The arrival of young Skywalker happened not because the then-septuagenarian Mark Hamill reprised his role in heavy make-up, but because of deep-fake technology. This technology allows studios to create performances out of digital thin air; to capture footage from some virtual world where Hamill continued playing Luke Skywalker in the early 80s. It wasn’t the first, nor the last time Lucasfilm had done this trick for Star Wars. Rogue One featured digital recreations of the deceased Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin and a version of Carrie Fisher in her early 20s as Princess Leia, while deepfake Luke returned again for an episode of The Book of Boba Fett....

If Patrick Stewart got a quarter for every time his Charles Xavier died onscreen… well, he’d have a dollar at this point. Which is not a lot, but it still feels substantial after Chuck was gleefully introduced in Sam Raimi’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness only to then be gleefully shepherded off this mortal coil in a highly Raimi fashion. How else would you describe Professor X having his neck snapped by Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) at her witchiest?...

In Marvel Comics, the Illuminati is a gathering of the smartest and most influential heroes on Earth. They exist to deal with galactic and multiversal threats; complex problems that demand difficult solutions. They first appeared in the pages of Brian Michael Bendis’ run on New Avengers and played a major role in the follow-up, New Avengers, written by Jonathan Hickman. These stories found the Illuminati making morally gray decisions, like when they decided to exile Bruce Banner in space to avoid any further Hulk outbursts, and plotted to destroy alternative Earths before their own was compromised in Secret Wars....

The Doctor Who season 12 finale is nigh, and we’re going back to Gallifrey! The planet where they like their snow globes like they like their collars – huge! And apparently everything you knew was a lie. Which for the Doctor is a massive, haunting revelation that will shake her very hearts, but for the rest of us has us scratching our heads and saying “What do we know about Gallifrey?...

Utilizing a combination of equipment and overnight explorations, the team approaches their search for Sasquatch with an open-minded skepticism. For the premiere, they implement an agriculture drone to spray primate pheromones in hopes of drawing out the creature they seek. Additionally, LeBlanc and Mayor appear to notice a figure peering down at them from a ridge while they’re on the river, and Acord’s shelter is accosted by something outside while hunkered down for the night....

DuckTales Season 3 Episode 13 There are two central pillars at the heart of this DuckTales episode. The first is Scrooge questioning, “what if being Scrooge isn’t enough this time?” The second is “we won’t get stronger by attacking the people we love.” Both of these lessons seem separated and they are, at least in terms of being the A and B stories. However, the closer you look the more you realize how they effectively dovetail together....

I had a grin on my face from the start of this DuckTales episode to the end. The premise of this outing was a winner from the jump; the family all-splitting up to find three different pieces of the titular split sword of swanstantine. It’s a simple “find the macguffin” story that could have been routine but DuckTales has its characters to fall back on. The team behind the show have done so much work developing these characters over the last three seasons that simply watching them in these “mini-ventures” was a pure delight....

While Dying Light 2 features some of the most amusing, subtle, and creatively diverse Easter eggs that I’ve seen in a game in quite some time, the game’s best Easter eggs are often those that reward you with some special weapon or piece of equipment that produce effects that simply can’t be replicated. Some of those rewards are little more than memes, but some of these special items are powerful enough to pretty much break the game....

Every monster in Elden Ring sticks to a strategy. Their animations and patterns give players plenty of tells to help them dodge incoming attacks, and gamers can easily defeat these opponents with enough practice. At least, that’s how Elden Ring should work. In practice, the game has quite a few enemies with tells that are near impossible to read, are faster or stronger than they have any right to be, or are just downright cheap, which makes them more annoying than even some bosses....

Everything Everywhere All at Once has just arrived to streaming, but the Daniels-directed indie darling is only the latest (and let’s be honest, best) in a recent flurry of activity across the multiverse. The film was the first of several major releases to feature the multiverse this year, opening just slightly before Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which in turn was the second multiverse movie to feature Doctor Strange after Spider-Man: No Way Home, which itself was the second multiverse-themed movie in recent years to feature Spider-Man (with two more sequels to that version of the multiverse on the way)....

I can’t say how long the superhero movie bubble will last. I’m not some authority that can tell you when the Marvel Cinematic Universe will run out of steam or come to a narrative close. They’re still cranking out multiple movies a year and have transformed the streaming TV shows from throwaway side-stories to important gears in the greater Marvel machine. They’re making money hand over fist. Disney just built their second theme park thrill ride based on Guardians of the Galaxy....

This Sunday’s episode focuses on Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey) and Strand (Colman Domingo) as they struggle to navigate Virginia’s thriving settlement, where they’ve been delegated less-than-desirable societal roles, to put it mildly. In the new clip, Alicia and Strand are escorted in handcuffs down the dirt roads of Lawton. They meet an ostensibly friendly teenager named Dakota, who claims to know who they are and bears a striking resemblance to a certain red-headed boss lady....

Fear the Walking Dead Season 6 Episode 1 After everything the world has endured these last several months, it just doesn’t seem productive to harp on what did or didn’t work about last season. I’m even willing to give John Dorie’s San Antonio Split a pass at this point. If anything, we’re lucky we have anything new to watch at all, especially with some series being outright canceled because they’re too difficult to produce in the age of Covid-19....

Flowers for the Sea is a bewitching tale that engrosses for the entirety of its 112 pages. Trapped on a deteriorating ark, afloat in a treacherous and endless sea, Iraxi is the inadvertent hope for the vestiges of humanity who managed to survive the flooding of their kingdom, and the slow decay of their floating salvation. Without revealing too much about the plot: Iraxi is pregnant, and the child she carries would be the first born in a long time, but she does not want it....

The casting of Taylor-Joy is not entirely a surprise since Miller has made clear for the last year that he intended to cast a younger actor in her 20s to portray Furiosa’s origin story. While this has been bittersweet for fans, and Charlize Theron who was nominated for an Oscar for originating the character in 2015, Taylor-Joy has been rumored to be Miller’s choice for months and is a definite rising star....

While any series of its scope and stature is the offspring of literally hundreds of creators–from showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss to the indelible cast–one person who left his own mark on Game of Thrones is director Neil Marshall, who helmed two of the show’s most unforgettable, epic episodes: the second season’s “Blackwater” and the fourth season’s “The Watchers on the Wall.” “I came to it almost entirely because of Centurion,” recalls Marshall now, saying that his low-budget historical thriller about an early 2nd century battle between a Roman legion and the guerilla-like Picts in northern England was a perfect calling card for GoT employment in its earliest days....

Relocate King’s Overlook to Downtown Los Angeles’ Skid Row, and you have its closest real-world equivalent: the Cecil Hotel. The hotel’s checkered history, and lore involving curses and ghosts, has made it a dark tourism landmark situated at the crossroads of true crime and paranormal fascination. But despite lots of interest on the internet, the Cecil, since rebranded as Stay on Main Hotel, has never officially permitted cameras inside for a paranormal investigation....

The future of the MonsterVerse is uncertain. If you had any doubt, just look at the lack of a post-credits scene in the latest installment, Godzilla vs. Kong. While Kong: Skull Island teased the coming storm of King Ghidorah and other kaiju, and Godzilla: King of the Monsters ended its actual credits sequence with the big ape waiting in the wings, there is a sense of closing out a chapter (if not the book) in the MonsterVerse’s Godzilla vs....

Aside from studios Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures, and certain behind-the-scenes executives, the four MonsterVerse movies to date have embraced largely different creative and directorial visions for each outing. This includes the latest installment Godzilla vs. Kong. But even though all four movies have had different directors, somewhat different tones, and mostly different casts, one of a handful of constant names has been that of Max Borenstein. Borenstein has had a writing credit on all four MonsterVerse movies, starting with penning the screenplay for 2014’s Godzilla....

Except, of course, the Star Destroyer isn’t really a colossal military ship, but a scale miniature, one of the dozens expertly crafted by a team of artists and builders at Industrial Light and Magic. Those spiky outcroppings, which hint at all kinds of mysterious scientific applications, are in reality tiny pieces of plastic, cunningly applied to the model to suggest a ship of unfeasible size. It worked, too: when the Star Destroyer made its grand appearance in Star Wars‘ opening shot in 1977, it set the tone for the entire movie: this wasn’t just another low-budget sci-fi B-picture....