Tag: Polygon

Marvel’s Iman Vellani dishes on her love of Attack on Titan

[ad_1]

Iman Vellani is the kind of movie star whose enthusiasm, humor, and openness radiates off the screen and feels positively incandescent in person. The 21-year-old actress, best known for her role as Kamala Khan in 2022’s Ms. Marvel and 2023’s The Marvels, is unabashedly open in sharing her love of all things MCU-related, from playfully debating the finer points of canonical continuity with Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige to co-writing a Ms. Marvel limited series with Sabir Pirzada.

But Vellani has other passions beyond Marvel — her most recent being anime. Earlier this year at the Crunchyroll Anime Awards, Vellani shared with Polygon what convinced her to finally take the plunge into exploring Japanese animation.

“I was very intimidated by anime until very recently,” Vellani said. “I started watching anime about a year ago, so this is a new obsession for me, but I’m totally into it now. There’s just so much content, I didn’t know where to start. I mean, I can barely keep up with all the Marvel content that’s out there.”

Image: Wit Studio/Crunchyroll

Vellani attributes her nascent love of anime to Attack on Titan, which she was introduced to via family and friends and proudly names as her current favorite anime. “They just talk about it all the time,” Vellani said, “and Attack on Titan kept coming back up whenever they would talk about anime. I started watching it and was like, This is a story that seems like it’s about humanity. I think I can get into it.”

Of the entire ensemble of characters that appear in Attack on Titan, Vellani pointed out one in particular whose story resonated the most with her. “I love Mikasa Ackerman,” Vellani said. “The way that she kept Eren’s scarf at the end of the show, even though Eren told her to give it up and forget about him. Her being the only one who was able to kill Eren at the end to stop the Rumbling. That is a woman who — I don’t think I’ve seen many other female characters like her who have that authority, willpower, and determination to actually act on it. I recently cut my hair, and when I looked in the mirror, I was like, I know what my next cosplay is.”

Image: Wit Studio/Crunchyroll

Aside from Mikasa, Vellani also named one of the series’ other leading characters as one she especially enjoyed, going so far as to praise the voice actor responsible for their performance in Attack on Titan’s finale. “I like Armin because I always like to root for the nerdy characters,” Vellani said. “I watched the final half of the show with the English dub and, I don’t know who the actor who plays Armin is, but they deserve a raise because their performance in the final episode blew me away. He made me cry, his wailing and that flashback scene between him and Eren, it just hit me in all the right ways.”

After resisting anime for a while, Attack on Titan quickly became a show that stuck with her. “The ending was such a gut punch. It left me feeling so awful at the end, but it’s like one of those Succession-type endings where it’s not the ending you want, but it made sense. The ending made sense for the story, it made sense for the characters.

“I think they tied the knot so perfectly, and I can’t think of anything else I’ve watched recently that’s impacted me as much as that. I was crying in my bed watching it. My mom walked in on me and she was like, ‘It’s just an animation show!’ and I was like, ‘No, this is real!’”

Image: MAPPA/Crunchyroll

Shortly after finishing Attack on Titan, she dove into exploring other popular series suggested by her friends. “I finally started Jujutsu Kaisen and One Piece,” Vellani said. “One Piece was one that I did not want to get into initially because it’s like, what, a thousand episodes now, and that felt like too much. Grey’s Anatomy was more than enough for me, and I stopped at, like, season 10. But after the Netflix show came out I was so drawn to the characters, and after the heartbreak of Attack on Titan, I needed something lighter and funnier and that made me feel good. The characters are likable and I want to root for them all, so that’s a show I really like.”

And Vellani’s love for anime doesn’t stop at TV. “I watched Suzume just before coming to Japan and I loved it,” Vellani said. “That blew my mind. Truly a masterpiece. I also recently watched The Boy and the Heron and, as a 21-year-old, it really spoke to me and it reassured me that my inner child still exists.”

Image: Studio Ghibli via GKIDS/YouTube

When asked why she felt that her generation has embraced anime, and what it was about the medium that specifically spoke to her, Vellani cited the empowering roles and depictions of women and children, as well as the craftsmanship of studios like Studio Ghibli, as some of the reasons why anime is so popular among Gen Z audiences. “I just feel like anime feels so progressive with the way they depict women and children, especially in Studio Ghibli movies. All those movies are so good at showcasing youth and childhood and imagination in a way that’s encouraging children to keep that mindset.

“I feel like a lot of American cinema right now is just so depressing. It just wants to show the gritty real life of the world. I want to live in a world that makes me excited for the future, and I think anime does such a wonderful job in showcasing all the beauties of life. We went to the Ghibli Museum this morning and saw how they draw every single detail of the houses — the bricks, the walls, the windows — and you just realize how much people paid attention to these details when they drew it. Like, this is how they see the world, and that’s how I want to see the world, as something that’s full of life and joy.”

[ad_2]

Toussaint Egan

Source link

April 28, 2024
7 Days in Hell did Challengers before Challengers — threesomes and all

[ad_1]

It sometimes seems surprising that tennis doesn’t inspire more movies. Its one-on-one gladiatorial clashes are inherently dramatic and psychological, while the devious scoring system means no match is ever lost until it’s lost. Nail-biting climaxes and last-minute turnarounds are baked into the design. On the other hand, the fast-moving, seesawing action is technically difficult to frame in a way that’s both exciting and legible — and that same scoring system might drastically confuse anyone who doesn’t follow the sport.

Or maybe there are only so many tennis stories to tell. It’s certainly true that after watching Challengers, the torrid, wildly entertaining new tennis melodrama starring Zendaya and directed by Call Me by Your Name’s Luca Guadagnino, I was struck by some surprising similarities to an earlier film. Only this film isn’t a proper sports movie, or even a pseudo-serious bit of prestige pulp like Challengers. 7 Days in Hell is a profoundly silly 43-minute HBO mockumentary from 2015, starring The Lonely Island’s Andy Samberg and streaming on Hulu and Max.

It’s tough to prove my point without comprehensively spoiling either film. You should watch them both; they’re both lots of fun. Let’s just say that both feature a hotly contested, emotionally (and maybe sexually) charged match between rival male players that goes the distance — and far beyond. Both movies also feature varying degrees of hot threesome action; an absurdly extended, physically impossible rally at the net; and a certain gesture that takes things up a gear. And they both end in strikingly similar ways, even though the actual outcomes are very, very different.

Image: HBO

Image: HBO

Photo: Niko Tavernise/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures

Above: Andy Samberg and Kit Harington in 7 Days in Hell. Below: Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor in Challengers.

Perhaps the key to both films’ success is that they recognize that tennis, with its strange rituals, hourslong matches, hushed intensity, and soundtrack of echoing pops, grunts, and smacks, is actually pretty ridiculous. Guadagnino’s movie spends more than two hours edging along the border of high camp, urged along by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ pounding gay-club score. 7 Days in Hell is an all-out parody; it has no such restraint, if restraint is the word.

7 Days in Hell spoofs an ESPN 30 for 30-style sports documentary. Its subject is the longest match in tennis history, a first-round clash at Wimbledon that lasted for seven days. The top seed is Charles Poole (Game of Thrones’ Kit Harington), a tragically dim Brit carrying the nation’s hopes on his shoulders. The wild card is Aaron Williams (Samberg), a washed-up “bad boy of tennis” in the Andre Agassi mold who happens to be Venus and Serena Williams’ adoptive brother. (In one of many talking-head cameos from famous real-world tennis figures, Serena explains that her father, Richard, adopted a white boy off the streets and turned him into a tennis pro in a “reverse Blind Side.”) Aaron is on the comeback trail after killing a line umpire with a 176 mph serve in the 1990s.

7 Days in Hell’s prime target is the absurdly extended matches that the Grand Slam tournaments are known for — particularly Wimbledon, where rain often delays play into the next day, and tie breaks weren’t used in the final set until 2019, making endless matches theoretically possible. The movie delights in the absurdism and masochism of both playing and watching this sport, as rain, streakers, traffic accidents, conjuring tricks, and more conspire to imprison the two players and their audience in an agonizing weeklong death spiral.

The fun comes from 7 Days in Hell’s extremely broad, even crude, humor (you’re going to need to enjoy dick jokes — this is a Samberg joint, after all) mixed with its savage parody of both the tennis world and the sports-documentary format. The film’s best gag is a brilliantly sustained digression into the history of Swedish courtroom sketch art, delivered with completely straight faces by tennis legends John McEnroe and Chris Evert, as well as the film’s stacked cast of comic actors. It’s a sly satirization of the way docs can use celebrity and misappropriated expertise as a vehicle for all kinds of barely relevant, unexamined information.

Among those self-mocking talking heads, McEnroe is particularly good value throughout. (His best line delivery: “Aaron probably should have forfeited after killing a guy. But he didn’t, because he’s an asshole.” McEnroe remains undefeated at cursing.) David Copperfield also sends himself up beautifully. The pro performers are great, too, with Fred Armisen as All England Club chairman Edward Pudding, MCU veteran Karen Gillan as Charles Poole’s supermodel ex-girlfriend, Mary Steenburgen as his overbearing mother, Lena Dunham as a fashion CEO, and an unforgettable turn from Michael Sheen as Caspian Wint, a pervy, chain-smoking British sports broadcaster. The smooth narration comes from Jon Hamm.

Before things come to a head on day seven of the match, the two players hold a joint press conference. A dispute starts, and they square up against each other, hurling insults, in an argument that briefly turns into a confused, thwarted embrace. Fundamentally, 7 Days in Hell and Challengers are saying the same two things. One: Sport may be about competition and dominance, but it’s a thin line between dominance and desire. And two: Tennis is absurd.

7 Days in Hell is streaming on Max, Hulu, and YouTube (with a subscription) and can be rented on Apple TV, Google Play, and other digital platforms.

[ad_2]

Oli Welsh

Source link

April 27, 2024
What to know before watching Zendaya’s new sports movie Challengers

[ad_1]

At Polygon, a lot of us are fans of sitting down to a movie with as little upfront information as possible, for the feeling of discovery. But sometimes, it helps to know a few things going in, whether it’s an interesting fact about the movie’s history or just knowing how many end-credits scenes to wait for. Here are four things we think you should know about Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers before watching.

What is Challengers about?

Photo: Niko Tavernise/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures

The simple title doesn’t offer much clarity. But broadly, and without spoilers: Challengers follows a complicated relationship between three people. Zendaya, who also produced the movie, plays Tashi, a former teenage tennis superstar. In a story that jumps back and forth in time, she meets best friends and tennis partners Art (West Side Story’s Mike Faist) and Patrick (The Crown’s Josh O’Connor), dates both of them, marries one of them and becomes his tennis coach, then pits them against each other in an epic tennis match for complicated personal reasons that take most of the movie to unpack.

The movie starts at that match, when all three of them are in their 30s. Then it loops back to their teen years, and jumps around in time to explore what happened between the threesome’s first meeting and the present, more than a decade later.

Does Challengers have a post-credits scene?

No, there’s nothing after the credits — meaning no further information about the aftermath of that final match. Director Luca Guadagnino (Call Me by Your Name, Bones and All) and writer Justin Kuritzkes leave that up to fanfiction writers. We like to think that aftermath resembles the climactic scene in one of Kuritzkes’ favorite movies, Y Tu Mamá También, which… well, if you know, you know.

What do I need to know about tennis before watching Challengers?

Image: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures/Everett Collection

The scoring rules for tennis are a little complicated, and it’s worth boning up on them before the movie if you want to fully understand the action and the specific setbacks and triumphs Art and Patrick face. (Video gamers who’ve played a lot of Wii Sports tennis or any of the many other tennis sims may be way ahead of the game here.)

The two men are competing in a Challengers match, one of the qualifier events the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) uses to determine who goes on to professional-level competition. When the movie starts, Art is already a pro-level player, qualified for the biggest events in the sport, like Wimbledon and the U.S. Open. Patrick is trying to qualify to play at that level.

The key terms to understand: The two men are pitted against each other in a match, which typically means three or five sets. A set is a series of games, played until one player has won at least six cumulative games and has won at least two more games than their opponent has. The winner of a game is whichever player scores four points first, except when the game is tied at three points each. We’ll get into that below.

Points have their own designations in tennis: love (zero points), 15 (one point), 30 (two points), and 40 (three points). Tennis has multiple officiants, but the one seated above the match, known as the chair umpire, serves as a referee, calling the score and any faults or penalties that would change the score. For instance, if the chair umpire calls a score of “love-30,” that means one player has zero points and the other has two. When both players have the same number of points, the score is called as “all,” as in “15-all,” meaning each player has one point.

A game that hits a tied score of 40-all has its own special word, “deuce.” In a deuce situation, a player needs to score two points in a row to win. That means a four-point game might go on for a dozen points. Whoever scored the most recent point in a deuce game after the score was tied is said to have “advantage,” since they’re halfway to winning — so if player A scores one point in a deuce game, they have advantage, but if player B then scores a point, the score goes back to 40-all, with player B now having advantage. There are several ways to score points in tennis apart from successfully getting a ball past the other player. An opponent might surrender points via a fault. Or the chair umpire might assess penalty points for an opponent’s unsportsmanlike conduct, including swearing, throwing things, delaying a match, and more.

Yes, all this is relevant in Challengers, especially for understanding why Art and Patrick play so many games against each other, and why some of those games go on so long.

Can you enjoy Challengers without knowing anything about tennis?

Sure. It’s pretty clear when one of the players is on the upswing and the other is losing, just from their responses. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ aggressive, driving score for the film spikes up the excitement and makes it clear when big, important things are happening. But being able to read the on-screen match scoring and follow what’s going on in individual games will give you a lot more nuance about the status of a given game and the overall match.

Are the actors really playing tennis in Challengers?

They’re often hitting real balls on real courts, but plenty of effects and editing trickery were involved in making the games look seamless. Zendaya, Faist, and O’Connor all went through extensive training to make sure their forms on the court were convincing. But as Zendaya has pointed out in interviews, she’d never played tennis before, and she faced a steep learning curve, giving a credible performance as a world-class tennis prodigy.

Is Challengers a good movie?

Polygon sure recommends it! It’s a playful, sexy, tense story, part romance and part compelling sports drama. From our review:

Luca Guadagnino’s sweaty, panting sports-and-sex romantic drama Challengers feel[s] like a thumbed nose (or a raised middle finger) aimed at American Puritanism and an increasingly sex-negative culture. Challengers is a sharp and snappy movie, full of big emotions expressed through fast-paced dialogue in some scenes and through silent, sensual physicality in others, all shot with creative verve and aggressive in-your-face energy. Everyone in this movie is chasing sex and success, and conflating those things with each other in unashamedly provocative ways.

[ad_2]

Tasha Robinson

Source link

April 25, 2024
Shōgun is a great war epic that never actually shows us any war

[ad_1]

[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for the end of Shōgun.]

Just before he’s forced to commit seppuku in the final moments of Shōgun, Yabushige demands to know how Toranaga’s plan to overthrow Ishido will play out. At this moment, Shōgun shows us a glimpse of tens of thousands of soldiers across five armies amassed on a battlefield. The entire series has seemingly been building up to this point — the training of the cannon regiment, Toranaga’s half-brother shifting his alliance, the Regents all signing a declaration of war — and yet just before the battle is set to begin, Ishido is delivered a note letting him know that the heir’s army will abstain from the battlefield. Without the heir’s banner, the other Regents will turn on him before the battle even begins. But this is just Toranaga’s plan; Shōgun never actually shows us any war.

It’s subversive never to have any war in a historical war epic, with Toranaga’s subversion delaying his impeachment vote (and any declaration of war) until the ninth episode. Most movies or TV shows in the genre set up the narrative to give the viewer a satisfying and violent conclusion to the tension that’s been building, like the final stand in The Return of the King, the faceoff in Braveheart, or even the last stand of The Last Samurai (which is also about a Western military man landing in Japan, and shares some crew with Shōgun). In essence, no matter how brutal and bloody the fight is, an explosive battlefield is the natural climax to the story arc. These movies and shows also often land on one implied conclusion: War, no matter how disgusting it may be, is a justified, even virtuous endeavor.

But while the war genre often posits a “good side” to root for over the evil one, Shōgun complicates the conception with Toranaga, who spends most of the series plotting in the background toward an alliance with key adversaries rather than preparing to fight them. Toranaga is cunning, ruthless, and willing to sacrifice his closest friends if it means he can avoid an all-out war. His motivations are what make Shōgun such a compelling show — while at the same time forcing audiences to reexamine their expectations of a historical war epic.

For Toranaga in Shōgun, there’s only one evil side: war itself. In his final speech to Yabushige, Toranaga describes his dream: “A nation without wars. An era of great peace.” Key to his calculus, however, is his willingness to sacrifice those dearest to him to achieve this peace. From the moment Ochiba returned to Osaka, Toranaga had been prepping Mariko (and her thoughts about death) to make a final appeal to gain allegiance from the heir’s army. And, knowing since the pilot that Yabushige was bound to betray him, Toranaga’s orchestration of Mariko’s sacrifice was his personal trolley problem — only in his version, the question is between sacrificing one life or setting 10,000 trolleys against another 10,000 trolleys on the same tracks.

Photo: Katie Yu/FX

Photo: Katie Yu/FX

In other shows, this setup wouldn’t quite work. Audiences are used to war being a mass of bodies hacking and slashing and shooting each other with the idea that sacrifice is necessary and just as long as both parties are armed. Individual deaths of beloved characters, however, are usually framed as the face for the heaps of lost lives. But Mariko walked into Osaka with a plan. With how close she came to committing seppuku, her sacrifice is likely one of the potential outcomes of the plan she discussed with Toranaga. When she willingly absorbs the blast of the bomb through the door, it’s absolutely heart-wrenching for the viewer and Blackthorne. His grief on screen, along with Father Alvito’s and Buntaro’s, is devastating to see unfold in the finale. In most media properties, the audience would walk away wishing the character was saved in time from their terrible fate, forced to be content with the revenge in their name. In Shōgun, we’re asked to accept her decision and not demand a bloodbath as retribution.

In this light, Toranaga seems ruthlessly Machiavellian, since he seems perfectly fine with innocent death. When Uejiro the gardener removes the rotting pheasant and is put to death by the village as a smokescreen to protect his spy, Toranaga treats Blackthorne’s distress as childish. Similarly, when the Erasmus is sunk at the end of the series, Toranaga routs the whole town of Ajiro, sticking severed heads of fishermen on a sign as punishment for the destruction of the boat — even though it was he, personally, who hired the men who spread gunpowder across the deck of Blackthorne’s beloved ship. Even his son’s graceless death is only audibly acknowledged by Toranaga as a way to buy time and delay the oncoming war.

Avoiding war seems to be Toranaga’s top priority throughout the series, though he never fully states it outright until his final confrontation with Yabushige. Throughout the show, he declines to share his feelings publicly, instead letting other characters in his council lead discussions — even if he’s manipulating their moves from behind the scenes. When his oldest friend and advisor threatens seppuku, Toranaga stands by his decision to surrender to Osaka, knowing that Hiromatsu’s death will set his battle-averse plans in motion. Even in his final interaction with Yabushige, who demands to know if Toranaga plans to reinstate the shogunate, triggering a return to a single military ruler for all of Japan, he forgoes the chance to monologue: “Why tell a dead man the future?”

Shōgun is sparing but decisive about the horrors of war that Toranaga wants to avoid. Violence is efficiently brutal in the world of the show. Even in the flashback to Toranaga’s early glory days, Shōgun is careful not to valorize war or his part in it; while his own soldiers brutally behead fallen enemies lying in bloody piles of limbs on the battlefield, a young Toranaga looks on, unwavering in his demeanor. Threatened by the arrival of Ishido’s main man Nebara Jozen in episode 4, Toranaga’s son Nagakado makes the rash decision to unload their newly minted cannon regiment on the interlopers. As the cannons in the distance roar, the camera cuts quickly to Jozen, his men, and their horses being torn to shreds in some of the goriest effects put to television. While there is a fair amount of swordplay skirmishes throughout the series, this cannon demonstration is one of the only depictions we get of mass warfare, and the results are truly terrifying. Amid the viscera, the audience can actually hear the feet of Nagakado’s men squelch in the blood-soaked mud as they creep in to finish everyone off. Compared to the hand-to-hand combat we’ve seen in the woods, where men drop from a single slash or stab, this preview of war is significantly more gruesome, particularly when you add in the full rifle regiments.

Photo: Katie Yu

Shōgun is careful to avoid the glorious charge into battle, upending the viewer’s relationship to political struggle. When Hiromatsu commits seppuku to protest Toranaga’s surrender to Osaka, he does so to prevent Toranaga’s other generals from sparking their own uprising. Toranaga clearly wants to stop him but can’t, the way Hiromatsu would do anything for him and must. Later, Toranaga reveals that he knew Hiromatsu’s actions would spark Yabushige and Blackthorne to head to Osaka on their own, which allows him to send Mariko with them as part of his true plan. Toranaga’s pained stoicism in this scene is revealing, and the tears in his eyes are the first time viewers see his facade crack. Even if Toranaga carries the weight of every death in service to his cause, he’s still unwavering in his ultimate goal.

That brings us back to Mariko’s standoff at the Osaka castle gates. As she tries to fight her way forward with her naginata, she’s relentlessly beaten back by Ishido’s men. After her defeat, she declares her intention to commit seppuku publicly for not being able to fulfill Toranaga’s orders, and it’s that moment that primes Ishido to release the Regents and their royal court as hostages — not her actual fight. In her actual fight, just before she picks up her own polearm, we see the pointless death of her armed escorts again and again as Ishido’s men slaughter them. Even when it looks like they may turn the tide, Mariko’s guards are cut down by arrows from men stationed on the castle walls. The battle is over in seconds, ending with one of Toranaga’s men bowing to Mariko while being speared directly through the heart from behind.

It’s hard to ignore the message of intentional protest by death. For those not directly involved, war — particularly period warfare like Shōgun — tends to be a tragedy that occurs in a faraway place, out of sight and out of mind. Even if her men remain nameless, Mariko’s sacrifice instead places tragedy immediately on the doorstep of Japan’s capital in the most unavoidable way possible. When looking to calculate what the cost of war is, it’s no longer a tally of nameless soldiers dying far away. It’s now the immediate loss of someone everyone in the show — and of course, the audience — holds dear to their hearts.

And the audience spends the entire last episode dealing with Blackthrone’s grief and acceptance. Shōgun defies the natural story arc by ending with a whimper; it’s in that precise moment of audience discomfort that viewers are forced to reckon with how much they want to see violence play out on screen, and perhaps even contend with how readily they are willing to accept war in real life.

In a way, Shōgun is both a critique of war and of the media’s portrayal of it. But the show is always clear that every decision demands some sort of sacrifice. “It’s hypocrisy, our lives,” Yabushige states, cliffside, as Toranaga draws his sword to second his seppuku. “All this death and sacrifice from lesser men just to ensure some victory in our names…” Yabushige in this moment exists almost as an analog for the audience, questioning Toranaga’s methods. “If you win, anything is possible,” Toranaga replies, echoing a sentiment uttered by Blackthorne earlier. And winning, Shōgun seems to imply, can happen before war even breaks out.

Shōgun is now streaming in full on Hulu.

[ad_2]

Jesse Raub

Source link

April 24, 2024
Can Trubbish be shiny in Pokémon Go?

[ad_1]

Trubbish, the trash bag Pokémon from Unova, can be found in the wild in Pokémon Go. Yes, Trubbish can be shiny in Pokémon Go!

Graphic: Julia Lee/Polygon | Image sources: Niantic/The Pokémon Company

Neither Trubbish nor Garbodor see any meta use in PvE or PvP, though Garbodor has some really niche uses in some PvP leagues. As meta Pokémon, these guys go into the trash. As Pokémon themselves, they deserve love, care, and a wonderful home.

What is the shiny rate for Trubbish in Pokémon Go?

As per old research by the now-defunct website The Silph Road (via Wayback Machine), the shiny rate for Pokémon on a regular day is approximately one in 500. Trubbish is not a confirmed Pokémon that gets a “permaboost” (meaning that it’s a rare spawn and thus gets a boosted shiny rate).

What can I do to attract more shiny Pokémon?

Not much, unfortunately. It appears to be random chance. Shiny Pokémon catch rates are set by developer Niantic, and they are typically only boosted during special events like Community Days or Safari Zones, or in Legendary Raids. There are no consumable items that boost shiny Pokémon rates.

Where can I find a list of available shiny Pokémon?

LeekDuck keeps a list of currently available shiny Pokémon. It’s a helpful visual guide that illustrates what all of the existing shiny Pokémon look like.

For more tips, check out Polygon’s Pokémon Go guides.

[ad_2]

Julia Lee

Source link

April 22, 2024
Infection Free Zone’s early access bugs weigh down its intriguing premise

[ad_1]

Infection Free Zone, now in Steam Early Access, has a basic premise: Zombies have taken over the world, driving humanity into underground bunkers to wait the plague out. Eventually, the radio fires up, and a message goes out that the disease is fading. While the surface is still dangerous, it’s time to step up and make an attempt to build a new society.

This isn’t my first rodeo with a game like this, where you have to build a post-apocalyptic society that’s constantly under attack by hordes of zombies. However, this is the first time I’ve done so from the comfort and safety of my own real-world block. Instead of a fictional setting or a careful diorama based on an actual city, Infection Free Zone pulls from map data to create a one-to-one re-creation of cities and towns, using that information to create places for looting and building up a base of operations.

An Infection Free Zone run starts with the player choosing where to begin. The game offers my own region as a starting location, and I even found my own apartment. The map also draws on real-world data to categorize each building. For instance, the walk-in clinic across from my apartment is recognized as a hospital, which made it an ideal starting HQ. My apartment building lacked medical supplies, and its size meant it would be difficult to defend. Meanwhile, I could lock down the clinic easily, and help myself to all that free medicine left behind.

Image: Jutsu Games/Games Operators

The real-world function of each building factors into how it’s interpreted in Infection Free Zone. Learning about the perks — and downsides — of each building in my area would be necessary if I wanted to survive. From there, I started organizing my population into small squads for scavenging the homes in the area for canned food. We found other survivors and started planting food and building infrastructure.

Unfortunately, I haven’t figured out yet how to escape one of two inevitable fates: turtling until I starve to death, or attracting so many infected to my fledgling settlement that we’re overwhelmed. Perhaps it’s because I live in a humble Canadian neighborhood where guns wouldn’t spawn frequently, but I couldn’t find enough firearms to fend off the endless hordes. You can play anywhere in theory, but in practice you’re going to need to pick a major city for more resources.

There are also other little early access issues that are all individually annoying, but build up to make challenges feel insurmountable. Do you want to renovate a building? You’ll need to clear everyone out first. Want to dedicate time to research? The advancement tree has disappointingly few options, so that doesn’t feel very satisfying. I managed to plant lots of crops in the park near my place, but they stopped producing food. By the time I realized they needed fertilizer, my colony was already on the brink of starvation. Many of these problems aren’t broadcast or explained by the game in any way; I figured them out as I went, and usually died for the trouble. These annoyances go beyond the typical faults of zombie games or base builders; they seem much more related to the game’s early access state.

Plus, seemingly everything requires an endless amount of wood to build, upgrade, or advance. At first, I thought that the easiest way to get wood would be to chop down trees, but found it’s actually more productive to break down buildings in order to also get other materials, such as bricks. However, that turns what seems like an impossible barrier into merely a deeply boring and irritating grind. All those extra materials also fill up my storage, requiring lots of micromanagement. It’s all very awkward, and the threat of the roving undead means I didn’t have much time to focus on solving these issues. Add in constant transmissions and radio chatter, and I walked away from Infection Free Zone irritated.

Image: Jutsu Games/Games Operators

Instead of fighting against the zombies and feeling them emerge as a natural threat, I felt like the real enemy was the game itself. A base builder zombie survival game like State of Decay 2 can be difficult and terrifying, but I always felt as though my fate was in my own hands. I’d like more agency as an overseer, and more ways for the game to evolve. Right now, my settlement seems doomed to perish from hunger or get overrun by the inevitable hordes.

There’s a lot to iron out, but this is an early access release, and Infection Free Zone has a lot of potential. The ability to choose a real-world neighborhood or rebuild society literally from the comfort of your own home is very cool. I’m intrigued to see if Jutsu Games can turn things around and clean up all the UI issues, early access bugs, and janky systems. There’s something special about surviving the post-apocalypse in my own neighborhood and using my local knowledge to benefit my community of survivors. Alternatively, it’s neat to start a game at the base of a famous landmark and enjoy a little post-apocalyptic tourism. It’s just a shame the rest of the ride is currently so rough.

[ad_2]

Cass Marshall

Source link

April 21, 2024
The best sci-fi movies to watch on Netflix this April

[ad_1]

Greetings, Polygon readers!

This weekend sees the release of not one, but two sci-fi epics in the form of Dune: Part Two and Rebel Moon Part Two: The Scargiver on VOD and streaming. If neither of those strikes your fancy, don’t worry; we’ve once again descended into the backlog of Netflix’s streaming library to bring you a trio of the best sci-fi movies to watch in April.

This month’s picks include John Carpenter’s 1984 sci-fi body-horror romance starring Jeff Bridges, an underrated post-apocalyptic blockbuster about mobile city fortresses duking it out for resources, and an anime adaptation of a cult-classic cyberpunk manga.

Let’s take a look at what this month has to offer!

Editor’s pick: Starman

Image: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment

Director: John Carpenter
Cast: Jeff Bridges, Karen Allen, Charles Martin Smith

The pitch “John Carpenter’s version of Close Encounters” conjures a far different image for fans of the Halloween director than what his 1984 film Starman turned out to be. The film kicks off with a sleek spaceship descending upon Earth in a frame not too far off from the opening of The Thing. There’s even a bit of body horror: When the alien creeps into the home of the recently widowed Jenny (Karen Allen), the entity uses bits of DNA of her deceased husband to recast his corporeal self — growing from baby to toddler to teen to adult Jeff Bridges in mere seconds. It’s sick! Then Carpenter gets all mushy in his most romantic film to date.

Starman is a sci-fi film through and through — the alien visits our planet after intercepting Voyager 2’s golden disc, and its arrival sparks a classic Spielbergian cat-and-mouse game between bumbling feds and the on-the-lam ET — but in having the alien assume the form of Jenny’s dead husband, Carpenter burrows deeper into human mortality than these screen stories tend to go. Allen, spiraling in an impossible situation, and Bridges, mixing his alien’s hyperintelligence with childlike wonder, have the chemistry to make a silly story sing. Jenny knows the man in her passenger seat isn’t her husband, but he is a second chance. Carpenter mines the dreamlike premise for all the sap, leaning on Jack Nitzsche’s unforgettable score to swell at just the right moments. Starman is pure Hollywood romance, and proof that boxing a director into one genre is the quickest way to limit greatness. —Matt Patches

Mortal Engines

Image: Universal Pictures Home Entertainment

Director: Christian Rivers
Cast: Hera Hilmar, Robert Sheehan, Hugo Weaving

An underrated post-apocalyptic blockbuster from many of the people who made the Lord of the Rings movies, Mortal Engines was a box-office bomb but deserved much better. Set in a future where cities are mobile and big cities hunt smaller ones, the story follows a young assassin (Hera Hilmar) who seeks to take out a power-hungry leader (Hugo Weaving). Along the way, she finds allies (Jihae) and maybe even a bit of love (Robert Sheehan).

But the characters or narrative aren’t Mortal Engines’ main selling point (although Weaving does fully and delightfully commit to an over-the-top villainous performance). Instead, it’s the fantastic production design and creative world-building that make Mortal Engines feel like a breath of fresh air in the sequel/prequel/remake-heavy sci-fi blockbuster landscape. Now that it’s newly on Netflix, check out one of the 2010s’ most undeserved flops. —Pete Volk

Blame!

Image: Polygon Pictures/Netflix

Director: Hiroyuki Seshita
Cast: Takahiro Sakurai, Kana Hanazawa, Sora Amamiya

Alongside the likes of H.R. Giger and Shinya Tsukamoto, Tsutomu Nihei is one of the most prolific artists associated with the subgenre of posthuman science fiction, emphasizing horrific man-machine hybrids and massive, desolate worlds set in the far future.

Nihei’s 1997 manga Blame! is inarguably his magnum opus — a post-apocalyptic cyberpunk saga about a mysterious warrior known as “Killy” wandering the metallic wastelands of an Earth overrun by a techno-organic virus. Adapted into a feature-length anime by director Hiroyuki Seshita (Knights of Sidonia), Blame! streamlines the manga’s story into a single adventure in Killy’s quest to find a means of undoing the virus that has reshaped the world and endangered humanity’s last remaining descendents.

While the film loses some of the evocative, wordless melancholy of the manga in its translation from page to screen, it lacks none of the scale and depth of its world-building and vistas. The action is punishing and electrifying, as Killy contends with monstrous killer androids and a ruthless antagonist hellbent on killing as many impure humans (i.e., everyone) as possible. Blame! is a worthy adaptation of the source material, as well as a worthwhile watch for anyone who considers themself a fan of dark sci-fi animation. —Toussaint Egan

[ad_2]

Toussaint Egan

Source link

April 20, 2024
Pathfinder’s War of Immortals includes the first new character classes designed without the OGL

[ad_1]

Paizo, fresh off a highly-anticipated refresh of Pathfinder’s 2nd edition ruleset, announced some big moves for the game’s ongoing narrative on Tuesday. The War of Immortals meta-event will kill a god, span multiple rulebooks, and restart the publisher’s line of hardcover novels. It will also introduce the first two original classes built following the company’s formal departure from the legacy Dungeons & Dragons ruleset and the OGL.

At the center of the new narrative arc will be Pathfinder War of Immortals, a 240-page hardcover rulebook expected in October that will introduce “mythic rules” for Pathfinder Second Edition. These rules should function similarly to past mythic-tier content, which represented ways to make your high-level characters stand out with powerful boons and abilities. According to a news release, the book will also include two new character classes — the animist and the exemplar — which are “the first original classes built on the remastered foundation of Pathfinder Player Core.”

(Pathfinder Player Core and Pathfinder GM Core were released in November 2023. The team moved the game off of Wizards of the Coast’s Open Game License (also known as the OGL), which had allowed the original version of Pathfinder Second Edition to use some legacy materials from D&D, following Wizards’ attempts to change that agreement. Paizo now publishes its fantasy TTRPG under its own license, called the Open RPG Creative (ORC) License. You can read more about that transition in Polygon’s interview with publisher Eric Mona.)

Next, Pathfinder Lost Omens: Divine Mysteries is a setting book with a smattering of character options — not unlike Pathfinder Lost Omens: Tian Xia World Guide detailed here at Polygon in March. Instead of a guide to an entire region, however, this 320-page hardcover will include a remastered pantheon of deities. It will also feature new deities, such as Aleph, god of darkness, and Nin, god of vampires. The $79.99 book is expected in November.

Several new adventures are included in the War of Immortals arc. Pathfinder Adventure: Prey for Death is a standalone 128-page adventure for high-level characters (level 14 and above). Expect the larger-than-usual, hardcover format to make a splash when it is released at Gen Con on Aug. 1, 2024.

Two even larger campaigns are also on the docket.

Pathfinder Adventure Path: Curtain Call — Pathfinder’s 40th since its launch in 2009 — will take characters from level 11 all the way to 20. The episodic release will begin at Gen Con with Pathfinder Adventure Path #204: Stage Fright and will conclude in September. Pathfinder Adventure Path: Triumph of the Tusk, which has players fighting alongside a band of orcs, will pick up in October with Pathfinder Adventure Path #207: The Resurrection Flood and continue into December.

Both Adventure Paths are included in their entirety as part of the Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscription.

Finally, a new novel titled Pathfinder: Godsrain, written by Liane Merciel, is also due out in November. Paizo said in its news release that the book will follow “four iconic heroes — the wizard Ezren, the barbarian Amiri, the cleric Kyra, and her wife, the rogue Merisiel — as they witness the calamity of the Godsrain and are faced with the opportunities — and consequences — of mythic power.”

[ad_2]

Charlie Hall

Source link

April 18, 2024
Who is Miquella in Elden Ring anyway?

[ad_1]

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree will send players on a new journey this summer to the Land of Shadow, where they will learn more about one of the game’s most mysterious demigods, Miquella of the Haligtree.

Game director Hidetaka Miyazaki says that players will track Miquella on their journey through the Land of Shadow, “tracing his path and following in his footsteps, trying to see what he’s going to do there,” similar to how players followed the light of grace in the base game. Players will also discover what compelled Queen Marika, who shattered the Elden Ring in the game’s story, to visit the Land of Shadow.

Elden Ring players who haven’t pored over the bits of lore scattered throughout the game’s dialogue and item descriptions may not know much about Miquella, and about his role in the game’s story. We’re here to tell you what you need to know so you don’t have to watch an hourlong lore video that unpacks it all.

Who is Miquella in Elden Ring?

A statue depicting Malenia and Miquella
Image: FromSoftware/Bandai Namco via Polygon

Miquella of the Haligtree is a demigod in the world of Elden Ring and a being known as an Empyrean. That means he is a candidate to succeed Queen Marika as the vessel for the Elden Ring.

We don’t really see Miquella in the game, but he’s the older twin brother of Malenia, the fearsome, rot-afflicted boss who resides at the base of the Haligtree. An offspring of the game’s penultimate boss, Radagon, and Marika (who are, uh, the same person), Miquella only appears in withered cocoon form in the main game’s story. As teased in Shadow of the Erdtree’s reveal trailer, Miquella’s cocoon will be the doorway to the Land of Shadow when the DLC launches.

Malenia and Miquella were both born with terrible afflictions: Malenia with rot that would consume her limbs and sight, and Miquella with eternal childhood. Statues of the brother-sister duo are scattered throughout the Haligtree, showing full-grown Malenia embracing her twin, who is stuck in the body of a young boy. Other statues show the twins at a younger age being embraced by their older sibling, Godwyn the Golden.

Malenia calls Miqeulla “the most fearsome Empyrean of all,” with the wisdom and the allure of a god. Miquella is also said to be beloved by many, and can compel the affections of others.

What’s Miquella’s relationship to Malenia? And Mohg?

Image: FromSoftware/Bandai Namco via Polygon

Malenia and Miquella were close. The former fought to protect her brother, earning her the name Malenia, Blade of Miquella. Miquella was similarly protective, and worked unsuccessfully to develop a remedy for Malenia’s rot affliction. One of Miquella’s inventions was an unalloyed golden needle, which players can use to undo the Flame of Frenzy. (Miquella strived to “ward away the meddling of Outer Gods,” according to the description of Miquella’s Needle; an Outer God appears to be responsible for the spread of rot, too.)

As part of his work to cure his sister and after leaving the faith known as the Golden Order, Miquella sought to create a new Erdtree, nurturing a sapling with his own blood. This endeavor would fail and produce the Haligtree, which would become a haven for the meek and afflicted. Miquella ultimately embedded himself within the Haligtree to grow it, residing in the cocoon, but he was kidnapped by Mohg, the Lord of Blood, who sought to become Miquella’s consort.

That’s why Mohg has Miquella’s cocoon in his chambers. Mohg essentially stole Miquella from his Haligtree womb, in which the Empyrean now appears to have grown older compared to his previous boylike form.

If Miquella’s stuck in that cocoon, how is he also in the Land of Shadow?

Miquella’s arm juts from his cracked cocoon in Mohg’s palace
Image: FromSoftware/Bandai Namco via Polygon

Miquella is said to have “divest[ed] himself of his flesh, his strength, and his lineage,” according to Shadow of the Erdtree’s official description. Miquella may not be a purely physical being in the DLC, and the Land of Shadow may not be a purely physical space; FromSoftware has a history of sending players to alternate time periods and dreamlike spaces in its expansions for games like Dark Souls and Bloodborne.

Furthermore, there’s well-supported speculation that Miquella is connected to a character named St. Trina, who is also unseen in Elden Ring. Trina is said to be a mysterious character of ambiguous gender who has close associations with sleep and dreams, according to a few in-game item descriptions. Followers of St. Trina are said to look for her while they sleep, and we know that Miquella has been slumbering for some time.

Both Trina and Miquella are also associated with nearly identical in-game items — Trina’s Lily and Miquella’s Lilly — that may connect them in still-unclear ways. However, in content that was discovered to have been cut from Elden Ring, it’s hinted that Miquella and St. Trina are actually the same person. That connection could be explained or confirmed in Shadow of the Erdtree, insofar as things ever get “explained” in FromSoftware games.

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree will be released on June 20. Until then, there are plenty of deeper dives into Miquella lore to enjoy from creators like VaatiVidya, Smoughtown, and Arlun Grim if you want to be fully prepared for Elden Ring’s DLC.

[ad_2]

Michael McWhertor

Source link

April 16, 2024
Polygon Labs earns crucial information security certificate

[ad_1]

Polygon Labs has announced that it has received ISO 27001 certification.

According to a Polygon blog, Schellman Compliance externally audited the certification and confirmed that its information security management system (ISMS) complies with ISO standards.

ISO 27001 is a globally recognized information security standard that defines the requirements for creating, implementing, maintaining, and continuously improving ISMSs.

Organizations use an ISMS to systematically manage information security risks to ensure asset confidentiality, integrity, and availability. By this standard, obtaining an ISO 27001 license means that Polygon Labs is committed to maintaining high information security standards.

“Robust security processes and continuous improvement have always been integral to Polygon Labs. ISO 27001 compliance reflects this commitment to security best practices, and positions Polygon Labs as a trusted leader for the blockchain industry.”

Polygon Labs announcement

Amid the news of receiving a license, the naive Polygon token (MATIC) recorded growth. According to CoinMarketCap, shortly after the announcement of the new initiative, the token surged in price, rising 4.2% in the last 24 hours or up to $0.72.

Polygon (MATIC) Price | CoinMarketCap

The recent ISO 27001 certification initiative comes two months after Polygon Labs announced it was laying off 19% of its workforce, or 60 employees. CEO Marc Boiron spoke about the key challenges facing the Polygon Labs team.

According to Boiron, an effective team is needed to achieve its goals, and it must be capable of collaborating and participating in complex business processes.

Follow Us on Google News

[ad_2]

Anna Kharton

Source link

April 15, 2024
Hollow Knight: Silksong has become a meme about waiting for games

[ad_1]

In the hours leading up to several gaming news events — like an indie event or a Nintendo Direct — you can see the rumblings of people online discussing a game called Hollow Knight: Silksong. Some share digital summoning circles constructed with emojis and dedicate them to the game in the hopes it will make an appearance at a showcase; others simply express their excitement by sharing memes prior to the event. During a digital event itself, you’ll see viewers spam the live chat with messages like “SKONG [with four airhorn emojis],” or “WHERE SILKSONG????!!??” Sometimes, the phrase “Silksong” will even trend online before one of these events because so many people are sharing their excitement.

All of this ruckus, just because fans just really want to hear a sliver of news about Hollow Knight: Silksong. The game — which fans shorten to Silksong — is the planned sequel to a game called Hollow Knight. Developer Team Cherry first announced the follow-up to its beloved Metroidvania in 2019; since then, it got a splashy trailer in 2022, but no concrete release date. And by now, its dedicated fan base has turned waiting for the game into one giant viral meme.

What is Hollow Knight: Silksong?

To understand the lasting popularity of Silksong, we need to look back at the game that preceded it: Hollow Knight. Developer Team Cherry first released the popular Metroidvania in 2017. At the time, the game stunned fans with its fantastical insectoid world and precise combat. Those elements, paired with its rich method of environmental storytelling, resulted in a gem of a game. Polygon hailed it as “unquestionably the finest Metroidvania ever made.”

Image: Team Cherry

Hollow Knight has racked up more than its fair share of devoted fans, so when Team Cherry surprised players with the announcement of a full-on sequel called Silksong, it drummed up plenty of buzz. The developers promised an original story, new bugs to meet, and new worlds to explore. What’s more is that fans would get to play as Hornet, a mysterious but beloved side character from the main game.

Fans excitedly awaited more news about the upcoming game, but none came. Years passed, and Team Cherry didn’t release any more trailers or news. With each passing gaming news event, it seemed all the more inevitable that players would get a release date, or a new trailer, or at least another peek at the project.

Finally, in 2022, the developer shared a new look at the game at an Xbox Showcase, but even then, the game had no stated release date. According to Xbox, however, the games in that showcase were going to be released in the next 12 months — meaning Silksong should have come out in 2023. But it didn’t. On May 9, 2023, Matthew Griffin from Team Cherry broke the news on X (formerly Twitter) that the game was not yet ready to be released and that fans should “expect more details from [Team Cherry] once we get closer to release.”

That was the last major update from the team, and since then, fans have been left in limbo — while still repeatedly expressing their hearts’ desires for the game online.

Why do fans shout about Silksong online?

In the years since its initial announcement, expressing a desire to see Silksong has become a viral bit online. At this point, you can’t watch a gaming news stream without people mentioning Silksong. People on social media will share fan art, memes, and reaction posts all in anticipation of the game, or making fun of the fact that there might not be more news about it. The avid fandom can spark the ire of other viewers in chats, and Silksong fans have inadvertently psyched up others excited for the game because they so regularly cause the game’s title to trend on X. All because people just want to express a desire to see this game.

Polygon reached out to Team Cherry to ask about what it’s been like to see fans talk about the game. We will update this article if we hear back.

Hollow Knight did sell in the millions, but that isn’t necessarily what seems to be causing this reaction to Silksong. It’s just that this game — which is genuinely a fantastic game to play — has inspired a super-dedicated cult following. The people who love the game just really adore it, and they want to see the next game released.

In this sense, Silksong does just come across as the next generation’s version of the entire “localize Mother 3” movement. Nintendo has never released an official English localization of Mother 3 in North America, but people have been asking for it for years. To this day, fans still beg Nintendo on social media to release the game, and several fans have regularly pulled IRL stunts to bring attention to the game. Being a Mother 3 fan is almost as much about wanting Mother 3 to come out officially in the U.S. as it is actually playing or enjoying the content of the game.

That all being said, Silksong has a much better chance of being released than the official English version of Mother 3. Team Cherry has assured fans that while the team might not have revealed too much, development is progressing. So I guess fans will have to rely on their summoning circles until then.

[ad_2]

Ana Diaz

Source link

April 15, 2024
The poo-stained humanity of Sasquatch Sunset

[ad_1]

Gross-out humor reached its apex in 2010’s Jackass 3D, when the boys slingshotted a ripened port-a-potty 100 feet into the air, and a bungee-cord bounce sent fecal matter splattering all over Steve-O — in glorious 3D, no less! That was it. There was nowhere else to go. Or so I believed.

Sasquatch Sunset has upended comedic history.

The new comedy from filmmaker brothers David and Nathan Zellner stars Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keough, though you wouldn’t know it without seeing their names on the poster; they’re both outfitted in cryptid costumes that conceal everything but their eyes. It’s really them, movie stars, roaming the woods in big hairy prosthetics. Like the apes in 2001: A Space Odyssey, the movie’s small pack of four sasquatches is on the verge of a new phase of evolution as they unlock the possibilities of the world and their own bodies. This leads them to defecate without restraint, make feral love in the open, and occasionally fondle their dongs. No bodily function goes untapped in Sasquatch Sunset, which happens to be a meditative communion with North America’s glorious woodland.

Sasquatch Sunset is extreme even for the Zellners, who are experts in thwarting expectations and upending movie tropes. Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter, their biggest breakout, stars Rinko Kikuchi as a Tokyo office drone drawn to Minnesota, supposedly in search of the bag of money buried in the snow by the characters in the Coen brothers’ neo-noir Fargo. Twisting urban legend into fantastical docudrama, the film earned indie cult status by threading quirk through tragedy to spin up a genre-defying odyssey. Their follow-up, 2018’s Damsel, let Robert Pattinson, Mia Wasikowska, and a tiny horse go ham on the Western genre. While less successful as commentary, the romp was pure Zellners — wicked funny, experimental, and eye-catching. Sasquatch Sunset continues the arc, as the brothers both broaden their humor and find a way to be even less accessible.

There is no dialogue in Sasquatch Sunset, and little plot. More National Geographic documentary than Harry and the Hendersons, the film follows the four Bigfoots over a year as their senses blossom and urges take hold. Eisenberg and Keough’s sasquatches already have a son (Christophe Zajac-Denek of Twin Peaks: The Return), but the pack’s alpha male (Nathan Zellner) is randy. Through grunts and howls, the humanoids negotiate their societal norms, paving the way for Keough and Zellner’s sasquatches to graphically, as the Bloodhound Gang would put it, “do it like they do on the Discovery Channel.” Keough’s sasquatch winds up pregnant, Zellner’s has a sexual awakening, and Eisenberg ends up introspective, ruminating in silence as his companions bang, and staring off into the trees as if wondering whether there are any more of them out there.

Cinematographer Mike Gioulakis breathes life into Sasquatch Sunset’s quiet stillness with his sun-soaked landscapes — the California redwoods are as much of a far out, man spectacle as the infinity of the night sky. And as an examination of the dawn of man that still brushes up against the existence of modern(-ish) mankind, Sasquatch Sunset occasionally connects with something profound about how we became the violent, vulgar, curious, loving beings we should all admit we are.

Where viewers’ mileage will vary is in the aggressive punctuation of introspective moments with absolutely profane humor. I will never unsee Eisenberg’s sasquatch having an explosive diarrhea episode all over a street after eating the wrong kind of berries. Or watching Keough go ape on her dangling breasts to firehose milk in every direction. Or a sasquatch live birth. The practical effects in Sasquatch Sunset are… astounding.

Image: Bleecker Street

There is a point to all of this. While the Bigfoots live off the land, they know little about their surroundings. Everything is a “first” in the wild, and the Zellners want us to feel it. How do you eat a fish if you’ve never seen one before? The sasquatches pop a few like water balloons. How do you care for a baby without any instruction? Smack it until it burps. What the hell is a mountain lion? A sex object, at least at first. The Zellners are right to imagine their sasquatches’ quest for survival as complete chaos, walkouts be damned.

Reactions to Sasquatch Sunset’s Sundance Film Festival premiere called it everything from a masterpiece to an utter misfire. I can’t imagine the Zellners would want it any other way; their vision is clear, and zero concessions were made to tame the backwoods journey into a whimsical, Disney Plus-ready drama. No, this is how it would really be, and the laughs (horrors?) within might even make Steve-O squint.

Is Sasquatch Sunset a good movie? A bad one? I will say I approve of it. I wanted to vomit three or four times before the credits rolled, but in an era where even indie films can feel like four-quadrant efforts on the cheap, what a relief that something so aggressively sick and sweet exists.

Sasquatch Sunset opens in a few major cities on April 12, and expands to a nationwide release on April 19.

[ad_2]

Matt Patches

Source link

April 13, 2024
Kung Fu Panda 4, Argylle, Netflix’s The Bricklayer, and every new movie to watch this weekend

[ad_1]

Greetings, Polygon readers! Each week, we round up the most notable new releases to streaming and VOD, highlighting the biggest and best new movies for you to watch at home.

This week, Kung Fu Panda 4, the new animated action comedy starring Jack Black, arrives on VOD following its theatrical run last month. There’s tons of other exciting releases this week, too, like the satirical spy thriller Argylle on Apple TV Plus, a new action thriller starring Aaron Eckhart as a former CIA agent landing on Netflix, the new romantic fantasy film The Greatest Hits on Hulu, and much more. And then there’s Mayhem!, one of the best action movies of the year so far, now streaming on AMC Plus.

Here’s everything new that’s available to watch this weekend!

New on Netflix

Strange Way of Life

Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix

Image: El Deseo/Saint Laurent Productions

Genre: Western drama
Run time: 31m
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Ethan Hawke, Pedro Pascal

This Western short from legendary Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar (Volver, Pain and Glory) follows the story of two gunslingers (and former lovers) who reunite after 25 years apart.

The Bricklayer

Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix

Image: Millennium Media/Vertical Entertainment

Genre: Action thriller
Run time: 1h 50m
Director: Renny Harlin
Cast: Aaron Eckhart, Nina Dobrev, Tim Blake Nelson

The latest in a long tradition of “action movies with odd profession titles,” The Bricklayer follows a former CIA agent (Aaron Eckhart) needed by his former agency when journalists start dying. The movie has a bit of pedigree behind it, as Renny Harlin (Cliffhanger, Die Hard 2) directs.

New on Hulu

The Greatest Hits

Where to watch: Available to stream on Hulu

Image: Groundswell Productions/Searchlight Pictures

Genre: Musical romance
Run time: 1h 34m
Director: Ned Benson
Cast: Lucy Boynton, Justin H. Min, David Corenswet

After suffering the loss of her boyfriend in a car accident, a young woman named Harriet (Lucy Boynton) inadvertently discovers that she has the power to go back in time to various points in their relationship by listening to his old record collection. When Harriet meets a new love interest named David (Justin H. Min), she struggles between her desire to correct the past to resurrect her boyfriend or pursue the possibility of newfound love in the present.

New on Prime Video

The Exorcist: Believer

Where to watch: Available to stream on Prime Video

Image: Universal Studios

Genre: Horror
Run time: 1h 51m
Director: David Gordon Green
Cast: Leslie Odom Jr., Ellen Burstyn, Ann Dowd

David Gordon Green’s new entry in the Exorcist franchise arrives this week on streaming. It’s a bizarre twist on the franchise, per our review:

Up until this most recent movie, the title The Exorcist carried some weight. While its role as a representation of quality was up for debate, its mark as a sign of ambition was not. Since the original Exorcist, the series has provided some of American cinema’s best and most interesting artists with space to ruminate on faith and evil. Believer lacks the ambition that’s meant to define an Exorcist movie. This is the most profound statement the movie has to offer, seemingly by accident: If the result of moving past God is that everything in the world will feel as empty and pointless as The Exorcist: Believer, we should cling to faith forever.

New on Apple TV Plus

Argylle

Where to watch: Available to stream on Apple TV Plus

Photo: Peter Mountain/Universal Pictures/Apple Original Films/Marv

Genre: Action comedy
Run time: 2h 19m
Director: Matthew Vaughn
Cast: Henry Cavill, Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Rockwell

What happens when you take the meta-fictional irreverence of Stranger than Fiction and smash it together with a premise similar to Matthew Vaughn’s 2014 movie Kingsman: The Secret Service?

You get Argylle, an action satire of spy novels à la 1984’s Romancing the Stone that follows Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard), an introverted novelist who is dragged kicking and screaming into a world of international espionage when it turns out that her popular spy novels are predicting the future. Who is the real agent Argylle? You’ll have to watch in order to find out.

From our review:

Argylle is too winking, too keen to show that it’s in on its own joke, to admit any real romantic feeling or any excitement that runs deeper than the surface level of its flashy choreography. Vaughn, the impish ringmaster, delights in challenging the audience to figure out what’s real and what’s fictional within his stylized, nested worlds. It’s just that he never really answers the question: Why should we care? With Argylle, he mounts a playful, rollicking thriller with an all-star cast and some dazzling action — but then holds the audience at arm’s length from it, just to show how clever he’s been in putting it together. The truly clever thing would have been to let the dumb film be joyously dumb, and invite the audience to lose themselves in it instead.

New on Peacock

Drive-Away Dolls

Where to watch: Available to stream on Peacock

Image: Focus Features

Genre: Road comedy
Run time: 1h 24m
Director: Ethan Coen
Cast: Margaret Qualley, Geraldine Viswanathan, Beanie Feldstein

Ethan Coen’s first narrative feature without his brother Joel is an offbeat crime comedy about a pair of young women who embark on an impromptu road trip. Things get dicey after the two cross paths with a group of incompetent criminals sent to retrieve a mysterious briefcase on behalf of their shady employer.

From our review:

Drive-Away Dolls’ well-worn beats are buttressed by tremendous style, a deep care taken with the film’s production and costume design. All that attention to the era that isn’t fully present in the script comes out in the visuals instead. There isn’t much narrative texture to Marian and Jamie’s various stopovers — in particular, there isn’t much for Jamie or Marian to connect with. While the pair have frequent and funny interactions on their trip, the people they meet are more or less cartoon characters setting up a gag.

New on Paramount Plus

Bob Marley: One Love

Where to watch: Available to stream on Paramount Plus, MGM Plus

Image: Paramount Pictures

Genre: Biographical musical
Run time: 1h 47m
Director: Reinaldo Marcus Green
Cast: Kingsley Ben-Adir, Lashana Lynch, James Norton

This biopic follows the story of cultural icon Bob Marley, portrayed by Kingsley Ben-Adir (One Night in Miami…). The film follows Marley from his rise to fame in the ’70s up until his death in 1981.

New on AMC Plus

Mayhem!

Where to watch: Available to stream on AMC Plus

Image: IFC Films

Genre: Action thriller
Run time: 1h 49m
Director: Xavier Gens
Cast: Nassim Lyes, Loryn Nounay, Olivier Gourmet

An early contender for one of this year’s best action films, Mayhem follows Samir (Nassim Lyes), an ex-con and martial artist, who flees from France to Thailand to escape his former gang. Struggling to build a new life, Samir finds himself once again dragged into a world of deceit and violence when a powerful real estate tycoon kidnaps a member of his family.

From our review:

Mayhem’s action is brutal and kinetic, with inventive kills, strong location work, and realistic choreography that makes the most of Lyes’ kickboxing pedigree. It’s a true star-making performance for him, as he juggles the role’s demanding physical requirements with a deep well of sorrow that permeates the entire affair, even as he dispatches foe after foe.

New to rent

Ennio

Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu

Image: Music Box Films

Genre: Documentary
Run time: 2h 36m
Director: Giuseppe Tornatore

Cinema Paradiso director Giuseppe Tornatore made a documentary on renowned film composer Ennio Morricone, one of the most accomplished people in that stacked field. The documentary includes Quentin Tarantino, Clint Eastwood, Bruce Springsteen, and many more luminaries from the entertainment world.

Glitter & Doom

Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu

Image: SPEAK Productions/Music Box Films

Genre: Musical romance
Run time: 1h 55m
Director: Tom Gustafson
Cast: Alex Diaz, Alan Cammish, Ming-Na Wen

A musical set to the songs of the Indigo Girls, Glitter & Doom follows a summer romance between a musician committed to this craft (Alan Cammish) and a “free-spirited circus kid” (Alex Diaz).

Io Capitano

Where to watch: Available to rent on Apple and Vudu

Image: Archimede/Cohen Media Group

Genre: Fantasy
Run time: 2h 1m
Director: Matteo Garrone
Cast: Seydou Sarr, Moustapha Fall, Issaka Sawadogo

Desperate for an escape out of poverty, two cousins leave their hometown of Dakar, Senegal, to journey to Italy in search of a better life. Trekking across the hazards of the Sahara Desert and Mediterranean Ocean, the pair are met with sights and wonders beyond their wildest imaginations.

Kung Fu Panda 4

Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu

Image: DreamWorks Animation

Genre: Martial arts comedy
Run time: 1h 34m
Director: Mike Mitchell
Cast: Jack Black, Awkwafina, Bryan Cranston

The fourth entry in the Kung Fu Panda saga sees Po taking on a new apprentice to succeed him as the Dragon Warrior. When a mysterious sorceress plots to resurrect Po’s past adversaries, he’ll need to call upon all his strength and allies to save the day.

From our review:

While the individual scenes and moments in Kung Fu Panda 4 are entertaining (and sometimes even great), it never quite gels as an enjoyable movie on its own. The message of change tying it together is flimsy, and the plot feels strung along, trying to get the characters in the right place to launch a few seconds of cool action. After four movies, it isn’t really a surprise that the Kung Fu Panda machine is running out of steam — thankfully, though, it has just enough power left to churn out some genuine laughs at the end.

One Life

Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu

Photo: Peter Mountain/Bleecker Street

Genre: Biographical drama
Run time: 1h 50m
Director: James Hawes
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Helena Bonham Carter, Johnny Flynn

Anthony Hopkins stars in a dramatization of the life of Sir Nicholas “Nicky” Winton, a London broker and humanitarian who rescued the lives of 669 Jewish children in the months leading up to World War II. Hopkins portrays Winton in his late ’70s, while actor-musician Johnny Flynn portrays him during his youth in the late 1930s.

Sleeping Dogs

Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu

Image: Nickel City Productions/The Avenue

Genre: Crime thriller
Run time: 1h 50m
Director: Adam Cooper
Cast: Russell Crowe, Karen Gillan, Marton Csokas

After being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, retired homicide detective Roy Freeman (Russell Crowe) is motivated to reopen an investigation into the murder of a college professor when a mysterious new witness comes forward with a compelling piece of evidence. As he works to track down the true culprit, he’ll have to fight to convince those around him to trust his intuition and theories.

[ad_2]

Toussaint Egan

Source link

April 12, 2024
Fallout’s violence and gore are part of its charm

[ad_1]

Fans of the Fallout games won’t be shocked to learn that Amazon’s new TV show based on the franchise is gruesomely violent. This is a franchise known for its Bloody Mess perk, and for the VATS system, which lets players target and blow off heads and limbs. But the violence of the Fallout TV series still has the power to shock; viewers can expect multiple severed heads and lopped-off extremities in this post-apocalyptic world where mutated monsters feed on human flesh.

While the gore of Fallout may be uncomfortable to watch, it’s rarely (if ever) gratuitous. Instead, it’s done in the service of world-building. In many cases, it’s played for comedy and surprise, in the style of Sam Peckinpah or Quentin Tarantino films.

The first few minutes of Fallout may give viewers the incorrect impression that the show treats violence only with deadly seriousness. The first episode of the series starts with the nuclear destruction of Los Angeles. It’s a chilling scene, and since young children are involved, it sets a grim tone.

And yes, in later episodes, there are scenes that are difficult to watch. Puppies are incinerated at a research facility. Innocent Vault Dwellers are casually murdered. Body parts are sliced, crushed, and made into human jerky. In the show’s above-ground post-apocalyptic society, extreme violence is presented as a daily occurrence, and that society has the means to address it. Medicines that can instantly heal wounds are as commonplace as off-the-shelf replacement body parts.

Some of the show’s instances of violence are nods to the games. One big shootout plays like a VATS-powered killing spree, in which viewers watch in slo-mo as a bullet rips through multiple poor wastelanders. The show’s creators highlight that bodies are squishy and life is cheap in this world, but that its residents have adapted accordingly. Death and violence don’t seem to bother anyone all that much. Hell, becoming a brainless zombie is treated as something of an inconvenience in Fallout’s world.

Fallout also delves into body horror. One of the show’s more disturbing creatures, as seen in trailers, is a giant mutant axolotl covered in hundreds of human fingers. Adding an extra layer of grossness, we see one of those creatures vomit up the rotting contents of its massive stomach before it dies. It is extremely unpleasant! We see horrifying examples of human-mutant experiments. Giant mutant cockroaches run rampant, and they burst open with green gooey guts when stomped on.

All of this is to say that violence in the Fallout show is fast, frequent, and unrepentant. But it isn’t dreary or humorless in the way other post-apocalyptic worlds, like The Walking Dead or The Last of Us can be. Instead, it borrows a page from the Mad Max movies. Like the Fallout games, Fallout the TV series isn’t for the queasy. But for fans of black comedy and copious amounts of fake blood, it’s a hoot.

All eight episodes of Fallout season 1 are now streaming on Prime Video.

[ad_2]

Michael McWhertor

Source link

April 10, 2024
Star Wars Outlaws pre-order guide
[ad_1]
Star Wars Outlaws, the open-world adventure from Ubisoft and Massive Entertainment, launches Aug. 30 for PlayStation, Xbox, and PC. Players will take on the role of smuggler Kay Vess as they attempt to seek their fortune across a variety of new and classic locations in the Star Wars universe.

While Respawn Entertainment’s open-world Star Wars Jedi: Survivor puts forth an unforgiving melee combat system akin to Dark Souls, Outlaws seems to channel gameplay elements from the Uncharted franchise. This includes sneaking around, quickly resorting to shooting first if things go sideways, and of course, an ample supply of left hooks.

Image: Ubisoft / Massive Entertainment

There are a three versions of Star Wars Outlaws that are available for pre-order. In this post, we’ll dig into:
- Every pre-order option available, how much they cost, and where you can buy them
- What bonuses each edition of Star Wars Outlaws includes
Star Wars Outlaws pre-order editions

Star Wars Outlaws standard edition

Image: Ubisoft, Lucasfilm Ltd.

Pre-ordering the $69.99 standard edition of the game will get you access to the Kessel Runner Bonus Pack which grants exclusive cosmetics for your ship and speeder. The standard version of Star Wars Outlaws is available to pre-order through Ubisoft, PlayStation, Xbox, the Epic Games Store, and Best Buy. Like most recent Ubisoft launches, there’s no Steam version in sight.

If you intend to play the game on PC via the Ubisoft Connect store, digital retailer Gamesplanet is offering a small discount on pre-orders. Normally $69.99, you can get Star Wars Outlaws for $62.99.

Star Wars Outlaws Gold Edition

Image: Ubisoft, Lucasfilm Ltd.

If you want three days of early access to Star Wars Outlaws, you’ll need to pre-order the $109.99 Gold Edition. This version of the game also gets you access to the season pass, which is currently slated to include at least two pieces of post-launch DLC, in addition to the “Jabba’s Gambit” mission at launch. You can currently reserve this version of Star Wars Outlaws from Ubisoft, PlayStat ion, Xbox, the Epic Games Store, and Best Buy.

Star Wars Outlaws Ultimate Edition

Image: Ubisoft, Lucasfilm Ltd.

The digital-exclusive Ultimate Edition costs $129.99 and comes packaged with everything included in the cheaper versions. Additionally, this premium version includes additional cosmetics in the form of the Rogue Infiltrator and Sabacc Shark bundles, as well as a digital art book with concepts and storyboards from the game. Currently, you can reserve this version of the game from Ubisoft, P layS tation, Xbox, and the Epic Games Store.

Alternatively, if you want everything included with the Ultimate Edition but don’t want to pay the full price, you can subscribe to Ubisoft Plus for $17.99 a month. This plan grants you all the same benefits, including three-day early access, and is available on PC and consoles.
[ad_2]

Alice Jovanée

Source link
April 9, 2024
Fallout: New Vegas endures because of big clunky story swings

[ad_1]

Fallout: New Vegas has endured in the cultural zeitgeist in a way that few other games have. Even within the Fallout fandom, it’s earned a prized position as a true classic of the RPG genre. That love is still reflected today, in goofy memes and fan art and enduring debates over which endgame is the right one. Even though the game has aged terribly in some respects — characters look rough, and not just from living in the apocalypse — it still persists as one of the high points of the Fallout franchise. The new Fallout TV series is set to premiere on Amazon, so there’s seldom been a better time to revisit New Vegas or play it for the first time.

Fallout: New Vegas opens with an exploration of the Mojave Wasteland, setting up some of the factions vying for control of this region of post-apocalyptic America. This game builds off the lore of the first two isometric RPGs, returning to the West Coast. The New California Republic, a democratic attempt at building back an old America, has expanded too far. Here, at the Hoover Dam, they struggle to hold on to territory. Caesar’s Legion, an army emulating the empire of old Rome, has met the NCR here in a clash of ideologies. New Vegas, a sparkling city of progress run by the mysterious Mr. House, dominates the skyline with its neon towers.

Unfortunately, the player character will need to work up to confronting these forces. The game begins with the Courier being waylaid by a smooth-talking group of goons. You awake in a friendly local doctor’s home, having miraculously survived being shot in the head and left in a shallow grave. You sort out matters in the small town of Goodsprings and then begin your trek into the Mojave.

Image: Obsidian Entertainment/Bethesda Softworks

New Vegas is built on the bones of Fallout 3, and the gameplay is honestly so-so. But the game is elevated by its fantastic writing. There are four possible paths the Courier can choose from: joining the NCR, allying with Mr. House, enlisting in Caesar’s Legion, or pursuing an independent Mojave. There’s a similar structure to Fallout 4, but I failed to connect with the various ideologies of the Commonwealth. They were a little too simplistic and flat. Fallout: New Vegas is anything but that.

The questions posed in New Vegas are much more interesting to me as a player. At first, the NCR appears to be the default good guy faction. But one companion, Cass, openly expresses skepticism of the government. She critiques their expansion with the memorable line: “Nobody’s dick is that long, not even Long Dick Johnson. And he had a fucking long dick, hence the name.” Hanging out with Boone, a stoic and surly sniper I meet in the mouth of a giant dinosaur tower, complicates things further. After enough time working together, he shares the trauma incurred by his time with the NCR.

Every companion in this game has opinions, and they’re interesting. New Vegas has a bunch of wildly interesting ideas, and it’s not shy about running with them. Lily Bowen is a giant nightkin super mutant who wears a giant sun hat and shades. Raul is a ghoul gunslinger who’s been press-ganged into service as a mechanic for a hostile state of super mutants. Arcade Gannon is a doctor and scientist who automatically joins your party if you have an intelligence of 3 or less, because he feels like someone needs to take care of you.

The NCR may be complicated, but Caesar’s Legion poses a serious threat — or opportunity, depending on your decisions — to the denizens of the Mojave. The player is introduced to the faction through Nipton, a sinful town sentenced to a gruesome ritual known as the Lottery. The encounter starts with a guy running at you, hysterically laughing and screaming that he won, he won! You quickly realize that his joy is closer to a wild hysteria, and something truly terrible has happened in Nipton.

Image: Obsidian Entertainment/Bethesda Softworks

Mr. House offers a potential third path, but as I quest around the Strip, I can’t help but realize how many impoverished communities have sprung up in its shadow. I can’t even get in — under penalty of being shot by a giant murder robot — unless I meet specific qualifications. Can I trust the reclusive master of the Strip and its casinos? Or is it worth forging a new path for the Mojave, with no masters or kings?

Each of these factions have interesting characters. Caesar is definitely a bad guy, and I have journeyed through his camp to blow him up in new and satisfying ways many times over the years. But it’s also worth talking philosophy with him, and learning more about the Legion and the sort of civilization they would establish. He’s not a mustache-twirling villain, but a satisfying antagonist to face and defeat.

This is all skimming the surface of what New Vegas has to offer. The cherry on top of this great RPG is a radio station that’s full of bangers, with a particular shoutout to Big Iron. But the game takes big swings, and the overall vision is able to balance both serious themes and some intense goofiness.

Similar open-world RPGs have quickly faded from conversation after their launch. Even a recent big RPG epic like Starfield has fallen off most of our radars. But Fallout: New Vegas fans are still making memes, arguing about the endgame variables, and sharing build tips to this day. It’s a clunky game in many respects, the characters don’t look great, and there’s the occasional glitch. I don’t care. Fallout: New Vegas is still the apple of my eye, and showcases how brilliant the setting can be.

Fallout: New Vegas is available to play on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox Game Pass, and Windows PC via Steam and GOG.

[ad_2]

Cass Marshall

Source link

April 7, 2024
Wish, Netflix’s Scoop, The Zone of Interest, and every new movie to watch this weekend

[ad_1]

Greetings, Polygon readers! Each week, we round up the most notable new releases to streaming and VOD, highlighting the biggest and best new movies for you to watch at home.

This week, Wish, the latest musical fantasy from Walt Disney Animation Studios and starring Ariana DeBose and Chris Pine, finally comes to Disney Plus. There’s a lot of other exciting new releases on streaming, including the biographical drama Scoop on Netflix, Jonathan Glazer’s Oscar-winning film The Zone of Interest on Max, the supernatural horror film Talk to Me on Paramount Plus, and more. There’s also plenty of other new movies available on VOD, like Baby Assassins 2 and The American Society of Magical Negroes.

Here’s everything new that’s available to watch this weekend!

New on Netflix

Scoop

Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix

Image: Peter Mountain/Netflix

Genre: Biographical drama
Run time: 1h 43m
Director: Philip Martin
Cast: Gillian Anderson, Rufus Sewell, Billie Piper

The latest film from director Philip Martin (The Crown) dramatizes the downfall of Prince Andrew in the wake of the infamous Newsnight interview following allegations of sexual assault. Things go from bad to worse when the prince’s connections to convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein are brought to light.

New on Disney Plus

Wish

Where to watch: Available to stream on Disney Plus

Image: Disney

Genre: Musical fantasy
Run time: 1h 35m
Directors: Chris Buck, Fawn Veerasunthorn
Cast: Chris Pine, Ariana DeBose, Alan Tudyk

This fantasy adventure film created to celebrate the Walt Disney Company’s 100th anniversary follows Asha (Ariana DeBose), a young girl living in an island kingdom ruled by a powerful sorcerer named Magnifico (Chris Pine). After making a wish one night, Asha befriends a living magical star that falls from the sky and agrees to help her achieve her heart’s greatest desire.

From our review:

The main problem with Wish is that the filmmakers lean so hard on Disney’s legacy and the nostalgic elements that they fail to actually add much new. Every single detail in Wish is a deliberate reminder of another movie that came before it — usually something better and more unique. That’s particularly true for all the characters, some of whom are literally just walking nods to previous Disney movies. They’re all vague ideas of what a Disney Character™ should be, from snarky talking goat Valentino (voiced by Wreck-It Ralph’s Alan Tudyk) to the heroine herself, without much to make them memorable.

New on Hulu

Lord of Misrule

Where to watch: Available to stream on Hulu

Image: Riverstone Pictures/Bankside Films

Genre: Horror
Run time: 1h 44m
Director: William Brent Ball
Cast: Ralph Ineson, Tuppence Middleton, Alexa Goodall

The director of the delightfully fun Orphan: First Kill is back with another movie, this time starring the inimitable Ralph Ineson (The Witch, The Green Knight). After a minister (Tuppence Middleton) moves to a village in the English countryside, her daughter goes missing ahead of the annual harvest festival. I have a feeling those villagers are up to something sinister!

New on Max

The Zone of Interest

Where to watch: Available to stream on Max

Image: A24

Genre: Historical drama
Run time: 1h 46m
Director: Jonathan Glazer
Cast: Christian Friedel, Sandra Hüller, Johann Karthaus

Based on the novel by Martin Amis, Jonathan Glazer’s latest film follows the story of Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp who chose to build his family home just outside the camp’s walls.

From our review:

The Zone of Interest may be the most powerful movie about complicity that’s ever been made, particularly about the Holocaust. The movie’s true warning isn’t that regular life can go on even amid atrocity, it’s that people are capable of pretending that atrocity isn’t happening. Glazer seems to suggest that people aren’t unaware of destructive historical events going on around them, but rather that they actively close their ears to it. The Höss family doesn’t drown out the camp, or begrudgingly ignore the roar of its furnaces or the gunshots from over the wall. They just keep going like it isn’t there at all. The effect of all their silence is one of the loudest and most unique views a film has ever taken on one of history’s most horrific atrocities.

Metalocalypse: Army of the Doomstar

Where to watch: Available to stream on Max on April 6

Image: Warner Bros. Discovery/Adult Swim

Genre: Apocalyptic musical comedy
Run time: 1h 23m
Director: Brendon Small
Cast: Brendon Small, Tommy Blacha, Malcolm McDowell

Metalocalypse creator Brendon Small returns with a feature-length finale to his satirical Adult Swim original series. With the evil Tribunal preparing to instigate the Metalocalypse, the members of Dethklok must work together to compose the song of salvation and save the day.

From our review:

“Epic” as a descriptor is thrown around too often as a hyperbolic compliment, but Metalocalypse: Army of the Doomstar rightfully warrants that description and then some. It’s a fitting final chapter in the long and outrageous saga of one of Adult Swim’s most surprising cult classics, and a rapturous encore dedicated to a passionate fan base who refused to let the series go quietly. The Metalocalypse may be over, but the music never dies.

New on Prime Video

Música

Where to watch: Available to stream on Prime Video

Image: Amazon MGM Studios

Genre: Coming-of-age rom-com
Run time: 1h 31m
Director: Rudy Mancuso
Cast: Rudy Mancuso, Camila Mendes, J.B. Smoove

Internet personality turned writer-director Rudy Mancuso stars in his directorial debut as a fictionalized version of himself. Plagued by constant music in his head, Rudy struggles to navigate the challenges of life and love as he attempts to pursue a future marching to the beat of his own drum.

New on Paramount Plus

Talk to Me

Where to watch: Available to stream on Paramount Plus w/ Showtime

Image: A24

Genre: Supernatural horror
Run time: 1h 35m
Directors: Danny Philippou, Michael Philippou
Cast: Sophie Wilde, Alexandra Jensen, Joe Bird

Talk to Me follows a group of Australian teenagers who discover how to conjure the spirits of the dead using an embalmed hand. Naturally, they start filming themselves messing around with it, but when one of them holds on to the hand for too long in order to communicate with a lost loved one, they open a door to a world of horrors. Praised as one of the scariest movies of 2023, Talk to Me is the directorial debut of YouTubers Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou and already has a sequel in production.

New on Peacock

Night Swim

Where to watch: Available to stream on Peacock

Image: Blumhouse/Universal

Genre: Horror thriller
Run time: 1h 38m
Director: Bryce McGuire
Cast: Wyatt Russell, Kerry Condon, Amélie Hoeferle

Wyatt Russell (Monarch: Legacy of Monsters) stars in this supernatural horror film as a professional baseball player who, after being forced into retirement, moves into a luxurious new home with his wife and children. When a malevolent force emerges from the waters of the house’s backyard pool, the family is forced to face a horror beyond their deepest fears.

From our review:

All the strengths of its family story aside, it’s probably fair to want a little more horror out of a movie about a killer swimming pool. There are a few fun bits of pool horror in Night Swim, like seeing another world behind the flap of the skimmer or the spring of an empty diving board playing like a warning sign to run. Outside of its opening scene, though, Night Swim isn’t the scariest movie about hungry spirits and ancient gods. But hey, it’s January. Horror fans will take what we can get. Sometimes that just means a few good scares in an otherwise fascinating family movie about magic pools and baseball — which is more than enough to make Night Swim a worthy addition to the list of interesting, watchable January horror.

New on Apple TV Plus

Girls State

Where to watch: Available to stream on Apple TV Plus

Image: Apple TV Plus

Genre: Documentary
Run time: 1h 35m
Director: Jesse Moss

Who runs the world? That was a rhetorical question, but what if the answer was girls? This documentary follows 500 adolescent girls from Missouri who come together to take part in an immersive weeklong experiment: creating a Supreme Court designed to take on the nation’s most contentious issues.

New on Mubi

How to Have Sex

Where to watch: Available to stream on Mubi

Image: Mubi

Genre: Coming-of-age drama
Run time: 1h 31m
Director: Molly Manning Walker
Cast: Mia McKenna-Bruce, Lara Peake, Samuel Bottomley

One of the best movies of 2024 so far, How to Have Sex isn’t quite what its title suggests. Rather than a rowdy teen comedy, it’s a tender coming-of-age story. As Oli Welsh puts it in his write-up in our list of the best 2024 movies, “It’s a quietly devastating movie about bad formative experiences, but also beautiful in its empathy and kindness, and funny, too.”

New to rent

Baby Assassins 2

Where to watch: Available to rent on YouTube, Apple, and Vudu

Image: Well Go USA Entertainment

Genre: Action comedy
Run time: 1h 41m
Director: Yugo Sakamoto
Cast: Akari Takaishi, Saori Izawa, Oto Abe

The sequel to one of 2022’s most delightful movies, Baby Assassins 2 sees the two teenage assassin protagonists return with a new problem: They’re overdue on their gym payments, and there are two contractors gunning for their jobs and their lives.

From our review:

That action is designed by Kensuke Sonomura, one of the best action directors and fight choreographers working today. He also happens to have a long history designing action for video games, like Devil May Cry 4, Vanquish, 2020’s Resident Evil 3, and multiple Metal Gear Solid games. His style of choreography nimbly shifts to meet the needs of each project, but it always excels in its fluidity of motion, use of environments, and legibility of action. You will never be lost watching a Kensuke Sonomura fight scene.

The American Society of Magical Negroes

Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu

Photo: Tobin Yelland/Focus Features

Genre: Fantasy rom-com
Run time: 1h 45m
Director: Kobi Libii
Cast: Justice Smith, David Alan Grier, An-Li Bogan

Kobi Libii’s directorial debut stars Justice Smith (Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves) as Aren, a young biracial artist who is recruited to join a clandestine group of magical Black people who secretly help white people in their mission to solve racism. You can probably guess about how well that goes.

Snack Shack

Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu

Image: MRC Film/Republic Pictures

Genre: Coming-of-age comedy
Run time: 1h 52m
Director: Adam Carter Rehmeier
Cast: Conor Sherry, Gabriel LaBelle, Mika Abdalla

Travel back to 1991 in this comedy that follows a pair of teenage boys who work at the snack shack of a local pool in Nebraska. When a new lifeguard shows up, both boys instantly fall for her, putting their friendship in question.

Knox Goes Away

Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu

Image: FilmNation Entertainment/Saban Films

Genre: Crime thriller
Run time: 1h 54m
Director: Michael Keaton
Cast: Michael Keaton, Al Pacino, James Marsden

Sixteen years ago, Michael Keaton made his directorial debut with The Merry Gentleman, about a hitman going through some hard times. Now he’s back with his second directed feature, also about a hitman going through some hard times. This time, the hitman is John Knox, a contract killer separated from his family who takes on one last job after a dementia diagnosis.

[ad_2]

Toussaint Egan

Source link

April 5, 2024
3 years in, Hellblade 2 on Xbox Series X finally gives us a next-gen moment

[ad_1]

This console generation has been pretty short of “next-gen moments” — those dazzling, techy epiphanies when you see a game do things that were inconceivable on earlier hardware. You can make a case for Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart’s lightning-fast loading or Starfield’s potato physics, but there have been relatively few instances where you can watch the future arrive in real time.

There are a few reasons for this. One is that console supply issues and pandemic-driven development delays led to an unusually long cross-generational phase. Until last year, most games were still being released on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One as well as their successors. Another is that Unreal Engine 5, the latest iteration of Epic Games’ ubiquitous graphics engine, lagged a little behind the new console generation, and large-scale UE5 productions have been slow to appear, with a couple of exceptions.

All of this is why I wasn’t expecting to experience a next-gen moment when I traveled to Cambridge, U.K., to visit the Ninja Theory studio and play Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2. But I got one. It’s an astonishingly lifelike narrative action game that applies UE5’s tech, Microsoft’s resources (the company owns Ninja Theory), and the unique processes of a smallish team of technical artists to create something at once grounded and vividly hyperreal. There’s nothing else quite like it.

This won’t come as a total surprise if you played 2017’s Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. Both Hellblade games blend horrific, quasi-mythological action with a realistic approach to the psychology of their heroine, Senua, an eighth-century Celtic warrior with psychosis. Both games have a photoreal visual style with heavy emphasis on performance capture — an area Ninja Theory has specialized in since collaborating with Andy Serkis on its 2007 action game Heavenly Sword.

Quite a lot has changed for Ninja Theory since 2017, however. In 2018, the studio was acquired by Microsoft. It hasn’t grown much since — with 100 people, around 80 of whom are working on Hellblade 2, this remains a modestly sized team — but Microsoft’s investment is evident in beautiful new offices with a large, dedicated motion capture studio (and, at the insistence of some extremely British local planning regulations, an in-house pub). On my visit, there was no sign or mention of Ninja Theory’s flamboyant founder and Hellblade writer-director Tameem Antoniades. An Xbox spokesperson later confirmed to Polygon that he is no longer with the studio. Antoniades was involved in Hellblade 2 in the early stages, but the game now has a trio of creative leads: environment art director Dan Attwell, visual effects director Mark Slater-Tunstill, and audio director David Garcia.

You would expect a dedication to craft in any game led by three technical artists, but that still wouldn’t prepare you for the extraordinary lengths Ninja Theory is going to in its pursuit of realism. In Hellblade 2, Senua journeys to Iceland on the hunt for Norse slavers who are decimating her community in the northern British Isles. As press toured the studio, Attwell explained that the route of her adventure had been plotted in the real world, and locations were captured using a mixture of satellite imaging, drone footage, procedural generation, and photogrammetry. The team spent weeks on location in Iceland, studying the landscape, photographing rocks, and piloting drones. They also studied building techniques of the time and virtually constructed doors out of 3D-scanned planks of wood, rather than modeling them. They even made their own rough wood carvings and scanned them in.

Character art director Dan Crossland showed us real costumes that had been made to fit the actors by a London-based costume designer using period-appropriate techniques, and then scanned in by the studio. Behind Crossland’s desk there was a mannequin plastered in mesh, putty, feathers, and deconstructed scraps of fabric — a spooky, hand-sculpted prototype enemy design.

Image: Ninja Theory/Xbox Game Studios

Over in the combat team’s section, principal action designer Benoit Macon, a very tall and ebullient Frenchman, explained that the game’s fight sequences weren’t traditionally animated, but 100% mo-capped. I watched stunt professionals act out finishing moves on the performance capture stage while animation director Guy Midgley shot them in a close, roving handheld style, using a phone in a lightweight rig.

The playable results of this fully mo-capped fighting system are quite unique. Combat in Hellblade 2 is one on one only, slow-paced, and very brutal. In the fight scenes of the demo I played — which also featured pattern-spotting puzzles and some atmospheric, grueling traversal — there’s a heightened sense of threat as Senua faces hulking and aggressive opponents, and the characters loom large in the unusually tight camera angles. This might not be the over-the-top combat of DmC: Devil May Cry, but it’s still very effective.

In a small, soundproofed studio on the top floor, Garcia worked with the two voice actors playing the Furies, which is how Senua thinks of the voices in her head who keep up a constant commentary on the action and her state of mind. (As with the first game, scriptwriter Lara Derham has worked with psychology professor Paul Fletcher and with people who have experienced psychosis on the portrayal of the condition’s effects.) The actors prowled around a binaural microphone — essentially a mannequin head with microphones for ears — hissing and murmuring their lines as if at Senua herself. Garcia, a Spaniard with an infectious sense of wonder, is called a “genius” by his co-workers. His growling, chattering soundscapes are players’ principal point of access into Senua’s state of mind, and they’re as overwhelming now as they were in 2017.

$Senua, seen from the waist up, holds a sword with her back to the player. She faces an indistinct enemy holding a fiery sword whose appearance is fractured$

Image: Ninja Theory/Xbox Game Studios

The lengths to which Ninja Theory is going to ground this digital video game in physical reality might seem quixotic — even contradictory — but the proof is in the playing. The game, which I played on Xbox Series X, looks stunning, whether it’s rendering the black, smoking slopes of an Icelandic volcano or the pale, haunted eyes of Senua performer Melina Juergens. But beyond that, Hellblade 2 has a tactile immediacy that seems to operate at an almost subconscious level. Ninja Theory’s artists are seeking an emotional connection with the player that, they believe, can only form if the player thinks that what they are seeing is real.

“I think that the human mind does [a thing where] you think you know what something looks like, but then actually, when you look at what that thing is, in reality there’s way more chaos in it. It’s not quite the same as what you picture in your head,” Slater-Tunstill said. “If you were just sculpting off the top of your head, the environments or the characters or whatever, it just is going to lose some of that nature, some of that chaos.”

Attwell said that Unreal Engine 5 has made this realist approach more more achievable, both because of the level of fidelity available in the engine’s Nanite geometry system, and because “the turnaround between scanning the thing and putting it in the level is drastically cut, and you can spend that time finessing.”

“You can think more about the composition,” Slater-Tunstill agreed. “And with the kind of lighting volumetrics we can now do, everything just beds in much better. It’s more believable.”

Overall, the sense from the Ninja Theory team is that UE5 has removed a lot of barriers for video game artists, and that players are only just starting to see the results. “It feels like the graphical leap that we’ve managed with this is like… We’re on the trajectory we wanted,” Attwell said.

Image: Ninja Theory/Xbox Game Studios

You only need to lay eyes on Hellblade 2 briefly to understand that you’re seeing the next evolution of game technology. It’s not just the engine, though — there are a bunch of factors aligning to make Hellblade 2 a tech showcase. For one, the game design is extremely focused. This isn’t some wild open-world simulation; it’s a linear, narrative-first action game. As an Xbox first-party studio, Ninja Theory has the luxury of building for fewer formats. Also, it’s been given the time to experiment. Touring the studio, Microsoft’s investment in Ninja Theory starts to make a lot of sense. The tech giant hasn’t just acquired a boutique developer, but also an R&D unit that explores the technical and artistic frontiers of a specific game-making process.

The result is a game made with an unusual degree of focus. Hellblade 2 won’t necessarily be to everyone’s taste with its slow pace, deliberate inputs, and highly scripted, cinematic presentation. It struck me as a modern successor to something like the 1983 interactive animation Dragon’s Lair. As intense and dramatic as the section I played was, it remains to be seen whether the game’s story — a more outward journey for a more mentally balanced Senua — can connect as deeply as Hellblade’s trip into her darkest fears. But there’s no doubting the craft on display, or the immersive sense of presence this game has. It may be a sequel, but it feels like the start of something — like a true next-gen experience should.

Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 will be released May 21 on Windows PC and Xbox Series X.

[ad_2]

Oli Welsh

Source link

April 4, 2024
Somna wants to creep you out and turn you on, and you should let it

[ad_1]

In Somna, one woman is burning, and another can’t sleep. She sees a demon when she shuts her eyes. He wants to do things for her, to her. It’s Puritan England, and they set women ablaze for thoughts like this. She ought to know — her husband is the one who lights the torch.

Becky Cloonan and Tula Lotay, the legendary creative team behind the gorgeous erotic folk horror comic, bill Somna as “a bedtime story.” Like a lot of erotic work, this is a double entendre. Yes, its lead character, an Englishwoman named Ingrid, struggles with disordered sleeping. Much of the story takes place in bed as she slips into dreams and slowly begins to lose track of the borders between her waking life and her dreaming one. But beds are also for sex — her repressed desires come to frightening life in her unconscious mind, and possibly the real world, too.

“We went into Somna knowing that we wanted to tell an ambiguous story,” says Cloonan. “There’s no wrong way to read this comic. A lot of it’s gonna hopefully make people think about why they think it’s a certain way. If the demon that [Ingrid] is seeing isn’t real, why do you think that?”

“In the ’80s, there was a lot more of this kind of sexual horror stuff going on,” Lotay says. “There’s not as much of it now, but we’re bringing it back!”

The pair are referring to what many have noted is a uniquely sexless time in pop culture, leaving a void in the sort of explicitly sexual stories that explored messier aspects of the human experience. Deeply flawed characters responding poorly to internal and external desire, and how the world responds to them. In that regard, their work feels refreshing.

Somna is immediately beguiling, not just for the ways its lush art plays with reader perception, alternating between dreamy lust and folk-horror thrills. Cloonan and Lotay are working in a rich thematic space, exploring the ways repressive cultures and institutions harm everyone, even those who benefit from them. Initially inspired by a bout of sleep paralysis, the story gestated for 10 years before finding life as a miniseries for new comics publisher DSTLRY — an unusual and splashy entry in the burgeoning imprint’s line of debut titles.

Image: Becky Cloonan, Tula Lotay/DSTLRY

“A book like Somna, I know it’s not for everyone. We didn’t go in thinking, Everyone’s gonna love this!” Cloonan laughs. “It’s definitely a self-indulgent book that we think some people might really enjoy.”

Somna is also arriving at the height of the romantasy boom in literature. Novels that take sex and romance just as seriously as their elaborate fantasy worlds are lighting up BookTok and Goodreads. Yet comics that cater to the direct market — your monthly periodicals famous for superhero yarns but full of other genre fare — have yet to make a big splash in the genre.

“When people open [a comic] up, and they see it laid bare in front of them, it’s jarring,” Cloonan says, ruminating on why comics publishers have been trailing their prose counterparts. “I think we’re still suffering from the Comics Code, and the moral crackdown that comics in North America had while this kind of book flourished in Europe. I think the North American market is still a little trepidatious.”

“I do think the reason there isn’t more of this kind of content in American comics is due to some of the movements you’ve got out there, [with] banned books,” adds Lotay, who is British. “It’s scary stuff that doesn’t happen so much in the U.K. or in Europe, France and Italy. There’s been a very different approach to sequential art. It’s massive there and they’ve always been pretty open-minded with sexual stories — as a teen I grew up reading Heavy Metal… kind of dark stories that are uber sexy as well.”

Image: Becky Cloonan/DSTLRY

Somna gets a lot of mileage out of the liminal space between danger and desire, playing with the reader’s perception. While Cloonan handles the script, both creators take on the story’s art — with Cloonan’s inky, careful linework telling Ingrid’s story when she’s awake, and Lotay’s dreamlike, painterly style bringing her dreams to life. This is also, consequently, where Somna’s most pulse-quickening pages are.

“The thing that is passionate and arousing is the emotion behind what’s happening rather than just the visuals. We didn’t want to enter into something with just visuals that are like, Well, now they fuck, or Now we’ll show a dick,” Lotay laughs. “The point is the way Ingrid is becoming more and more entangled in this dream world, and stepping out and being enticed slowly. And Shadow Man being in the room, or hovering nearer and the words he’s saying to her — and then it builds up to the point where she gives in.”

This is the tricky part in comics, in which the static visual image and the sparse prose have to carefully mingle to showcase characters’ arousal, but not give away too much. This is where the horror aspect of Somna helps a lot, with the dangerously loaded context of its historical setting and themes of female desire and sexual agency.

Image: Becky Cloonan, Tula Lotay/DSTLRY

“Even those moments where it’s full-on, I think I tried to draw where there was a lot of emotion there,” Lotay says. “And darkness as well, where you’re thinking, This is arousing, but actually, this is quite scary as well! It’s those fine lines.”

In its final chapters Somna begins to shift into full-on thriller, as Lotay and Cloonan’s art blurs together and a murder mystery simmering in the background envelops Ingrid. Titillation and fear blend into an unsettling climax that leaves the viewer with much more to think about than what is real and what is not. Somna lingers, its historical rumination on women’s sexual agency and patriarchal repression echoing into the present.

“What makes it scarier is the fact that it’s sexy,” Cloonan says. “At the end if you can put the book down and feel upset that you’re turned on by it, I think we’ve done our job.”

Somna #1-3 are available to purchase digitally at DSTLRY and in print wherever comics are sold. A collected edition arrives in July.

[ad_2]

Joshua Rivera

Source link

April 2, 2024
The Walking Dead is building to something — but it’s not clear what

[ad_1]

For a little while, it seemed like The Walking Dead was eager to use its popularity as a platform to create an entire universe of zombified television. First, there was the spinoff/prequel Fear the Walking Dead, followed by The Walking Dead: World Beyond and then the anthology series Tales of the Walking Dead. Each one intermingled with the original show, but for the most part, they were intent on telling their own stories. Fast-forward to 2024, and the former two series have ended, while Tales got an order for another season last year with no further news.

This leaves us with the question: What do we want out of The Walking Dead now? Because it seems like whatever plans AMC had for a sprawling empire have been whittled back down to focusing on what the central characters of the main show have been up to. Dead City looks at Negan and Maggie, Daryl Dixon is concerned with the titular badass, and The Ones Who Live reunites Rick and Michonne, the franchise’s power couple who previously departed The Walking Dead, leaving it to end in a rudderless, underwhelming fashion. Is the future of The Walking Dead… The Walking Dead divided into three shows?

If it’s a ploy to regain a dwindling audience, it makes sense. At its height, The Walking Dead was a ratings behemoth. Its peers in the “prestige TV” boom of the 2010s might have eaten its lunch in terms of sustained critical appraisal, but at its height, the fifth-season premiere scored 17.29 million viewers. To put that in perspective, the finale of Breaking Bad had 10.28 million.

Going back to the “glory days” with a handful of the characters most associated with them seems to be a good idea in perhaps luring back the viewers that absconded from the show due to its exhausting length or unpopular creative decisions. The debut of The Ones Who Live nabbed 3 million viewers, a far cry from the massive numbers it once landed a decade ago, even considering TV viewership being down in general. However, it’s a marked improvement from the relatively measly audience of the final season. And AMC is happy with the show’s performance on its streaming service, AMC Plus.

As a way to reignite its narrative potency, it’s a more questionable direction. Dead City, in particular, suffers from a “been there, done that” feeling — didn’t Maggie already sort of forgive Negan for whacking her beloved Glenn with a baseball bat back in the original? Do we really need another series where they have to play an apocalyptic odd couple and go through the same emotional arc again?

Photo: Emmanuel Guimier/AMC

Photo: Peter Kramer/AMC

Image: AMC

Daryl Dixon thrives on Norman Reedus’ bottomless well of likability and an engaging atmosphere. And with best pal Carol co-headlining the upcoming season 2 of his spinoff, we’re likely to get something at least somewhat watchable. However, with franchise overseer Scott Gimple seemingly set on one day reuniting the gang, will it eventually feel like Daryl ’n’ Carol are just spinning their (motorcycle) wheels until we can get the Avengers of Walking Dead side projects? And aren’t all of these Walking Dead spinoff leads coming together just… The Walking Dead?

And considering that The Walking Dead ended with a look toward the future, what wider meaning is there for them to reunite aside from a nostalgic group hug? The zombies have become a bit of an afterthought as the world moves toward rebuilding itself, and they mostly serve as a fleshy obstacle course in 2024. There is always some terrific gruesomeness to be mined from The Walking Dead’s consistently stellar makeup and practical effects, but piecing the cast back together for the sole purpose of seeing them beside one another, squaring off against undead hordes, feels a little empty. The Walking Dead managed to shock us in its early years thanks to its commitment to going the distance in showing that no one is safe from the zombies, but a reunion tour of all the people that were clearly safe misunderstands the “glory years” that the creators want to return to.

Luckily, The Ones Who Live is tapping into some much-needed emotional territory and making it seem like the event that it wants to be (even if the zombie horror aspect has long since rotted). Rick Grimes, now an established soldier of the paramilitary group CRM, must reconcile with his guilt and survival instincts when Michonne, his sword-wielding partner and the mother of his youngest child, comes back into his life to corral him and bring him home. It’s something that Grimes wrestles with, as heading off might put him and the people he loves in the line of fire from the CRM, who has some serious dirt on him and the community he left behind.

“What We,” the fourth episode of the new show, might be one of the best in the franchise’s history that doesn’t focus on undead bloodshed. A good chunk of it is devoted to Rick and Michonne arguing and finally getting to reflect upon the world-weariness that an experience like this would instill. In particular, Rick finds it hard to return to his family because of what happened with his late son Carl, and The Ones Who Live gives him a chance to properly grieve for the ones who don’t. He doesn’t want anyone to have to go through that kind of pain again, nor does he believe that he’d be able to. They’d all be much safer if he bore the weight of their tragedy alone. It is misguided patriarchal martyrdom, but it makes sense for Rick.

Photo: Gene Page/AMC

Of course, Michonne is able to convince him of the fact that he’s Rick Grimes, that he shouldn’t give up, that there’s more out there for the pair, etc. But Rick Grimes being reduced to an anxious, melancholy shell of a man and giving him an ultimate redemption makes The Ones Who Live feel like a fitting narrative follow-up to The Walking Dead and the closest thing the show has gotten to a proper epilogue. It could have very easily been a hollow attempt to draw in the unconvinced crowd with “Hey, it’s that sheriff guy that you liked!” Instead, it competently grapples with Rick as a character that’s been through so much trauma rather than Rick as a returning action hero.

On a wider level, The Ones Who Live can also serve as a fitting cap to the escalating threats of the show. The “We are the Walking Dead” mindset, where the physical menace of the zombie (amid a pop culture saturation of zombie media at the time) was no match for the terrifying specter of your fellow man, produced bad guys like the unstable Governor, the brutal Negan, and a host of other antagonists that ranged from wannabe cults to cannibals. The CRM, an army equipped with massive firepower that is willing to adjust the world to its specific definition of law by force, is the logical “final boss” of The Walking Dead. By fighting back against them, Rick and Michonne aren’t just taking on a rival group but helping decide the order of the future.

Where this leaves the end goal of The Walking Dead remains to be seen. It could all be pointing toward some eventual grand reunion, given that the original show concluded with Michonne and Daryl both running off to find Rick. But the first seasons of both Dead City and Daryl Dixon end with the shows spiraling off further into their own specific plots, so it will be a while before the gang gets back together again.

Until then, The Walking Dead franchise is in, essentially, its DLC era. What you want out of The Walking Dead depends on how attached you are to certain characters, and luckily, there’s now DLC side quests available for a few of them. It remains to be seen if these threads will ever interconnect again (now that every actor is on their own show, AMC would also have to deal with a truckload of contractual issues if it wanted to then push them back into the same series), so until then, The Walking Dead survives entirely on audience interest in the solo exploits of characters it worked to build together. With 11 seasons of the main show, AMC did plenty of asking for you to wait for plots to be resolved and character arcs to be fulfilled. And now, with the hint of bigger things to come and a host of orbiting spinoffs, it’s asking you to wait just a little while longer. For what? We’ll just have to see.

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live is now streaming on AMC Plus.

[ad_2]

Daniel Dockery

Source link

March 31, 2024