Other Shows

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    This week’s The Mandalorian, “Chapter 21: The Pirate,” was the best episode of the season … of a show that does not exist.

    “The Pirate”’s first act follows X-wing pilot Carson Teva (Paul Sun-Hyung Lee) as he responds to a distress signal from Greef Karga (Carl Weathers), after his settlement on Nevarro comes under attack from space pirates. Teva finds the bureaucracy of the New Republic indifferent to his pleas for assistance, so he seeks out the Mandalorian, Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal), and informs him of Karga’s plight. The Mandalorian’s clan fights off the pirates and then claims land on Nevarro as their new home.

    After the conflict is resolved, an additional scene shows Teva further investigating his suspicion that there is a growing underground threat to the New Republic that no one has noticed. Sure enough, he finds a derelict ship that should have transported the evil Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito) to trial. Its crew slaughtered and its prisoner escaped, it never arrived at its destination.

    Lucasfilm Ltd.

    Again, as episodes of The Mandalorian Season 3 go, this was a solid one. It has an exciting battle for Nevarro on the streets and in the skies above the planet. I’m also a sucker for a good story about a lone hero who believes something bad is on the horizon but, gosh darn it, no one will listen to them. Plus, the epilogue scene, with Carson Teva investigating that Imperial shuttle, was more atmospheric and spooky than anything Star Wars has done lately.

    But I just spent an entire paragraph praising the best parts of The Mandalorian and never once mentioned the Mandalorian himself. This week, he was mostly a bystander on his own show. He was certainly less important than Carson Teva and Karga, who drove much of the action. And he was also less essential to the story than Bo-Katan (Katee Sackoff), Mando’s ally who has taken an increasingly central role in plotting the destiny of Din’s Mandalorian clan.

    Mando did give one rousing speech to his Mandalorian brethren, but the key dramatic moment in that sequence belonged to another member of the clan, Paz Vizsla, voiced by series creator Jon Favreau. And this week’s final scenes belonged to the Armorer (Emily Swallow), the leader of the Mandalorian clan who appears to have a mysterious master plan for Bo-Katan.

    Lucasfilm Ltd.

    READ MORE: Why Are Some Fans Struggling With The Mandalorian Season 3

    With more than half of Season 3 now complete, The Mandalorian looks like a show that would rather be about anyone but the Mandalorian — which is especially bizarre since the previous Star Wars Disney+ show, The Book of Boba Fett, essentially stopped being about Boba Fett for an episode and a half so it could be about the Mandalorian. Now that Mando’s back on his own show, he keeps getting nudged out of the spotlight by his large supporting cast.

    In hindsight, almost every Season 3 episode so far plays like a backdoor pilot for another potential Star Wars show: Bo-Katan’s quest to reclaim leadership of the Mandalorian people, the first seeds of the First Order growing within the New Republic, the Children of the Watch and their struggle to find a new home, Greef Karga’s attempts to maintain peace and prosperity on Nevarro, and now Carson Teva and his squad of Rangers patrolling the galaxy. At one point, Lucasfilm actually announce a series titled Rangers of the New Republic, but it never came to fruition, apparently because of the firing of its purported star, Gina Carano. Most of this week’s Mandalorian could have been a repurposed script from its unmade pilot.

    Lucasfilm Ltd.

    Broadening Din Djarin’s world isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But the more The Mandalorian’s focus widens, the more passive its hero becomes. Din did urge the rest of the Children of the Watch to help Greef Karga this week; otherwise, he has mostly seemed content to follow the Armorer and hang out with Grogu. His character has no forward momentum, no goal he’s striving for, nothing he’s seeking to earn or do. He’s quickly becoming a Mandalorian, not the Mandalorian; just one of a large group of tough dudes in cool helmets.

    As a viewer, it does seem like Favreau has a plan for the wider Star Wars universe; he’s planting a lot of seeds that can be picked up in other shows like the upcoming Ahsoka, and maybe even a Rangers of the New Republic series if that ever gets off the ground. But that’s the future; the present of The Mandalorian is awfully muddled. With just three episodes left in this entire season, it still feels like it’s putting the pieces in place for a story that hasn’t even begun yet.

    New episodes of The Mandalorian premiere on Wednesdays on Disney+. Sign up for Disney+ here.

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  • Are They Making ‘John Wick 5’?

    Are They Making ‘John Wick 5’?

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    The following post contains SPOILERS for John Wick: Chapter 4.

    When John Wick: Chapter 4 was officially announced back in the summer of 2020, it was announced with the next sequel, John Wick: Chapter 5, which was supposedly going to be shot back-to-back with part four.

    “We hope to shoot both John Wick 4 & 5 back to back when Keanu becomes available early next year,” said Lionsgate CEO John Feltheimer at the time.

    But now John Wick: Chapter 4 is here (Covid-19 delayed things somewhat) and not only is Chapter 5 was not shot with it, if you’ve seen Chapter 4 you know another sequel is, at best, a long shot. That’s because — here is your last chance to bail before spoilers — John Wick: Chapter 4 concludes with John Wick’s death. The film’s final scene is a funeral where Ian McShane’s Winston, Laurence Fishburne’s Bowery King, and John Wick’s dog all mourn at his grave side.

    So what happened to the plans for two back-to-back sequels? Franchise director Chad Stahelski recently explained the change in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “The real reason we didn’t do four and five together was because I raised my hand,” Stahelski revealed. “I even went to Keanu and said, ‘I’m just not good enough to do four and five. I’m good enough to do one. I can make a difference between three and four, but I’m not good enough to somehow magically get better in the middle of the process between four and five.’ The reason these movies keep getting better is because we keep getting better, but I need the time to go to school and get better. So that’s the real reason why we divided it up at the time. I’m not a good enough director to deliver two uniquely special experiences.”

    READ MORE: How John Wick: Chapter 4 Pulled Off Its Greatest Action Sequence

    Stahelski says as he and the John Wick creative team were developing the fourth movie, they realized one way they could make it different and better than the previous films was to give it a conclusion — i.e., the title character’s heroic death. At first, Lionsgate’s response to that idea was, in Stahelski’s words, “Are you f—ing insane?” Eventually, they warmed to giving John Wick a proper sendoff.

    But if you’ve seen the film, you know that we see John Wick’s funeral, not necessarily his death. It’s not totally implausible that the character might have faked his demise to finally get some peace and quiet. Stahelski also told THR that they did shoot a version that even more strongly hinted at John’s survival, but that a test audience “revolted pretty hard about [it].” So the filmmakers stuck with the more “mysterious” version that you see onscreen — which still includes a shot of John’s dog looking up at one point to place just the tiniest bit of doubt about John’s fate in the audience’s mind.

    Whether they ever make a John Wick: Chapter 5 or not, the franchise will continue. Keanu Reeves has already filmed a cameo role in Ballerina, a spinoff that expands on a subplot from John Wick: Chapter 3 about ballerinas who moonlight as assassins. That movie, which stars Ana de Armas, doesn’t have an official release date yet, but it was mostly shot in the fall of last year, so it will likely premiere later in 2023 or in early 2024.

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  • How ‘John Wick 4’ Pulled Off That Incredible Stairwell Scene

    How ‘John Wick 4’ Pulled Off That Incredible Stairwell Scene

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    The following post contains some minor spoilers for John Wick: Chapter 4.

    John Wick: Chapter 4 is the culmination of an almost nine-hour story about the very sad and very violent life of its title character, a former hitman who just wanted to live a humble life with his puppy dammit, but cannot seem to escape his past as a killer for hire. And most of those nine hours have involved action scenes of every imaginable kind: Hand-to-hand combat, shootouts, sword battles, knife fights, along with chases on motorcycles, cars, and even horseback. How do you bring all of that to a close and top what you’ve done before, all at once?

    By walking up a flight of stairs, of course.

    Ah, but this is no ordinary walk up some steps. John Wick: Chapter 4 concludes with a dazzling sequence where John (the seemingly indefatigable Keanu Reeves) must arrive at a Parisian church by dawn in order to participate in a duel with his sworn enemy. If he does not make it in time, he will be executed. And so said enemy sends what seems like half of Paris after John to delay his arrival.

    After making his way through the city, pursued on foot and by car, he finds himself at the bottom of an enormous set of stairs. There are hundreds of steps and dozens of enemies, and he’s got only a handful of minutes to make it to the top. And once he gets to the top … he gets knocked the entire way back to the bottom and must make a second climb at an even faster pace.

    I’ve only seen John Wick: Chapter 4 once (so far), but I am absolutely certain this stairwell sequence — and especially that moment where John Wick tumbles down dozens upon dozens of stairs only to get up and start to climb again — will go down in history as one of the greatest action sequences of the 21st century. When I had the chance to interview the movie’s director, Chad Stahelski, I decided to focus on just this scene: How he conceived it, what inspired it, how he shot it, and how this sure-to-be legendary scene fits into the film as a whole.

    The Concept

    Lionsgate

    Stahelski, who directed or co-directed all four John Wick movies and has spent decades in Hollywood working as a stuntman, stunt coordinator, and fight choreographer, says that there are essentially two approaches to the creation of an action sequence: Inside out or outside in.

    “When you choreograph martial arts, we call it ‘the maze,’” Stahelski explains. “Picture Jackie Chan. He’s always running and fighting; that’s how you suspend disbelief when he’s fighting multiple attackers. You don’t just stand a spot and let them come to you. That was more like a Bruce Lee mentality. Jackie does the running fight scene. And if he’s fighting a tall guy, he’ll go into a phone booth. There’s an environmental element to it, a set piece element to it. That’s more the school of thought I’m from.”

    That approach is all over John Wick: Chapter 4, particularly in the jaw-dropping sequence that precedes the stairwell fight where John fends off enemies around the Arc de Triomphe. “We had this idea,” Stahelski says, “that we wanted a movable set where you’re fighting the environment as well as you’re fighting people … an ever-changing set piece. We’re like ‘Well, how do I get the set to move?’

    From that initial impulse, Stahelski and his team gradually settled on a fight involving moving cars. “But just an intersection would be boring,” he observes. “So we’re just gonna make a roundabout and we’re gonna have 200 cars keep circling. So the walls are always changing, and we’re just gonna fight in the middle of that, and the cars aren’t going to care, they’re just gonna keep moving. So now you have to worry about the set piece and you have to worry about the opponent. That’s an example of inside out; that was a concept that we had to build outward and figure out how to do it.”

    The staircase sequence was an example of the opposite approach; the outside in method. Rather than wanting to shoot a scene on a staircase, Stahelski and his team found the stairwell first and that in turn inspired the fight that they created.

    Influences

    Getty Images

    The all-important French church that John Wick must reach is Sacré-Cœur, one of Paris’ most iconic landmarks. Stahelski’s desire to shoot Chapter 4’s climax there came from a somewhat surprising place.

    “I’m a big fan of Amélie, believe it or not,” Stahelski says. “And that film’s third act starts at Sacré-Cœur. So I put on all my location scout lists; ‘I want to see Sacré-Cœur!’ And on the second day, we saw Sacré-Cœur, and we walked up the main steps, and I‘m like ‘Oh, that’s cool, we’ll figure something out here.’”

    Stahelski says the feverish race to the church also drew inspiration from High Noon, the 1952 Gary Cooper Western about a lone sheriff who must decide whether to flee his post or stand and fight when he learns that an outlaw he sent to prison is coming to kill him. (Cooper’s High Noon character is named Kane, while Donnie Yen’s character in John Wick: Chapter 4 just happens to be named Caine.) Stahelski claims he also thought a lot about Buster Keaton, the brilliant silent comedian and filmmaker who, like most of Stahelski’s actors, did his own stuntwork.

    “All I could think about was Buster Keaton,” Stahelski reveals, “How would Buster Keaton do it? Buster would walk all the way up, he’d fight his way up, he’d trip at the top step, he’d fall all the way back down, then look back up and go “F—.” I always look at it from a silent film perspective. And that’s how it all came about.”

    The Location

    READ MORE: Chad Stahelski Confirms a John Wick Fan Theory

    Initially on that fateful location scout in Paris, Stahelski and his team walked up Sacré-Cœur’s front steps. But then they began wandering around the site looking for potential spots to shoot. That’s when they made the discovery that sparked everything you see on screen.

    “We walked around, and we came to these other steps,” Stahelski continues, “and all I could think of was William Friedkin’s The Exorcist. That stair fall in that film. And I’m looking down — it was at nighttime — and I saw the fog, and I’m like ‘Oh no, dude. John Wick’s going down this.’”

    “My stunt coordinator, Scott Rogers, says ‘That’d be a bitching stair fall.’ I’m like ‘No, no, no, we gotta run him up it. Because Keanu, he hates stairs. Just to make him suffer, we’re going to make him walk all the way up. And before he gets to the top step, I’m going to knock him back down and we’re going to do the biggest stair fall you’ve ever seen. And I’m going to make him climb it up again with Donnie Yen.”

    Longtime John Wick fans will recall that this is not the first time the character has taken a tumble down some stairs. In the middle of a fight between John and Cassian (Common) in John Wick: Chapter 2, the pair threw each other down much smaller set of steps, then got up and kept fighting. It’s one of several callbacks and homages to earlier John Wick movies sprinkled throughout Chapter 4, which make the whole film a bit of a curtain call for the franchise, something Stahelski confirms was very much intentional.

    “We’re very aware of that,” he says. “And that’s the silent movie gag of it all; repetition, making fun of ourselves, letting you know we’re in on the joke. I think that is important, because you can have some pretty serious thematics and emotional content, but at the end of the day, we’re audience members, too. And that makes us laugh.”

    Shooting the Biggest Stair Fall Ever

    Stahelski scheduled five days to shoot the stairwell sequence outside Sacré-Cœur. It ended up taking seven, in part because Stahelski prefers to shoot action scenes in order, which takes longer.

    “I’m sure every other director you talk to, they all say we shoot out of order. I’m incredibly anal about shooting in order as much as I can,” he explains. “Obviously, there’s lighting, there’s environment, or it starts to rain, you have to bail, the actor’s unavailable. But as much as I can, I don’t try to abide by any schedule other than trying to make great shots happen. And if it makes people sit around for a little bit, or if. it makes the crew relight a little more … I think what f—s up action sequences sometimes is one unit’s doing this, another unit’s doing that. There needs to be an organic flow.”

    Stahelski also notes there is something of a misconception about how fight scenes are achieved, at least on John Wick movies. There is intricate choreography that must be rehearsed and memorized, but that doesn‘t mean when Stahelski arrives on set he knows exactly what he’s going to do, or shoots things exactly according to the initial plan.

    “People are always shocked when I tell them Keanu doesn’t know all the fights. He knows all the pieces,” Stahelski continues, “He can perform anything. But he comes to set going ‘Okay, what’s Chad going to change today?’ And by the second day in a fight scene, it’s flipped on its head and everybody’s like ‘What the…?’ and we’re choreographing on the spot. You can ask my choreographers, I drive them bats— crazy.”

    For Stahelski, fights, like any other idea, “should evolve … I thought the [stairwell] fight was going to turn out one way, and then realized that I was wrong. We had a plan, but that plan lasted two days and went out the f—ing window when we saw how cool the stairs were. So yeah, you try to stay in order and you create as you go so you don’t backend yourself. I’m a big fan of that.”

    The Man Who Fell to Earth

    The ultimate moment in this bravura sequence comes when John Wick finally, after minutes of shooting and running and punching, makes it to the top of the Sacré-Cœur stairs only to immediately go tumbling all the way back down in a series of long takes. It’s brutal, painful — and kind of hilarious. So I had to know: Who took that fall?

    “Vincent. We’re talking about Vincent [Bouillon], the French stuntman who was doubling Keanu most of the time,” Staheski reveals. “We had two main doubles for him. Vincent is the one that did the stair fall you see in the movie.”

    It might seem like a delicate matter to ask someone to fall down hundreds of stairs — or, even worse, to ask them to do it a second time so you have more than one take to work with in the editing room, but Stahelski says that doesn’t really factor into the process.

    “You’re with some of the best stunt people in the world and you’re all standing looking at a staircase. What do you think is going through their heads?” he laughs. “They’re not thinking ‘What’s the easiest way down there?’ They’re thinking “F— me, we’re about to create a legend!”

    The Art of a Stunt Fall

    Part of what makes Stahelski such an outstanding director of stunts is that he’s been a performer of stunts himself. (He famously doubled Keanu Reeves on the original Matrix movies.) So I asked him: How do you take a massive fall like the one in John Wick: Chapter 4? Is there an art to falling so it looks good but you don’t kill yourself? The secret, he told me, is something called “kinesthetic sense” or “air awareness,” along with a total lack of concern about one’s own welfare.

    “You can’t hold back,” he adds. “You have to not worry about getting hurt. It’s a mindset more than physicality. Granted, our stunt team, our fight guys or stunt doubles, they’re some of the best in the game. As much as I spend time on casting, I’ll spend as much time casting the stunt people because I know what I’m gonna put them through. There’s got to be a genuine we-want-to-do-better-than-the-people-before-us kind of thing. So we get those kinds of mindsets. You need to have the physical ability and the mindset of ‘No, I’m going to do this. We’re going to make something special.’”

    That same mindset comes in handy when things don’t quite work out as planned on the first take. As Stahelski notes, on Vincent Bouillon’s first attempt at the stair fall, he didn’t get very far.

    “Take one: [Bouillon] did the big kick, landed, but he got hung up in the railing literally in the first ten steps. So it was a cut. He took a beat, and I’m like ‘F— dude, that was awesome. You all right?’ He’s like ‘Yeah, I’m ready to go again.’ The second take is what you see in the movie. That’s legit. He goes and he goes. That’s a hundred something steps. As far as we know, it’s the longest one we’ve seen. All in one. There’s no stitching. It’s an honest to god one-taker.”

    But even after getting a great take, and possibly the longest stair fall in the history of movie stunts, the crew wasn’t done.

    “It’s funny,” Stahelski laughs, “I don’t know if I was being a jerk, but I was like [to Bouillon] ‘Look, it’s just not enough.’ Like it was fun, I get the gag, but the whole thing needs to be subversive. I want the audience to clap and go ‘What the f—?’ But at the same time, how do I get them again? And then Vincent and this guy Florian [Beaumont] who was doubling the [main villain] character, came up and said ‘We’ve got an idea for you: I’m going to go down again. And I’ll go all the way down.’ And I’m like ‘Okay, let’s see it.’

    This time they wanted to add a “tabletop” to the fall, where before Bouillon fell down the stairs, he’d spin and hit a light post first.

    “Dude, there’s no way,” Stahelski replied. “You’re not going to be conscious.” But the stunt team insisted they could pull it off.

    “So they do this second one,” Stahelski told me. “First take — it was a one-taker. They threw Vincent, he wrapped around and hit so hard. If I played you the real track, you can hear half the crew groaning. Like, they turned away. And then he goes down three more sets of stairs. I never thought he’d make it past the first one. So that’s what’s in the movie. That’s people doing what they love.”

    A Stairwell That Isn’t Just a Stairwell

    John Wick: Chapter 4’s stairwell fight works as a great moment of visual excitement, pathos, and humor, but it’s more than that. Starting from the bottom of this insurmountable obstacle, filmed from an angle that makes it seem like John Wick is so far underground he might as well be in the pits of hell, only for him to climb to the surface (where, of all things, a church awaits), lends the entire sequence some major religious overtones.

    The stairwell “just fit with the location, the story, the theme. It all just came together,” Stahelski concurs. It sequence also works, in his words, as “a metaphor for the movie as a whole.”

    It works as a metaphor for filmmaking in general too; every movie is a bit of an impossible journey against long odds and endless hurdles and hindrances. Once you solve one problem, two more crop up to knock you all the way back down the proverbial staircase again. Stahelski says the John Wick team knew the sequence was good while they were shooting it. And the response from audiences so far has confirmed that instinct.

    “We’ve been doing the tour here,” he notes, “and I think it’s eight times now that we’ve screened the movie. There hasn’t been a single audience that hasn’t either cheered or gone ‘What the f—!’ We knew on the day we were gonna show people something special. I think that’s our obligation to entertainment.”

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  • The True Story Behind ‘Tetris’: What Really Happened

    The True Story Behind ‘Tetris’: What Really Happened

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    The movie version of Tetris tells a story nearly as absurd as the notion of an Italian plumber traveling to a magic kingdom to fight a giant turtle and rescue a princess. It involves a mad fight over the rights to the original Tetris game, which was created in Russia by an unassuming computer engineer named Alexey Pajitnov.

    Taron Egerton plays Henk Rogers, an ambitious game designer and entrepreneur who stumbles upon an early iteration of Tetris at a trade show and becomes obsessed with it. Over the course of Tetris, directed by Jon S. Baird and written by Noah Pink, Rogers mortgages his home, leverages his company, and risks potential imprisonment behind the Iron Curtain, all to secure the rights to sell Tetris in the West, while evading, outsmarting, and outbidding several competitors, including a cunning European businessman named Robert Stein (Toby Jones), and the arrogant Kevin Maxwell (Anthony Boyle), the CEO of one of Britain’s largest media companies, Mirrorsoft, and the heir to one of the country’s largest fortunes.

    An opening title card proclaims that Tetris was “based on a true story.” But just how truthful is the film version? In some ways, it is very accurate. In others, it is a complete fabrication. But the parts that are authentic and the parts that are not may surprise you in a few cases. (In others, they will definitely not.)

    The Real Story of Tetris

    For the most part, all the broad strokes — and all the key players — in Tetris are true to life. As shown in the film, the classic puzzle game was created by Russian computer scientist Alexey Pajitnov (played by Nikita Yefremov), who developed the game in his spare time. Pajitnov was inspired by a lifelong love of puzzles to develop Tetris, a name that combined “tetra” (or four) and “tennis” (which has very little to do with the finished game, but whatever). As the film shows, the early version of the game was incredibly crude; Pajitnov wrote the program on a computer without a graphics card, so the first tetrominoes pieces were made out of brackets.

    This was Russia in the mid-1980s, circa the dying days of Communism. That meant Pajitnov could not sell his game or profit off its rights. Instead, he initially gave copies of Tetris to friends and colleagues in Russia, and it proved so addictive it spread like wildfire. As in the Tetris film, copies even made there way to Hungary — where they were first seen by a salesman named Robert Stein of Andromeda Software. Impressed by the game, Stein was able to use his connections in Russia to contact Pajitnov; the pair sent a series of faxes indicating Stein’s interest in licensing the game and Pajitnov’s willingness to enter an agreement with him.

    Stein interpreted the faxes as a contract, and then began selling the rights to make Tetris to various other companies, including Mirrorsoft, the company owned by British media tycoon Robert Maxwell (played in the film by Roger Allam). But the gray area between what Stein thought he had and what he really possessed eventually led to a mad scramble for various rights to Tetris in various territories and on various sorts of platforms: Computers, arcades, video game systems, and handheld.

    The Film Version

    The Tetris movie’s main character is not Pajitnov or Stein, but Henk Rogers, the Dutch game designer and salesman who ultimately becomes the middle man between the Soviet government organization “Elorg,” which controls the rights to Tetris, and Nintendo, the company that would ultimately make Tetris a pop culture legend by packing it with its first handheld Game Boy video game system.

    The movie version of Rogers (played by Egerton) is a charming, relentless, but ultimately extremely honest businessman. After he acquires the rights to sell Tetris in the Japanese market, he convinces Nintendo to let him make a version for the Famicon (basically the Nintendo Entertainment System’s Japanese counterpart). When Nintendo shows Rogers the prototype Game Boy, he is the one who suggests they use Tetris, rather than a new Super Mario Bros., as the game included with each system. When his efforts to get handheld rights from Stein and Mirrorsoft are unsuccessful, Rogers travels to Russia — on a tourist’s visa, which is a big no-no — and walks into Elorg without an appointment to negotiate his own deal.

    That leads to an outrageous sequence where, by sheer happenstance, Rogers, Stein, and Mirrorsoft’s Kevin Maxwell are all simultaneously negotiating their own deals with Elorg in separate conference rooms, while the head of the organization, a man named Belikov, attempts to extract the best possible deal for the Soviets. Initially, Belikov accuses Rogers of selling illegal bootlegs of Tetris, because he does not believe anyone holds the rights to make versions of the game for consoles like the Nintendo.

    It turns out that Stein had interpreted his initial contract with Elorg extremely broadly, taking his rights to sell Tetris for computers to also mean home video game systems. After Rogers points out the flaw in the contracts to Belikov, Belikov forces Stein to sign a new contract which essentially cuts him out of the Tetris gravy train for consoles and handheld games entirely, and allowing Rogers and Nintendo to escape Russia with the deal of a lifetime — despite Robert Maxwell flying to Russia and using his friendship with Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev to attempt to pressure Elorg to sell him the rights to the game.

    Separating Fact From Fiction

    As ludicrous as this conference room sequence seems, it is apparently based in large part on what really happened. According to the BBC documentary Tetris: From Russia With Love, which you can watch below, Belikov and Elorg really did perform simultaneous negotiations with all these parties, essentially pitting one against the other. And another YouTube documentary, The Story of Tetris, even backs up the notion that it was Rogers himself who pointed out the flaws in Elorg’s contracts with Stein to Belikov, giving him an upper hand in the negotiations. It is also apparently accurate that the Maxwells tried to get Gorbachev to influence the negotiations in their favor, a gambit that ultimately proved unsuccessful.

    What is not accurate, or at least is not present in any version of the creation of Tetris and the negotiations for the right to produce the game around the world that I could find, is the involvement of Soviet politicians and KGB agents trying to intimidate Henk Rogers into abandoning his quest for the Tetris rights. Some of the threats shown in the film did happen; Rogers confirms in one documentary that when he presented Elorg with a copy of Tetris for Famicon, they really did accuse him of theft, and he did worry for a while that he might end up in a Russian prison camp.

    But other elements of the KGB’s tactics are totally invented for the film. In an interview with Collider, Jon S. Baird confirmed that the movie’s climactic chase scene, which sees Henk Rogers and several Nintendo employees racing to the airport — and driven there by Pajitnov — to escape Moscow before the KGB can catch them, did not actually take place. As he explained…

    We were being a bit metaphorical with that because they were under a lot of pressure from, obviously, the KGB and from Maxwells and from everything else, but the car chase through the center of Moscow to get to the airport and stuff was definitely a Hollywood version of their pursuit from the rival factions of who wanted Tetris.

    In a separate interview, the real Henk Rogers said that while he and Alexey Pajitnov did consult on the script for the film, and the creators did listen when their suggestions “had to do with authenticity … when it started getting into [creative flourishes like] the car chase and all that, it was like, ​‘OK, now it’s all them.’ We couldn’t change anything.”

     

    So, not too surprisingly, the wild car chase is the biggest and most extreme change in the movie. Make sure you come back to ScreenCrush in a few weeks so we can explain how The Super Mario Bros. Movie deviates from the actual story of Mario Mario during his journey to the Mushroom Kingdom. And if you’re interested in more of the real story behind Tetris, this BBC documentary includes interviews with many of the key players, including Rogers, Stein, and Pajitnov.

    And this video incorporates elements of that doc, and other sources, to tell an even more comprehensive version of the events.

    You can watch Apple’s own video on “the story behind Tetris” below:

    Tetris is playing in select theaters. It will be available on Apple TV+ on March 31.

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  • Why Are There No Movies For Kids in Theaters?

    Why Are There No Movies For Kids in Theaters?

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    All I wanted to do was take my daughter to the movies.

    My youngest is five years old. My wife and older daughter are headed out of town, and I thought it would be fun to go the theater with the little one. Movies are a big part of our family’s lives; we have “Family Movie Night” almost every weekend where we all sit together in front of our big TV and have dinner while we watch a film. But we haven’t gotten to the theater as much as I would like in the last few years, mostly because of the pandemic. With half the family otherwise busy, I thought a trip to the multiplex would be a good way to correct that and a nice daddy-daughter bonding moment.

    It didn’t quite register with me until I actively looked at showtimes near me in New York City, but there are essentially no major new releases for small children at the multiplex right now. Current multiplex options include violent PG-13 fare like Creed III, Shazam! Fury of the Gods, and 65, or even darker films like Scream VI or Cocaine Bear. Next weekend’s one big wide release is John Wick: Chapter 4. My daughter loves lavish hotels, but otherwise, that is going to be a bit too mature for her. The next little-kid-friendly film coming to theaters, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, doesn’t open until April 5. Basically, my hopes of taking my daughter to the theater for a pleasant afternoon out were dashed.

    So I tweeted (my first mistake) “As a parent of little kids it would be great if there were literally *any* movie in theaters right now i could take them to.” I sincerely did not think this was a hot take or a controversial statement (my second mistake). Asking Hollywood to release more than one picture for little ones per financial quarter did not strike me as an edgy comment. It just seemed like smart business sense.

    The parents who replied to my tweet largely said things like “Seriously, we’ve been dying to take our kids the movies for weeks!” A couple exhibitors and movie theater employees responded too, and their responses were almost all the same — “Yes, we’ve been talking about this, and dealing with it for months. We have nothing for families who want to bring young children to the theater.”

    But then there were a lot of responses yelling at me for daring to complain about the lack of choices for families in theaters. The snarky retweets and dunks could generally be grouped into four kinds of responses. Some I found surprising, some were interesting, and a few I found quite depressing. I’m paraphrasing, but here’s essentially what I was told (only a lot less politely in most cases).

    RESPONSE #1: “You’re complaining about no movies for kids the same week Shazam! Fury of the Gods opened in theaters. Give me a break.”

    Warner Bros.

    Yes, the big new movie in theaters last weekend was DC Studios’ sequel to Shazam. And the movie does feature a bunch of teenagers (and even a couple of grade-school-age children) who turn into superheroes. If you don’t spend a lot around children, or you haven’t actually seen Fury of the Gods, you might think this is something a kid might want to see.

    And an older kid, more in the age range of Billy Batson — who’s about to turn 18 and age out of the foster system in the movie — probably would want to see it. But I was talking about a little kid. My daughter is five. The MPAA rated Shazam! Fury of the Gods PG-13 for “sequences of action and violence, and language.” Having seen the movie already myself, I can also tell you that the film opens with Helen Mirren and Lucy Liu’s characters marching into a museum and brutally killing dozens or people. Later, the villains use mind control to force a character to walk off the roof of a building and fall to their death. Then a legion of creepy monsters rampages through Philadelphia. (If we wanted to get into spoilers, we could discuss even more elements that would be very troubling to a kindergarten kid.)

    Still, I was told by some, this is just “fantasy violence.” It’s fine for kids; the MPAA says so. “It’s fine if you’d just rather not take your five year old there,” one person wrote, “but you can’t really pretend you have *no* choice.”

    Along similar lines, others wanted me to give Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania a go. Because what you want to do with a five year old to really get them addicted to the movies is show them a story about multiverses, time travel, intergalactic conquerors, M.O.D.O.K.s, and large-scale space warfare and have it be the 31st installment in an ongoing franchise that they are totally unfamiliar with.

    Generally, a lot the respondents took the attitude of “These movies are not rated R — which means they won’t upset your daughter. So just go to that.” But there’s a huge difference between “not objectionable” and “appropriate.” Shazam! Fury of the Gods may not be rated R, but it’s still violent and occasionally pretty scary. Frankly, given its subject matter and protagonist, it might be a better movie — and might have been a lot more successful at the box office — if it was more targeted towards children, and its content wasn’t quite so adult. But as it stands, it is not a movie for little kids. (At least not my little kid.)

    Also, this is slightly irrelevant for this conversation, but Shazam! Fury of the Gods isn’t just too mature for a 5 year old; it stinks! This trip to the movies was supposed to be fun, not a punishment.

    READ MORE: The Strangest Kids Movies Ever Made

    RESPONSE #2: “Puss In Boots: The Last Wish is still playing in theaters. What’s the problem?”

    DreamWorks Animation

    This is the problem! Puss in Boots is still in theaters four months after it came out — and weeks after it began streaming on Peacock — because literally nothing else has showed up to take its place. One person straight-up told me it didn’t matter if my kids had seen the film already; I should just take them to see it a second time, whether they wanted to or not. “You are not supposed to like your options here,” they wrote.

    I got very different responses from movie theater employees, who said in some cases that their multiplexes had actually brought Puss in Boots back after it had ended its initial theatrical run out of pure desperation. There were no other options for families, and they needed something that would be satisfy that audience. (One person who works for a major theater chain sent me a private message that read “[This] is a legit problem!”)

    RESPONSE #3: “Why do you want to take a 5 year old to a movie theater in the first place? There is more media available at home than ever before. Just let them watch something at home.”

    Netflix

    I guess if I didn’t care at all about movie theaters existing in 10 years I could adopt this attitude. But I do, so I won’t. (It was especially strange to get these types of responses from people whose Twitter bios claimed they were movie lovers.)

    It is true that my children are spoiled when it comes to the availability of movies and TV shows. They can watch hundreds of things instantly whenever they want. All five of this year’s Academy Award nominees for Best Animated Feature are already available on streaming, including the winning picture, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio. My kids don’t even have to worry about paying attention to a broadcast or basic cable channel schedule like I did at their age; if they want to watch Is It Cake? they just turn on Netflix whenever they feel like it. If they’re in the mood to binge 25 episodes of Bluey, they can. (And do — also, should I be concerned that my five-year-old now speaks with an Australian accent? She’ll grow out of that eventually, right?)

    I am glad my kids have so many good films and shows they can watch at home. But I also love taking them to the movies. I have such vivid memories of going to the theater with my parents at that age — like having my mind blown by Who Framed Roger Rabbit or the time my mom took me to see Flight of the Navigator at Movie City 5 in East Brunswick, NJ. The popcorn, the candy, the massive screen, the times when they’d have special sneak previews of second movies and you could stay for a double feature (at least until you had to go home for dinner because there were no cell phones back then and thus no way to let Dad you’d be late). I want to share those kinds of moments with my own kids! Right now, that’s really hard to do.

    RESPONSE #4: “Hollywood caters so hard to kids that they’ve infantilized generations of adults. We don’t need any more kids movies. Just wait a couple weeks.”

    Marvel

    This is a separate issue, and framing things this way means blaming one symptom for another. Both symptoms stem from the same problem: Increasingly, Hollywood only makes one kind of movie for theaters: Superheroes, science-fiction, big sequels, things based on massive IPs with built-in audiences. And so movie theaters are full of many examples of one kind of movie. They’re big and loud with lots of special effects and not much else. If I had wanted to go on a date night to the multiplex with my wife to see something funny and romantic, I would have had the same issue. (Wait, I haven’t seen Cocaine Bear yet. Is that a romantic comedy?)

    True, the pandemic had a lot to do pushing both audiences and other kinds of smaller movies to streaming services. And since theaters have reopened in the last few years, the films that have performed the best have been blockbusters designed to be seen on a big screen. But as evidenced by the people who replied to my tweet — those who agreed with it and many of those who hated it — there are young and old audiences out there who are starving for other kinds of films, not just the ones about dudes wearing capes punching things.

    As for my daughter, we’ll probably go to the playground next weekend, and then do one of our family movie nights at home. (We could even watch Puss in Boots: The Last Wish.) My youngest is a big Barbie fan, so I’m already looking forward to taking her to that movie when it opens in July. I must confess, though, that she was a little confused by its trailer. When I played it for her, she wanted to know why all the girls were destroying their baby dolls. 

    The Best Children’s Shows in History

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    Matt Singer

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  • The Worst Unconventional Superhero Movies

    The Worst Unconventional Superhero Movies

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    When it comes to the superhero genre, there’s certain things that we have come to expect. For starters, we know there will be someone — or something — that puts on a costume and becomes a vigilante. There’s also the understanding that there will be a good deal of action, whether that be in the form of crime-fighting or super-on-super battles. Typically, there’s also a villain, who is at odds with our superhero protagonist and oftentimes the rest of the world. Plot developments happen rather quickly, sometimes at the sake of character development. Audiences cheer, gasp, and laugh at the heroes’ quippy one-liners. This is the experience of watching a superhero movie.

    However, this isn’t always the case. In fact, there are a handful of superhero movies that eschew these stereotypes in favor of something … well, different. Instead of a superhero that defies gravity, these superheroes defy convention. While this concept sounds intriguing — and has indeed led to some great entries in the superhero canon — there are quite a few unconventional superhero movies that completely miss the mark.

    READ MORE: The Worst Marvel Villains Ever

    You see, genre cliches exist for a reason. That’s not to say that every single Marvel and DC movie should follow a cookie cutter mold, but incorporating formulaic elements into a movie can go a long way in creating a satisfying experience for moviegoers. It’s like your favorite pizza from your go-to delivery place — it might not always be particularly exciting, but it’s consistent, and it makes you feel good.

    Without further ado, let’s look at ten outside-the-box superhero movies that just flat out didn’t work.

    Unconventional Superhero Movies That Totally Missed The Mark

    Superhero Scenes That Could Never Get Made Today

    These scenes and characters from famous comic-book movies would not fly in the modern world.

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    Claire Epting

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  • ‘The Mandalorian’: What Is An Apostate?

    ‘The Mandalorian’: What Is An Apostate?

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    Each episode of The Mandalorian is treated as a chapter of a larger story, and given a title with the same format: “The _______.” The pilot was simply “The Mandalorian,” and since then we’ve had installments like “The Child,” “The Sin,” “The Gunslinger,” “The Marshal,” “The Jedi,” “The Tragedy,” and “The Rescue.” (The only episode so far to violate that rubric was Season 1’s “Chapter 4: Sanctuary.”)

    The Season 3 premiere is the 17th chapter of the story so far. It’s dubbed “The Apostate,” a word that’s a little more obscure than child or sin or gunslinger or even Jedi. But it cuts to the heart of what’s happened to Pedro Pascal’s Din Djarin and his central quest on this season of the Star Wars TV series.

    Lucasfilm

    An apostate is a person who commits apostasy, defined by Merriam-Webster as “an act of refusing to continue to follow, obey, or recognize a religious faith” or “abandonment of a previous loyalty.” That’s because at the end of Season 2 of The Mandalorian, Din Djarin willingly removed his helmet to his Yoda-esque charge, Grogu. In Din’s specific sect of Mandalorians, the Children of the Watch, that is the ultimate no-no. Their sect’s “creed” forbids removing one’s helmet under any circumstance. In the case of Din, he didn’t even do it to save his life, or to protect a loved one. He did it because he was saying goodbye to Grogu forever and the little guy wanted to see his face just one time.

    (Obviously forever didn’t even last the break between Mandalorian seasons; the pair were reunited during the events of the spinoff series The Book of Boba Fett.)

    If we’re being technical about it, Mando has actually removed his helmet several times over the course of The Mandalorian’s two seasons.

    When word of the removal of Din’s helmet got back to the leaders of his Mandalorian sect — primarily the woman known as “The Armorer” (Emily Swallow) — they branded him an “apostate” because he has violated their sacred creed. That means he’s no longer a member of the Children of the Watch. The only way back in to the group at this point is by redeeming himself, which, according to the creed, can only be accomplished through a bath in the living waters of the planet’s mines. But Mandalore was destroyed a long time ago, meaning adhering to this tradition might be impossible. (Look, if it was easy, that wouldn’t make much of a TV show, now would it?)

    That’s the central conflict of The Mandalorian Season 3. Din is now an apostate to his people until he performs a sacred ritual in a body of holy water that may not technically exist anymore. Good luck, dude.

    New episodes of The Mandalorian premiere on Wednesdays on Disney+. Favreau co-wrote the entire season with producer Dave Filoni and writer Noah Kloor. There are seven weekly episodes left in Season 3.

    Sign up for Disney+ here.

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    Matt Singer

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  • We Asked a Chatbot Why 25 Classic Movies Are So Great – Here’s What It Said

    We Asked a Chatbot Why 25 Classic Movies Are So Great – Here’s What It Said

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    Everywhere you look these days, people are talking about artificial intelligence. A New York Times reporter recently had a conversation with an AI chatbot created by Microsoft that, among other things, confessed to destructive impulses and seemingly fell in love with said reporter over the course of the chat. (Microsoft has already limited the number of questions a user can ask the chatbot in a single session, so things are going great so far.)

    Chatbots use artificial intelligence to interpret and answer questions. Some chatbots are sophisticated enough to create complex responses that could have been written by human beings. But can they write film reviews?

    To find out, I posed a series of questions to the chatbot ChatGPT. I gave it a list of 25 widely recognized cinematic classics and asked it why each was considered a great work of art. It gave lengthy responses for each; a series of bullet points, followed by a summary, which I have excerpted below:

    An AI Chatbot Reviews Classic Movies

    We asked ChatGPT about 25 of the greatest movies ever made. Here are its reviews…

    So, what did we learn? Well, for one thing, I will not be out of job and replaced by an AI in the immediate future. (In the semi-near future, maybe.) While none of what the chatbot said about the 25 movies was incorrect, its responses were a bit repetitive. It praised the movies’ “groundbreaking” visuals over and over; and it cited some variation of “enduring cultural significance” for title after title. Again, it’s not wrong! Most of these movies do include groundbreaking imagery and most left some kind of impact on po culture. But one of the most crucial parts of being a critic is finding different ways to say the same thing over and over again — and at least at present, ChatGPT had a difficult time with that.

    That said, I was slightly relieved that when I asked why Terminator 2: Judgment Day was a great movie it didn’t respond with “because it gave me a lot of practical ideas for career goals to strive toward as an artificial intelligence.” I was testing you, ChatGPT . And you passed.

    The Biggest Box-Office Hits in History (Worldwide)

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    Matt Singer

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  • ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’ Post-Credits Scene: Who Are Those Characters?

    ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’ Post-Credits Scene: Who Are Those Characters?

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    The following post contains SPOILERS for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.

    “If you think I’m evil, well, just wait till you meet my Variants…”

    Marvel’s Loki ended with that ominous line from Jonathan Majors’ He Who Remains, the mysterious head of the Time Variance Authority. This lonely, eccentric, seemingly all-powerful man who lived in a citadel at the end of time explained to Loki and his variant Sylvie that he was a scientist from the 31st century who discovered the existence of alternate realities. Each one of these divergent universes had their own scientist from the 31st century, and many of them were hellbent on conquest. These various conquerors started a multiversal war, which He Who Remains ultimately won.

    To prevent future wars and variants, he (who remains) then created the “sacred timeline,” a singular universe protected and patrolled by the TVA to ensure that no new variants arose. When He Who Remains is found at the end of Loki he warns that killing him will spark the return of the multiverse, and the return of more versions of him — even more evil variants of the man known to comic fans as Kang.

    He Who Remains’ promise came true in the Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania post-credits scene. The rest of the movie has focused on just one Kang (also played by Majors), who was exiled to the microscopic universe known as the Quantum Realm by his variants. Over the course of Quantumania, this Kang reveals a few key details of his backstory: His variants from throughout the multiverse have banded together, and in doing so have imperiled all of reality. Only he can stop them — but at the end of the film Ant-Man and the Wasp defeat Kang. Which means the other Kangs are coming.

    And then they show up — hundreds and hundreds of them — in the post-credits scene.

    This “Council of Kangs” (or sometimes referred to in comics as the “Cross-Time Kangs”) comes straight out of Avengers comics; the image above drawn by Marvel great John Buscema originally appeared in June 1988’s The Avengers #292. In Marvel’s comics, as in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, time travel does not rewrite history the way it does in, say, Back to the Future Part II, where the Biff of the future gives his younger self the Grays Sports Almanac, which leads to an alternate present where Biff rules over Hill Valley as a casino magnate.

    Instead, when you alter the past of the Marvel Universe, you create an entirely new divergent timeline. The old timeline still exists and continues on its path, while a new timeline is created based upon the change. And because Kang the Conqueror has been traveling through time for a long time (sorry), he’s created many alternate realities — each with its own variant of the original Kang. (In the scene we see Kangs who look like Jonathan Majors, and even a few that look radically different, including one that appears to be an alien Kang.) And eventually these multitudinous Kangs decide to work together. And that’s the group we see during Quantumania’s closing credits.

    But this sequence also shows us a trio of additional Kang variants separate from the Council of Kangs, making plans in some kind of separate antechamber. (Comics villains love a good antechamber; that’s where all the evil schemes are hatched.) These three variants, all played by Jonathan Majors, are clearly more important than the rest. Two of them are immediately recognizable from Marvel Comics; the third is a bit of an ongoing mystery.

    The first of the three is dressed in the style of an Egyptian pharaoh. This Kang variant is known as Rama-Tut and he is actually the very first version of Kang that showed up in Marvel Comics. In 1963’s Fantastic Four #19, the FF travel back to the past, and battle a despotic dictator named Rama-Tut, a fugitive from the far future who had traveled back in time and conquered ancient Egypt. By the end of the issue, the Fantastic Four defeated Rama-Tut and send him back [Christopher Lloyd voice] to the future.

    When Kang the Conqueror debuted the following fall in the pages of The Avengers #8 that story retconned the two characters as the same man at different points in his life. This second story revealed that Kang was born in a utopian future in the 31st century, where everything was beautiful, perfect, and boring. Kang found a time machine and used it to go back to ancient Egypt and become Rama-Tat. On his way back to his own time, his time machine malfunctioned and sent him even farther into the future. Now he was in the 41st century, which was the opposite of the future where he was born; this Earth was ravaged by an apocalyptic war. Rama-Tut settled in to his new home, conquered the whole place, and took the name Kang.

    In later comics, Kang would become Rama-Tut again, but for the purposes of Quantumania and the MCU, that’s irrelevant. All you need to know right now is the Kang variant in the pharaoh outfit is a guy who ruled over ancient Egypt.

    The second of these Kang variants looks much older than the other two and wears a very elaborate hat. That’s Immortus, yet another version of Kang who has alternately helped and hounded different versions of the Avengers through the years. He debuted just two issues after Kang in The Avengers #10. Initially, he was treated as a totally separate character; another bad guy who could control time. Rather than fight the heroes with technology from the future (which was Kang’s gimmick), he would pluck figures out of the past to fight for him. So Immortus could send Billy the Kid or Genghis Khan or whoever he felt like to battle Captain America or Iron Man.

    Later stories revealed Immortus was in fact another version of Kang. His transformation into Immortus is extremely complicated, spread out across decades of stories, and includes multiple retcons, but here is the basic gist: After Kang spends untold ages conquering and fighting, he eventually comes to see the futility of his actions. As an older man, he grows more thoughtful and if not more benevolent, then at least a little less aggressive in his actions. This variant ditches his Kang identity and adopts the name “Immortus.”

    In some stories, Immortus seems to be actively aiding the Avengers. In others, he’s even more dangerous than Kang. In a couple, Kang and Immortus actually fight each other. Essentially, Immortus has been traveling through time so long and seen so much stuff, that he has elaborate (and often inscrutable) grand plans for the timeline that only he knows (and sometimes only he understands). Whether helping or harming the Avengers, it’s always to suit his own ends.

    And then there’s Quantumania’s third Kang variant (still played by Majors) who wears silver armor and appears to be younger than the other two. He’s … to be perfectly honest, I don’t know what variant of Kang this is supposed to be. In terms of who that could be, there are really only two other significant Kang variants from the comics. The first is named Scarlet Centurion, yet another double of Kang (or, sometimes, Kang’s son) who enjoys traveling through time and messing with the Avengers. The other is Iron Lad, and is a younger version of Kang from before he became Rama-Tut. This variant decides he wants to be a hero, rather than a conqueror, and travels back in time to the present day Marvel Universe to start his own team of Avengers.

    (I know, this is really confusing.)

    The third Kang variant in Quantumania’s post-credits could be either one of those guys — but he doesn’t really look like either of them. As the name Scarlet Centurion suggests, the character always dresses in red; this variant is in silver. And he’s young like Iron Lad is in the comics, but as his name suggests, Iron Lad’s armor looks like Iron Man, and this variant’s armor does not. So whoever he is, Marvel’s keeping his identity a mystery for now.

    These three Kangs agree that the heroes of Quantumania (and, by extension I suppose, the Avengers) need to be stopped from meddling with the Kangs’ plans for the multiverse. Precisely what those plans might be aren’t really made clear — all we known is the Kangs will be back, and that they intend to start their own dynasty throughout the multiverse. One that could potentially lead to another multiversal war — perhaps even a secret one.

    Every Marvel Cinematic Universe Movie, Ranked From Worst to Best

    It started with Iron Man and it’s continued and expanded ever since. It’s the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with 31 movies and counting. But what’s the best and the worst? We ranked them all.

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    Matt Singer

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  • Why Doesn’t Jim Carrey’s Riddler Have Eyebrows?

    Why Doesn’t Jim Carrey’s Riddler Have Eyebrows?

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    Joel Schumacher’s Batman movies are famous for their unique sartorial choices; nipples on the Batsuit, pronounced codpieces, and so on. Perhaps their general ostentatiousness obscured what has to be one of the strangest — yet least observed — costuming choices in any Batman film: Jim Carrey’s eyebrows in Batman Forever.

    Or rather his lack of lack of eyebrows.

    This whole situation defies explanation so images will be required. First, here is Carrey in his introductory scene as Edward Nygma, a quirky and ambitious scientist at Wayne Enterprises who has invented a new kind of hyperrealistic television. As you can see, Nygma is a bit disheveled, but he nonetheless possesses a normal human face with normal human eyebrows.

    Bruce Wayne (Val Kilmer) finds disturbing implications in Nygma’s technology — as well he should. It turns out Nygma’s “Box” can transfer the viewer’s brain power to its creator, enhancing his intellect and giving him the uncontrollable urge to talk like Ace Ventura. When Bruce Wayne rebuffs Nygma’s pitch to roll out this “Box” throughout Gotham City, the inventor quits and plots revenge. After witnessing Tommy Lee Jones’ Two-Face in action, Nygma decides to become a costumed criminal himself. Eventually, he picks the name “The Riddler,” with a green and black ensemble covered in question marks.

    Nygma debuts his new alter ego by crashing a dinner party at Two-Face’s lair. When he shows up, he looks like this:

    Notice anything strange about Carrey’s look as the Riddler? Here’s another angle:

    In the span of a scene, Jim Carrey’s eyebrows have vanished. Edward Nygma has eyebrows. But for some reason, the Riddler does not.

    My first thought was “Huh, that’s weird, Jim Carrey’s Riddler has no eyebrows. Why would he shave his eyebrows to become the Riddler?” But here’s the thing: Jim Carrey did not shave his eyebrows to become the Riddler. A few scenes after his transformation into the Riddler, Nygma hosts a lavish black-tie affair. And in that scene — and in every subsequent scene where Carrey plays Edward Nygma —he has eyebrows.

    Look, there they are again.

    Then a couple minutes later, when Nygma puts his Riddler costume on again, his eyebrows vanish.

    This is the Riddler’s ultimate riddle: Why does he have no eyebrows?

    I looked around and couldn’t find a suitable explanation. The closest the late Joel Schumacher comes to explaining it on the Batman Forever DVD commentary is in the first scene between Riddler and Two-Face. Here’s how he describes Carrey’s look as the Riddler:

    Jim’s makeup, believe it or not, was harder to do than Tommy’s. Because there’s an attempt here to make his face almost perfect, like a doll. And that takes a lot of time, because it’s subtler than doing the prosthetic on Tommy’s face.

    I have two daughters, so I live in a house full of dolls. And all of their dolls — every Barbie, every LOL, every baby — has eyebrows. And who thinks of a “perfect” face as one with no eyebrows? Well, Joel Schumacher, I guess.

    Whatever the reason Schumacher equated no eyebrows with the “perfect” look he wanted for the Riddler, he decided to give Carrey a prosthetic to cover his real brows. In fact, a few years ago makeup artist Rick Baker auctioned off many of his famous works — and the items up for bid included not only the masks he made for Carrey to wear in Batman Forever, but the eyebrow covers as well. One set sold for a whopping $632.

    Propstore.com

    Admittedly, there is a certain amount of suspension of disbelief that goes into every superhero movie costume. Michael Keaton’s Batman always wore dark makeup around his eyes under his helmet, yet we never saw him apply it and he never seemed to remove it either. In one infamous moment in Batman Returns, Keaton is very clearly wearing makeup in one shot and then it vanishes in the next when he goes to rip off his mask to reveal his identity to Catwoman.

    This is just one of the things an audience is supposed to accept in a superhero film. But once I noticed Riddler’s (lack of) eyebrows, I couldn’t stop staring at them. I became fixated on trying to understand them — if not from the perspective of the filmmakers then at least from the perspective of Edward Nygma. Why would he go to all this trouble?

    Nygma’s Riddler already wears a mask and dyes his hair orange; did he think that hiding his eyebrows would obscure his identity more? If he was so worried about people recognizing him, maybe he shouldn’t have talked like a standup comic on speed both in and out of his costume. That’s sort of a dead giveaway. Even Bruce Wayne uses a different voice to talk as Batman.

    A few years ago, we learned about a three-hour director’s cut of Batman Forever that Schumacher assembled in the early days of editing the film. This version is described as “much darker in nature” with more focus on the “emotional and psychological issues that led Bruce Wayne to decide to become Batman.” At the time this cut’s existence was revealed, Warner Bros. said they had no plans to ever release it. I only hope some day they change their minds — and that amongst the extended sequences, they include a scene where excessive use of the Box technology makes all the hair fall out of Edward Nygma’s eyebrows. Otherwise, I just don’t get it.

    Every Movie Batman Actor, Ranked From Worst to Best

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    Matt Singer

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  • Warren Beatty Just Made One of the Weirdest Sequels Ever

    Warren Beatty Just Made One of the Weirdest Sequels Ever

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    In this era of comic-book movies, reboots, and IP, a new Dick Tracy seems like a can’t-miss project. The original film, directed by and starring Warren Beatty, became a major hit in 1990, grossing over $100 million in the U.S. alone. And yet a sequel never materialized.

    Well, would you settle for a 30-minute TV special where Warren Beatty talks to himself as Dick Tracy over a Zoom call?

    That is essentially what aired tonight on TCM. In Dick Tracy Special: Tracy Zooms In, TCM host Ben Mankiewicz invites film critic Leonard Maltin over to his office as he prepares for a Zoom call with the famous comic strip and movie cop, Dick Tracy. Tracy (Beatty) calls Mankiewicz and Maltin on Zoom — Beatty is seated in a black void while wearing Tracy’s trademark yellow hat and overcoat — first to compliment Mankiewicz on an interview he did with Beatty for TCM some time earlier. Then “Dick Tracy” explains his issues with the movie Beatty made about him in 1990, while he watches clips from the film. A good five minutes of this 30 minute show were literally just Warren Beatty dressed as Dick Tracy watching the Dick Tracy movie while muttering things like “Yes! Yes, that’s good!” and “No! No! That’s terrible!”

    Maltin’s presence isn’t as random as it may appear. In 2008, Maltin had interviewed the “real” Dick Tracy (Beatty once again) for a first Dick Tracy Special on TCM. This first special lives on on YouTube, and it is almost as weird as this new show.

    2023’s Tracy Zooms In special builds to Maltin adding the “real” Warren Beatty to the Zoom call, and — as Mankiewicz and Maltin look on in disbelief — the two Beattys get into a rambling debate about the Dick Tracy movie and moviemaking in general.

    It‘s worth noting that through all of this, Mankiewicz and Maltin barely say a word. After facilitating this call, they are less participants in it than bewildered observers. This image of their side of the “conversation” sums up the vibe of this entire project.

    Eventually, Dick Tracy and Beatty bury the hatchet and agree to meet for lunch to discuss the possibility of a new Dick Tracy film. That leads to the final shot (seen above) with the two sharing a meal and a single frame together, an image that suggests a new alternative to the played-out Spider-Man pointing at Spider-Man meme.

    So what the hell was that all about? You can go to the Dick Tracy Wikipedia page to find out; the section titled “Possible sequel, legal issues and reboot” contains nine paragraphs and almost 1,000 words on the subject. In short(ish): In the 1980s, Beatty had bought the rights to make Dick Tracy movies directly from Tribune, the owners of the original comic strip. Then he brought his rights to Disney, where he made his Dick Tracy movie.

    For a variety of reasons, he was never able to get a sequel off the ground, and eventually Tribune tried to reclaim their rights so they could try to make their own Dick Tracy films or TV shows — at which point Beatty claimed they were trying to breach their deal and filed suit. 

    In the legal battle that followed, Tribune claimed that per the original contract after a “certain period of time” without a new Dick Tracy movie, series, or special, they’d get their rights back. According to a Reuters report on the outcome of the case (which Beatty won), in 2006, Tribune set Beatty a letter “that gave him two years to begin production on Dick Tracy programming.”

    And so, in 2008, Beatty made the first Dick Tracy Special that’s embedded above. The judge in that case found that “Beatty’s commencement of principal photography of his television special on November 8, 2008 was sufficient for him to retain the Dick Tracy rights.”

    I have no idea if another “certain period of time” passed, or if someone sent the now 85-year-old Beatty another letter. All I know is I just watched Warren Beatty take Dick Tracy to lunch at the Polo Lounge, and I will never be the same again.

    10 Weird Titles That Beloved Movies Almost Used

    These iconic films almost had some not-so-iconic titles.

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    Matt Singer

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  • ‘Knock at the Cabin’s Ending Makes It Very Different From Book

    ‘Knock at the Cabin’s Ending Makes It Very Different From Book

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    The following post contains SPOILERS for Knock at the Cabin, as well as its source material, The Cabin at the End of the World.

    Typically, when you turn a best-selling novel into a movie, you want to make it clear to fans of the book you’ve made an adaptation of it. The most obvious and easiest way to do that is to use the book’s title as the title of the movie. Hey, did you love John Grisham’s The Firm? Well here is the film The Firm, starring Tom Cruise. Big into Dune? Check out Dune! And so on.

    But the movie of Paul Tremblay’s The Cabin at the End of the World isn’t titled The Cabin at the End of the World. It’s called Knock at the Cabin. The co-writer and director of the adaptation, M. Night Shyamalan, has said that was very much a purposeful choice that comes with an implied meaning: Although Knock at the Cabin is inspired by Tremblay’s book, and begins from the same starting point, is not the same story, and in particular takes the form of a much different ending.

    Universal

    Shyamalan expressly told Digital Spy that when he was brought the book as a potential project, changing the ending and the title were part of the deal. “When the book came back to me and they said, ‘Would you be interested?’ I said, ‘Oh yeah,’ because I was so taken with the setup and so I said, ‘I am gonna do a different version of this book. I won’t call the movie the same, the fans of the book can just have that and then this is a different artist, interpreting it differently.’”

    He definitely interpreted it differently. In the book, the protagonists, Andrew and Eric, and their adopted daughter Wen, are on vacation at a remote cabin in New Hampshire when they’re attacked by four strange visitors: Leonard, Sabrina, Adriane, and Redmond. The intruders claim they have received visions of an impending apocalypse that can only be averted if one member of the family willingly kills another as a sort of ritualistic sacrifice. If they do this, humanity will be spared. If they don’t, the rest of the world will be beset by one cataclysm after another, including rising waters, plagues, and eternal darkness.

    Universal

    All of those broad strokes remain in Knock at the Cabin, although Shyamalan being Shyamalan, the movie is set in the woods of Pennsylvania rather than New Hampshire. Otherwise, the premise remains intact, with Ben Aldridge as Andrew, Jonathan Groff as Eric, and Dave Bautista as Leonard. But true to his word, Shyamalan made some drastic changes to the original story.

    In the book, after Andrew manages to get his hands on a gun, there’s a struggle that leads to the accidental death of his daughter Wen. Because she wasn’t willingly chosen for a sacrifice, Leonard insists the ritual has to continue. But the death of Wen causes the group of religious zealots to fracture, even as some of their prophecies begin to come true. By the end of the story, Leonard and his acolytes are dead, and Andrew and Eric have escaped. They consider fulfilling Leonard’s demands anyway — but ultimately decide to live to face any potential Armageddon together.

    Shyamalan’s version differs greatly. In the film, it gradually becomes less ambiguous whether or not Leonard and his followers are crazy. It seems as though the world really is coming to an end. Eric certainly starts to think so. (In his defense, when you see hundreds of planes falling from the sky all over the world amidst earthquakes, tsunamis, and a deadly flu virus, it’s easy to believe the apocalypse is at hand.) Leonard’s group remains united, although the members are systematically sacrificed every time Andrew and Eric refuse to choose who among their family should die. Andrew eventually gets the gun, but Wen isn’t accidentally killed in the film. Instead, Andrew kills Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird) and locks Leonard in the cabin’s bathroom.

    Universal

    Leonard is able to turn the tables on the men and get his hands on the gun. He asks Eric and Andrew a final time if they will choose, and when they refuse, Leonard commits suicide as an unnatural thunderstorm begins to drop lightning and heavy rain on the cabin. Although the family has managed to survive the ordeal, Eric is now convinced they really are being tested by some kind of divine presence. He implores Andrew to kill him and then to live a happy life raising Wen. Andrew resists, and even asks Eric to kill him. But Eric insists, and eventually Andrew gives in, and shoots and kills his own husband.

    After that, Andrew and Wen leave the cabin. They find Leonard’s truck a ways down the road, and take it to a diner, where everyone inside watches on TV as all of the horrific events — the tsunamis, the plague, the planes dropping out of the sky — have magically stopped. It seems as if Leonard was right, and Eric’s sacrifice has saved the world. Andrew and Wen return to their car, playfully fight over the radio, and drive off into the distance.

    Universal Pictures

    This is a fairly significant change; instead of choosing to live, one of the main characters chooses to die. Instead of their daughter being tragically killed, she survives.  So why deviate so strongly from the source material? According to that same interview, Shyamalan said that he “felt very strongly that the story can’t go the way it was written. It just can’t, it can’t go that way for me, I have my feelings about that.” At least commercially, he is unquestionably correct. Sticking with the book’s ending, or at least including the brutal death of a seven-year-old girl, would have doomed the film’s box-office prospects.

    By making this change, Shyamalan also brings the material more in line with his other work, where parents often make extreme sacrifices to protect their children from supernatural or otherworldly threats. Think of Mel Gibson shielding his home from aliens in Signs, Mark Wahlberg on the run with his kids in The Happening, or Gael Garcia Bernal and Vicky Krieps desperately trying to escape the magical beach in Old. Shymalan can have a bit of a mean streak — characters, even central ones, often die in his films. But almost never the kids.

    He’s also no stranger to films with spiritual themes. Just look to the film that made his name, The Sixth Sense, about a boy who communicates with a ghost. Even before that, Shyamalan directed Wide Awake, a story of a boy who is so deeply affected by the death of his grandfather that he begins to seek out proof of God. Or consider Signs, where a former priest finds a divine plan in a series of personal tragedies.

    A more skeptical filmmaker might have adapted The Cabin at the End of the World’s ending, or at least made their film more about faith in the face of uncertainty. In Knock at the Cabin, there’s very little ambiguity; the world is pretty clearly coming to an end. Whatever force or being or presence is causing this is real. So it becomes less of a story of faith, and more of a story of sacrifice.

    As to how Tremblay feels having his own ending sacrificed by Shyamalan, he was supposedly aware of the change. In the Digital Spy interview, Shyamalan said he told Tremblay his plan and he responded “I was gonna do that first and then I decided to do this other version.”

    Great Movies That Got Zero Oscar Nominations

    These all-time classics not only didn’t win any Oscars — they weren’t even nominated!

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    Matt Singer

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  • Who Are the Authority? Meet DC’s New Movie Team

    Who Are the Authority? Meet DC’s New Movie Team

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    Chapter 1 of the DC Universe is stacked with the heaviest of heavy hitters from the company’s superhero library. Superman is getting a new movie from James Gunn. Batman and Robin will headline their first shared movie in 25 years. The Green Lantern Corps is getting its own event series. Wonder Woman’s sisters on Themyscira will get their own spotlight on HBO Max.

    And then there’s The Authority.

    That was the only character (or group of characters) included in the batch of five films that will comprise the cinematic half of DC Chapter 1 that hasn’t previously in at least one movie before. This relatively obscure group is getting their own film, which the official announcement describes thusly: “WildStorm characters will join the DCU as members of The Authority take matters into their own hands to do what they believe is right.”

    That sounds like The Authority, but it doesn’t fully explain why they’re getting their own movie — or why the original Authority stories from WildStorm might be the most influential DC comic book of the 21st century.

    Although largely defunct now, WildStorm was an important DC Comics imprint of the late 1990s and 2000s. It was the publishing home of Jim Lee, and began as his studio while he was part of the original crew of artists who defected from Marvel to form Image Comics in the early 1990s. Lee sold WildStorm to DC in 1998 as he began illustrating more and more DC books.

    WildStorm’s bedrock books had long been WildC.A.T.s., about a team of superheroes who battled an alien race, and Stormwatch, about a United Nations organization that protects the world. (The company name, WildStorm, came from the two series.) But shortly after WildStorm moved to DC, Stormwatch came to an end. (In an unusual move, much of the team was killed off during a crossover comic featuring the xenomorphs from the Alien franchise.)

    The few surviving members of Stormwatch were spun off into a new series called The Authority, originally written by Warren Ellis and illustrated by artist Bryan Hitch. The initial team lineup featured an eclectic mix of characters. Some were clearly pastiches of popular DC heroes. Apollo, for example, was a Superman-type with strength and flight powers, while Midnighter resembled a darker, tougher version of Batman. Others were like familiar Marvel heroes, like the Doctor, who was a Doctor Strange-esque mystic with the added wrinkle that he was also a drug addict. Others were a bit more unusual, like the Engineer, who’d had her blood replaced with nanotech robots, and Jack Hawksmoor who somehow drew power from cities. The remaining Authority members were Swift, a woman with Hawkgirl-like wings and claws, and Jenny Sparks, who could create electricity.

    Ellis and Hitch’s 12 issues of The Authority became a major hit for WildStorm, thanks to the characters’ gritty attitudes and the story’s huge scope, with the heroes fighting for the fate of the entire world in pretty much every issue. Soon The Authority and its huge visuals were being grouped with a variety of other books from the time and dubbed “widescreen comics” — because their epic imagery drew comparisons to blockbuster films. (Remember, this was 1999 before every Hollywood blockbuster was based on a comic.) More and more comics began to made in the widescreen comics style.

    After Ellis and Hitch left The Authority, they were replaced by writer Mark Millar and artist Frank Quitely. They mostly maintained the same tone and style and continued the book’s popularity. Shortly after their run concluded, Millar teamed with Hitch on The Ultimates, which was Marvel’s attempt to modernize and update The Avengers for contemporary audiences. In essence, they turned the Avengers into Marvel’s version of the Authority — and that version of the team, including its Nick Fury who looked and acted like Samuel L. Jackson — heavily influenced Marvel’s first Avengers movie.

    The Authority continued on under various creative teams for a while, but none of the subsequent runs matched the Ellis/Hitch and MIllar/Quitely runs for buzz and impact. DC eventually closed WildStorm in 2010, at which point they incorporated the company’s most popular characters like Grifter, Voodoo and the members of the Authority, into mainstream DC Comics universe. Initially, the former Authority members were part of a relaunched Stormwatch, but later the characters were further integrated throughout DC. Midnighter and Apollo — who are a married couple — got their own series in 2016. And the team was recently revived as part of a book called Superman and the Authority where they were reassembled to help the Man of Steel battle an alien menace.

    So where does the Authority fit into a DC movie and TV universe? Likely in a version close to the one that appeared in those original WildStorm comics, tackling massive threats while affecting an extremely sardonic attitude about everything that happens. (Think a more ruthless, more effective, and less benevolent version of James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy.) Then again, while the classic Authority team exclusively featured WildStorm characters, it wouldn‘t be shocking to see DC Studios incorporate some more famous DC heroes into the group to give the film a bit more star power and name recognition.

    If you’re interested in The Authority, all the classic stories are available in a variety of collected editions, including a gigantic “Absolute” edition.

    Actors Who Turned Down DC Roles

    These major stars could have played some of your favorite DC Comics’ heroes onscreen. But they all said no for one reason or another.

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    Matt Singer

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  • Last Of Us Episode 2 Has a Big Change From the Game – Here’s Why

    Last Of Us Episode 2 Has a Big Change From the Game – Here’s Why

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    The following post contains SPOILERS for the first two episodes of The Last of Us.

    The Last of Us isn’t just a great adaptation of a video game; it’s an extremely faithful one. Besides the characters, the backstories, and the premise, the first two episodes of HBO’s adaptation include images and even lines of dialogue lifted straight out of the game. Some moments combine both — like when Ellie gazes out at the ruined skyline of Boston and remarks “But man, you can’t deny that view.” Heck, a lot of the characters wear the same clothes as in the game.

    For all those similarities, though, there is one really major change to the world of The Last of Us on television, and that’s how the Cordyceps fungal infection is spread. In The Last of Us games, the infection can be passed through bites, just like all good zombie infections get passed from person to person. But in the games they can also be passed through spores which hang in the air.

    Episode 2 of the show makes it clear that that’s not the case in this version of The Last of Us. While bites are still just as deadly — at least for people who aren’t Ellie — the uninfected no longer need to worry about Cordyceps spores, or carry around gas masks like they did in the game. Instead, like some real-life fungus, the Last of Us show’s infected share a kind of hive mind that is also connected to the Cordyceps that’s all around our heroes as they make their way through the ruined city. And because all the infected are connected, a noise in one place can awaken hundreds of zombies somewhere else, who will then race to wherever that sound was heard.

    In the “Inside the Episode” aired after The Last of Us Episode 2 on HBO, series co-creator Craig Mazin explained why this fairly significant change was made to the series’ zombie mythology. “In the game,” Mazin said, “[the infection] spreads through biting and saliva but it can also spread through the air, through spores. And while that works in a video game environment, in real life spores move around everywhere. And it’s just harder to buy into the notion that spores localize and don’t spread.”

    It might seem at first glance like the TV series would be less scary than the game if the characters can’t catch the infection at any moment just by breathing in a stray spore. After all, the first episode of the show played up the connections between the show’s fungal infection and our own pandemic of the last few years, when an errant cough or sneeze has felt like a potentially fatal act. Removing the airborne component of the Cordyceps infection could potentially blunt some of the show’s allegorical impact.

    In practice, though, this Last of Us episode was still extremely scary. By turning the infected into a hive mind that works along what Mazin calls the “wood-wide web,” and can be activated at any moment, the show has even more dread than segments of the game. Now any wrong step can put the characters in peril in seconds. The change also gives the show room to try new things; to surprise viewers with sequences they won’t anticipate because they’ll also be different from the game. After all, scares aren’t quite as terrifying if you know they’re coming.

    Plus, now The Last of Us doesn’t have to stick Pedro Pascal in a gas mask for 20 minutes every week or two.

    New episodes of The Last Of Us premiere on HBO and HBO Max on Sunday nights at 9PM ET.

    10 TV Actors Who Were Replaced For Controversial Reasons

    These actors were replaced from hit shows under clouds of controversy.

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    Matt Singer

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