CHRIS HEMSWORTH LUPITA NYONG’O TURNS TRANSFORMER BECOMES A WILD ROBOT
FIRST LOOK NIGHTMARE SPIDER SHELOB IS BACK IN THE RINGS OF POWER S2
ELI ROTH’S BORDERLANDS
LOWER DECKS S5 MARK WAID ON ABSOLUTE POWER
DAVID BOWIE’S UFOS STAR WARS OUTLAWS UBISOFT'S AMBITIOUS OPEN-WORLD GAME ON SET HANGING WITH THE GANG FOR UMBRELLA ACADEMY S4
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▲STAR WARS OUTLAWS
At Summer Game Fest, we went hands-on with the very first open-world Star Wars game. We caught up with Ubisoft Massive to learn how the team accomplished this major leap forward for the franchise. PG. 62
MEET SHELOB
Sauron makes his next move in The Rings of Power season two, but he’s not the only villain. Actor Maxim Baldry (Isildur) and VFX supervisor Jason Smith tell us all about the show’s new take on the terrifying giant spider monster Shelob! PG. 56
▲WILD ROBOT
Lilo & Stitch director Chris Sanders heads up this tale of a robot (Lupita Nyong’o) getting in touch with nature. Nyong’o tells us about finding a voice for a character who has no human emotions in our exclusive interview. PG. 50
◄BORDERLANDS
The highly acclaimed loot shooter video game series is making the jump to live-action and introducing a whole new audience to the chaotic planet of Pandora. We chat with director Eli Roth about adapting this beloved world. PG. 18
▼THOSE ABOUT TO DIE
Peacock’s new historical epic takes a deep dive into the world of gladiators, chariot racing, and sports betting in the days of the Roman Empire. Writer Robert Rodat takes us through the real history behind the series. PG. 28
▲LOWER DECKS S5
The first Star Trek animated comedy is going on its final voyage with season five. Stars Tawny Newsome and Jack Quaid say their farewells. PG. 24
CHRIS HEMSWORTH
This movie star is no stranger to playing largerthan-life characters, and for the animated origin film Transformers One, the actor is tackling yet another as the voice of a young Optimus Prime. PG. 48
UMBRELLA ACADEMY S4
The crime-fighting family of The Umbrella Academy have gone to some weird places. We visit the set and showrunner Steve Blackman and the cast walk us through their biggest adventure yet: the show’s fourth and final season. PG. 42
▼ABSOLUTE POWER
The scheming Amanda Waller tears the Justice League apart in order to reshape the DC Universe in her own tyrannical image. Writer Mark Waid takes us behind the scenes of Absolute Power, DC Comics’ biggest (and darkest) crossover event yet. PG. 58
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ON THE COVER
In space no one can hear you scream, but at San Diego Comic-Con it’ll be screams all round when Disney presents footage from it’s upcoming chiller Alien: Romulus Hopefully squeals of joy will also accompany the reveal of our exclusive cover— comfortably our scariest one yet. We chatted with director Fede Alvarez and stars Cailee Spaeny and David Jonsson about the latest installment of the franchise, set 20 years after the original Alien. Elsewhere in the issue you’ll find a deep dive into new game Star Wars Outlaws, a visit to the set of The Umbrella Academy season four, interviews with Chris Hemsworth and Lupita Nyong’o on their respective robot animations Transformers One and The Wild Robot, a first look at terrifying spider Shelob as she has been reinvented for The Rings of Power season two, and much, much more. It’s packed to the brim and it’s a corker. Enjoy SDCC if you’re reading this there, Den of Geek will be out in force—come and say hi! In the meantime, we hope you like the issue!
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Heroes & Villains in Tucson brings comics and games together with joy and kindness.
ANYONE WHO has read a Den of Geek Holiday Gift Guide knows the passion we as an institution have for Marvel vs. Capcom 2. So when Ryan Rodriguez, manager at Tucson’s Heroes & Villains, a comprehensive everything-geeky store that sells comics, games, and gear, says in an interview that he got his start at the shop running an MvC2 tournament in its early incarnation, it would be safe to assume that’s the beginning of a long and pleasant chat. “I ran a Marvel vs. Capcom 2 tournament,” Rodriguez says, “and I reached out to [H&V owner Mike Camp] like, ‘I work for a video game place, you sell comics. Can we do something together?’ We had, I think, two dozen people enter, [and] it planted a little seed in his head that this one kid did this on his own with just a few other resources and
BY JIM DANDENEAU
friends.” Rodriguez was managing the store soon after.
Heroes & Villains is unique in that it is several shops in one. On one side is the comics business; on the other is
WORKING AT DIFFERENT STORES, MY GOAL IS TO BE ABLE TO SPEAK TO KIDS AND PEOPLE WHO AREN’T THAT CONFIDENT.”
the games store, with everything from Pokémon and Magic cards to Warhammer setups. And connecting the two is a specialized card store
selling single cards to help pilots finish their decks, or collectors grab hard-to-find items.
When Rodriguez took over Heroes & Villains, he had a tough time finding his niche. Coming from a gaming background, “a lot of your conversations revolve around gameplay mechanics [and the] history of some of the developers,” he says. “As long as you have that language, you can talk to everybody.”
Comics were different. Rodriguez didn’t grow up steeped in comics and books culture. “My main goal for the first month I was there was to read every number one trade paperback that we owned,” he says. And when he would talk with customers about books, “I found myself just reciting the whole story.”
Watching his team helped. The
Ryan Rodriguez is the manager at Tucson’s Heroes & Villains store.
comics staff were comics people, and their interactions with customers were much more casual. “After watching them for a while, I’m like, ‘Oh, this is a much more passive environment,’” he remembers. “A lot of times, I think I was coming on a little bit too strong.” So he laid back, and he learned from his team that letting them focus on their passion would benefit everyone. They had an opportunity to make H&V one single shop, but the different businesses weren’t gelling, and when they first got their hands on the middle room, they turned that into the card store and kept the games and comics businesses separate. “We ended up finding out that our tabletop people are flourishing because they can specialize, and our card people are able to flourish because they’re able to specialize there,” he says. “We were bummed out that we couldn’t merge all the stores together [but] by separating them, we actually found customers were a lot more prone to opening up and talking about their passion because we had a lot more employees that were able to speak to a lot of those games and books that they were interested in.”
According to Rodriguez, the staff is the most valuable part of what Heroes & Villains does. “Working at different retail places, my goal is always to be able to speak to kids and people who [aren’t] that confident,” he tells us. “Whenever I’m hiring, I look for compassionate and passionate people and… more often than not, the people I have are just so incredible. That’s the thing I really like about our stores. We have very, very smart, hyper-focused staff who are able to speak to the [competitive Magic players] but also speak to the first few baby steps when you’re getting into the game, too.” Like all successful comic and game shops, kindness and a welcoming spirit lead to success.
Heroes & Villains Comics, Games & Vinyl Records is located at 4533 E. Broadway Blvd, Tucson, AZ. If your shop does something unique or interesting, tweet us @denofgeekus.
BULLET-PROOF
Eli Roth on proving doubters wrong and adapting Borderlands to the big screen.
BY BERNARD BOO
WHEN HOSTEL DIRECTOR
Eli Roth was cast as the Bear Jew in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds (2009), fans were skeptical that he would be up to the task, considering his relative inexperience in front of the camera.
“At the time, people were saying, ‘Why is Tarantino casting Eli? He’s not an actor,’” Roth tells Den of Geek. “And Tarantino is going, ‘Yes, he is. Wait until the movie comes out.’ Fifteen years later, the Bear Jew is a classic character. The way to prove people wrong is with your work.”
For Borderlands, Roth’s forthcoming film adaptation of the long-running Gearbox Software video game series, he assembled an ensemble cast that includes Cate Blanchett and Kevin Hart, cast boldly against type. Blanchett, mostly known for dramatic roles in classy Best Picture nominees, plays Lilith, a grumpy bounty hunter, while Hart leans away from his signature frenzied comedy to play deadly mercenary Roland.
“You think you know them for one thing, and what they do in this film is completely unlike what they’ve ever done before,” says Roth. While the decision to cast Blanchett and Hart as stone-cold ass-kickers in a weirdo sci-fi action flick may seem like a risky move, Roth never doubted their range. “One of the reasons they liked working with me was that I, of all people, know what it’s like to be underestimated as an actor.”
Joining Blanchett and Hart in the ensemble are Jack Black as mouthy robot Claptrap, Jamie Lee Curtis as mad scientist Tannis, Ariana Greenblatt as pre-teen explosives expert Tiny Tina, and Romanian boxer Florian Munteanu as Tina’s burly bodyguard, Krieg. The crew of outcasts helps Lilith on her mission to
return to her murderous home planet of Pandora to locate the missing daughter of powerful businessman Atlas (Edgar Ramírez). While fans will recognize the characters from the games by name, Roth stresses that the movie is an adaptation of the story from the games, not a one-toone remake.
“I’d had meetings for video game movies before, and it’s always like, ‘Well, you can’t change things without approval of this company and this company.’ That’s not for me. You have to adapt to a different medium.”
Roth was familiar with and played the Borderlands games before signing on to the picture, though he admits he’s not a gamer and came into the project with a more personal vision in mind. Though Roth had worked in genre for years, he’d never had the opportunity to make a gigantic sci-fi
movie. It’ll come as no surprise to his fans that Roth’s inspirations for Borderlands came from the more bizarre regions of the sci-fi sphere.
“I’d always wanted to do a big, fun sci-fi movie, something that was a mix of Star Wars, Escape from New York, Mad Max, and even batshit crazy sci-fi movies like The Fifth Element and Starship Troopers,” Roth explains. “I didn’t want to change it to the point that it’s not Borderlands, but I wanted to take it from being a video game to being a great sci-fi film. My loyalty is to the movie.”
While fans of the games may squirm at the thought of the games’ world and lore potentially being over-manipulated past the point of recognition, the reality is that Gearbox was deeply involved with the film’s production, with the entirety of the games’ digital assets being made
Eli Roth on the set of Borderlands
available to Roth and his team to reference. On top of all that, Gearbox president Randy Pitchford was on set every day of production.
“[Pitchford] was excited about what we were doing,” Roth recalls. “I’d change some things [from the games], and he’d say, ‘That’s really cool. We should try that in the games!’ It was a good creative connection between the two of us.”
The art style of the Borderlands games is iconic, and it would take a lot of work to translate the cel-shaded dustland of Pandora to the big screen. There was an emphasis on practical
builds and effects wherever possible on set, and while the live-action film doesn’t look identical to the games, Roth’s off-kilter sci-fi influences clearly shine through.
“I looked at The Fifth Element and even movies like Barbarella,” Roth says. “There was a whole vehicle team building these badass Atlas vehicles, and we had a working outrunner, so when Cate Blanchett steps off of it, she’s really stepping off of it. It was really fun to watch Randy excited like a kid, geeking out holding all of the Atlas weapons, the Vladof weapons, the Dahl weapons.”
Vehicles, weapons, and loot are major components of the games, but what really made them special were the over-the-top characters. In the film, the original characters are used more as a foundation for the actors to build and expand upon. The cast may seem like an odd mish-mash on paper… and in some ways, they are. But Roth was actually quite deliberate in assembling what is, in his words, “one of the greatest casts in the world.”
Prior to reading the script for Borderlands, Roth had just completed The House with a Clock in Its Walls with Blanchett, and he thought she’d be
Cate Blanchett as Lilith, Ariana Greenblatt as Tiny Tina, Kevin Hart as Roland, Florian Munteanu as Krieg and Jamie Lee Curtis as Tannis. Jack Black voices robot Claptrap.
perfect for the role of Lilith because he knew something about her that most people don’t. “She loves crazy horror movies like Evil Dead,” Roth explains. “When I called her about doing Borderlands, I said, ‘This could be an amazing character for you, like Snake Plissken from Escape from New York!’ and she said, ‘Escape from New York is my favorite movie!’”
Once Blanchett was on board, Roth immediately knew he wanted to cast Black as Claptrap. “They were so good together in The House with a Clock in Its Walls, and I thought, what would be better than a follow-up film where Cate’s a pissed-off bounty hunter and Jack’s an annoying robot?” Hart had expressed he wanted to show he had a serious action movie role in him, which Roth was happy to spotlight, and Curtis and Gina Gershon (who plays fan favorite Mad Moxxi in the film) were natural additions due to their respective resumes.
But one cast member, Greenblatt, who was just 13 at the time of production, was the surprise standout of the group. “I fought for her,” Roth says of casting the young actor. “This
I’D ALWAYS WANTED TO DO A BIG, FUN SCI-FI, SOMETHING LIKE A MIX OF STAR WARS, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, MAD MAX. ”
was two years before she did Barbie, and I just knew she was going to be a major star. She blew everyone away.”
While all of the actors had stunt people, Roth says that they all wanted to do as many of their own stunts as possible in the film’s extremely chaotic action scenes. Blanchett got hooked up to a ratchet in a stunt rig and learned how to twirl guns, and Greenblatt shot guns and threw grenades while running up a wall.
Hart had perhaps the biggest point to prove of all, as he hoped Roland would help him transition into a new avenue for his acting career, one which would involve hard-core action.
“Everybody knows him for his comedy and being the funny sidekick, but think about Will Smith going from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air to Bad Boys,” Roth says. “I told him, ‘I’m going to have a scene where you kill hundreds of bandits in an unbroken take, and we’re going to see that it’s you.’ Kevin is an amazing athlete, and he really knows how to fight.”
As Roth beams about the experience of making the movie, there’s a sense that he and the cast had chips on their shoulders, just like he did back in the Inglourious Basterds days. Skepticism is commonplace for screen adaptations of popular franchises, but Roth remains laserfocused on the job at hand:
“With Borderlands, the games are the games, and the movie is the movie,” Roth explains. “We made a PG-13, big, fun, summer popcorn movie. If you love the games, you’ll have a great time with the film. And if you’ve never played the games, [the movie] will make you want to play the games.”
Borderlands opens in theaters on Aug. 9.
The cast of Borderlands loved playing against type.
VARADA SETHU
She’s gone from Andor to the TARDIS. Meet next year’s new Doctor Who companion.
BY LOUISA MELLOR
1 Varada Sethu will play a brand new companion in Doctor Who series 15. She’ll fight side by side with the Doctor and Ruby Sunday in the TARDIS in 2025, but that won’t be her first time on the show. Sethu made a surprise appearance in series 14 episode “Boom” as Mundy Flynn, an ordained Anglican Marine on the planet Kastarion 3.
2
Sethu has been a Star Wars fan since childhood and plays rebel medic Cinta Kaz in Andor. She and co-star Faye Marsay, who plays Cinta’s girlfriend Vel Sartha, prepared for their roles by watching war movies and reading Eileen MacDonald’s book Shoot the Women First
3
Born in Kerala, India in 1992, Varada’s family moved to the UK when she and her non-identical twin sister were six years old. She credits her background in South Indian classical dance Mohiniyattam with helping her to learn fight choreography for action scenes. She takes fitness seriously and works out a lot
4
A self-described “action-babe,” Sethu was Lance Corporal Manisha Chetri in two series of hit British thriller Strike Back, where she learned combat training that she says helped her land the Andor gig. In Jurassic World Dominion, she stepped in to replace Daniella Pineda, who was unable to return due to Covid delays.
5
Aged 18, Sethu was crowned Miss Newcastle in a Northern England regional beauty pageant. She studied physiology at university before attending London’s Identity School of Acting, which was also home to fellow Star Wars actor John Boyega. The next achievement she wants to tick off her to-do list? Playing a lead role.
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FINAL VOYAGE
Jack Quaid and Tawny Newsome contemplate the end for their Starfleet underdogs in Star Trek: Lower Decks.
BY RYAN BRITT
IT FEELS LIKE YESTERDAY, but back in 2020, the Star Trek franchise launched its first animated comedy with Lower Decks. The brainchild of Rick and Morty writer Mike McMahan, Lower Decks follows the misadventures of a Starfleet crew not cool enough to boldly go on Enterprise-level voyages. For five seasons of warm-hearted sci-fi comedy, Jack Quaid and Tawny Newsome have led the series as the voices of stickler Brad Boimler and rule-breaker Beckett Mariner, respectively. In 2023, they even played their animated characters in a live-action crossover episode of Strange New Worlds
Now, with the Lower Decks journey ending with season five, we caught up with these outer space besties to get a sense of how this quirky Star Trek will end and what’s next.
Lower Decks is ending with this fifth and final season. In the first episode, we get a tease of an alternate universe. Can you imagine your own alternate universes where you didn’t join Star Trek?
Tawny Newsome: I can’t. Since 2020, Star Trek has really loomed large in my life. I mean, I’m a lifelong fan, but it was my entire career last year. Doing Lower Decks, combined with writing for [upcoming Paramount+ live-action series Starfleet] Academy. I don’t know what I’d be doing without Star Trek. Probably be bartending again or something.
Jack Quaid: I think the thing that first came to mind was just the friends that I got to make from this show. It would have been a real loss if I never met Tawny and all these people. I got a best friend out of this.
I FEEL SO MUCH MORE CONNECTED TO AND ETERNALLY GRATEFUL FOR THIS FRANCHISE.”
JACK QUAID
Newsome: Don’t make me cry, Jack!
Quaid: I’m sorry. But everyone from Eugene [Cordero] to Dawnn Lewis to Noël Wells...
Newsome: Jack, they’re not here. You don’t have to say all that.
Quaid: Okay, I’ll blow smoke your way. I just feel like I got a true bestie out of this, and then widening it out a little bit like the supporting cast and even the larger Trek family, we got to
do that amazing episode of Strange New Worlds and got to bond with that cast, and Jonathan Frakes got to direct us. I still text with Jonathan Frakes and got to meet Gates McFadden—all these people that Trek has touched. I feel so much more connected to and eternally grateful for this franchise.
Speaking of Strange New Worlds, Lower Decks is ending, but Mariner and Boimler can live in on liveaction, right?
Newsome: Every day in the writers’ room of Starfleet Academy, I’m like, “You ever think about maybe Mariner could show up?” Every day, I just casually bring it up. But no no. I’m joking. The internet will run with that. But we would be remiss if we didn’t say that [Lower Decks showrunner] Mike McMahan ain’t done. He’s got seasons upon seasons in him. So, it would be great if Lower Decks could continue to have life somewhere else. Outside of that, I
think that it makes total sense to have more live-action things. Maybe a movie, something where we can see the rest of our castmates in live action. We got to see Shaxs and Tendi and Rutherford and Carol and Jerry [O’Connell]. Why did I just call him by his Earth name? [Laughs]
Quaid: I’m glad you did! [Laughs]. In this pitch, Jerry O’Connell does not play Commander Ransom. He plays the actor Jerry O’Connell!
Mariner and Boimler have grown a lot over these five seasons. But the show is still very, very down-to-Earth. How does that even work?
Newsome: I think it’s a good meditation on how nothing’s really a meritocracy, even in Starfleet where we wish it might be! Sure, in season five, Mariner is no longer self-sabotaging. But that doesn’t mean the rest of the fleet is suddenly going to be like oh wow, the Cerritos, what a great ship. They’re still kind of messed up.
Quaid: My favorite shows ever are animated, and the one that comes to mind, I think, is always The Simpsons, but then it’s also Futurama. I love Futurama because it’s a sci-fi sitcom that speaks to the nerd inside everyone. I think Lower Decks does that.
What do you hope fans—new and old—take from Lower Decks as a whole?
Quaid: I think our show is really grounded. If people could take any kind of inspiration, maybe make some sci-fi that isn’t all about pew pew pew. There are so many more interesting things to dive into out there. Not that I don’t love the pew pew pew of it all, but it’s such a huge genre and I love the way Star Trek explores it, so I just wanted that to keep going in whatever way possible.
Newsome: Our show always tends towards a real overarching kindness. Teaching that lesson through comedy, I think, is the best way to do it. So I hope that people will make things that take whatever they’ve learned from Trek. There are climate lessons, there are lessons about capitalism, there are lessons about race and sex. Just take an ideal and make your shit. I hope they’re inspired.
Star Trek: Lower Decks is streaming now on Paramount+.
Jack Quaid, who plays Brad Boimler and Tawny Newsome, who plays Beckett Mariner.
Professor Tore C. Olsson taught a course on ‘Red Dead’s History’ before writing a book on the subject.
HISTORY BOY
Professor Tore C. Olsson on the real-life inspirations of Red Dead Redemption 2
.
BY THERESA DELUCCI
AS ROCKSTAR GAMES readies
Grand Theft Auto VI, one historian is looking back at the studio’s 2018 mega hit open-world Western, Red Dead Redemption 2. Professor Tore C. Olsson’s new book, Red Dead’s History, delves into the real-life inspirations for the infamous Van der Linde gang. The audiobook edition is narrated by Roger Clark, the actor who voiced and performed as game protagonist Arthur Morgan, making Red Dead’s History a must-listen for fans of the
beloved game.
Before it was a book, ‘Red Dead’s History’ was a course taught by Olsson at the University of Tennessee. It’s not often video games are used as academic course materials, but the depth of Red Dead’s creators’ research impressed the professor, who started playing the game at the urging of a historian colleague.
“The first 20 hours were just like, ‘Oh, I’m playing a video game. This is fun,’” Olsson laughs, chatting with
Den of Geek between lectures.
“But when the game migrated southeastward into Lemoyne, it was a shock seeing that Red Dead 2 was not just a ‘Western’; it’s a Southern. That’s a genre that’s not nearly as prevalent.” Southern genre blockbuster films like Gone with the Wind and The Birth of a Nation typically depicted a romanticized, racist view of post-Civil War America. Not so with Red Dead Redemption 2: Black members of the Van der Linde gang react with unease
when they’re forced deeper into Lemoyne, and missions highlight clashes between bitter ex-Confederate soldiers, the formerly enslaved, and the Ku Klux Klan. St. Denis, an analog to New Orleans, is the part of the game map Olsson most revisits, marveling at its attention to economics and social movements.
RED DEAD 2 IS NOT JUST A WESTERN IT’S A SOUTHERN. THAT’S A GENRE THAT’S NOT NEARLY AS PREVALENT.”
While Rockstar’s game excels at highlighting this lesser-discussed period with nuance, dramatic license was taken for the game’s most iconic symbol, the cowboy.
“John Marston and Arthur Morgan are not cowboys,” Olsson asserts. “Cowboys are the pawns in the game, not the kings.”
The age of outlaw gangs Red Dead presents is actually 30 years too late. By the 1890s, cowboys were more likely to be striking for fair wages than robbing trains. While Red Dead 2’s brutal industrialist baddie Leviticus Cornwall was fictional, 19th-century America was teeming with similar opportunistic robber barons and the Pinkerton agents they hired to bust unions. (See also: HBO’s Deadwood and its third season villain George Hearst, who was very real.)
Red Dead’s History also examines Indigenous characters, including fan-fave gang member Charles Smith and tribal leader Rains Fall, as well as the coal and logging industries of Appalachia (called Roanoke in the game,) a topic close to Olsson’s heart.
“I live in Appalachia. Many of my students self-identify with the Southern mountains as where they’re from. The game does both a good and bad job. It recycles many of those
‘shoeless, toothless’ stereotypes, but it also shows the way that Appalachia was transformed very negatively by people like Leviticus Cornwall, who come in and tear apart the social fabric and contribute to that poverty we see in those stereotypes.”
Olsson may have criticisms from a historian’s perspective, but he’s overwhelmingly a fan of the rich open-world game as an emotional hook to educate students and gamers alike.
“The point of Red Dead’s History is not to ruin Red Dead Redemption 2 for you. It’s to make you passionate about learning some of the heaviest and thorniest dilemmas of American history in
this time period,” Olsson says. Arthur Morgan and his merry band of outlaws, swindlers, whores, and parasites may not be real people, but they feel like they could have been; they laugh, sing songs, fight, have kids, have opinions and prejudices. Though Red Dead Redemption’s sweeping epic confronts American mythology with its cruel, bloody reality, the game also reminds players that history was, ultimately, made by people who were once like us, who must live with—and learn from— others’ past wounds.
Red Dead’s History: A Video Game, an Obsession, and America’s Violent Past by Tore C. Olsson is available Aug. 6, 2024.
BACK IN THE SADDLE
Red Dead Redemption 2 actor Roger Clark on embodying Arthur Morgan
DoG: In addition to voicing Arthur Morgan, you were also behind all of his motion capture, right? Walking, combat, loading vintage weapons, etc.
RC: I’m very passionate about performance capture, which is the way most video games are done nowadays. And it’s still called voice acting by many people, and that’s simply not accurate. We did everything, just like Avatar or Lord of the Rings. It’s acting.
What did you learn recording the audiobook for Red Dead’s History?
RC: Olsson makes this work so accessible, both to history fans and gamers alike. The research that he did was really amazing. I knew that a lot of research had gone into Red Dead, and it was
very pleasing to see that that hadn’t gone unnoticed.
We’re in a renaissance of great game adaptations. Any hope for a Red Dead TV show?
RC: I know a lot of people would be interested in that. In the five years that I worked for Rockstar, they always said, “We don’t make movies, we don’t make TV shows, we make video games.” Never say never, though, but I don’t see it happening.
What other video game projects do you have coming up?
RC: I’ve got two video games coming out this year. Rosewood, which is another Western, but it’s a comedy, a little bit like The Curse of Monkey Island. And there’s another one called Evolutis: Duality. It’s a cyberpunk video game.
BLOOD AND CIRCUSES
Peacock’s Those About to Die
enters the
underworld of gladiators, chariot racing, and bloodsport betting in
the Roman Empire.
BY ALEC BOJALAD
“YOU SEE WHAT that is?” Those About to Die writer Robert Rodat asks, angling his Zoom window towards a portrait on the wall of his New Hampshire home. It’s a painting of men in horse-drawn chariots racing across a dusty track.
“Circus Maximus,” Rodat says. “I bought that thing for like five bucks—I can’t even guess how many decades ago—at a yard sale. I’ve had a super-longstanding interest in the late [Roman] Republic. If I told you how many books I’ve read about it, you’d say I’m insane or a liar.”
Peacock gladiator series Those About to Die isn’t exactly about the late Roman Republic but it’s close enough for Rodat’s tastes. Like another swords-and-sandals project of note (Ridley Scott’s 2000 film Gladiator), Those About to Die is loosely inspired by Daniel P. Mannix’s 1958 book of the same name about the nitty gritty details of gladiatorial entertainment in Rome. The 10-episode series takes
place amid the beginnings of the Roman Empire and the establishment of the Flavian dynasty. Anthony Hopkins stars as notable Roman Emperor Vespasian.
“Vespasian had the same challenges that Caesar had,” Rodat says. “He had to make a choice between being a soldier and being a politician. We live in a society now in which ambition runs roughshod over community and commonality, but the stakes were even higher then.”
The stakes are indeed high on Those About to Die. The show spends time with both the decision-makers at the capitol and the lower class subjected to combat, chariot races, and other amusements for the benefit of the wealthy. Iwan Rheon (Game of Thrones) leads the charge of the underclass as the bookie and relentless social climber Tenax. But there are even more unfortunate souls, including Cala (Sara Martins,) who is trying to retrieve her children, who
were brought to Rome in the bondage of slavery.
“In the world of Tenax, when we’re dealing with lower-level crime stuff, we have Cala, who will grow and assert her powers in a way that’s not available to the upper class,” Rodat says. “It was important to the people in the room that we not be anachronistic. And that we showed people who were disadvantaged or at the lower end of the power scale asserting themselves in ways that were realistic for the period.”
The prevailing image from Mannix’s Those About to Die that helped best encapsulate the series for Rodat and producers Roland Emmerich, Gianni Nunnari, and Harald Kloser was that of the thriving underclass beneath Rome’s premier entertainment venue.
“Circus Maximus sat 250,000 people. And 35,000 people lived and worked in the underbelly underneath the stands,” Rodat says. “Fenway Park in Boston holds 35,000 people. That’s how many people worked in the betting parlors and the brothels and the stables.”
Notably, Those About to Die premiered July 18 on Peacock, just a
(l-r) Tom Hughes as Titus, Anthony Hopkins as Emperor Vespasian, Jojo Macari as Domitian.
week before the NBCUniversal streaming service became the exclusive online home for the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris. While the Olympics will (hopefully) be far less bloody than the contests observed on Those About to Die, the series still comments on our modern entertainment appetites in more ways than one, as Rodat explains.
“There’s a thing that happens in Hollywood when you pitch a historical piece and say, ‘Well yes, it’s set in this historical period but it’s
really about today, honestly.’
Everybody nods and says, ‘Yeah, bullshit.’ But the early empire period really does have so many allegorical connections to today, it’s incredible. You have polarization of wealth, crushing immigration issues, gender issues, political battles on either side, the constant threat of civil war. Those connections ring out and they did for all of us.”
All 10 episodes of Those About to Die are available to stream on Peacock now.
R A ND O M R A NK INGS
Superhero names ranked by onomatopoeia potential.
BY ALEC BOJALAD
5 Swamp Thing: Ignore the “thing” portion and focus on the “swamp” half of Alec Holland’s alias. “Swamp” sounds like many of the noises of an actual swamp. Frogs ribbiting, mosquitoes screeching, water bubbles popping—it’s all swamp.
4 Hank Pym: Marvel’s first Ant-Man gets the honor of being the only actual surname on this list. That’s because “Pym” sounds oddly like the actual act of shrinking. “Hey, check it out— that guy over there is Pym-ing!”
3
The Flash: “Flash” gets remarkably close to describing the sound that Barry Allen makes when running past someone at supersonic speed. “Whoosh” alone would be closer. If only Batman and Superman had to interact with The Whoosh.
2 Hulk: Doesn’t the word “hulk” just make you reflexively clench your biceps? That’s because “hulk” undeniably sounds like a human body suddenly swelling to shirt-shredding, purple-pantspreserving portions.
1 Thor: The Norse knew a thing or two about onomatopoeia, naming their thunder deity after various ancient terms for thunder. Marvel merely took up the hammer and ran with it, creating a character whose very personality sounds like his name.
Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson as Viggo, Moe Hashim as Kwame.
Kyshan Wilson as Aura, Sara Martins as Cala.
DAVID BOWIE’S UFOS
The Starman’s sightings, 50 years later.
ALONG WITH BEING a musical genius and accomplished actor, David Bowie was the coolest spooky nerd around, contributing to sci-fi, horror, and fantasy. And 50 years ago, he gave an interview to Creem magazine, where he revealed he had worked at a UFO publication when he was 21 years old and had had multiple sightings.
The experiences impacted the young musician, and themes of extraterrestrials and high strangeness would be present throughout the rest of his life. Here are just a few examples of how the Starman looked to the stars, man.
“LIFE ON MARS?”
AARON SAGERS
PARANORMAL
POP CULTURE EXPERT
While living in South London, David Bowie helped edit a UFO newsletter and believed in extraterrestrial life. In that Creem article by journalist Bruno Stein— published February 1975, based on the interview conducted during the ’74 Diamond Dogs Tour —Bowie discussed his UFO sightings and the movement of the crafts of unknown origin:
“I made sightings six, seven times a night for about a year when I was in the observatory. We had regular cruises that came over. We knew the 6.15 was coming in and would meet up with another one. And they would be stationary for about half an hour, and then, after verifying what they’d been doing that day, they’d shoot off.”
Stein also documented an
interaction between the rock star and a friend of his roadie—a UFO fan dubbed “flying saucer man”— wherein Bowie said he had a metal pin in his body (and it’s heavily alluded that the musician believed it to be of alien origin).
Bowie’s sightings preceded his emergence as a unique talent. His 1967 self-titled debut lacked the signature stylings we associate with the artist. The album was all over the place, musically.
It wasn’t until his 1969 album (also self-titled but later reissued as Space Oddity for the famous opening track) that the musician the world came to know as David Bowie first made his mark. That album was recorded from June to September of the same year of Bowie’s sightings.
Meanwhile, author Paul Trynka, in his 2011 Bowie biography Starman, quoted British DJ and producer Jeff Dexter as saying he, Bowie, and musician Lesley Duncan (who sang with Pink Floyd and dated Bowie) would have UFO-spotting sessions around 1967/68 and would have sightings.
“SPACE ODDITY”
Three years before the world met Ziggy Stardust, David Bowie’s 1969 single “Space Oddity” (released just five days before the Apollo 11 launch first put men on the moon) is about astronaut Major Tom, who becomes lost in space. It was his first big hit in the UK—and an early example of the musician’s fascination with space and science fiction. The re-recorded version of the single became his first
David Bowie poses for a portrait dressed as ‘Ziggy Stardust’ in a hotel room in 1973 in New York City, New York.
hit stateside in 1973.
The song, which has allusions to 2001: A Space Odyssey, is arguably the most famous space-rock tune out there. Its legacy cannot be overstated for both genre and popular culture as a whole, but it literally became part of space exploration when International Space Station Commander Chris Hadfield covered the song while on board in 2013.
Bowie brought Major Tom back in
the songs “Ashes to Ashes,” “Hallo Spaceboy,” and, finally, in “Blackstar,” the title track on the album released on his Jan. 8, 2016 birthday—two days before he died.
“STARMAN”
How does one sum up the importance of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars in just a few words? David Bowie’s concept album was his fifth, released in 1972, and is
about a rock star who happens to be a bisexual alien with a message of peace for humanity. The glam rock album—and basis for the concert film where Bowie portrayed the androgynous Stardust—tells a rich, trippy story and is hands-down one of the best albums ever. Of his extensive contributions to music and pop culture, this is Bowie’s greatest.
An avid sci-fi reader, Bowie’s “Starman” was influenced by the 1953 Robert A. Heinlein children’s book, Starman Jones. He also referenced Ray Bradbury’s 1951 book The Illustrated Man in his song “Karma Man” and interpreted George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel 1984 for his album Diamond Dogs.
“MOONAGE DAYDREAM”
Beyond his musical achievements, Bowie is perhaps best known for his first starring role in the 1976 film The Man Who Fell to Earth. The sci-fi classic, based on Walter Tevis’ 1963 novel of the same name, is without a doubt high-concept. Bowie plays extraterrestrial Thomas Jerome Newton on a mission to Earth to retrieve water for his drought-stricken world. After crashing, he poses as a human and amasses wealth using his alien tech to patent inventions on our world, and develops a fondness for vodka and television. He is eventually discovered, imprisoned, and subjected to experiments and loveless sex. Legal issues prevented Bowie from being involved musically with the movie, so the cult film rests squarely on his acting.
“OH! YOU PRETTY THINGS”
Bowie also gave the world his son, Duncan Jones—the director behind the excellent science fiction films Moon (based on his own story) and Source Code. “Oh! You Pretty Things” was actually written shortly before Jones was born in 1971 and conveys the anxieties of becoming a parent for the first time through the lens of an alien invasion. Clearly, Bowie passed along his love of genre to his son.
SAY WHAT?
Quotes of the month from Den of Geek exclusive interviews.
“I was listening to the Dracula score [by Wojciech Kilar] the whole time, and it was such a funny thing to discover that happened.”
Ishana Shyamalan on how she wound up naming her central sisters in The Watchers Mina and Lucy.
“If I had a magic button, a magic ‘greenlight button,’ for Star Trek: Legacy, and it was all on me, I’d push that button today. Right now, it’s beyond my paygrade.”
— Alex Kurtzman on the possibility of a Star Trek: Picard spinoff series.
“The obvious thing to do would be to expand the world of Gotham by Gaslight. All we ever saw of it was Batman and Gotham. Where are the other heroes? Where are the other villains?”
— Andy Diggle on the return of the
“I milked a goat, yeah. Tick that off the bucket list.”
Eugene
Levy on traveling to rural Europe for season two of The Reluctant
Traveler
“I had a really strange experience with a character where for the entirety of the shooting period, I defended her to another level. When people said, ‘Ugh, she’s a terrible person.’ I’d go, ‘You don’t understand where she’s coming from.’ And then the second that we wrapped, I was like, ‘Get it off, get it off, get it off!’”
— Anya Taylor-Joy on what it takes to play baddies.
“YOU NEED A BIT OF SPICE IN YOUR LIFE. YOU NEED SOME DANGER. YOU NEED SOME BETRAYAL. YOU NEED SOME VILENESS.”
— House of the Dragon actor Tom Glynn-Carney making his pitch to support King Aegon II in season two.
“I remember where I used to train, there was this thing on the wall that said: ‘Train Hard. Fight Easy.’ That’s true, man. It’s all in the prep.”
— Dev Patel on how his youth as a competitive martial artist influenced his career.
seminal DC Elseworlds series.
FEDE ALVAREZ, CAILEE SPAENY, AND DAVID JONSSON INVITE US ABOARD ALIEN: ROMULUS, AN OLD-SCHOOL CREATURE FEATURE DRIPPING WITH IN-CAMERA MENACE.
H.R. Giger’s iconic xenomorph design makes a terrifying return in Fede Alvarez’s Alien: Romulus.
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, but he’d also change that aspect to make it his own. He would find a way to reinvent the franchise. By the time it was over, friends stared in disbelief.
“Why are you trying to fix something that is perfect?” he was finally asked. “Do not fuck with those things,” said another. Looking back at the chat now, Alvarez can’t help but laugh and perhaps be a little grateful. “Everybody has to thank them because it made me realize that certain things are true,” Alvarez says. “You want the pure, unaltered classic version of it, and then you can innovate by the new things you add.” You want what an
Ian Holm character famously dubbed “the perfect organism.”
These appear to have become words to live and, in the case of some characters, die screaming by in Alien: Romulus, the seventh film in the venerated science fiction series. More than any other Alien continuation in the last 30 years, Romulus is laser-focused on recapturing the cosmic dread of the 1979 masterpiece from director Ridley Scott and the high-octane adrenaline of James Cameron’s radically different follow-up, Aliens (1986). It’s a deliberate return to why audiences recoiled in the first place at the sight of a dripping, drooling beastie who’s desperate to put something inside you.
“Just picking apart what makes those films in particular work so well in such different ways was really fun as a lover of film in
BY D A V I D C R O W
general, but especially this franchise,” says Romulus’ leading lady, Cailee Spaeny. The impulse to serve both styles can lead to mornings where Spaeny is asked by the director what is the “indie movie version” of the scene they’re filming, and afternoons where she’s covered in blood and holding a quasi-flamethrower for a hero shot taken out of Cameron’s playbook.
“There’s a moment where I’m coming out of the elevator with the pulse rifle, and I’ve got two guys behind the camera with leaf blowers hitting me, and we’re really leaning into the ’80s drama of it,” she enthuses. “It’s amazing.” It’s also a homecoming for a franchise that’s traveled light years from its roots.
ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES
When we catch up with Alvarez, he’s at the finish line on Romulus. On this particular evening, he has just wrapped a round of press in Paris, and tomorrow, he’ll be back to Los Angeles, where he has one more day of sound mixing before the picture is locked. He likens it to an expectant mother in her ninth month of pregnancy. Or John Hurt moments before dinner on the Nostromo.
But then, the Alien movies have always loomed large in Alvarez’s mind. He was a shade too young to experience Scott’s haunted-house original during its first theatrical release (Alvarez was born in 1978), but he was there for the Aliens tidal wave in ’86, which in turn led to him watching Alien countless times at home. Alvarez even speaks fondly of more contentious entries in the series, be it Alien: Resurrection or how he got into debates on the Evil Dead set after the whole crew saw Prometheus over the weekend. “That’s a movie that clearly accomplished
more than most movies ever do,” he insists.
Yet it’s always been about the original two entries when it comes to the Alien franchise, and now by extension, Alien: Romulus. Upon getting the gig, Alvarez sought out those who were there opening night in ’79 to better understand why the movie left such a scar on the cultural psyche. And Alvarez has attempted to instill some of those lessons into Romulus, even as he also hopes to make “a full meal” that’s fresh for xenomorph veterans and newbies alike.
Take the ensemble assembled in Romulus, for example. Whereas Alien famously followed “space truckers” (blue-collar stiffs marked as expendable by their company), and Aliens pivoted toward “colonial marines,” Alien: Romulus, which is set in the 57-year gap between those two films, takes a page from a half-forgotten deleted scene in Aliens and blows it up into its own saga of dreams and screams. It follows
space colonists who are too young and desperate to know the kind of nightmare that they’re getting themselves into.
“They’re inspired by [that deleted scene] when you see a bunch of kids riding around Hadley’s Hope,” Alvarez explains. “I remember seeing that and thinking that’s tough for those kids. If they didn’t die a week later and they grew up to be adults, it would have been hard to live in a colony where there’s no future. You’re either a farmer or a miner, and that’s all you can be, and it’s going to take 50 years for the atmosphere to be ready. Human beings, we’re not cut out for that.”
THE KIDS AREN’T ALRIGHT
Things are indeed grim for the children of a remote outpost at the beginning of Romulus. They’re a generation of young adults who have lived long enough to see the company abandon their colony,
leaving them without resources or opportunity. This includes a girl named Rain (Spaeny) and her surviving friends and family, all of whom are anxious enough to scheme for a better life on a space station called Renaissance.
As with the plight of the crew of the Nostromo, Spaeny sees plenty of parallels between how folks live today and Romulus’ cast of refugees.
“They feel like they come from a truthful blue-collar world,” says the star. “I’m from southern Missouri. I come from a long line of farmers and blue-collar people, which was my main source of inspiration. I wanted her to feel very Americana, very sort of meat and potatoes.”
This drips all the way into the movie’s central relationship: the love between Rain and her brother. But who that brother is reframes the chilliest subplot of the Alien franchise, since he’s also an android named Andy (David Jonsson).
“It is what Ridley [Scott] identified early on as the heart of the movie when I pitched him,” Alvarez recalls
Andy (David Jonsson) carries on the franchise tradition of complex android characters.
of his meeting with the Alien director and Romulus producer. “[He said it’s] what people are going to really connect to, and that’s true.” While humans and robots have had a spectrum of relationships across previous Alien movies, making a “synthetic” part of the family opens a whole new can of worms.
In the film, Andy is a “passing gift” Rain’s father bequeaths to her. At the time, Rain is still a child, and Andy becomes both a surrogate brother and caregiver. Given the history of androids in the Alien franchise, that should probably raise immediate red flags—as should any knowledge of the story of Romulus and Remus from which the film derives its title. Yet both Jonsson and Spaeny insist the characters’ sibling dynamic is genuine and loving.
“We have this incredible, complex relationship that basically sees us through this film,” Jonsson says. And while Andy is made by WeylandYutani, the actor points out that so was Lance Henriksen’s benevolent robot Bishop in Aliens.
“I think that there is something inherent in every single synthetic [in this series],” Jonsson continues. “You don’t know whether one’s going to do right or go the other way. I think that’s the wonder of what Alien is. But I can definitely assure you that Andy is very, very different from any synthetic you’ve seen before.”
For Alvarez, it gets to something more personal: what he calls the responsibility of siblinghood. As someone who grew up with several brothers, it was a culture shock when he first came to the U.S. and people would ask him if he was close to his brothers. Why wouldn’t he be?
He suspects the size of one’s country influences this perception, just as it might affect what he sees as a glaring blindspot in Hollywood movies.
“There have been a lot of movies made about what it means to be a parent or what it means to be a lover. But siblinghood is one that hasn’t been explored enough for me, at
T h e AI s of AL I EN
ASH
The original synthetic played by Ian Holm, Ash represented the sinister inverse of HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey
Whereas that famed AI malfunctioned, Ash works just fine as the secret robot the company plants in a working-class crew to undermine their efforts to kill a valuable specimen.
BISHOP
In a classic bit of misdirection, director James Cameron spends most of Aliens trying to get the audience—and Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley —to second-guess the android played by Lance Henriksen. He proves to be a solid dude, though, right up until he’s cut in half.
▼ CALL
From villain to hero, robots had come a long way by
the time Alien: Resurrection’s Winona Ryder played Call, a political activist AI who attempts to undermine corporate genetic testing and ends up in a will-they-or-won’tthey relationship with Weaver’s Ripley clone. The ’90s were weird, huh?
DAVID
Arguably the best part of Ridley Scott’s ambitious prequel, Prometheus, Michael Fassbender’s David is a Lawrence of Arabia-quoting, Peter O’Toole-cosplaying android who obeys his programming—but relishes when it allows him to experiment in body horror on nearby dum-dums.
WALTER
Breaking the ABCs of the franchise’s synthetic series, Walter and David’s names are a wink to longtime Alien producers David Giler and Walter Hill. Fassbender also plays this role in Alien: Covenant, albeit as a goody-two-shoes compared with David’s robotic Lucifer. Still, they can find common ground, including in a scene with Fassbenderon-Fassbender action.
least,” says the director. “It’s very easy to say the words ‘you’re my brother, you’re my sibling,’ but a different thing is to act and really be ready. Would you die for your brother? Would you die for your sibling, particularly when they’re not really related by blood?”
The director thus suggests Andy is closer to how replicants are depicted in the Blade Runner movies: “The android represents the oppressed minority, the different one, the one that lives among us, and he’s supposed to be a friend, but you’re truly kind of exploiting him. It’s like you find a legal, accepted way to have a slave sometimes.”
FIERCER CREATURES
If the idea of what a “synthetic” can be is always evolving, the Star Beast of the Alien franchise’s
title remains terrifyingly constant. “They really are hellish, those designs,” Spaeny muses of the Giger concepts that return in their full glory in Alien: Romulus “I remember doing research on what the drawings of the creatures were before H.R. Giger came along, and they had eyeballs and funny little arms. They looked more like the aliens we would imagine in our heads if we drew them on a piece of paper. So there’s something striking in the restraint of those designs that ended up being the iconic xenomorph. The attachment of the human anatomy is just really strange, confrontational, and uncomfortable.”
Romulus’ iteration is closer to Giger and Scott’s original ideal than any previous Alien sequel, too. Alvarez insisted on restoring the Star Beast’s K-Y Jelly-doused dome after Cameron nixed the visual in
Right: Cailee Spaeny as Rain and Archie Renaux as Tyler. Below: Director Fede Alvarez on the set.
The android represents the oppressed minority, the different one, the one that lives among us, and he’s supposed to be a friend, but you’re truly kind of exploiting him.
- FEDE ALVAREZ
1986. But it wasn’t only the first xenomorph that the director exhumed from the 20th Century Studios vaults.
“One of the key factors behind those original movies, apart from Ridley and Cameron, is also Ron Cobb and Syd Mead, these mythical designers,” Alvarez says of the concept artists who worked on the first two films. “So we went back to their drawings, and there’s some stuff in our movie inspired by sketches that Ron Cobb did for the original Alien that were not used. We took those and we brought them to life.”
But “life” might be a poor choice of words when describing the Renaissance space station. With two sections, ominously known as “Romulus” and “Remus,” the station is in a state of cascading failure when the film’s young colonists arrive. Furthermore, the way the leads tell it, there was barely a green or blue screen in sight on the sets, which made the sweaty, claustrophobic horror real.
“A fear with these films is you’re going to sign on to something and you’re going to spend six months in front of a green screen reacting to a guy waving around a tennis ball, which I’ve done,” Spaeny says. “That’s why the first conversations with Fede were so exciting, and I really hope it works, because it made such a difference for us as actors that Fede decided his biggest battle was to fight for everything [being] practical.”
Alvarez explains it more simply: any Alien movie worth its acid blood should be suffused with atmosphere. That instantly negates too many digital enhancements.
Says the director: “If you put in a CG extension of the set, you can’t put any smoke in it. That’s why they look so sterile in some movies. Our movie has smoke everywhere because if you want to be an Alien movie, you need to have smoke pumping in every
corner all the time. It also didn’t allow us to have CG creatures for the most part because once you fill the space with real smoke, it’s really hard to compose any CG element. So, as a consequence of building the set like that, we also needed real creatures that would move through the space.”
The result of this approach was an intensely tactile experience where basic actions could become surprisingly challenging.
“This is probably a Fede request; it would sound like something he’d make sure happened,” Spaeny chuckles, “but [the pulse rifle] was really heavy. To the point where he’d do ongoing rolling takes over and over again until I would just scream, ‘I can’t keep it up any longer!’ Which I’m sure he’s like, ‘Well, that’s what I was going for.’”
All that effort, though, is in service to a primal story that the Romulus star likens to generational folklore. The new movie even has some of the same folks who worked on the xenomorphs way back in 1986 applying the acid today.
“That is the ground-level bones of this film, the creature,” Spaeny considers. “And I think more than feeling shock and horror, it’s really love that has been passed down and injected in the making of these creatures. The people that were on our film that also worked on Alien and Aliens, they have spent an entire working lifetime dedicating themselves to this iconic creature. This is sort of a continued tradition that’s been passed on. It comes back to something in us as little kids who come across these creatures.”
It is an icon of Freudian menace that has burrowed its way deep into our nightmares. Why mess with that?
Alien: Romulus is released in theaters on Aug. 16
Den of Geek visits the set of The Umbrella Academy to discuss the dysfunctional superhero family’s final season and alternate timelines. By Bryan Cairns
THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY is getting their butts kicked. It’s May 2023, and Den of Geek is in Toronto, Ontario, to visit the set of the superhero saga for its fourth and final season. Production has constructed a department store—complete with an escalator, display cases, and multiple levels—on a massive soundstage. At the moment, the quirky Hargreeves family—Luther (Tom Hopper), Viktor (Elliot Page), Allison (Emmy RaverLampman), Klaus (Robert Sheehan), Number Five (Aidan Gallagher), Diego (David Castañeda) and his wife, Lila (Ritu Arya)—is facing off against a CGI monster. “It’s a giant fight with a tennis ball,” Castañeda jokes during a break.
The Hargreeves family reunited. L-R: Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman), Luther (Tom Hopper), Diego (David Castañeda), Lila (Ritu Arya), Number Five (Aidan Gallagher) and Klaus (Robert Sheehan)
The quick-paced sequence unfolds like this: Viktor lies unconscious on the floor. Diego flips onto the escalator and sprints towards the top while Luther yells, “Aww… shit. We have to get that thing away from Viktor.” It’s do-or-die time, especially since this episode marks the series finale. Total chaos ensues, punctuated with crazy action, high stakes, and emotion.
Showrunner Steve Blackman notes, “We hold nothing back.”
“First and foremost, I wanted to come full circle with the family relationship,” Blackman says over Zoom later about this year’s narrative
roadmap. “I wanted the family to come together. They started off estranged four seasons ago. They had their ups and downs but ultimately, I wanted them to find some closure with the family. I think we achieved that,” Blackman says.
“The second goal was to answer many of the mysteries of the show, things that we’ve left unanswered or mysteries from the graphic novel [by Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá] that we’ve set up,” he adds. “A lot of those will be answered this year. The fans will be very satisfied as we finally close the loop on some of those.”
FAMILY AFFAIR
In August 2022, Netflix announced that it had once again renewed The Umbrella Academy before reducing the episode count down to six from 10 in previous seasons. As a result, Blackman pivoted. “There were things I would have addressed if I had the economics and more pages,” he reflects. Nonetheless, the remaining episodes cram in plenty of punch. “They are longer than normal episodes,” confirms Blackman. “They are closer to an hour. Everyone’s story gets told. I am just sad to see these characters go. I could have written them forever. The truth is, four seasons is a great number.”
Season three culminated with the Umbrella Academy thwarting their treacherous father’s scheme to reset the universe… with mixed results. An alternate timeline was created, one in which the Hargreeves have lost their powers. Reeling from the development, they splintered off on their own. The season four premiere picks up five years later and finds the family leading mundane lives.
“It’s a question of ‘What is it like to have powers and then have no powers? How do they deal with normality?’” Blackman says. “Each of them is struggling in their own way to be ‘normal,’ and I put that in quotes for a reason. How are they adapting to life? It’s not quite the world that it should have been had Allison not brained Reginald Hargreeves at the end of the [season three] finale. I think it’s fair to say the world is not going to be quite right.”
SECOND CHANCES
In this brave new world, some of the characters have embraced a more domesticated existence. Allison is in full mother mode. A mopey, miserable Diego grapples with being a father and husband to Lila. “They are not really communicating and are snapping at each other,” Arya teases. Luther, who no longer boasts a gorilla body, puts his dance moves to good use in a steamy occupation. Viktor runs a successful business. Number Five works for the CIA. As for Klaus, “he goes off on a very strange tangent,”
says Sheehan.
“He is really terrified of death now,” Sheehan reveals. “Klaus is scared of dying, which is a nice little 180. He’s become a bit of a germaphobe with OCD. He’s bubble-wrapping his apartment. He is one of those boring people who is scared of everything. A lesson that he has to learn as the series goes on is how not to be scared of life.
“Klaus also sort of plummets back into drug addiction, quite severely,” he continues. “Through relaxing and getting his powers back, he starts to discover other aspects of his power. He can do other stuff. That always gets fans excited.”
The siblings sound split on whether wielding superhuman abilities should be considered a blessing or something of a burden.
“For someone like Viktor, maybe being without the curse of the family, including the power, might be a good thing for him,” Blackman says. “Whereas with someone like Diego, who loves being the vigilante with power, it’s going to be a bigger issue.”
Regaining their powers isn’t the Umbrella Academy’s only priority. The world needs saving… again. What the impending doom is constitutes a major spoiler, but Blackman promises the threat doesn’t present itself immediately. It’s a slow burn.
“It doesn’t just launch like we usually do, right from the start,” Blackman explains. “It’s a
combination of coming together as a family. One of the big stories revolves around Ben, which I think fans will be craving. Every year, there is someone who has a bigger story. I’m not giving too much away, but fans know we are building toward what happened to Ben, what the Jennifer incident is, and all that will be revealed this season.”
SIBLING SHENANIGANS
Part of Blackman’s season four pitch centered on pairing individuals who aren’t normally together. The combinations provided unique opportunities for storytelling and
Allison and Lila are at the top of their party game.
Hargreeves drama. Reginald and Viktor—two of the most estranged members of the family—share screen time. Number Five and Lila embark on a subway adventure, which gives the space-time manipulator a purpose in this reality.
“Number Five is lost,” Gallagher says. “He is using the job at the CIA as this façade of purpose that he can hold onto, but it’s hollow. He doesn’t know what his place is in the universe. When he goes on this emotional arc with Lila, for the first time, he feels there is a reason for living.”
This season sees a few kooky, fresh faces join the fray. Real-life couple Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally portray community college professors Gene and Jean Thibedeau. The married duo seem to have a vested interest in Allison and one of her VHS movies. In addition, David Cross plays Sy Grossman, a shy businessman with his own agenda. Whether the trio should be considered friends or foes remains to be seen. Either way, Blackman compares landing the three performers to “winning the lottery.”
“They are not only great actors but lovely human beings,” Blackman praises. “The interesting thing is, with Nick and Megan, I didn’t think I could get them, and it turns out they are huge fans of the show. When I talked to them, they were like, ‘I want to be on the show.’ They are super-fans of The Umbrella Academy. They knew every character and every episode.”
The cast considers season four as its best and most action-packed one to date. Blackman couldn’t agree more. He even cites Luther and Diego’s brawl in the CIA’s basement as one of his favorite moments.
“It’s funny and violent,” Blackman offers. “The music is great. The actors had so much fun doing it. You can see the joy on their faces as they were performing. They are loving every minute of this fight sequence. They did all the stunts themselves. They both got super-fit for the fight, with amazing stunt people. They just loved it. They could have gone all night.”
“And David was just amazing, as well,” Blackman continues. “From day one, I said to them, ‘Do my line, but
if you have anything that you want to say that is better….’ The comedy that came out of the mouths of these three people had the crew and cast laughing.”
FOND FAREWELLS
With Umbrella nearing the end of filming, the cast doesn’t seem ready to let go. For Page, the show represents a deeply personal period of growth. In 2020, the Canadian native announced they were non-binary and, eventually, transgender. The series tackled Page’s decision by transitioning their character, Vanya, into Viktor.
“In particular, this arc with Viktor is significant in a lot of ways,” Page says. “I feel lucky for the journey that I have gotten to go on in this show and with this character. I hope to get to do a series again. To find a character you love, and get lucky enough to expand and grow and experience a length of arc this extensive, to me, was a real dream come true.”
Wipe away those tears. The heroes still have a mission to complete, and celebrating their victory feels premature. Death could be knocking on someone’s door. Early on, Blackman envisioned how the series would finish. That insight, however, didn’t extend to the cast. Up until the day before wrapping, the actors weren’t privy to the last page of the script. Blackman kept the details hush-hush. Ultimately, he believes they crafted a series that gives a proper send-off to these characters but also raises plenty of questions and discussion for the viewers.
“From the beginning, I wanted the Brellies, the Umbrella fans, to walk away and feel they had a satisfying ending,” Blackman says. “As a person who loves TV, I hate feeling I didn’t get a good ending in a show. I wrote for multiple seasons, knowing how I was going to end it. It’s a very hard thing.
“The fans have very high expectations,” he concludes. “It’s an emotional ending. I find it very satisfying, and I hope the fans will, too.”
The Umbrella Academy season 4 premieres Aug. 8 on Netflix.
Viktor (Elliot Page), with his family, including Liisa Repo-Martell (right) as the mysterious Abigail Hargreeves.
Odd COuplE
Transformers One gives us Optimus Prime and Megatron like we’ve never seen them before, according to director Josh Cooley. BY BERNARD BOO
EVERYBODY KNOWS OPTIMUS PRIME and Megatron are arch nemeses, and Transformers
One director Josh Cooley used this knowledge to his advantage when making the fully animated origin story. The film is set on Cybertron before the Autobot-Decepticon Civil War ravaged the planet, and Optimus and Megatron—young soldiers called Orion Pax and D-16, respectively—are the furthest thing from mortal enemies: they’re brothers in arms.
“The audience knows that they’re going to become enemies, so I wanted them to start their arc as best friends,” Cooley tells Den of Geek. “If we can get you to love these two characters together in act one, then you’re really going to feel it when the relationship falls apart.”
Lending their voices to the film are Chris Hemsworth (Optimus Prime/Orion Pax), Brian Tyree Henry (D-16/ Megatron), Scarlett Johansson (Elita-1), and Keegan-Michael Key (B-127/Bumblebee). The four form a bond as they venture to Cybertron’s surface for the first time, and together, they are bestowed the ability to transform.
We know who Orion Pax and D-16 go on to become, and that reality looms over the entire film. But does the movie simply show how the cracks formed in their friendship ultimately led to them becoming sworn enemies, or do we get to see them have a full-on break-up brawl?
Understandably, Cooley isn’t keen on revealing the extent of the conflict that arises between the besties. But he does insist that, while the film is meant to be fun for the whole family, we also get to see some serious, intense drama that erupts between them that has, so far, left the test audiences stunned.
The entire time… you know it’s going to fall apart.
“You are going to feel the conflict,” Cooley teases. “It’s very clear where we’re headed by the end of the film. The
Meet OriOn Pax… Or is that OPtiMus PriMe?
Actor
Chris Hemsworth
on bringing the iconic Transformer to life.
You have a lot of experience working within long-running franchises with huge fanbases. What is it about properties like Marvel and Transformers that make them enduring? I think what we connect to through all great storytelling, whether it be comic books, film, even Shakespeare, is that there’s a mythology to it.
And there’s allegory and hidden messaging in there, too. It’s baked into the story. When I was watching Transformers as a kid, there were moral questions posed—right and wrong, good and evil, cause and effect. Your choices have consequences. And I think there’s a nobility to Optimus Prime that kids look up to.
third act is epic. I saw it with a test audience, and they were left completely silent and still. As a director, seeing that gave me chills.”
As the first Transformers animated movie focused entirely on the robots, Transformers One marks a decisive tone shift for the franchise on the big screen. But fans of the original Hasbro toys and Generation 1 animated show should feel right at home. “The G1 series was a really fun show, and I wanted to bring that fun back,” Cooley says.
Part of getting back to the roots of the franchise meant using the power of animation to create a bright and vibrant movie that was more dazzling and less gritty than its live-action predecessors. Because the story takes place billions of years in the past, Cybertron
Audiences and critics often dismiss kids’ movies as somehow unimportant or unworthy of prestige. How do you value family entertainment when compared with the more “serious” films that dominate awards shows? Family films are essential. I think when a movie is joyful, fun, and entertaining, we think of it as not being serious. People think more serious movies are more important. But you can be fun and entertaining and still be sincere. Look at Toy Story, Shrek, and now Transformers One—there are life lessons for all ages in animated films.
What life lessons are we going to find in Transformers One? And what drew you to the project?
This being an origin story is what appealed to me. It isn’t a remake; it’s not a reimagining. It shows the early years of these
characters, whom we only knew later in their lives. This film delves into friendships and relationships you have with people when you’re vulnerable and afraid. It talks about what bravery really means and how good and evil aren’t as simplistic as they might first appear. We make mistakes, and we learn from them. But ultimately, we are defined by the decisions that we make.
Orion Pax and D-16 are faced with the same conditions, but their opinions on certain things change drastically throughout the film. What I like about this version of Optimus Prime is there’s a brashness and recklessness to him that needs to be tempered. He’s exposed to things that make him question everything he believes in.
As audience members, we’ve become incredibly familiar with your face and voice. You’re super famous. But seriously, what’s interesting about
is still a healthy, colorful planet made of all matter of metals and constantly transforming, like plate tectonics on steroids.
For Cooley, scale has always been a hallmark of the franchise, and while there are no human characters in the movie to crane their necks up at the 30-foot-tall heroes, the artists achieved a sense of scale in a different way by focusing on the sheer size of Cybertron. “Everything is gigantic compared to the characters,” Cooley explains. “And they’ve never been on the surface before, so it’s all new to them and the audience.”
Another advantage of going full animation was that, unlike the live-action films, the robots didn’t need to look photorealistic, with every nut and bolt rendered meticulously. The designs are closer in spirit to the G1 cartoon, which meant that the characters could be far more emotive with their faces and animations. This was something Cooley felt was crucial to the film’s success. “That was really important to me,” he says of the creative
decision. “I talked to [VFX and animation studio] ILM early on and told them I needed these characters to be able to emote and act without saying a word. Some scenes are heartbreaking—the animators did a wonderful job.”
Whether you’re a long-time Transformers fan or completely new to the franchise, Transformers One was designed to be enjoyed by all. “I wanted to make sure that even people like my parents who don’t know the deep lore could follow the story,” Cooley says. There are certainly Easter eggs scattered throughout the film (like glimpses at some of the early Primes), but Cooley was mindful to only include lore that supported the heart of the story.
Most importantly, Cooley stresses that Transformers One was made by fans, for fans.
“My entire crew and I grew up with Transformers,” he says. “The animators would fight over which Transformers they got to work on, and there was just so much excitement among everyone. I think that comes through in the film.”
a role like this is that we don’t see your face, and you have an American accent. Was it liberating to truly let the work stand on its own?
I’m comfortable with the transformative nature of acting—pun intended—and being able to wear a mask and play a character that’s really different as opposed to playing a character that’s more similar to me, which makes me self-conscious.
For Transformers One, you don’t see my face at all, which allowed me to not have to think about my physical presentation at all. In a sense, you have to do more work with your performance. The animators do a good job of filling in the gaps, but when I’m in the booth recording, it’s just me and my voice. I loved the creative adventure that it provided. And I loved having a second, third, fourth, fifth take as well.
On film sets, you get to do reshoots occasionally. But with this movie, we got to do
the entire film a few times. We got to test it with family and friends, to see what resonated, what worked, and what didn’t. It was really fulfilling and collaborative.
What
can longtime fans expect from Transformers One? As I’m sure you’re aware, these characters mean a lot to fans.
I feel a huge sense of gratitude to the fans for this opportunity. I’m deeply aware of the passion for this character and this world. It was as nerve-racking as it was exciting. It’s good to do things that scare you, and on the creative side, I had to dig a lot deeper. I came at this project as a fan. What excited me was that these are sides of these characters we’ve never seen before. And we’ve never seen Cybertron like this before. It’s a hugely entertaining movie, but there is a darkness to it as well.
Transformers One is released in theaters on Sept. 20.
Wild At Heart
The team of artists behind The Wild Robot has worked to make it, like its titular character, more than the sum of its parts. Director Chris Sanders gives us an inside look at the animated movie.
BY CHRIS FARNELL
DURING THE EARLIEST PRODUCTION
stages of an animated movie, it is common to begin the process with a series of exploratory paintings.
“They are abstract and loose and just delicious paintings,” says Chris Sanders, the director of films such as Lilo & Stitch, How to Train Your Dragon, and The Croods
But something special happened during the production of Sanders’ latest film, The Wild Robot, while he was sitting in a meeting and being shown some of these conceptual paintings.
“Someone pushed a button,” Sanders recalls, “and one of them started to move. And the camera started pushing through it.” What Sanders had taken for a painting was actually a finished scene of the movie. “And I cannot put too fine a point on it; I really didn’t think that was a piece of our finished film until that happened, and I realized, ‘My God, we’ve done it.’”
Painting a Movie
As shocked as Sanders was, this was what he had asked of The Wild Robot’s production designer, Raymond Zibach—for a film that was indiscernible from those early conceptual paintings. The Wild Robot, based on the book
by Peter Brown, is the story of Rozzum unit 7134, Roz for short (Lupita Nyong’o), a robot who finds herself washed ashore on a forest island after a shipwreck. Lacking human masters to serve, she sets about looking after the wildlife of the island.
“Peter Brown revealed quite a few things to us about why he wrote the book and what was going on in his head as he wrote it,” Sanders says of adapting the story. “What wasn’t put in the book is that in his mind, he was operating under the premise that kindness can be a survival skill.”
While recent cinema history is full of stories about lovable animated robots, the unique environment Roz finds herself in required a unique style of animation.
“With The Wild Robot, it was important to me that this piece of high technology really feel like it was lost in the wilderness,” Sanders says. “So we needed the biggest contrast we could get, meaning a forest that looks organic.”
For Sanders, the benchmark of organic animated forests was set by Tyrus Wong’s animated backgrounds in Disney’s Bambi and the painted backgrounds of Hayao Miyazaki in My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away, and that is what the art style of The Wild Robot aspired to.
“Any animated film you see, I guarantee that what you see on the screen represents the outer limit of the available
technology,” Sanders tells us. “With The Wild Robot, I would be so bold as to say that we have closed the circle that began with Snow White and Bambi, [and] through films like The Lion King, Lilo & Stitch, and Shrek. We’ve finally gone back to those analog painted environments. Everything in The Wild Robot was painted by hand, by a human holding a stylus instead of a brush, but hand-painted nonetheless.”
Call of the Wild
While the art is crucial to the story The Wild Robot tells, that part of the production comes relatively late in the moviemaking process.
“The first thing we do is the voices. The voice is recorded before anything moves,” Sanders explains.
The most important of those voices is, of course, Lupita Nyong’o’s.
“Lupita worked harder than anyone else to create the voice of the robot.” That effort was essential because, aside from her voice, Roz had few other ways to communicate her (artificial) feelings. “My only real direction [to modeling supervisor Hyun Huh] was I insisted she not have a mouth. I feel very strongly that in the absence of that articulation, we can see our emotions and see a reflection of ourselves in her.”
This meant the design of Roz was crucial, especially as
the illustrations in the book leave so much to the imagination.
“The robot, as illustrated by Brown, is both vague and specific,” Sanders points out. “She has a very humanoid silhouette because Peter wants Rozzum robots to be humanoid. They operate in human places doing human jobs. But at the same time, his style is very graphic, so it was left to us to fill in the details on Roz.”
In addition to voices, The Wild Robot also tells a great deal of its story through music.
“I learned way back in Lilo & Stitch that the storytelling device that does the heaviest lifting can be music,” Sanders says.
The composer for this project was Kris Bowers, whose work covers everything from Bridgerton and Secret Invasion to Green Book and The Color Purple.
“I said write me something orchestral that begins and develops and grows and is its own thing, and if there’s any problem with the way our visuals are working with that, I’ll deal with it later,” Sanders says. “I didn’t want something a character was doing to interrupt his music.”
Assembling the Robot
Sanders does all the jobs the director on a live-action movie would do, although admittedly, not always at the same time.
“Imagine a live-action set, take every one of those disciplines and just separate them,” he explains. “We move the camera first. We make the set and move the camera in space because we know from the storyboard what we want from a particular shot.”
From there, the animators create and animate more detailed models, all to fit the recordings of the voice actors. But the film doesn’t exist until all these disparate components are combined.
“It all comes together at the end,” Sanders says, “rather than me being on a set and yelling ‘Action’ and it all happening at once.”
The Wild Robot is out in theaters on Sept. 27.
Robot Roz (Lupita Nyong'o) connects with nature when she's shipwrecked.
Natural Beauty
Oscar-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o's robot, Roz, finds humanity through nature in The Wild Robot.
BY CHRIS FARNELL
HOW CAN SOMEBODY SOUND LIKE
they’re running if they don’t breathe? This is the sort of question Lupita Nyong’o had to ask as she was recording the voice of Rozzum unit 7134, the titular wild robot in The Wild Robot.
“We did a scene where Roz was running through a field, and I realized, “Oh my God, Roz doesn’t have breath! So how do I perform her running with no breath, which would have been the default if I was performing a living being?” Nyong’o remembers. “We had a debate about what running sounds like for a robot. You have to find a way to intensify your voice without doing the breathing you would do for a living being. It was fascinating to do.”
The Wild Robot is a story about a robot who finds herself surrounded by animals when her shipping crate is washed ashore on an island after a shipwreck, but Nyong’o was drawn to the very human messages it delivers.
“I read the book, and I loved its allegory,” she says of Peter Brown’s original children’s story. “It’s about the importance of self-actualization and being more than you thought you were meant to be.”
Of course, “being more than you were meant to be” is a common theme for movies, even movies about robots, but Nyong’o argues The Wild Robot goes a step further.
“It’s also about the importance of community. The individual is very much informed and inspired by the community they come from,” she explains. “The idea that to self-actualize is to separate from others is a folly. It can mean embracing the collective and expressing it uniquely, and I loved that.”
The Feelings of an Unemotional Being
If Roz were any other protagonist, this would be considered the emotional arc of the character. But Roz is a robot and behaves like a robot—not just a metal person. It was a unique challenge for Nyong’o as an actor.
“My big question was how can I evolve in a way that
resonates with an emotional human audience without betraying the circumstances of my character being a robot?”
Nyong’o says. “For me, as an actor, emotion is something I rely on to get the subtleties across. I try to figure out the emotional composition of my characters and here I was with a character who did not have that facility.”
To make sure she got the tone right, Nyong’o went through the script with the director, Chris Sanders, looking for moments that needed to be adjusted to reinforce that Roz was not an emotional being.
Roz the robot does not experience emotions but learns to express herself through the natural world.
“Because Chris and Jeff [Hermann, producer] were so open to changing those moments, we got a lot clearer on showing how Roz learned things in a way that could make her seem like an emotional being. She learns behaviors and adapts so that she can express herself emotionally while not necessarily operating from an emotional place.”
In terms of showing how Roz learned those lessons, Nyong’o had no set, no costume, and no other actors to bounce off. The animated figure didn’t even have facial expressions.
“You have to convey everything through your voice,” Nyong’o
points out. “So there are some challenging limitations, but it was also kind of liberating. You can do whatever you want in the booth. You can move your body however you want to get the effect you’re looking for in your voice.”
To communicate Roz’s arc, Nyong’o says she began with a tone of “programmed positivity,” emulating the chipper voices you hear from services like Alexa and Siri.
“It’s a bright voice. One of the ways I achieve it is to rely on my higher register, sending it through my upper resonate, brightening my eyes, and smiling as I do it!”
As Roz adapts to her new, more organic environment, she takes on more dimensions in her vocal posture until, at the end, she sounds a lot closer to Nyong’o herself. Although The Wild Robot presented Nyong’o with unique challenges, in many ways it was just like any other acting job.
“It starts with the same questions I ask of any character. Who am I? What do I want? How do I go about getting it? Once you know that, it informs the questions you ask of the director and of the process,” she explains. “I think the hardest thing was that so much of the performance was in the hands of the animators.”
The Core of the Job
It is a new way of working, but Nyong’o has been acting on screen since 2006, and she’s seen numerous new technologies and trends come into play.
“Well, I’ve definitely noticed more green screen,” she laughs. “There is so much more that people can do through computer graphics and manipulation, and that is useful for sure. We can be in Busan in Atlanta, and it can be immersive even on the set. I remember when I was part of Star Wars,
I was impressed and amazed by how many practical effects were around me. Everything was three-dimensional and moving. All these aliens were animatronics. It was beautiful to be immersed in an imaginative three-dimensional world that had texture, and you could touch and explore it.”
In the Black Panther films, Nyong’o saw what was possible with digital technology.
“In some ways, it can feel sad, but in other ways, it is just a new way of approaching this imaginative work. The challenge in front of me is the same, whether it is all around me or on a green screen. All this technology offers me unique challenges to navigate and push against to stay true to the human story that I am telling. Things have advanced, I barely understand them, but my job remains the same, which is to breathe truth into the human experience.”
Nyong’o tries to find a range of experiences to breathe truth into. When looking at roles, diversity is one of the first things she looks for—she won’t do the same thing twice if she can help it.
“I look for roles that will teach me something new about myself or the world,” she says. “Those are the things that I
Director Chris Sanders wanted Roz to feel like an advance piece of tech lost in the wilderness.
consider. What are the ways the role will stretch me?”
An Animated Cast
She also prioritizes finding the right people to work with, especially considering how long a film takes, and how vulnerable it can make an actor.
“I feel strongly my creativity is not an infinite source, so I want to work with creative people who will nurture my creative spirit and not stamp out my light,” she says.
I feel strongly my creativity is not an infinite source, so I want to work with creative people who will nurture my creative spirit and not stamp out my light.
—LUPITA NYONG'O
This was a particular challenge with The Wild Robot, which recorded the dialogue for each of its actors separately, meaning that often Nyong’o never met her co-stars.
“I was shown some drawings, but there was very little that I saw to inform what I gave in the booth, so Chris [Sanders] would describe the scene and give me as much context as he possibly could. It was up to my imagination to keep those things in mind.”
Nyong’o has worked in animation before, but this is the first time she has played the lead role in an animated feature film, adding a new layer of challenge. Fortunately, she was not alone.
“Chris Sanders is not just an incredible animation director, but an incredible actor’s director as well. He has such an incredible facility for inspiring a new thought without giving you line reading,” Nyong’o says. “He will share words with you that just spark a new thought, and it was so much fun to work with him because he’d get things out of me I didn’t even know I had in my pocket.”
As well as providing a good working chemistry as a director, Sanders also read for Nyong’o’s co-stars in the recording booth. Viewers might remember his voice as that of the alien Stitch in Lilo & Stitch, but his repertoire goes far wider than that.
“He gives it his all, he’s got such a dynamic voice,” Nyong’o says. “He understands all the characters he’s written, and he brings it. He was my scene partner, all the scene partners that I needed.”
He also helped bridge the gap between Nyong’o and the other performers in the film, which was crucial to understanding Roz’s character.
“There was a line that Roz says, a turn of phrase she uses, but I remember saying we needed to figure out where she had learned it from. So that turn of phrase was given to Fink [the fox played by Pedro Pascal] earlier in the movie,” Nyong’o reveals. “When we were shooting that scene for Roz, I asked to hear the recording of Pedro Pascal doing it so that I could be informed by his inflection. I enjoyed that process of figuring out ways for Roz to adapt to this thing we experience as empathy.”
While Roz learns a new language throughout the movie, Nyong’o is also aware the same is true for the youngest members of the audience.
“They unabashedly have access to rage and fear and glee and euphoria. They have big feelings and understand big feelings in a way that we shy away from as adults.”
Nyong’o, Sanders, and the animators worked to make sure that the language of the film remained accessible to children—which wasn’t necessarily the same as simplifying it.
“The choice of language was really important so that we did not alienate children with the breadth of vocabulary,” she recalls. “We didn’t want to dumb down the script because this is an opportunity for children to pick up new language. What was so fascinating was how the animators took care of making it understandable for children through their use of expression. There was the language of the page, the inflection put on it by the performer, and the expression the animators brought to it, all working together.”
The Wild Robot was a unique experience for Nyong’o, but she still has new things she wants to try.
“I am very keen to work in the comedic realm. Especially with the times we live in, life can be really scary right now, and it’s important to be reminded of joy and euphoria and the light,” she says. “I’m very keen to walk towards the light."
The Wild Robot is out in theaters on Sept. 27.
The Rings of Power’s take on the terrifying arachnid, Shelob, was inspired by several real-life spiders, including tarantulas and black widows.
Actor Maxim Baldry and VFX supervisor Jason Smith take us through the process of bringing Tolkien’s scariest monster to life for The Rings of Power
BY JULIETTE HARRISSON
ARACHNOPHOBES COVER YOUR eyes because a familiar monster from the world of J.R.R. Tolkien is making a return appearance in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season two—Shelob, the giant, demonic spider who attacked Frodo and Sam as they made their way into Mordor both in the books and the Peter Jackson movies.
In Tolkien lore, Shelob is the offspring of Ungoliant, an evil spirit in the form of a giant spider who destroyed the Two Trees of Valinor, the first sources of light in Arda, the larger world in which The Rings of Power and The Lord of the Rings are set. Ungoliant disappeared far back in Middleearth’s history, but Shelob, “an evil-thing in spider form,” to quote Tolkien, is her last surviving child. Shelob herself is also the mother of the smaller—but still huge—spiders that attacked Bilbo and the Dwarves in Mirkwood in The Hobbit. Shudder.
The Shelob we’ll see in The Rings of Power season two will be slightly different from the monster we met in Jackson’s The Return of the King. Movie Shelob’s design was based on the New Zealand tunnelweb spiders that had terrified Jackson as a child. For The Rings of Power’s version, the design team took inspiration from Tolkien’s own childhood memories of being bitten by a tarantula in South Africa, as well as a few different real-world spiders.
“The first thing we did is we all thought back to the nightmare spiders of our youth,” says senior VFX supervisor Jason Smith, who specifically referenced his own pet tarantula, Fluffy, which he got in an attempt to cure his fear of spiders as a child, as well as the black widows that infested a small space where he had to crawl to turn on the water for his cabin.
But the team also did extensive research into “every spider known to man,” Smith explains. “I realized that the fear I was feeling most aggressively was with those long, thin legs—the black widow proportions really spoke to me.”
When it came to filming Shelob, the team used a combination of blue screen and visual effects, together with a 360-degree physical set and large prop legs operated by puppeteers. “We’d come out attacking [Maxim Baldry, who plays Isildur] with this mechanical spider puppet that we had made,” Smith reveals, “with multiple puppeteers [working] the legs because we wanted to get something crawling on him. We love visual effects but only as the tool to close the gap where it must be closed.”
For Baldry himself, it was quite an experience facing Shelob. He describes himself as being “petrified” of spiders and tells us that the sequence is “a terrifying concoction of all of my worst nightmares.” Although filming on the day and working with a
rugby ball with giant legs that would later become Shelob’s body thanks to the art of VFX did require some suspension of disbelief, he says the set itself was “very realistic, very claustrophobic”—especially with Berek the horse and his two wranglers in there with him.
Isildur’s tussle with Shelob was also one of a number of night shoots for Baldry over the course of the season, which did become “quite isolating” for the actor, especially since his scene partners were a horse and a part-physical, part-computer-generated giant spider—though he still loved doing it. Speaking of those long night shoots, the VFX team gave a lot of thought to the lighting of those scenes, too. Smith says they used night screens, or black screens, as well as blue screens for filming, which made it easier to get the lighting on the actor just right.
Fans of the books should keep a sharp eye on Isildur and Shelob’s fight, as there are little details within that refer back to Tolkien’s mythos. Shelob’s chief weak spot is the same in the TV series as when Sam faced her in the movie; look closely at that claustrophobic cave set for a clue to where her mother, Ungoliant, ended up.
The encounter with Shelob will, unsurprisingly, have quite an impact on Isildur as a character through the rest of season two. Having been separated from his family, who have returned to Númenor believing him to be dead, Isildur is, in Baldry’s words, “forced into a world of survival” and will be “thrown into adulthood.” Surviving Shelob (as we know he will, given what we know about Isildur’s destiny as a Ring-bearer) is “character-building for Isildur,” says Baldry. “He leaves season two a man; he is no longer a boy. He’s hardened, he’s blunt, he’s a little bit more of a mercenary… more warrior-like.”
After having to fight off that nightmare creature, we’re not surprised!
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season two premieres on Prime Video on Aug. 29.
Isildur (played by Maxim Baldry) comes face-to-face with Shelob in season two.
Award-winning writer Mark Waid takes the DC Universe to the brink of destruction in Absolute Power.
BY JOE GEORGE
bsolute power corrupts absolutely.
That statement almost always holds true in the real world but not often in the world of mainstream superheroes, especially those published by DC Comics. No matter how bleak things get, the denizens of the DC Universe can always look up in the sky to find Superman, their shining beacon of hope.
That is, until Absolute Power, the new DC crossover event from the all-star comics team of writer Mark Waid and artist Dan Mora, shoots Superman through the heart. To make matters worse, the Justice League has disbanded, leaving Earth without its greatest heroes.
“I really expected Absolute Power to be a Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman story,” Waid admits to Den of Geek. “And instead, it became very much a book about a bunch of different heroes, [including] Dreamer, Jon Kent, and Nightwing.”
Waid is an award-winning industry veteran who initially worked at DC Comics as an editor in the late ’80s, overseeing legendary books such as Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol and the first Elseworlds book Gotham by Gaslight. As a writer, Waid has written some of the most important comics of all time, including Kingdom Come with Alex Ross, “The Return of Barry Allen” arc in The Flash, and the “Tower of Babel” storyline in JLA
In short, Waid knows the history of DC Comics better than almost anyone. And that makes him the perfect person to write the story of the DCU’s downfall.
“I was not crusading for it, but when the opportunity came up, I was very interested,” Waid says of penning Absolute Power, which he describes as “an event without a story.”
In Absolute Power, scheming U.S. government operative Amanda Waller expands beyond pressing supervillains into her service with the Suicide Squad and instead launches an attack on the nation’s heroes. With a combination of maneuvers that feel at once fantastic and pulled from the real world, Waller seeks to recreate the DCU in her own image.
A FORCE TO BE RECKONED WITH
The Absolute Power event didn’t come out of nowhere. Rather, it stems from Waller’s increased presence, both in the world of comics and in pop culture at large, thanks to Academy Award winner Viola Davis’ performance in The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker
“They built her and built her and built her, especially over the last year or so, and they wanted that big payoff, Amanda Waller versus the DC Universe,” Waid explains. On the page, that build-up occurred in several DC books of the past year, including Batman, Green Arrow, and Suicide Squad: Dream Team
“Everybody brought something to the table. There’s a little bit of [Batman writer] Chip Zdarsky in this. There’s a
Left: An imprisoned Superman features on a variant cover of Absolute Power: Task Force VII #1, with art by Stephen Platt.
little bit of [Green Arrow writer] Joshua Williamson in this. There’s a little bit of other writers in this. By the time it got to me, there were some ideas on the table that I was free to pick from or not pick from, and then bring something bigger to it myself that brought it all together and gave it a real sense of peril and immediacy.”
This approach helped Waid and Mora not only nail new characters such as Dreamer—Waid credits her co-creator Nicole Maines as “enormously helpful with getting a handle on that character”—but also situate the story in the larger DC Universe.
The limited run of issues prevented Waid from including everything he wanted to in the event: “Look, if you gave me 12 issues to do Absolute Power, I could absolutely use them,” he says. Fortunately, he did get access to every character he wanted.
A DIFFERENT KIND OF CROSSOVER
Absolute Power isn’t Waid’s first company-wide crossover event, having written 1995’s Underworld Unleashed and the 2006 weekly series 52. But Absolute Power is something even more special for Waid.
“This is the first time anybody’s just said, ‘This is important enough to us where everyone’s on the table. Do what you need to do to tell a great story, and don’t worry about what’s going on in the other books. We’ll make it work on our end.’ And that’s basically what they did.
“Green Lantern was not originally envisioned as a tie-in book with this series. But Jeremy Adams was so on board with what we were doing that he voluntarily turned Green Lantern into an Absolute Power tie-in. There have been a couple of cases like that, where things that could have been off-limits were instead volunteered by the different writers.”
In a way, that collaborative approach hearkens back to 52, which Waid wrote with Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka, and Geoff Johns, with designs by the late, great artist Keith Giffen. But there are
two big differences between 52 and Absolute Power…
“One of them is we didn’t have Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman to play with, which is kind of the point of the series. The other big difference is [in 52] we were telling myriad stories that tied into each other. In Absolute Power, I’ve got 120 pages over four issues to really focus on one strong story with some side beats and personality beats and a little bit of subplot stuff here and there.”
As disappointing as that might be to readers who would love for Waid “to drift off and spend five pages with Adam Strange,” the focus also helped Waid distinguish Absolute Power from other comic-book crossovers.
“We’ve all read crossovers where the main story is the main story, and then all the tie-in books are the C-list books, and it’s really just a cash grab to slap a logo on their cover. And I really resisted that,” Waid explains. “One of the first things I asked of the various DC writers is to devote three issues of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman to this story.”
He admits that the request was “a big ask, but at the same time, that makes it feel bigger, that gives it weight. Right off the bat, we have Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman all going off on specific missions that feed into the climax that takes them off the
that even some of the deep mining I’m doing with some key elements that go back 50 or 60 years into DC history are still clear and have context, and don’t require you to read the same comics I read when I was five.”
people with power do real good in the world.
“They have absolute power, and they answer to no one,” Waller says of the pantheon of DC heroes in Absolute Power #1. “They adhere to a child’s idea of morality, and like all children, they occasionally have tantrums.”
Morality has long been a thematic concern for Waid, as seen in Kingdom Come, as well as in creator-owned projects such as Irredeemable and Empire. “I think that morality is the DNA in all superheroes. They are built to demonstrate what the right thing to do is,” Waid explains. “But beyond that, I sometimes feel like there’s no other way for me to reach other people and communicate the importance of ethics and morality in the 21st century than through my stories. I don’t know a better way of doing it. I don’t know it really reaches anybody, but I can’t help but do that because I feel like that is an important message to put forth.”
That concern comes right to the fore in Absolute Power, which involves contemporary issues such as deepfake videos and media misinformation campaigns.
“I spend a lot of time in the worlds of news, science, and politics, seeing what’s happening to our world,” Waid says. “But I never take a cynical approach, thinking that there’s no way to fight that in the real world. I still believe in Superman [and] Batman. I still believe in that element of fantasy. The trick really is to bring together elements of the real world and fantasy without compromising one or the other.”
board for issue three and gives the opportunity for a lot of other lesser characters to shine.”
If anyone is suited to writing Band C-list characters, it’s Waid, with his encyclopedic knowledge of the universe. At the same time, he wanted to avoid the main pitfall of writing crossover events that reference decades of DC lore.
“The real challenge is making sure that my deep-cut knowledge of the DC Universe isn’t so deep that it loses casual readers. I want to make sure
SUPERMORALS
Unlike most bad guys in big crossover events, Amanda Waller has a clear moral compass, one she considers more complex and realistic than the good guys. That compass drives her to take out the DC Universe’s heroes and establish her own set of crime fighters, including not only the Suicide Squad and the radical Batman robot Failsafe but also some surprising allies. The plot raises questions about how
For an industry veteran like Waid, maintaining that balance is just as important as coming up with new ways to surprise readers and himself.
“On the off chance that some 10-yearold stumbles across the story I’ve written and is enlightened even for two minutes as to what the responsibilities of people with the power to change things are, that’s a win for me, and that’s an important mission for me.”
Absolute Power #1 is out now. Issue #2 hits stands on Aug. 7.
Above: The cover of Absolute Power #1 with art by Dan Mora. Left: Villain The Last Son and Shazam! feature on covers of Task Force VII #1, while the story’s antagonist, Amanda Waller, features on a variant cover of Absolute Power #1.
SPAC E FAN TA S Y
Star Wars Outlaws is a major leap forward for the video game franchise. The team at Ubisoft Massive walks us through how it turned the galaxy far, far away into a true open-world experience.
BY JOHN SAAVEDRA
Fans of a certain age may still look back to the ’90s and early ’00s as “the golden age” of Star Wars games, but the truth is that we’re currently at another high point for the game franchise. After a long drought, there are lots of new Star Wars games to choose from—across multiple genres and platforms—with more on the way, including the franchise’s most ambitious title to date.
Star Wars Outlaws, from developer Massive Entertainment and publisher Ubisoft, is the first ever open-world game set in the galaxy far, far away. After playing a short hands-on demo at this year’s Summer Game Fest, Den of Geek sat
down with the dev team to talk about the challenges of making a new kind of Star Wars game, crafting the world and story of Outlaws, and the fun Easter eggs that fans can expect this August.
A Larger World
Best known for The Division series and last year’s Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, Massive brought plenty of openworld design experience to its newest title, which was on a different scale entirely.
Outlaws allows players to travel freely between four planets from the franchise’s past, as well as a brand-new
Outlaws, “you live in it, and you get to go where you want and do what you want when you want.”
The demo that we played covered just about an hour of the game, broken up into three sections meant to highlight different aspects of the experience. The first slice of gameplay, which followed thief and scoundrel protagonist Kay Vess and her trusty pet companion, Nix, as they escaped an Imperial Star Destroyer, was the best showcase of the game’s scale. What began as a sneaking mission quickly broke out into a firefight on the ship’s docking bay, which progressed into a tense battle in space once our heroes took off on the Trailblazer, all before landing on the moon of Toshara, hopping on Kay’s speeder bike, and venturing into the city of Mirogana to complete the section. It was a virtually seamless experience from point A to B that felt immersive and exciting.
moon called Toshara, all of which feature their own unique biomes, sights and sounds, and scum and villainy. Oh, and you can even explore outer space on your trusty ship, the Trailblazer, which you’ll fly between the game’s many locations and pilot into battle against Imperial TIE fighters. There are a few space stations to find as well, such as Achra Station, which is located in the middle of an asteroid field near the planet Akiva.
“That was a challenge because we’ve never done that before,” world director Cloé Hammoud says of designing the game’s space regions. Fleshing out the game world with plenty of things to do and see was at the forefront of Massive’s mission to “realize [the Star Wars galaxy] as a real place where you’re not on a guided tour,” according to game director Mathias Karlson, who promises that in
Karlson says seeing the ambitious scale of the game come together for the first time was a “magical moment” for the studio. In Outlaws, players can also explore the deserts of Tatooine, snowy Kijimi from The Rise of Skywalker, the lavish Canto Bight from The Last Jedi, and the jungles of Akiva first mentioned in the books. Within these larger worlds, you’ll find major settlements such as Mirogana, a dense, multi-level city on Toshara that looks like it’s been carved out of a cliff face. The demo also took us to another point of interest on Toshara: a crashed High Republic-era ship with its own stories to discover.
Each planet also has its own seedy underbelly led by one of the game’s five main criminal factions, which you’ll interact with quite a lot throughout. Our brief trip to Mirogana and Kijimi City showcased locales brimming with life and danger, as well as lots of nods to established lore. So, how did the team at Massive keep track of all of the details?
“The approach when we do things like this is really breaking it down into slices: demographics,
Above: The outlaws’ ship, the Trailblazer, in battle with a pair of TIE fighters. Top right: Hero Kay Vess attempts to escape a Star Destroyer.
Below: Vess’ ally Danka, a Mon Calamari information broker.
syndicates, population, fauna, flora, the biome,” says Navid Khavari, the game’s narrative director. “When you start laying out those layers, all those details organically start to form, and the process is extremely fascinating.”
While the game’s central story follows Kay as she makes a name for herself in the criminal underworld, Outlaws offers plenty of opportunities to go off the main path and explore.
“That’s the beauty of an open world,” Karlson says. “The presence of these syndicates and the Empire is padded with a lot of other fun things for you to find if you’re curious.”
The Outlaw and the Merqaal
Fantastical worlds are key to a successful Star Wars story, but the saga is nothing without its emotional core: the relatable underdogs who must face insurmountable odds to complete a quest. Enter Kay Vess (Humberly González), who crosses a powerful crime lord named Sliro (Caolan Byrne) and ends up with a huge price on her head at the start of the game. Now, she is on the run from bounty hunters, and the only way to buy her freedom is to pull off a history-making heist. Along the way, Kay also has to complete jobs for the galaxy’s competing crime gangs—even if it means risking a run-in with the Empire.
Clockwise, from below: Kay Vess and her trusty pet companion, Nix, explore the moon Toshara; fighting the Empire on the jungle world of Akiva; landspeeders help you traverse the huge open worlds; Vess can use stealth to take down Imperial forces.
The game is set between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, which means the franchise’s greatest villains are still at the height of their power. Kay will face the Empire throughout the game. But unlike Han Solo, this scoundrel is no freedom fighter.
“What was exciting to us is that Kay isn’t part of the Rebellion, isn’t part of the wider galactic war, but is really on the ground,” Khavari says. Kay had a rough upbringing as a thief on the streets of Canto Bight, and that background is reflected in her appearance.
“She has a broken nose and scars to show she has had quite a rough life,” associate art director Marthe Jonkers says. “Kay has a hairpin that she can lockpick doors with. She also has sneakers, which are not normally in Star Wars, but we created these sneaker-style boots, which are very
helpful for a thief to sneak around. There are even small things like her jacket, [which] has scratches on the back because Nix hangs on the back part.”
Kay’s main weapon is a slick blaster that’s a whole lot of fun to unload on stormtroopers, but her most effective (and adorable) tool is the little merqaal, Nix (Dee Bradley Baker). An original creation for the game, Nix can attack or distract enemies, fetch treasure and weapons for Kay, and even activate traps on command. Siccing Nix on people was the very best part of our demo.
“Nix is the heart and soul of Kay,” Khavari says. “Kay is a pretty untrusting person, and the crack in her armor is Nix. She loves and adores this creature.” We still don’t know how Kay and Nix first met, but there’s plenty more to learn about these partners in crime. Khavari teases: “There’s a file on Nix where we’ve gone to great lengths to explain where he’s from and all of that, but it is a mystery.”
Kay will also eventually team up with an imposing Clone
Wars-era battle droid named ND-5 (Jay Rincon), but Khavari says “they don’t necessarily get along super well.” They can’t all be Nix.
Stranger in a Familiar Land
interesting dynamic between Qi’ra and Kay.”
Although the goal was to give players a new way to experience this galaxy, there are still plenty of classic Star Wars influences in the game: Spaghetti Westerns, samurai movies, and the art of Ralph McQuarrie—particularly “the simplicity, the color palettes, the scale of the architecture that he designed,” according to Jonkers.
Massive also brought back two of the most dangerous criminals in the movies: Kay will cross paths with both Jabba the Hutt and Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke’s character from Solo) during her adventure. But Kay doesn’t know their history, which allowed Massive to explore these characters through a fresh perspective.
“One of the most exciting things we were able to roleplay in our story room was, what if you never met Jabba? Or what happens if you have no idea who Qi’ra is? What’s that conversation like?” Khavari says, teasing that “there’s a really
Then there’s the return of Tatooine, Star Wars’ original hive of scum and villainy, which was a no-brainer for a game about space outlaws, but Khavari says your time on the desert planet won’t just be a retread of the movies. One new activity to find on the desert planet involves a side quest that offers a hilariously specific bit of wish fulfillment—if your ultimate Star Wars fantasy is moisture farming.
“As Kay, you will stumble onto someone who is desperate,” Jonkers says, giggling before she can get the words out. “He has gambled too much and lost his moisture farm. You can help him get his farm back, and, as a reward, you become co-owner of the farm.”
Outlaws isn’t the first Star Wars game set between Empire and Jedi
In the ’90s, Shadows of the Empire was the first story to explore this specific era. It also took a deep dive into the galaxy’s criminal underworld and featured another scoundrel, the mercenary Dash Rendar, stepping in for Han, who is still frozen in carbonite at this point in the timeline. Shadows isn’t canon anymore, but the similarities between the classic game and Outlaws are obvious. Was that on purpose?
“We looked at absolutely everything,” Khavari says coyly. “Shadows of the Empire is one of my all-time favorite Nintendo 64 games, and it has some super fun characters, but you’ll have to wait until August to get the full answer.”
Star Wars Outlaws is out on Aug. 30 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
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No Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles collection can be complete without these select pieces that can induce serious shell shock.
BY ERIC FRANCISCO
This story is part of an editorial series presented by eBay.
From out of the shadows of indie comic books to the bright lights of Hollywood, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is one of the unlikeliest success stories in modern popular culture. Centered around juvenile ninjutsu masters Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Donatello, plus their many friends and enemies, TMNT has outlived most other franchises from the 1980s. Its cultural dominance of 40 years is asserted across comics, cartoons, big-budget movies, and, of course, collectors’ shelves.
What has given the Ninja Turtles their lasting legs, aside from their intense training, is simply the genius of creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. TMNT began life as a comic book from Eastman and Laird’s humble Mirage Studios, (so named because Mirage wasn't an actual company and was based out of their apartment). In May 1984, the first issue of Eastman and Laird’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles dropped like hot pepperoni pizza on an unsuspecting comic book public, with
3,000 self-published copies of the first issue sold at a New Hampshire convention. Early buzz made these issues instant collector’s items, not to mention kicking off a short-lived imitator and parody boom. (Adolescent Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters, anyone?)
Amid their lengthy first run of comics by Mirage, the Ninja Turtles got their own smash-hit animated series in 1987. Both the gritty comic and the colorful cartoon—not to mention the cult hit 1990 feature film—created the modern TMNT franchise we recognize today. These days, TMNT is more popular than ever, thanks to last year’s critically acclaimed animated blockbuster, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem; a streaming series spinoff for Paramount+ is currently in development.
Naturally, the Ninja Turtles make for great collectibles, too. Since that first comic sold out in May 1984, the Ninja Turtles have become musthave toys, accessories, streetwear, and so much more. Here’s a brief guide to the coolest Ninja Turtles collectibles from deep in the New York sewers that can make any die-hard fan yell out, “Cowabunga!” You can find these collectibles and many more on eBay now.
There are all kinds of Funko Pop! TMNT figures for collectors to choose from. But nothing quite compares to the designs of these PX Exclusives from 2022. Inspired by the original Mirage Comics run, these figurines feature all the Turtles in red bandanas (before they were a unique Raphael signature), along with some black and gray shading to give them stylized depth. The line also included Shredder and Casey Jones, with similar detailing. An even rarer variant set in black and white was released at the same time, affording collectors the chance to own the Turtles in their true, original forms.
FUNKO POP! METALLIC TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES
(2013 SAN DIEGO COMIC-CON EXCLUSIVE)
Rewinding the clock to the earliest days of Funko collecting, the Ninja Turtles arrived in San Diego all shiny and chrome in a now extremely rare metallic paint set. Only a thousand of these were made and sold, and only at that year’s Comic-Con International. Individually, these Turtles now fetch upwards of $500 apiece, while some eBay sellers have them in complete sets for thousands of dollars. For the TMNT faithful, these metallic Pop! figures are, without question, some of the most valuable collectibles you’ll ever find.
TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES #1 (2ND PRINTING)
Face it: You’re never going to find a first printing of Eastman and Laird’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1. Those original 3,000 copies are long gone. Sorry! But with a little bit of luck and a lot of loose change, you can pick up a second printing (still from 1984, the first year of the Ninja Turtles’ existence). On eBay, sellers have different graded copies of the Turtles’ first-ever comic book appearance for upwards of $2,000. For the truest die-hard fans, this was and still is the Holy Grail of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles collectibles.
TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: THE LAST RONIN PX PREVIEWS
EXCLUSIVE FIGURE
The past meets a dark future in Playmates’ The Last Ronin figures, based on the acclaimed comic book series Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin by Kevin Eastman. While in roughly the same molding and build as the original Ninja Turtles figures of yesteryear, these Last Ronin figures center on the lone surviving Turtle who armors up in stealth black and carries all the weapons of his fallen brothers (we’re trying very hard not to spoil their identity, just in case you don’t know it yet). While the normal version of the figure retails for less than $20, a graphic novel-inspired “white” variant can be picked up for between $30-$60. Some eBay sellers bundle both versions for around $80.
TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: THE LAST RONIN #1 (1A FIRST PRINT)
The hottest TMNT comic in years debuted in October 2020, with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin #1. Originating from a story conceived by co-creator Kevin Eastman during the first few years of the Ninja Turtles comic book publishing, The Last Ronin is the dark “sequel” series to the TMNT saga in which one last Turtle lives to avenge his fallen brothers in a dark, dystopian future. The Last Ronin has spawned its own successful sub-franchise within the larger TMNT empire, with both video game and movie adaptations in development. That means any collector worth their salt needs to get their hands on The Last Ronin #1, ideally with Eastman’s original cover from the first printing.
TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES X STRANGER THINGS
(IDW EXCLUSIVE HARDCOVER)
The Ninja Turtles have crossed paths with legends and heroes of different dimensions. In 2023, the heroes in a half shell teamed up with the heroes of Hawkins in a four-issue miniseries published by IDW. Written by Cameron Chittock and illustrated by Fero Pe, this comic book crossover sees the kids from Stranger Things embark on a supposedly stress-free trip to New York City, only to encounter a monstrous threat that has followed them to the Big Apple. Thankfully, there are some lean, green fighting machines ready to lend them a hand. It’s the crossover you never knew you wanted until now.
TMNT BST AXN TURTLES MIDNIGHT 4-PACK
From The Loyal Subjects and their premium BST AXN line of collectible action figures comes a ridiculously rad set like no other. The “Turtles Midnight” set is a 4-pack collection of The Loyal Subjects’ own Ninja Turtles figures in a sick midnight blue color variant, meant to invoke the Turtles prowling in the night-time shadows of New York City. Contrasting their dark blue hue are the Turtles’ stealth black gear, ghostly white eyes, and smiling teeth. You’ve truly never seen the Ninja Turtles like this before. The entire set comes in a neat vintage-style pizza box for a solid $90.
ORIGINAL 1988 BEBOP AND ROCKSTEADY FIGURES, OR 2022 REISSUE
No one needs to tell you the original 1988 Ninja Turtles toys from Playmates (tied to the animated series) are treasured relics. But prized even more than the Turtles are the bumbling villains Bebop and Rocksteady. On eBay, original and pristine Bebop and Rocksteady figures fetch eye-watering prices, like this Rocksteady going for $263, or this Bebop for $850. If the packaging means nothing to you, Playmates’ 2022 reissued versions sell for a more obtainable $30 combined.
COLLECTOR’S DIGEST
TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: THE NEXT MUTATION STUNT UNIT CREW JACKET
Ninja Turtles fans may be all too eager to wipe from memory the short-lived Fox Kids series, The Next Mutation. But this rare crew jacket made for the show’s buttkicking stunt team is too good to pass on. Described as coming from the personal collection of producer James Shavick, this cozy black jacket emblazoned with the show’s logo on the back is a piece of hot drip for the cold weather. No, you didn’t do stunts for a Ninja Turtles TV show, but you can make
NINJA TURTLES (1990) CASEY JONES MASK PROP REPLICA
It’s never too early to start planning for Halloween. Thanks to NECA, a replica Casey Jones mask—closely modeled after the one seen in the 1990 live-action film—can turn anyone into the Turtles’ vigilante ally and April O’Neil’s loyal boyfriend. This full-size, fully wearable replica of Casey Jones’ hockey mask was made by NECA, which closely studied the original prop. Durable straps allow anyone to wear the mask or display it by hanging it, or putting it on a mannequin head.
ULTIMATES! PARTY WAGON
For the Super7 collectors out there, the brand released one of the coolest accessories ever in any Ninja Turtles line. The Turtles’ signature van, nicknamed the “Party Wagon,” was turned into a physical toy scaled to Super7’s Ninja Turtles figures. Measuring 20.25 inches long, 13.8 inches tall, and 12.5 inches wide, the Party Wagon is the ultimate way to get your Super7 Turtles from Manhattan to Brooklyn in no time flat. The Party Wagon first sold on Super7’s store for $450, and it’s now on eBay for prices in that same ballpark.
As part of TMNT’s 40th anniversary, the Turtles entered into a collaboration with Adidas to produce a “Shelltoe” edition of Adidas’ Superstar sneakers. The first of the collabs came in March 2024, with a green sneaker themed after the Turtles. After it sold out, Adidas announced new variants themed after Master Splinter (in a pale fuzzy pink with brown stripes) and Shredder (in a very sleek black leather shoe with metallic silver stripes). The shoes retail for $130, but in the sneaker world, they sell quickly and go for different prices on eBay.
COMPLETE SETS OF TOPPS TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES MOVIE (1990) TRADING CARDS
The 1990 live-action movie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was a game-changer, not only for the TMNT franchise but for Hollywood, too, being one of the most financially successful independent movies (yes, really) of all time. Because it was the ’90s, of course the movie had its own trading card set from Topps. It’s not hard to snag complete versions; prices and quality vary, but there are eBay listings for complete sets for as low as $15.
COLLECTOR’S DIGEST
Shell-heads, if you want an even more personal experience, visit the eBay Pop-Up Studio at the mother of all geek conventions: San Diego Comic-Con!
From Thursday to Sunday, the eBay Pop-Up Studio will occupy Sparks Gallery (530 Sixth Ave) at the Gaslamp Quarter, right outside the convention center in downtown San Diego. All weekend long, the shop will be the home for all things eBay, including Skybound’s exclusive collectibles and daily drops.
There will also be daily livestreams featuring exclusive giveaways, tickets to Funko Fridays, and appearances from esteemed artists such as Art Adams and Ninja Turtles co-creator Kevin Eastman! eBay Live will also be streaming straight from Funko Fridays, with live pre-show and postshow streams with special guest and Funko co-founder Mike Becker (and friends!). Whether you’re hitting up Comic-Con or just in town, stop by and get your geek on with eBay.
LET’S GET QUIZZICAL!
Pit your wits against our moderately difficult pop culture quiz. BY
LOUISA MELLOR
1
SDCC was first held in March 1970. Which one of these MCU actors is older than SDCC?
5 Who is the famous director of upcoming epic sci-fi movie Megalopolis?
Steven Spielberg
George Lucas
Francis Ford Coppola
Fritz Lang
6 Venom 3 is titled Venom: The Last Dance. Which sports star was the subject of the 2020 Netflix doc series, The Last Dance?
LeBron James
Magic Johnson
Michael Jordan
Larry Bird
9 ▲What comic book Easter egg store name features in the Deadpool 3 trailer?
Liefeld’s Just Feet
Niciezia’s Cable
Provider
The Newstand Mutants
Wilson’s Waders
10 Beetlejuice 2 is coming. Which Oscar did Tim Burton’s 1988 original Beetlejuice win?
Best Actor
Best Original Score
2 ▲What song do Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga dance to in the Joker: Folie à Deux trailer?
Born This Way Rock and Roll (Part 2) Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head What the World Needs Now Is Love
Benedict Cumberbatch
Jeremy Renner Paul Rudd Tom Hiddleston
3 Complete the famous tagline from 1979 sci-fi horror classic Alien: “In space no one can hear you…”
Scream Fart
Sacrifice your life to save Sandra Bullock Make finger guns and go “pew-pew”
4 In Doctor Who series 14, which of these did the Doctor and Ruby NOT face?
A monster made of boogers
An android made of candy
A god who eats music
A murderous ambulance
Want more quizzes? Scan the QR code to access Den of Geek’s interactive brain teasers.
7 ▲Colin Farrell will return as Penguin in The Batman TV spinoff. In nature, what gift do penguins often give to a potential mate?
Pebbles
Pearls
The beak of a defeated rival Bunch of flowers
8 In The Lord of the Rings, how many rings of power were forged in total?
Best Makeup
Best Original Screenplay
11 ▲Which of the following is NOT the name of a dragon in House of the Dragon?
Seasmoke
Dreamfyre
Moondancer
Stormfly
◄Which was NOT a fake title teased by Disney for the new Marvel series, Agatha All Along? 20 19 7 3
12
Agatha: House of Harkness
Agatha: The Book of Carol
Agatha: Coven of Chaos
Agatha: The Lying Witch with Great Wardrobe
THE ULTIMATE ADVENTURE AWAITS!
Enter the heart of fandom with Den of Geek x Hro’s Collector’s Quest.
SCAN the QR code to learn more and kick off your adventure now!
