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Earth’s mightiest heroes—what’s left of them, at least—stand united, for one last fight.
Marvel just dropped another surprise new Avengers: Endgame teaser out of nowhere, and it is packed with new footage, as the scattered heroes we left at the end of Infinity War find their way back together and formulate one last attempt to avenge what they lost.
We’ve had set photos. We’ve had space-beepers. We’ve had comic universe teases. Hell, we’ve had notepads. But finally, finally, hope for a battered and bruised post-Infinity War Marvel Cinematic Universe has arrived—in the form of the mighty Captain Marvel herself!
As revealed by the cover of the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly, we finally have our first official look at Brie Larson in costume as Carol Danvers, a.k.a. Captain Marvel. Here she is, in all her high-flying glory:
Photo: Michael Muller/Marvel Studios (Entertainment Weekly)
The set photos we’d seen a while ago had already given us an idea of what to expect from Carol’s film look—or rather specifically looks, as the suit we saw was similar to this but in a very Kree-inspired green and blue, a callback to the origins of the Captain Marvel mantle as championed by the Kree warrior, Mar-Vell (purportedly played by Jude Law in the upcoming film). But at least now we can see it in the iconic red, blue, and gold we know as Carol’s iconic look since she first took on the mantle herself in 2012. And god damn does it look good.
Speaking of Law’s character, according to EW the film will open with Carol already having gotten her cosmic powers—as she heads to space to join the Kree comic book superteam known as Starforce, which will be lead by Law’s “enigmatic commander.” After spending time with the team in the film, Carol returns to her homeworld, only to face a bold new threat: the infamous shapeshifting Marvel villains the Skrulls, who will be lead by Ben Mendelsohn’s villainous Talos.
We already know a few more familiar faces are in the movie—helping out Carol we’ve got younger versions of Nick Fury and Agent Coulson, still played by Samuel L. Jackson and Clark Gregg through the power of Marvel’s uncanny de-aging CG, and on the cosmic Kree-based side of things there’s Lee Pace and Djimon Honsou, reprising their Guardians of the Galaxy roles of Ronan the Accuser and Korath the Pursuer, respectively. Beyond that, there’s new characters like Kree scientist Dr. Minn-Erva, played by Gemma Chan, and mystery characters played by Annette Bening and Lashana Lynch (who we’re very much hoping could be bringing badass former Captain Marvel herself, Monica Rambeau, from the comics to the MCU).
It’s likely we’ll be seeing and learning a lot more of Captain Marvel this week—we’ll bring you more as we know it.
After years away, Anakin, Ahsoka, and Obi-Wan are back for one last battle.
GIF: Star Wars: Clone Wars (Lucasfilm)
10 years ago, the Star Wars universe was forever changed with the arrival of the Clone Wars animated series. Now, for one final story, the animated show is making a beloved return.
Just announced at San Diego Comic-Con’s special 10th anniversary panel for Star Wars: Clone Wars, Lucasfilm animation is reviving the show for one last huzzah, in the form of a series of episodes based around the Siege of Mandalore—a plotline planned for the show’s potential sixth season before it was brought to close following the acquisition of Star Wars and Lucasfilm by Disney.
Originally planned as the final end for Clone Wars—set after the climax of the show’s fifth season, and just moments before the start of Revenge of the Sith—the storyline was meant to re-unite Ahsoka Tano and her master, Anakin Skywalker, for one last adventure together as they liberated Mandalore from the rule of Darth Maul. Speaking to the Star Wars website in the wake of the news, Clone Wars executive producer Dave Filoni noted the satisfaction in finally getting to complete the story of the show as he originally intended:
Personally, it’s very rewarding. Any opportunity to put the final pieces of the story in place is meaningful as a storyteller. I’m happy for the opportunity to define these things and the end of this part of the Clone War. It also makes me reflect on all the people that I got to work with over the years. It reinforces the things I learned from George. It reminds me of the important elements that go into making Star Wars. So, it’s nice on several levels, and I think for the crew that’s still here that worked on Clone Wars, they feel that, as well.
For one last time, the fires of the Clone Wars burn again.
Image: Lucasfilm
Clone Wars returns on Disney’s untitled streaming service—set to launch some time in 2019—for a 12 episode run.
If you’ve ever wanted to hear Robin say “Fuck Batman” before knocking the hell out of and killing a couple of street-level criminals, then allow us to show you the very first trailer for DC Universe’s upcoming live-action Titans series. Suffice to say that Teen Titans Go!, this is not.
Rather than teasing us with brief glimpses of what the titular Titans are going to look like in action, the first Titans trailer gets right down to business and introduces us to its take on Raven (Teagan Croft), a teenaged girl haunted by literal and metaphorical demons just as she’s beginning her search for detective Dick Grayson (Brenton Thwaites). Using her psychic abilities, Raven’s able to deduce Robin’s tragic origin story and she implores the vigilante to her stop an unforeseen threat with the potential to destroy the world.
The trailer features a couple of shots of Beast Boy (Ryan Potter) in action and of Starfire (Anna Diop) using her impressive energy projection abilities, but what really stands out is just how seemingly gritty and bloody the show’s going to be.
While these might not exactly be the Titans you were expecting, it’s interesting to see what a mature direction DC and Warner Bros. are taking the characters, especially given how they’ve tended to skew much younger in recent years. In any case, Titans is definitely shaping up to be a darker show for a slightly older audience and to be honest, that’s perfectly fine considering that Teen Titans Go! is still very much a thing that isn’t going anywhere.
What remains to be see, though, is whether DC Universe’s Titans will be able to hold its own against the company’s other riffs on those characters when the series premieres later this year.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson attends the SXSW premiere of behind-the-scenes doc The Director and The Jedi.
Photo: Jesse Grant (Getty)
If you’ve spent literally any time on the internet interacting with fans of pretty much any genre franchise, like Ghostbusters, Star Trek, or Star Wars, then you know that what begins as an impassioned debate can quickly descend into hostile, vitriolic trolling.
At some point over the past few weeks, actress Kelly Marie Tran, who played Rose Tico in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, deleted all of her Instagram posts for reasons that have not been explained. io9 has reached out to Tran’s representatives for comment about what happened but as of publishing, they’ve not returned our calls. Multiple reports are alleging that it might have been in response to racist, misogynist trolling from the Star Wars fandom, reports themselves based off of an as-yet unverified tweet from a fan account that spread quickly on social media.
Regardless of the specifics reasons for Tran’s disappearance from Instagram, the fact remains that groups of fans targeting specific people for harassment is a very real problem that’s not likely to go away soon unless people get serious about addressing it head-on.
This afternoon, The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson took to his own Twitter account to speak about his personal (and overwhelmingly positive) experience with the community:
In response to Johnson’s initial tweet, a number of people came out of the woodwork to argue that fans who had come after Tran were merely trying to voice valid critiques of the Star Wars film she’s been in. Johnson, who again, is not new to this kind of thing, wasted no time in calling out that line of “reasoning” as the straw man that it is:
Johnson has dealt with more than his fair share of loud, angry harassment from fans, and so his faith in the rest of Star Wars’ massive community is heartening. But as a person who’s in a unique position of power with regard to Star Wars, Johnson, like other franchise directors and studio executives can and should feel more than comfortable telling fans not to be shitty to one another.
The contingent of fans who claim that the inclusion of more women, people of color, and queer people are ruining Hollywood is probably very small in reality. But that doesn’t change the fact that these people feel emboldened to go after those they don’t like and attempt to make their lives a living hell. There are countless numbers of “good” fans who spend plenty of time explaining why diversity is ultimately making genre franchises stronger and more narratively interesting, but—even together—their voices don’t have nearly the same kind of reach as people like Johnson’s do.
This is why it’s important now more than ever for prominent creators to just straight up call people out on their blatant bigotry.
There’s the idea that explicitly addressing a fandom’s bad behavior could have the unintended effect of backfiring and ultimately end up hurting a movie’s bottom line. But by ignoring it completely, studios (or other entities) send the message to the rest of the fandom that the abuses fans are suffering at the hand of their peers is not a concern.
Yes, there are plenty more Star Wars fans out there that identify with the Resistance (which, you know, is kind of the overall message of the franchise) as opposed to the First Order, and they will continue to love and care about Star Wars for years to come. But there will always be fans who would rather act in bad faith than accept that Star Wars isn’t only for them. It would be in Lucasfilm and Disney’s best interest to make it crystal clear that they don’t support or condone that reprehensible behavior.
With just the right song, and some good edits, this game footage looks like it stepped out of the Spider-Man cartoon of my dreams.
The song, of course, is the classic 1967 Spider-Man cartoon theme song, and the edits are made by Ascender, who transforms Insomniac’s upcoming Spider-Man videogame into a beautifully wrought homage to the retro history of Spider-Man television.
I see a lot of fan trailers and edits in my job, but this is easily one of the snazziest and most clever takes on the form I’ve ever seen. It looks professionaly. Marvel should seriously consider hiring these people.
And also making a TV show in this style. I mean, wouldn’t you watch that?
The first trailer for the hard-R-rated puppet film The Happytime Murders says that the film is “no Sesame, all Street,” and the people responsible for Sesame Street are not happy about it. In fact, they’re suing.
Sesame Workshop, the company responsible for the long-running family program Sesame Street, filed a lawsuit in New York Thursday against STX Entertainment, which is making The Happytime Murders. The suit claims The Happytime Murders tarnishes the Sesame Street brand by using its recognizable name in its decidedly adult marketing. (The Wrap has more specific details on the suit.)
“Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit organization behind Sesame Street, learned last Friday that the name Sesame Street is being used to market a graphic, adult-themed movie,” a statement released to io9 from the Sesame Workshop read. We were surprised and disappointed that SesameStreet, a show dedicated to educating young children, is being exploited to market this R-rated film. We immediately contacted the film’s distributor, STX Films, and requested that they remove our name from the film’s marketing. They declined to do so. We take no issue with the creative freedom of the filmmakers and their right to make and promote this movie, rather this is about how our name is being misused to market a film with which we have no association. We regret that our fans and families have been confused by STX’s marketing campaign.”
“Fred, Esq.,” a puppet representing STX Entertainment, provided io9 with the following statement.
STX loved the idea of working closely with Brian Henson and the Jim Henson Company to tell the untold story of the active lives of Henson puppets when they’re not performing in front of children. Happytime Murders is the happy result of that collaboration and we’re incredibly pleased with the early reaction to the film and how well the trailer has been received by its intended audience. While we’re disappointed that Sesame Street does not share in the fun, we are confident in our legal position. We look forward to introducing adult moviegoers to our adorably unapologetic characters this summer.
The Happytime Murders is directed by Brian Henson—whose father, Jim Henson, helped create Sesame Street. While there is no direct link between the properties, Henson puppets and puppeteers are being used in the film, so there is some tangential DNA. The question becomes, will STX decide to remove the Sesame Street reference from the film’s marketing—or will a court of law be forced to get involved?
The Happytime Murders is scheduled for release August 17.
Updates: Sesame Workshop sent a slightly updated statement after publication, which we changed, and we added a statement from STX’s representative puppet.
As court cases go, the State of Georgia V. Denver Fenton Allen may be one of the most insane legal proceedings in history. After all, it’s not every day a defendant repeatedly tells a judge “go fuck yourself” and “suck my dick.” (The entire transcript is truly a thing of beauty, truly.)
The team at Rick and Morty caught wind of this insanity and did their own re-creation for San Diego Comic-Con back in July, featuring Morty as the Judge and Rick as the world’s most vulgar defendant. After fan-postings of the animatic went viral, Adult Swim released an official version of the film shown at SDCC.
Now some fans have decided to do an even better version. Using Toonboom Harmony 14, YouTuber tiarawhy took the black and white animatic and animated it in full color. It took two months of work, but it looks just great:
Justin Roiland, who is the voice of both Rick and Morty, does a bang-up job with his line reading. And the extra animations really add to what is already a truly laugh out loud experience.
Season three of The Magicianslands on Syfy this Wednesday and with it comes one of the show’s best scenes ever. Hold onto your butts—The Magicians is going meta.
The writers of this show are truly magicians themselves if this newly released clip is any indication. We’ve come to expect a certain level of quippy dialogue from The Magicians,but when it comes time to hide a vital conversation from prying eyes and ears, King Eliot comes up with an amazing plan: Talk in pop culture!
Eliot’s entire conversation with Queen Margo is perfection but hits a high note by kicking things off referencing another Syfy series: Battlestar Galactica. Take a look (unless you want to go into the episode fresh, of course). And don’t worry if you’re not entirely versed in pop culture; there are helpful subtitles to explain some of the references.
Speaking of dialogue, executive producer Sera Gamble also revealed on Twitter today that the expletives will be flying around like players on a Quidditch field in season three.
The Magicians returns to Syfy this Wednesday at 9 pm.
The response to The Last Jedi has been divisive to say the least. Some love it because it takes Star Wars in a bold new direction; some hate it for the same reason. While I enjoyed a great deal of the film, it profoundly depressed me, and here’s why: The Last Jedi killed my childhood, but not in the way you think.
I understand the issue here. “Killing my childhood” evokes the far more common “ruined my childhood,” a petty term that merely means someone hates a modern installment or version of something you loved as a kid. “So-and-so ruined my childhood!” cannot be said meaningfully; it can only be whined. The Last Jedi ruined neither my childhood nor the Star Wars franchise.
So when I say it “killed my childhood,” I mean it only personally.
I was born in 1977, and I grew up with Luke Skywalker. I was one of the multitude of kids who watched the films religiously. I can’t even imagine how many times I’ve seen A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi. I loved a lot of movies and cartoons and toys, but it was always Star Wars first and foremost, and Luke Skywalker was my hero. It’s not that I necessarily considered him the best hero in pop culture, it’s that he was The Hero. The other good guys in my pop culture life were just that—other.
A regular part of the makeup of hero stories is that there’s a problem—a monster to defeat, an issue to solve, an institution to topple—that the older generation has either allowed to happen or is actively participating in. It requires a young hero, a new generation, to solve the problem that the older generation can’t, or won’t. Older characters can at best act as mentors to the heroes—but they must fail so that the heroes can succeed.
For a kid, it’s an intrinsic, powerful story. It makes up the bulk of Western mythology, from the stories of Greek heroes like Perseus, Theseus, Achilles, to the tale of Beowulf. It connects to kids fundamentally. That’s why people have been telling stories about heroes, just like this, for thousands of years. But with few—very few exceptions—these heroes don’t get old. We don’t want to see our heroes turn into mentors, because we don’t want them supplanted. There’s something inherently tragic about aging from a hero to a mentor (or even worse, the hero becoming part of the problem). The message is that no one stays a hero forever. It’s why this part of the story is usually left untold.
But this story is effectively told in the Star Wars sequels, just as it had to be told. Once we learned Luke Skywalker, Leia, and Han Solo would appear in the trilogy, we knew there would have to be a problem they couldn’t solve—a conflict beyond their powers that could only be won by Rey, Finn, and Poe. It couldn’t happen any other way. If it had, it sure as hell wouldn’t be Star Wars.
When The Force Awakens came out, a movie I loved, I bemoaned this fact. My childhood heroes had won their war against the Empire in the original trilogy, but TFA showed that they didn’t bring peace to the galaxy. The New Republic Leia fought so hard to establish was broken even before it was destroyed. Luke’s attempt to bring back the Jedi ended in such tragedy that he had been living in self-imposed exile for years. Han Solo not only failed to keep his son from the Dark Side, he was murdered because of it.
I hated learning that their hard-won accomplishments in the original trilogy were for naught, that after the end credits of Return of the Jedi their futures would be filled with disappointment and pain. But when The Force Awakens ended, despite Han Solo’s death, there was still hope. The Resistance survived. The battle against the First Order had just begun. Luke Skywalker had been found.
I knew The Last Jedi would be a darker, more tragic movie; second acts invariably are (which is why the rumors that TLJ would be the Empire Strikes Back of the new trilogy were so useless). But The Last Jedi does more than leave the story at a low point. It ends with the galaxy nearly consumed with evil, yet a small hope remains—a flickering candle in overwhelming darkness, to use TLJ’s constant metaphor, that could bring light… someday. In the future. Presumably Episode IX.
The reason this small light isn’t extinguished is because Luke Skywalker makes the ultimate sacrifice to keep it burning. He projects himself across the stars to confront Kylo Ren, buying enough time for the tiny remnant of the Resistance to slip away. It’s a noble act. And Luke is successful at keeping that, well, new hope alive. But Luke dies tragically.
When he becomes one with the Force, things are infinitely worse at the end of The Last Jedi than they are before A New Hope begins, before Luke starts his journey. Evil rules the galaxy. There are no more than a dozen members left living in the neo-Rebellion—not even enough to fill the Millennium Falcon. His adventures, his sacrifices, his victories in the three movies that dominated my childhood accomplished nothing, meant nothing.
I turned 40 this year. I’ve had a mild, rather traditional midlife crisis at the realization that I’m likely at the midway point of my life, but my love of the entertainment of my youth—buoyed both by the immensely popular and profitable nostalgia entertainment industry, as well as the fact that my professional career keeps one foot stuck firmly in my childhood—has kept me at least partially in a state of arrested development as I approached middle age. I recognized this, but I saw no downside to remaining young at heart. I still don’t.
Watching Luke die, not to achieve something as much as to prevent an unfathomable defeat being total, made me ache with sadness. I hated that he died, essentially, a failure. I hate that the movies I lived and breathed as a kid (and for decades after) meant nothing to the Star Wars galaxy. This past weekend I happened to glance at the original trilogy DVD set on my shelf, and had to look away because I didn’t want to think about Luke Skywalker’s fate. The Last Jedi has made me so upset I don’t want to think about Star Wars at all.
I would suspect that those people of my generation who were as obsessed with A New Hope, Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi as I was feel the same—like the Star Wars franchise has been wrested away from them, by taking the focus off the original heroes, by killing Luke off, and by essentially negating the movies I loved so damn much. Those who grew up with the prequels, or who enjoy Star Wars but don’t feel a proprietary ownership over it, probably think I sound like a self-entitled asshole.
This is because I am being a self-entitled asshole. Because despite my feelings, The Last Jedi is the best thing that could have possibly happened to the Star Wars franchise.
The Last Jedi is a direct, not-even-slightly subtle message to hardcore, original trilogy-obsessed fans like myself that Star Wars is more than those three movies (or the three prequels that served as one long, terrible prologue to them). It completely resets the battle between good and evil, putting good in more dire straits than we’ve ever seen in these films. It introduces several brand new Force powers. It expands the universe in ways no one expected (or in ways purists like me wanted). And it removes the old heroes to fully make way for the new.
It proclaims boldly it’s time for a truly new Star Wars saga, for a new generation of kids to fall in love with, just like I did. That Star Wars can be more, should be more, than the original trilogy and its prologues and epilogues. That the franchise belongs to more than just those born in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. That it’s time for me, like Rey, to let go of the past. It has been that time for awhile now.
This is all exactly how it’s supposed to be. The franchise needs to do more than just ape the original trilogy in order to evolve, if not outright continue. I shouldn’t be holding Star Wars hostage. Lucasfilm and Disney shouldn’t be making these movies just for me. They can’t if they expect to continue for the next decade. And god knows I’ll get to experience plenty more of the adventures of Luke, Leia, and Han for decades to come. As long as I and my ilk keep spending money on them, someone will keep churning out ancillary Star Wars products targeted to our nostalgia.
My brain knows all this, but my heart is still broken. When the Skywalker saga came to a close, so did, in a very real way, that last remnant of my childhood. Star Wars is so representative of my inner child, of my nerdiness, that when Luke faded away into the Force I truly felt like I had lost someone close to me, and the loss was profound. The fact that The Last Jedi’s incredibly tragic end makes it so uniquely, horrifyingly perfect for 2017 makes it even more powerfully depressing to me.
The Last Jedi was made with other fans in mind—especially the new ones. This isn’t only a good thing, it’s the right thing. If you grew up with the prequels, or your first Star Wars experience was The Force Awakens or TLJ, you almost certainly wouldn’t have latched onto the original trilogy heroes in the way that my generation did. How could you? Why would you? If you were born in 2007, why would you be any more sad about Luke dying than we were when Obi-Wan sacrificed himself in A New Hope? Rey, Finn, and Poe are the heroes now. And whenever Episode X rolls around, maybe in 2021 or so, another new generation of heroes will emerge, for a new generation of kids to be inspired by.
The Last Jedi is a good Star Wars movie. It just wasn’t made for me, or the legion of other fans my age. After 40 years of having Star Wars basically tailor-made for us, it was well past time.
But Luke Skywalker is still dead. And with him, part of my childhood died, too. I mourn them both.
Trailer FrenzyA special place to find the newest trailers for movies and TV shows you’re craving. 
