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Somehow, Ultron has returned to the MCU. According to The Hollywood Reporter, James Spader is set to reprise his role as the villain from Avengers: Age of Ultron in the upcoming untitled Vision spinoff series.

This series, helmed by Picard showrunner Terry Matalas, is reportedly intended to be the final part of a WandaVision trilogy, with Agatha All Along as the next installment. WandaVision already saw Vision (Paul Bettany), or at least another version of him, brought back to life physically by S.W.O.R.D. and emotionally by Wanda’s (Elizabeth Olsen) grief and the power of the Mind Stone they both share. It’s still not quite clear how much of the original Vision still resides in this new stark white body, but that seems like part of what this new series is going to explore. What Ultron’s role in this journey will be, however, is still unclear.

“Welcome to the circus,” Bruce Banner told Simu Liu’s Shaun, aka Shang-Chi, at the end of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. At the time, the comment seemed to bring the Master of Kung fu into the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe. Since then, however, the MCU has turned out to be an even bigger circus than Shaun or audiences expected… and not everyone is getting to share the spotlight.

According to the entertainment website Inverse, who is drawing from anonymous and unconfirmed sources, the role of Shang-Chi in the upcoming Avengers movies has been as in flux as the films themselves. As per the site, Shang-Chi was originally intended to be a main character in the fifth Avengers movie, which at the time was titled Avengers: The Kang Dynasty. During this period, The Kang Dynasty was to be directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, who also helmed Shang-Chi...

There are many standards by which we can measure the influence of the Mad Max franchise. The series consists of five excellent movies, all made by Australian filmmaker George Miller and a host of co-creators. The series launched the career of Mel Gibson who, until his hate-mongering came to light, was one of the most engaging movie stars of the 1980s and ‘90s. And it defined the idea of the post-apocalypse so much that revved-up machinery and bondage gear has become the de facto look of the end of the world.

At their center, though, the Mad Max movies are deeply personal stories about two things: the way humans destroy themselves with their own inventions, namely the motor cars and the gas they guzzle, and the way communities and even empathy endure in the Wasteland.

Although Miller helms each of the entries, the franchise has evolved over its 45-year existence.

This post contains massive Alien: Romulus spoilers.

“I’m not going to go after the women in the audience. I’m going to attack the men. I am going to put in every image I can think of to make the men in the audience cross their legs.”

So declared Alien screenwriter Dan O’Bannon in the 2002 documentary The Alien Saga, and no one can say he failed. The most famous moment in Alien involved Kane (John Hurt) giving violent birth after a facehugger forced itself inside him. Although later contributors would leave aside the male focus, pregnancy metaphors continued to drive Alien‘s sequels and prequels. Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) finds a surrogate daughter in Aliens, gives birth to a xenomorph in Alien 3, and destroys her offspring in Alien Resurrection. When Alien director Ridley Scott returned to the franchise with Prometheus, he included an abortion scene in which Elizabeth Shaw...

Since the beginning, every sequel and prequel in the now seven-film Alien franchise—yes, there are only seven movies, those other two monster mashes never happened!—has been at war with itself. And the battle has remained the same: How much do we evolve the sci-fi concepts suggested by the monster versus serving up what worked before?

Over the past 45 years, the series has flirted with intriguing ideas, such as when Renny Harlin (who quit) and then Jean-Pierre Jeunet proposed respective Alien 3 and 4s that ended up on Earth. There was also the original intentions of Vincent Ward (who quit) to set Alien 3 on a floating wooden space monastery straight out of A Canticle for Leibowitz. Ultimately the powers that be decided in entry after entry that fans need the penis-headed H.R. Giger alien just how they remember it; a resourceful final girl being chased through corridors lined...

Release the Schumacher Cut!

Okay, that nerdy battle cry maybe hasn’t caught on like the demands for David Ayer’s darker cut of Suicide Squad or another, longer cut of whatever Zack Snyder is making. But the Schumacher Cut of Batman Forever is a thing, a longer and darker version of the 1995 sequel based on director Joel Schumacher‘s original intentions, and according to Akiva Goldsman, who co-wrote the script with Lee Batchler and Janet Scott Batchler, the Schumacher Cut almost saw the light of day.

Speaking with Collider at Sdcc 2024, Goldsman revealed that the Schumacher Cut does exist and he has seen it. “There is a preview… that is most of the material that is available put back together,” Goldsman explained.

Even though much of the deleted material has made its way onto the internet in one way or another over the years, Goldsman has long hoped to...

As part of a brand-new trailer for Captain America: Brave New World premiering at Disney’s D23 fan event in Anaheim, California this week, the thousands on hand at the Honda Center arena got their first full-on look at the movie’s Red Hulk (following an indirect glimpse in the first trailer), the anger-fueled alter ego of President Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross (Harrison Ford).

Ross’s transformation into the big red guy comes at the end of the clip (shown exclusively to the D23 audience), as he is speaking to a gathering of some kind outside the White House. Ross is overcome with a seizure and emerges from behind the official presidential lectern in full Red Hulk glory.

He rises to his full stature and unleashes a tremendous roar before the title of the film flashes onscreen, followed by one more close-up of his face, eyes blazing with fury, as he...

The Fantastic Four: First Steps came to Disney’s D23 movie and TV preview at Anaheim’s cavernous Honda Center with just a little bit more than they showed at San Diego Comic-Con two weeks earlier. With the movie now two weeks into filming and the cast working in London, Marvel’s First Family—Pedro Pascal (Reed Richards), Vanessa Kirby (Sue Storm), Joseph Quinn (Johnny Storm), and Ebon Moss-Bachrach (Ben Grimm)—delivered a video greeting to the 12,000 fans in the arena.

The four were seated around what could have been the gang’s kitchen table, but what drew the most attention, of course, was that Quinn was also wearing what looked very much like our first look at a Fantastic Four costume from the movie. But it’s not the classic 1960s suit you might have expected from this superhero period piece.

The costume appeared to be all blue from the shoulders down,...

Magic grows precociously on Mayfair Witches as season 2 is set to adapt Lasher. The second book in Anne Rice’s Lives of the Mayfair Witches series follows Dr. Rowan Mayfair (Alexandra Daddario), who recently gave birth to once-and-future family demon, Lasher (Jack Huston). To celebrate the unholy occasion, Den of Geek summoned the cast and creatives assembled for San Diego Comic-Con. Actors Daddario, Harry Hamlin, Tongayi Chirisa, Ben Feldman, and Alyssa Jirrels, as well as Mark Johnson, who oversees AMC’s Anne Rice Immortal Universe, and showrunner Esta Spalding, openly attest to past misdeeds, transgressions to come, and abominations still awaiting forensic excavation.

Mayfair Witches’ season 1 finale, “What Rough Beast,” revealed Hamlin’s Cortland Mayfair as Rowan’s biological father, conceived under heinous circumstances. The predatory family patriarch’s world is rocked forever. The conclusion sees Cortland transformed into a statue in retribution for the sanity-shredding assault on Deirdre Mayfair...

In the very first action set piece of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, a chopper gets shot out of the sky, crashing in front of a truck carrying heroes that includes Duke (Channing Tatum) and Ripcord (Marlon Wayans). The scene which follow would set the tone for the rest of movie. After that fiery explosion, there is an all-out assault on the soldiers, who do their best to repel the black-clad Cobra troopers. Alas, the heroes’ weapons are no match for the terrorists’ superior tech.

A funny thing, however, is also occurring in this scene—an element which borders on distracting. The camera focuses less on the carnage circling around the heroes and more on the recognizable IP of their vehicles and uniforms. The lens flies past the nose of the Cobra ship attacking Duke and Ripcord in order to instead highlight the high-tech missiles on its side. Each...

This Batman review contains spoilers.

Everything you need to know about Batman: Caped Crusader happens in the opening credits. Sepia-tone shots of Batman glowering from a rooftop or skulking through empty rooms give way to images of the Gotham police office and gangsters firing tommy guns, all set to a moody, mournful score. Fancy art-deco script introduces the creatives involved, including producer credits for J.J. Abrams and The Batman director Matt Reeves.

Then there’s Bruce Timm, whose influence on the series is unquestionable from the moment the credits scene kicks off. Caped Crusader plays like an updated version of the great Batman: The Animated Series, which Timm created with Eric Radomski. Male characters may not have the same barrel chests and female figures don’t all have hourglass shapes, but the same linework and designs from the ’90s show is present. Each frame appears painted on black matte paper again,...

“You were an X-Man. You were the X-Man.” This line from Deadpool & Wolverine will likely become a classic among geek circles since it describes the importance of Hugh Jackman’s Logan, both to the Fox era of X-Men and to the brand as a whole. With that said, Deadpool & Wolverine was about the legacy of one specific Wolverine—or two, at any rate. And neither seems likely to be the Wolverine of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Which makes an eye-popping easter egg that was sneaked into Saturday night’s San Diego Comic-Con Hall H panel all the more shocking: Marvel is finding an in-canon reason to explain adamantium in “the sacred timeline,” and it has to do with one of the most controversial Marvel Studios films to date: 2021’s Eternals.

As revealed almost in passing during an exclusive clip from next year’s Captain America: Brave New World, President...

Shocking news out of San Diego Comic-Con and Marvel’s big Hall H panel Saturday night: Captain America: Brave New World looks to be taking on the best Cap comic book run of all time! That’s right, baby, the supervillains have unionized.

Giancarlo Esposito, the consummate badass that everyone assumed would be playing someone befitting his menace, like Gw Bridge, William Stryker, or even Magneto, turns out to be playing none of those characters. Instead he’s playing a mild-mannered economics professor and notorious Marvel Universe labor leader from Kenosha, Wisconsin. Probably. Maybe? Let’s unpack the surprisingly complicated backstory of Sidewinder, aka the King of the Serpent Society!

Who Is Giancarlo Esposito’s Sidewinder?

Marvel Studios’ panel confirmed that Esposito would be playing Sidewinder, King of the Serpent Society. However, it’s unlikely they’re doing a direct lift from the comics, because it would be a deeply bizarre pull to puzzle together.

Doom is no man’s second choice. And that’s why the MCU is going back to its first choice.

For years now, fans have speculated about the coming of the greatest villain in fiction, Doctor Victor Von Doom. And at the end of Saturday night’s Marvel panel at San Diego Comic-Con, Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige finally revealed the actor who will play Doctor Doom… and it turns out to be a familiar face: Robert Downey Jr. will return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Doctor Doom! He will furthermore be the big bad of the fifth Avengers movie, which has now been officially retitled Avengers: Doomsday, and which will be directed by Joe and Anthony Russo.

I know what you’re thinking: What? How?!?! The MCU knows Tony Stark as one of its greatest heroes. How can its greatest villain have the same face. Well, there’s actually a few possible explanations…...

My favorite version of the Penguin remains the one that scared me when I was seven years old. He had webbed hands, spewed black bile from between his teeth, and had a penchant for biting off the noses of insufficiently servile yes men. He was, of course, Danny DeVito’s Penguin in Tim Burton’s still bafflingly original Batman Returns, and he had absolutely nothing to do with his comic book counterpart other than a name, a monocle, and a penchant for fancy cigarette filters.

I’m reminded of my initial revulsion—and disappointment that he had nothing to do with the character I saw first on Batman: The Animated Series and as played by Burgess Meredith in the 1960s’ Batman camp classic before that—while predictably seeing the initial online criticism of the news that Minnie Driver has been cast as Oswalda Cobbeplot in a revisionist interpretation of the...

One of the great joys of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is seeing minor characters from The Original Series get fleshed out, characters like Dr. M’Benga and Number One. Another joy has been the romantic tension between Spock and Nurse Chapel, tension that has been complicated by the interactions with T’Pring, Spock’s Vulcan fiancée.

Both of those aspects are about to get much better with the third season of Strange New Worlds. Cillian O’Sullivan joins the cast as Dr. Roger Korby, the most respected archaeologist in the Federation. For those who know only Strange New Worlds and other recent Star Trek series, Dr. Korby refers only to the scientist under whom Chapel considered studying throughout the series’ second season. Chapel’s frustration about Spock refusing to acknowledge the feelings between them and her interest in Korby’s work drove several of her plots, especially in the musical episode “Subspace Rhapsody.

A case can be made that in the 21st century Bumblebee has become the most popular Transformer. He’s certainly the most loved Autobot after the big red fire truck we call Optimus Prime. This is in large part due to his starring role in the first live-action Transformers movie of 2007. Despite having almost no lines of dialogue—the poor robot lost his voice!—Bumblebee found novel ways of communicating with Shia Labeouf’s Sam Witwicky: he used music and created the sensation of your first car as a teenager being your best mate.

It’s a trick that was expanded on in the prequel spinoff Bumblebee (2018), and it might be getting a whole new dimensionality now thanks to the upcoming animated film, Transformers One. Due out in September, the movie takes place three billion years ago—so long that whichever Transformers canon it may be a part of is practically mooted.

This article has Deadpool & Wolverine spoilers galore.

Going into Deadpool & Wolverine, conventional wisdom held that the film would be a definitive end to the X-Men movies produced by 20th Century Fox. After all, even if Kevin Feige had a hand in crafting that universe, serving as a producer on X2: X-Men United and X-Men: The Last Stand, he didn’t enjoy the full control that he has now as head of Marvel Studios. And given the multiple wrong turns, not to mention more than a few bad men who have been involved with the franchise, it might be nice to give Marvel’s merry mutants a clean slate.

But in a surprise bigger than any of its cameos, Deadpool & Wolverine preserves the Fox Universe for future use… and it leaves the door wide open for their possible return to the MCU proper.

FoX-Men’s Fate

Early in Deadpool & Wolverine,...

When Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem opened a year ago, it hit like a mutagen bomb. Despite our fab four characters of Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, and Raphael being around for decades—this year marks their 40th(!) anniversary—never before had anyone really thought about treating them like… teenagers.

In the dizzyingly animated film, the characters were played by real adolescents like Nicolas Cantu (Leo), Micah Abbey (Donnie), Shamon Brown Jr. (Mikey), and Brady Noon (Raph). None of whom were old enough to vote when first stepping into the recording booth—a place where they recorded entirely together and in a style apropos of writers and producers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. The creatives who long favored spontaneity, and in this case the filmmakers wanted to catch the giggling authenticity of youth.

But you can’t be a kid forever, even if you’re a pizza-loving turtle in a half-shell.

This article appears in the new issue of Den Of Geek magazine. You can read all of our magazine stories here.

Before he ever settled on a pitch to 20th Century Studios, Fede Alvarez invited close friends and colleagues, cinephiles, and horror connoisseurs, into his home. At this point in his career, the Uruguayan director had once already pulled off a magic trick by becoming the first person not named Sam Raimi to helm an Evil Dead movie. Miraculously, he was celebrated for that walk across cinematic holy ground. Now, Alvarez wanted to workshop an even more death-defying stunt. He was going to share fledgling ideas for a new Alien film.

Over conversation and drinks, Alvarez teased the broad strokes of what he had in mind, from keeping one element of the franchise’s lore to perhaps jettisoning another; he would repeat this iconic detail of H.R. Giger’s creature design,...

While Ryan Reynolds has gone on the record as far back as 2021 to state that his dream vision for a third Deadpool movie always involved a road trip story with Wade and Logan, the path to making Deadpool & Wolverine a reality was anything but a smooth ride. In fact, Reynolds spent a good deal of time pitching Marvel Studios on a number of alternate, divergent ideas for Deadpool 3… including a low-budget concept sans any big set pieces. And when we spoke to Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige last week, the MCU impresario confirmed that a “Sundance” version was briefly developed. He even shed some light on Reynolds’ apparently Yuletide vision.

“Ryan is an idea machine who every day could pitch a new Deadpool movie, and did for a while as we were working on this,” Feige told us. “I don’t know exactly which ones he’s revealed and talked about,...

From the very first scene, Wade Wilson is squatting in the grave of Wolverine and the X-Men cinematic universe he helped build. This is not a metaphor. The film literally opens with Ryan Reynolds’ crimson-clad dynamo six feet deep in the hole Hugh Jackman’s superhero was buried beneath at the end of Logan, desperate to resurrect the past—or at least exhume the corpse of it for a gag.

It is not a metaphor, and yet it happily invites one all the same while watching Deadpool & Wolverine, the third fourth-wall-knocking laugher starring Reynolds and an endless barrage of dick jokes. Often funny ones too. Marketed as a long-overdue buddy comedy about the most popular (and lucrative) characters in Reynolds and Hugh Jackman’s respective oeuvres, Deadpool & Wolverine is indeed quite giggle-inducing when it slouches back into the iconography of its leads and watches what happens when you...

“It’s okay, baby,” Harley Quinn tells an agitated Joker at the end of the newest trailer for Joker: Folie à Deux. “Let’s give the people what they want.”

What people want, apparently, is Harley Quinn herself. First introduced in an episode of Batman: The Animated Series, Harley has grown to become one of the most popular characters in the DC Universe. Through most of her history, Harley has been the quintessential battered girlfriend, a woman who lost her own identity under that of her abusive, controlling boyfriend.

Harley Quinn began as Dr. Harleen Quinzel, a psychiatrist at Arkham Asylum tasked with studying the Joker. The more she learned about the Joker, the more enamored with him she became, to the point that she lost all sense of herself and became a henchman.

The trailer for Folie à Deux features a very different take on their dynamic. Instead, Harley...

In the modern age of superhero movie domination, comic book-accurate portrayals are a basic expectation. Nowadays fans even get upset when an actor doesn’t have the right hair color or nationality as the character that they’re portraying. Those expectations weren’t nearly as prominent back when X2: X-Men United was released in 2003. But that didn’t stop Aaron Stanford from doing his best to do justice to St. John Allerdyce, the Aussie mutant better known as Pyro in the comics.

“The movie Chopper had just come out and I loved Chopper, so I approached them with my best Mark Brandon Read accent,” Ashford tells Den of Geek, referring to Eric Bana’s character from the hit Aussie crime film. “I asked them, ‘Do you guys want him to have an Australian accent in this?’ and they were just like, ‘Absolutely not.’”

Making Pyro an American wasn’t the...

Here’s the thing about Deadpool: he knows that he’s in a movie. So he’s probably aware that his long-awaited first MCU entry Deadpool & Wolverine has finally been screened to critics and that those critics are sharing their thoughts about the movie on social media. But is he reading the tweets and jumping in joy or blowing himself up a la Deadpool 2? The studio betting big on the character’s latest theatrical outing is definitely hoping it’s the former.

After the relative box office and critical failures of Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania and The Marvels, Deadpool & Wolverine is the sole Marvel movie making it to theaters this year (unless we count Sony trash such as Madame Web). Marvel hopes that star Ryan Reynolds and his Deadpool will help turn the tide of superhero fatigue and make the MCU the sensation that it once was.

“It’s only nine people, but my entire world is in this picture.” These are a few of the words uttered by Ryan Reynolds’ forever-chatty Wade Wilson in the final Deadpool & Wolverine trailer. While the sizzle reel took the internet by storm Friday morning because of its strategic reveal of another beloved character cameo from X-Men movies past, what caught us most by surprise was how earnest, and even hoarse, Reynolds sounded as he pleaded with Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine to help him save his family. Deadpool might be the Merc with the Mouth, but in this scene he definitely wasn’t talking out the side of it.

Then again, one of the things about the first two Deadpool movies—particularly the earlier one—is how unexpectedly earnest they could really be. The first film really was the (raunchy) romantic comedy to beat during Valentine’s Day 2016. And it...

“You’ve got the wrong guy,” sneers Wolverine in the latest and final trailer for Deadpool & Wolverine.

“You were always the wrong guy,” comes the rejoinder, which would have been powerful said by anyone, but gets all the more cutting because of who delivered it: Laura aka X-23, once again played by Dafne Keen.

Ever since Hugh Jackman announced his return to the world of superheroes as Wolverine, fans have worried about the sanctity of his last outing, Logan. In addition to fully embracing the themes of regret and violence that have always driven Wolverine, Logan gave the hero a moving and well-deserved ending that seemed permanent when Jackman announced his retirement from the character.

The newest and final trailer for Deadpool & Wolverine goes to great lengths to assure viewers that Logan remains unsullied. Throughout the surprisingly sober teaser, Wolverine distinguishes himself as a multiversal variant of those seen in previous X-Men movies,...

The Alien franchise has a lot of scary elements: the uncaring company Weyland-Yutani, androids that look like humans, and, oh yeah, freaking Xenomorphs, based on an unnerving design by Swiss artist H.R. Giger. Underpinning many of these things is a fear of rape and pregnancy, especially inflicted upon men.

Many have written about how the first chestburster scene in Alien represents a man giving horrific birth, after being violated by a facehugger. Ash’s analysis of the facehugger in that movie gave viewers a sense of how the creature worked, including a tube that ran down the victim’s throat. But, at that point, director Ridley Scott apparently figured the audience had been traumatized enough, so he didn’t show the tube going into Kane.

Alien: Romulus director Fede Álvarez has no such concern. In the latest teaser for the upcoming film, we see not just a swarm of facehuggers...

When Duke Leto Atreides took on stewardship of Arrakis, he did so at the behest of the Imperium. The transfer of stewardship featured all manner of pomp, which cost the Imperium “1.46 million and 62 solares,” according to Mentat Thufir Hawat.

Those external shows of extravagance are about all that viewers get to see with the Imperium, in both Dune and its sequel Dune: Part Two. Even when Christopher Walken joined the cast of the second film as Padishah Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV, he makes only infrequent appearances, surely not enough to flesh out the Imperium’s workings.

Fortunately, the newest teaser for the HBO series Dune: Prophecy promises more attention to the Imperium. Most of the teaser focuses on the Bene Gesserit, the secretive coven of powerful women. As seen through the actions of Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam and Lady Jessica in the Dune films, the Bene Gesserit exerts enormous...

This Star Trek: Prodigy article contains spoilers.

Even though it got seven full seasons, Star Trek: Voyager still has a reputation as lesser Trek. However, in the decades since Captain Janeway brought her crew back home from the Delta Quadrant in 2001, Voyager has become a fan-favorite. So beloved is Voyager that Trekkies have thrilled to see the return of some of the cast, including Seven of Nine and Tuvok on Picard.

More than Picard or Lower Decks, Star Trek: Prodigy has functioned as a Voyager sequel series. The story begins with a bunch of kids in the Delta Quadrant finding a ship once captained by Chakotay; Janeway (as both an Admiral and a hologram) plays a major role in the series; and the Doctor joined the main crew in the latest season.

Yet, despite all of these connections, Prodigy creators Kevin and Dan Hageman don’t want to limit themselves to just Voyager.

Deadpool seems like he’s one of a kind, right? Somehow sweet and hyper violent, lovable and extremely annoying, aware that he’s a fictional character. Surely there can’t be more like him, right?

Of course there are! Multiverses and variants are all the rage right now, especially in superhero movie universes. In fact, one of the most exciting aspects of Deadpool & Wolverine has been the promise of various Wades Wilson from across realities. We’ve already seen glimpses of a handsome, maybe samurai Deadpool as well as Dogpool, the cute lil’ good boy with a mouth. But now two more variants are entering the MCU, including one whom fans have been waiting for quite a long time.

In the latest teaser for Deadpool & Wolverine, we get two quick shots of new variants: Lady Deadpool and the Deadpool Kid. Both characters made their debut in Deadpool: Merc with a...

“You can never go back,” warns Eiko (Sonoya Mizuno) in the trailer for the upcoming Netflix anime series Terminator Zero.

That’s a strange thing to hear from a character who literally went back in time. A human resistance soldier from 2022, Eiko has been sent to the year 1997. She’s there to stop a Terminator (voiced by Timothy Olyphant), itself sent to kill someone who might threaten the Machines in the future.

That sure sounds like Terminator Zero is moving back, all the way to the timeline of the first two (and easily best) Terminator movies. But Terminator Zero puts a twist on the proceedings by focusing not on any Connors or even Miles Dyson, the scientist who co-creates evil AI Skynet.

Rather, Terminator Zero features Malcolm Lee (voiced by Andre Holland), a scientist living in Japan. Lee is working on an AI that threatens to compete with Skynet. As the trailer shows,...

This Star Trek: Discovery review contains spoilers.

Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 Episode 1 and 2

The final voyage of Star Trek: Discovery is upon us, and it’s officially the end of an era—albeit one that will likely be met with plenty of mixed emotions. After all, no matter how you feel about the show itself, Discovery brought Star Trek back to television after a decade-plus absence, and played a key role in launching the larger franchise universe we’re all enjoying today. For that alone, we owe it a debt, and a resounding thank you. But it also must be said that Discovery hasn’t always been the easiest Trek installment to watch—or love.

The show struggled to find a coherent identity in its early seasons. A series that originally began as a fairly bleak Star Trek: The Original Series prequel about the Klingon War, Discovery drastically shifted its...

Before Blu-ray or DVD, before you could just open up an app on your phone and stream things, there was the beloved VHS tape, that most bulky of physical media. Whether you rented them from Blockbuster, owned a library of them and organized them neatly in the shelves running alongside your home entertainment center, used them to record your favorite movies or TV shows, or simply prayed for your teacher to pull one out on a Friday afternoon in middle school, the VHS tape was king of ’80s and ’90s home media.

There was simply nothing better than the experience that came with popping one of these bad boys into your Vcr — unless the film was a stinker, of course, but then again, you probably still at least remember watching it, unlike so much of the mindless filler on today’s streamers. In fact, let’s take a stroll down...

While the Kang Dynasty has not fallen, we dare say that its glory days are behind it. Because as of Wednesday afternoon, the film titled Avengers: The Kang Dynasty just lost its director.

As per Deadline, which broke the news, Destin Daniel Cretton has moved off directing what is supposed to be the first Avengers film since 2019’s gargantuan Avengers: Endgame. Considering Cretton previously directed the well-received Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, this would be a surprise… except that according to the digital trade, Cretton is still onboard to possibly direct other Marvel Studios projects in the future. In other words, this appears to be less about Cretton stepping away from Kang Dynasty than Marvel possibly (and probably) stepping away from Kang.

The character, who is admittedly played with verve and presence by Jonathan Majors, has in fact been the center of plenty of internal handwringing at...

Horror has come into its own in the 21st century. This is not to say that the genre has ever not been one of the most interesting and creative in the long history of cinema. Since nearly the beginning of the art form, using moving images to scare audiences has been a gateway for aspirin filmmakers to break into the industry—or for even veterans to creatively something about the greater world by painting a landscape of anxiety.

Nonetheless, the 21st century (particularly beginning in its second decade) has brought a renewed appreciation for scary movies’ abilities to speak to audiences with more than just “boo.” With that in mind, we at Den of Geek have polled our staff and collected the below list of what we generally consider to be the best chillers of the fast quarter-century or so. Enjoy.

42. Land of the Dead (2005)

Land of the Dead does...

How do you like to celebrate the arrival of October and true autumn? Perhaps you have a favorite sweater you like to pull out of the drawer; or maybe you’re a fiend for consuming pumpkin-spiced… everything! For ourselves, it’s always been about putting on that first horror movie (or three). While the whole year is a fine time to watch scary movies, there’s something especially crisp about a favorite chiller to match the cool evenings outside.

Spooky season has to start somewhere, and for us it might as well be with a film that either makes us shriek or smile. So if you’re looking for suggestions on how to best ease yourself into the reason for the season, these are the movies that we think make Halloween a wickedly fine time.

It’s not Halloween until I watch… The Shining (1980)

There aren’t many of the...

This Star Trek: Strange New Worlds review contains spoilers.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 Episode 10

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 2 is honestly an astounding achievement. It not only pulled off a musical episode and a live-action crossover with a cartoon, its traditional installments were virtually nothing but straight bangers, rattling off war stories, showstopper courtroom trials, and heartrending journeys through time that rank up there with the best the Star Trek franchise has ever offered. We are so lucky to have this show, and it has generally exceeded every expectation I could have ever set for it.

So when I call the season 2 finale “Hegemony” a generally fine conclusion to this run of episodes, I mean it in the most expansive sense of the word. A “fine” Strange New Worlds episode is still pretty outstanding television, and as a season-ender, “Hegemony” is certainly an action-packed adventure, one that...

This Star Trek: Strange New Worlds review contains spoilers.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 Episode 9

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds continues to swing for the fences in its second season, repeatedly going where literally no one has gone before in this franchise. And if you thought that things couldn’t possibly get more delightfully chaotic than the episode that brought several Lower Decks animated characters into the world of live action, you definitely weren’t prepared for the series’ foray into musical storytelling, an installment that is potentially the most purely fun hour of Star Trek I’ve ever watched. Is it silly? Absolutely. Occasionally cringe-worthy? Kind of. But somehow still perfect in spite of it all? 100% yes.

Most viewers likely assumed that the much-ballyhooed Star Trek musical episode would basically be a marketing gimmick, a silly, largely disposable hour with little to offer besides the chance to see...

This Star Trek: Strange New Worlds article contains spoilers.

The fact that Star Trek: Strange New Worlds features a character with the last name Noonien-Singh meant that we would eventually get an episode like “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow,” an hour that finally attempts to address the long-tail impact and trauma of growing up in the shadow of Khan’s bloody legacy. But, like so many other aspects of this show, the series found an unexpected way to explore this story—one that doesn’t rely solely on nostalgia to carry its plot but rather uses familiar elements to find something new to say about its characters and the larger world they inhabit.

To be fair, security officer La’an Noonien-Singh has absolutely been through it over the course of her life so far—heck, even just over the course of this series’ 13 episodes to date!—and it’s hard...

This Star Trek: Strange New Worlds review contains spoilers.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 Episode 1

On paper, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is the most traditional entry in the current Star Trek franchise, with its more episodic weekly adventures, light-hearted feel, and open embrace of the wonders inherent in space exploration. But, for all its old-school vibes, nothing about this show feels stodgy or stuck in the past. In fact, Strange New Worlds is at its best when it’s gleefully subverting our expectations about what a show like this is supposed to be and do from week to week, embracing shifts in genre, tone, and format that somehow manage to make even the most familiar story beats feel fresh and new.

So it probably shouldn’t surprise anyone that the Strange New Worlds season 2 premiere continues to choose the unexpected path, and does exactly the opposite of what...

The following contains major spoilers for the series finale of The Flash.

The Flash Season 9 Episode 13

It’s the end of an era. After nine seasons, over 180 episodes, half a dozen major network crossovers, and countless rogues, The CW’s The Flash has completed its final run (and most likely wrapped up the current incarnation of the DC TV universe as we know it along with it). Though the show’s shortened final season certainly had its issues—the random introduction of a third Snow sister instead of just giving Caitlin an actual story, way too much Cecile, the awkwardness of the “Chellegra” romance—the four-part series finale “A New World” did attempt to bring the story of The Flash full circle, resurrecting Rick Cosnett’s Eddie Thawne and using him to bring balance to the Speed Force; showing us the birth of Barry and Iris’ daughter, Nora; and expanding...

This Star Trek: Picard review contains spoilers.

Star Trek: Picard Season 3 Episode 10

All good things must come to an end. Even the things we might wish wouldn’t. Such is the case with Star Trek: Picard, a series that, to put it mildly, struggled to find a coherent identity and purpose during its first two seasons, but which blossomed in its third and did so by finally embracing the very legacy it at first tried so hard to run away from. I’m as surprised as anyone to find myself wishing this story could last just a little bit longer, that we could somehow spend a little bit more time with these people, that we didn’t have to say goodbye to this piece of Star Trek: The Next Generation, grown older alongside us in rich and fascinating ways.

Look: If you, as a viewer, haven’t been enjoying the...

This Star Trek: Picard review contains spoilers.

Star Trek: Picard Season 3 Episode 9

The penultimate episode of Star Trek: Picard season 3 is an hour it feels like we’ve been waiting weeks to see. “Vox,” thankfully, seems to understand that there are two episodes left in this entire series and acts accordingly. The end result is an hour that may not be perfect from a narrative perspective, but that definitely hits all the right notes when it comes to the heart and emotion that have made this season of Picard such an improvement over the two that have come before it.

After largely spinning its wheels through “Dominion” and “Surrender”, two mediocre installments notable only for the return of Deanna Troi and the successful merging of Data’s multiple personalities, the series’ sudden dash through a half dozen major plot points at once is certainly a welcome change, if only because...

This Star Trek: Picard review contains spoilers.

Star Trek: Picard Season 3 Episode 6

The third and final season of Star Trek: Picard finally puts the proverbial band back together in “The Bounty,” and, to the likely surprise of no one, it’s the best episode of the season. It’s true, the bulk of this hour is pure fan service and contains elements that seem to be there for no reason other than they will utterly delight those who loved Star Trek: The Next Generation. But it’s hard to argue with a classic simply playing the hits when they’re executed with this much verve and heart. Particularly when they’re integrated so seamlessly into the larger story the season is telling.

From a slow-motion panorama across many of Star Trek’s most famous starships—including Captain Kirk’s U.S.S. Enterprise and Seven’s former home, the U.

This Star Trek: Picard review contains spoilers.

Star Trek: Picard Season 3 Episode 4

Star Trek: Picard’s “No Win Scenario” feels like the closest we’ve come yet to an old-school Star Trek: The Next Generation episode on the Paramount+ series, complete with a main story that highlights the necessity of collaboration and teamwork, a textbook inspirational captain’s speech, and a reminder that the vast and wondrous potential of the universe is the real reason this franchise exists in the first place. There are life and death stakes, a seemingly unsolvable problem, a surprise revelation about the season’s Big Bad, and more than one surprising heart-to-heart talk between legacy characters reflecting back on a lifetime in Starfleet and what its mission has both cost and meant to them.

Of course, the whole “impending death by gravity well” thing is technically the least interesting part of the hour, possibly because...

This Star Wars review contains spoilers for The Mandalorian.

The Mandalorian Season 3 Episode 1

“Being a Mandalorian is not just learning how to fight. You also have to know how to navigate the galaxy, because you never know where you might be headed next.”

The beautiful thing about The Mandalorian’s season 3 premiere, “The Apostate,” is that it reminds us that this show is all about adventure. It’s a deliberately paced episode with a few bursts of action, some pleasant quality time between Din Djarin and Grogu, and some enticing setups for the rest of the season. Following the duo’s stint in the less-than-stellar The Book of Boba Fett, this re-introduction to the mainline Star Wars series is a much-needed palate cleanser.

The sun-drenched opening sequence with the Armorer and the Tribe’s helmet bestowment ceremony re-establishes the importance of a Mandalorian’s oath to never remove one’s...

This article contains MCU spoilers.

It’s over! It’s officially over. Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is finally in our rear view mirror, and what did we learn? We learned that Marvel Studios wasn’t going to stop taking risks after capping off Phase 3 with the box office juggernaut of Avengers: Endgame. In fact, they were going to take more risks than ever. Sometimes, those risks paid off. Other times, they did not. But during a transformative time for the MCU, Phase 4 was, for the most part, determined not to offer the one thing that would have made older fans happy but would have perhaps discouraged newer, younger fans from emerging: more of the same.

As such, the MCU got a whole slate of brand-new and diverse characters. Moon Knight, the Eternals, Ms. Marvel, Shang-Chi, She-Hulk, Kate Bishop, Yelena Belova, John Walker, Ironheart, Agatha, Red Guardian, Clea, Echo,...

Sometimes even the most rich and powerful of streaming services need a little break. Such is the case with Disney+’s list of new releases for July 2022.

As the stewards of Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar, and hundreds of other beloved franchises and characters, Disney is never exactly hurting for content. And that’s good for them as streaming service Disney+ won’t be bringing much new material to the table in July 2022.

The only major release of note this month is the finale for delightful Marvel series Ms. Marvel on July 13. The story of Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani) discovering her powers has been a worthwhile little entry into the MCU canon thus far. Will the show opt for spectacle in its finale like many of its Marvel peers? I suppose we’ll find out on July 13.

Read more TV Ms. Marvel: Why Kamala Khan’s Powers Were Changed for TV By Delia Harrington TV Ms.

This Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi review contains spoilers.

Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi Episode 3

What kind of monster is Darth Vader? This week’s Obi-Wan Kenobi presents Vader as both terrifying and vulnerable. While Part III doesn’t always nail the visuals, the confrontation between Obi-Wan and Vader brings back classic Star Wars thrills.

Obi-Wan and Leia head to Mapuzo, a once-pastoral planet the Empire is now strip-mining. He’s trying to reach Qui-Gon through the Force. Instead, he’s confronted only with memories and visions of Anakin and the other tragedies in his life. Leia is more hopeful, but knows little about the Force or how evil the Empire can be. On the Imperial side of things, the Third Sister calls Darth Vader himself. The Inquisitors are still fighting among themselves. The Third Sister and Fifth Brother clash over who gets to bring Obi-Wan’s location to Vader. And in...