Featured Essays Let’s Start a Fight: Are Science Fiction and Fantasy the Same? What are the differences that separate sci-fi and fantasy into different genres? Do they really hold up, and are they important? By Kristen Patterson | Published on May 7, 2024 Comment 42 Share New Share The other day, my dad texted me a link to this John Hodgman piece weighing in—or I guess I should say “adjudicating”—on whether the Star Wars series is really sci-fi or fantasy. This was apropos of an argument we (dad and I; Hodgman was not yet involved) had over the holidays about the delineations between those two genres. I proposed that the delineations between science fiction and fantasy can be more aesthetic than substantive; he maintained that there are more fundamental differences. He prosecuted his case with a lot of references to Star Trek, a childhood favorite of his which he introduced to us, his own children, in turn. I, like an egghead, countered with many “yes, but” theoretical arguments. I love to play the egghead. My brother even-handedly tried to parse out the merits of both sides while dad and I continued to lob differently-worded versions of the same point back and forth across the dinner table. Mom and grandpa did not engage. The tone was occasionally pretty strident for such a goofy topic. You know, the way you argue with your family? And now dad’s fired another shot across my bow, courtesy of a cultural commentator with real-fake authority and fake-fake judge’s attire. Well, fetch my red shirt! Time to relitigate this argument in public, for if Star Wars has taught me one thing, it’s that throwing yourself in the path of a more powerful man in a dowdy black robe is a great strategy for winning a fight with your father. May it please the court: The Honorable John Hodgman, we should note, begins his short piece by noting that he also finds genre distinctions, or arguments about said, to be questionable or tiresome. Nonetheless, he delivers a verdict, finding that Star Wars is a narrative fueled by nostalgia rather than futuristic speculations, landing it much closer to Tolkien than Trek. This is a common enough differentiation between sci-fi and fantasy: that they look towards different horizons, the latter retro-gazing, the former speculating on what could be. Construed in this way, the two genres are not just different but full opposites. And that is indeed a perfectly workable measure for explaining how sci-fi and fantasy stories have been traditionally classified. What bothers me, however, is the sense I get that assigning Star Wars the label of fantasy is a kind of relegation. That is, it’s not just that the fantasy label is a better fit, but that Star Wars is too unserious to deserve to be classified as sci-fi. Fantasy is fuzzy and frivolous, sci-fi is sophisticated and cerebral. (Plenty of people, I’m given to understand, think all genre fiction is fuzzy and frivolous, but that’s another matter.) The emblematic example of Star Wars’ conceptual squishiness is that it misuses the metric of the parsec, referencing it as a measure of time rather than distance. Someone has likely explained this factoid to you before, probably one of those early figures in your life who tried to convert you to pedantry. We all had them. Mine were well meaning, good humored, and delightful. But we likely also overlook the parsec error, because we recognize that the real central concept of Star Wars is “the Force,” which has nothing to do with science and everything to do with feelings. Frivolous. Fuzzy. Star Trek, by comparison, has very serious and grounded mechanisms like warp cores and transporters and dilithium crystals, which are also made up but could be totally scientifically plausible. Except that the scientific plausibility of dilithium-based technology, much like the parsec error, doesn’t matter. In fact, you could say it anti-matters (yuck yuck).  What is important about the starship Enterprise is not how it goes but where it goes. Star Trek may feature many, many episodes that revolve around fixing the warp core, but for the most part the concepts Trek wants to explore are really political and sociological, about interactions between the diverse crew and encounters with alien life. How many of these civilizations’ representatives are eager to sleep with Commander Riker? Better make a tally. For science. But specifically for the “soft” science of sociology. To be sure, the sociological premises of Trek interact with its technological ones. For instance, the technology of the replicator helps to explain how the Federation’s egalitarian, moneyless society operates. But how does a replicator convert energy to matter? And why can’t it successfully replicate dilithium of sufficient quality to serve in a ship’s matter-antimatter reactor? Maybe it has something to do with how dilithium is also an energy source, and therefore the replicator’s process of converting energy to matter saps the dilithium of its potential energy? Or maybe it’s about dilithium possibly being a four-dimensional substance in a way that replicator technology can’t yet reproduce? To both the physicists and Trekkies out there, does any of that… make sense? This kind of explanation, whenever sci-fi properties even bother to engage in it, substantively amounts to what is commonly called technobabble—or as I think of it, Ruddigore-ing! Meaning: this particularly rapid, unintelligible patter isn’t generally heard, and if it is, it doesn’t matter (matter matter matter matter). My eyes are fully open. If Gene Roddenberry and his ilk really had a feasible and fully mapped-out mechanism for how their tech worked, they would have been on their way to the U.S. Patent Office, not NBC. But again, it doesn’t matter that the science is hokum, because what’s important is that said hokum permits us to engage in generative imagining. What would it be like to live in a society empowered by this kind of technology? How much would that change, and how could it change one’s relationship to their own identity and to others? That sort of thing. I don’t wish to be too dismissive here and give the impression that all the science in sci-fi media is technobabble. Sci-fi writers show, rather splendidly, out how incredibly fruitful it is to engage with actual principles of physics and biology and programming. Heaven knows, Asimov got a lot of mileage out of simple conflicting booleans. Only, the “fi” half of the sci-fi requires audiences and writers to lean in to unproven, speculative territory. The exact same sort of sociological speculation can and does occur in stories that are premised around the lack of common post-industrial technologies or around the existence of some magical force that has shaped society in much the same way that a microchips-and-circuitry technology would. A Song of Ice and Fire, when you get down to it, is the tale of a world whose dynastic politics were heavily shaped by the “technology” of dragons, and their subsequent, erm, obsolescence. Ditto pretty much every dragon-riding story, Eragon, Temeraire, The Dragonriders of Pern (which already casually straddles the border between sci-fi and fantasy in its premise), etc. So: if we dispense with the technobabble and just say our space machine or what have you is powered by magic, what exactly do we lose? Just the flashing lights on the dashboard? I am willing to concede that we do lose slightly more than just that.  Because it’s often futuristic and therefore less likely to hold itself constrained by historical precedent, science fiction may, generally, be more inclined or more free to imagine radical ideas. The aforementioned moneyless society of Star Trek, for instance. But that is just a tendency and not a strict constraint. Fantasy stories set in alternate worlds are just as free to imagine strange, unprecedented societies as sci-fi set on alien worlds. While a considerable bulk of traditional fantasy takes inspiration from medieval Europe, it’s disingenuous to say that worldbuilding that deviates from either European or other historical models is therefore “unrealistic,” as author and medievalist Shiloh Carroll points out in a critique of how the House of the Dragon showrunners have discussed the inclusion of elements like sexual violence in their show as necessary toward the interest of historical accuracy. Phillip Maciak had the same note for House of the Dragon’s parent series, Game of Thrones, in a review from back in 2011. We’re all, evidently, still waiting for someone to hear it… Regardless, while they might trend in different directions, both fantasy and sci-fi are equally free to imagine whatever they will, empowered by the license of otherworldliness and the equally potent forces of either magic or super-advanced technology. This is not an original argument, of course. J.R.R. Tolkien made this observation in his magisterial essay “On Fairy-Stories,” at one point in which he proposes that H.G. Wells’ novel The Time Machine better meets the criteria for what counts as a fairy story than some other tales that have traditionally made the cut. In justifying this claim, he argues: “The magic of Faerie is not an end in itself, its virtue is in its operations: among these are the satisfaction of certain primordial human desires. One of these desires is to survey the depths of space and time. Another is to hold communion with other living things. A story may thus deal with the satisfaction of these desires, with or without the operation of either machine or magic, and in proportion as it succeeds it will approach the quality and have the flavour of fairy-story.” To paraphrase that, Tolkien identifies the fact that sci-fi and fantasy fulfill a common wanderlust; to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; one could even say, to boldly go where no man has gone before! (How do you like them apples, Dad?) We should not fail either to mention Arthur C. Clarke’s three laws, the third of which is the most famous: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” There are a few ways to interpret that statement’s meaning, either as about the gullibility of rubes who mistake tech for magic, or as about the wonder of tech so powerful and with workings so obscure that it seems magical to everyone. I lean toward the latter camp, and reading Clarke’s third law in the context of the first two, oft elided, supports my inclination. Those read as follows: When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. Collectively, the three laws read as a commentary on the relationship between imagination and possibility, with Clarke arguing that imagination consistently expands our ambition about what could be possible, even to the point of achieving something that felt so impossible it was labeled as magical.  Clarke’s laws, then, muddle the idea that we can divide science fiction from fantasy on the grounds that sci-fi deals with the plausible while fantasy peddles the implausible. Both genres invite their audiences to flirt with unreality, they just use different pretexts to do it. For a more contemporary version of this same take, see China Miéville: “[T]he boundaries between the impossible of the fantastic and Gothic on the one hand, and the impossible of science fiction on the other, are simply too fuzzy to be systematically maintained. What they share is as important as what distinguishes them. What they share is the starting point that something impossible is true.” To go along with Tolkien, Clarke, and Miéville, we ought to put sci-fi and fantasy together in the same Wittgensteinian family of resemblances. Almost all members share the aquiline nose of fancifulness. The square jaw of obeying the laws of thermodynamics? Less prevalent. But I promised that we would actually concede one major difference between the sci-fi and fantasy genres. And we will. Is everybody ready? Here it goes: people don’t relate to them in the same way. I know: groundbreaking. But really. Technobabble may be, for all intents and purposes, the same excuse as “it’s magic,” performed with slightly more elaborate hand-waving, but science-y explanations flatter the sensibilities of some readers who may otherwise have a more difficult time getting on board with a premise that isn’t legitimized by a rational explanation. (As evidence of this dynamic, I submit the classic Dropout, née College Humor, sketch “Why Can’t You Use Phones on Planes?”) We live in fairly rationalist societies—and we should keenly note here the difference between “rationalist” and “rational”—so we like to be reassured that we are not engaging with bald-faced flimflam. The rationalist, scientif-ish explanation places its impossibilities on a continuum with the scientific and technological advances of the modern era. Sure, it’s not possible now, but it could be in the future! This concern has even bled over into fantasy and its sweatily rationalized and rule-bounded “Hard Magics,” whence the Larry Niven corollary “any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science”   The reverse also applies, with the fantasy genre’s monarchs who are destined to reign over all appealing to a human liking for neat and “natural” hierarchy. Even Ursula K. Le Guin, who consistently problematizes hierarchy across her work, indulges some in this trope with the character Lebannen from the Earthsea series, whose ascension to the throne parallels a cosmic return to natural order at the conclusion of The Farthest Shore. Both of these gestures are different sorts of appeal to legitimacy, the legitimacy of scientific rationality on one hand, and the legitimacy of tradition and historicity on the other. Both have the effect of offering their audience some form of comfort to counterbalance any ensuing strangeness. But people do relate differently enough to these forms of legitimacy that it would be disingenuous to write them off the same thing. As with many labels, the distinction being made is not so much to do with the qualities or inner workings of the things described; rather, they evoke the different ways we feel about the things described. And feelings matter, since they inflect the way that we read—or write. Because its genre boundaries are defined by the somewhat persnickety standard of rationality, sci-fi has to be a little more choosey about what it will admit to its club. Hence, when Star Wars flubs the definition of a “parsec,” science fiction apologists must rush to disavow it as mere fantasy. At least, that’s the way it is for now. Look, can’t we all agree to believe that the whole parsec thing, spoken as it is by gorgeous idiot Han Solo, is just a bit of fast-talk aimed at some desert yokels? Moreover, can we agree that the Star Wars universe, with its light-speed spaceships, laser-based weaponry, and beep-booping droids, all equally dubious and equally science-y, is as much science fiction as any other good old space opera? Yes, it also has “the Force,” which just goes to show that magic-y concepts, like the Vulcan mind meld or “the Voice” from Dune, fit perfectly comfortably alongside technological ones is speculative fiction. They are all pulling together, doing the same work of making the impossible possible. There’s a line in the denouement of the musical My Fair Lady where Eliza, a lower-class girl who has been trained in upper-class affectations, explains what she has realized about class distinctions. “You see, Mrs. Higgins,” Eliza tells her erstwhile tutor’s mother, “apart from the things one can pick up, the difference between a lady and flower girl is not how she behaves but how she is treated.” We can and should apply Eliza’s epiphany to a liberal swath of topics, including the matter at hand. Star Wars is as much science fiction as John Hodgman is a judge. They’re both wearing the right pajamas. The rest is all about how they are treated. As for the treatment of fantasy, or of fantasy elements in whatever genre they might lie, we might do ourselves some good by treating them less literally—they are impossible!—and permit ourselves thereby to take them more seriously. It would be a mistake to take Le Guin’s Lebannen as a literal pro-monarchy gesture, and as much a mistake as to overlook that Darth Vader isn’t just powerful because he wields the Force. His literal, “magical” Jedi powers to move objects with his mind and terrorize the cream of the British Actors’ Guild is less significant than the symbolic, thematic power he is revealed to occupy in the narrative. He’s powerful because he’s a father. My own dad is also a father, and as such is unlikely to cry uncle anytime soon. That’s alright, though. If he did, it would only mean an end to the fun. He’s the reason I was introduced to Star Trek and Star Wars, and hopped from there to other genre fiction. His influence is probably also to blame for so much of my logic being grounded in references to musical theater. The Force is strong with that one. Dad, argue again soon?[end-mark] The post Let’s Start a Fight: Are Science Fiction and Fantasy the Same? appeared first on Reactor.

News Blade Runner 2099 Michelle Yeoh Will Turn Into a Replicant for Blade Runner 2099 Ridley Scott is executive producing the sequel series By Molly Templeton | Published on May 7, 2024 Screenshot: Paramount Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: Paramount Prime Video’s Blade Runner 2099 series was announced over two years ago—long enough that a person could be forgiven for thinking maybe it just faded away, as so many potential series do. But no: It’s trucking along, and what’s more, it has a pretty incredible star. Variety reports that Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh (Star Trek: Discovery, pictured above) has signed on to the series, and while all the plot details are secret, “sources say Yeoh will play a character named Olwen, described as a replicant near the end of her life.” Blade Runner 2099 is a slightly odd duck. As suggested by the title, it takes place 50 years after Denis Villeneuve’s film Blade Runner 2049, but Villeneuve is not involved; instead, it’s a project from original Blade Runner director Ridley Scott, and is also a sequel to that film. Scott is an executive producer, and Silka Luisa is the series’ showrunner. Luisa was the showrunner for Apple TV+’s The Shining Girls, a very good adaptation of the Lauren Beukes novel of the same name. She was also a writer and supervising producer on the first season of Halo. And one more interesting person is attached to this Blade Runner: Jonathan van Tulleken is set to direct the first two episodes. Van Tulleken recently directed two episodes of Shogun, as well as four episodes of The Changeling. No premiere date has been announced.[end-mark] The post Michelle Yeoh Will Turn Into a Replicant for <i>Blade Runner 2099</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Books Dissecting the Dark Descent Intimate, Brutal, Indelible: “Dread” by Clive Barker A master of the genre puts his unique stamp on gothic horror in this disturbing tale. By Sam Reader | Published on May 7, 2024 Comment 4 Share New Share Welcome back to Dissecting The Dark Descent, where we lovingly delve into the guts of David Hartwell’s seminal 1987 anthology story by story, and in the process, explore the underpinnings of a genre we all love. For an in-depth introduction, here’s the intro post. Clive Barker is a name that looms large in horror, and not just due to his habit of putting his name all over everything he’s worked on. He’s lent his unique blend of European gothic storytelling, modern interplay of desire and punishment, and a willingness to go to more gruesome and intimate places than his peers to a variety of comic books, movies, and video games. His seminal work of extreme gothic horror, Books of Blood, redefined what modern horror meant when it emerged, complete with endorsements from blockbuster authors. “Dread,” a story which first appeared in Books of Blood, uses the familiar structures of gothic fiction and the twisted horror-noir aesthetic of 1950s stories and comics to build an intimate and disturbing portrait of a mad philosopher and his trusting pupil. By subverting the standard tropes through a punishing application of realism and disallowing any form of detachment, “Dread” transcends its influences to become a truly disturbing and indelible tale. A chance encounter with a stranger at a university bar brings Steven into contact with the mysterious Quaid, an older man with an arresting presence whom everyone seems to know, but few know anything about. Intelligent, charismatic, and eccentric, Quaid delights himself in philosophical discussions about the concept of dread and trauma with both Steven and Steven’s classmate Cheryl, a staunch vegetarian who is willing to charge headlong into Quaid’s arguments. As the year goes on, Quaid and Cheryl become close, and Steve drifts along, eventually losing contact with them both. That is, until after a holiday break when Quaid approaches Steven with an unusual invitation: Come to his house in a decaying neighborhood, and Quaid will show him pictures of what happened over the holiday between him and Cheryl. Soon, Steven learns of Quaid’s horrifying experiments on Cheryl to expose the root of her dread and trauma. Worse still, he finds himself trapped, the subject of Quaid’s next twisted experiment to understand the roots of fear and dread, even if it destroys them both. So far, so gothic—a mad scientist (in this case a mad philosopher) performs inhuman experiments on people. A younger man, more idealistic and an audience surrogate, is drawn in and befriends this mad scientist, and then is told in horrifying detail of the ways his new best friend has perverted the natural order. Where it differs is that the scientists in these stories are usually presented as someone who goes mad—at one point they were sane, regular people. Quaid is not presented that way. He’s an enigma, a figure who dresses in shabby and nondescript clothes, his eyes described as snakelike with pinprick pupils. The usual elements that would make him seem like a normal human being—a place to live, distinguishing marks, relationships—are all strangely absent from him. From the beginning, he simply appears at the bar and Steven can’t remember where he’s seen Quaid before. Rather than the mad scientist, he resembles a different familiar figure in gothic fiction, that of a devil drawing people in and leading them to their damnation, the ambiguously human creature tempting and manipulating desire in exchange for death or worse.   Quaid’s presence in “Dread” as a devil offering what the other characters desire plays on the recurring theme throughout The Books of Blood: the idea of desire (as commonly presented in gothic fiction) as bait in a trap that costs you everything. Quaid, a man who views himself as above his fellow humans and presents as a complete enigma who disappears and reappears at will, is adept at finding out what others need and desire, baits the hook, and then psychologically guts his victims, turning them into manic animals. The focus in Barker’s work is never the desire. It’s the self-annihilation that comes about as consequence for that pursuit. In the case of both his victims, Quaid presents himself as a provider, someone willing to give them what they need. For Cheryl, that’s companionship. For Steven, it’s a person he respects (and is obsessed with) who gives him validation. Quaid even lures Steven to his apartment with answers about what happened to Cheryl. It makes what he does even more horrifying, as he views his torture (the way Barker’s devils do) as transactional: While the cost certainly isn’t worth the reward, he provides something both of his victims tell him they want. In “return,” he uses them as subjects in his experiments. Steven, our audience surrogate, is one of those subjects. His fascination with Quaid’s world makes him a perfect target for Quaid’s experiments, and unlike his predecessors in the gothic tradition, Steven feels every moment of Quaid’s punishing intelligence. Barker eschews the idea of a detached moral observer standing in for the audience. In intimate detail, Steven is subjected directly to confinement and sensory deprivation mirroring his childhood trauma, and as the viewpoint character, that means we’re given a front-row seat to the erosion of his sanity and humanity. Worse is how genuine it feels. Most of the people reading this are lucky enough to never experience confinement, to never experience the conscious feeling of one’s sanity and personhood slipping away. Barker writes with the visceral knowledge of someone who has experienced such pain, or who at least has access to firsthand accounts of that experience. Seeing Steven as he was and then watching him crumble into a fear-driven shell with the mind of a seven-year-old isn’t horrifying simply due to the end result, but also the intimate, human depiction of Steven’s breakdown and the knowledge that his trauma will alter him irrevocably. Once Steven is no longer a sane narrator, the story splits between Quaid and his own dread and the broken, deranged “Stevie” as he giggles his way through the streets on his way to exact vengeance on Quaid. By comparison, Quaid’s inhumanity, and desire to process his trauma (nightmares of his parents’ murder and his subsequent fear of clowns) through his experiments is what eventually damns him, as he refuses to confront his own trauma and instead visits trauma on others. As he lies dying after Steven attacks him with an axe, he can only think about how torturing his former pupil destroyed all shreds of Steven’s humanity. That his own trauma turned him into an equally inhuman monster that condemned two people to a fate worse than death is clear, but only occurs to him in the final moments of his death. “Dread” ends on that ironic note, with neither humor nor pathos for its villain. While the ending’s irony and final gruesome image of a broken Steven hacking Quaid to pieces with an axe while dressed like a ghastly vision of a clown is pure EC Comics, the stark realism of its depiction of trauma and gothic moral calculus played utterly straight gives that ironic twist a much heavier impact. It’s Barker’s ability to wield these elements—devil figures, mad scientists, grim irony, gothic morality—and bring them into modern focus while denying the reader’s ability to look away that makes “Dread” such a punishing, intimate read. It leaves a fingerprint as indelible as the one Quaid left on Steven, and one equally as disturbing. And now to turn it over to you. What are your thoughts on “Dread,” and does its power lie in its lack of escapism, or its successful blending of modern and classical horror elements? What’s your favorite “Clive Barker Presents…” property? Or, for that matter, your favorite story from Books of Blood? Please join us next week as we discuss familial curses, evil aristocrats, and other classical gothic elements in Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”[end-mark] The post Intimate, Brutal, Indelible: “Dread” by Clive Barker appeared first on Reactor.

News A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Game of Thrones Spinoff A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Gets a Director and Surprisingly Short Episode Count Saddle up, knights! By Molly Templeton | Published on May 7, 2024 Images: Warner Bros. Discovery Comment 0 Share New Share Images: Warner Bros. Discovery It’s a smaller story, so it gets a smaller series: The Hollywood Reporter has the news that the next Game of Thrones spinoff, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, will have a mere six episodes in its first season. The series is based on a trio of novellas, so presumably that makes a certain kind of sense. The show was previously going by the slightly more ponderous title A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight, but apparently has dropped those last three words, at least for the time being. What’s more, Owen Harris has joined the adaptation as an executive producer and director; he will tackle the first three episodes. Harris famously directed Black Mirror’s “San Junipero,” several episodes of Brave New World, and—most importantly, in my book—four episodes of the criminally under-watched and entirely wonderful Mrs. Davis. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms recently cast its two leads, enlisting Peter Claffey as Ser Duncan the Tall and Dexter Sol Ansell as his young squire Egg. (Anyone familiar with the regularly recurring names of the world of Game of Thrones can probably guess what “Egg” is a nickname for. Here’s a hint: There are a lot of Targaryens.) Here’s the official synopsis: A century before the events of Game of Thrones, two unlikely heroes wandered Westeros… a young, naïve but courageous knight, Ser Duncan the Tall (Claffey), and his diminutive squire, Egg (Ansell). Set in an age when the Targaryen line still holds the Iron Throne, and the memory of the last dragon has not yet passed from living memory, great destinies, powerful foes, and dangerous exploits all await these improbable and incomparable friends. George R.R. Martin is writer and executive producer for the series, which also has Ira Parker, Ryan Condal, Vince Gerardis, Owen Harris, and Sarah Bradshaw as executive producers No premiere date has been announced, but the show is expected to arrive next year.[end-mark] The post <i>Game of Thrones</i> Spinoff <i>A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms</i> Gets a Director and Surprisingly Short Episode Count appeared first on Reactor.

News Snowpiercer Snowpiercer’s Fourth Season Hits Tracks Sooner than Expected, With First-Look Photos to Boot You’ll be able to watch the whole series on AMC soon By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on May 7, 2024 Credit: AMC Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: AMC The television series Snowpiercer has had a rocky journey. The show’s first three seasons ran on TNT, but the network chose to not air the already-shot fourth and final season as part of the large number of tax write-offs that came with the Warner Bros. Discovery merger. Luckily for us, the show found a new home at AMC, with that network saying they would release the final episodes sometime in early 2025. The network announced today, however, that we would be able to see the fourth season—as well as the three seasons that came before it—in mere months. For those who need a refresher, the Snowpiercer series takes place seven years after the world has become an arctic wasteland and focuses on a 1001-car train of survivors that continually run on tracks laid across the globe. It’s based on the graphic novel series by Jacques Lob and Jean-Marc Rochette, and the film from Oscar-winner Bong Joon Ho. Season three saw the train cars split into two factions, with one led by Melanie Cavill (Jennifer Connelly), who wants to maintain the status quo, and the other by Andre Layton (Daveed Diggs), who wants to explore new territory. Credit: AMC “We can’t wait to share the final season of this thrill ride of a series with this vibrant fan community and new viewers starting July 21 on AMC and AMC+, with plenty of time built in to catch up on previous seasons on a variety of on demand platforms and AMC+ before then,” Courtney Thomasma, Executive Vice President of Streaming for AMC Networks, said in a statement shared with Deadline. “Snowpiercer is an entertaining drama with a great cast and seeing how the ride ends will be a highlight of summer viewing worthy of a 1001-car train.” The first two seasons of Snowpiercer will start streaming on AMC+ beginning June 1, 2024, with the third season premiering on the platform on June 8, 2024. The fourth and final season will premiere on July 21, 2024 at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT on AMC and AMC+. The network also released first-look photos of the final season, which you can see above and below. [end-mark] Credit: AMC Credit: AMC The post <i>Snowpiercer</i>’s Fourth Season Hits Tracks Sooner than Expected, With First-Look Photos to Boot appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Dead Boy Detectives Dead Boy Detectives Make a Case for a Cute Gay Afterlife A fun, weird, and joyfully queer series adapted from the work of Neil Gaiman By Leah Schnelbach | Published on May 8, 2024 Comment 2 Share New Share Let me start by saying that Dead Boy Detectives is often delightful—but that I also don’t think it’s exactly for me. The Sandman is for me. Season One of American Gods was VERY MUCH for me. I think Dead Boy Detectives is for who I might be if I was in high school now, and that makes me incredibly happy. Grateful, actually, that this kind of show can be there for kids now, and be so fun and weird and queer. The show was developed by Steve Yockey, who acts as co-showrunner with Beth Schwartz. On #TeamDeadBoy, George Rexstrew plays stuffy Edwardian Edwin Payne, Jayden Revri plays late-80s punk Charles Rowland, Kassius Nelson plays teen psychic Crystal Palace, Yuyu Kitamura plays Crystal’s neighbor-turned-friend Niko, and Briana Cuoco plays their furious goth landlord, Jenny, who is also the town’s butcher. On the villainous side of the aisle are Jenn Lyon as a centuries-old witch named Esther, and Ruth Connell as an afterlife bureaucrat who thinks the Boys should be less “detectives” and more plain old “dead”. And then there are fabulous ghost clients, town denizens, high school students, demons, a Cat King—everyone’s pretty great. My personal fave is Michal Beach as Tragic Mick, proprietor of Tragic Mick’s Magic Tricks, who used to be a proud walrus before a curse trapped him on land. I want the Tragic Mick spinoff NOW. And, obviously, I have to give a special nod to Lukas Gage who steals the whole show as the Cat King (until Edwin gets his shit together and stands up to him, anyway) and whom I also found delightful in a very different role in the Road House reboot. Credit: Netflix The Dead Boy Detectives began life (heh) as minor characters in what was, for my money, the best arc of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, “Season of Mist”. That’s the one where Lucifer quits his job, and Hell falls into chaos while various entities fight over who’s going to rule it next. (<GrouchoVoice>It’s been on my mind a lot because it’s an election year here in the US. </GrouchoVoice>) Little Charles Rowland is the last living student at his boarding school, and when it’s overrun by demons and ghost teachers, little Edwin Payne, who died in 1916, helps him navigate all the horror. When Death comes to collect them, the two decide to stay on Earth (and eventually go into business as afterlife detectives) and she lets them because she’s incredibly busy. In the comic it’s a dark take on a classic boarding school story, it’s really sad and horrific under the black humor, and the boys are both around 12 years old. Neil Gaiman loved the characters and the concept, and brought them back for a Children’s Crusade crossover comics event, Jill Thompson adapted their story for Death: At Death’s Door, they got a four-issue miniseries called Sandman Presents: Dead Boy Detectives from Ed Brubaker and Bryan Talbot. and most recently, two appeared on Doom Patrol, where they were aged up a little and played by Sebastian Croft and Ty Tennant. In the new iteration, the boys are sixteen—I’m assuming for romantic spark reasons—but I guess the title Dead Teen Detectives doesn’t really roll off the tongue. The boys have both come into clearer focus: Edwin Payne died in 1916 rather than 1914, and Charles Rowland died sometime in the late 1980s I think—both deaths the result of attacks by fellow students, but in both cases I think their deaths would be called hate crimes. Edwin is stuffy, snarky, and dressed in perfect Edwardian upper-crust fashion; Charles is as punk as a boarding school uniform will allow, with a mohawk-adjacent haircut, an earring, and a jacket bristling with buttons for ska bands and Union Jack patches, and he radiates happiness and optimism. Obviously, these facades get chipped away as the series rolls along The Boys have three antagonists of differing levels of importance: a witch they piss off in the first episode, members of the afterlife bureaucracy who want to separate them and sort them into their “proper places”, and, of course, Death Herself—though I suspect Death isn’t the antagonist they think she is. We quickly learn that the boys have been working together since Charles’ death, and have racked up an impressive roster of solved cases over almost 30 years. But it’s always been just the two of them, until a botched exorcism leaves them with a traumatized psychic teen named Crystal Palace, who in turn leads them to a case in America that entangles them with a troubled student named Niko, their lonely landlord, a truly heinous witch, and the Cat King of Port Townsend, Washington. Credit: Netflix Much like The Sandman, the ensemble grows a bit in each episode, until each new member feels vital to the show. Each episode is named for the week’s case, and one of the strongest parts of the show is the Case of the Week format. The larger concern always tie-in to the cases. “The Case of The Dandelion Shrine” brings Niko into the group, “The Case of the Devlin House” helps unravel a little of Charles’ past, “The Case of the Two Dead Dragons” brings up some of Crystal’s past with David, her Demon—but each case stands on its own merits as well. Also like The Sandman, the show is dark fantasy edging into horror. I would argue that the horror is a lighter and more kid-friendly than the other Gaiman adaptations, but as ever it depends on the kid. And there is a trip to Hell, and somehow even more discussions of death and its complications than you’d expect from a show about ghosts. And yes, two members of the Endless do make appearances—one is pretty obvious, but I was startled by which other Endless the show’s writers chose to feature. As much as I’m talking about DBD as a fun, cute time, there are some really dark undercurrents here. Where the Netflix adaptation of The Sandman felt like The Sandman, and sometimes stuck too close to the source material, Dead Boy Detectvies is freewheeling, and throws dashes of Pushing Daisies, Buffy, modern Doctor Who, and Riverdale into the core Gaiman-ness, and, happily, reaches beyond all of those core influences to create its own tone. Best of all, to me, is that the show as a whole acts as a weird, queer, outsider rallying cry against despair. Why should the Boys submit to the afterlife status quo, just because it’s expected? Why should they create an afterlife that suits them, and helps people both living and dead?   As I said, I especially loved the episodes that made the Case of the Week the focus, and poked at the overarching themes in a way that was in service of the case. The best example would be “The Case of the Devlin House”, where Edwin, Charles, and Crystal investigate a haunted house. The haunted house turns out to be kind of a supernatural cold case, and, for reasons I shall not spoil, ties in incredibly well with Charles’ ongoing struggles with trauma and anger. The episode comes together extremely well, and feels inevitable rather than overdetermined, and also features a genuinely scary monster and a creative use of VHS tapes. As the credits came up I realized that it was damn close to the X-Files high I’ve been chasing most of my adulthood. (Also a fun dovetail with seeing I Saw the TV Glow, another incredible work of queer horror, with my beloved colleague Emmet a few weeks ago.) Credit: Netflix The villains are two variations on the Bitchy Authority Figure. Ruth Connell and Jenn Lyons both do fabulous jobs playing iterations of this character, with Connell making Night Nurse a Schoolmarmish Afterlife Authority Who Wants Everyone To Go To Their “Proper” Place, and Lyons having fun with the Condescending Witch Who Wants To Be Young Forever—they felt like riffs on villains we’ve seen in Buffy and Doctor Who, but they both get actual characters arcs, and become more than archetypes. Thematically they work perfectly—Edwin, who seems upper-class but is also a gay nerd, and Charles, who is biracial and sticks up for outsiders in his oppressive boarding school, are both boys who challenge the idea that anyone has a proper place, and making their antagonist a bureaucrat who “just follows orders” is a great idea—though I do think she needed a little more development for their antagonism to pay off better. Making the Boys’ other antagonist a literal child predator was perfect—but I wish there had been a little less emphasis on her, because of my one big overall issue, which I’ll get into… now. I have some quarrels with the structure of the show. For me, personally, the show culminates in Episode 7, “The Case of the Long Staircase”, which made the actual finale, “The Case of the Hungry Snake”, feel a bit overstuffed and frantic. But that also might just be a me thing—I loved the themes that were explored in Episode 7, and felt like the finale was a bit too much… plot. Effective plot, to be clear, and plot that made me want a second season, but after the delicacy and depth of Episode 7 it was a lot to process. (For those who have watched the show, I’m planning a spoiler essay later this month that will go into the themes of Episode 8.) One other thing that plays into this is the show’s habit of telegraphing too many of its emotional beats. A traumatic or pivotal event happens, and before the event has room to breathe, the characters are explaining it, talking about it, underlining it—basically holding the audience’s hand as they navigate it. Several of the episodes follow a pattern where Person A urges Person B to talk about trauma, Person B allows several nudges and then blows up, Person A backs off, and a few minutes later (minutes, not episodes) Person B apologizes for blowing up and talks about trauma to Person A. It would have been much more effective and natural to let these conversations play out across multiple episodes, to leave things unsaid, to allow the gentle prods and subsequent blow-ups to play out over a few weeks in the show’s world so that the audience could feel move involved. And again this is by no means a dealbreaker for me, just one area where I think the writers can trust their audience to come with them, rather than having to spoonfeed anything, and I really hope that if we get a second season the writers allow the characters their space. You might have noticed, if you read other reviews of mine on this site, that I’ve used some variation on the words “joyfully queer” or gleefully queer” a lot lately—because there’s been a beautiful lava flow of fucking rainbow Skittles in pop culture. And please understand that I don’t mean that it’s all been cheerful—The People’s Joker, I Saw the TV Glow, Interview with the Vampire, Good Omens, and Dead Boy Detectives are not exactly chipper fare. But they are all honest about queer experience. They give no quarter and no credence to the straight world’s opinions. THAT’S where the joy comes in. This makes me incredibly happy, and also worried, because so much of the world is attempting to crush this latest wave of queer joy, but also hopeful, because I think the kids coming up after me are much stronger than I was—and I was goddamn strong. Dead Boy Detectives features some completely matter-of-fact queerness of a kind that would have been revolutionary only a few years ago, and has a slightly more complicated plot centered on Edwin, who grew up in a time when being open meant imprisonment and probably death. (Edwin was born the year Oscar Wilde died, after all.) The nimble balance of these threads is one of the great joys of the show, among a lot of joys.[end-mark] The post <i>Dead Boy Detectives</i> Make a Case for a Cute Gay Afterlife appeared first on Reactor.

News 11817 Greta Lee and Kingsley Ben-Adir Might Have Some Trouble at Home in 11817 What kind of title is that?? By Molly Templeton | Published on May 8, 2024 Screenshot: Netflix Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: Netflix It is almost time for the annual Cannes Film Festival, which means that a lot of uncertain movie news is in the air: Movies that may or may not get picked up, after festival screenings, for distribution; movies that may or may not be coming together for future productions. A lot of possibility is floating about, some of it more enticing than other bits. But this one is quite intriguing: Deadline reports that Greta Lee (Past Lives; Russian Doll, pictured above) and Kingsley Ben-Adir (Barbie; Secret Invasion) are in talks to star in 11817, a sci-fi horror film from director Louis Leterrier. Leterrier is, depending on your personal predilections, either an interesting director of large-scale action films, or the guy who made the Ed Norton Hulk movie. His resume includes episodes of Lupin; the delightfully silly The Transporter; Fast X, which really ought to have been called Fast10 Your Seatbelts; and also the 2010 Clash of the Titans. 11817, which sounds more like a zip code than a film title, is written by Matthew Robinson (Love and Monsters). According to Deadline, “The film watches as inexplicable forces trap a family of four inside their house indefinitely. As both modern luxuries and life or death essentials begin to run out, the family must learn how to be resourceful to survive and outsmart who — or what — is keeping them trapped…” Actor Omar Sy (Lupin) is among the film’s producers, along with Leterrier and Thomas Benski (a producer on The Northman, Pig, and Midsommar, among others); the three have a production company called Carousel Studios, and this film looks to be their first project. No production timeline has been announced.[end-mark] The post Greta Lee and Kingsley Ben-Adir Might Have Some Trouble at Home in <i>11817</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Column Science Fiction Film Club World on a Wire: Smoke and Mirrors in Paranoid Unreality Rescued from obscurity and restored in 2010, Fassbinder’s film is fascinating in its visuals and its philosophical exploration of virtual reality. By Kali Wallace | Published on May 8, 2024 Comment 1 Share New Share World on a Wire (German: Welt am Draht)(1973) Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Starring Klaus Löwitsch, Barbara Valentin, Mascha Rabben, and Karl-Heinz Vosgerau. Screenplay by Fritz Müller-Scherz and Rainer Werner Fassbinder based on the novel Simulacron-3 by Daniel F. Galouye. One of the things I like to do when I’m researching movies for this film club is to read about how they were received and interpreted at the time of their release. In cinema, an art form that is always self-consciously contemplating itself, and in science fiction, a genre that constantly uses similar premises to talk about very different themes and ideas, I like getting a glimpse at how audiences responded to a movie when it first appeared. I haven’t been able to do that with World on a Wire. There is quite a lot of writing out there about the life and works of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, the provocative, controversial German filmmaker who made forty-some movies over a span of less than fifteen years before dying of a drug overdose at age thirty-seven. But everybody seems to agree that World on a Wire, his only work of science fiction, was always one of his more obscure films. It was first broadcast in two parts on West German television in 1973 and screened theatrically a few times before just sort of fading away, until the Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation digitally restored the film in 2010 with the help of its original cinematographer, Michael Ballhaus. These days, critics and audiences are extremely familiar with the ideas and tropes of virtual reality in movies. Everybody watching World on a Wire since the restoration was released in 2010 is doing so in a world that has already seen Tron (1982), The Matrix (1999), and that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where Professor Moriarty tries to escape the holodeck to live in the real world. Not to mention The Thirteenth Floor, Josef Rusnak’s 1999 film that is somewhere between a remake of Fassbinder’s film and an adaptation of the same novel. But that wasn’t the case in 1973. Of course, the science fictional concept of virtual reality in general, and the particular version of it that encompasses people unknowingly living in virtual worlds, had been around for some time; World on a Wire is based on the American novel Simulacron-3 by Daniel F. Galouye (also published under the title Counterfeit World). And it was one of the first movies about virtual reality—maybe even the very first, although that’s hard to prove or even define. But the fact that the film languished in obscurity for a few decades makes it difficult to assess whether it was influential on what followed. So we’ll just take the movie as it is—which is completely fine, because it’s great. It’s very long and a bit slow at times, but overall it’s unsettling, tense, oddly touching in parts, and absolutely gorgeous to look at. The film is centered around a man named Fred Stiller (Klaus Löwitsch) who works at the Institute for Cybernetics and Future Sciences (Institut für Kybernetik und Zukunftsforschung, or IKZ for short). Along with Professor Vollmer (Adrian Hoven), Stiller has developed a highly advanced simulation for a supercomputer; they have created an entire simulation world and peopled it with some 9,000 simulated individuals for the purpose of modeling societal changes over time. At the beginning of the film, Vollmer dies under mysterious circumstances, right after confiding to the head of security, Günther Lause (Ivan Desny), that he has discovered something terrible about their project. Lause conveys this to Stiller at a party hosted by their boss, Siskins (Karl-Heinz Vosgerau). The bizarre, uncomfortable party is the film’s first look at what happens when you combine stylized filmmaking with surreal philosophical science fiction with—let’s be honest—basically just what I assume rich people social gatherings were like in the ’70s. After Lause tells Stiller there was something strange about Vollmer’s last days and death, Lause disappears. He doesn’t walk away; he just vanishes. This is, naturally, very alarming to Stiller. He tells Siskins; he calls the police; it’s reported in the press. Then, just as abruptly, everybody begins telling Stiller they have never heard of Lause. Nobody else remembers him. The police have no idea what he’s talking about. As sci fi fans in the 21st century, our minds immediately land on the explanation that Stiller is likely also in a simulation or is being manipulated in some similar way. But even before cinema and television provided an entire canon of virtual reality stories to lead us to that conclusion, I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what Fassbinder intended. The screechy electronic musical cue whenever something is changing around Stiller is not subtle, nor are the many philosophical conversations about perception and reality and wondering if the virtual people know they are just programming. We can easily spot evidence for it, once we start to look. Some of the evidence is subtle and unsettling, such as the way bystanders in many scenes will stare blankly at the characters, creating sensations of both unnatural inaction and constant surveillance. Some of it is very much not subtle, such as the scene in which a woman on the street is crushed by a falling load of concrete and nobody reacts appropriately. But even if we are meant to know, Stiller does not, so the film follows his increasingly paranoid and desperate attempts to find out what’s going on. One of his friends is dead, another is missing, and he knows it has something to do with the simulation he has helped create. He pops into the simulation world himself and meets up with a simulated person called Einstein (Gottfried John), who serves as the research team’s “contact” in the virtual reality. Einstein is the only one of the virtual people who knows they’re virtual, and he tries to escape by taking over another man’s body. When he does so, he tells Stiller that Stiller isn’t in the real world either, but in another layer of a simulated world. Stiller sets out to find out if this is true, his suspicions growing and his sanity unraveling all the while. He wants to find his world’s version of the “contact” person, but his efforts make all the other characters extremely wary of him. There is also a subplot about how Siskins is secretly colluding with a steel company to use the computer for corporate, commercial purposes, rather than the non-commercial social purposes for which it was designed, which is the sort of detail that feels like a glitch in this reality. Gosh, what would the world be like if corporations could use powerful computer simulations for commercial purposes? (Imagine me staring directly into the camera as I type that.) Because it’s been obvious all along, the confirmation that Stiller’s world is a simulation isn’t a surprise—but it also doesn’t help him much. It only puts him in greater danger. Eva Vollmer (Mascha Rabben) reveals to Stiller that he was created as a simulation of the real-world programmer controlling this virtual world; that man, she says, has gone mad with power and delights in tormenting his virtual counterpart. There are hardly any special effects to speak of in World on a Wire; the technology on-screen rarely has a science fictional appearance. But the movie still manages to convey a powerful sense of paranoid unreality by using its actors, setting, and truly brilliant cinematography. I’ve already mentioned the eerie, blank way bystanders act—or fail to react—in several scenes. It’s noticeable when they are in a crowd, such as in a party or at a club, but it’s also very unsettling in scenes with only a few characters. When Einstein escapes his virtual world in the body of Stiller’s friend Fritz (Günter Lamprecht) and Stiller physically attacks him, the cafeteria worker witnessing this stands there the entire time with a bemused expression on her face, barely reacting even when they smash a table. Waiters tend to appear and disappear without warning—which might be how we perceive service staff in real life, but is heightened here to a jarring degree. Furthermore, there is often something just slightly off about how many of the characters are behaving. The nonstop drinking and smoking might just be a relic of the ’70s, sure, but there is also something pointedly self-conscious about the habits, such as when Stiller is messily rolling cigarettes on a conference table at a meeting with his boss and the secretary of state. We know it’s absurd, he knows it’s absurd, but the other characters seem to think they’re having a perfectly normal meeting about the institute fulfilling its governmental obligations. It works because the cast is all very good at coming across as just a bit off. The movie was filmed in Paris, but for the most part the setting is completely interior: inside the offices at IKZ, inside the computer room, inside various homes and bars and clubs. One thing I absolutely love is how dense and rich the décor is. The rooms are filled with art pieces, the furniture is draped with furs, and even the telephones are stylishly shaped and brightly colored. There are several scenes that are a feast for the eyes, and this is highlighted by the way some characters are dressed. The (white) men mostly have suits and sideburns and mile-wide ties, but the women have a glorious array of fashion and hairstyles that add to the ornateness of every scene. The effect is not always a good one—the way women and men of color are literally objectified as part of the scenery might be intentional, but it’s also deeply off-putting—but the impact is still there. There is something designed about this world and these people, and we see it even without the science fictional or technological special effects. But my favorite tactic the film has of keeping us off-balance in this unreal world is in its camerawork. The cinematography by Michael Ballhaus and Ulrich Prinz is stunning. There isn’t much information out there about Prinz; he doesn’t have many credits to his name. Ballhaus, on the other hand, is widely regarded as one of the best cinematographers to have worked in the movie business. He collaborated with Fassbinder on several films before making a move to Hollywood, where he worked with the likes of Martin Scorsese, Robert Redford, and Francis Ford Coppola. You’ve almost certainly seen Ballhaus’ work before, and that includes a particular quirk for which he is especially famous: the long 360-degree tracking shot. Ballhaus and Fassbinder established that technique while working on the film Martha (1974); they filmed World on a Wire at more or less exactly the same time, during the summer of 1973, and it too makes extensive use of different types of dizzying 360-degree shots. My favorite example is in the second part of the film, when Siskins and Holm (Kurt Raab) are in the computer room discussing what to do about Stiller. The room is washed with cool, metallic blue light and completely wrapped in reflective surfaces. Holm is wearing a black suit and seated, while Siskins is wearing a bright plaid jacket and is pacing around constantly. In every single shot, there are multiple versions of both men, reflected from the countless mirrors. And as the camera moves and rotates, including turning in a complete circle, it becomes impossible to tell the men from their reflections. It’s disorienting, discomfiting, and really incredibly cool. It echoes the use of mirrors throughout the film: characters are often shot in reflection, so that they never seem to be looking in quite the right direction. The disruption of visual lines is hugely effective in weaving that sense of wrongness into scenes throughout the film. It’s Eva who finds a way to bring Stiller out of the virtual world at the end, by transferring his consciousness into the body of his creator. We suspect this is possible, because Einstein has done it before. But right up until it happened, I didn’t know if that’s where the film would go. I had absolutely no idea. It is certainly not a movie that carries an obvious promise of a happy ending; it works too hard throughout its running time to keep us unsettled and unsteady. Other characters are callously deleted; there is no reason for us to trust that Stiller won’t be as well. His knowledge that he’s a virtual person in a virtual world does not imbue him with any special powers or advantage. He doesn’t automatically know things he didn’t know before; he doesn’t have any new skills or tricks. He can’t change the rules of his world, nor is he really trying to. The changeable perspective, the untrustworthy perception, the sense of being both a part of the world but also separate from it, all of this works together to create this unreal reality. Because of the other virtual reality stories I’ve read and watched over the years, I went in expecting another story in which the entire point of awareness within the virtual world is to obtain some control over it. But Stiller’s goal is never to wrench power away from the unseen sadist playing god with his virtual world; he doesn’t even know about that man for the vast majority of the film. He only ever wants to know. He’s basically hosting a one-man epistemology seminar that features a lot of whisky, way too many cigarettes, and people constantly trying to shoot him. He wants to know how to define his world. He wants to know he isn’t crazy. He wants to know that the friend he remembers was real, that the things he saw really happened, that his paranoia does not come from nothing. In the end, I’m glad that the film does have a happy ending, more or less, because I found that I very much wanted Stiller’s knowledge of his world to lead to some change. At the same time, I also really like the way the film doesn’t quite embrace what is often the central fantasy of virtual reality stories: the idea that having secret knowledge of your world gives you a superior power to alter it. Stiller has the knowledge, but he doesn’t have the power; that still comes from outside the simulation, from people not subject to the same rules. It’s a fascinatingly bleak examination of the perception of free will, and exactly the sort of story I love to see explored when sci fi plays with virtual reality. What do you think about World on a Wire? Which of the lengthy rotating tracking shots was your favorite? How do you think it fits into the genre of virtual reality sci fi, which is often weird and almost always a bit philosophical? Next week: Let’s get lost in the intersection between illusion and reality with Alejandro Amenábar’s Open Your Eyes. Watch it on Amazon and BFI (UK only).[end-mark] The post <i>World on a Wire</i>: Smoke and Mirrors in Paranoid Unreality appeared first on Reactor.

News Alpha Gang Cate Blanchett Will Invade Earth in the Zellner Brothers’ Alpha Gang Take over the planet. Please. By Molly Templeton | Published on May 8, 2024 Screenshot: Marvel Studios Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: Marvel Studios First sasquatches, then space invaders. David and Nathan Zellner recently released Sasquatch Sunset, a very weird movie in which Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keogh starred as, yes, sasquatches; now, they’re planning to follow it up with an alien invasion comedy starring Cate Blanchett as… well, I’m going to let Variety explain: Alpha Gang follows alien invaders sent on a mission to conquer Earth. “Disguised in human form as an armed and dangerous 1950’s leather-clad biker gang, they show no mercy… until they catch the most toxic, contagious human disease of all: emotion,” reads the synopsis. Blanchett, apparently, will be playing the leader of said gang. So yes: leather-clad, armed and dangerous Cate Blanchett should be coming to a screen near you. It’s a fun turn for the former Queen Elizabeth, no? And her outfits for this might be almost as good as everything she got to wear in Ocean’s 8. Blanchett has, of course, been nominated for a whole pile of Oscars, and won two: Best Supporting Actress for The Aviator, and Best Actress for Blue Jasmine. She has played too many excellent roles to list here, but it would be silly not to mention her turns as Hela (Thor: Ragnarok, pictured above) and Galadriel (several Lord of the Rings movies, including, alas, those dreadfully long Hobbits). Alpha Gang is expected to begin filming later this year. Further casting announcements will be watched with great curiosity.[end-mark] The post Cate Blanchett Will Invade Earth in the Zellner Brothers’ <i>Alpha Gang</i> appeared first on Reactor.

News Twisters Twisters Seems to Really Want to Be a Cowboy Movie About Tornadoes We’re gonna twist again whether we like it or not. By Molly Templeton | Published on May 8, 2024 Screenshot: Universal Pictures Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: Universal Pictures Once upon a time, in the 1990s, there was a movie called Twister that was patently absurd, but also weirdly charming. Now, nearing 30 years later, there is a movie called Twisters that is not a sequel, nor a remake, but just another movie about people who really like to chase tornadoes. The film’s tagline seems to be, “You don’t face your fears. You ride ’em.” This tagline makes me tired. We now have our second trailer for Twisters, which is much like the first one, except with more buildup to the tornado that traumatizes Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and more chaotic tornado drama as the trailer (and presumably the film) progresses. Now there’s a fire tornado! I would like to be into this, but every time a character opens their mouth, the film gets less appealing. She’s a smarty-pants city girl! He (Glen Powell as Tyler Owens) is a good ol’ boy with a lot of social media followers and his face on a T-shirt, and he does things the old way, no PhDs required! The most intriguing part is that Kate might have figured out how to “disrupt” a tornado, but she done messed up last time. Who but the good ol’ boy to give her another chance? Twisters is directed by Lee Isaac Chung (Minari) from a screenplay by Mark L. Smith (The Midnight Sky), with a nod to Michael Crichton, who co-wrote the first Twister. It also stars Brandon Perea (Nope), Sasha Lane (American Honey), Daryl McCormack (Peaky Blinders), Kiernan Shipka (Chilling Adventures of Sabrina), Nik Dodani (Atypical) and Maura Tierney (Beautiful Boy). You can ride your fears right into the theater on July 19th.[end-mark] The post <i>Twisters</i> Seems to Really Want to Be a Cowboy Movie About Tornadoes appeared first on Reactor.