If there’s any franchise timeline that can tell The Legend of Zelda to hold its beer, it’s The Elder Scrolls. A big part of the reason why the series’ timeline is so difficult to keep track of is the fact that all games in it are fairly disconnected. Sure, every Elder Scrolls game features recurring ideas such as the races, guilds, and demonic Daedra, but other than that, there are not many obvious links between them....
In 2014’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Steve Rogers catches up with everything he missed when he was on ice by carrying around a little notebook full of historic moments and pop culture recommendations. In Marvel’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) has a similar notebook of his own. But instead of entries like “Nirvana”, “Thai Food,” or “Moon Landing”, Bucky’s has a list of names linked to past sins he must atone for, mostly carried out when he was Hydra’s favorite assassin, the Winter Soldier....
The Flash Season 5 Episode 1 I made no secret about my general disdain for the previous season of The Flash. Then again, I was in the minority who absolutely loved season three, so make of that what you will. But seriously, I was so disappointed in last season that not even the finale, where the show has often managed to do its best work, was able to change my opinion of things....
The Flash Season 8 Episode 1 “This is not a crossover,” showrunner Eric Wallace tells me via Zoom of Armageddon, the five episode event story that kicks off The Flash Season 8. “I cannot stress that enough. This is a five part special event, which means it’s a traditional graphic novel centered around Flash that’s a little bit bigger. A little bit more exciting, a little bit extra, the emotions are a little deeper, but it is not a crossover....
That was spoken by producer Albert S. Ruddy, and he should know. Ruddy was the producer on The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola’s adaptation of Mario Puzo’s bestselling novel that is renowned as one of the greatest films of all time. But making a masterpiece like this certainly did not come easily. Ruddy’s comment is recounted in author Mark Seal’s recently published book, Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli, an exhaustive and fabulously entertaining look back at the making of The Godfather through the eyes of many of those who were there....
After the misery of season two, which slouched from one cruelty to the next, The Handmaid’s Tale season three owed viewers some victory. Broadly, that’s what it delivered. We saw Fred and Serena’s marriage implode, June make new alliances in the Lawrence house, and cracks begin to appear in Gilead. First, the regime lost baby Nichole and Emily over the Canadian border, and then it lost the Waterfords – now both under arrest and facing trial for their actions....
And with Soul Plumber, the deep dives continue by — as Zebrowski describes him — a tolerant and pure-hearted “wet Chihuahua” of a man driven by a sincere belief in a loving God, but is just too weird to fit in anywhere. The gas station attendant builds a pirated version of a machine intended to deliver souls from Satan, but ends up getting more than he bargains for when he goes after a demon....
It’s a fun movie on its own that hits just the right level of being over-the-top at the appropriate moments. If anything, it’s hurt by the perfect way it sets up fight scenes like video game boss battles, only for the fights to be over within seconds. While Ghost Rider is ultimately a footnote in the superhero movie pantheon, it’s still worth rewatching every now and then. Get your martini glass full of jelly beans ready, because it’s time to talk about the legacy of the Ghost Rider movie, 15 years later....
The Man in the High Castle Season 3 Episode 3 The Man in the High Castle has always been a subtly complex show teeming with suspicion and intrigue, but season 3 has truly woven a beautiful narrative tapestry with even more depth and detail in a very short amount of time. The unfolding mystery about the latest film, Smith’s incredulity about the existence of parallel worlds, and Juliana and Joe circling around each other with tentative desire are a joy to watch....
Neo and Trinity are back in The Matrix Resurrections. But how the hell is that possible? Didn’t they die in Revolutions? And why is there a different version of Morpheus running around the simulation? There are plenty of questions to be answered in The Matrix Resurrections and many of its big mysteries are addressed head on. But there are a few things that may not be so clear about the movie’s plot that need further explanation....
Beginning filming after the coronavirus pandemic delayed filming earlier in the year, The Northman marks the third historical drama from Robert Eggers after he made two of the most interesting horror movies of the last decade in The Witch (2016) and The Lighthouse (2019). But whereas those films examined Puritanism in early 17th century New England and the livelihoods of lighthouse keepers in late 19th century Maine, The Northman promises to be a bigger and more ambitious effort set during the distant age of Vikings....
When former cello prodigy Charlotte’s (Allison Williams) mother dies after a long illness, she heads to Shanghai to meet Anton (Steven Weber), the head of her alma mater, the Bachoff Academy of Music. Anton and his wife Paloma (Alaina Huffman) console Charlotte and ask her to help judge potential new students with Lizzie (Logan Browning), Charlotte’s replacement at Bachoff. After the pair watch a frisson-filled student audition performance, they go clubbing and have sex....
One of the more peculiar things about The Rings of Power so far has been the total lack of any actual rings on the show. We’ve also heard a lot about our principal bad guy and the show has seemed desperate to convince us that he might be any one of several characters, but we think we might finally, in episode 5, have been introduced to Sauron in the form of a mysterious new character credited only as “The Dweller” (Bridie Sisson), who is seen peering over the edge of the crater where the Stranger landed back in episode 1....
“It’s a very interesting, meticulous puzzle where you need to keep that precarious balance where you hold hands with the audience, but also hold back,” she explains. “I think the crucial thing is that you can’t cheat. There are rules about it. You don’t lie. You might do something which could be misleading, but is not really misleading or, you play with a borderline, but you never cross it. Because the point where you cross is when you lose the audience....
Once TV’s most-watched series, AMC’s long-running zombie drama is…still one of TV’s most-watched series but significantly less so than it was at its peak. The show, based on Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard’s 193-issue comic of the same name, still receives plenty of active fans and bemused weekly onlookers. Here at Den of Geek we’re a bit of both. We know people are still watching The Walking Dead, now three episodes into its 24-episode final season....
As an Aes Sedai scholar and channeler, Moiraine begins the series uniquely equipped to track down potential candidates before they even know the importance of their own existence. To the villagers in Two Rivers, the Dragon was a powerful channeler who was among those who accidentally released the nameless evil known as the Dark One into the world. Resealing the prison tainted the male half of the One Power from that point on, and the original Dragon went mad, killing everyone close to him....
Being familiar with the books upon which a television adaptation is based already sets up even the most optimistic viewer for disappointment, but this is particularly true for readers who watch The Wheel of Time. The Eye of the World, the first book in the Robert Jordan series, is told from the point of view of the one who is quickly recognized as a candidate for the Dragon Reborn. The show, on the other hand, has managed to dig itself out from its deficient narrative through one major change: hiding the identity of the reincarnated destroyer-hero....
Titans Episode 5 It’s hard to get a handle on Titans because of its offbeat approach. On the one hand, the DC Universe series clearly aspires to the kind of serious, “adult” storytelling that Marvel’s Netflix shows have become known for. But while those shows are notoriously bashful about embracing the colorful superhero elements of their comic book world, Titans is full-steam ahead, giving you all of the weirdness of the DC Universe in undiluted form with no apologies whatsoever, complete with story pacing that often feels more like the instalments of a monthly comic book rather than traditional hour long TV drama formulas....
HBO Max crime drama Tokyo Vice begins by going back to the past…twice. The eight episode series opens in 2001. Floppy-haired journalist Jake Adelstein (Ansel Elgort) and Tokyo police detective Hiroto Katagiri (Ken Watanabe) enter into the top floor of a plush Tokyo restaurant to have a meeting – or more accurately be threatened – by the number two figure in a Japanese crime family. After the yakuza boss delivers his ultimatum (which amounts to “don’t publish this story, or else”) Tokyo Vice flashes back even further in time to the beginning of its story in 1999, when Jake is fresh out of college and preparing to apply at Tokyo’s premier newspaper, Mainichi Shimbun (a fictional stand in for the real Yomiuri Shinbun)....
More satisfyingly, however, the long-delayed movie is genuinely engaging and exciting enough to draw in others as well, including even those of us who (yes, we’re out here) don’t care for the original film. It plays exceptionally well as large-scale summer fare meant to be seen on the big screen (we recommend IMAX). At the same time, the things that people disliked about Top Gun—the one-dimensional characters, the maudlin melodrama, and the montages of military porn that play almost like Navy recruitment videos—still remain....
