King Kong has long been a staple of Universal Studios theme parks. From Kongfrontation to his appearances on the Studio Tour tram ride, the Eighth Wonder of the World has always terrorized park attendees. But now, things are getting much, much bigger.
This summer, Universal Studios Orlando will open a massive, King Kong-themed ride called called Skull Island: Reign of Kong and some new materials from it have been revealed. You see one new piece of concept art for the ride above, but here are a few more—followed by a brand new video explaining the story of Skull Island.
I was at Universal Studios Orlando last summer, and it’s almost hard to describe how imposing this ride is going to be from the outside. The art can barely do justice to the huge, rock structure that’s been erected in the park. Hopefully what’s inside will live up to that. Get official info on the ride here.
Last summer, the internet was overrun with six-eyed dog faces, human legs that are actually slugs, and other images reminiscent of the day you ate magic mushrooms and feverishly explored your kitchen floor. In fact, these were the dreams of an AI developed by Google. And it was only a matter of time before the technology inspired new forms of art.
That day, my friends, has come. The Gray Area Foundation, in collaboration with Google Research, has put together the first of several art exhibits that make use of biologically-inspired forms of computing called artificial neural networks. The most famous of these is Deep Dream, an algorithm that takes everyday images of, say, clouds, and enhances contours until it’s sussed out hidden pig-snails and camel-birds. (Here’s how that works.)
But the exhibit also features other neural network-based tools, including style transfer, which “uses neural representations to separate and recombine content and style of arbitrary images.” This allows the artist to mash up a Manet and a Picasso the way a DJ might mix a house and a pop song.
The exhibition, which takes place tomorrow night at the Gray Area Art & Technology Theater in San Fransisco, includes 29 neural network artworks, created by artists at Google and around the world. It’s a one-off event, tickets are limited, and the pieces are going to be auctioned to the highest bidders. But for those who can’t make the trip, the Gray Area Foundation has agreed to share a sneak peak with us.
Here is the future of fine art. Embrace it, or be destroyed in the robot apocalypse.
Courtesy of Gray Area FoundationCourtesy of Gray Area FoundationCourtesy of Mike Tyka / Gray Area FoundationCourtesy of Mike Tyka / Gray Area FoundationCourtesy of Mike Tyka / Gray Area FoundationCourtesy of Mike Tyka / Gray Area FoundationCourtesy of Mike Tyka / Gray Area FoundationCourtesy of Mike Tyka / Gray Area FoundationCourtesy of Mike Tyka / Gray Area FoundationCourtesy of Mike Tyka / Gray Area FoundationCourtesy of Mike Tyka / Gray Area FoundationCourtesy of Mike Tyka / Gray Area FoundationCourtesy of Mike Tyka / Gray Area FoundationCourtesy of Mario Klingemann / Gray Area FoundationCourtesy of Mario Klingemann / Gray Area FoundationCourtesy of Mario Klingemann / Gray Area FoundationCourtesy of Mike Tyka / Gray Area FoundationCourtesy of Mike Tyka / Gray Area FoundationCourtesy of Alexander Mordvintsev / Gray Area FoundationCourtesy of Alexander Mordvintsev / Gray Area FoundationCourtesy of Alexander Mordvintsev / Gray Area Foundation
When you think of NASA and our current rush to the stars, images of shiny Mars rovers or a speeding ISS come to mind. But the ghostly remnants of the United States’ space race still remains and photographer and professor Roland Miller has spend decades documenting their slow deterioration.
His book, titled Abandoned in Place: Preserving America’s Space History, features color photographs of NASA, Air Force, and Military facilities over more than 20 years, and half of the facilities photographed for the book no longer exist. Roland helped fund his project through Kickstarter and is now selling the book through the University of New Mexico Press. These are just a few stunning shots from the collection. You can see even more great photos over at The Guardian as well.
Mobile Service Tower Platforms, Atlas Launch Complex 36B, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, 2005.Gantry, Launch Umbilical Tower, and Ramp, Atlas Launch Complex 13, Cap Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, 1992.Telemetry Receivers, Strip Chart Recorders, and Tape Recorders, Redstone Launch Complex 26 Blockhouse, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, 2000.Launch Control Room, Titan 11 ICBM Silo 395-C, Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, 1995.Launch Ring, Launch Complex 34, Apollo Saturn, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, 1990.Apollo 1 Fire Commemorative Blockhouse Service, Launch Complex 34, Apollo Saturn, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, January 27, 1994.Launch Pad and Gantry with Hermes A-1 Rocket, V2 Launch Complex 33, White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, 2006.
Unless you’re a model maker who works for Industrial Light & Magic, your skills at gluing bits of plastic together probably never turn out like this. But you don’t need skills to put this magnificent replica of the 2009 USS Enterprise on your fireplace mantle—just $7,000.
If 2015 was all about the return of Star Wars, 2016 will be for Trekkies since it marks the 50th anniversary of the original Star Trek TV series. This replica isn’t based on the original USS Enterprise that hit the airwaves back in 1966, though. It’s instead based on the 2009 J.J. Abrams Star Trek update, not that it makes this Enterprise any less desirable.
All of the replica’s details, including some 200 different lighting effects, many of them animated, are screen-accurate to the CG version seen in the film. And to show off your investment, it comes mounted on a mirror display base so it’s easy to stare in awe at the detailing underneath the 34-inch long replica as well.
So the question shouldn’t be, “can I afford to buy a$7,000 replica of the USS Enterprise?” You should instead be asking yourself, “does my house really need a new roof?” or “do my kids really need to go to college?”
We all know about method actors. Are method writers a thing? Because according to an unnamed insider of unknown origin and access, Ben Affleck would rewrite portions of the Batman v Superman script while wearing full Dark Knight regalia.
The Oscar-winning screenwriter “would go into wardrobe and get all suited up for the day in his Batman suit,” explains the insider of the action flick. “Then he would sit around reworking the script. Ben wasn’t thrilled with it and would find himself on multiple occasions fixing it the day of.”
While it’s worth noting that Affleck was tinkering with the Batman v Superman script even into shooting the film, it’s really not that unusual. And sadly, this probably wasn’t Affleck getting into his costume just to feel “Batman-y enough” to write his dialogue; it’s much more likely that Affleck had to get the cape and cowl on for the day’s shooting, had a bunch of downtime between takes, and used that time constructively by punching up the script.
That said, I have a glorious image in my head of Affleck renting a hotel room, bringing his Batman costume and his MacBook Pro, and then screaming at Microsoft Word for a week until the film met his standards. “’Clippy! CLIPPY! DO YOU BLEED?! You will.’ Hey, that’s pretty good.”
Ever since Boston Dynamics released new video of the Atlas robot getting bullied with a hockey stick, people have been making mash-ups about the robot uprising. But I think Imgur user exgexg has made the best one yet.
I won’t spoil the whole GIF for you. The shot above is just a sample. But you can guess where this one is going. Sarah Connor knows something about the latest version of Atlas that the rest of humanity clearly doesn’t. You can watch the full (100 meg!) GIF over at Imgur.
It’s pure dystopian pathos, mashing together the fears of the Terminator franchise, with the very real humanoid robots that are now becoming shockingly agile.
There are plenty of other gifs out there, but this person has won. So far. I doubt this is the last we’ll see of Atlas. Either way, he’s done taking your shit. Can you blame him?
There is no shortage of fan-built Lego BB-8s across the internet, but Mark Smiley and James Garrett have managed to build a tiny one that actually rolls, while keeping its head floating on top, using nothing but Lego components available in standard sets.
This custom Lego build is very reminiscent of Sphero’s tiny version of the rolling droid, but this BB-8 is limited to rolling on just a single axis, without the aid of an electric motor inside. But it can be brought to life using a matching base with hand-cranked wheels that power it, or simply rolled across the floor.
Before you jump into the discussion below with angry comments about how this BB-8's spherical body isn’t a legitimate Lego component, Mark and James were actually clever enough to repurpose the plastic sphere that housed, and is part, of this Sebulba’s Podracer set.
A quick paint job turned it from a miniature version of Tatooine into a miniature version of BB-8's body. And everything else, including BB-8's head (a re-painted cockpit dome) and the magnets inside that hold the two sections together, are all sold by Lego.
If you like the clever ingenuity behind this design, but don’t have the Lego parts needed to build one for yourself, there’s some good news. This BB-8 has been posted to Lego Ideas which means that if 10,000 fans show their support for it, Lego will actually consider turning it into a real set. Right now some 842 Star Wars fans have already backed the creation, but there’s a long way to go before this ends up on toy store shelves.
Go ahead, commit cannibalism! Slaughter your neighbors and feast on their still-warm flesh. Nobody can judge you, because the mere existence of the film Gods of Egypt has dissolved all social contracts, and eliminated forever all concepts of good and evil.
The moment I walked out of a screening of Gods of Egypt, I set about building a massive throne out of human pelvises. I worked feverishly through the night, barely pausing to listen to the sounds of the city fracturing into seven brutal revels: a chainsaw maze, a great pit full of vengeful lobsters, a poisoned rave, and so on. As I climbed at last atop my pelvic majesty, I had a perfect view of the inundation of viscera that had turned the very streets into canals: For even if nobody else ever saw this movie, its very existence was enough to sunder every human relation for once and ever. There could be no language, no society, no kindness, after Gods of Egypt.
How did this happen? Why didn’t somebody involved with the creation of Gods of Egypt realize what they were setting in motion, and that this movie was not just bad, but obscenely, devastatingly bad? I wondered this the whole time I was watching Gods of Egypt.
I’m going to give you a spoiler warning here, even though spoilers are a concept that belongs to the old order, before the rise of the murderpocalypse.
So Gods of Egypt is loosely based on Egyptian mythology, if the Egyptian gods were mostly white people who could turn into animal robots, sort of like Transformers. Basically, director Alex Proyas and his crew tried to turn the ancient beliefs of the Egyptians into a standard action-adventure movie, full of wacky set pieces and wild romps. And they wound up something that actually makes a river of entrails seem totally reasonable.
This movie starts when the god Horus (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau from Game of Thrones) is about to be crowned King of Egypt—until his uncle, the evil god Set (Gerard Butler), overthrows him. To get back his power and reclaim the throne, Horus must work with a plucky human thief named Bek (Brenton Thwaites) to pass a bunch of tests, with a little help from the sun god, Ra (Geoffrey Rush.) So yeah, it’s a buddy comedy about a god and a mortal teaming up to save the world and stuff—which could actually have been good, in theory.
In fact, in theory, this movie could have been awesome—generally any film with giant fire-breathing snakes, huge scarab-drawn chariots and holy spaceships is automatically great, in my book. But instead, Gods of Egypt squanders all of its incredible potential.
Gods of Egypt has been justly criticized for its policy of casting white people as almost all of its Egyptian characters—to the point where it might be the first movie whose director apologized months before it was released. But the casting is just one of the many problems that eat away at this movie, which seems to have fed slices of Egyptian cultural traditions into a typical Hollywood “Save the Cat Goddess” structure, to try and create something familiar and comfort-foody, with an exotic veneer.
The result is a movie in which nothing particularly makes sense. The stakes are completely unclear, and the moment that you think you have a handle on what’s going on, the movie lurches off in another direction. The actors stand around in front of greenscreens, saying terrible dialogue that they know is meaningless, and none of it carries any weight at all. This is also the umpteenth movie I’ve seen lately that has 90 minutes of action padded out to over two hours.
Bek, the movie’s ostensible main character, is supposed to be desperately in love with a mortal woman named Zaya (Courtney Eaton) who dies early on—so Bek is helping Horus in the hope that the god-king can bring Zaya back from the aferlife. But Zaya’s death puts barely a dent in Bek’s chipper action hero banter, and he just carries on leaping from CG obstacle to CG obstacle, while saying things like, “roll the bones!”
Meanwhile, every few minutes, the movie asks us to care about stakes-raising weird ideas like, “Set has changed the rules of the afterlife!” and “Set has stolen the glowing blue brain of the only black person in the movie!” At the same time, you don’t get the impression that any of the human characters actually worships these gods or considers them more than just oversized people with random powers.
But the result of taking all this grand metaphysical weirdness and putting it into a formulaic action-movie template is to create a movie where nothing means anything, but the film keeps dragging you from set piece to set piece every few minutes anyway. This isn’t just a film where it’s impossible to care, but one that negates the very idea of giving a shit.
Nothing has meaning! Everything is monstrous.
And that brings us to the central problem of Gods of Egypt—this movie can’t manage to find an interesting tone. At all. It’s either a comedy, in which there’s exactly one funny line of dialogue, or it’s a breezy action-adventure romp in which the characters are unlikable and the plot is mush, or it’s a semi-serious epic about the struggle of the gods. The overwhelming tone is one of blandness, like a rejected Disney Channel TV movie starring the younger brother from Hannah Montana and one of the less gifted wizards of Waverly Place.
And meanwhile, this movie’s aesthetic is a weird mixture of Egyptology pastiche and VFX overkill. As I mentioned, the Egyptian gods are sort of like off-label Transformers. Their fights, for the most part, look pretty awfully rendered, with a lot of bits that look like 90s video games. And the film’s aesthetic is pretty much a solid gold—all the buildings are gold, the gods are blinged out, and they bleed gold blood.
And one of the film’s most interesting visual innovations turns out to be its greatest liability: all of the gods, including Jaime Lannister, are much bigger than ordinary humans. Like, maybe 10 or 12 feet tall, I’m guessing. This yields a few startling shots early on in the film, but also means that at no point can the actors just be in a scene together, without everything being rendered digitally. I have a feeling that’s one reason for the utter lack of chemistry or personality in any of this movie’s character-building moments.
This movie feels like a dull, joyless monument to excess and cultural exploitation.
I’m just going to repeat the word “joyless” a few more times—joyless, joyless, joyless—while reminding you that I’m writing this review on a computer keyboard that I fashioned out of the fingernails and ribs of my former best friends. (The keyboard’s not connected to anything; I’m not even sure how you’re reading this, to be honest.) I love an over-the-top bad movie as much as the next Joe Bob Briggs acolyte, but Gods of Egypt is just too fucking bland—even with Gerard Butler shouting his heart out in a few scenes—to be anything but brain-compacting.
That said, there are a handful of incredibly beautiful images, that leave you with a sense of just why anybody thought this film was a good idea at all. At one point, when we first visit the spaceship belonging to Geoffrey Rush’s Ra, there’s a stunning visual of the flat Earth that Ra is sailing over. A few bits inside the land of the dead are also just gorgeous. You can sort of see how someone might have seen a few of those renders, early on, and thought this might be a distinctive, even eye-popping, film.
But for the most part, Gods of Egypt feels like such an abdication of story, and such a bastardization of culture, that the only sane response is to abandon sanity, and enlist in the murder-police of the senseless new era. As I write this from atop my pelvic cathedra in a world of unspeakable mayhem, I testify that Gods of Egypt has liberated us all.
You do not need to see this movie to know that you live in the world it created. Mercy is a cast-off from the time before the coming of Gods of Egypt.
Artist’s concept of Planet 9. (Image: Caltech/R. Hurt)
Saturn’s Cassini probe is nearing the end of its mission, but that doesn’t mean it’s no longer useful. In fact, astronomers have found a totally new purpose for the plucky little space probe and its vast trove of data: searching for the elusive Planet 9.
Last month, Caltech astronomers Mike Brown—the guy who killed Pluto and is proud of it—and Konstantin Batygin captured the world’s attention when they announced they’d found evidence for a ninth planet, ten times the mass of Earth and lurking somewhere in the far reaches of our Solar System. Theydidn’t see a giant planet, they inferred its presence by looking at the orbits of several smaller Kuiper Belt Objects. Now, the race is on to find the beast and bring it into the planetary fold.
And help is coming from all corners of the astronomical community, including missions designed to study other large planets. As New Scientistreported this week, scientists are now trying to figure out what sorts of clues Planet 9 might leave behind as it completes its 15,000 Earth-year journey around the Sun. If we had a distinct fingerprint in mind, that could greatly narrow down the fields of view our telescopes have to scour.
Now, severalscientific papers are arguing that we do have a fingerprint. Planet 9 may be a frigid wasteland, but it should still be emitting a tiny amount of energy in millimeter radio wavelengths. It just so happens that Cassini has spent over a decade collecting radio ranging data across the sky as it sails in and out of Saturn’s rings.
Using that data, a team of astronomers has now modeled the motion of all of our Solar System’s heavyweights. And they’ve found they can rule out about half of Planet 9's potential orbits, as the presence of another large planet would have shown up in Cassini’s data. With several more years of radio ranging, astronomers might be able to narrow the search even further. (Cassini is currently slated to plunge suicidally into Saturn’s atmosphere in September, 2017.)
We’re still a long ways off from finding Planet 9—if it even exists. But efforts like this highlight the creativity of the astronomical community, reminding us that if anyone has a shot at finding a cold, dark world at the ass-end of the Solar System, it’s these brilliant space nerds.
This has been a long-ass week. Did you know there were three Tuesdays and five Wednesdays this week? It’s because it was a Leap Week or something. But it’s over! Let’s celebrate by rolling out some bloody awesome GIFs. What you got?
What I got is some GIFs of the special Johnny Karate episode of Parks and Recreation, from the final season. Unlike Gods of Egypt, here’s some whitewashed cultural appropriation with a sense of humor and some self-awareness.
Plus here’s the best legal disclaimer of all time:
For 20 years, Pokémon has had the reputation of a cheery kid’s franchise. But under the veneer of Ash and co.’s adventures, there lies one of the most sinister dystopias around. To celebrate Pokémon’s 20th birthday this week (and its newest games), here’s a few reasons as to why the Pokénation is much more terrifying than you realized.
Yes, It’s All Basically Cockfighting
Let’s get the most obvious one out of the way: the core of Pokémon is about wild animals being enslaved and then pitted against each other in violent combat for both fun and profit. Not only are these fights vastly popular spectator sports for the public, but the best Pokémon trainers are held in the highest regard and are lauded with titles and prize money. Every little kid dreams of becoming a Pokémon master when they head out on their adventures. Speaking of which...
It’s Traditional to Send Pre-Teens on Dangerous, Country-Wide Treks
Ash is only 11 or 12 (more recent protagonists in the games were aged up to be around 14 or 16) when he’s sent off on his merry way by his mom to go be a Pokémon trainer, with nothing but the clothes on his back, some Pokéballs and a Pokédex. He’s basically kicked out of the house to go not just fight wild animals—and let’s bear in mind that there’s some legitimately messed up Pokémon out there in that tall grass—but traverse across an entire country, arid deserts, active volcanoes, treacherous waters, in a bid to be the very best, like no one ever was. If that wasn’t bad enough, this is almost seen as a coming of age, rite of passage thing in the Pokéverse—the protagonist’s parents and other adults throughout the games often fondly recall the days when they too were forced to leave home on a nightmarish survivalist trek.
City Infrastructure Is Centered Solely Around Pokémon Battles
It’s less obvious in the anime series, but take a look around your average town in the Pokémon games and you come to realize some very odd things. Where are the schools? The hospitals? Government buildings? Financial Institutions? Basic civic planning is worryingly absent from human society, but you can be guaranteed that every town has a Pokécenter, a Pokémart and (almost every town) a Pokémon Gym. The basic needs of the populace don’t seem to exist, but if you want a Pokémon battle, you’re catered for. You’re the only thing catered for.
Pokémon Champions Might Actually Be the Government
There’s the occasional mayor of a town in the TV show, but outside of that, there doesn’t actually seem to be any governing bodies for each Pokémon region. So who’s paying for everything? Who pays for infrastructure and highways between towns? Who pays public sector employees like Police Officers and Pokécenter nurses? (And more on them in a bit.)
Considering there’s no real government on the show, and considering how every town is set up to cater to Pokémon battles, the most obvious choice is that each Region’s Elite Four and Gym Leaders are some sort of regional government... which means people rule based on their Pokémon-fighting skill, and nothing else. To paraphrase Monty Python, the ability to know when to deploy Squirtle is no basis for a system of government.
Nobody Questions the Cloned Civil Servants
It’s a long running joke in Pokémon that every Pokécenter is staffed by a Nurse Joy, or how every police department is made up of Officer Jennies—but never does anyone stop to question how there are so many of them running about. They can’t be identical twins, as there’s so many of them. Are they cloned creations from the original Joy and Jenny? Androids? Ordinary citizens who undergo plastic surgery to become the idealised poster child of their respective industries? No matter which way you slice it, the answer cannot be good.
Pokémon Are Indentured Slaves
Who else is part of the workforce aside from Joy and Jenny? Pokémon, of course. Pokémon are put to task at a variety of jobs: Gogoats are used as a Taxi service in Pokémon X/Y’s Lumiose City. Chanseys are used as medical assistants. Pokémon are members of the Police force. They’re used to perform manual labor, like Rhyhorns and Machamps. Hell, part of the Gym Leader Lieutenant Surge’s backstory is that he served in the Army, flying fighter planes that used Electric Pokémon as a power source, confirming that Pokémon even play a role in the military—in at least a support role, if not as active combatants.
It’s not just that Pokémon are used in this way, it’s that even in these jobs they’re never in a position of power.Chansey reports to Nurse Joy, Officer Jenny deputises Pokémon, Construction Pokémon report to a human site manager. And yet not only do they never get promoted into management, we’ve never actually seen them get paid, either.
Highly Advanced Technology Is Used to Better Humanity and Abuse Pokémon
It’s pretty obvious that the human societies of the Pokénation are very technologically advanced, even beyond ourselves. They have renewable energy sources (who needs fossil fuels when you’ve got Pokémon to generate power?), commercial-grade holocommunication devices, the list goes on. But the craziest technology is reserved for basically abusing domesticated Pokémon.
As the above video shows, Pokéballs operate by converting a Pokémon, a sentient being, into some sort of digital energy for transportation and storage—just think about the size of a computer we’d need to store the brain functions of a human, and these things are the size of your palm! But while some fan theories believe Pokémon stored in Pokéballs or on home PCs (yup, commercially viable computers can store oodles of living creatures as digital data) are housed in a sort of Star Trek-esque holodeck to keep them happy, there’s evidence to believe that this is not the case, and that Pokémon can still think and react to stimuli within the confines of a Pokéball. They’ve been shown communicating with trainers and receiving commands from inside the ball on multiple occasions, which when think about being disembodied and turned into a still-active nebulous consciousness inside someone’s pocket, that seems horrifying.
The Human-Pokémon Relationship Is Completely Insane
So aside from the slavery and the technological abuse, the entire spectrum of relationships between humans and Pokémon is absurd. They’re beloved pets, work colleagues (although clearly below them in this regard), transportation, sportsmen, even a source of food, all at once. How do people even begin to comprehend all of that? Well, that’s because...
Society Is Indoctrinated to Believe Pokémon Want This
Yup. Despite the messed up nature of humanity’s relationship with these powerful creatures, everyone is a-okay with it because from a young age, it’s hammered into people that Pokémon just love to serve the human race. In the very first episode of the anime, Ash’s Pokédex reads an entry on Wild Pokémon states that wild Pokémon are extremely jealous of their domesticated counterparts—supposedly hence why they will attack a trainer’s Pokémon rather than the trainer themselves when you encounter them.
So if we take the tradition of sending every young kid out on their own Pokémon journey as a rite of passage, basically every kid is going to be told that by their Pokédex. And why shouldn’t they trust it? After all, it tells them so many wonderful factoids about Pokémon, this one must be true too. Scientists like Professor Oak influence all these young kids into thinking Pokémon are eager slaves, and anyone who questions that and wants to see Pokémon free—like N and Team Plasma in Pokémon Black/White—are branded criminals on the same level as actual terrorist groups like Team Rocket or Team Magma and Aqua.
But considering all the shit Pokémon have to put up with, maybe they do want it—or at least, over the centuries have come to accept this as their way of life. Which is just as chilling a thought to consider as well.
And It’s All Happening Under Our Own Noses
But here’s the real kicker: This dystopian nation apparently happily co-exists with the rest of our own civilized world. Remember Lieutenant Surge from earlier? Part of his official backstory is that before coming to Kanto he served in the United States military, and he’s referred to as “The Lightning American.” Another Gym Leader, Fantina, speaks French as her native tongue.
These two characters are the only ones so far with confirmed origins from outside the Pokénation, but they confirm that international relationships between it and other countries are good enough to allow immigration—and that the rest of the world is apparently fine with these animal abusing, technologically advanced nutjobs is incredibly depressing to consider.
[A version of this article originally ran on January 6th, 2015.]
The real reason The 100 is such a great show isn’t its beautiful actors or its badass fight scenes. We love this show for the way characters are put in impossible situations, so that we can watch them make hard—sometimes appalling—choices, that add shades to their personalities and cause them to grow.
Well, Bellamy made an appalling choice recently. Only this time, it was a choice that came with none of the context, motivation, or character development that The 100 is usually so good at dishing up. In fact, it just felt wrong. In my view, this storyline came dangerously close to ruining the show entirely—fortunately, enough other fascinating developments happened in episode six that this doesn’t seem to be the case, for now.
Still, Bellamy’s choice undercuts everything the show has stood for, and we need to talk about it.
Turn back now if you haven’t watched past Season 3, episode 3 of The 100. You have been warned.
Look, Bellamy, like everyone else in his band of scrappy not-really-teenagers-anymore, has had a shit life since hitting the ground. They’ve been attacked, imprisoned, and victimized repeatedly by the other people living on Earth. They’ve witnessed unspeakable horrors, watched friends and loved ones die, and murdered the innocent to survive. The original 100 (now 40-something?) have been through hell, and some of then have snapped. Finn’s psychotic break in Season 2, and Jasper’s alcohol-fueled spiral into a pit of depression after the battle at Mount Weather, are two great examples of a character taking a shocking turn, when his circumstances became too much to bear.
Both Finn and Jasper’s character developments were upsetting—but they were motivated. We understood exactly why these characters changed, and the changes added complexity to their personalities.
None of this is true for Bellamy’s complete about-face in episode 5 of Season 3, when he decides to ally himself with Pike, and participate in the mass slaughter of hundreds of their Grounder allies, the people who were stuck on Earth while the Sky Crew survived the devastation in an orbiting satellite. While the show hasn’t been shy about killing droves of people in the past, this was the first time I felt disgusted by it. And while I really can’t stand Pike—a one-dimensional zealot who has stood for nothing other than blind hatred of Grounders since the show introduced him—this decision is entirely consistent with his character.
For Bellamy, though, it doesn’t make any sense at all. The show does a piss poor job setting up Bellamy’s motivations for betraying basically everyone in his life so he can follow a meathead on a murderous rampage.
Clearly, Bellamy feels guilty about the latest tragedy at Mount Weather, where his decision to trust a Grounder ended up getting a bunch of Sky Crew killed. But this isn’t the first time people have died on Bellamy’s watch, and in other instances, he’s found the Grounders to be better allies than his own people. He’s well aware of the complex political situation with the Grounders, and in the past, he’s never viewed them in black-and-white terms.
And yet somehow, after this recent incident, a five-minute conversation with Pike convinces Bellamy that all Grounders are murderers, who need to die before they kill Sky Crew? Even though he knows that his people just struck a peace deal with their leader, and that the Grounder army is a thousand times bigger than his?
Maybe Bellamy is extra enraged, because his new girlfriend was just killed—but if that was the show’s attempt to add weight to the situation, it was a misfire. We barely knew her. I can’t even remember her name right now. Is this somehow motivated by his newfound anger at Clarke for leaving the Sky Crew camp, Arkadia? Bellamy helped Clarke leave, and it was one of the most adult things he’s done.
Whatever spurred Bellamy’s recent choice, it doesn’t come across. Instead, the sudden transformation of one of the show’s protagonists from a reasoned human being who carefully weighs his actions and alwaysquestions authority to Pike’s henchman feels like a betrayal of his character.
There were a few signs in episodes 5 and 6 that Bellamy’s conscience is starting to kick in—he stopped his crew from killing Indra, for one, and he seemed to feel a brief pang of remorse at the thought of slaughtering an innocent village. But I’m not sure this is a stumble his character will recover from. As I said before, I’m still enjoying this show a lot (holy shit, the City of Light plot is really getting moving!), but screwing with Bellamy’s character like this sets a disturbing precedent.
Because this is a show that, until now, has differentiated itself from the smorgasbord of other post-apocalyptic worlds in science fiction by portraying a future where people are driven by more than reckless tribalism. Where enemies and allies can come from anywhere.
If Bellamy can no longer see that, I guess I’m relieved that Clarke, Lexa, and others still can. As it is, his botched storyline is a huge warning sign that The 100 might be starting to careen out of control.
Theoretical physicist Brian Greene, who’s also known for books such as The Elegant Universe where he explains concepts like string theory in layman’s terms, was on the show last night to give Stephen a crash course on not only why gravitational waves are important, but also how they were discovered.
Greene even goes so far as to break out a really neat experiment involving green lasers that replicates how the LIGO observatory works, but on a much simpler and smaller scale. If at the end of this clip you still can’t wrap your head around gravitational waves, it’s probably best to just leave that research to the professionals.
When people pick up the first appearance of Deadpool, New Mutants #98, sometimes they forget two other characters got introduced at the same time. They were Gideon and Domino. Gideon never quite caught on, but Domino did, and now it seems she may be showing up alongside Wade in Deadpool 2.
Minor spoilers follow.
Heroic Hollywood is reporting that Domino will join Deadpool and Cable (revealed by DP himself in the film’s end credits) in the sequel, which is currently being written by Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese. This makes sense for a bunch of reasons.
When comic readers first met Domino, she wasn’t actually Domino at all. She was a character named Copycat, a shape-shifter who had captured the real Domino and was posing as her. Here’s the kicker: In the comics, Copycat was actually Vanessa, Deadpool’s girlfriend, played by Morena Baccarin in the movie. The real Domino is a woman named Neena Thurman who was experimented on and given the ability to manipulate luck, which comes in handy when you’re a gun-toting assassin.
So will Morena Baccarin’s Vanessa gain shapeshifting powers? And if so, will she masquerade as Domino? We don’t know. We just know it’s likely she’ll be in the movie, and she’ll make a worthy adversary (and eventually ally) for Deadpool and Cable if this is all building to an X-Force movie.
When the trailer for the new movie 10 Cloverfield Lanewas released, it was impossible not to imagine it was a sequel to 2008's Cloverfield. Why else use that title? Well, the film’s producer J.J. Abrams has something to say about that. “It’s not Cloverfield 2,” he said.
Speaking to Fandango, Abrams did his best to clear up this common misconception. “This movie is very purposefully not called Cloverfield 2, because it’s not Cloverfield 2,” Abrams explained. “The association is clear and there are multiple connections—and there is a bigger idea at play for us with these movies and this connection.”
Don’t believe him? There’s more.
The story of this movie—and it came to us originally as a spec that was very different in a lot of ways and an unrelated thing altogether—is definitely about different kinds of monsters. And while the Cloverfield monster isn’t in this movie, there’s a new monster and there’s something else that happens, but I don’t want to ruin the ending.
“The Cloverfield monster isn’t in this movie.” That’s worth reiterating. Whether these other monsters that Abrams mentions are literal, like in the first movie, or something more symbolic, we’ll have to wait and see.
So will we ever see a real Cloverfield 2, complete with that crazy monster? Abrams said while there had been lots of talk about making a second Cloverfield movie after the first film’s release, he and the filmmakers could never quite get the right idea. And now, with much bigger movies like Godzilla and Pacific Rim out there, he feels it’s probably past its time. But he doesn’t rule out other movies with “Cloverfield” in the title.
“A larger franchise or anthology would suggest multiple movies, and we’re just focusing on this, which is the second of two,” Abrams told Fandango. “But I will say that there is something larger at play that if we’re lucky enough to get to do I think could result in something pretty cool.”
Well, this sucks. A fan of the legendary artist Bill Sienkiewicz—known for his work on The New Mutants, Batman, Elektra: Assassin, and countless other comic books—commissioned the artist to paint an extraordinary picture of Batman and the Joker... only for it to be stolen en route. Naturally, Sienkiewicz is pissed.
The artist posted a shot of the painting to Twitter to warn fans if they see the piece for sale anywhere, with a colorful message to whoever swiped the work in the first place:
It’s an understandable sentiment. Comic artists provide commissioned artwork and sink tons of time and effort into them for fans to get direct access to them, a chance to support creatives that they admire. It’s heartbreaking for the fan who lost what was a fantastic bit of art, but for Sienkiewicz as well, especially if the piece crops up elsewhere and someone illicitly (intentionally or otherwise) profits from its sale.
The good news is that Bill’s warning is being spread far and wide over the world of comics on Twitter, so if it does pop up anywhere for sale, people will hopefully be able to point out that it was stolen. And Sienkiewicz plans to even potentially re-do the piece if it’s never found—so it will all eventually have a happy ending.
If you’re a comics art fan who is part of the commissions scene and you see this piece being floated around, you can get in touch with Sienkiewicz on Twitter or Facebook.
This is incredible news. Nicholas Meyer—the man who probably deserves more credit than anybody for the longevity of Star Trek—has joined the writing staff of Bryan Fuller’s new Trek TV series.
A new press release from CBS includes this statement from Fuller, who’s still the showrunner:
“Nicholas Meyer chased Kirk and Khan ‘round the Mutara Nebula and ‘round Genesis’ flames, he saved the whales with the Enterprise and its crew, and waged war and peace between Klingons and the Federation. We are thrilled to announce that one of Star Trek’s greatest storytellers will be boldly returning as Nicholas Meyer beams aboard the new Trek writing staff.”
When Meyer took on Star Trek with Wrath of Khan, the series was arguably flagging. The Motion Picture had done well, but hadn’t left anybody with much appetite for more Trek, and you could easily imagine this franchise being relegated to one 1960s TV show, an animated sequel, and a couple of movies. But Meyer gave a new lease on life to Kirk, Spock and the rest—while also proving that Trek could be thrilling and expansive, beyond just appealing to fan nostalgia.
As massively as Star Wars benefited from the addition of Lawrence Kasdan as co-writer of The Force Awakens, this feels like a similar, essential boost to Star Trek.
The dedicated fun adversaries at One Million Moms are back with a new campaign, this one aimed at making Satan less hot. They’re outraged that the new Fox show Lucifer makes the Dark Lord look like a “likable guy” who’s “cool and irresistible to women.” Kind of like how these campaigns make the TV shows they’re targeting irresistible to viewers?
One Million Moms is, of course, the genteel ladies’ auxiliary of the anti-gay American Family Association, and Lucifer is, of course, the Morning Star, described in some old book as “the tempter,” which “deceiveth the whole world.” He’s also, not to get too literary here, described as beautiful by his Creator(“Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness: I will cast thee to the ground, I will lay thee before kings, that they may behold thee.”)
The series focuses on Lucifer portrayed as a good guy “who is bored and unhappy as the Lord of Hell.” He resigns his throne, abandons his kingdom, and retires to Los Angeles, where he gets his kicks helping the LAPD punish criminals.
At the same time, God’s emissary, the angel Amenadiel, has been sent to Los Angeles to convince Lucifer to return to the underworld. Lucifer questions Amenadiel, “Do you think I’m the devil because I’m inherently evil or just because dear old Dad decided I was?” The question is meant to make people rethink assumptions about good and evil, including about God and Satan.
The program included graphic acts of violence, a nightclub featuring scantily-clad women, and a demon. The message of the show is clear. Lucifer is just misunderstood. He doesn’t want to be a bad guy, it’s God who is forcing him to play that role.
Truly shocking, and unacceptably sexy. Also arguably a bit of an odd use of the Moms’ time, given that the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced Lucifer is apparently terrible, flat, and not very well-written (“the least interesting thing Beelzebub has ever done while killing time on the mortal plane,” the Hollywood Reporter noted). But once the motherly hordes are done with this important campaign, we hope they’ll turn their attentions to whichever Godless sinner wrote Paradise Lost, wherein the Devil also looks cool as—well—the place where he’d rather reign than serve.
Listening to composer John Williams discuss Star Wars music is always a treat. In this short featurette, he discusses his ideas behind the unique themes of both Rey and Kylo Ren, as well as the fine line between using his classic score from the original trilogy... and overusing it.
