I don't know: Is it a good thing or a bad thing if Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion) is making fun of you? He doesn't look like a guy with the greatest grasp on, well, anything. But then, Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced) is also in the room in which it all happens—by which I mean three people (Maxwell Lord is the third) insult Peacemaker (John Cena) when they're supposed to be asking him questions. Mostly Hawkgirl seems to be there for the popcorn, though.
As it turns out, saving the world doesn't always turn everyone into your biggest fan. Peacemaker is having a bit of a hard time in this trailer for the second season of the Max series. The synopsis is brief:
The new season follows Christopher “Chris” Smith, aka Peacemaker, the vigilante Super Hero as he struggles to reconcile his past with his newfound sense of purpose while continuing to kick righteous evil-doer butt in his misguided quest for peace at any cost
Writer (and sometime director) James Gunn's fingerprints are all over this trailer, not least in the poster for "Hanoi Roxx" that appears near the end, when Christopher "Chris" Smith appears to walk into some other world, where there's another version of himself (the other one presumably has pants on). Peacemaker is a fan of Hanoi Rocks (as they're called in this world), and so is Gunn, who recently posted on Instagram about going to see lead singer Michael Monroe and taking some of his Superman and Peacemaker cast along for the show.
Along with Cena, Danielle Brooks, Jennifer Holland, Freddie Stroma, Steve Agee, and Robert Patrick are back for season two. Frank Grillo, David Denman, Sol Rodriguez, and Tim Meadows are among the new faces this time around. The eight-episode second season of Peacemaker is on Max beginning August 21st.[end-mark]
Sometimes, SFF movie news can feel a little repetitive. You type the words "Marvel" and "DC Studios" and "Disney" over and over again. But not today. Today we get to talk about Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s A Useful Ghost, which makes its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival later this month and has, at present, a surprising and delightful trailer.
The synopsis doesn't prepare you for the reality, but it is quite promising:
March is mourning his wife Nat who has recently passed away due to dust pollution. He discovers her spirit has returned by possessing the vacuum cleaner. Being disturbed by a ghost that appeared after a worker's death shut down their factory, his family reject the unconventional human-ghost relationship. Trying to convince them of their love, Nat offers to cleanse the factory. To become a useful ghost, she must first get rid of the useless ones.
As my editor said after seeing the summary, "Woman can't escape housework even in death."
The trailer, though. The trailer is funny and eerie and baffling in excellent combination. There's a vacuum makeout session (pictured above). There is a caption that reads simply, "Oops, a ghost." Oops! There's also running and screaming and a big splash of blood. It's tonally all over the place in the best way.
A Useful Ghost stars Davika Hoorne as Nat and Witsarut Himmarat as March, her husband. It's the first film from director Boonbunchachoke, who Deadline says "is regarded as one of Thailand’s hottest emerging directors on the back of his short films."
Let us cross all our fingers and toes—and vacuum hoses—that a U.S. distributor picks this up so we can see it.[end-mark]
We've been waiting for more details on Jane Schoenbrun's next film, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, basically since we first heard about it—and now there's news, and it's very good news indeed. Variety reports that Gillian Anderson (The X-Files; Sex Education, pictured above) and Hannah Einbinder (Hacks) are set to star in the film, which will reportedly be "funnier and grislier" than Schoenbrun's previous films.
Variety describes the movie like this:
In Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, the infamous “Camp Miasma” slasher franchise is getting rebooted yet again. But when the latest movie’s director becomes obsessed with the mysterious, reclusive actress who played the “final girl” in the original film, a whole new kind of slasher emerges from the bottom of the lake.
No details have been offered about casting, though it seems moderately logical to guess that Anderson might be playing that final girl. In a statement, Schoenbrun said, “I make movies I wish existed when I was a kid. ... Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is my best attempt at the ‘sleepover classic:’ an insane yet cozy midnight odyssey that beckons to unsuspecting viewers from the horror section at the local video store."
Schoenbrun's I Saw the TV Glow was, as Variety puts it, "one of the most acclaimed indies of 2024." Emmet Asher-Perrin wrote, "It is about transness and queerness, certainly, but it is also about the ways in which fandom can anchor lives, and the places we find ourselves in life that don’t fit. And it is a story about becoming… and about the violence inflicted on anyone who attempts to become in direct defiance of the world that they are crammed inside."
There's no word yet on when Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma will arrive on screens.[end-mark]
More vampires are coming to your television. According to Variety, a series adaptation of Kate Stayman-London's 2024 novel Fang Fiction is in the works, with Diablo Cody (Jennifer's Body) executive producing.
Fang Fiction came out last year and was a bestseller; Entertainment Weekly called it, "A delightfully meta take on fandom, vampire fiction, and a beautiful tribute to the healing power of fantasy and facing your demons.” Here's the publisher's synopsis:
Tess Rosenbloom is no stranger to the dark. An assault survivor and grad school dropout, Tess spends her nights managing a chic Brooklyn hotel and her days reading her favorite vampire novels, Blood Feud. She even dabbles in online conspiracies claiming Blood Feud is real—it’s fun to hunt for clues! But deep down, Tess doesn’t believe vampires actually exist . . . until one walks through her door.
It turns out the sexy villain of Blood Feud is trapped, and only Tess can rescue him. Eager to escape her life, Tess agrees to help, and soon she’s on a secret island where the sun never shines, surrounded by deadly vampires—and most terrifying of all, she’s falling in love with one of them. (Meanwhile, back in New York, Tess’s estranged best friend is having a sapphic paranormal affair of her own.)
Visiting the world of your favorite story is any fan’s dream, but can Tess outrun the demons of her past (and vampires of her present) before it becomes a nightmare? In this darkly glamorous rom-com, Tess will find out if it’s worth risking her neck—and her heart—for a chance to reclaim her future.
Stayman-London is writing the adaptation herself; Variety notes that Cody is "said to be working closely with her on the script." No network or streamer is on board yet, but surely it's just a matter of time: Vampires sure do seem to be having a(nother) moment.[end-mark]
Here’s the movie’s official synopsis, per Deadline:
The Dog Stars follows Hig, a civilian pilot living a lonely life on an abandoned Colorado airbase with his dog and a tough ex-marine. The two men couldn’t be more mismatched but depend on each other to fend off roaming invaders. When a random transmission beams through the radio of his 1956 Cessna, the voice ignites a hope deep inside the pilot that a better life exists outside their tightly controlled perimeter. Risking everything, he flies past his point of no return and follows its static-broken trail.
We already know the two major human stars in the film: Jacob Elordi (Euphoria, Guillermo del Toro’s upcoming Frankenstein) plays Hig, and Josh Brolin (Weapons, Dune Parts 1 & 2, Outer Rim) is the ex-marine named Bangley. Other actors on board include Margaret Qualley (Poor Things, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood), who plays a character named Cima, a doctor whom Hig meets when his plane crashes, and Guy Pearce (Memento), who plays Qualley’s father.
Today, we also found out that Benedict Wong (3 Body Problem) is part of the cast, though his character details remain under wraps. We don’t know (yet!) who will play Hig’s beloved dog, Jasper.
The adaptation was penned by Mark L. Smith, who also wrote the script for The Revenant. The 20th Century Studios movie is currently filming in Italy, with no news yet on when it will make its way to a theater near you.[end-mark]
"Don't touch anything," Ed Warren (Patrick Wilson) says in a basement full of haunted stuff, at the very start of the teaser for The Conjuring: Last Rites, the supposed last Conjuring film. It's good advice! And I'm sure some people fail to take it.
Last Rites is, as the teaser will tell you, based on the last case investigated by the real-life Ed and Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga). And this time, as Lorraine says, "Something's changed." Maybe it's the sink full of blood? Maybe the floating possessed dolls? Maybe the way something seems specifically to be stalking Lorraine? No synopsis is on offer for this latest film in the Conjuring universe, which is directed by Michael Chaves (The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It) and produced by James Wan and Peter Safran.
Last Rites also stars Mia Tomlinson as Warren daughter Judy and Ben Hardy as Judy's boyfriend, Tony. A lot of writers are credited: screenwriters Ian Goldberg & Richard Naing and David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick; story creators Johnson-McGoldrick and Wan; and character creators Chad Hayes and Carey W. Hayes.
According to Variety, the Conjuring series is the highest-grossing horror franchise in history. Will these Last Rites really be final? Surely there are always more horrors to investigate.
The Conjuring: Last Rites is in theaters—including IMAX, if you're longing for some really BIG haunted baby dolls—September 5th.[end-mark]
The end of The Old Guard seemed to make it quite clear who Andromache of Scythia—Andy to her friends—would have to face in the second film. There was, if I can say this without spoiling a five-year-old film, some baggage there. Some history.
But The Old Guard 2 has a second enemy up its sleeve. In one of the most delicious face-offs to come along for a minute, Charlize Theron's Andy finds herself at odds with Uma Thurman, playing the first immortal—who is quite cranky with Andy for caring about humans, it seems. Here's Netflix's synopsis:
Andy (Charlize Theron) and her team of immortal warriors are back, with a renewed sense of purpose in their mission to protect the world. With Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts) still in exile after his betrayal, and Quynh (Veronica Ngô) out for revenge after escaping her underwater prison, Andy grapples with her newfound mortality as a mysterious threat emerges that could jeopardize everything she’s worked towards for thousands of years. Andy, Nile (KiKi Layne), Joe (Marwan Kenzari), Nicky (Luca Marinelli) and James Copley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) enlist the help of Tuah (Henry Golding), an old friend who may provide the key to unlocking the mystery behind immortal existence. Directed by Victoria Mahoney, and also starring Uma Thurman, The Old Guard 2 is an emotional, adrenaline-pumping sequel, based on the world created by Greg Rucka and illustrator Leandro Fernandez.
The first Old Guard movie was one of the rare good things about 2020, an action film with excellent fight sequences and a lot of heart. The second has a new director (Mahoney replaces Gina Prince-Bythewood, who's presumably busy with Children of Blood and Bone), but the film is still written by comic co-creator Rucka, this time writing with Sarah L. Walker.
And this trailer looks great! There's just enough action to get a sense of the fight sequences without giving them all away, just enough sense of villainous motivation, and a brief bit involving fast cars that gave me Fast and/or Furious feels. Yes please.
The Old Guard 2 fights its way onto Netflix on July 2nd.[end-mark]
Note: This column includes spoilers for The Last of Us, season two, episode two.
A year and change ago, when writing up the news about Kaitlyn Dever’s casting in The Last of Us, I wanted to know why people had such strong feelings about her character. I found the shortest possible version of the answer and went on my merry way, not sure I would even be back to watch the show’s second season. (One can only take so much apocalyptic storytelling, especially in this timeline.)
As it turned out, instead of skipping the season, I’m reviewing it, which means I not only watched the episode in which Abby brutally kills Joel, but I thought about it. A lot.
And mostly what I thought about was the fact that knowing that it was coming didn’t make that moment any less terrible. It wasn’t just that moment, either: That episode, “Through the Valley,” tells viewers all the big things that are going to happen. There are piles of infected hiding under the snow. There is a plan for what happens if Jackson gets attacked. Abby, as she has already told us, wants to kill Joel. She gets her chance. The snow erupts with the infected. Jackson’s wall is breached. It’s all breathtaking.
It’s a cliche and a truth to say that the journey matters more than the destination. But that episode got me thinking a lot about stories, and narrative structure, and what we do or don’t consider spoilers—and the unpredictable way that sometimes knowing the details matters, and sometimes it doesn’t. I watched a very uninspired action movie years ago with only one thought in my head: When is the female lead going to die? I’d accidentally read a review that mentioned her death, and so for the first 20 minutes of the film, until it happened, that knowledge distracted me. I could not stop being aware it was going to happen.
This was not the case with poor Joel. Part of the reason for this was just that I didn’t expect it to come so soon in the season; I was in denial even as he rescued Abby and rode straight into her clutches. Surely something would happen to avert this—for now. Surely that death would be finale material.
Nope. It was time, and the episode was so well crafted, so perfectly acted, so masterfully directed, that knowing all those things only contributed to the sense of dread. Presumably, the writer (co-creator Craig Mazin) and director (Game of Thrones alum Mark Mylod) were aware that a lot of their audience knew that Joel’s death was impending, and they took that into consideration when creating an episode that had no other surprises. That would be enough of a shock for the unspoiled. You get a heads up for all the other terrible bits: You’re going to be stressed. You’re going to be upset. You might not see this other thing coming.
I thought, for a while, that maybe the reason I didn’t mind knowing what would happen to Joel was because it can be sort of soothing, or at least less dreadful, to know what’s coming, even when it’s terrible. But then I looked around and thought again. Knowing how many terrible things are coming, are continuing, have been happening, will keep happening—none of that makes it any “easier,” though to be honest I don’t know what “easy” would even mean in such a context. I never understand the frequent use of the phrase “I’m not surprised” when terrible news breaks. What difference does that make? Are you not still horrified? Is a death, a war, a genocide, the removal of someone’s rights, the destruction of important systems, less awful when you expect it? Maybe surprise makes some things feel more immediately acute. But the surprise fades. The horror remains.
Andor is a story in which we know exactly what is going to happen, eventually, because we’ve already seen Rogue One, which left many of us with several questions about how exactly Cassian Andor got where he ended up. Wicked, the book, is a story in which we know the ending (the musical, well, that’s a different story). Game of Thrones walked familiar territory for many of us, up to a point. Every retelling, to some degree, is a story in which the reader knows the ending, depending on their familiarity with the original tale (and the liberties the author does or doesn’t take). Arthur dies. Greek gods and goddesses get up to countless shenanigans. The evil queen/stepmother/witch is defeated. Can you spoil those? Is a spoiler different than basic story knowledge?
I don’t actually want to argue about spoilers. Especially not the week after Marvel gleefully spoiled its own movie in a way that implied that if you were a real fan, you would have gone to said movie already and thus not been spoiled. Spoilers exist, but they’re different for everyone, and a detail is not a spoiler. I think my definition of “spoiler” might be something like “a thing that, once you know it, changes how you experience the whole.” Not necessarily a twist, or a reveal, but a thing you can’t shove back out of your brain. Is it always a thing the storyteller presumably didn’t want you to know? Is the element of surprise part of it? Can that thing still be interesting, even without the surprise?
You can only experience a story for the first time once. But maybe there’s too much emphasis on the relative purity of that first time. It comes back to that impossible question of what each reader wants to know about a book before reading it. I’ve had moments where I had no interest in a book until someone told me a specific detail or angle, unmentioned in the cover copy or reviews, that was right up my alley. I know I’ve had this moment. But whatever book that was has just become part of my mental library, the details forgotten. It mattered at the time. It’s irrelevant now. Details are weird like that.
Daniel Abraham’s Kithamar trilogy tells the story of one year from three perspectives. I was a bit skeptical, going into the second book after reading the first, about how well this could work. And then I liked the second book as much as, if not more than, the first. You could read them in either order—or any order, once the third arrives. I am more antsy for the third book in this series than just about any other fantasy novel I can presently think of. And technically, I know what happens. But I have no idea how, or what the next perspective(s) will be like. The element of surprise is both present and absent. It’s delicious.
The no-spoilers-please people and the tell-me-everything people want different experiences. But even a blank slate isn’t blank; you arrive at a book, or a movie, or an episode of TV, with your own understanding and experience with stories and genre and narrative forms. I like to watch things twice, once for the first-time experience, and a second time to see how it works. I occasionally read things twice like that too, but it takes so much longer. Sometimes, though. Sometimes there’s time, and it’s as if knowing where the path ends makes it easier to keep my attention on every step. Like knowing the way makes the journey better. Sometimes.[end-mark]
I’d say something smart like “Vive la resistance!” but... yikes.
“Messenger”
Credit: Lucasfilm
It’s two years before the Battle of Yavin. Cassian is on the Rebel base on Yavin 4 nursing a blaster burn that isn’t healing, and Wilmon returns from his latest mission to see him and Bix. Cassian wants to know where he’s been, but Wilmon is vague. He tells Cassian that Luthen wants to know if he’s ready to work, as he knows Cassian’s been injured. Wil isn’t trusting of all the new people who keep showing up to this base, but Cassian insists that they can’t go it alone if they want to win. Luthen wants them to hit Ghorman again; he knows that Dedra Meero is on Ghorman now and in charge. He wants them to kill her, and Wilmon thinks it’s the right thing to do. Cassian tells him to check in. Dedra is told that the original plan for Ghorman will go forward—there’s no substitute for the material they want from the planet. The mining project will begin in 48 hours. Captain Kaido (Jonjo O’Neill) is her crisis specialist, bringing troops in. Dedra is concerned, but Partagaz assures her she’s done admirably. Syril comes in to asks what’s going on; Dedra still hasn’t told him the truth about Ghorman, but she does tell him to pack and be ready to leave.
Mon Mothma’s driver Kloris (Lee Ross) is an ISB agent, but she can’t get rid of him as he’s thankfully incompetent. Senator Oran tells Mon that he wants to thank her for aiding everyone in the face of what the Empire is doing: He knows Ghorman doesn’t have long and urges her to protect herself. On Ghorman, the Front is arguing about what kind of resistance they should display. Rylanz wants them to continue peaceful protest while the rest are urging more violent displays. Lezine (Theirry Godard), now a member of the movement, tells them to stop fighting and remember what they’re trying to preserve. On Yavin 4, Bix brings Cassian to a “Force healer” (Josie Walker), which he thinks is nonsense. The woman notices them and approaches on her own, touching Cassian’s wound and thanking him for giving her clarity, for his strength of spirit. Cassian flees and the woman tells Bix that Cassian is a messenger, that he gathers what he needs as he goes—that he has a great purpose in all of this and there’s a place he needs to be. Bix confronts Cassian about it, insisting that she’s had similar dreams to what this woman told her, that he needs to let it in.
On Ghorman, Syril speaks with Enza, wanting more information on whether the Front is working with outside agitators, but she slaps him and continues on her way. General Draven (Alistair Petrie) asks Cassian where he and Wilmon are heading off to, but they won’t tell him—he lets Cassian know that’s no longer acceptable, and he will have to fold into their ranks sooner rather than later. Kaido arrives on Ghorman with troops who are clearly brand new and untested; Cassian and Wilmon land in the hills. Vel comes to talk to Bix on Yavin 4. She’s doing intake there because she needed a break; she was getting reckless. She was asked to talk to Bix by the generals because they need Cassian to stick around now. He’s a leader here and they need to be able to depend on him. On Ghorman, curfew is in effect. Cassian and Wilmon split up, and Cassian checks back into the same hotel on the plaza. The former bellhop Thela (Stefan Crepon) is working the desk, and also a member of the Front now. He remembers Cassian and warns him of how he’ll be reported on by the staff. Cassian and Wil check comms to make sure they work. Cassian checks his sightlines for the assassination tomorrow, noticing that there are more troops than expected.
“Who Are You?”
Cassian assembles his rifle in the morning. In the square, Sargeant Bloy (Tomi May) is deploying the troops to put up barricades around the plaza. Cassian contacts Wilmon on the comms, asking what’s going on. Everyone on Ghorman is hearing that they’re opening the plaza, and Cassian urges him to recognize that it’s not an opening, it’s a trap. Dedra contacts Partagaz about how bad it looks that the mining equipment keeps being spotted, but he insists that they don’t have to worry about that anymore; their misinformation campaign has done its work. Syril is told to report to the Imperial building as an employee and check in. The Ghor take to the streets, and Rylanz warns his daughter that this is what the Empire wants, and that everyone is going to die. The group assembles on the plaza, chanting and carrying flags. Rylanz sees Syril and accuses him of duplicity. Syril insists that he means no harm, and admits to his mission of trapping outside agitators. Rylanz tells him about the mining equipment, and Syril doesn’t want to believe him, throwing that man to the ground and heading to the square.
Cassian leaves his room and Thela tells him that he never checked him in; he was never here. When Cassian says he hopes it works out for them, that man tells him that “Rebellions are built on hope.” Cassian watches the group assemble and notices that they’re in a killbox situation. He tries to get in touch with Wil, but it’s hard to hear him over the comms. He spots Dedra and tries to get in position to line up his shot. Syril heads into the Imperial building and is asked to sit in a waiting area with others and a crew of KX droids. One of them keeps staring at him. On the square, troops move to box the protestors in. Kaido orders Bloy to take his green troops into the square to patrol despite their lack of readiness. Lezine begins to sing rather than chant, and the whole square is soon joining in on the traditional song. Syril forces his way into Dedra’s office, asking what she’s doing and how long she’s known that his mission was fake. He grabs her forcefully and chokes her, demanding the truth. Dedra tells him, and insists that this is what they both wanted, to go home as heroes. Syril says goodbye and exits the building before she can stop him, merging into the crowd.
Bloy’s troops push back the crowd in their riot gear, getting increased resistance. Dedra receives orders to proceed and TIEs fly overhead. An Imperial sniper on the roof kills one of their own troops to create panic in the crowd and a massacre begins. Cassian keeps an eye on the windows, still trying to get his shot, but the Ghor are revealing their own weapons and everyone is joining the fray or running for their life. The exits are blocked, and people begin running into the hotel, directed out the back by Thela. The Front continues to lose fighters, as Syril looks on in horror. The KX droids are sent out, throwing people aside, including Enza, who is killed. Cassian almost has his shot lined up when a bomb goes off in the hotel. Syril spots Cassian across the plaza and goes after him. The two of them brawl in a cafe, and Syril gets a blaster trained on Cassian, who merely asks, “Who are you?” In the ensuing pause, Rylanz shoots Syril in the head.
Wilmon is trying to find Dreena (Ella Pellegrini), his Ghor girlfriend, and he gets boxed in with Cassian by a KX droid who is rampaging. Samm hits the droid with a transport, and Wilmon tells Cassian that he can’t leave without Dreena. He implores Cassian to leave and tell everyone what happened here. Cassian asks for one last favor and loads up the destroyed KX droid. Dreena sends out word on the comms, telling the galaxy what the Empire is doing to Ghorman, asking them to pass the message along. Wil joins her, and she asks him to broadcast too. Cassian leaves Ghorman in tears. Dedra stands alone in her office, tugging at her Imperial uniform collar and shaking. The news portrays this is an insurrection by the Ghor, aided with outside rebel assistance.
“Welcome to the Rebellion”
Bail Organa arrives at the Senate right as Senator Oran is being arrested, his pleas for help going unaided. Mon Montha tells Bail that she needs to make a speech, and that she needs his help so she can take the floor. Mon has decided that she needs to do this and be done, that they both have to leave. Bail tells her that he can’t yet, but that he supports her plans, and she must be ready to go the instant she’s done giving her speech. Kleya tells Cassian that they’re keeping the journalist cover they used on Ghorman to get him into the Senate building to aid Mon Mothma tomorrow. Cassian tells Kleya that he won’t be coming back after this, that he wants out of the entire cause. She’s unimpressed given that he’s just witnessed the Ghorman Massacre, but he insists that he’s always come through and needs to start making his own choices. She tells him she thought that was what they were fighting for.
Erskin Semaj finds the bug Bail warned about in Mon’s office, and she breaks the thing. ISB notices that the device has gone down. Mon needs to practice her speech, so she goes to the plaza where she doesn’t have to worry about being spied on. Luthen finds her there because it turns out that Erskin works for him, a fact that Mon feels utterly betrayed by. Luthen tells her that when she flees, she needs to use his operative instead of Bail’s people; there’s something wrong with his team and Luthen doesn’t know what. Mon admits that right now she’s more afraid of Luthen than anything, but he tells her his code phrase—I have friends everywhere—to know when it’s his operative. ISB flags Mon because she hasn’t left the Senate building tonight, and her bug isn’t working. She dismisses Erskin when she returns to her office, deeply hurt by his clandestine work.
The next day, Cassian meets with Luthen and urges him to leave with Mon, but he refuses. Luthen talks about Cassian like he’s a fated entity, always appearing to Luthen when needed. Kleya tells them that they have no idea what Mon will say, as she fired Erskin, though he’s still on site. Bail’s extraction team meets at the same time Cassian enters the Senate building on his press pass. Bail tells Mon that he’s got a group to take her to safety after her speech; she asks if he knows them, and he admits that he can’t for security reasons. Cassian meets Erskin inside, who directs him to Mon Mothma. The Senate convenes and talks about the Ghorman threat, the insurgency that brewed right under their noses. ISB has an agent on Bail’s team, but one of the other members notices her talking to them, so she kills him. Through a series of byzantine rules, the Senate floor is given to Bail, who then gives the floor to Mon. A senate worker is given the order to shut down the feed and rushes to do so; he is blocked by two technicians who “fixed” the system to bring it up to code, so that it cannot be easily interrupted.
Mon’s speech is about the fact that they have lost sight of truth, which is the ultimate victory of evil. She tells them that what happened on Ghorman was genocide, and that the monster they have fallen pray to is the Emperor himself. The feed is finally shut down, and Mon exits the Senate chamber. Cassian is waiting for her and has to convince her of his credentials, including being present on Ghorman. He tells her that he knows Luthen is difficult, but that he’s here to get her out. When they emerge, the ISB agent on Bail’s team tries to arrest Mon in public. Erskin shouts that she’s a rebel spy, giving Cassian enough confusion in the room to kill her. Cassian and Mon look for different ways out, but the building is going into lockdown and they’re running out of exits. Kloris is told to call in when he has something to report, and heads toward the building to learn more. Cassian and Mon get outside onto the walkways and find Kloris, who Cassian also kills. Mon is mortified, but Cassian implores her to look at him and takes her hand, getting her into her car and away.
Back on Yavin 4, Melshi (Duncan Pow) has shown up to the base. Cassian brings Mon to the safe house on Coruscant, and finds Wil and Dreena there; Wil has been injured and needs to go to Yavin 4 for a doctor. Mon isn’t going to Yavin with Cassian; she’s going to get there with a special escort and will give another speech, so the story of her exit will be rewritten into something more grand. Cassian tells Mon to make it all worth it. He lands back on Yavin 4 and is told by General Draven that none of this mission will be logged since it wasn’t sanctioned, and they get Wilmon medical attention. Cassian goes to Bix and tells her that he wants to be done with this, and be with her. He thinks the only thing special about him is luck, and knows it will run out. He wants them to go somewhere quiet to try and live out the rest of their lives, and they embrace. When he wakes, he’s alone, and Bix has left him a message: She tells him that he needs to be here, that she believes in his purpose. She can’t be the reason he quits, so she’s leaving, making the choice for them—he has to stay with the Rebellion. She promises to find him when it’s over. Cassian is called inside because they’re about to power up the KX unit he brought back. It’s a risk doing this kind of cortex-swap, but they train blasters on him and switch him back on.
K-2SO wakes and apologizes if he’s offended them—but asks them to point their blasters elsewhere.
Commentary
Screenshot: Lucasfilm
There are upside and downsides to how the arc with Bix seems to be working out. The upsides are that I was convinced they were going to kill her, as she’s not around by Rogue One, and something had to keep Cassian in the Rebellion long enough to get there. Allowing Bix to take control of this and essentially tell Cassian that they’ll be together when it’s over is great because it’s hyper-tragic (knowing that Cassian won’t make it out) without relying on the cheap move of fridging a woman for a man’s pain journey (provided that they stick to this choice, which they'd better).
The downside is that Bix hasn’t really been given enough material here to feel like a person, and her opinions are frequently baffling as a result. The belief that Cassian is “destined” for this cause seems to come out of nowhere. She claims that she’s had dreams that align with the Force healer’s narrative of his messenger role, but it would’ve been nice to see one of those dreams much earlier in the season. Otherwise it all just feels like a neat little explanation for her choices here—choices that are incredibly complex and painful for both of them.
And I’m still not sure if it’s entirely her faith in Cassian’s place that’s motivating it, or something much darker; does she think she’s somehow tainted due to Gorst’s torture? Is she leaving to tend to her apparent drug addiction under less watchful eyes? (Or did they just drop that, because uh, that’s kind of relevant.) Does she secretly feel that they’ve been growing apart and can’t bear to tell him? Perhaps none of these are factors, but the idea that she’s maybe got some slight Force-awareness that makes her adamant this is the right choice is such a weird move.
Speaking of which, I love the concept of Force healers. Mostly I love the idea that many of them are likely charlatans (like the one Maarva apparently saw) running alongside the issue that most of these people never got the required training to be any good at it? The woman we meet here seemingly has that problem; like, sometimes she can get the Force to do-thing-make-healing-go and sometimes she can’t. She doesn’t know how the abilities work in any consistent, actionable sense.
The supposed wisdom she gives to Cassian and Bix is appropriately (hilariously) vague as a result. Saying Cassian is a messenger is one thing, but the idea of gathering as he goes, needing to be somewhere, it all sounds incredibly profound while giving no useful information whatsoever. And then she even suggests that Bix is the “place” where Cassian supposed to be, a piece that Bix ignores because that doesn’t fit in with what she’s already decided about Cassian. So that part is Grade A Tragedy Material.
Which segues nicely into talking about handling of Syril’s Karn’s demise, and honestly—my only complaint is that this show needed another season between this and the first. There’s so much going on, and all of these characters have wildly complex journeys that deserved much more time to cook. Give us two seasons of the Ghorman mission, watching the Front grow, watching Syril get embedded with the group and start caring about these people he’s working with. (Two seasons of Bix rebuilding herself. Two seasons of Cassian growing increasingly exhausted. Two seasons of Dedra getting slowly crushed under the weight of an assignment she emphatically didn’t want, and having to lie to Syril. Two seasons of Mon Mothma losing her ability to perform civility while Bail Organa watches from the sidelines with worry.)
The way Syril’s story plays out is searing to my mind, but I wanted to watch him get there. We were introduced to his relationship with Dedra a handful of episodes ago, it’s a little much to go right to betrayal choking. It’s like hearing a song with an incredible build being played at double-speed. You’re missing the crescendo, but you know it’s there. You want to feel it.
Having said that, the chain of events feel so psychologically solid on his end that I’m still kind of awed. He realizes he’s been used by the one person who he felt brought him purpose. He realizes that he’s also betrayed the people he thought he was meant to befriend and connect with in the worst possible way. And when all of this comes clear to him, he suddenly finds the face of Cassian-flipping-Andor in the crowd—the figure who started him down this path in the first place—and the only thing he can think to do is kill what caused all of this.
When you see that the episode is titled “Who Are You?” your first assumption is likely that the phrase will be directed at someone who is deep in their loyalty throes for one of these rebellions. The idea that it would be directed at Syril Karn by Cassian Andor in the moments before his death, because despite being Syril’s entire reason for being, Cassian has no idea he even fucking existed—
This show just bodied me again. Not sure I’ll get back up from that.
It’s a brilliant thought to seed in a story like this: Marginalized peoples are constantly being told that they don’t matter, often as a fatigue tactic designed to make them stop fighting. No one cares; they’ve never even heard of you. But how often is it ever pointed out that the people casting you as the bogeyman are even more inconsequential and unknown? Devoting their lives to hating something they can’t identify with until their lack of belonging becomes all that they are.
Did Syril Karn have the ability to become anything other than this? Well… he’ll never find out now.
It becomes clearer than ever during this episode why Dedra tried to shirk this assignment. Tracking Axis, that’s cool sexy espionage work. Trying to find the guy who’s throwing a wrench in all your plans and making everyone’s lives harder, it’s going to feel important and exciting. You’ve got an opponent who you get to battle like equals. But exacting the plans themselves against largely helpless populaces? That’s too much reality. And after learning about Dedra’s background in an Imperial orphanage, we now know that she didn’t have too many options in avoiding this path. Where it goes from here—doubling down or changing allegiances—is going to be a fascinating transition of its own.
The end of the Ghorman Front is a tragedy writ large in part because of its real-life historical parallels. The French Resistance overcame the Nazis, but these people, their planet, and their culture will die. Importantly, the Empire had to convince the galaxy of their evil and build them up as monsters—something that they did not have to do on planets that had less contact with the outside galaxy (Kenari) or with non-human inhabitants (Geonosis and Lasan).
But it’s also important that Ghorman is the major step toward the open declaration of Rebellion that’s coming. Mon Mothma’s defection is effectively the opening salvo of the united Rebel Alliance, and it only happens here because of the Ghorman Massacre. Watching them put the pieces into play and create a more complete tapestry has been riveting. And Mon Mothma’s speech is on the nose, but truer than ever:
“Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil.”
We’re already here. Time to decide where we’re headed, too.
Cassian has lost Bix in this, but in true Star Wars fashion: When you lose people, you gain droids. That sounds flippant, but I meant it in the exact opposite way, because as ever, I am a droid simp. And of course, we can tell K-2SO is already in there before they ever do the cortex-swap—you know he’s the one who keeps staring at Syril when the rest of the KX units look away. He’s curious and blunt like that.
Bix is fine and all… but this is the partner Cassian needs. He’s finally made it to the party.
Bits and Asides
Screenshot: Lucasfilm
I have waited forever to get a better look at the base facilities on Yavin 4, you have no idea how satisfying this was to my brain. So many fanfic writers just got prime material. Scaffolding! Vouchers! Tent houses in the jungle! Infrastructure!!
A very sharp choice to have the Ghorman protestors change their chants from their own language to Galactic Basic; it's a clear sign that they're trying to reach the wider galaxy and get them to care.
Is it very cheesy that Thela says the words "Rebellions are built on hope" to Cassian as a setup to Jynn Erso saying the same in Rogue One? Yes, but I actually appreciate the choice because it alleviates my cringey feelings about how moved people seem to be by that line in the movie: It's a very simplistic idea, and it makes more sense that Cassian would be affected by the thought when it's the echo of a dead man who he once connected with.
Denise Gough. Just... Denise Gough. She is a masterclass unto herself. Every pinched, stunted expression, I am mesmerized by her.
Don't ever break bugs or listening devices! You keep them there and act normal! This is Covert Operations 101, Mon.
The perfect little meta touch of Cassian having to help people pronounce his cover name, and both times it's a white person, and one of them is even a member of the Ghorman Front because that lack of awareness is not a partisan problem...
The technicians who make the broadcast machinery run correctly, thereby making it harder for the Empire to shut down, are working a classic tactic in resistance books: Use red tape and system mechanics against your oppressors. Make the bureaucracy work in your favor to slow them down.
The reference to Gold Squadron bringing in Mon Mothma and the new speech she’s going to give to enter the Rebellion is covered in Rebels season three—the episode “Secret Cargo” shows Mon Mothma on the run after speaking out against the Empire publicly for the first time. Of course, the Ghost crew get all the classy missions at this point, and are the ones to bring her in, but I wondered how they were going to tetris that exit so that all the events lined up. I’m super pleased with the results here.
Melshi finally made it! Hey my guy, what have you been up to?
The premise of the first novel Stephen King wrote—published years later under his Richard Bachman pseudonym—makes it seem like it could, if you squint, be the direct ancestor of Speed. Except rather than a bus that's gotta stay over 50 miles per hour, the characters in The Long Walk must keep walking at a minimum pace of 4 miles per hour. There are other rules, but this is the basic one. Stop walking and die. Be the last man standing walking and win.
For the upcoming movie adaptation, directed by Francis Lawrence, the game has been upped: The men (all men) have to stay under 3 mph. That's a twenty-minute mile: generally doable for a person in good walking health, but perhaps not so much when you've been doing it for days on end.
The synopsis is not particularly informative and in fact a bit confusingly written:
From the highly anticipated adaptation of master storyteller Stephen King’s first-written novel, and Francis Lawrence, the visionary director of The Hunger Games franchise films (Catching Fire, Mockingjay – Pts. 1 & 2 , and The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes), comes The Long Walk, an intense, chilling, and emotional thriller that challenges audiences to confront a haunting question: how far could you go?
For what, Lionsgate? How far would you go for what? Without context this question is not all that haunting.
Surprisingly, given the sheer number of King adaptations in the world already, this is the first movie adaptation of the story. The trailer is very very very serious. And grim. It stars Mark Hamill as the Major, who is the boss of the walk, and a whole bunch of young men, presumably as those walking or shooting the walkers: Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, Garrett Wareing, Tut Nyuot, Charlie Plummer, Ben Wang, Roman Griffin Davis, Jordan Gonzalez, Joshua Odjick, and Josh Hamilton. Judy Greer is here too.
The screenplay is by JT Mollner, who has two other feature film credits under his belt: a Western called Outlaws and Angels, and a serial killer film called Strange Darling. He directed both of those.
This trailer says only "coming soon," but the movie is in theaters September 12th. [end-mark]
A good game can take you away from the real world, immersing you in a fantasy land full of adventures, challenges, and excitement. But at the end of the day, you can box it back up, put it on the shelf, and get back to your daily existence. This is not what happens when Jenny Thornton wanders into a slightly sketchy store called More Games, meets a demon named Julian, and finds herself and her friends drawn into the fantasy world of the Game he sells her, promising “Danger. Seduction. Fear … Secrets revealed. Desires unveiled” (17). Jenny’s looking for something extra special for her boyfriend Tom’s birthday party and this seems to be just the ticket (though the handsome boy doing the selling seems to be the real clincher on the deal). Jenny leaves the strange store, box in hand, and this impulse buy sets into motion the events of The Forbidden Game trilogy, which includes The Hunter, The Chase, and The Kill (all 1994) by L.J. Smith, who is best known for her Vampire Diaries series (1991-2011).
In The Hunter, Jenny, her boyfriend Tom, and their friends Dee, Audrey, Summer, Michael, and Zach set up the game Jenny has bought, which when assembled forms a model of “a three-foot-high Victorian house” (39). It is made of paper but quite elaborate: “It had three floors and a turret and was open in front like a dollhouse. The roof was removable. Sheet after sheet had to be cut out to make all the chimneys and cornices and balconies, but no one got tired of working, and only Michael complained” (39). The players themselves become the avatars, drawing their own faces and their darkest fears on the game pieces that complete the setup. The goal is to work their way from the first floor all the way to the top of the turret before dawn the next morning, while on the lookout for The Shadow Man, who is “lurking around inside, and if he catches you … He’ll ‘bring to life your darkest fantasies and make you confess your most secret fears’” (40). The illustration of The Shadow Man looks exactly like the mysterious boy Jenny met in the game store, and he is joined in the game by two monstrous characters called the Creeper and the Lurker, who are an enormous snake and a terrifying wolf. Jenny starts to have a bad feeling and some serious misgivings about the game, but everyone else thinks it’ll be fun—especially birthday boy Tom—so they forge on.
Before they even enter the dark alternate world of the Game’s house, there are some tensions in the friends’ relationships with one another. Tom and Jenny have been together since they were kids and while Tom seems like a nice enough guy, Jenny definitely lets her relationship with Tom and what he wants dictate too many of her decisions, including the way she dresses and wears her hair: the night of the party, she wears a long skirt to please Tom despite Audrey’s disapproval and “she pulled her hair back—the way Tom liked it—and anchored its silkiness with an elastic band” (31). Audrey is a relatively new addition to their friend group, the daughter of a diplomat who has had positions all over the world. She is cultured and cosmopolitan, which makes her dating Michael a bit surprising, since he’s just a regular guy, who is slightly overweight and a bit of a nerd. Audrey teases him quite a bit and tells the other girls that “He’s just keeping the seat warm until I decide who’s next. He’s a—a bookmark” (30). Dee and Jenny have been best friends pretty much their whole lives and Dee is a no-nonsense badass who does kung fu and whose grandmother is an artist and a treasure trove of African folktales and wisdom. Jenny is friends with both Dee and Audrey, but the two girls are very different and don’t get along well at all, constantly challenging, insulting, and competing with one another. The group is rounded out by Summer, who is kind and sweet, but the others all see her as kind of a ditz, and Jenny’s cousin Zach, an artistic guy who doesn’t say much.
When the group starts playing the Game and find themselves literally transported into the nightmare house, they take all of these conflicts and underlying stresses with them, which serve as a counterpoint to the fears they must face there, both individually and collectively. As they play, they find out more about themselves and one another. They initially gain successes as they conquer the fears they encounter—like Dee’s terror of aliens—but things quickly get darker and more dangerous. Jenny, Dee, and Audrey escape from Audrey’s nightmare of dark elves and defeat the creeping plants that take over Michael’s body. As they navigate these different threats, they also draw closer together, confessing their less tangible fears, like Dee’s terror of being physically powerless and Audrey’s self-conscious uncertainty about making new friends after spending her whole life moving from place to place.
While these battles draw the friends closer together, there are fights they can’t win and when they collectively face Summer’s nightmare—her messy bedroom taken to monstrous extremes—they fall short and Summer dies, trapped within her own darkest fear. And Jenny’s own nightmare opens the door on other horrors from her past that she has long forgotten: she knows something terrible happened in her grandfather’s basement when she was five years old, but what she has blocked out is how her grandfather was a demon hunter, which kind of makes sense because no one else in her family seems to have known his secret. He had several of these beings imprisoned in his basement closet, held with a sealing rune on the door. Jenny opened the door, released the demons, and when they threatened to consume her, her grandfather sacrificed himself in her place (though since no one else in the family knows he’s a demon hunter, they all believe he tried to hurt Jenny and then ran away, which definitely tarnishes his legacy and makes her feel even more guilty when she remembers the truth). She has always known that something bad happened but blocked out exactly what it was and her own role in the tragedy of her grandfather’s loss.
Jenny is also fighting her own private battle separate from these fears, as she repeatedly finds herself transported away from these collective struggles and trapped alone with Julian. Jenny’s appearance in the game store wasn’t a coincidence, as Julian tells her “Suppose the devil was just quietly minding his own business—when he saw this girl. A girl who made him forget everything. There’ve been other girls more beautiful, of course, but this girl had something. A goodness, a sweetness about her. An innocence” (101, emphasis original). Julian has been watching and admiring Jenny for years and the Game is a tool of both terror and seduction as he draws her into his world. Jenny doesn’t want to be attracted to Julian, constantly reminding herself of how much she loves Tom, but there’s something irresistible when they’re close to one another: “His voice seemed to steal the bones from her body. She was aware of shaking her head slightly, as much in response to the new feelings as to his question. She didn’t know what was happening to her. Tom made her feel safe, but this—this made her feel weak inside, as if her stomach were falling” (100).
Tom’s biggest fear is losing Jenny and as the Game draws toward its conclusion, it looks like he might actually have to face it. As terrifying as their time in the nightmare house has been and as upset as Jenny is about losing Summer, there is something alluring and liberating about giving in to her darker side and the desires that Julian has awakened in her. She has discovered that she’s stronger and braver than she ever thought she could be, and she pledges herself to Julian and promises to stay with him, ceremonially swearing “All I refuse and thee I choose” (233), as long as he’ll let her surviving friends go back to their real world. Jenny indulges in these desires, including an intense kiss with Julian, as her friends flee toward safety, then she turns the tables, shoving Julian into a closet, sealing it with the same rune her grandfather had used all those years ago, and fleeing to drive her friends on to safety. She has chosen Tom and her friends and the real world, but her attraction to Julian wasn’t just a ruse and part of her still hesitates, longing for the Shadow World, along with the freedom and pleasure it offers.
The second book, The Chase, picks up in the immediate and messy aftermath of The Hunter. While Jenny and the rest of their friends make it back to the real world, Summer is still dead and her body missing, with Jenny and the others suspected of having hurt or killed her. Two young men named P.C. and Slug, who were stalking Jenny near the game store and who have heard the siren’s call of the Game, steal it and meet a bad end, which leaves the Game dangerously at large and Julian loose in their world, along with the Creeper and the Lurker.
While the breakdown of the separation between the world of the Game and the teens’ real world is plenty scary, the continued tension in their relationships causes additional problems, particularly between Jenny and Tom. Tom is bothered by two lingering effects of the time they spent in the nightmare house with Julian. The first is plain and simple jealousy: he feels threatened by Julian and thinking of the demon’s charm, he wonders “How could Jenny resist that? Especially being as innocent as she was … He’d seen them together, seen Julian’s eyes when he looked at her. He’d seen the kind of spell Julian could cast. When Julian came for Jenny next time, Tom was going to lose” (285). The second problem Tom is wrestling with has more to do with his own sense of insecurity and his discomfort with Jenny’s newfound strength, as he reflects on how “He’d seen her in that Other Place, inside that paper house that turned real. She’d been so brave and so beautiful it made his throat hurt. She’d functioned absolutely perfectly without him” (284, emphasis original). Tom can’t provide for Jenny or be the indispensable support he has always been for her in their relationship, and rather than adjusting to these new dynamics, he keeps Jenny at a distance and watches over her from the shadows, as he wrestles with his own feelings of inadequacy.
Dee is the one who unpacks the shifting mechanics of this new game, explaining to the others that while their experience in the nightmare house was “a race game [where] the point is to get from the start to the goal in a certain amount of time—or before everybody else does” (394), this new one, where Julian and his minions are in the real world, is a different kind of game, a “hunting game … the oldest games of all” (395), as Julian takes Jenny’s friends one by one and she has to try to stop him and free them before it’s too late. As Jenny’s friends are taken, a paper avatar, like those from their first game, are left in their place and in the end, Jenny has to face off against Julian on her own, with her friends’ survival at stake, as she once again tries to navigate her complex, intermingled feelings of terror and desire.
Jenny resists Julian’s temptation and discovers a portal to her friends’ prison through one of her cousin Zach’s photographs, this one featuring a surreal image of their school cafeteria, though when Jenny tries to lead them out, they find themselves surrounded by a ring of imprisoning fire. Jenny thinks through the challenge they’re facing, remembering how Julian turned their own fears and perceptions against them in the paper house, and reassuring her friends that they can simply walk out of the flaming cafeteria and back into their normal lives because “The fire isn’t real! It’s a model our brains are making” (487). The comfort of this realization is compromised by the fact that the fire can actually burn them, though Jenny tells them that it’s only “because you believe it’s hot” (488, emphasis original). However hard they try, they can’t completely free themselves from these perceptions but they’re able to believe enough to walk through the fire and out of Julian’s shadow realm, singed but alive … except for Tom and Zach, who lost track of the others along the way and are trapped as the portal between the worlds burns. But Jenny does get one last message from Julian before everything goes up in flames: “Your friends are with me—in the Shadow World. If you want them, come on a treasure hunt. But remember: If you lose, there’s the devil to pay” (503, emphasis original).
Like all the best trilogies, the third book of The Forbidden Game series, The Kill, draws Jenny and her friends back to the beginning, in this case, to Jenny’s grandfather’s basement and the notes and knowledge he left behind. They steal money from their parents and book tickets on a cross-country red eye flight to head back to Jenny’s childhood home, only to find that they can’t get the key to the house from her grandfather’s former housekeeper (and now caretaker of his empty home) until that evening. With time to kill, Jenny takes her friends to Joyland Park, an amusement park she fondly remembers from her childhood visits there, though their visit now is an underwhelming and ineffective distraction from their troubles.
When they’re finally able to get into Jenny’s grandfather’s house and its basement full of secrets, they find the notes and Jenny is able to absorb and use her grandfather’s knowledge, carrying his legacy forward. They find and carve the rune designs that they need to reopen a door to Julian’s world, but when the door opens … they find themselves back in Joyland Park, which is an uncanny reproduction that has grown dark and terrifying. While the first game was a race and the second game was a hunt, this third game is—as Julian’s invitation promised—a treasure hunt. In the real world, there’s a new attraction opening at Joyland Park this summer called Treasure Island, which is on an island in the middle of the park. Visitors who find gold doubloons hidden in the park prior to the attraction’s opening win early admission and the challenge laid before Jenny and her friends is similar: find three gold doubloons to gain entry to the park’s island, where they can find and reclaim Tom and Zach.
But of course, it’s never that easy and the teens’ treasure hunt has a couple of horrifying complications: first, while Julian has previously been the only demon they’ve had to contend with, now that they’re in the larger Shadow World a whole host of demons are hunting them. This has particularly profound consequences for Jenny because while Julian frequently terrorized her in their previous interactions, he could never actually bring himself to hurt her. The other demons have no such hesitancy and Jenny almost drowns in a cavern of the park’s mine ride before she realizes that the rules of the game have fundamentally changed. The presence of these other demons also provides some larger context for how Jenny (and to a lesser extent, the others) see and understand Julian: right now, he’s quite handsome and human in appearance but that’s because he’s the youngest of the demons. Jenny and her friends encounter several of the other demons, who are monstrous and subhuman, as they make their way through the park, with Jenny slowly coming to the realization that this is what Julian will one day become as he ages and transforms, following his true nature. She stubbornly clings to the hope that she could save him or change him, but once she realizes this is fundamentally impossible, it’s a deal breaker. A demon that looks like a cute teenage boy is one thing, but a demon that will eventually look like a deformed monster baby is another thing entirely, and definitely takes some of the romance and shine off the Shadow World for Jenny.
The other horrifying danger the friends have to contend with is that everyone they have lost is returned to them in Joyland Park, often in horrifying fashion. They are attacked by Slug’s decapitated and decomposing body in the Fish Pond carnival game, and later in the arcade, they find Slug and P.C.’s heads bobbing in a cabinet that invites them to “SPEAK TO THE SPIRITS. ASK ANY YES OR NO QUESTION, 10¢” (640). There are more horrors in the arcade and when Jenny puts a dime in the animatronic fortune teller’s cabinet, she’s devastated to see her grandfather’s trapped eyes staring out at her and a fortune card that says “HELP ME HELP ME HELP ME HELP ME” (637) over and over again. Their terror reaches an all-time high when they find Summer in the park’s funhouse. Jenny is frozen, thinking how “She’d seen that dying in the Shadow World didn’t mean you got buried and disappeared” (650), and that on some level as they continued playing these games, she knew “they were looking for Summer, however transformed, however defiled Summer might be” (650, emphasis original). She walks toward her friend’s body, anticipating “Summer’s head falling off when Jenny took her by the shoulder, or … some Rosemary’s Baby-type monster looking up with crafty, glee-filled eyes” (650). But whether because of Julian’s intercession or Summer’s innate innocence, she is returned to them unchanged. She remembers the paper house and her nightmare bedroom, but after that, everything’s lost and she tells them “I don’t remember it. Just that it was bad. Did I get hurt? Did I faint?” (654, emphasis original). Summer has been dead and lost to them for weeks, but as far she knows, she’s just had a bit of a nap.
The final ordeal the friends must face is on the Tunnel of Love ride, though it has now been transformed into “the Tunnel of Love—and Despair” (675), where all of their most hurtful secrets come out. Dee has told everyone that she doesn’t plan to go to college and Julian berates her, telling her “Maybe you’re just too stupid to learn … That’s the real reason you don’t want to go to college, isn’t it?” taunting her with the suggestion that “All this athletic stuff is just a front” (677, emphasis original) to try to cover her intellectual deficiencies. He tells Michael to “Ask your girlfriend if she’s ever called you ‘Tubby’ behind your back” (680), which forces Audrey to confess that she had said that “A long time ago … Before I found out I loved you” (681), though that doesn’t make this cruelty and betrayal hurt much less. Julian torments Audrey with the prediction that “You’re going to turn out like your mother, you know—a shrill and contentious bitch. Your father’s words, I believe. You’re afraid that you’re not capable of having real feelings like other people” (683). In each case, the teens work together and encourage one another, enabling them to rise above Julian’s taunts, reaffirmed in who they are and who they love.
When the teens best Julian and head toward the island to save Tom and Zach, their adventure becomes briefly cosmic, as they glimpse the various other Shadow Lands that they are passing over and through, an interconnected web of other worlds and “other bridges, delicate and airy, some fiery, some that looked like ice. They led to clumps of land that looked like islands floating in space” (701). While Tom had been intimidated by Jenny’s newfound strength, when the group finally arrives at Treasure Island, he looks upon her with fresh eyes as his rescuer, “As if she were something infinitely precious, something that bewildered him, but amazed him—something he didn’t deserve, but trusted” (712).
The game is finally over and while Jenny can’t save Julian, there is some complicated comfort when the other demons “unmake” (797) Julian by destroying his rune symbol as punishment for not letting them kill Jenny and the others. Jenny mourns his loss, thinking that “The truth was that Julian had probably been too dangerous to live. The universe would be a much safer place without him … But poorer. And more boring. Definitely more boring” (746). Though Julian is gone, Jenny and her friends all carry his influence and legacy with them: they have all been changed, transformed by their interactions with Julian and the battles they fought and won within his Shadow World. Jenny and her friends got a lot more than they bargained for when she bought a game for Tom’s birthday party, but along with the horrors they encountered, they found their deepest strengths, the truth of themselves and one another.[end-mark]
Bless you, Aardman Animation, for a little piece of good news: The studio announced that a third Shaun the Sheep movie is in the works for release in 2026. And what's more, it's Halloween-themed!
Here's the synopsis:
Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom sees the residents of Mossy Bottom Farm looking forward to Halloween – until the clumsy Farmer trashes the Flock’s beloved pumpkin patch! When Shaun turns MAD SCIENTIST to fix the problem, things rapidly spiral out of control… With The Farmer missing and a wild beast roaming the woods of Mossingham, all the ingredients are in place for a monstrously fun family adventure.
MAD SCIENTIST SHEEP. Yes, that had to be in capital letters. They started it!
Shaun the Sheep, who was introduced in the Wallace & Gromit short film A Close Shave, has previously starred in two films: Shaun the Sheep Movie and Shaun the Sheep: Farmageddon. As an Aardman press release says, “This new feature film follows the recent landmark success of Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, which broke viewing records in the Christmas period as it became the most-watched animated film broadcast on British television since modern viewing records began in 2002.”
Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom has a creative team with plenty of shepherding experience: directors Steve Cox (Shaun the Sheep: The Flight Before Christmas) and Matthew Walker (Lloyd of the Flies), and writers Mark Burton (Shaun the Sheep Movie) and Giles Pilbrow (Shaun the Sheep: The Flight Before Christmas). Wallace & Gromit creator Nick Park is among the film's executive producers.
People! So useful and yet so ephemeral. Scarcely has one become accustomed to a person before they pursue other employment opportunities, die of old age, or perish because Cheryl from Human Resources forgot to feed them. Thanks, Cheryl! We make back-up copies of valuable files. Why can’t we do the same with people?
Science fiction authors labor under no such limitation. Consider these five explorations of the wonders that would surely result if only we could somehow copy people.
The Gismo can duplicate anything, even other Gismos. Even, or perhaps especially, people. Overnight, the Gismo transforms the economy. Material scarcity is a thing of the past. The only true wealth is human labor. Surely, a worker’s paradise is just around the corner!
Not as such. By the mid-21st century, legions of duplicated slaves serve a tiny minority of Gismo-monopolizing superrich. Dick Jones is one of the lucky few at the top of this social pyramid… which is to say that his life will be one of relentless competition against his peers, unless of course the slaves take advantage of their numbers to rid themselves of their cruel masters.
I too am astonished that the relentlessly optimistic Damon Knight somehow got from “the end of material scarcity” to “a boot stamping on a human face—forever,” before his short novel was an eighth of the way done.
Determined to ensure a ready supply of combat veterans, the United States made an irresistible offer to Jerry Hawker and his fellow soldiers. In exchange for a handsome payout, Hawker and his colleagues would be placed in suspended animation, to be revived when the next war broke out. Hawker agreed.
That over the centuries Hawker would become progressively alienated from his employers and his role was a predictable outcome of the arrangement. More unexpected was the development of matter duplicators. Now stored as electronic data, soldiers could be recreated whenever and wherever they were needed. Even death cannot not free Hawker from an eternity of combat.
To quote Pratchett: “And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things.” Duplicators make it possible to trade people like Hawker as if they were illicitly duplicated mp3 files. Which is bad.
(Translated by Elizabeth D. Crawford) Famed pianist Iris Sellin understood the implications when she was diagnosed with MS. MS might someday kill Iris; before that, it would rob Iris of her ability to play the piano. The prospect outraged Iris. In consequence, Iris embraced a bold effort to preserve her glorious talent.
Enter Iris’ daughter Siri. Siri is surprisingly similar to her mother. This is because Siri is Iris’ clone. All Iris need do is force Siri to replicate her clone-mother’s career and Iris will achieve a form of immortality. Children being notoriously cooperative when it comes to being shoehorned into a life not of their choosing, it’s hard to see how this plan could go wrong. Yet, somehow, it does.
You’d think if anyone could empathize with a clone, it would be their genetic donor. Iris’ mistake seems to be assuming that because Iris delights in being Iris, surely other people will as well. She would have done better to consider how different Siri’s context was from her own.
Robin/Reeve’s traumatic background makes them the ideal subject for unethical social experiments. Good news for Professor Yourdon, who needs hapless subjects. Robin/Reeve is recruited to play a role in a recreation and exploration of emergent social relationships in that long ago dark age known as the 20th century.
What at first appears to be an exaggerated version of mid-century American suburban social hierarchies proves even more alarming, as its architects have gone to great lengths to ensure conformity and deter escape. However, Robin/Reeve is not without allies… including, thanks to matter duplicators, judiciously edited copies of Robin/Reeve in disguise.
Many readers will come away from this novel with the impression that matter duplication, especially the sort that allows duplicates to be edited, is as prone to abuse as it is useful. However, others might come away with the notion that if you’re going to be unethical, best to go all-in from the start, rather than making any pretense of informed consent: Just whip up a few dozen subjects with no memory of any existence outside the experiment.
Like all galactic empires, the Radch was challenged by the sheer scale of the galaxy. A single centralized government would be plagued by communications delays. A decentralized system of satraps might fall apart into warring states. The obvious solution? Duplicate and distribute ruler Anaander Mianaai, to ensure uniformity of governance.
This seemingly perfect system is not without implementation flaws. Breq is a victim of those flaws. Breq is only a single person. Logic dictates that Breq abandon any hope of justice or compensation for the abuses heaped on her. Logic fails to fully comprehend Breq Mianaai’s determination.
Ancillary Justice stands out for me because it’s the only example of duplicated people I can think of where it’s a powerful person being run in parallel, rather than useful servants. I feel like I’ve forgotten some obvious examples, but standing in front of my bookshelves staring at spines has been of no help.
Of course, there are many works I could have mentioned but didn’t, from Triplicate Girl1 to Cyteen’s Ari. In many cases, this is because I have mentioned them in other contexts. Nevertheless, don’t let that stop you from recommending your favourites in comments below![end-mark]
The utility of a skilled but otherwise unremarkable person, like Triplicate Girl, who can become three skilled but otherwise unremarkable people may seem unclear in the context of the Legion of Superheroes, whose workplace routinely features kill-crazy AIs and personifications of the concept of entropy. However, there is at least one foe whom Triplicate Lass (later Duo Damsel) is ideally suited to face: Nemesis Kid, whose powers allow him to defeat any single enemy but are completely ineffective in the face of two or more foes.
The Otherwise Award (formerly known as the Tiptree), which “honors stories that expose the many ways we experience gender in this world and others,” has announced the winners of the 2024 award. Four winners are honored with the prize:
In Universes by Emet North
“Kiss of Life” by P.C. Verrone
Rakesfall by Vajra Chandrasekera
Walking Practice by Dolki Min, translated by Victoria Caudle
The jurors also selected five longlisted titles:
“The Flame in You” by L. Nabang
Sacrificial Animals by Kailee Pedersen
The Sapling Cage by Margaret Killjoy
“Scarlett” by Everdeen Mason
Vanessa 5000 by Courtney Pauroso
Last year, the Otherwise changed its process in order to recognize several books with each year's prize, rather than a single title. Going forward, the organizers hope to “Focus less on presenting an award, and more on having a conversation around recent works,” among other changes.
The 2024 jury was chaired by Eugene Fischer and also included Avery Dame-Griff, E. Ornelas, Elsa Sjunneson, Liz Haas, and Sophia Babai. Winners of the Otherwise Award receive $200 in prize money and a commemorative medal. They are celebrated each year at a gala and panel at WisCon, which this year will be completely online from May 23rd through 26th.
The Otherwise Award is now taking recommendations for the 2025 Award.[end-mark]
The third season of Apple TV+’s Foundation is ready for us. Today, the series adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s books gave us a teaser trailer, some delightful first-look images, and an official release date.
One of the aforementioned images rests above this post, giving us Lee Pace portraying a loincloth-wearing version of Brother Day, one of the three Cleon clones who rule the empire.
That empire, however, isn’t doing so great, as the synopsis for season three makes clear:
Set 152 years after the events of season two, The Foundation has become increasingly established far beyond its humble beginnings while the Cleonic Dynasty’s Empire has dwindled. As both of these galactic powers forge an uneasy alliance, a threat to the entire galaxy appears in the fearsome form of a warlord known as “The Mule” whose sights are set on ruling the universe by use of physical and military force, as well as mind control. It’s anyone’s guess who will win, who will lose, who will live and who will die as Hari Seldon, Gaal Dornick, the Cleons and Demerzel play a potentially deadly game of intergalactic chess.
We’ll be following these machinations through Pace’s Cleon, as well as the younger and older versions played by Cassian Bilton and Terrence Mann respectively. We’ll also see the return of Lou Llobell's Gaal Dornick, Jared Harris’ Hari Seldon, Laura Birn’s Demerzel, and Rowen King’s Kalle.
Season three will also introduce us to new actors, including Pilou Asbæk (aka Euron Greyjoy on Game of Thrones) taking on the role of the Mule from Mikael Persbrandt, who played the character in season two. Other newcomers and returning players to the series are Cherry Jones, Brandon P. Bell, Synnøve Karlsen, Cody Fern, Tómas Lemarquis, Alexander Siddig, and Troy Kotsur.
The third season of Foundation premieres Friday, July 11, 2025 on Apple TV+ with the first episode, followed by one episode weekly every Friday through September 12.
Check out the trailer below, as well as some additional first-look images.[end-mark]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bMCpnEi4k0
Courtesy of Apple TV+Courtesy of Apple TV+Courtesy of Apple TV+Courtesy of Apple TV+Courtesy of Apple TV+Courtesy of Apple TV+Courtesy of Apple TV+
