Movies & TV Eternity Eternity Tries to Break the Mold, But Only Bends It Slightly If you’re looking for an afterlife romance, this might fit the bill… but don’t expect it to do anything surprising. By Emmet Asher-Perrin | Published on December 2, 2025 Credit: A24 Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: A24 As a person who generally enjoys afterlife romantic shenanigans (don’t get me started on Chances Are, I beg you), Eternity seemed catered to my tastes precisely. Here’s a story about a woman named Joan (Elizabeth Olsen) who dies and finds out that the great beyond demands she choose an afterlife to reside in… forever. Things complicate themselves from there when both of her husbands—one she spent most of her life with, and one who died young in the Korean War—turn up to ask for her hand in eternity. Sounds fun, yes? Parts of Eternity are deeply enjoyable, but in a world where these sort of romantic comedies (being the sort where death and love intersect in silly ways) number far higher than you might expect, I was hoping for just a tiny bit more deconstruction. What we get is surprisingly rote and a little simplistic in terms of payoff. Perhaps all the name-checking of Billy Wilder on the press tour should have been a tipoff that surprise wasn’t on the docket so much as nostalgia for a different kind of film. Part of the trouble is in the film’s perspective choices—Joan’s husband Larry (Miles Teller, in the only role I’ve ever really enjoyed him in, which was a pleasant surprise) is the first one to die, which means that the film’s entire explanation of the afterlife occurs through his eyes, his vantage point. His Afterlife Coordinator Anna (another beautiful turn from Da’Vine Joy Randolph) explains that he must choose an eternity within a week, or stay at the “Hub” way station where he’ll have to get a job if he intends to wait for someone. Each eternity falls into a category, which is where things start to get a little itchy in terms of the worldbuilding; all the eternities were clearly built for the purpose of jokes, which means that they don’t make a ton of sense. There’s “Paris World,” “Capitalism World,” and “Studio 54 World,” and “Weimar Germany With No Nazis! World,” and also “Queer World,” which sounds like it should just be the former world, right? Then there are a bunch of afterlife eternities that are just geographical locations like “Beach World” and “Mountain World.” They each have a cap on residents, and once you’re there, you cannot change your mind. Your eternity is where you spend forever, which means this version of the afterlife is an absolute nightmare for anyone with ADHD who craves novelty, but I digress. You might think that wouldn’t matter because this is the afterlife, where earthly concerns don’t matter—and you’d be wrong! One of the funnier jokes in the movie deals with Larry’s presumptions about what a soul is, and Anna explains: What you are in life is basically what you are in death. (This is her gentle way of pointing out that Larry being a constantly aggravated grouch isn’t about to change any time soon.) If you had reservations about the cast all being young, hot versions of themselves once they die, this is explained in a way that makes it better… and also worse? The point is that you revert to the point in your life when you were “happiest,” which means there are a variety of ages running about the Hub. But that still points an odd finger at the central cast: Joan and Larry lived a long and lovely life together, complete with kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids. While it’s perhaps understandable that Larry would want to revert to a point in time when he had fewer physical aches and pains, the idea that both he and Joan would choose to be a version of themselves possibly before all their kids were even born seems odd. It misses out on the possibility of two younger-appearing men trying to romance an older-appearing woman, or of having Larry and Joan played by older actors while Luke (that’s husband #1) swoops in, in all his baby-faced glory. The film doesn’t sink into Joan’s perspective until well after she arrives at the Hub, which feels like an error built into the film’s framework. The entire story hinges on her choice between two men—one she only had briefly and one who saw her through every little facet of life, good and bad. The movie does a decent job at showing the pros and cons of both, but without sitting in Joan’s vantage point for the majority of the story, we don’t get to know her well enough to feel out this journey with her. This is Joan’s story,  or it should be. Olsen gives a charming and emotional performance, but the film has forgotten she’s the central character… or worse, was afraid to let her take on that role. One of the best parts of the film is when Joan finally gets away from both men: Larry and Luke get to hang out and find that they actually like each other very well when they’re not busy vying for an afterlife partner. Joan goes on a bender with recently deceased, secretly gay neighbor Karen, played by the always-effervescent Olga Merediz (Editor’s Note: I have known the actor in question for my entire life, and called her “Auntie Yoga” as a toddler when I couldn’t pronounce her name, so if that impacts your trust of my ability to review her performance… I suppose that’s only fair. I am still right, though—she’s an absolute hoot in this role.) In this section, the film stops worrying about the big overarching plot questions and remembers that people are beautiful for all of their connections to each other, however those connections come about. But then we come up for air, and those same annoying questions linger. Before you ask, no, polyamory is never seriously considered in this. Which feels wild given the eternity factor, again, but fine.  Joan makes a choice that briefly seems like a break in the age-old narrative rules, but it’s not for interesting reasons: She’s simply too scared to break either man’s heart. It falls again to Larry to make the right decision for them both, one that sees the story through to its conclusion. But while Larry’s devotion to making Joan feel cared for and adored is a beautiful thing, it still makes for a puzzling experience overall. What we learn in this exercise is that our lives are made by the people who stand by us through every little curveball life has to offer. Which… I think a lot of us instinctively know, when you get right down to it. What Eternity seems to miss is that eternity itself doesn’t have anything to do with that—at least, not the way “eternity” was conceived of in this use-case.[end-mark] The post <i>Eternity</i> Tries to Break the Mold, But Only Bends It Slightly appeared first on Reactor.

News knives out Beignet Blanc Stars in Surprise Sesame Street–Knives Out Crossover Short The best part might be the consideration given to Cookie Monster’s nostrils By Molly Templeton | Published on December 2, 2025 Screenshot: Netflix Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: Netflix No, that’s not a typo. We’re not talking about Benoit Blanc, the drawling detective played by Daniel Craig in Rian Johnson’s Knives Out films. We’re talking about Beignet Blanc, who investigates a different sort of crime in “Forks Out,” a charming short from Netflix, which is home to both Wake Up Dead Man (the latest Knives Out mystery) and Sesame Street. And over on Sesame Street, someone has eaten Cookie Monster’s pie. Who could it be? Oscar the Grouch, perhaps, whose sardine pie looks quite delicious, really, if you’re into that sort of thing? Rian Johnson? Did Cookie Monster steal his own pie? With drawl and charm, Beignet gets to the bottom of the pie pan, uncovering a solution that’s about as sweet as pie, and entirely appropriate to Sesame Street. This is utterly charming, but it has one flaw: Why not get Daniel Craig himself, real human Daniel Craig, to play Beignet? Like, in person, with the puppet residents. It would be incredible. I demand a remake! (The Reactor staff is not convinced that it is actually Daniel Craig doing the voice of Beignet, but we do not know who is doing it. Netflix has not been helpful with details.) This is not exactly the Muppets crossover folks have been asking for, but it’s not that far off. Knives Out creator Rian Johnson—who’s shot down the Muppets idea, gently and correctly pointing out that no one wants to see Muppets get murdered—has given the short the seal of approval, writing “This brings me so much joy” in a post on the website formerly known as Twitter. With knives and forks covered, one can only assume “Spoons Out” is coming soon. Wake Up Dead Man is currently in (some) theaters, and will be on Netflix December 12th.[end-mark] The post Beignet Blanc Stars in Surprise <i>Sesame Street</i>–<i>Knives Out</i> Crossover Short appeared first on Reactor.

Books Seeds of Story Infernal Gravity and the Logic of Death Scenes: Ada Palmer’s Inventing the Renaissance A fascinating look at how societies manufacture the myth of a Golden Age By Ruthanna Emrys | Published on December 2, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share Welcome to Seeds of Story, where I explore the non-fiction that inspires—or should inspire—speculative fiction. Every couple weeks, we’ll dive into a book, article, or other source of ideas that are sparking current stories, or that have untapped potential to do so. Each article will include an overview of the source(s), a review of its readability and plausibility, and highlights of the best two or three “seeds” found there. This week, I cover Ada Palmer’s Inventing the Renaissance: The Myth of a Golden Age. It’s a book about why societies invent Golden Ages, what they get out of them, and the real changes that grow from these myths. It’s also full of really juicy gossip about the Medici family, explanations of what the hell Machiavelli was thinking, and descriptions of how badly it sucks to get your arts funding from oligarchs. What It’s About At the start of the COVID pandemic, people kept asking Ada Palmer—history scholar and science fiction author—whether this new plague would lead to a new Renaissance, just as the Black Death led to the original Renaissance. This book is her answer, and her explanation of all the levels on which that question is not even wrong. It starts with the fuzziness of what we mean by “the Renaissance.” Different historians list time periods that barely overlap, depending on what region they study and, more importantly, what development they consider the key shift toward modernity. Artistic flourishing? Modern-ish banking? The birth of nationalism? Each of these changes is its own myth, used to claim legitimacy for later powers in later ages: if the “X-factor” is banking and trade, then the capitalist side of the Cold War can claim the Renaissance and progress, and consign communism to the (imaginary) Dark Age that clouded men’s minds between antiquity and rebirth. This kind of story starts in Renaissance Italy itself, with Petrarch’s proposal that reclaiming and teaching the wisdom of antiquity could pull society out of its war-torn dystopian morass, and create a new golden age echoing Rome’s old security and unity. This had real impacts—we can read Homer again—but did not precisely achieve its goals: In 1506, Machiavelli received a letter from a friend, who had recently read the first part of his history of the decade they’d just lived through. The friend urged Machiavelli to write more. Why? Because, he said, without a good history of these days, future generations would never believe how bad it was, and would never forgive their generation for losing so much so quickly. This was the same decade in which Michelangelo carved the David and Leonardo painted the Mona Lisa, yet living through the years that laid these golden eggs felt like an apocalypse. Machiavelli then goes on to create a theory of scientific realpolitik, of picking political strategies based on what appears to work rather than what sounds good in Cicero—strongly influenced by following Cesare Borgia as he commits what we’d now consider to be war crimes. But his goal was still the preservation and improvement of (Florentine) civilization. Per Palmer—biased herself, as she points out, like any other historian—the Renaissance X-factor is this kind of societal self-examination, and this ability to imagine that if we try new things we will get new, maybe even better, results. It’s doing this desperate experimentation in the middle of apocalypse. And it’s fuzzy at the edges: everything that happens in the Renaissance can be found during preceding centuries, but in this pressure cooker becomes “ever so much moreso.” I have a choice here between focusing on the book’s overarching thesis and the delightful details, and have mostly done the former. But in the course of Palmer’s cohesive argument, we get rich bios of thirteen “friends” who provide very different views of the Renaissance, ranging from mercenary Montesecco to composer Josquin des Prez to charismatic religious martyr Savonarola. We get an explanation of different types of ethics so that we understand what was so innovative about Machiavelli, and also so we understand why Shakespeare’s death scenes are so drawn-out. (Whether you go to heaven or hell depends on your final thoughts! You can’t know how to feel about someone’s death if you don’t get that monologue!) We get the history of how Florence convinced everyone that they were an irreplaceable center of art and culture, such that damaging the city would be a crime against all of humanity. (It worked—not only did it discourage invasions at the time, but they still have all their Renaissance architecture because no one bombed them during the world wars!) These are all intrinsic to the book’s overarching argument. They’re also necessary to understanding that argument, because they illustrate just how much of another country the past really is. History isn’t divided into the period before and after people took up recognizable modern beliefs. Ultimately, the great project of trying to make a better world can be effective. It won’t, however, always be effective in the way you’re aiming for. Petrarch wanted to end war, and that hasn’t happened. But the movements he started eventually led to vaccines and antibiotics, and the Black Death is now easily treatable. We can all hope that, in 500 years, someone will write about us as historical friends, and trace the unexpected changes resulting from our efforts. Buy the Book Inventing the Renaissance: The Myth of a Golden Age Ada Palmer Buy Book Inventing the Renaissance: The Myth of a Golden Age Ada Palmer Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget Ada is a friend, and I got to read a partial draft of this book three years early as prep for an instance of the LARP described in Chapter 65. One usually worries about reviewers being biased by real-life friendship, but I suspect I am much more biased by having spent a few days playing Cardinal Giovanni Colonna. (Cesare Borgia’s not that bad! He convinced his father to give me partial control of Milan, allowing me to restore my family fortunes! I’ve just arranged a marriage alliance with Cardinal della Rovere, what do you mean he’ll be Battle Pope II?) Anyway, this book is very much like the delightful experience of hanging out with Ada at a con, talking about theories of societal change, or getting her personalized tour of the Uffizi, or, presumably, sitting in her classroom. It’s chatty, deep, thought-provoking, and an excellent illustration of Jo Walton’s assertion that history is the secret weapon of speculative fiction writers. It feels like a friend coming up to you at recess, hands cupped around some secret treat, going GUESS WHAT I FOUND IN THE WOODS??? Palmer has a mycologist’s enthusiasm for the brightly-colored fungus of the Renaissance, and it’s infectious. As someone who studies present-day interactions between story and society and technology, the history of these mythmaking processes fascinates me. It’s good to have a reminder of how long-lasting the effects can be, but also how far they evolve and adapt over time. There’s continuity between the people thinking it doesn’t have to be like this in 1500s Italy and 2000s America—but also vast differences in our understanding of how and why change can happen. The gap is both daunting and reassuring. The Best Seeds for Speculative Stories Patrons and Saints. One thing that gives Palmer’s students trouble, when trying to play realistic characters from 1492, is the patronage system. Renaissance European society is built around the idea that you have someone richer and more powerful than you who can call on your loyalty, and who provides you with financial and social support. They, in turn, have a patron, who has a patron, on up to emperors and popes. This is mirrored in the sacred Court of Heaven, where saints advocate for the groups of which they’re patrons, and beg favors of their own deific protectors. Your patron can speak for you in a court of law, and ask for mercy when you break the rules. The entire justice system is set up to allow and account for this, and to provide an earthly lesson about heavenly justice. The natural/official punishments are severe and terrible; you are meant to depend on patron intervention and mercy from the top in order to avoid them. If you aren’t embedded in this protective hierarchy, it’s only natural that you fall prey to the worst consequences. This is (1) the complete inverse of the logic by which modern democratic, secular justice systems are designed, and (2) clearly the model that some people have in mind when they demand harsh punishments in written law, but expect that police, judges, and juries will show mercy when there are mitigating circumstances, or mitigating in-group memberships. Or when they bribe officials, using methods that would have been perfectly legitimate and legal five centuries ago. It’s easy to take for granted assumptions that are very modern and local, and assume that they’ll apply in Middle-earth or on Alderaan. But many possible attitudes toward hierarchy and justice are dreamt of in our philosophy—and this diversity should show up in our worldbuilding as well. Faith as Physics, Physics as Faith. Renaissance Europe, and Italy in particular, is extremely Christian. However, breaking with modern assumptions, there’s no sense of conflict between Christianity and scholarship. Rather the reverse: it’s taken for granted that the Platonic Truth is out there, and that study will eventually produce common insights from all sources of truth. This assumption is extremely important, not because scholars expect to eventually come up with vaccines, but because correctly understanding the truth is necessary for eternal salvation. And the truth is expected to be physics. Heaven and Hell and Purgatory are specific places, the soul has mass based on its sin and virtue; you get where you’re going after death due to gravity. Thus those Shakespearian death scenes; the groundlings have to know which direction your soul is pointing at the moment of departure. This confidence in one cohesive truth, reconcilable across multiple types of inquiry, gave scholars confidence and occasionally surprising leeway, but also made certain types of truth harder to notice. If confident 20th-century scholars could measure non-existent differences in skull volume across ethnicities, imagine how long it took to admit that Aristotle wasn’t completely compatible with Plato—or that individual observations could be more accurate than Aristotle. As I mentioned in our last column, it’s hard to get more science fictional than imagining the implications of different physics—or of different assumptions about how those physics should be studied. New Growth: What Else to Read Palmer’s Terra Ignota series is science fiction that mines the big philosophical-physical questions of the Renaissance. It also has flying cars. Dante was a science fiction author by Renaissance standards, writing about Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory based on the best physics of the time. Other excellent readings of the (broadly-defined) era include Petrarch’s letters, and Machiavelli’s. Annalee Newitz’s Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind is a very different take on how societies produce, and change in response to, national mythologies. Matthew Gabriele and David M. Perry’s The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe does an excellent job of deconstructing the myth of the Dark Ages, a necessary precursor for deconstructing the myth of the Renaissance. What are your favorite “the past is another country” historical facts? Are there old friends you’d like to introduce everyone to? Share in the comments.[end-mark] The post Infernal Gravity and the Logic of Death Scenes: Ada Palmer’s <i>Inventing the Renaissance</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Books Best of 2025 Cast Your Vote for the Best SFF of the Year! Books! Movies! TV shows! Video games! Short fiction! And more!! By Reactor | Published on December 2, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share We are thrilled to announce… REACTOR’S BEST OF THE YEAR READERS’ POLL!! Books! Movies! TV shows! Video games! Short fiction! And more!! Reactor Magazine would like to know your speculative fiction favorites from 2025. That weird short film that gave you nightmares? The sci-fi thriller that’s got a million fan theories swirling around in your head? The cozy fantasy series you can’t stop telling everyone to check out even though you’re pretty sure they’re tired of hearing about it? We want it all. Share the poll with your friends! Your family! The Discord chats you haven’t messaged in 4 months. Your old roommate. Your favorite SFF forums, if you’re classy. We’ll reveal the results later this year. VOTE HERE! Polling closes at 11:59pm EST on Sunday, December 7th  The post Cast Your Vote for the Best SFF of the Year! appeared first on Reactor.

News Mother Mary Anne Hathaway Goes Full Diva in the Trailer for David Lowery’s Mother Mary Not sure you wanna say yes to this dress, Anne By Molly Templeton | Published on December 2, 2025 Screenshot: A24 Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: A24 The director of The Green Knight is now interested in everything red. That’s my initial takeaway from the dramatic, stylish trailer for David Lowery’s Mother Mary, which appears to be the story of a wildly successful pop star returning to someone she once left behind in order to request a dress. There’s something very fairy-tale about this; everyone knows how magical the right dress can be (just ask Cinderella!). But instead, things get very weird, and slightly witchy, and Michaela Coel delivers some wryly threatening lines with crackling anger. Anne Hathaway is the pop star here, but it’s Coel who’s magnetic in the trailer. The synopsis offers little else to go on: Long-buried wounds rise to the surface when iconic pop star Mother Mary (Anne Hathaway) reunites with her estranged best friend and former costume designer Sam Anselm (Michaela Coel) on the eve of her comeback performance. Estranged best friend, eh? That is not exactly the vibe I was getting, but okay. Mother Mary is, as one would expect from Lowery, deeply stylish, with that blood-vibrant red fabric/ghost/presence billowing throughout. It’s a coy trailer, hinting at body horror and the religious leanings of Mother Mary’s name but insisting it is not a ghost story, not a love story, but a communion, a prayer, and a sacrifice, among other things. Whatever it is, it’s gorgeously shot, the performance scenes are striking, and the cast (which also includes Hunter Schafer and FKA Twigs) can’t be beat. The songs are by Jack Antonoff, Charli XCX, and FKA Twigs; the movie is both written and directed by Lowery. Mother Mary doesn’t have a specific release date yet—just “Spring 2026″—so doubtless we’ll peek further behind the curtain in new trailers before it arrives.[end-mark] The post Anne Hathaway Goes Full Diva in the Trailer for David Lowery’s <i>Mother Mary</i> appeared first on Reactor.