Concept art for Kong: Skull Island by artist Eddie Del Rio. All Images: Eddie Del Rio
Kong: Skull Island ruled the box office this weekend, thanks in large part to the scope and audacity of the film. It’s just insanely big, fun, and colorful—all of which comes across in a stunning set of concept art from the film.
The art is by designer Eddie Del Rio and, in a pretty unique spin for most concept art, if you’ve seen the film you’ll recognize most of this almost instantly. Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts used many of these compositions and colors almost exactly. Check them out.
Now, most of that is in the film in some way. These below images, however, aren’t. They tease an idea of Kong as a more literal king. An idea that was likely cut.
Very interesting.
For more of Del Rio’s work, visit his site. Kong: Skull Island is now in theaters.
It’s hard to believe that the undisputed King of Kaiju has yet to actually get his own animated movie in Japan. That’s changing at last with the arrival of Polygon Pictures’ Godzilla film later this year, but there’s more good news: it’ll be easy to see outside of Japan when it airs, too.
Polygon and Toho have announced they’ll be teaming up with Netflix to bring Gen Urobuchi, Kobun Shizuno, and Hiroyuki Seshita’s animated take on Godzilla worldwide upon its release later this year. It will mark the first official appearance of Godzilla in an animated feature in Japan, outside of a brief tie-in appearance in Crayon Shin Chan last year to promote Shin Godzilla. It’s not the first time Godzilla’s appeared in animation full stop, however—there’s been two different animated TV shows for big G in the West, including one inspired by the 1998 reboot movie.
We’ve still not seen much of the movie outside of a few pieces of art, like the one above, which gives us a very scifi-looking setting for the film. And we’ve not even seen its take on Godzilla himself yet. But at least we know we’ll be able to see it outside of Japan when it hits later this year.
Henry Cavill as Superman in Man of Steel. Image: Google
A sequel to Man of Steel has long been expected, but there hasn’t been much news about it thus far. Last we heard, the DC film was in “active development,” but that was eight months ago. Now we know that Warner Bros. has its eye on a certain comic book director to bring Superman back to the big screen.
His name is Matthew Vaughn. You know him as the director of Kick-Ass, X-Men: First Class, and Kingsman: The Secret Service. He’s currently finishing Kingsman: The Golden Circle for a fall release—and Collider first reported he’s at the top of Warner Bros. list to direct Man of Steel 2. We’ve also heard this is true, and in addition that the film may not be a direct sequel to Zack Snyder’s 2013 film. It could potentially be more of a soft reboot or reimagining, though nothing has been decided. Either way, the wheels are spinning.
Collider also points out that while preliminary talks have happened, this is not a done deal by any means. Vaughn is just someone the studio would like to work with; he loves the character and he’s considering it. Plus, if he doesn’t do Superman, they’d be interested in him directing something else. Warner Bros. did not comment.
You may recall this isn’t the first time Vaughn has had a run-in with Superman. Back before Man of Steel came out, the director spoke to Warner Bros. executives about the character, but it didn’t pan out. Instead, they went with the David Goyer/Christopher Nolan/Zack Snyder vision. But Vaughn did say this about his take, which is very telling:
I think that’s the one thing not to do with Superman, trying to do the serious The Dark Knight version. Superman is about color and fun, or it should be, for me.
So if Vaughn still feels that way, maybe it suggests Warner Bros. is ready to start pushing that dark, Snyder vision out of the way as long rumored. Maybe they want Vaughn’s colorful, boisterous vision. And maybe, like we said, this will be less a Man of Steel sequel and more a reboot of the character as a whole. The opportunity is right there considering he’s, well, dead at the moment. A Justice League resurrection could surely put the character into a whole new headspace.
A new Superman movie is just one of at least 17 (yes, 17) DC movies that are in various stages of development. It’s near the bottom in terms of progress, but the search for a director suggests it could start jumping over the other films soon.
Released 30 years ago today, Evil Dead II is still the funniest horror movie ever made, as well as one of the greatest horror sequels. Far more than the first Evil Dead movie, it launched the careers of director Sam Raimi and star Bruce Campbell, and it has influenced countless splat-stick films that matched gore an laughs in equal measure. Here are our favorites.
1) The Cabin in the Woods
Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon’s immensely enjoyable send-up of slasher movies borrows from a lot of horror that came before. But its setting—a classic scary movie “bad place” so iconic it’s enough to form the movie’s entire title—owes a debt to the first two Evil Dead movies, while its ability to be simultaneously scary, gross, and screamingly funny is a wink to Evil Dead II specifically. And while The Cabin in the Woods’ big reveal that the creatures menacing its college-kid protagonists are actually controlled by techs who have the cabin under surveillance is an idea unique to the film, the idea that malevolent ancient forces are one bungled sacrifice (or one irresponsibly uttered Book of the Dead incantation) away from wiping out all of humanity is not.
2) Army of Darkness
We might as well get this obvious but utterly beloved entry out of the way early. The saga of Ash Williams, the Deadites, the Necronomicon, and Ash’s beloved Delta 88 continued—this time with time travel!—in this 1992 sequel to Evil Dead II.Transporting Ash to the Middle Ages makes the film even more of a fish-out-of-water comedy, though it still has plenty of ghouls and gore to go with its fantasy elements. An Evil Dead 4 was often discussed over the years (with some insane ideas on the table, including sending Ash to the future), but the Evil Dead world eventually spawned a not-shitty remake of Raimi’s original film, as well as the gleefully blood-soaked Ash vs Evil Dead TV series instead.
3) Shaun of the Dead
Like Peter Jackson, Edgar Wright has made no secret of his admiration for Raimi and his Evil Dead cohort. In 2007, while making the rounds for Hot Fuzz, he told The Telegraph:
“Evil Dead 2 is the film that set me off on my career,” says Wright. “You could easily pick holes in the dialogue and the plotting, but it’s all about the director running riot with the form.
“The 45-minute midsection has just one character being tormented, and not only by the spirits in the story but by the director and the camera, too. It’s as if the camera is a character within the film – that’s what’s so imaginative about it. Most horror films are about people being picked off; Evil Dead 2 is about one actor being picked on.
“Orson Welles said a movie studio was the best train set a boy could have. In Evil Dead 2, Sam Raimi is like a kid smashing up his train set, making it go faster and faster until it crashes.”
Wright’s breakout feature, 2004's zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead, has a lot of Evil Dead II’s insane spirit and exuberantly gushing blood, even if it has a whole lot more characters and locations. Adding an even deeper layer, the TV show Wright made with Shaun stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, Spaced, was filled with pop culture references, including shout-outs to the Evil Dead films.
4) Bubba Ho-Tep
Obviously, director-screenwriter Don Coscarelli (Phantasm) and source-material author Joe Lansdale both had a huge hand in creating Bubba Ho-Tep, one of the greatest cult movies ever. But would Bubba Ho-Tep have been nearly as memorable without Bruce Campbell’s performance as an elderly Elvis Presley, living incognito all these years in a nursing home that suddenly finds itself beset by a soul-sucking mummy? The Evil Dead movies—especially Army of Darkness, which ends with Ash declaring “Hail to the King, baby”—really laid the groundwork for Campbell to just outright play Elvis in a movie one day. And Bubba Ho-Tep brilliantly took advantage not just of Campbell’s physical resemblance to the music legend, but his Ash-honed persona as someone who can keep his swagger while battling supernatural beasties.
5) Dead Alive
Peter Jackson has often praised Evil Dead and Evil Dead II—movies made by a guy his age, with nothing to go on but raw talent and a 16mm camera—as being hugely motivating for his own film career. In an interview with Fangoria, Jackson explained:
Evil Dead was a movie that was memorable for me in the sense that beyond the qualities of the film itself, which is that it’s a quite entertaining, funny, enjoyable film, it just made me think, “God, I could do that,” because I was old enough. I had a 16mm camera when Evil Dead came out and Evil Dead II a few years later, and I was right on the cusp of wanting to make a 16mm film, and then here comes a horror movie that somebody else of a similar age as me made in 16mm. It really helped me get going on Bad Taste [a.k.a. Dead Alive], which was my first film, and so it was one of those inspirational moments. The type of tone in Evil Dead II was a little bit more like what I enjoyed, which was this rollicking over-the-top splatter movie. That combination of tone is what influenced me as I was getting into my first features.
That ability to deftly mix humor and horror is something that Jackson has carried over into his later films, too—even the Lord of the Rings series has a bit of that feel.
6) Dead Snow
Because sometimes, there’s not an undead witch chained in the cellar of that isolated cabin you’ve declared party HQ for the weekend. Sometimes, there are frozen Nazi zombies buried deep within the Norwegian ski slopes just outside your door. In either case, you gotta do what you gotta do, with whatever’s on hand in the middle of nowhere, to try and survive. Note: no matter your foe, chainsaws always come in handy.
7) Ghosthouse
The unholy union of director Umberto Lenzi (Cannibal Ferox) and producer Joe D’Amato produced this “unofficial” 1988 sequel to Evil Dead II, which is sometimes called La Casa 3, after the Italian title for the Evil Dead series(with Lenzi credited with the dubious alias “Humphrey Humbert”). Ghosthouse is a rip-off patchwork of the highest order, though as you can see from the trailer, Evil Dead II isn’t one of the immediately obvious influences. However, there is a horrifying clown doll that should probably come with a trigger warning as well as some kind of creative-license fee to Poltergeist.
8) My Name Is Bruce
Years before Ash vs. Evil Dead took a look at what “El Jefe” had been doing with his life with since that journey to the Middle Ages, Bruce Campbell directed and starred in this meta-comedy that pokes fun at a similar subject. He plays an exaggerated version of himself who begrudgingly agrees to help a small town fight off a furious demon that’s appeared in their midst. The cast also includes Evil Dead series alums Ted Raimi, Ellen Sandweiss, and Dan Hicks. And if it’s not quite the cult classic that it aspires to be, My Name Is Bruce offers the best evidence to date that Campbell and Ash’s personalities are basically interchangeable.
9) Tucker and Dale vs. Evil
A very funny twist on the genre, in which two good ol’ boys who just happen to enjoy being in the wilderness (in their very Evil Dead-ish dilapidated cabin) get mistaken for a pair of hillbilly maniacs by the college kids who’re camping nearby. There’s nothing supernatural in Tucker and Dale vs Evil, and it makes fun of movies like Wrong Turn more than anything else—but it’s so cleverly done, and there are enough similarities there, that it would make an excellent backwoods double-feature with Raimi’s classic.
It’s no secret that supermassive black holes are heartless beasts: These objects of immense gravity that let nothing, not even light escape, have fascinated astronomers since the early 20th century. While it’s believed that so-called supermassive black holes lurk at the center of most galaxies, including our own, there’s still much we don’t know about how they formed, or why, except to remind us of our own mortality.
But new research from an international team of scientists might have some answers to at least one of the critical questions—namely, how supermassive black holes, which range in size from millions to billions of solar masses, apparently formed very quickly in the early universe. Using computer simulations, the researchers found that these giants can grow incredibly fast if they can suck the life (read: radiation) out of a nearby galaxy, disabling their host galaxy’s ability to create stars. Essentially, a burst of radiation from a nearby galaxy breaks molecular hydrogen (H2) into atomic hydrogen, preventing new stars from forming. Instead, all of that unborn-starstuff collapses into a black hole, allowing it to quickly achieve its supermassive status. The team’s findings were published today in Nature Astronomy.
“The collapse of the galaxy and the formation of a million-solar-mass black hole takes 100,000 years—a blip in cosmic time,” study co-author Zoltan Haiman, an astronomy professor at Columbia University, said in a statement. “A few hundred-million years later, it has grown into a billion-solar-mass supermassive black hole. This is much faster than we expected.”
Though they were quite vulturous, early supermassive black holes had some standards, apparently. The researchers found that the neighboring galaxy supplying the radiation had to be certain size and distance away from the black hole’s host galaxy—though these cosmic energy sources could be smaller and closer galaxies than other studies estimated.
“The nearby galaxy can’t be too close, or too far away, and like the Goldilocks principle, too hot or too cold,” study co-author John Wise, an associate astrophysics professor at Georgia Tech, said. Having that perfectly sized galaxy is what can cause supermassive black holes to grow so rapidly—relatively speaking, of course.
By understanding how ancient black holes could have formed, we can get a better sense of what the universe was like long before our solar system existed. The team is already planning to follow up this research with a study on how the merging of millions of black holes and stars could have formed ancient giants.
“Understanding how supermassive black holes form tells us how galaxies, including our own, form and evolve, and ultimately, tells us more about the universe in which we live,” lead author John Regan, a postdoctoral researcher Dublin City University, said.
A brand new trailer for Peter Capaldi and Steven Moffat’s last season of Doctor Who has dropped and it has so much in it. Although the cast does helpfully name most of the things you’re seeing.
A lot of this season, which begins April 15, seems to be in a theme of “twisty looks.” We’ve got a closer look at the old-school, cloth-faced Cybermen which are so much freakier than the metal ones. There’s Missy (Michelle Gomez) who is looking uncharacteristically unkempt. Female ice warriors, a human-looking girl who says “exterminate,” Nardole (Matt Lucas) with a Baker-era sonic screwdriver, and I’m sure other references that flew by too fast for me to catch.
After 50 hours of Horizon Zero Dawn, battles like this are a walk in the park. All images: PlayStation
Historically, once I beat a video game, I rarely keep playing it. What’s the point? The story is done and I don’t get satisfaction from 100 percent completion. Well, with Horizon Zero Dawn, not only have I kept playing it, I don’t want it to end. Ever. Guerrilla Games has created a world and experience that has reinvigorated my love of video games.
As a teenager, I was a huge gamer. Literally, I bought a game a week, and realized at one point that I had spent about $8,000 on video games during my high school days. It was bad. In the decades since, I’ve cut down, and now it’s just a pleasant hobby.
Almost 50 hours of gameplay and about 80 percent completion later, Horizon Zero Dawn may have ruined me. These days, I go to bed thinking about what missions I have coming up. I think about how I could have done missions differently. I try to think about how I can upgrade my weapons, sell my resources, and buy new items. During the work day, I watch the clock for that precious moment when I can sign off and turn on my PlayStation. Then I play as long as I can, dinner, work, or wife be damned.
There are a lot of reasons the game that has seeped so deeply into my life, the first being it’s a mashup of basically everything I love, both from genre and pop culture as well in a video game. Genre-wise, it’s a sprawling adventure, about a young hero with a mysterious past who has to fight her way to the truth. To do that she has to conquer a world that mixes sword-and-sandal weapons with high science fiction. It’s like Robin Hood meets Transformers wrapped around Lost and The Bible.
When you blend scifi with historical influences, you get a unique cross section of genre. There’s something undeniably satisfying and original about using a bow and arrow to shoot a robot dinosaur in slow-motion. You draw back the arrow, slow down the action, and strategically send a shot in exactly the right place. It’s a similar feeling sneaking up on the beautiful machines, overriding them, and making them your allies.
But, let’s be honest, minus the robot dinosaur thing, this isn’t that unique. What makes Horizon Zero Dawn unique is the Focus. The Focus is a small device your character, Aloy, finds early in the game that changes everything. It’s a relic of a forgotten world. A world that birthed the machines and has since been buried under the ground. Using the Focus, Aloy can instantly access all kinds of information about the world around her. It’s kind of like her very own J.A.R.V.I.S.
From a gameplay perspective, this gives Aloy an instant advantage over every other character in the game. You basically have a third eye that sees things no one else can see, and that’s very helpful in dissecting machine weaknesses or tracking bad guys.
But on a larger level, the Focus represents the game’s fundamental and universal theme: religion vs. science. Without giving too much away, the mostly primitive characters in the game worship and fear the technology around them. Technology that remains from a world long gone. Aloy then becomes a kind of bridge between that. A woman raised in a world to believe one thing, who is now in possession of the first shreds of evidence leading to the truth of that world. Basically, Aloy has found a key to the mysteries of God and you, the player, uncover these answers along with her.
That’s a pretty profound story to get wrapped up in amid all the action and beautiful graphics. So as you continue to move along and explore, using the Focus, more information is revealed about the link between the machines, the world of the past, and the world you are walking around in.
Adding to that level of interest and realism is a wonderfully diverse cast of characters. Men, women, black, white, good, evil, young, old, it just makes the world feel that much more real. You can meet any kind of person at any time and they all have a profound effect on the story. Each has a different set of beliefs and allegiances too, and Aloy can choose to side with them, go against them, or whatever you feel like doing.
One downside to all of this is the way the game chooses to give you much of this information. As you keep playing, there are several huge narrative dumps throughout the game. Every 10 hours or so there’s a segment of the game where a ton of story is dropped on you at once, and you definitely would prefer to have it spread out a bit. Thankfully, you are so starved for more information linking Aloy, the Focus, machines, and more, you gladly soak it up. Plus, if you really want to dive into it, there’s a bunch of extraneous detail provided in text files.
Then, once you beat the game, solve the mysteries, figure it all out, you can go back and continue to play. Of course, this isn’t new either. But it goes to show that as good as the mysteries are, all the gameplay stuff is just top notch too. The huge amount of areas to explore, weapons to gain, ease of travel, all that stuff. It’s all just great to explore and that’s where I am now: leveling up, doing side missions, and engaging enemies I avoided early on. You finally become one with the world.
I could go on and on geeking out about everything I love in Horizon Zero Dawn. It’s just that good of a game. And granted, I haven’t played as many games in the last several years like many of my colleagues. But I have digested a lot of popular culture. Story and content from television, movies, and yes—video games. I feel like I’m a good judge of the quality of something on that simple level and, on that level, Horizon Zero Dawn just delivers. It simply seeps into your everyday life and continually rewards you in ways both obvious and subtle. Whether or not I’ll ever get to 100 percent completion and retire the game I don’t know. But more than any other game I’ve ever played, I want to try. Not because it’ll give me some grand reward. Because I don’t think I can stop.
The problem with this is that most games aren’t Horizon Zero Dawn. Even many of the great games don’t take over your life. In the past few months I played Firewatch, Uncharted 4, Last Guardian, No Man’s Sky, and Resident Evil 7. Each is a game I enjoyed, but was fine to be done with. I’m not done with Horizon Zero Dawn. Sure I’ll put it aside to play something else, but I’m coming back. Seeing how far I can push Aloy and fascinating world. And that kind of obsession is what I was missing in video games. I’m back and it’s all because of Horizon Zero Dawn.
In many ways, aspects of Atomic Blonde will be really familiar to fans of high-octane action movies. It invests a lot in ambitious set pieces and fight choreography, and features many predictable character archetypes. But it manages to tie together its Cold War setting and character arcs into a larger theme very, very well.
Adapted from Antony Johnston and Sam Hart’s Oni Press comic The Coldest City and directed by David Leitch—who’s signed on for Deadpool 2—Atomic Blonde screened last night in Austin at SXSW. It unfolds in flashback, as Lorraine Broughton (Charlize Theron), an elite operative in Britain’s MI6 intelligence division debriefs her superiors about a 1989 mission to extract sensitive information from Berlin. From the first, Broughton comes across as icily aloof, even as it’s shown that she had a romantic past with a murdered colleague. She seems to only care about completing her mission. That goal gets complicated when she has to partner with David Percival (James McAvoy), an undercover spy who’s embraced the underground, anything-goes chaos roiling through East and West Berlin a little too heartily.
The end of the Cold War serves as the backdrop for the movie, which sprinkles real-world news reports as reminders of the political stakes that hang in the balance for the American, British, and Russian governments. Glimpses of punk, hip-hop, and skate culture add texture to the proceedings and the repressive response to them makes Berlin feel like a dangerous place that’s ready to explode at any moment. It’s presented as a time when the cultural footing is unclear and traditional allegiances can’t be trusted. Late ’80s pop is used to great effect and one of the movie’s best sequences is set to George Michael’s “Father Figure.”
Director David Leitch worked on John Wick before Atomic Blonde and, in terms of its approach to action and aesthetic, this new film operates on the opposite end of the spectrum. The fight staging doesn’t come across as slick, smooth, or elegantly choreographed. Instead, face-offs happen with brutal intimacy that harkens back to old-school Hong Kong action dramas. Theron throws herself into Atomic Blonde’s fight scenes with stunning ferocity, letting herself get flung, smashed, and bludgeoned in ways that look all too real. She gives better than what she gets, though, as seen in a six-minute long brawl in an East Berlin apartment that will likely go down as a classic movie fight. As Percival, McCoy doesn’t get as much of a spotlight in the action department but makes up for it by making his character luridly indulgent and seductive. John Goodman does great supporting work as a CIA honcho that Broughton barely tolerates, filling the role with huffy bureaucrat tics that make him a perfect foil.
What’s stuck with me after seeing Atomic Blonde is the portrait it paints of the emotional decay that happens to espionage agents. It’s not virgin territory for the super-spy genre but Theron and McAvoy make the core conceit come to life in wary, electric performances. Everyone’s paranoid and twitchy with nervous energy and there’s a sour astringency that moves through the entire film. All the film’s major characters wind up changed by the shifting political sands of this Cold War inflection point, and Atomic Blonde finds surprising depth by delving into the existential considerations of spycraft, questioning exactly how and when a good spy who does terrible things can stop believing that they’re doing good.
Atomic Blonde will have a wide release this summer.
Finn Jones, star of Marvel and Netflix’s Iron Fist, keeps blaming outside factors for the poor reviews of his show. He’s already trotted out the old and rotted “this is for the fans not critics” argument, but now he’s added an argument as baffling as it is new: Danny Rand is too much like Trump and that is why people don’t like him. We are dead serious.
Speaking to the RadioTimes, Jones gave this explanation for the negative perception regarding his TV series:
“I think the world has changed a lot since we were filming that television show,” he said. “I’m playing a white American billionaire superhero, at a time when the white American billionaire archetype is public enemy number one, especially in the US.”
On a purely objective level, this is bullshit. No one’s bitching about Tony Stark or Bruce Wayne, who are far more representative of the uber-rich, beyond-the-law stereotype than Danny Rand is. And Arrow launched a TV universe on the back of a rich, white, billionaire character. Clearly, Iron Fist’s problems lie elsewhere.
Jones continued:
“We filmed the show way before Trump’s election, and I think it’s very interesting to see how that perception, now that Trump’s in power, how it makes it very difficult to root for someone coming from white privilege, when that archetype is public enemy number one.”
Given that the vast majority of American TV and movie entertainment features white leads and yet has not faced an inkling of the backlash or criticism that Iron Fist has received, it’s safe to say that this is nonsense. Are more people critiquing the idea of rich, white men as protagonists? Absolutely, especially in stories like Iron Fist which also incorporate racist tropes in their DNA. But that not “public enemy number one” so much as it is people expressing disappointment that promoting diversity in entertainment is still a battle that needs to be fought every day. (And to say that a clichéd white character archetype is “public enemy number one” is incredibly offensive to people who have actually been targets of things more serious than criticism.)
Regardless of whatever you think of Donald Trump, you cannot lay Iron Fist’s problems at his feet. Criticisms over the show’s casting and the character existed long before Trump was elected; criticisms about the show’s lackluster fight scenes and dull, interminable storytelling have nothing to do with anything other than the show’s lack of quality.
Finn Jones is being so defensive right now, he’ll blame his show’s problems on anything or anybody, other than the people who actually committed them. If there’s any connection at all between Iron Fist and Trump, it’s that.
We’ve reached out to Netflix for comment and will update if we hear back.
There’s no dialogue in Zeek Earl and Chris Caldwell’s In the Pines—just a rambling voice mail message that plays as the unnamed protagonist hikes a forested mountain trail to the top, sets up listening equipment like a lo-fi version of Jodie Foster in Contact, and waits for the UFO she’s sure will arrive.
In the Pines is so short that you don’t get to know much about this troubled young woman—but you can tell by the reaction of the voice-mail recipient, her mother, that her behavior is both deeply worrisome and irritatingly familiar. Whether or not the film is actually about mental illness or aliens is made mostly clear by the end. Mostly.
Some very fun cameos are confirmed for the Power Rangers movie. Get new details on a creepy scene with David the android in Alien: Covenant. Plus, tons of new pictures from The Walking Dead, and new footage from DuckTales, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and the impending return of iZombie. To me, my Spoilers!
Blade Runner 2049
Edward James Olmos, speaking to the Trendtalk show, has confirmed that he’ll reprise his role as Gaff from the original movie:
I signed a seven page non-disclosure contract. I did, my manager did, my agent did, everybody did. I couldn’t talk about it. I couldn’t talk about it to anybody about it. Guess what? This is the first time that I’m telling the whole world, that yes, I am going to be Gaff in Blade Runner 2049.
He went on to describe his moment in the film as relatively short, but poignant:
Well, it’s not about Gaff, but it’s about someone who is going to try to find out certain things about us back then. My role is like it was in the original – that time I only had four scenes, in this I only have one. But again, it’s a poignant little scene.
Lionsgate has seemingly revealed, via its own publicity site for the film, two cameos in the film: Jason David Frank and Amy Jo Johnson, who played Tommy Oliver and Kimberly Hart—the Green and Pink Rangers—in the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. A bit of a surprise, considering the last we’d heard was not to expect any original cast cameos at all. [Comicbook.com]
Teen Titans: The Judas Contract
DC Entertainment and Warner Bros. have released a new image from their long-awaited animated adaptation of The Judas Contract. The film will premiere March 31 at WonderCon Anaheim before hitting digital streaming services on April 4, and Blu-ray/DVD on April 18.
Aquaman
James Wan is currently scouting for some very gorgeous locations for the movie, that presumably we’ll actually see minimal amounts of if Arthur Curry spends most of his time underwater.
Smurfs: The Lost Village
A new trailer for the smurftacular sequel has been released, as have a new trio of clips.
Alien: Covenant
Coming Soon reports some new footage screened at SXSW showed a meeting between Billy Crudup’s Captain Oram and David (Michael Fassbender’s android in Prometheus, not to be confused with Walter, Michael Fassbender’s android in Covenant) inside a cave. David has been performing genetic experiments with the black goo canisters from Prometheus, studying how they’re able to create new biospheres that cause Xenomorphs to evolve into unique species.
“Idle hands are the devil’s playground,” David intones, before sharing his latest experiments in genetics and crossbreeding with Captain Oram. He leads him to a room full of facehugger pods, heavily implying David is their creator. At the end of the clip, David says he needs one last ingredient to complete his experiment: “their mothers.”
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
The latest Gardens of the Galaxy TV spot features “Come a Little Bit Closer” by Jay & the Americans.
Mission Control
Grimm’s David Giuntoli and Poppy Montgomery will star in a new series for NBC depicting the daily lives of NASA astronauts. Andy Weir (The Martian) and executive producer Simon Kinberg will be writing and directing the pilot, respectively. [TV Guide]
Amazing Stories
Bryan Fuller’s reboot of the anthology series Amazing Stories has tapped Patton Oswalt, Kumail Nanjiani, Emily Gordon and Jane Goldman for future episodes. [Crave Online]
12 Monkeys
Syfy may have quietly renewed 12 Monkeys for a fourth season, according to Spoiler TV:
A production notice obtained from our source lists that the production office for season 4 opens March 20th with a production date yet to be determined. We will update when it becomes official.
Time After Time
Here’s a synopsis for episode 10, “Caught Up in Circles.”
In the episode Caught up in Circles, H.G., Vanessa and Jane decide to investigate “Project Utopia” while Vanessa doesn’t realize some of the people in her life are not who they appear to be.
Even more set pictures give us a better look at Crystal’s appearance in the show, and confirms she does indeed keep her weird black headbands as part of her look.
The Walking Dead
AMC has released a ton of photos from episode 14, “The Other Side.” See the rest here.
DuckTales
A new Donald-centric trailer has surfaced.
iZombie
Finally, The CW has released an exciting trailer for the third season premiere of iZombie.
Additional reporting by Gordon Jackson. Banner art by Jim Cooke.
Well, this is both charming and baffling: As a tribute to David Bowie, the U.K.’s Royal Mail launched 52 sets of their commemorative David Bowie stamps into the sky.
The stunt is, of course, inspired by Bowie’s 1976 acclaimed scifi movie The Man Who Fell to Earth. The stamps were attached to balloons yesterday—even better, they attached cameras to the stamps (you know, just like Bowie’s character in that movie). When the balloons burst, the stamps began hurtling towards the ground.
The Royal Mail’s contest website plays the video taken by the stamp cameras. Watching too long may trigger your motion sickness, by the way.
If you correctly guess where one of the sets landed, you’re entered into a drawing where the prize is one of the stratospheric sets. The contest ends March 26, although if you do guess where one of the stamps has landed, one might think you’d have a better chance of acquiring one by driving out there and finding it rather than relying on the drawing.
At any rate, you can read the typically intense rules here. Meanwhile, I’ll be doing some back of the envelope calculations about how fast stamps attached to cameras can go in free fall.
Using a powerful supercomputer, meteorologists have simulated the “El Reno” tornado—a category 5 storm that swept through Oklahoma on May 24, 2011.
A research team led by Leigh Orf from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS) has used a high-efficiency supercomputer to visualize the inner workings of tornados and the powerful supercells that produce them. As part of the project, the researchers recreated a tornado-producing supercell that devastated the Great Plains six years ago. Their new models are providing fresh insights into these monstrous storms and how they form.
During a four-day stretch in late May 2011, several tornadoes touched down over the Oklahoma landscape. One of these storms, dubbed “El Reno,” registered as an EF-5—the strongest category on the Enhanced Fujita scale. This beast of a tornado touched down near Hinton, Oklahoma, where it proceeded to blaze a trail of destruction for nearly two hours. By the time it was over, the storm caused extensive damage along a 63-mile (101 km) long path, killing nine people and injuring 161 others.
To simulate the incredibly complex set of meteorological factors required to produce this particular tornado, Orf’s team was given access to the Blue Waters Supercomputer, located at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Orf’s team used real-world observational data to recreate the conditions at the time of the storm, including a vertical profile of temperature, air pressure, wind speed, and moisture. Together, these ingredients contribute to “tornadogenesis”—the conditions required for a supercell to spawn a tornado.
Unlike a conventional computer program, where code is written to churn out predictable results, the researchers sought to create a “true” representation by feeding archived weather data into software that simulates weather. This provided a degree of variability that’s reflective of how weather works in nature; no two storms are exactly alike. In total, it took the machine more than three days to compile the tornado—a task that would have taken decades for a conventional desktop computer.
Once the main tunnel forms, several “mini” tornadoes form alongside it. They eventually merge, making the tornado even stronger. (Credit: UW-Madison)
Looking at the simulation, the researchers observed numerous “mini tornadoes” that formed at the onset of the main tornado. As the main funnel cloud took shape, the smaller tornadoes began to merge, adding strength to the superstructure and boosting wind speeds.
The simulation revealed several structures that make up a fully-formed tornado, including the streamwise vorticity current (SVC), thought to be a main driver of the tornadic activity (seen in yellow). (Image: University of UW-Madison)
Eventually, a new structure known as the streamwise vorticity current (SVC) formed within the tornado. “The SVC is made up of rain-cooled air that is sucked into the updraft that drives the whole system,” said Orf in a statement. “It’s believed that this is a crucial part in maintaining the unusually strong storm, but interestingly, the SVC never makes contact with the tornado. Rather, it flows up and around it.”
From here, Orf would like to share his team’s data with scientists and meteorologists across the United States. “We’ve completed the EF-5 simulation, but we don’t plan to stop there,” says Orf. “We are going to keep refining the model and continue to analyze the results to better understand these dangerous and powerful systems.”
In the original Beauty and the Beast, the reason everyone loves Gaston is basically because he’s “hot.” (I put that in quotes because a real-life person with those proportions would be TERRIFYING.) But Luke Evans says there’s more to the good-looking villain in the new live-action adaptation than what was on screen in 1991.
Evans spoke toEWabout his character, and the background that actually justified Gaston’s “local hero” status:
The fact of the story is that Gaston is a war hero and an army captain, and the only reason he’s got this celebrity status in Villeneuve is because when he was about 16, he protected the town from a pack of Portuguese marauders in 1740.
He’s basically been a local legend since he was 16. Yeah, that might explain some stuff.
Evans went on to say that his first interpretation of Gaston was going to be much darker than the version the movie actually ended up using, as the character’s PTSD would form the basis of a lot of his actions. After Evans’ audition, the director called back and said they were going to try it again, but closer to the original, less dark Gaston. However, the actor believes PTSD still shapes the character a bit:
He probably does suffer from PTSD, which he manages to keep under wraps because he has people like the villagers and LeFou and the girls who puff him up and make him feel sexy and wanted. But below that is a broken human being. He’s jaded, and the second he realizes that he’s not going to get what he wants, this military creature comes out of him.
There’s also something that explains LeFou’s (Josh Gad) devotion to the character in a way that is so much better than that he’s just got a crush. According to Evans, LeFou also went to war with Gaston and was with him for all his heroic moments, so he has a reason to insist on Gaston’s perfection.
That’s actual depth! Gaston has always felt harder to make interesting than other Disney villains because he was such a buffoon, and it really didn’t make sense that everyone in the village just worshiped him when he was transparently a self-absorbed dick all the time. At least now we know why he got away with it and why he swings from a mere jerk to leading a mob so easily.
You’ll also find several popular routers (including the Archer C9), ethernet switches, range extenders, powerline kits, and more, all marked down to great low prices. A few more of our favorites are below, but head over to Amazon to see all of the discounts. Just remember that like all Gold Box deals, these prices are only available today, or until sold out.
Amazon’s Fire Tablet doesn’t exactly feature bleeding edge technology, but hey, it’s a perfectly good portable TV screen and web browser for like $50. Today, you can get the upgraded 16GB version (which retails for $70), a case, and a screen protector all for $60 with promo code FIREBUNDLE. Yes, that’s $10 less than you’d normally spend on the tablet by itself.
This tiny microSD card reader works with both USB-A and USB-C, meaning you won’t have to worry about it becoming obsolete the next time you buy a computer. Hell, it’ll even work with a lot of newer Android phones.
Half of your electronics charge over USB these days, so it makes sense to buy power strips that include both AC outlets and USB ports. For $16 today, you can take your pick between a nightstand-friendly plug-in model, or a more traditional power strip with more outlets, and a 5' power cord.
There’s not a whole lot to say here: This phone stand has nearly 4,000 reviews, looks great, and is only $6 today with code 6VGBXP2D. Why wouldn’t you put one on your desk?
Update: Now up to $113, which is still a solid price.
Until fairly recently, external hard drives over 2TB required an extra power cord, but not so with this ultra-portable 4TB WD My Passport, now marked down to an all-time low $110.
That makes it easy to toss in a bag to take anywhere, and it would also be great for storing all of your PS4 and Xbox One games.
Your favorite USB car charger just happens to be the smallest one you can buy, and you can grab it on Amazon for $7 today with code AUKEYCAR. We’ve seen it go as low as $6 on a few occasions, but this is the best deal we’ve seen in a long time, if it’s been on your wish list.
If you spend any significant amount of time on a bike, this $14 gadget from KMASHI is an LED headlight, Bluetooth speaker, and USB battery pack all rolled into one. Use code WPKK2CAY to get the discount, but just don’t be obnoxious with the speaker, please.
Mpow basically invented the ~$20 Bluetooth earbud market, but it turns out they also make wireless on-ears, and you can try out a pair for just $21 today. Even at that low price, they’re foldable, include a microphone for calls, and even work as wired headphones if your battery dies.
The SoundBuds Slim are, as you might have gleaned from the name, far smaller than the originals. Heck, they look like a small set of wired earbuds; you might never guess there were batteries and Bluetooth radios in there. Despite the size, these buds are still rated for seven hours of battery life, and recharge fully in just 90 minutes.
There was a $6 launch day discount on these a few weeks ago that dropped them to $24, but if you missed out on that sale, they’re slashed to $22 today, no code required.
These days, you probably charge as many things over USB as you do over standard AC outlets, so it only makes sense to add some semi-permanent USB ports to your home.
TP-Link’s Smart Plug is one of the cheapest and easiest ways to dip your toes into home automation, and both the Plug and its smart light switch sibling are on sale for the best prices we’ve seen in months. Both can be scheduled and toggled from anywhere via a free smartphone app, and if you have an Amazon Echo, you can even control them with your voice.
This 58-piece screwdriver set is marketed as an electronic repair kit, but with a snake attachment and tons of bits (including pentalobes for Apple products), it could come in handy for all sorts of repairs in hard-to-reach places.
You might not need to use it often, but a car inverter is one of those “just in case” things that you should always keep in your trunk or glove box. At $18 with code A893NO8Y, why not?
It’s a scientific fact that every outdoor space looks better with copper string lights, and $10 is a fantastic price for a 33' strand, especially one with a remote that can power them on and off, and even make them dim, pulse, and strobe on demand.
If you have any DIY or home improvement projects on the horizon, this discounted Lowe’s gift card is a no-brainer. I suggest spending the $10 you saved on beer to drink while you operate power tools.
Let’s get this out of the way early: Yes, BioBidet is a terrible brand name for a kitchen faucet company.
Okay, moving on. Their FLOW faucet has pretty much every feature you’d want in a kitchen faucet: A retractable hose, an attractive design, and a hands-free motion sensor that runs off AA batteries, so you don’t have to have a power outlet available under your sink.
Today only, you can get it in brushed nickel or chrome for $170, an all-time low. Just be sure to get yours before the deal gets rinsed away.
Anker, producer of a lot of your favorite charging gear, has its own line of flashlights now, and all three are on sale today for the best prices we’ve ever seen.
The cheapest model is IP65 dust and water resistant, but actually doesn’t include a rechargeable battery. However, you can run it on three AAAs or a single rechargeable 18650 battery, which are cheap and easy to find.
The next step up is far brighter (900 lumens vs. 400), and includes a rechargeable battery and a microUSB port, while the most expensive model is brighter still at 1300 lumens, and is IP67 rated, meaning you could even use it underwater. Whichever model you choose, just be sure to note the promo codes below.
Here’s something to chew on: Amazon’s taking an extra 30% off Mentos gum for a limited time. Just pick your favorite flavor, and start stretching out your jaw.
All this 4.5 star-rated luggage scale has to do is save you from an overweight baggage fee once, and it will have paid for itself several times over.
You might have a bathroom scale at home that works just fine when you’re leaving town, but this one is small enough to take with you, so you can make sure you won’t get dinged for all of those heavy souvenirs on your return trip.
Just like the Philips light, Vansky’s Sunrise Alarm Clock fades in a sunrise-simulating light for 30 minutes prior to your designated wake-up time, and then finishes the job with your choice of six natural alarms, or an FM radio station. That means by the time your alarm goes off, your body will already have begun the process of waking up, eliminating that awful feeling of being jolted out of a deep REM cycle. You can even choose from seven different light colors, a feature that doesn’t exist on any of Philips’ models.
I’ve had a Philips Wake-Up light for years, and absolutely love it, but $29 is an insanely great price for a feature-packed alternative.
The well-reviewed Hoover Sprint bagless upright vacuum is only $43 today, and includes more features than you might expect, including an accessory hose, adjustable brush height, and a true HEPA filter, not to mention the fact that it’s an Amazon top seller. It’s not the smallest or most maneuverable vacuum around, but it’s probably the best sub-$50 vacuum you can buy.
If reliability is something you crave in a pair of shoes (if it isn’t, you may need to reconsider), I bet you have Cole Haan in your closet. And if you’re looking for a new pair but don’t want to spend the normal asking price, Cole Haan is taking an extra 40% off all their sale styles with the code EXTRA40. That includes waterproof boots, outerwear, bags, and accessories.
Buy two UT graphic tees, get third free for men and women
Uniqlo may be known best for excelling at temperature-controlled garments and bringing minimalism to the masses, but their collaborations on graphic tees are also pretty awesome. Right now, pick up two UT graphic tees and get a third free, in both men’s and women’s styles. This includes their Disney and Pixar collections, as well as their new SPRZ NY releases.
Thankfully, it seems like after this week (and the impending Nor’easter), spring weather will be here to stay. That means if you’ve been using the crappy weather as an excuse not to go for a run, you’re SOL. Amazon is right there with you, marking down gear from Mission Apparel so you can get outside, even if it’s just for a nice, brisk walk to the deli for a sandwich.
L.L.Bean is ready for you to get outside. Right now, use the coed TRAIL, and take 20% off all hiking clothes, footwear, and gear. Get ready to spend your days winding through trees and climbing mountains. They even has some great rainwear to help stave off the impending spring showers.
I have painful, yet fond memories of my college’s Athletic Trainer using one of these on my thigh after I suffered a strained quad. They are hell while using it, but heaven afterwards. And for $10 when you use the code KINJA604, this muscle roller can help further your love-hate relationship with working out.
Not only did Old Navy just drop a bunch of new spring styles, everything including clearance is 40% off. Just start adding things to your cart and watch the numbers drop, no code needed. It’s kind of impressive how many things you’ll end up wanting.
Your coworkers and family members will cower in fear during your next Nerf gun fight when you pick up the Rival Atlas XVI-1200 Blaster for an all-time low $25. Rather than darts, this blaster shoots two “high impact” yellow balls at once at up to 80 feet per second. Good luck dodging that.
Mass Effect Andromeda’s Pathfinder edition game guide might be the most impressive limited edition guide I’ve ever seen. Here’s what you get:
Mass Effect™: Andromeda Initiative Backpack: A two-pocket Andromeda Initiative backpack that holds a 15-inch laptop.
Alternate Premium Hardcover Guide: An exclusive hardcover version of the complete guide. A must-have for every Mass Effect fan! Only available in the Pathfinder Edition.
DLC Code Inside: Get a head start on Day 1 co-op play with the MultiPlayer Booster Pack, which includes weapons and equipment to kick-start your progress (entitled instantly, limit one per match).
Welcome Letter: An introduction letter, written by the mission’s founder, Jien Garson, welcomes you to the Andromeda Initiative.
Galaxy Chart: A full-color 11”x17” map of the Andromeda Galaxy.
Field Journal: A 32-page journal with field notes and sketches about the Initiative with space for your own note-taking needs while on your adventure.
Branded Envelope: The Galaxy Chart and Welcome Letter come packaged in an Andromeda Initiative branded envelope.
Mobile-Friendly eGuide: Unlock the enhanced eGuide for strategy on the go, all optimized for a second-screen experience.
This was listed for over $120 at launch, and was in the $90s for the last several days, so $78 represents a substantial price drop. Plus, if you preorder now and the price goes any lower, you’ll automatically get the best price Amazon listed once it ships.
Apropos of nothing, Prime members can still preorder the game for 20% off. Just note that you won’t see the discount until checkout.
It may look like Carrie Fisher but, under the digital effects, that’s Ingvild Deila. Image: Lucasfilm
Ingvild Deila had one of the most important roles in Rogue One, but you’ve probably never heard of her. The Norwegian actress was the person on set whose face was turned into the young Carrie Fisher’s for the film’s climactic scene. While most Star Wars actors aren’t allowed to say much about the films, Deila was sworn to total silence—she couldn’t even say she’d been hired—but now she’s finally speaking out about the role.
The UK-based actress just gave her first interview to journalist Jamie Stangroom. Here it is in its entirety but, we’ll discuss some highlights below.
So if you didn’t watch the interview, Deila auditioned for the part without knowing what it was. She just was asked to speak for three minutes about something and be a specific size. It wasn’t until after she found out she got the part that she realized something was odd about it.
“I realized what was actually happening because I was sent two scenes from A New Hope, when Leia meets Vader for the first time, and the hologram monologue,” she said. “I was like ‘Oh my god is this happening?’ Those buns are big. I had the hairy buns. And I had plenty of dots all over my face, like an exotic fish. I looked very strange”
She studied the scenes for a weekend, filmed it, and then waited 18 months for the film to be released before revealing it was her under the work of ILM. In the meantime, people were talking about the film, getting excited for the film, but she was the biggest surprise in the film. She couldn’t say anything.
Stangroom asked Deila about the ethics of digitally recreating a famous actor, which was a big debate when the film was released, and she had a pretty even headed disposition about it.
“I was just thinking ‘What if it was me? How would I feel?’ If they had to pay my living relatives or something, or forced to share the money, then yeah... I mean I’m dead, I don’t care. We just need to establish a system where we do it right by their relatives or what they agreed on.”
Of course, when Deila took the role, Carrie Fisher wasn’t dead. Deila was excited to hear that Fisher liked the performance but also admits, if Fisher had passed away earlier, she may have had reservations.
“It would have been more difficult to say yes,” Deila said. “Also it depends whether she’d been informed. If she was against it then I don’t know if I would have said yes. But if she was fine with it, maybe yeah. It’s hard to know. It would have been way more complicated.”
There’s even more in the interview, including her thoughts on a potential Leia spinoff movie. You can see Deila when Rogue One hits digital March 24 and Blu-ray April 4.
Starting today, Twitch is streaming all 23 completed seasons of Power Rangers as one of the most absurd marathon binge-watches in recent memory. If you, perhaps, don’t have the time to watch 17 days worth of television, then we’re here to help with a few suggestions for the episodes you absolutely need to watch (or rewatch).
Since Twitch’s stream includes all 831—eight hundred and thirty one!—episodes of the show starting at 11:00 am PT, from Mighty Morphin’ to Dino Super Charge, it’s actually really tough to limit ourselves to a list of the top 20 Power Rangers episodes. Instead, here are the 23 best stories of Power Rangers’ insane run; that still totals 47 episodes you should watch, listed by season. This is not a definitive representation, but rather a sample of what the Power Rangers melange has to offer.
Hey, it’s still a lot more reasonable than 831, right?
Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers
Green With Evil
A definitive moment in Power Rangers history, as the team faces a sinister new minion of Rita Repulsa: Tommy Oliver, the Green Ranger! Tommy’s multi-episode introduction created a character fans would be fascinated with for decades to come, and cemented the series as a legend for many viewers. (Season 1, episodes 17-21)
Doomsday
This was originally meant to be the final story of MMPR if it hadn’t become an overnight sensation—and it really feels like it, with massively increased stakes as the Rangers find their Zords nearly destroyed and the population of Angel Grove captured by Rita. (Season 1, episodes 39-40)
Power Rangers Zeo
A Zeo Beginning
Another game-changing moment in the franchise’s early history, as we bid farewell to the MMPR suits and say hello to the Zeo costumes. Plus, it resolves the cliffhanger of the Rangers’ home base, the Command Center, being blown the hell up at the end of the 10-part miniseries Mighty Morphin’Alien Rangers. (Episodes 1-2)
Revelations of Gold/A Golden Homecoming
This two-parter is the conclusion of Zeo’s ongoing mystery about the real identity of the mysterious Gold Ranger (who was heavily hyped, because he’s the “sixth ranger” equivalent á la Tommy)—as well as the return of some familiar faces in the form of Rita, Zedd, and Austin St. John as MMPR’s first Red Ranger, Jason, who would take on the Gold Ranger powers for a while. (Episodes 33-34)
Power Rangers Turbo
Trouble by the Slice
The joy of Power Rangers is that it is cheesy as hell. Turbo in particular is quite goofy at times, but this episode is perhaps the peak of its silliness, in which main villain Divatox loses her mind, starts working at a pizza parlor, and then the Rangers are almost baked into a giant pizza by the monster of the week while the villains try to rescue Divatox. Incredible stuff. (Episode 22)
Power Rangers in Space
From Out of Nowhere
Power Rangers has always had a very sci-fi bent to it, but in In Space’s opening, it becomes very literal—building out of Turbo’s finale, which saw the team routed from Earth and forced to flee into space after the destruction of Zordon’s Power Chamber. (Episodes 1-2)
Countdown to Destruction
An absolute epic of a finale, this isn’t just the end of In Space, but pretty much the end of the first era of Power Rangers full stop, the culmination of an ongoing story that started with Mighty Morphin’. It’s the last appearance of Zordon, and of Rita and Zedd, and it marks what is pretty much the end of Power Rangers doing its own massive thing and going on to adapting each Super Sentai show every year. (Episodes 42-43)
Power Rangers Lost Galaxy
The Rescue Mission
Want an episode of Power Rangers that is basically nothing like the rest of Power Rangers? This episode is insane. It’s basically a kids show’s weirdly effective ripoff of Alien, features no in-suit Ranger action at all, and one of the rare moments the series tries to justify being space-themed while adapting a Sentai show that was distinctly not space-themed. (Episode 18)
Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue
The Titanium Ranger Saga
One of the most interesting things about Power Rangers is the moment it diverges entirely from its Japanese source material and does something unique: in Lightspeed Rescue’s case, it added its own sixth Ranger, the Titanium Ranger, to a series that never had an additional member in Japan. Also, he’s introduced with a snake tattoo that’s slowly killing him? Man, this show. (Episodes 11-16)
Power Rangers Time Force
The Quantum Quest/Clash for Control
Power Rangers loves itself an anti-hero addition, and Time Force’s introduction of Eric as the Quantum Ranger is no exception, giving the show a new hero that is distinctly at odds with the Ranger team—this time, without being influenced by villainous mind control. (Episodes 13-15)
Power Rangers Wild Force
Forever Red
Wild Force is a bit of a bland series in general, but this all-out episode for the franchise’s 10th anniversary, bringing back the Red Rangers from all the prior series, is a spectacular event. It’s often considered one of, if not the best, episodes of the entire franchise. (Episode 34)
Power Rangers Ninja Storm
Thunder Strangers
Like I said: this show loves mysterious, antagonistic characters who eventually join the team. These two sets of stories set up the arrival of Blake and Hunter, a rival clan of Thunder Ninjas who think that the Wind Rangers’ master killed their parents—only for them to learn that it was secretly the villain they were working for. (Episodes 5-7)
Power Rangers Dino Thunder
Day of the Dino
Part pastiche of the dino themes of MMPR, and part Tommy Oliver fanservice (who returns as both the team mentor and, eventually, its Black Ranger), Dino Thunder’s opening story is downright hilarious. Also, Tommy roundhouses a dinosaur. Amazing. (Episodes 1-2)
Lost and Found in Translation
I shit you not, this is an episode of Power Rangers where the Power Rangers watch an episode of Power Rangers. Specifically, they watch an episode of Bakuryū Sentai Abaranger, the Sentai show Dino Thunder is based on, reimagined as a Japanese show adapting the Dino Thunder’s own adventures into a TV show. It’s a loving tribute and acknowledgment of the show’s roots. (Episode 19)
Power Rangers SPD
Beginnings
Power Rangers premieres always go all out in terms of budget and making a big splash, but SPD’s first episode in particular is great for a return to the show’s love of scifi. This time, the Rangers are members of an intergalactic police academy run by a talking dog... named Doggie Cruger. (Episodes 1-2)
Shadow
Aforementioned Police Commander-Dog Doggie Cruger transforms into the SPD Shadow Ranger for the first time. He doesn’t keep his Sentai equivalent’s extremely badass battle cry—“Cutting down hundreds of evil doers! Hell’s Guard Dog!”—but he gets the amazing moment of cutting down 100 enemy goons within moments of his fist morph. (Episodes 11-12)
Power Rangers Mystic Force
Mystic Fate
If you don’t like it when Power Rangers focuses on the Red Ranger’s character at the expense of everyone else, then you’ll hate Mystic Force. But the finale is kind of worth it, just because the magic Power Rangers (and their majestic capes) fight a giant evil space squid that’s basically Cthulhu as the big bad. (Episodes 31-32)
Power Rangers Operation Overdrive
Once a Ranger
Often seen as one of the worst seasons of the show—and very nearly one that got the franchise canceled under Disney’s ownership—Overdrive at least has a very cool 15th-anniversary episode, featuring a team of old Power Rangers as the “Retro Rangers” teaming up with the Overdrive team to fight Thrax, the son of Rita and Lord Zedd’s unholy matrimony. (Episodes 20-21)
Power Rangers Jungle Fury
Fear and the Phantoms
As I’ve said before, Power Rangers is often at its best when it brings its own thing to the table that isn’t from the Sentai show it is adapted from. In the case of Jungle Fury, it added not one, but three new suited Rangers to the series: the Ranger’s masters, who (of course) were first mind-controlled into fighting them before joining them in battle. (Episode 23)
Power Rangers RPM
The Road to Corinth
RPM was going to be the last season of the show, full stop, before Disney resold Power Rangers back to Saban. So the production team decided to go all out, adapting the kids-y racecar-themed Engine Sentai Go-Onger into... post-apocalyptic Power Rangers. Seriously, this episode opens with most of humanity being destroyed by the bad guys, and the remnants fleeing to a domed city called Corinth as their last hope. Heavy. (Episode 1)
Doctor K
An unprecedented run of episodes that focuses on each Ranger of the team culminates with this special standalone episode about the team’s mentor, Doctor K, covering her backstory before the events of the season. It stands out as one of the most well-written and heartbreaking character pieces in the show’s entire history. (Episode 11)
Power Rangers Super Megaforce
The Wrath/Legendary Battle
Power Rangers Samurai and Super Samurai, the series after Saban took control of the Power Rangers franchise again after eight years of Disney ownership, are dire. The follow-up to Megaforce is also very skippable, as it’s mainly a hamfisted way to connect footage from the sublime anniversary Super Sentai series Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger to the story and characters and team established in Megaforce, which was already a pretty dull and dry series itself. However, if you want to see a ton of Power Rangers fighting and teaming up from across the show’s history, the finale of the season is well worth a watch. (Episodes 19-20)
Power Rangers Dino Charge
Break Out
The introduction of the Dino Charge Gold Ranger isn’t that different in terms of previous “sixths” Power Rangers has added—when it comes to differences between Power Rangers and Super Sentai—but it’s a wonderfully silly twist on the source material nonetheless. In Kyoryuger, Gold is a feudal Samurai warrior who’s been held captive by the villains for centuries, and talks in archaic Japanese a lot. In Dino Charge, he’s Sir Ivan of Zandar, a 13th-century medieval knight who still runs into battle shouting “forsooth!” and “verily!” when he’s morphed. Never change, Power Rangers. (Episode 11)
Got recommendations of your own? Let us know what they are and why you love them in the comments!
Ryan Reynolds + Flamethrower = Life. All Images: Sony
For superhero film fans, few titles are more shudder-inducing than Spider-Man 3. Which is probably not the thing the marketing team at Sony was going for when creating a new trailer for killer alien film Life, but it oddly works. Let us explain.
So today a new, restricted trailer was released for Life, the upcoming scifi thriller starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson, and Ryan Reynolds. And it’s intense. You get a great view of the weird alien, plus there’s a disgusting finger-breaking scene and lots of screaming. It’s great. Check it out.
But nothing is scarier than what Redditor toomuchsoull figured out about this footage, which is also in a new TV spot.
At 1:26 in the above trailer, you see this reaction shot.
It’s played as a reaction shot of something falling to Earth. However, it seems that the footage wasn’t originally shot for Life. Look at this.
That above image is from Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3. And it’s almost exactly the same. Yes, it has a different color finish and slightly different angle. But several of the outfits and actors are undoubtedly the same.
Sony had no comment on the situation. However, this is what I guess happened. On the set of Spider-Man 3, someone shot a bunch of “Shocked People in NY” B-roll. This shot made it in. The rest of the footage was put into a stock footage folder somewhere and, when a reaction shot was needed for the Life trailer, they pulled out one that was different enough but still obviously the same. No one ever guessed someone on the internet would figure it out. But they did. And to answer the obvious question—which is “Why didn’t they just use footage from Life?”—well, when you see the movie you’ll understand. But there’s a logical explanation.
Anyway, that’s a weird aside to an otherwise edge-of-your-seat type of trailer. But nothing will ever be scarier than the sight of Spider-Man 3's Tobey Maguire confidently grooving down the street in his all-black ensemble.
Life is out March 24. We’ll have more on the film, including a review and interviews with the writers and director, soon.
Update: The original article didn’t have a comment from Sony. We’ve added in their response.
Written by Dave Croatto and illustrated by Tom Richmond, Goodnight Batcave gives us a fascinating look at how the Caped Crusader unwinds. Except that before he can retire for the night (or can he only sleep in the daytime?) Batman has to fight all of Gotham’s baddies who have somehow managed to find his secret lair.
Will Batman be able to battle his way to a good night’s sleep? Will this book actually help encourage your kids to go to bed at night? The answer to both of these questions is just $15 away via MAD’s online store.
A shot that never made it into Rogue One. And it’ll never be explained. Image: Lucasfilm
The instant news of the Rogue One Blu-ray dropped, we all had the same question: would the disc contain some of the many, many scenes from the trailers that aren’t in the movie? The answer is no, and now the director of the film has explained why—but his answer isn’t totally satisfying.
“There’s not an individual scene that you can drag and drop and put on a Blu-ray,” Edwards told Fandango. “There are little things that would come and go during the process of post-production, but they’re not scenes. They’re more moments within the scenes or a single shot. So it’s impossible to be able to do that, and that’s why the decision was made.”
He continued:
The stuff people talk about, like what they saw in the trailer, they’re not scenes you can just put on a DVD. They’re moments within scenes and threads, and you pull a thread and it all changes. It was changing the whole time. It’s not like there was one version and then there was this other version — it was like this thing that incrementally evolved constantly through all of post-production and didn’t stop until there was a gun at our heads and we were forced to release the movie.
This absolutely makes sense if it was just moments. He’s already explained several of those. But we know several of the scenes that were shot go well beyond that. Like, for example, this video showing K-2SO and Cassian Andor dying in a different place. That’s more than just a thread; that’s an entire alternate scene. Maybe it’s missing some CG work, but that certainly hasn’t stopped studios from including them in Blu-ray releases before
The most famous unexplained shot, however, is probably the one of Jyn Erso encountering a TIE Fighter on Scarif. That’s almost certainly more than just a moment too but unfortunately, Edwards said what’s happening there will remain a mystery.
[The TIE Fighter shot] is going to have to remain a myth because it’s sort of the thing where you’re trying ideas out to find the right version of the movie, and at the same time marketing is getting excited about certain shots and moments. Eventually you’ll see something presented to you and you’ll be like, wait a minute, this shot is no longer in the film.
Read more from Edwards at the below link. Rogue One hits Blu-ray on April 4.
