Den of Geek Magazine Issue 6 - The Boys Season 3 by Den of Geek

TV | MOVIES | COMICS | BOOKS | GAMES TH E R U S S O B R O S . N EX T A C TI O N EP IC

INS IDE

³ IN TR OD UC IN G ³

E S J O IN S J E N S E N A C K L E E X P L O S IV E TH T H E G A N G F O RS E A S O N O F T H IR D

MS. MARVEL

LIGHTYEAR ª STRANGER THINGS ª OBI-WAN KENOBI ª JURASSIC WORLD: DOMINION

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INSIDE THIS ISSUE

BY EXPERTS. FOR FANS.

JURASSIC WORLD: DOMINION The latest installment in the Jurassic saga marks the end of an era. Director Colin Trevorrow talks us through reuniting the original cast, and wrangling dinosaurs in the wild. PG. 50

ON THE COVER

That’s Supernatural star Jensen Ackles screaming his head off front and center of our exclusive cover celebrating The Boys season three. We were lucky enough to meet the cast and showrunner in person out in SXSW and now we are more hyped than ever for the show. Ackles plays Soldier Boy, the original supe in the world of The Boys—he’s the show’s answer to Captain America (only a bit less of a boyscout.) Check out our interview with him, Karl Urban who plays Billy Butcher, and more inside the mag. This vibrant cover was put together with help from artist Neil Jamieson and we think it conveys the appropriate levels of anarchy for the show. We hope you like it as much as we do! COVER PHOTO CREDIT: PRIME VIDEO

ISSUE 6 | SUMMER 2022

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STRANGER THINGS

Things are about to get stranger in Hawkins with the arrival of season four of Netflix’s nostalgia-soaked supernatural drama. Director Shawn Levy gives us the low down. PG. 56

MS. MARVEL

Meet Iman Vellani, the actor who is about to embody Kamala Khan on the small screen in Ms. Marvel. Vellani and Khan have a lot in common... PG. 30

BEST SCI-FI MOVIES

We polled readers and staff to uncover the greatest sci-fi films to be released since Den of Geek was launched 15 years ago. PG. 62

THOR

IMAGE CREDITS: NETFLIX/UNIVERSAL/DISNEY/MARVEL COMICS

Jane Foster is front and center in this brand new Marvel Comics series. Writer Torunn Grønbekk celebrates Jane’s kindness. PG. 32

OBI-WAN KENOBI

Writer Joby Harold delves into why Obi-Wan might just be the most important character in the Star Wars universe in our exclusive interview. PG. 42

LIGHTYEAR

Pixar’s latest imagines Buzz Lightyear as a true space ranger, voiced by Chris Evans. The creative team behind the movie talk to us about visiting NASA, creating a tangible aesthetic, and bringing Buzz to life. PG. 12

THE GRAY MAN

The Russo Brothers are back with a high-impact action espionage thriller. Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans star. Need we say more? PG. 46 DEN OF GEEK

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

THE BOYS ARE BACK IN TOWN

Left to right: Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso), Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara), and Hughie (Jack Quaid) look concerned.

“POWER TENDS TO CORRUPT, AND ABSOLUTE POWER CORRUPTS ABSOLUTELY.” THE IDEA OF THE SUPERBEING not as an aspirational figure but a cautionary tale is one that predates even the concept of the superhero. Philip Wylie’s 1930 novel about a superhumanly strong and tough man, Gladiator—a key influence on Superman—isn’t one of high adventure and happy endings. Long before they brought the Man of Steel we all know and love to life, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s 1933 “Reign of the Superman” wasn’t about a heroic character at all, but rather a mad scientist whose experiments grant a man telepathic powers who is soon corrupted by his gifts. Hell, we could rewind this thousands of years and see how mythological gods and heroes were far from paragons of virtue. It’s why even in the most shiningly optimistic superhero tales, there’s always a darkness lurking just beneath the surface. In the right hands, you get something like Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen (and, for that matter, its similarly superlative TV sequel). In the wrong hands, you 6

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get muddled messaging and the uncomfortable sense that some viewers are celebrating characters and events that are meant to be a reminder of human nature’s darker tendencies. Fortunately for everyone, Prime Video’s The Boys falls firmly in the former camp. Based on Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson’s comic series, the TV show arrived at just the right point of superhero media cultural saturation to feel like more than just another cautionary tale about power. Instead, The Boys expertly unpacks the cultural ramifications of a world where superhumans are plentiful, the cult of celebrity that would spring up around them, and the myriad ways that megacorporations always manage to ruin everything. We spent a little time with the folks who bring the profane magic of The Boys to life to bring you an exclusive peek behind the (extremely bloody) curtain of the upcoming third season. Some might see a certain irony in a publication like Den of Geek, where our bread-and-butter is heroic fiction

and genre storytelling, celebrating a series that has already provided two seasons of commentary about where cultural superhero obsession could end up leading. Or maybe we’re thinking too hard about this. Because most importantly, The Boys is, quite simply, spectacular television. Sharp, darkly funny, boasting top-notch special effects and some of the finest superhero costumes ever realized in live-action, it’s as wildly entertaining, thought-provoking, and as perfectly cast as anything the “peak TV” era has offered. In this issue, we’re thrilled to bring you an in-depth preview of The Boys’ third season in all its wild, transgressive glory alongside our usual expert coverage of the best in sci-fi, horror, action, and (yes) superheroes. Mike Cecchini, Editor-in-Chief

PHOTO CREDITS: PRIME VIDEO

— JOHN DALBERG-ACTON. APRIL 5, 1887.

MAG AZ I N E Editor-in-Chief Mike Cecchini Print Editor Rosie Fletcher Editorial Director Chris Longo Creative Director Lucy Quintanilla

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COMIC STORE SPOTLIGHT

BOOKS AND BEERS IN COMIC FANS’ HANDS TIM ENSOR’S LIFE CHANGED because of a dream. Ensor, the co-owner of My Parents’ Basement, a comic shop/restaurant/ pinball joint in Avondale Estates, Georgia, said the idea for his hybrid shop came to him while he was asleep. “[In the dream] I was working at a beer bar, and it had a bunch of taps and it was attached to a comic book store,” Ensor told us. “And then the marquee, as bright as day outside, just said ‘My Parents’ Basement.’” Shortly after the dream, Ensor got a call from a friend whose brother was closing up his comic shop and was giving away 110 long boxes of books, and suddenly the dream was on its way to becoming a reality. My Parents’ Basement opened in 2015 in the suburbs of Atlanta, and it has been a community staple ever since. For years, Ensor and My Parents’ Basement worked hard at building relationships, both with customers and with colleagues. Ensor and his partners were restaurant professionals—“We have probably 60 years experience between all of us,” Ensor says—and they are also comic fans, and they use their fandom to put books in hands. “We have a trivia [night] once a week and we always give out comics as prizes,” he says. “We would do comics by the pound, a bunch of broader stuff we would sell for a dollar a pound. So that helped get people a lot of comics for real cheap.” Unfortunately, being a restaurant and a comic shop meant the pandemic hit My Parents’ Basement harder than most: the shop closed down for a few months at the start. But the 10

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Tim Ensor at My Parents’ Basement comic store in the Atlanta suburbs.

IMAGE CREDITS: MY PARENTS’ BASEMENT

How a strange dream spawned a whole comic book community around a store called My Parents’ Basement. BY JIM DANDENEAU

community that Ensor and his partners built around the shop helped it get through. Their expansive patio let them move their food and drinks outside. They also drew on lessons from their early experience selling comics by the pound and moving books over eBay from their initial haul, putting together comic grab bags for regulars. They’re back now and as strong as they’ve ever been. “We host the community farmers’ market in our parking lot every Sunday,” Ensor says. “There are all sorts of festivals that happen in Avondale and we’re kind of the anchor point for all of them—we have a side street that’s right behind us

OUR BUSINESS IS BUILT ON HAMBURGERS AND BATMAN.” that always gets shut down [for them]. We sponsor and help out for anything the community does.” Like most comic stores, Ensor said My Parents’ Basement was thrilled by the return of Bryan K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples’ celebrated Saga from Image Comics. “We had a midnight release for Saga,” he tells us. “It was our first big event we did, comic-wise, since the pandemic.” But Ensor’s personal tastes run a little darker. And… knightier? “Our business is built on hamburgers and Batman,” he says. “My personal collection is Batman. I’ve been collecting since the early eighties. So I have a pretty good run, starting in the seventies, every issue of Batman and Detective Comics up until now.” Hopefully a community anchor like My Parents’ Basement will help him continue feeding that Batman collection for a few more decades to come. My Parents’ Basement is located at 22 N Avondale Road, Avondale Estates, Georgia, 30002.

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NEW RELEASES

FROM TOY STORY TO SPACE OPERA The creative team behind Pixar’s Lightyear discuss bringing a familiar hero to life. BY ALANA JOLI ABBOTT IN 1995, A BOY NAMED ANDY received a toy for his birthday: Buzz Lightyear, Space Ranger. The toy had electronic parts, flashing lights, and far more catchphrases than the cowboy, Woody, which had previously been Andy’s favorite toy. And in a movie where toys come to life, Buzz Lightyear didn’t realize he was a toy at all, believing he was a real Space Ranger, stuck on a strange new planet. For Toy Story fans, this is a tale that has been familiar for nearly three decades—but what fans have never gotten to experience is Andy’s favorite movie, the film that inspired the toy. 12

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But what if they could see that film? What if Buzz Lightyear, rather than being a toy, truly was a Space Ranger? What would that story be like? Those questions inspired the team at Pixar to launch into a new adventure: creating a space opera that evoked the sensibilities of the films of Andy’s (and the filmmakers’) youth while also being the best movie they could make for a modern audience. Lightyear was born. For director Angus MacLane, the idea of exploring Buzz’s origin gave him a chance to go back to his own life-changing film inspiration: Star

Wars. “After I saw Star Wars in the theater… all I wanted to do was play Star Wars,” MacLane says. “Star Wars was just the beginning of a whole string of science fiction classics that defined my childhood. Every year, it seemed like there was another genre-defining classic.” While Lightyear isn’t held back by the special effects of the 1970s and 1980s, MacLane and the Pixar team still wanted to capture the aesthetics of that era. They also wanted to evoke real aerospace design, so the team went to NASA to experience what astronauts had touched and

Above: Buzz Lightyear (Chris Evans) attempts to jump to hyperspeed. Below: Buzz and fellow Space Ranger Alisha Hawthorne (Uzo Aduba) survey their spaceship, known as “The Turnip.”

used in space flight. “We really wanted the look of our models to be such that you’d want to reach out and touch them and start playing with all the buttons and switches,” explains sets art director Greg Peltz. “A basic rule of thumb on our movie is there are no touchscreens or cloudsharing in the world of Lightyear. It’s all Zip disks and 20-pound CRTs.” In the film, there’s also a lovely callback to a familiar video game

system that required players to blow air into the game cartridges to get them to work. The graphics and special effects are a product of modern animation technology, but the way the setting is imagined goes back to the heart of the era that inspired it. For instance, Galyn Susman’s interest in space science formed during this period. She originally went to college as a physics major, hoping to one day be an astronaut

before falling in love with computer graphics instead. After working for Apple in the 1980s, she started with Pixar in 1995 as a lighting supervisor and modeling artist on Toy Story. She has since become a legendary Pixar filmmaker, known as the woman who single-handedly saved Toy Story 2 when the film’s files were deleted from the Pixar computers because she had a copy at home. Now, as the producer on Lightyear, she got to revisit her dream by going to NASA, guided by astronauts Kjell Lindgren and Tom Marshburn. “Being able to go to NASA was an exceptional experience. I was over the moon,” she tells us (acknowledging her own space pun). In describing the team’s visit to NASA to explore, she emphasizes the number of buttons and switches the team saw in the machines that had been used in real space exploration. “Being able to sit in the capsule and touch the knobs and the dials that astronauts touched… that was pretty exciting,” Susman continues. The film emphasizes the tactile nature of all of Buzz’s equipment as a way to welcome viewers into the world and give them a sense that everything there is meant to be handled and interacted with in a physical rather than digital way (Marshburn later took a photo of the Pixar team with him to the ISS). The sets and aesthetic of Lightyear are meant to be tangible, and the plot-central science is based on real concepts, such as Einstein’s theory of relativity, where time moves more slowly for people traveling at faster speeds (as Buzz Lightyear will do). However, the heart of the movie—like in all Pixar films—is rooted in the characters. One of the core missions for the team was to create a Buzz Lightyear who was not comic relief. “It was important to differentiate our hero Buzz from the toy based on his character and represented in the Toy Story movies,” Susman explains. To do that, they decided it was important to choose a new voice actor. “He needed to have a nice, rich sound, able to be both dramatic and DEN OF GEEK

NEW RELEASES

Buzz meets the Junior Zap Patrol (voiced by Taika Waititi, Dale Soules, and Keke Palmer).

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Buzz and Alisha adapt to their new home.

the notion that Pixar movies are engineered to make you cry,” says MacLane. “The reality of it is based around trying to get your audience on board with the protagonist, and what they’re going through and the choice that they’ve made.” “We’re not actually trying to make you cry,” promises Susman, even as she concedes she’s satisfied if that’s the audience’s response. “We are trying to connect with the audience emotionally, as well as creating something that’s visually compelling and a nice story. You want to feel what your characters are feeling, the excitement and the pain.” The filmmakers also had to adapt to the hurdles of making the movie during the pandemic. But the experience did enable both Susman and MacLane to get in-the-moment feedback from their children (both young, in MacLane’s case, and grown,

in Susman’s), who were present in their work in a way they couldn’t be while working in the office. (It was also quite different from Susman’s famous experience of working from home in the late 1990s, which enabled her to save Toy Story 2. Lightyear, by contrast, requires so much more data that it would be impossible to store it on a single computer—and enhanced security protocols have made it impossible for anyone to accidentally delete the film.) The sense of isolation that Buzz feels in the film will be newly familiar to audiences who have had to spend time away from their families and friends over the past few years. And the sense of a return to an era of space adventures, of soft-boiled sci-fi, is exactly the right kind of escape. Lightyear hits theaters and IMAX screens on June 17.

IMAGE CREDITS: DISNEY/PIXAR

comedic, and most importantly, he needed to be heroic without coming off as arrogant or dense. That’s a tall order, and we immediately knew we had to ask Chris [Evans].” Making that sort of change and bringing to life a new version of an established character also meant reaching out to the original voice actor, Tim Allen. “We have a great relationship,” Susman says. “He’s a part of the Disney family overall. We reached out and explained the circumstances and the thinking. Long before we put any press out there about what this film was, there was information that we were doing a Lightyear film. Of course, he would wonder why he wasn’t included! We wanted to make sure he knew what was going on.” The Pixar team also took strides in inclusion and diversity among the cast, including an interracial, same-sex married couple. “Though it’s the film that Andy saw, we were still making it for today’s generation,” Susman explains. A same-sex kiss, which had initially been deleted, was restored to the film, much to the satisfaction of the creative team. That relationship is a counterpoint to Buzz’s own journey in act one: while Buzz is on a mission, moving ahead in time to test new flight technology, his best friend is living her life, experiencing all the milestones that Buzz is missing. This leads to a signature Pixar moment sure to have adult viewers, at least, in tears from the poignance of loss. “There’s something funny about

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FIVE THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT…

JEREMY ALLEN WHITE The former Shameless star gets ready for his next act. BY DANIEL KURLAND

F X’S T HE BE A PREMIER R E IN 2022 S .

White has been acting for more than 15 years and was cast as Lip right out of high school. However, before pursuing acting, White was on track to become a professional dancer. White trained in ballet, tap, and jazz before he decided to switch over to acting at age 13.

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His 2020 film, The Rental, marked his first foray into the horror genre. White played Josh, one of four friends who rent a house for the weekend, only to learn that they’re being watched. “We didn’t really approach it as horror, which might seem crazy. We treated it as a character study.”

He says that the final season of Shameless, which wrote the events of the Covid-19 pandemic into the story, was a surreal but cathartic experience. “I think it was really smart to write it in, document this time, and shine a light on how lower-income areas processed all of this.”

White trained in kitchens across the country to properly prepare for his chef role in the upcoming FX comedy, The Bear. “I got to spend time with some really amazing chefs in New York and Chicago,” he says. “I did a two-week crash course at a culinary school.”

IMAGE CREDITS: RICH POLK/GETTY IMAGES FOR IMDB

Jeremy Allen White has played his Shameless alter ego, Lip Gallagher, for over a decade and grown up beside the character. “It was interesting to learn things in my own life that I’d then share with Lip,” he says. “Not many hour-long dramedies go on that long. It’s a really special thing.”

CULTURE

BEAT THAT BLINDFOLDED! In the land of speedrunning, blindfolded gaming lets us see new possibilities. BY MATTHEW BYRD PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY LUCY QUINTANILLA

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cues to their advantage. Every sound and digital barrier their character bumps into helps them form a clearer image of the game in their mind. Yet, the most important tool in a blindfolded runners’ kit is their stunning ability to memorize even the largest games. “It is very important to divide the big problem of beating a game into simpler and shorter subproblems,” says speedrunner Bubzia whose Super Mario 64 runs challenged expectations for what kinds of games could be beaten blindfolded. “80 percent of my practice time is actually done with my eyes open. It’s mostly about trying to remember the game world as precisely as possible.”

YOU ARE TRYING TO MAKE THE IMPOSSIBLE POSSIBLE.” — CRYSTALSAVER, SPEEDRUNNER

Memorizing a game like Super Mario 64 is impressive enough, but that’s only part of the battle. Blindfolded runners of large 3D games also need to find ways to track their characters’ movements. After all, they can’t simply press a button and know their character moved in a specific direction as they can with Pokémon Red/Blue, much more pared-down games where you can only move up, down, left, or right. Meanwhile, 3D games like Super Mario 64 involve more complex forms of traversal, such as jumping, flying, and swimming.

So, how does a blindfolded runner track their movement in a 3D space without looking at the screen? “The key is to find as many normalizations as possible,” explains speedrunner CrystalSaver, whose blindfolded runs include The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. “That means finding a set of inputs that produce the same result every time… Once I find a path that will always work, it’s time to move on to the next, and the next, and the next.” In the case of Breath of the Wild, CrystalSaver found reliable inputs in the strangest of places. “The answer was bunny hops,” CrystalSaver reveals. “If you perform a hop in any direction, the distance Link moves is ‘usually’ the same… Another useful method is swapping between

IMAGE CREDITS: SANDER MYERS (GAMER), MARCEL STRAUSS (TEXTURE)/UNSPLASH

“I COULD BEAT THAT VIDEO game blindfolded” has long been something people say when bragging about their gaming skills or dismissing someone else’s. Few have ever taken those boasts literally. Actually beating a game blindfolded just seems like it would be impossible. However, for a new generation of speedrunners (gamers who compete to beat games as quickly as possible), this seemingly impossible act can sometimes happen in the most casual of ways. “The first blindfolded run I did for Pokémon Red/Blue was unplanned,” says Twitch streamer and video game speedrunner Shenanagans. “Another speedrunner and I just jumped into the game blindfolded without any practice/testing... We were both able to finish the run in around 45 minutes.” It’s easy to dismiss that claim, just like those made in the past by playground braggarts. Even watching Shenanagans’ run with your own unobfuscated eyes may leave you with doubts. But in reality, Shenanagans’ stunning achievement required a level of dedication as impressive as the results. “I’ve easily put over 10,000 hours into speedrunning the [Gen 1 Pokémon] games,” Shenanagans explains. “Honestly, Pokémon games are probably the easiest games to speedrun blindfolded.” While it feels strange to call anything that may require 10,000+ hours of preparation “easy,” there’s some truth to that statement. Blindfolded runners of retro games like Pokémon often use those titles’ simple patterns and obvious sound

aiming the bow and pulling up the Sheikah slate scope. Alternating between the two adjusts Link’s aim upwards at a specific angle every time. That was a crucial factor in beating Dark Beast Ganon!” No amount of practice can account for things going wrong, though. In runs where so much needs to be perfect, the slightest misstep can destroy the best-laid plans. However, it’s during those moments when blindfolded runners often demonstrate the full extent of their knowledge and abilities. “If you know how Super Mario 64’s camera behaves, you can actually play with it and listen for a surface you are confident you can determine your position from, like a door entrance or corner that makes a specific sound,”

Bubzia explains. “In those scenarios, it’s all about endurance, not giving up, and just trying over and over again until you get a perfect run.” That’s the strange thing about blindfolded runs. The results are magical, but the process can be painful and monotonous. Even the simplest runs require you to spend dozens of hours studying a game’s layout and finding perfect movement patterns. But as clinical as the journey may sound, it’s often inspired by the love of a game rather than a desire to break it. “[People] say, ‘They just rush the game and don’t enjoy it. They skip most of the fun stuff,’” Bubzia explains. “That is absolutely not true. We spend hours and hours every day with that game, learning about every

little corner and ledge… It has to be something that brings us joy and lets us appreciate the game. Why else would we do that?” For those who dare to defy conventional wisdom and actually try to beat a game while blindfolded, the ability to earnestly say “I did it” is often all the motivation they need. And unlike playground charlatans, real blindfolded runners share their efforts in order to open our eyes to what can be achieved in a video game. “You are trying to make the impossible possible,” CrystalSaver says, regarding the thrill and appeal of the endeavor. “Not only do you get the satisfaction, but anyone that stumbles upon your run gets to enjoy that same feeling.” DEN OF GEEK

READING LIST

SUMMER BOOKS

Whether you’re spending summer at the beach, abroad, or on staycation, here’s your essential SFF reading list. BY NATALIE ZUTTER

MOUNTAINS

MARY: AN AWAKENING OF TERROR

NAT CASSIDY (TOR NIGHTFIRE) JULY 19 Speculative playwright/performer Nat Cassidy puts a supernatural and true-crime twist on the menopause story. When Mary begins experiencing hot flashes, she suspects it’s not “the big change”—because they bring blackouts that exhume the persona of a notorious serial killer. Moving back to her hometown isn’t the start of a Hallmark movie, either, as a new crop of murders in the killer’s style means they’re back… or that it’s her.

THE PALLBEARERS CLUB

THE DAUGHTER OF DOCTOR MOREAU

SILVIA MORENO-GARCIA (DEL REY) JULY 19 Silvia Moreno-Garcia tackles classic horror story The Island of Doctor Moreau from the perspective of the mad scientist’s curious daughter, Carlota. Her love triangle between the lab’s melancholic overseer Montgomery and Eduardo, son of her father’s patron, will ignite her dad’s taboo experiments and examine issues of autonomy for humans and hybrids alike.

PAUL TREMBLAY (WILLIAM MORROW) JULY 5 Acclaimed horror writer Tremblay riffs on The Breakfast Club with a more macabre ’80s friendship. What starts as loner Art Barbara gathering volunteers to carry coffins at funerals turns into his cool new best friend taking Polaroids of dug-up corpses…

STAYCATION THE SHADOW GLASS

BOOK OF NIGHT

HOLLY BLACK (TOR BOOKS) OUT NOW Holly Black’s debut adult fantasy introduces Charlie Hall, an infamous shadow thief slinging drinks at her hometown bar and fighting her supernatural calling. But when the “gloamists” need someone to steal a secret, there’s no one better.

DEN OF GEEK

JOSH WINNING (TITAN BOOKS) OUT NOW Josh Winning’s fuzzy fantasy is a love letter to movies like Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal, filtered through the modern cynicism of reboot culture. Jack Corman bears the legacy of his late father’s cult puppet film, The Shadow Glass, but he soon discovers that the puppets are alive, and they have a quest: to save the world from destruction.

OUR CROOKED HEARTS

MELISSA ALBERT (FLATIRON BOOKS) JUNE 28 Melissa Albert’s latest adeptly balances dual timelines to tell parallel stories of two young women—a daughter in the suburbs and her mother a lifetime ago in the city—embarking on summer breaks full of sinister self-discovery. When Ivy’s mother Dana goes missing, she connects with Dana’s coven to learn about dark magic and its ugly consequences.

BEACH

THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD MOTHERS

JESSAMINE CHAN (SIMON & SCHUSTER) OUT NOW In a moment of terrible but understandable weakness, sleep-deprived single mom Frida Liu leaves her 18-month-old daughter Harriet alone for two hours of reprieve. To avoid losing custody, she must enroll in a dystopian state-run program for other “bad mothers” guilty of everything from marijuana use to coddling their children. Jessamine Chan’s stomach-churning debut is grimly compelling, with its robotic training babies and very real judgment of mothers.

LEGENDS & LATTES

TRAVIS BALDREE (CRYPTID PRESS) OUT NOW If you had never considered Dungeons & Dragons and slice-of-life fantasy in the same beat, let Travis Baldree transport you to a familiar epic fantasy setting, but with a comforting, cozy vibe. Orc barbarian Viv hangs up the ol’ sword to open Thune’s first-ever coffee shop, but it’s not easy going from big legend to small business owner. Viv must assemble a new party for this low-stakes yet vital personal campaign.

TRIPS ABROAD

THE CARTOGRAPHERS

PENG SHEPHERD (WILLIAM MORROW) OUT NOW Peng Shepherd’s speculative mystery about a disgraced former cartographer who uncovers a map full of places that don’t exist is a grown-up From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, with its adoration for the New York Public Library. That setting is layered with the propulsive adventure and family drama of National Treasure: twisty, engrossing hidden details reward a close read. A bit of magic is the finishing touch.

AGE OF ASH

SIREN QUEEN

NGHI VO (TORDOTCOM PUBLISHING) MAY 10 Before she’s famous, Luli Wei’s family crafts eternal life through charms, but only for men. Attaining that same immortality as a woman means entering the movie business—first as a viewer, bargaining snips of her own hair, and eventually becoming a star in 1930s Hollywood. All it requires is a simple demonic sacrifice. Nghi Vo’s (The Chosen and the Beautiful) poetic SFF prose, sharp and pristine, glitters as dangerously as Tinseltown’s promises.

DANIEL ABRAHAM (ORBIT BOOKS) OUT NOW Daniel Abraham (half of The Expanse writing duo James S.A. Corey) returns to epic fantasy with a new trilogy set in Kithamar, a city that holds within its walls countless former identities. The death of beloved prince Byrn a Sal dovetails with street rat Alys mourning her lost brother Darro in an intimate fantasy tale that feels exquisitely lived-in even as it saves revelations for future installments. DEN OF GEEK

READING LIST

TRIPS ABROAD BASE NOTES

LARA ELENA DONNELLY (THOMAS & MERCER) OUT NOW The base note of Lara Elena Donnelly’s contemporary fantasy thriller is a brutal, bloodthirsty commentary on the crush of capitalism. Perfumer Vic Fowler’s creations are unparalleled in capturing the scent memory of a lover or a lost moment, but the terrible irony is that they require that person’s corpse. When Vic’s struggling perfume business requires them to go into murder-for-hire, the line between killing for business and pleasure is irrevocably blurred.

CATCH-UP

THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE

THE GRIEF OF STONES

KATHERINE ADDISON (TOR BOOKS) JUNE 14 In 2014, Katherine Addison (a.k.a. Sarah Monette) released the utterly charming, seemingly standalone cozy fantasy novel The Goblin Emperor. In 2021, she returned to the world of Amalo with The Witness for the Dead, following Thara Celehar—a supporting character from the original who can divine ghosts’ unfinished business. Catch up on both before her sequel to Witness, in which Celehar’s further investigations lead him to Amalo’s dark underbelly.

DEN OF GEEK

AUDREY NIFFENEGGER (HARCOURT) OUT NOW Doctor Who and Sherlock showrunner Steven Moffat has been waiting almost 20 years to adapt Audrey Niffenegger’s time-travel romance about the man who leaves (Theo James) and the woman who waits (Rose Leslie). May’s HBO series looks to transplant the source material into a more contemporary romance, so it’s perfect timing to see how Henry and Clare’s relationship changes in another’s hands.

MS. MARVEL VOL. 1: NO NORMAL WRITTEN BY G. WILLOW WILSON AND ILLUSTRATED BY ADRIAN ALPHONA (MARVEL COMICS) OUT NOW It’s hard to believe that Kamala Khan joined the Marvel comics universe almost a decade ago, in 2014, but now she joins the MCU (played by Iman Vellani) in the upcoming Disney+ TV series this June. Relive Kamala’s journey from Captain Marvel fangirl to “embiggening”-empowered superhero in her own right. Along the way in this Hugo Award-winning trade paperback, there’s plenty of teenage awkwardness and Marvel crossover cameos.

COMICS PREVIEW

WORLD’S FINEST Robert Venditti on reintroducing the most beloved screen Superman of all time in comics form.

SOMEHOW, RICHARD DONNER’S beloved 1978 Superman: The Movie didn’t spawn a successful franchise. A lovingly made celebration of the Man of Steel, featuring arguably the most perfectly cast superhero movie lead of all time in Christopher Reeve, immediately ran into directorial, financial, and creative trouble with its sequel, and the franchise ultimately sputtered out with 1987’s Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. But Donner’s vision and Reeve’s performance were so definitive that they’ve influenced every new take on Superman since, from comics to TV and back to the big screen. But fans still dream of what other, better sequels could have looked like, and DC has answered the question with Superman ’78 by Robert Venditti and Wilfredo Torres. Venditti, a longtime comics writer with wildly successful runs on 24

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characters like Hawkman, Green Lantern, and, yes, Superman under his belt, has always had an affinity for the Reeve era. “Superman II is one of my earliest childhood entertainment memories,” Venditti tells Den of Geek. “I remember seeing it in the theater—and the emotional reaction that I had when Superman walks out of the particle chamber, we think he’s lost his powers, he kneels before Zod, and the John Williams score hits. That’s always kind of been my Superman.” So when DC approached him about continuing the Man of Steel’s movie adventures requesting a story involving the villainous Brainiac, Venditti got to work. “I watched all the films again,” he says. “I had the whole film universe in the front of my mind and really tried to think about what a Brainiac story would be in this world.” It’s important to remember that until recently, Brainiac had never been done in live action. The fact that Christopher Reeve never got a chance to face off against a big-screen Brainiac in a franchise that was never shy about its sci-fi roots always felt like the biggest of missed opportunities for fans. Venditti had to synthesize elements of the comics version with what would have worked on screen during the era of these films.

“I did take certain comic book elements of Brainiac and put them in my pitch,” he says. “I thought it would make sense within the context of the film to have both the skull-head robot version of Brainiac and the green-skinned, electrodes-on-his-head version in the same story because the green guy is the boss who’s controlling the robots, which are like his drones. These are things you can get away with when you’re doing a story like this because you can use and

IMAGE CREDITS: WARNER BROS./PHOTOFEST/ DC COMICS

DC delivers comic book sequels to the most beloved superhero movies ever made with Superman ’78 and Batman ’89, finally giving fans new, big-screen-worthy adventures with their favorite heroes of the past. BY MIKE CECCHINI

repurpose elements of comics continuity as long as it makes sense within the context of these films.” It’s not just about the story and the aesthetics of a 1978 Superman movie world but also a very specific tone, one that’s dramatic at the appropriate moments but also knows when to lighten the mood. It’s something that artist Wilfredo Torres is skilled at, capturing many comedic elements throughout the book even as its serious story about DEN OF GEEK

COMICS PREVIEW

All six issues of Superman ’78 are available now. The collected edition arrives on July 19.

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Joe Quinones and Sam Hamm on the unfulfilled promises of Tim Burton’s Batman. FANS OF A CERTAIN AGE will never forget a few great cinematic “almosts” in Batman movie history. Billy Dee Williams played Harvey Dent in Tim Burton’s first Batman movie, but we never got a chance to see his Harvey become the villainous Two-Face. Robin was supposed to appear in that film and then again in its sequel, but we never got to see how he would have looked on the big screen under Burton’s direction. And perhaps most famously, Michael Keaton never returned for a third turn as the Dark Knight after 1991’s Batman Returns. But DC is giving fans the next best thing with Batman ’89, a comic book that is the closest thing to Tim Burton’s Batman III as we’ll ever get. Taking place a couple of years after Batman Returns, the series depicts Harvey Dent’s Two-Face origin and introduces a new Robin worthy of this specific corner of the DC cinematic world. Its authenticity is complete down to the smallest detail, thanks to a creative team of original Batman screenwriter Sam Hamm and artist Joe Quinones, who was the perfect age to catch the wave of Batmania that swept the world in 1989 and beyond. “It’s a bit of a celebration of all things Batman that I love,” Quinones tells us. Quinones had pitched a Batman ’89 title several years before that never got off the ground. But when the time came, he was chosen for art, and it was his idea to recruit Hamm. For the writer, it was a chance to finish a story he had always hoped to tell. “I tried to sell Warner Brothers on the idea of doing Two-Face in the second movie, but they weren’t interested,” Hamm says. “They wanted Catwoman and Penguin, so

I never got a chance to write a version of Two-Face. The opportunity to do that and to just kind of drop back into this world was very appealing to me.” For Quinones, it was a chance to create a story he had wanted to see since he was a kid. “I was really drawn to Billy Dee Williams as Harvey Dent and such a huge Tim Burton fan,” Quinones says. “And then, as a nerdy little kid… I remember being really bummed out to not see the fulfillment of that

IMAGE CREDITS: WARNER BROS./PHOTOFEST/DC COMICS

Superman’s first encounter with the deadly Brainiac unfolds. “I think one of the things that’s nice about these movies is the playfulness,” Venditti says. “We certainly tried to capture some of that in the story as well. The first time the Brainiac robot lands, there’s a hot dog vendor, and he squirts mustard on somebody. We definitely tried to lean into those kinds of things because that’s part of the charm of those original films. I think all of that lends to the believability of it.” As to why these Superman movies continue to cast such a long shadow over the character and pop culture? “I don’t think it’s nostalgic,” Venditti says. “I think it’s a peaklevel interpretation of a character that endures because it’s so good… that’s why it’s adored as opposed to people who want to relive their childhood or any of those kinds of things because I don’t feel like Wilfredo and I tried to play on that nostalgia, we just tried to tell a good story with this version of the characters.” You can read more from Robert Venditti about Superman ’78 on denofgeek.com, and you can listen to the full interview on DC Standom wherever you get your podcasts.

promise of the casting of Billy as Harvey Dent and how interesting it would have been to see his fall from grace.” Hamm had twice attempted to tell Dick Grayson’s origin in the movies, once in an early draft of the first movie and again in the first draft of what would eventually become Batman Returns. But after debating which Robin should be the one they adapt for the book, they went in another direction with a new character named

Drake Winston. “That way, we weren’t constrained by the mythology that is already so coupled with Jason Todd, Tim Drake, or Dick Grayson,” Quinones says. “We can kind of pick and choose little elements that we could fold into our own version of the character [without being] constrained by any of that.” Drake sports a costume that is at once recognizably Robin, and that would have fit perfectly on the big screen alongside Keaton’s Dark Knight, but his backstory isn’t rooted as deeply in personal tragedy or revenge as his predecessors. Instead, he’s a resident of Gotham’s Burnside neighborhood, where Batman isn’t necessarily a welcome presence. The

need for his existence exposes one of the key flaws in Batman’s mission. “Bruce Wayne is so isolated from the problems that Gotham City residents face on a day-to-day basis,” Hamm says. “That was part of the genesis of Drake as Robin… this neighborhood that doesn’t think of Batman as a hero… they don’t necessarily know that he’s there to help them [because] their friends and their brothers and their uncles are getting beat up by this guy dressed as a six-foot bat. Drake, in his vigilante persona, is a reaction to that. In his own way, he’s a mirror of Batman and he’s trying to protect specifically the people of this downtrodden community that is maybe ignored societally, and that Bruce needs to come to grips with the ways that he has neglected.” You can read more from Joe Quinones and Sam Hamm about Batman ’89 on denofgeek.com. Listen to the full interview on DC Standom wherever you get your podcasts. All six issues of Batman ’89 are on sale now. The collected edition arrives on July 5. DEN OF GEEK

TALKING STRANGE

SOMETHING IN THE AIR SUMMER IS A TIME OF BEACHES and blockbusters. School is out, vacation is on, and we are collectively ready to celebrate sun and cinema, spending time both in darkened movie theaters and under starry skies. But along with pilgrimages to the multiplex and fireworks at night, summer is a season for aliens. Moviegoing audiences seem to have an increased appetite for visiting offworlders during the stretch between the end of May and Labor Day. It’s a trend that began before the notion of the summer event movie was even a thing and looks to continue with Jordan Peele’s upcoming “I’m not saying it’s aliens but it’s aliens” movie Nope. From classic 1950s summer sci-fi like 1953’s It Came From Outer Space or 1955’s This Island Earth to one of the most beloved (and highestgrossing) films of all time with Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and some of the most successful franchises (Transformers, Men in Black) to adaptations like War of the Worlds, aliens easily dominate movie theaters every summer. Even during the global Covid-19 pandemic, the movie with the biggest opening weekend (as theaters were starting to re-open) was the alien invasion movie A Quiet Place Part II. What is it about summer and aliens? UFO sightings historically spike between May and August, enough to be considered a “flap.” As far back as 1949, a CIA memo noted the increase in sightings and questioned whether it could be attributed to “midsummer madness” or if asteroids are more prominent at that time. And some of the most notorious sightings occurred during this season. Perhaps the most famous story involving a supposed crashed alien craft, the Roswell Incident of 1947 in New Mexico, took place in July (less than a month after pilot Kenneth Arnold’s mid-air sighting near 28

DEN OF GEEK

AARON SAGERS PARANORMAL POP CULTURE EXPERT

Mount Rainier, Washington—which popularized the phrase “flying saucer”). Four years later, in August 1951, the so-called Lubbock Lights over Texas received media coverage in newspapers and the likes of LIFE magazine. Just a year later, in July 1952, there was the UFO sighting above Washington, DC—which buzzed the White House—that likewise captured the nation’s attention and became one of the Project Blue Book cases. The infamous Kelly-Hopkinsville “little green men” attack took place in August 1955, and the trend continued with other well-known, if sometimes dubious, cases: Flight 105 (July 1947), Chiles-Whitted (July 1948), McMinnville photos (May 1950), NashFortenberry (July 1952), and the Carson Sink sighting by USAF colonels and hundreds on the ground (July 1952). It even felt like serendipitous timing that 2021’s unclassified version of the Pentagon’s report about sightings of UFOs, or “unidentified aerial

phenomena,” was released in June. Skeptics and cynics of summer sightings note that people are simply outdoors more during these months, and there happens to be an increase in activities held under open skies, such as fireworks. Or might the blockbusters of summer, which so frequently feature visitors from other planets, have become such a part of our cultural conversation that they influence what we believe we are seeing amongst the stars? And yet, if aliens are indeed appearing more frequently during the summer months, could they be showing up when we are more likely to be outside and looking up? Maybe they want to be seen? Or perhaps there is another truth. As Americans hit the beaches and cinemas during summer, maybe extraterrestrials are simply likewise eager to stretch their legs, tentacles, and necks during the Northern Hemisphere’s warmer months and take an intergalactic trek to Earth. Whatever the case, expect to see more sightings of aliens in paranormal pop culture—and maybe the skies. Find more of Aaron’s paranormal adventures at DenofGeek.com/paranormal

Henry Thomas (as Elliott), and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial in Steven Spielberg’s 1982 classic.

IMAGE CREDITS: ILLUSTRATION BY ASIA REYNOLDS, UNIVERSAL PICTURES/PHOTOFEST (E.T.)

Exploring why E.T. sightings spike during summer months.

NEW RELEASES

Iman Vellani stars as superhero superfan Kamala Khan in Ms. Marvel.

MEET MS. MARVEL!

Iman Vellani and her MCU character have lived parallel lives. PARALLELING THE CHARACTER she portrays, 19-year-old Canadian Iman Vellani is an earnest and talented teenage superfan who has been called up to the big leagues. Not long ago, she was reading issues of Ms. Marvel and dressing up as the MCU’s first lead Muslim heroine for Halloween. But after being cast, on her last day of high school, Vellani gets to bring the character to the MCU. Vellani spoke with Den of Geek about the “surreal” experience of going from being a fan on MCU subreddits and doing Avengers nail art to leading her own show on Disney+.

Den of Geek: Could you talk about the importance of getting to meet Kamala Khan through her own world and in her own story before we get to see her next year in The Marvels? Iman Vellani: We wanted to ground the show and keep it a little separate from everything else in the MCU because this is a very new character 30

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for a lot of people. She only debuted in the comics in 2014. That gave us a lot of flexibility in changing certain things to fit more into the direction that the MCU is heading in right now. Marvel is letting directors and writers play and create their own show based on their character. Coming from Moon Knight, especially, which is a lot darker and Fight Club-esque, to a show

that’s very much more lighthearted and John Hughes and Scott Pilgrim vibes and coming-of-age, we really wanted to lean into that corniness of growing up because it’s embarrassing and awkward. Kamala gets to go on a journey of self-discovery and figuring out how she fits into this world, if she can fit in with the Avengers, and what it means to be a superhero. Were there any other references you had for your character or the show as a whole? Lady Bird and Eighth Grade were another two that the directors had in mind, but, in my head, if you’ve seen Boy by Taika Waititi, it’s a similar vibe of a kid who doesn’t really know how they fit in but lives in their own fantasy world in their head.

IMAGE CREDITS: DANIEL MCFADDEN/MARVEL STUDIOS

BY DELIA HARRINGTON

children of immigrant parents who are proud of their culture and don’t neglect it. You mentioned the creative team, which is more diverse than we have historically seen. How did that impact your experience? It was just so encouraging and inspiring for me to see because I didn’t grow up with a lot of representation. After I read the comics, I immediately Googled Sana Amanat, who created the character with G. Willow Wilson, and I watched her TED Talk. Then two or three years later, I got to meet her. She has kind of been my rock throughout this entire process and is basically my older sister.

Kamala sits down for a meal with dad Yusuf, (Mohan Kapur), brother Aamir (Saagar Shaikh) and Najma (Nimra Bucha).

Some of those films feature young people who are portrayed by actual young people, like you. Do you feel like that helped you get into her mindset? I got cast when I was 17, and the character is 16, so we really weren’t far off. After I read the comics when I was in high school, I was like, “She lived my life. I lived her life.” The parallels are just insane, Kamala getting her powers and me getting this part, we’re so hand-in-hand, and the directors really went into my life in high school. They really wanted to get in the head of a 16-year-old growing up with immigrant parents and being in love with superheroes. I was so close to the

source material that it was easy for people to use me as a resource to bring this character to life and make it as authentic as possible. Kamala Khan is the first Muslim superhero in the MCU. How does that impact the show at large? We’re introducing an entirely new diaspora of fans to the MCU, all these South Asians and Muslims who never saw themselves represented in a positive light before. I’m excited to share this character and let people know that their experiences are shared and that people understand them. It’s important to showcase

In the comics, there’s a thread in Kamala’s story about feeling an element of invisibility. Is that part of this story? We wanted to lean into that side of growing up when you don’t feel understood; you don’t feel represented, especially when all her heroes are the Avengers, who are predominantly male and white. So immediately, she gets powers and thinks, “I have to be Captain Marvel. I have to do what Captain Marvel would do.” But she has to go on her own journey and create her own self because that’s what’s going to help people, not pretending to be someone else. Up next, we’re going to see you in The Marvels alongside Brie Larson as Captain Marvel and Teyonah Parris as Monica Rambeau. What are you most excited about for everything beyond this show? Sharing a screen with those incredible women was so empowering. Nia DaCosta is one of the most incredible directors I’ve gotten to work with in my two-year career so far. But, right now, my head is just everything Ms. Marvel. I just need the show to come out and for people to watch it and fall in love with her. Ms. Marvel airs on Disney+ from June 8. DEN OF GEEK

COMICS PREVIEW

STILL WORTHY!

Jane Foster & The Mighty Thor writer Torunn Grønbekk on how her leading lady hammers home kindness. BY JIM DANDENEAU

DEN OF GEEK

ultimately losing her powers. But she got her hands on the All-Weapon during War of the Realms, and that’s where Grønbekk picked her up. “One of the fantastic things about writing Jane is all the Jane fans who love her so much, who will send me long emails and messages telling me just how Jane helped them through, especially if they have people around them who’ve been sick,” she says. “[Jane’s] kindness is the thing that I think people find in her, and then they take inspiration from this fictional character, which I think is a really beautiful thing.” That kindness is central to Jane’s

role as Valkyrie. When she’s not adventuring as a powerful superhero, she’s either barely hanging on to a normal life—demoted to mortuary assistant in a medical examiner’s office—or she’s guiding the souls of the honored dead to Valhalla. That takes a superhuman amount of empathy even before being forced to fight the spirit of a dead celestial in the void between realms. “When she started out as Valkyrie, she was exploring her new role and dealing a lot with life and especially the death part of it, and trying to figure out how to find a way to live when you know so much about the afterlife,” Grønbekk

Jane Foster takes center stage on the variant covers of the new Marvel Comics series Jane Foster & The Mighty Thor. Credits: (left to right) art by Ryan Stegman, Peach Momoko, Martin Coccolo.

IMAGE CREDITS: MARVEL

DON’T LET TORUNN Grønbekk’s bright smile and joyful demeanor fool you. “I spend much of my time trying to figure out how to make Jane [Foster] uncomfortable,” the writer of the upcoming Jane Foster & The Mighty Thor tells us. “Just, ‘Oh, this is a thing that she would hate. I will do it.’” Grønbekk’s new book, due out June 8, has a hell of a hook. “Someone is plotting in the shadows, somewhere Sif ’s all-seeing sight doesn’t reach, bringing together the enemies of Asgard, promising that if they attack, Thor will be gone,” she tells us. “And when they attack, Thor is gone. The only trace of him is the bloody hammer smashing through Jane’s living room window.” These villains, a who’s who of Asgardian baddies including Ulik the Troll, The Enchantress, and the goddess of death herself, Hela, are enough to get Jane to pick up the hammer that, once upon a time, led to her death. And while this is Grønbekk’s first time getting to write Jane with the hammer, she’s a veteran with Jane Foster herself. Grønbekk’s first Marvel work was co-writing Valkyrie with recent Thor comics architect Jason Aaron, and she’s been Jane’s primary steward ever since. “I love Jane fans because they are truly the best people; they’re so excited,” she says. “When the trailer [for Thor: Love & Thunder] was released, it was just four days of happiness on my timelines.” As Valkyrie, Jane was in a vastly different place than she was when she wielded Mjolnir. Mighty Thor Jane was dying of cancer without the hammer, undergoing chemotherapy and then undoing the chemo treatments every time she changed into Thor. She died saving Asgardia from the rampaging Mangog, chaining him to Mjolnir and hurling the beast into the sun,

Grønbekk says. “Runa does all that I would like to do if I had Valkyrie powers… I find [Runa] one of the most interesting characters to write. I think she has so much potential, and she’s so much fun. I’m so cruel to her at the moment.” Joining Grønbekk on Jane Foster & The Mighty Thor is artist Mike Dowling. Dowling’s work tends toward the realistic, but he has a vivid imagination and a gift for staging action that you can see in his most recent work as part of the Spider-Man: Beyond crew. “The art is so fantastic, but I think the thing that just took our

I LOVE JANE FANS BECAUSE THEY ARE TRULY THE BEST PEOPLE.”

says. “What we’re seeing [in Jane Foster & The Mighty Thor] is her doing much of the same, just with godly powers, trying to figure out how to solve godly problems in a profoundly human way.” While Grønbekk has mostly worked in Asgard (with a brief but growing body of Warhammer comics work), she’s been able to write a fair amount of the Marvel universe as guest stars—Kraven the Hunter in The Mighty Valkyries and Spider-Man, Captain America, and Sentry (among

others) in Return of the Valkyries. So far, she’s refusing to divulge the big non-Asgardian cameos in Jane Foster & The Mighty Thor on spoiler grounds, but she did confirm that Runa, co-star of Jane’s story, would work her way over. Runa was one of the original nine Valkyries who fell in love with a colleague named Alta, and when Runa was guiding Alta to Valhalla, the pair were trapped in the corpse of a dead Celestial by the King in Black himself and forger of the Necrosword, Knull. “Jane is the nice one,”

breath away was the first big Valkyrie closeup that he sent over,” she tells us. “I keep writing in things that you shouldn’t be able to draw, and then he keeps doing it.” It is safe to assume, Grønbekk tells us, that Jane will be keeping her Valkyrie powers and the All-Weapon she’s been using while she gets to swing Mjolnir around one more time. That enhanced power set makes writing Jane more complicated, but it’s also kind of the point of the book. “We need to make a challenge that’s big enough for Jane, but trying to find a Jane way to solve it,” she tells us. “That’s where the humanity always comes in. Because Jane, after her illness, after losing her son, after losing many of the people she’s loved, she is profoundly human and filled with heart and life.” A superhero full of heart and life who leads with kindness (and a giant space hammer) seems like just what we need in the world today. Jane Foster & The Mighty Thor #1 from Grønbekk, Dowling, and colorist Marte Gracia is out June 8. Thor: Love and Thunder opens in theaters on July 8. DEN OF GEEK

EVENT SPOTLIGHT

PHOTO BOOTH

Some of the brightest talent at SXSW 2022, the eclectic Austin festival that celebrates film, music, and tech, stopped by the Den of Geek Studio for a chat—and to pose with our X-Ray specs. PHOTOGRAPHY BY NICK MORGULIS

1: Swimming with Sharks star Kiernan Shipka. 2: Bob Odenkirk promoting the Audible podcast Summer in Argyle. 3: Danique van Kesteren of the Dutch band Donna Blue. 4: Indie rockers Pom Pom Squad. 5: Frontman Aramis Johnson of Enumclaw. 34

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6: Swimming with Sharks star Diane Kruger. 7: Tunde Laleye, star of the indie horror Bitch Ass. 8 & 9: Richard Linklater and Glen Powell of the Netflix film Apollo 10 ½: A Space Age Adventure. 10-14: Chace Crawford, Jessie T. Usher, Karl Urban, Jensen Ackles, and Laz Alonso from Amazon’s The Boys. 15: Sheryl Crow promotes her new career-spanning documentary. 16 & 17: Star Regina Hall and director Mariama Diallo of the horror-thriller Master. 18: Brittany Snow of the backwoods horror flick X. 19-21: Claudia Sulewski, Rachel Dratch, and Patton Oswalt of the comedy I Love My Dad. S C A N T H E Q R C O D E F O R O U R S X S W R E V I E W S , I N T E R V I E W S , F E AT U R E S , A N D V I D E O S ! DEN OF GEEK

The Boys, from left to right: Hughie (Jack Quaid), Butcher (Karl Urban), Frenchie (Tomer Capone) Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) and Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonzo).

Exploding heads, sup erh ero ic or gi es , an d a v e n g e f u l C a p t a in A m e r ic a !

The cast of Prime Video’s The Boys walks Den of Geek through the madness to come in season three. BY ALEC BOJALAD

Starlight (Erin Moriarty) gives good side-eye.

The Vought Corporation creates supes via their proprietary pharmaceuticals, gives them some media training, and then sets them loose on the public to bring in advertising dollars, movie deals, and, hopefully, keep the body count down. Though personnel changes frequently, Vought’s premier team, The Seven, includes such superheroic luminaries as Homelander (Antony Starr), a sociopathic superman with mommy issues; A-Train (Jessie T. Usher), a literal and metaphorical speed-freak; The Deep (Chace Crawford), a dim-witted sex-pest; and relatively new member Starlight (Erin Moriarty), whose idealism is quickly crushed. Critically missing from this state of affairs is meaningful government oversight. Stepping into that void to keep the supes in line is profane, lovable goon Billy Butcher (Urban) and his Boys: Mother’s Milk (Alonso), Frenchie (Tomer Capone), Kimiko (Fukuhara), and Hughie Campbell (Jack Quaid). No series right now better understands the relationship between consumers and the superhero properties they demand to consume than The Boys. The show’s world, as depicted throughout the first two seasons and several ingenious augmented reality marketing efforts from Amazon, is distinctly familiar. Now, just as our superhero landscape must constantly grow bigger with new team-up movies, ponderous TV side projects, and all manner of merchandise, so too must The Boys’ world. And that’s something that season three is perfectly happy to do. The Boys’ third season will take things back to the very beginning with the introduction of Vought’s first supe: Soldier Boy. As played by Jensen Ackles (who previously collaborated with Kripke on Supernatural), Soldier Boy is The Boys’ tongue-in-cheek answer to Captain America—an image of an archaic patriot from the World War II-era brought back to an unfamiliar modern world. “He’s kind of the original superhero in this world,” Ackles says. “We did get to see a little glimpse into that past. Bringing in

Billy Butcher and Homelander (Antony Starr) face off.

someone who has experienced that world into the modern age—you can only imagine. It’s very similar to Grandpa still being around, and what would he think of someone like Homelander or someone like Butcher? It was really fun to play an old man. The beard was tough, though.” Ackles will be joined in the cast by Soldier Boy’s fellow 1940s “Payback” team members Crimson Countess (Laurie Holden) and Gunpowder (Sean Patrick Flanery). Before the show can further delve into the story

IMAGE CREDITS: PRIME VIDEO

he cast of The Boys and showrunner Eric Kripke have filed into the Den of Geek SXSW interview studio to discuss their festival appearance and the triumphant release of season three’s much-anticipated trailer. But as Kripke, Karl Urban (Billy Butcher), Karen Fukuhara (Kimiko Miyashiro), and Laz Alonso (Mother’s Milk) take their places on the hopefully comfortable stools we’ve provided, the conversation eventually goes to where most conversations about The Boys inevitably end up: the verisimilitude of superhero orgies. “It all comes from this very logical place of ‘if there really was a superhero orgy, what would it look like? How would you depict it in the most honest way possible?’” Kripke says. “Because we’re all about integrity here. We’re just telling the truth, man.” Depicting the outlandish in the most honest way possible has become a hallmark of Amazon’s massively successful superhero satire. Adapted from Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson’s 2006 comic series of the same name, The Boys imagines a world in which the public is obsessed with superheroes. Sounds familiar, no? Yet in the world of The Boys, superheroes or “supes” are very much real.

A-Train (Jessie T. Usher) takes to the stage.

of Payback, however, there are some lingering issues from its core cast to address early on. Hughie (Jack Quaid) is now working with Congresswoman Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit), who, unbeknownst to Hughie, is a secret brain-splattering supe. “She has this really interesting ongoing storyline,” Kripke says of Neuman. “We gender flip the character from the books, but this idea that there is this secret superhero is just a really interesting bomb in a briefcase, you

know? We give her a lot more to do this season, and Claudia kills it… [and] definitely kills some literal people.” Fellow Boys teammates Kimiko and Frenchie are still working through their sweet courtship, with Frenchie finally getting a handle on American Sign Language to better communicate with his silent superpowered friend. There will also be some dancing, much to Karen Fukuhara’s delight. “I’m most excited for everyone to see Kimiko’s dance sequence with Frenchie,” she says. “There was a tiny bit of it in the trailer. You know, I never expected to be able to do something like that ever in life. And I got to do it in a show playing a character who doesn’t speak.” On The Seven side of things, Starlight and Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligott) will have to recover from their titanic battle against Homelander and Stormfront. The Deep is still stuck in his Church of the Collective purgatory, while A-Train is on his way back into The Seven’s good graces. Homelander, for his part, will be more adrift than ever, having lost what he seemed to perversely see as his

family, with his “wife” Becca dead and their son Ryan set to call Billy Butcher papa. As for how that might go, Karl Urban is cautiously optimistic about Butcher’s parenting chops. “At the end of the season, he made a promise to Becca that he would look out for Ryan,” Urban tells us. “He finds himself torn between two worlds. One to fulfill that promise. The other trying to get justice/revenge for her death and what happened to her. It’s that moral, inner turmoil battle that he struggles with. It’s a lot of fun.” Of course, in a universe where all that separates superheroes from normal civilians is a pharmaceutical compound, the divide between the two factions can grow quite thin. We see as much in the revealing teaser for season three that features Butcher shooting lasers out of his eyes and throwing people across the room (and puking too, but who knows if that’s a superpower). In the original comic series, The Boys were known to consume some Compound V every once in a while to better take down a supe. It would appear that Butcher has done the same here. “We decided to go full Bill Bixby. Great Incredible Hulk moment,” Urban says of a powered-up Butcher. “To me, the interesting character element about that is ‘how far are you willing to go to achieve your goal?’ To destroy the thing you hate the most, are you willing to become that thing? To me, that’s a very interesting existential question. All of the characters have choices to make.” Not only does every character in The Boys have a choice to make, but so do the folks behind the scenes. For while honoring the characters is the first priority for Kripke and company, they also inherit some truly wild moments from their source material. And that brings us back to the superhero orgy. “Herogasm,” an iconic comic arc about the sexual depravity of Vought’s heroes, will be adapted for the back half of season three, with episode six bearing its title. “We definitely did it as a dare,” Kripke says. “From the moment people heard we were making The Boys, DEN OF GEEK

The Boys season three premieres on Prime Video on June 3. 40

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THE

ORIGINAL SUPE

SUPERNATURAL STAR JENSEN ACKLES TRADES IN THE DEMON HUNTING FOR A SHIELD AS THE BOYS’ UNIVERSE’S FIRST EVER SUPE, SOLDIER BOY. How did you convince your old Supernatural boss Eric Kripke to let you join The Boys’ team?

I called him regarding something completely unrelated, and I think I closed the phone call with, “Hey Eric, when are you going to bring me over to The Boys? I want to kick some ass or something. Blow a dolphin, I don’t know, whatever they’re doing over there. Maybe I could help [The Deep] with some water park shit.” And he said, “That’s interesting, let me think about that.” We had a few more conversations, and that led to this. I thought that was very apropos, coming right out of 15 years of a previous Eric Kripke world and diving right into another one. Interesting. When was this?

That had happened just before season two, and so I had seen season one. After watching season two and knowing Kripke the way that I do, I knew that he would just continue to level up. So I got very nervous at that point and I was like, “Oh great, what have I signed on for?” What can you tell us about your character Soldier Boy?

He’s kind of the original superhero in this particular world, and we did

get to see a little glimpse into that past. That was really fun to play and to dive into a bit. Obviously, bringing somebody who has experienced that world into the modern age, you can imagine, it was very similar to Grandpa still being around. What would he think of someone like Homelander or someone like Butcher? It was really fun to play an old man, so to speak. I’ve got to be honest, the beard was tough, though. I’ve never had more products for anything in my life than I had for that fuzz on my chin. But it was an interesting addition to what they already had, chemistry wise, in the super world. It was digging up this relic, essentially, and adding him back into the mix. It definitely shakes things up for season three. What’s it like being The Boys’ answer to Captain America and being a man unstuck in time?

This ties a lot into the Soldier Boy storyline of this throwback to the old guard, essentially, and these people who have been sent out to pasture get wrangled up and sent back into the fray. It’s interesting, because it was never something that I thought about in watching season one or season two, that there would

IMAGE CREDITS: PRIME VIDEO

people would say over and over again, ‘but you’re not gonna do Herogasm. I dare you to do Herogasm.’ Part of it was that we were in season three, we were a hit, Amazon could say ‘no’ to us less and less. So finally, we were like, ‘All right, let’s do it. Let’s fucking do it.’” The Boys’ most prurient elements, like sex and violence, are often the ones that stand out in marketing material and fans’ imaginations, but according to Kripke, the show’s writing staff never goes into a given episode or season with the plan to up the ante. “We genuinely don’t have conversations about trying to top ourselves,” Kripke says. “I think it’s dangerous because if you’re working to go bigger and bigger it’s an unsustainable pattern. Eighty percent of the conversation in the room is ‘how do we go deeper with the characters and how do we put them through existential crises?’” Still… even though Kripke is adamant that character comes first, he can’t help but reveal that season three will contain multitudes of madness beyond even Herogasm. “The very first 15 minutes of episode one is by far the craziest thing we’ve ever done… like, by a mile,” Kripke promises. “It’s a weird almost James Bond kind of opening. It’s its own adventure before you start the season. The hard stuff is figuring out the arcs. The fun stuff is figuring out the exploding bodies.” Simply put: viewers crave exploding bodies and blood. And The Boys season three is going to be more than happy to provide all that gore… if it can keep up with the demand. An anecdote from Laz Alonso illustrates a peculiar supply chain problem. “I do remember during episode three hearing the head of the makeup department talking to someone about ordering more blood. [She said] that they had already gone through more blood by episode three than they had through the entire season two.” One can only imagine the blood inflation for The Boys season four.

be an old guard, that these people do kind of age out of being in the spotlight. I thought that that was a really interesting commentary on society and on a lot of the entertainment industry as a whole. It’s like you have a peak, and then if you’re lucky, you can sustain that peak for as long as you possibly can, but I think that was a really interesting commentary on this superhero world, that you kind of get aged out and you get forgotten. What can you tell us about Soldier Boy’s old crime-fighting team, Payback?

I thought they all did a fantastic job. [Payback] is all about: “What about us? Don’t forget about us. We’re still valid, right? We’re still here, we still have powers.” It’s like, “Yeah, but you’re old news. You’re not in the news cycle right now, nobody cares about you.” And that was an interesting take. Again: it goes to Kripke and his team, of just finding a way to have a commentary on such relevant things that are going on currently. The world of The Boys is a big one and known for filming a lot of extra material for AR marketing purposes. Did you get to participate in any “extracurriculars” like that?

Not to give anything away, but there’s some old footage of Soldier Boy that we see on TV. Creating that content that we see, we didn’t just shoot a couple of seconds, which is probably all we see [in the show], we shot the whole thing. We did the entire story, which is insane to me, because it’s days of filming. Phil Sgriccia, who is somebody who I’ve a long relationship with—he was on Supernatural and now he’s on The Boys—when he showed up and he was like, “I got you for the next week,” I knew we were going to have a lot of fun. I was also like, “What are we doing this for?” And he just goes, “Amazon.”

KENOBI G E N E R AT I O N

STAR WARS SCRIBE JOBY HAROLD DIGS INTO WHY OBI-WAN KENOBI IS THE MOST IMPORTANT CHARACTER IN THE GALAXY.

N MAY 27, director

Deborah Chow and writer Joby Harold will introduce Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi to a new generation of Star Wars fans. Crafting any tale in this universe can be a huge undertaking, so just imagine the expectations that come with continuing the story of the most important Star Wars character of all time. “I think at the beginning, you feel the intimidation, for sure. You’re lying if you say you don’t,” Harold tells Den of Geek over Zoom. “Once upon a time, George Lucas wrote that name on a piece of paper, and now you are custodian of that name for this period of time. You feel the weight of that.” The writer behind recent Netflix zombie hit Army of the Dead took over script duties from original screenwriter Hossein Amini (Drive), a creative shakeup that saw the story become a pseudo-continutation of the Prequel Trilogy. Ewan McGregor’s Obi-Wan will once again face off against his former apprentice, with Hayden Christensen reprising the role of Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Vader. Set 10 years after their fateful duel in 2005’s Revenge of the Sith, these two Star Wars titans have “unfinished business,” according to Harold. 42

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Obi-Wan Kenobi will premiere at an interesting time for the franchise. It’s no secret that Star Wars is at a crossroads, shifting from a story that was once predominantly told on the big screen to a saga that’s now largely unfolding across multiple series on Disney+. Yes, Obi-Wan Kenobi is the kind of massive character that would have once been reserved for a big event film—and there was one in the works from director Stephen Daldry (The Reader) until Star Wars standalone movie plans were scrapped after Solo’s disappointing box office performance—but a streaming series actually feels more fitting for 2022 and this new era of Kenobi tales. While the big Star Wars tentpole films tend to push the stories of iconic characters such as Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa forward in massive, status-quo-shattering ways, the streaming series allow creators to take a more intimate approach, showing how these heroes continue to evolve between film installments. For example, The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett explore how Luke has grown since Return of the Jedi while also planting the seeds for why his own Jedi academy would eventually fail—which, in turn, informs his arc in The Last Jedi. The chance to do the same for an Obi-Wan living in the years between the Prequel and Original Trilogies is one of the things that attracted Harold to the project.

IMAGE CREDITS: LUCASFILM

BY JOHN SAAVEDRA

Below: Ewan McGregor reprises his Prequel Trilogy role as the eponymous Jedi Master in Obi-Wan Kenobi.

“There’s still an untold story there because of the weight of what he’s carrying, because of Anakin,” Harold says of where we find old Ben in the new series. “That weight and how that is reconciled and how that evolves, and how he became the man who eventually is able to do what he does in A New Hope, especially when he faces Vader—he’s at peace. How did the man on Mustafar end up at peace? That felt like a story.” Seeing McGregor back as Obi-Wan will undoubtedly create a new wave of nostalgia for Prequel fans, especially those Millennials who were kids in the early 2000s when McGregor and Christensen were taking down hordes of pesky droids. Just as the Sequel Trilogy felt like it was aimed directly at a specific generation of adults who were in middle school when the first Star Wars hit theaters in 1977, there’s a part of Obi-Wan Kenobi that is clearly catering to 30-yearolds who have long dreamed of seeing their childhood Jedi hero pick up a lightsaber again.

But there is also something deeper at work when it comes to Obi-Wan Kenobi. Every generation of Star Wars fans has been inspired by its own version of the wise Jedi Master. Generation X had Sir Alec Guinness in the Original Trilogy, while Millennials and early Gen Z had McGregor in the Prequels. Now that Millennials are beginning to have families of their own, their kids will grow up with the Disney+ series and an Obi-Wan at yet another stage in his life. In other words, every generation of Star Wars fandom is a Kenobi generation. You might be asking, “Sure, but hasn’t every Star Wars fan grown up with Luke, Han, and Leia, too?” That’s definitely true, but kids growing up in the 2000s never got a new movie or series starring the original trio (1997’s Special Edition re-releases of the Original Trilogy were a great introduction to these characters, though). On the other hand, almost every young Star Wars fan has enjoyed a brand-new onscreen adventure starring Obi-Wan. DEN OF GEEK

Why does Star Wars always go back to Obi-Wan and not Luke, Darth Vader, Leia, or Boba Fett? What makes Obi-Wan so much more important? “Obi-Wan was the soul of [the Original Trilogy.] He was the one who pulled back the curtain and introduced the audience to a new world—not just mythology-wise, but a new world of storytelling and everything that George built,” Harold, a self-described “Original Trilogy kid,” explains. “It was through Obi-Wan’s eyes, through his words, that we all came to understand that bigger world. Because of that, he has always been, to me, the character that was the most compelling. As much as it was the Skywalker story, Obi-Wan was the entry point.” The same is true of Prequel Obi-Wan. When McGregor was cast in 1999’s The Phantom Menace, he was accepting not only the biggest part of his career but a huge responsibility to Star Wars fandom. While on the surface the first Prequel film begins the story of Anakin’s tragic fall to the dark side, the movie is truly about Obi-Wan, who, while slightly in the background for the first two acts of the movie, must eventually become the mentor he was always destined to be. When he takes Anakin as his apprentice at the end of Episode I, he’s once again ushering all the kids in the audience into a larger world. This is why there’s no better character with which to explore yet another unseen era of Star Wars, according to Harold. “If you’re going to tell a legacy story, this didn’t just feel like another character you were taking advantage of; it felt like the right character to tell a story between the Original Trilogy and the Prequels,” Harold says. “He’s the one who’s been bearing witness throughout that story, to all the different elements of it, everything that happens with Anakin, it’s Obi-Wan.” But Obi-Wan is also a well-established character who has been explored across movies, animated series, books, comics, and games. You could easily end up repeating yourself. Harold agrees: “It has to be its own story. If you get consumed too much by the legacy of it all, I think it can suffocate the storytelling.”

ESSENTIAL OBI-WAN READS THE BEST KENOBI BOOKS AND COMICS TO CHECK OUT BEFORE THE SHOW.

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Above: Moses Ingram as Reva, an Imperial Inquisitor. Right: Sung Kang as Fifth Brother, another member of The Inquisitorius, backed up by a unit of Stormtroopers.

Fortunately, Obi-Wan Kenobi brings plenty of new elements to the table. Gone are the Republic and the Separatists of the Prequels, replaced by an Empire on the rise. The Jedi no longer command armies but are hunted down by them. Darth Vader has his very own order of Jedi executioners known as The Inquisitorius, led by the Grand Inquisitor (Rupert Friend). In fact, when Obi-Wan is forced out of hiding to go undercover on a new, neondrenched planet called Daiyu, he comes face to face with one of these Jedi hunters: Reva (Moses Ingram), who brings “attitude, ambition, guile, [and] a whole new energy,” according to Harold. Obi-Wan himself is in a very different place emotionally than where fans left him in 2005. He’s in exile on Tatooine, living in a dark, desolate cave near the Lars homestead,

JEDI APPRENTICE/JEDI QUEST/THE LAST OF THE JEDI Kids wanting more Obi-Wan adventures should look no further than the (non-canon) children’s book series by Jude Watson, which cover the hero’s years as a padawan, as Anakin’s master, and his time as an exile after the rise of the Empire.

KENOBI John Jackson Miller’s noncanon novel plays like an alternate cut of the Obi-Wan Kenobi show, chronicling Obi-Wan’s early days on Tatooine. When he’s thrust into a war between violent settlers and Tusken Raiders, Obi-Wan must decide whether to get involved.

where a 10-year-old Luke (Grant Feely) plays, oblivious to his own destiny. Unsurprisingly, this Obi-Wan feels completely defeated and like his heroic Jedi days are over. Even when he is thrust back into the action on the show, he brings a blaster to the fight, not his lightsaber (at least not at first). “He’s in a cave for a reason, which will become clear— same with the blaster,” Harold says. “Part of the joy of this was, we’ve all imagined where Obi-Wan was. It’s finally getting to see him in that environment, doing those things, and there’s a great joy to that.” It’s safe to say no one thought they’d ever see McGregor back as Obi-Wan after the Prequels, which were maligned at the time of their release. In fact, the actor spent years asserting that he’d never return to Star Wars, especially after how poorly the movies were received. But in 2022, the

FROM THE JOURNALS OF OBI-WAN KENOBI This collection of recent Marvel comics penned by Jason Aaron and drawn by A-list artists Salvador Larroca, Andrea Sorrentino, Simone Bianchi, and Mike Mayhew shows how ObiWan secretly protected Luke Skywalker in the years before A New Hope.

Prequel Trilogy is enjoying a well-deserved re-examination. Even Ahmed Best’s divisive Jar Jar Binks gets standing ovations at Star Wars Celebration now. Why? Because the fans who were kids in 1999–2005 grew up loving these movies, no matter what the more jaded adults had to say at the time. And just like Alec Guinness in 1977, it was McGregor’s Obi-Wan who was lighting the way for that second generation of Star Wars fandom. This year, he’ll do it again for a third. “As far as legacy characters go, he’s the biggest,” Harold says. “You’re entering everything that George built, to me, because Obi-Wan is the custodian of that. He’s the guy who says, ‘Come with me.’” The first two episodes of Obi-Wan Kenobi premiere on May 27 on Disney+.

MARVEL’S OBI-WAN KENOBI This new comic-book series by Christopher Cantwell and Ario Anindito sees a much older ObiWan looking back on his earliest days as a Jedi youngling, recollecting all the adventures that inevitably led him to his destiny on Tatooine.

BROTHERHOOD Mike Chen’s new novel takes a deep dive into Obi-Wan’s evolving relationship with his former apprentice after Anakin earns his knighthood. Now equals, the two must navigate new dangers during early battles of the Clone Wars. Plus, fan-favorite villain Asajj Ventress is back!

ales of moviemaking during the pandemic are traditionally fraught with hardship and struggle. But on the location shoot of a Russo Brothers action movie, it’s only filled with opportunity. That’s at least what it felt like on the days—weeks and weeks of them—in the Czech Republic capital of Prague when directors Joe and Anthony Russo had the full run of entire city blocks while staging one of their signature showstoppers for The Gray Man. “There are a lot of challenges associated with shooting during the pandemic, but we may have benefited in the sense that Prague was empty of tourists,” Anthony says with a faint laugh. “It’s one of the most beautiful cities and is normally packed. But the fact that the city was emptier than usual actually helped us out in terms of the amount of real estate we were able to control and shoot.” That control included building an entire city square and fountain in the middle of town just so they could destroy it—making it one more explosive casualty in the war of 46

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attrition between super spies Lloyd Hansen (Chris Evans) and Court Gentry (Ryan Gosling). The latter is the eponymous “gray man,” a renegade CIA errand boy who must fight, shoot, and survive a dazzling amount of carnage, which is a lot when it comes to the Russos, a pair who’ll happily derail a Prague tram to tell Court’s story. For two filmmakers who are now synonymous with propulsive action thanks to some of Marvel’s most beloved movies—Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War, and the last two Avengers flicks—it might be their most ambitious in-camera stunt work yet. It’s also something the pair have been dreaming about since long before they shepherded the Avengers franchise to its endgame. “A lot of what we do in the film business is motivated by our love for movies, which started when we were young kids growing up in Cleveland,” Joe says when we catch up with him over Zoom, fresh out of another post-production meeting on The Gray

Man, this one on VFX. Speaking with a genuine passion for the spy genre, Joe can still recall growing up and debating with his brother their favorite espionage movies, which, depending on the day, can range from Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation to Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest. However, he confesses to always really loving those early Tom Clancy films, too, especially John McTiernan’s The Hunt for Red October. The latter is serendipitous since it was one of Clancy’s protégés, Mark Greaney, who authored The Gray Man, a novel that Joe became obsessed with even before finishing the spy-adjacent The Winter Soldier. As he tells us now, he finished the first draft of a Gray Man adaptation

IMAGE CREDITS: PAUL ABELL/NETFLIX

The Russo Brothers return to espionage action in Netflix’s star-studded The Gray Man, and this time there are no clear heroes. BY DAVID CROW

Ryan Gosling stars as spy Court Gentry, aka the titular Gray Man, in the Russo Brothers’ new Netflix thriller.

Ana de Armas plays agent Dani Miranda, a sometime-ally of the Gray Man.

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while wrapping post-production on his first Marvel movie, which also happened to be the Russos’ introduction to fan-favorite MCU scribes Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. “They’re the best story-minds in the film business at the moment,” Joe says. “Historically, they could be as good as anyone who’s ever done this when you look at their track record.” So it seemed only natural to collaborate again when the Russos decided to revisit that idea where the spy is not so Marvel wholesome. In The Gray Man, Gosling plays Court, a spy who’s lived out on a limb his whole career. It began decades earlier when, after committing a murder to help his brother, he faced death row until a CIA man (Billy Bob Thornton) offered him a reprieve: as long as he’s willing to do the agency’s dirtiest jobs without a name or paper trail, they’ll let him breathe free. But eventually, that freedom puts him in direct opposition with an agency contractor named Lloyd (Evans), who has no handler and even less oversight when he decides to “retire” Court and leave the Gray Man’s sometime-ally agent Dani Miranda (Ana de Armas) out to dry. “It’s a common theme in all of our movies,” Joe says about the central conflict at the heart of The Gray Man. “Question authority. Be skeptical of the motives of authority when they are claiming that they’re on the side of right as an excuse to wield more power and justify extreme violence.” Anthony adds: “What’s interesting is both [characters] are in a dangerous place, but one of them is ultimately accountable to a chain of authority, and one of them isn’t, and that’s the dividing line… You can see this in a lot of the problems that we’ve seen in our armed services over the past decade or two. When there is no accountability for behavior, when you’re not a part of a chain of command and answerable for your actions, things go wrong.” The apex of those wrong things is embodied by Evans’ sneering yet gregarious antagonist. If Gosling’s titular character lives in the eternal “gray,” then Lloyd Hansen cheerfully 48

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Chris Evans stars as Lloyd Hansen, the “sociopath” contractor who’s on the hunt for the Gray Man.

reigns from the darkness of hell. Right down to his loud mustache (which was Evans’ idea), it’s a role audiences may be unaccustomed to seeing the actor in after a decade of Captain America. “We didn’t have to sell Chris on the role; Chris sold us, in a way,” Joe says. “We were talking to him as we were wrapping up Infinity War and then Avengers: Endgame about what’s next for him or where he wanted to go in his career, and he said, ‘You know what? I’m comfortable enough in my life and the work I’ve done that I’m just interested in taking risks moving forward, and I just want to play challenging characters.’” He dryly adds: “So it seemed obvious to us that the right move here would be to offer Chris the sociopath and not the hero.” If there is such a thing as a hero in The Gray Man, it’s Gosling’s deeply

flawed and isolated protagonist, an assassin with a trail of bodies in his wake. One of the most versatile leading men of his generation—just watch Gosling channel Lou Costello in The Nice Guys—the actor has dabbled in action before. But it’s been more than a decade since he last did a full-tilt action movie, and never has he starred in one with the physicality expected from a Russos joint. “We knew we needed somebody who knew how to disappear on some level,” Anthony considers. “Gosling has such an interesting technique to him in that he has a minimalist style where he conveys a whole lot of emotion, thought, and complexity, with a lot of subtlety.” Joe also notes that this is the first actioner that takes advantage of Gosling’s complete box of tools. “I would argue this role uses everything

that Ryan is incredible at,” says Joe. “It combines his great physical control; his really wonderful, quirky sense of humor; how he’s smoldering and intense onscreen and can communicate a lot while doing very little… Remember, Ryan was a dancer when he was younger. Playing an action hero is different from any other form of acting because all that stunt work requires incredible body control and extreme discipline.” And there was a lot of discipline going around on this shoot, from the aforementioned sequences of Gosling running through an exploding Prague square to scenes where he, de Armas, and Evans would train extensively for fights that would be shot and reshot as the Russos continued to refine their fisticuffs to match (and surpass) what they did on The Winter Soldier. “We shoot during the day and then go to editorial at night,” Joe explains. “We’re watching the footage cut together, and we’re refining it and then going back the next day and

altering maybe 30 percent of the material based on the ideas we came up with the night before in editorial. That goes on for weeks.” For one particularly complex fight sequence in which Gosling’s spook must punch and kick his way out of a crashing military plane, the Russos ended up shooting the scene three different ways. “Action films are difficult in that regard,” Joe muses. “It wears down the actors. Can you imagine going to Ryan and saying, ‘Hey, we’re going to reshoot this plane sequence for a third time, but we’re pretty sure this is going to be the last one?’” Nevertheless, the pair now stands at the finish line of what is one of Netflix’s most expensive films to date and the Russos’ first massive spectacle with nary a Hulk or a star-spangled shield in sight. But it was those Marvel experiences, the brothers attest, that made The Gray Man possible. “It’s different in that when you’re shooting a Marvel movie, there’s a

certain reliance on the audience’s emotional connection to historical story points, and you know that you’re going to be able to generate a shorthand,” Joe says. “You’re going to be able to generate enthusiasm for preexisting story points or payoff moments, or for character appearances, in a way that when you’re starting from scratch, you won’t.” But, he adds, “I think the work that we did at Marvel, and the work Markus and McFeely did there, allowed us to understand large-scale storytelling in a way where we can connect strongly with audiences by delivering characters with storytelling efficiency and in a way that they can become attached to them more quickly.” And whether in a bulletriddled Prague square or a collapsing plane, things rarely seem to be of larger scale than when Gosling and Evans lock horns. The Gray Man premieres on Netflix on July 22, 2022.

“I would argue this role uses everything that Ryan is incredible at.” Joe Russo, Director

Above, left: Ryan Gosling gets in on the action as Court Gentry. Above, right: The actor films one of the movie’s many setpieces on the streets of central Prague.

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Jurassic World Dominion closes out 30 years of dinosaur mayhem that began with Steven Spielberg. Director Colin Trevorrow talks dinos in the wild, bringing back the original cast, and wrapping up an iconic film series. BY DON KAYE

or director Colin Trevorrow, his new film Jurassic World Dominion marks the end of not one, not two, but possibly three eras for this long-running, audience-favorite franchise. The movie, the sixth overall in the Jurassic Park/World cycle, concludes the story that began with 2015’s Jurassic 50

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World (also directed by Trevorrow) and lead actors Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard. But it also puts a bow on the previous trilogy of films by bringing back original Jurassic Park stars Sam Neill, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum for their first joint appearance since Steven Spielberg’s 1993 classic. And the third era? We’ll

get to that a bit later. Trevorrow initially landed the job to direct Jurassic World in 2013 after helming just one previous feature, the tiny sci-fi indie Safety Not Guaranteed. When asked if he thought at the time that he’d be the keeper of the Jurassic flame nearly a decade later (he also co-wrote all three of the recent films,

Kayla Watts (DeWanda Wise) and Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) come face-to-face with a Giganotosaurus.

including 2018’s J.A. Bayona-directed Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom), Trevorrow is modest. “I don’t think I had the arrogance to believe that,” he says. “I think I was, at the time, focused on trying to do the job that I was given and deliver a film that would even be worthy of sequels in any way. So the answer is no.” Still, he admits that the ideas were percolating in his head even back then. “As a creative person, I couldn’t help but think about where we could go,” he adds. “Even in the very early discussions with Steven [Spielberg], I talked about an arc for this and a way that we could potentially create

a world in which we had to coexist with dinosaurs in the same way we do with animals. He responded really well to that, but he also understood the need to build that and to spend two movies earning that.” While the plot details for Dominion remain largely secret, the information and trailers released so far indicate that the film takes off from the ending of Fallen Kingdom, in which the cloned dinosaurs—in a development long anticipated by fans—were encroaching on the outside world and human civilization, with all the ramifications that could stem from that. As far back as 2016, Trevorrow was

saying in interviews that he had an ending in mind for this trilogy of films, although he reveals now that the idea has been repurposed since then. “The image that I had at that moment, we actually used as the ending for [animated spin-off series] Camp Cretaceous,” he says with a small laugh. “So it is in something. The ending of this film is a similar kind of idea… people seeing dinosaurs in our world, not in the confines of a theme park or on an island, and just recognizing intellectually that it’s possible. That’s where I think we’re headed.” Another longstanding idea, which DEN OF GEEK

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[the original trio] geographically into the same environment as our other characters, we really needed to have a reason, and the reason in this film is that it’s based in science, it’s based in their expertise and why they would be needed, and also why they would be curious… all of that stuff had to feel earned, and it took time and a couple of movies to do it.” The director says that the biggest challenge in developing the story for Dominion was finding the right balance of screentime for the legacy characters and the newer ones, keeping in mind that different generations of moviegoers have grown up with different protagonists. But it was equally important to make sure that Neill, Dern, and Goldblum were integral to the story and had moments of their own as well. “One thing we noticed really early, which seems obvious, but I don’t know if we ever really think about it, is that the three of them don’t face danger together in Jurassic Park ever,”

Jeff Goldblum returns as Dr. Ian Malcolm.

notes Trevorrow. “That’s something we knew that we would be able to remedy. Not that it was a mistake —it’s just what happened. It was part of the structure of that movie. So we were like, ‘Wow, we actually have something we can show people they’ve never seen before.’” Something else that hadn’t been seen since the original movie, according to Trevorrow, was a far meatier role for Dern’s Ellie Sattler (who last made a brief appearance

IMAGE CREDITS: UNIVERSAL/AMBLIN

Trevorrow says began to take shape even before Fallen Kingdom, was the possibility of bringing Neill’s Dr. Alan Grant, Dern’s Dr. Ellie Sattler, and Goldblum’s Ian Malcolm back for another go-round with the dinosaurs (the latter made a brief appearance in Fallen Kingdom). But the director didn’t want to deploy the trio unless it made sense and was respectful to their legacy. “I knew it was very important that if we were going to bring our legacy characters back that we needed to show them the respect of putting them on a true adventure,” he explains. “Putting them in danger, sending them out into the story in a way that was equal to the characters that we built in Jurassic World. I also felt it was really important to have Owen [Pratt] and Claire [Howard] in the first two films create a relationship with the audience so that once they come in contact with the legacy characters, there’s a sense that there’s a bit of equal footing there.” Trevorrow continues: “To even get

Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) finds herself in deep water.

Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill), Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon) and Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) are approached by an unseen beastie.

in 2001’s Jurassic Park III). “I actually felt, and Emily (Carmichael, co-screenwriter) agreed, that it was important for the plot to be driven by Ellie,” he explains. “She’s the only one of those three characters that hasn’t had her own movie. Ian Malcolm had The Lost World and Alan Grant had Jurassic Park III.” Trevorrow reveals that Sattler’s “expertise as a paleobotanist and what’s happening in the world as a result of unchecked genetic power

drives their story,” adding: “Then we have a parallel plot that seems unrelated but is actually the same story that is being driven by Claire and Owen. These lines continue to get closer and closer together until they collide, and you realize you were watching the same story the whole time… It’s much more of a science thriller than I think people expect.” Adding that Dominion is “much more of a film about the dangers of genetic power on a greater scope than just dinosaurs,” Trevorrow is adamant that while his creatures are now very much loose in the world, he wasn’t interested in a Godzilla-like scenario of having a Giganotosaurus (the movie’s dino big bad, according to reports) rampaging through cities and knocking over buildings. “The stakes in this movie are global, but they’re global in an extremely realistic way,” he says. “I think when people see what it is, they’ll recognize that there are experiments with genetic power that are happening right now and that we are toying with this science in ways that I imagine most people aren’t aware of and could have tremendous repercussions.” In a bit of irony, Trevorrow was given an opportunity a few years back to create a conclusion to another long-running series of films: he was hired to direct and co-write Star Wars: Episode IX, which was not only meant to tie up the Sequel Trilogy, but was also supposed to serve as a grand finale to the eight previous films of the Skywalker family saga. Yet he and Lucasfilm eventually parted ways over those all-too-familiar

“creative differences.” Still, he says that he applied what he learned while working on his Star Wars script to crafting the story for Dominion. “I approached [Star Wars] in my own way, and I felt what was most important is that it had to be approached as the end of three movies, to the end of six movies, and the end of nine movies, all at the same time,” he recalls now. “It had to respect every single one of those installments in order for it to feel like one complete story. I definitely applied that thinking to [Dominion]… at the end of this movie, I hope it’s clear that all of those films are respected as being of equal value.” Depending on how Jurassic World Dominion wraps up this story after nearly 30 years—and, of course, how many moviegoers turn up to see it— there is always the possibility that this universe could continue in a seventh chapter and beyond. But Trevorrow’s involvement with the franchise—that ‘third era’ we mentioned at the start of this article—is probably over, with the director saying he’s ready to move on. “I feel like I made a trilogy of movies, and it’s a lot,” he says. “It’s been nine years of my life. And the audience would probably agree that they’ve seen what I have to say about this. I think there would be a lot of interest in what another filmmaker had to say about it. I would just want to be there to share my own mistakes and the lessons that I’ve learned and provide the same kind of mentorship and guidance that I was provided.” Jurassic World Dominion opens June 10. DEN OF GEEK

Meet the unsung hero who triggered Jurassic Park ’s digital revolution. BY DAVID CROW The Abyss; Terminator 2: Judgment Day; Jurassic Park. All are landmark pictures that stood at the crossroads of the film industry’s history with celluloid and its future in the digital realm. And all collectively tell the story of how Hollywood pivoted from practical effects to computer-generated imagery. Yet one of the most crucial names in that tale has long gone unsung. Laconic, taciturn, and dryly deadpan, Steve “Spaz” Williams is far from what many might normally expect of a special effects guru. Yet this acerbic Canadian-American VFX artist can talk you under the table about the technological innovations that led to him, along with Mark Dippé, becoming James Cameron’s go-to CG animator on Terminator 2—and what gave him the vision to directly disobey orders at George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) and surprise Jurassic Park producer Kathleen Kennedy with the image of a walking, CGI Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton. “It was an act of rebellion,” Williams says. “The deal had been signed with stop-motion and Phil [Tippett] and to 54

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use robo-prosthetics and everything, and I just kind of came in and said, ‘I can build it.’ I was instructed not to by [Dennis Muren], and so I was forced to ambush Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall.” The legendary episode in ILM’s own internal mythology was a turning point for the original Jurassic Park: as Kennedy walked through offices on a cursory visit, she zeroed in on Williams’ short, looping Tyrannosaur walking across a screen out of the corner of her eye. The rest, as they say, is history. Even so, Williams and other ILM mavericks like Dippé have largely been left out of the official narrative; they’re rarely thanked (especially at Oscar ceremonies), and at the time of their innovations, the best they might hope for is an “evil eye” at work, which still, in turn, would overlook acts of deliberate insubordination. Perhaps this is why it took one who came from this world, like former ILM animator and current documentarian Scott Leberecht, to tell the story of this era in full via the new documentary Spaz. “The people that I wanted to talk to were the people I knew were there the earliest in the evolution of all that

IMAGE CREDITS: NICK MORGULIS FOR DEN OF GEEK

Steve “Spaz” Williams (left) and Scott Leberecht (right) at the Den of Geek Interview Studio at SXSW.

innovation,” Leberecht says. “They were people that I don’t feel like I’ve seen a lot of interviews with from that time, and yet I know they were right there when it happened because I worked with them.” Among them is, of course, Williams, who, despite being told “it couldn’t be done,” proved that dinosaurs could live and breathe inside of a computer. But then, he was always a bit ahead of the curve when it came to seeing what was next on the horizon. “I said it was inevitable to have the resurrection of deceased actors; I warned against that 40 years ago,” Williams says now of the modern phenomenon in blockbusters where beloved characters return to the screen, even though their actors have become permanently unavailable on this mortal coil. “I didn’t necessarily think it was a good thing… but pixels have no conscience.” When looking back at the world he helped shape with his contributions on Jurassic Park, T2, and his favorite early success, The Abyss, Williams is proud. He’s also a little ambivalent. “What we did sort of [marked] the beginning of the end of moviemaking,” says Williams, “because now the antagonists who were the visual effects are becoming the protagonists. And I sort of said it back then 30 years ago, and everyone got really mad at me, but I think today it’s become fairly obvious what’s happening.” Today, what once was rebellion looks a lot more like prophecy.

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IMAGE CREDITS: NETFLIX (STRANGER THINGS)

LE V Y N W A SH THE W O H S SHARE E RME NT OF D 0S “ W O N O D ” A N D ’8 E O INU C H I L D HLT U R E C O N T G E R P O P C UI V E I N S T R A N4 . TO TH R GS S E A SO N THIN AHR CHAE L

hroughout its run on Netflix, Stranger Things has celebrated the relationships of its young protagonists. Their bonds were strengthened through the shared trauma and triumph of fighting creatures from another dimension and the careless government agencies that enabled them to enter our world. But the story succeeds largely because of its 1980s setting, which not only provides a Cold War rationale for the adults’ behavior but also gives the teen heroes a certain pre-internet innocence that appeals to people who grew up in that decade and to those who appreciate the pop culture of the era.

1) Steve (Joe Keery), Rob in (Maya Hawke), Max (Sadie Sink), and Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) are bac k for season four. 2) Mike (Finn Wolfha rd), Will (Noah Schnapp), and Elev en (Millie Bobby Brown) get their ska tes on. 3) Mike, Lucas (Caleb McL aughlin), and Dustin go back to sch ool.

Brothers Matt and Ross Duffer started a nostalgia trend when they created Stranger Things in 2016, and their fellow producer and director Shawn Levy has brought their vision to life with a family appeal befitting his filmography, which includes the Night at the Museum movies and, more recently, The Adam Project and Free Guy. Their knack for tapping into the ’80s zeitgeist has been largely responsible for launching the careers of their young stars, including Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, Joe Keery, Sadie Sink, and others. Levy admits that’s why Stranger Things has enjoyed recontextualizing

’80s actors such as Matthew Modine in season one, Sean Astin in season two, and Cary Elwes in season three, not to mention lead actress Winona Ryder. “I was a tween and a teen in the ’80s, so these are cultural, historical touchstones for me,” says Levy. “Though I confess, the Duffers, who weirdly were born in the ’80s, have even more nerd nostalgia affinity for a lot of these touchstones.” In season four, the reinvented ’80s actor is Robert Englund—best known for his role as Freddy Krueger in the A Nightmare on Elm Street movies—who will play Victor Creel, a disturbed man accused of a terrible murder in 1950s

Hawkins. “I had the good fortune of directing Robert in some of his stuff for this season, and the only thing more fun than meeting and working with Robert was watching the Duffers meet and chat with Robert,” says Levy. “In fact, as I recall it, Matt Duffer came to meet Robert with a Nightmare on Elm Street t-shirt on. That’s what beautiful, gorgeous nerds the Duffer brothers are.” Dungeons & Dragons, a popular pastime of the ’70s and ’80s, has also played a key role in Stranger Things, providing contextual names for the show’s supernatural creatures. The Demogorgon gave way to the Mind DEN OF GEEK

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The show’s fourth season adds an emotional twist by separating the friends who have battled the forces of the Upside Down at a crucial time in any teenager’s life: right at the start of high school. “As I think we knew, Joyce moved away with Will and Jonathan, and Eleven moved with them,” Levy says. “We all remember that tearful farewell at the end of season three, so they’re all now living in Lenora, California… and things never quite seem to stay stable for as long as we’d like in good old fictional Hawkins, Indiana.” This time, there’s plenty for each group to worry about besides otherdimensional beings and government conspiracies. “Clearly, there is an attempt by the characters to find new places in the world: geographical

Flayer, and season four will introduce Vecna, a name straight out of the D&D Monster Manual. “I think it’s such an interesting early decision that we made on the show to give these names to our supernatural characters and phenomena that we don’t claim to have made up,” Levy says. “It’s literally our characters in the world of the show finding language for the crazy stuff that is going on in Hawkins.” Levy is aware that Stranger Things is often accused of over-indulging in nods to ’80s pop culture, but, since these days, more people are likely to associate the term “Demogorgon” with the show than with D&D, they can hardly be blamed for continuing the tradition. “I love the meta level of the fact that even the characters in Stranger Things use cultural references to understand the supernatural occurrences,” Levy enthuses. “And Vecna is a significant one both in D&D lore but also in what’s about to be Stranger Things lore. It’s literally these words that people think we made up… but no, it’s characters in Stranger Things appropriating the lexicon of D&D.”

places, social places, hierarchical places in the new social sphere of high school,” says Levy. “These are struggles and aspirations that all of us relate to, all of us have gone through. Whether we call B.S. on it or we play by those rules, adolescence is a time of finding yourself, and so much of how we flail in our attempt to find ourselves is the way we locate our identity among others.” Levy notes that this struggle has been taking place in the background of every season of Stranger Things, underpinning the supernatural battle. “I’d say that one of the core themes of season four is one of the core themes of the franchise and all seasons, which is you can try to define yourself by someone else’s rules, but the only friendships and

Y I’V E A LWA YS F IR M L OUR KID-SELF BE LI EV ED TH AT

IS R IGH T THER E W IT H US. —SHAWN LEVY

IMAGE CREDITS: NEW WORLD PICTURES (RYDER), WARNER BROS. (MODINE), AMBLIN ENTERTAINMENT/WARNER BROS (ASTIN), (ASTIN) 20TH CENTURY FOX (REISER, ELWES), NEW LINE CINEMA (ENGLUND)/PHOTOFEST

ona 4) Joyce (Win ray ur M d an r) de Ry ta ge ) an lm Ge (Brett ’80s 5) n. io pt chilly rece Englund legend Robert Victor guest stars as me on fla s It’ 6) l. Cree pper Ho Jim iff for Sher r). (David Harbou

authentic identity you’re ever going to be able to hold on to are the ones that are authentic to you and aren’t looking outside yourself for meaning and positioning,” Levy says. Complicating the high school frame of reference is the fact that the actors have aged significantly beyond the three-year scope of the show’s current timeline, but that doesn’t keep the cast from regressing to their younger selves as soon as they hit the set. “The [childlike joy] that happens when these kids are reunited with each other is adorable,” says Levy. “These are friends who met each other when they were 11 and 12, and as we all know, those kinds of bonds don’t really evolve and mature that much. They are always right there, immature and beautiful, right below the surface. So there is a really nice kind of familial connection.” Recapturing childhood, even for those who didn’t grow up in the ’80s, is a crucial ingredient of Stranger Things, with its Spielberg-esque sense of adventure that audiences associate with the entertainment of that decade. “I have always firmly believed that our kid-self is right there with us, and I think that’s a beautiful fact of humanity,” says Levy. “The bittersweet relationship that we have with innocence and with our childhood selves is at the heart of so much of Spielberg’s work; it’s at the heart of so many of my movies and very much at the core of Stranger Things.” Young audiences already possess that sense of adventure, but adults also want to re-capture it by watching Stranger Things, both for the horror and the fun. “People always ask me, ‘What’s the secret? Why is Stranger Things so successful?’” says Levy. “I know that people think it’s the genre tropes and the darkness, but I know it’s the balance between darkness and light, between scares and wonder. The wonderment of childhood is at the beating heart center of Stranger Things, and I think that’s why we love this world in such an enduring way.” Stranger Things Season 4 Volume 1 arrives on Netflix on May 27. Volume 2 will land on July 1.

B L AS T F RO M ICONIC ’80S ROLES FROM HAWKINS’ FINEST.

THE PA ST

● Joyce Byers, the devoted mother of Will and

WINONA RYDER

Jonathan, is the only series regular character to be played by an ’80s star. We’ll always associate Winona Ryder with her iconic roles as goth girl Lydia Deetz in 1988’s Beetlejuice and the deadly Veronica Sawyer in 1989’s Heathers.

● Matthew Modine had many recognizable

MATTHEW MODINE

movie roles in the ’80s, but he’s perhaps best remembered for his central performance in 1987’s Full Metal Jacket as Private J.T. “Joker” Davis. In Stranger Things, he plays the season one villain, Dr. Martin Brenner, whose fate is still shrouded in mystery.

● Perhaps no ’80s actor fits the Stranger Things

SEAN ASTIN

context better than Sean Astin, who played Joyce’s love interest Bob Newby in season two. A teenaged Astin starred in 1985’s The Goonies as Mikey Walsh, who could easily have been friends with Lucas, Dustin, and the others in this show.

● While some may associate Paul Reiser with his

PAUL REISER

’90s sitcom Mad About You, his role in Stranger Things season two as government-stooge-turnedbenefactor Dr. Sam Owens is more reminiscent of his appearance in 1986’s Aliens as corporate lackey Carter Burke. Reiser will return to Stranger Things as Dr. Owens this season.

● The chosen ’80s actor for Stranger Things

CARY ELWES

season three was Cary Elwes. He played the sleazy mayor of Hawkins, Larry Kline, who was complicit in allowing the Soviets to infiltrate the Starcourt Mall. Elwes is instantly recognizable as the inimitable Westley from the 1987 fairy tale comedy, The Princess Bride.

● For season four, Stranger Things has cast

ROBERT ENGLUND

Robert Englund, the actor who famously played the dream-killer Freddy Krueger in the A Nightmare on Elm Street films throughout the ’80s. Englund will play Victor Creel, a man imprisoned in a psych hospital following a grisly murder in the 1950s.

T HE BEST

SCI -FI MOVIES

OF T HE L AST 15 YEARS We polled our writers and readers to compile a list of the best sci-fi movies since Den of Geek launched.

15. Guardians of the Galaxy

(2014)

Throughout the wildly successful run of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s 27 films, very few directors have been given free reign to execute an especially stylish vision. The MCU is about telling stories well and efficiently, but “style” is occasionally sacrificed on the altar of “story.” Then along came James Gunn with the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie, a film so vastly different from the rest of the MCU’s output that you almost wouldn’t believe it was part of the same franchise. Gunn gave fans a genuine, old-fashioned space opera with the kind of lived-in sci-fi aesthetic beloved by fans of the original Star Wars trilogy and Tom Baker-era Doctor Who as well as one of the most memorable soundtracks of recent years. Sure, it’s packed to the brim with Marvel Comics characters, locations, and concepts, but before this film, Groot, Rocket, Gamora, Drax, and Star-Lord weren’t exactly household names. Well, they sure are now, all thanks to this wonderful slice of sci-fi, with nary a superhero in sight. — MIKE CECCHINI 62

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PHOTO ILLUSTRATIONS BY LUCY QUINTANILLA/DEN OF GEEK, IMAGE CREDITS: WALT DISNEY STUDIO PICTURES(GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, ROUGE ONE, WALL-E), PARAMOUNT (ANNIHILATION, ARRIVAL, INTERSTELLER)/PHOTOFEST

14. ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY (2016) Compared with the near carbon copy of A New Hope that was 2015’s The Force Awakens, Rogue One, directed by Gareth Edwards, still felt like a serious gamble at the time. Could a movie set mere days before A New Hope step out of its predecessor’s shadow and do something new with the franchise? By its shocking third act, it truly had. Billed as a war movie set in the galaxy far, far away, Rogue One presented a grittier vision of this universe than we’d seen before, where rebel spies like Diego Luna’s Cassian Andor can tread morally gray lines as opposed to the black and white morality of the Original Trilogy. The result is a movie that’s more layered and complex than your usual Star Wars fare, anchored by an emotional performance by Felicity Jones as unlikely hero Jyn Erso and Donnie Yen as the Force-worshipping Chirrut Îmwe. It’s a film that both recaptures the spirit of classic Star Wars battles and showcases new sights and sounds. — JOHN SAAVEDRA

13. Annihilation (2018)

12. Looper (2012)

11. The Martian (2015)

Alex Garland’s Annihilation follows an all-women team of scientists as they journey into the mysterious Area X, a quarantine zone in the U.S. where biology has begun mutating after a meteor crashed into the region. As the movie opens, we learn that no other expedition has ever returned from Area X, giving the whole affair a sense of doom before the mission’s even started. Natalie Portman and Jennifer Jason Leigh lead the cast as scientists with much deeper motivations for wanting to enter Area X than simple scientific discovery. What drives someone to partake in a suicide mission in the first place? The answer, like the film’s chilling third act, may very well terrify you.— JS

Would you kill your future self for money? This is the opening dilemma posed by Rian Johnson in Looper, a movie fit-to-bursting with pure love for science fiction and all of its speculative potential. Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a contract killer for a 2044 crime syndicate who takes care of victims sent back in time. It’s a simple gig, save for that one catch where the 2074 loopers are sent back to be exterminated by their past selves. Joe’s future self is played by Bruce Willis, and when it’s his turn in front of the gun, he has no intention of going quietly. Looper sprawls out into unexpected directions, allowing for a superb Emily Blunt performance to boot. — ALEC BOJALAD

Ridley Scott was back at the top of his game with this highly believable story of an astronaut stuck on Mars. The film is based on Andy Weir’s novel of the same name, and it features Matt Damon as Mark Watney, the astronaut abandoned on the red planet when his team assumes he has died following a disaster. There’s lots of fascinating science here, including explorations into how things would actually work in the atmosphere of Mars, and NASA was consulted in order to get elements of space travel correct. The detail is key but the resilience of the human spirit is at the heart. It’s an old-fashioned story of bravery and ingenuity with a career-best performance from Damon. — ROSIE FLETCHER

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10. WALL-E (2008) Imagine, if you will, a future techno-capitalist hellscape. The Earth is trashed. The human race bums around the universe on an antique luxury star-liner run by a misanthropic Autopilot. Touchscreens hover over our corpulent, reclined bodies as we cycle through mindless entertainment options until the fake sun goes back down. Welcome to the grim world of… animated family film, WALL-E. 2008’s WALL-E is another win for venerated studio Pixar and a surprisingly scathing social critique. The premise of the movie is simple. What if humanity left Earth and forgot to turn the last robot off on our way out? That question gives way to a remarkable sci-fi adventure story. Amid all the future dystopia is the dogged determination of a little robot with a job to do. Simply by clocking in, crushing his trash into cubes, and being himself, WALL-E makes a compelling case that humanity deserves a second chance. If we can make loveable robots like WALL-E and his sleek love interest EVE, then we really can’t be all that bad, can we? — AB

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Spike Jonze’s fourth feature as a director (and first as a solo screenwriter) is a gentle, melancholy yet incisive look at human relationships in an age of encroaching technology. Introverted Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix), whose job is composing personal letters for people who are unable to do so themselves, is depressed and lonely after the end of his marriage with Catherine (Rooney Mara). When he installs a new operating system at home, a virtual assistant, which he names Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson), is programmed to evolve on its own, and soon Theodore and Samantha begin an intimate relationship, even as Samantha begins to advance beyond human comprehension. More relevant than ever, Her presents Theodore and the other humans in the story as lost, unable to connect emotionally in a world where technology continues to keep us isolated. The love story between Theodore and Samantha is believably drawn, and Samantha’s final stages of development hint at unknown realms of consciousness we can only guess at. A marvelous, sad, and moving work of science fiction from a filmmaker absent for too long.— DON KAYE

7. Edge of Tomorrow (2014) Time loops are nearly always a character goldmine for the sci-fi genre, and Edge of Tomorrow is no different as it forces U.S. Army Major William Cage (Tom Cruise) into refining his mental and physical strength over countless loops in the midst of a futuristic battle to save the Earth from crafty aliens. Doug Liman’s risky movie (from the pen of Christopher McQuarrie) ended up being a cult hit, and while its conclusion was written during filming and is often considered the most underwhelming part of what is otherwise an action-packed sci-fi gem, it’s a treat to see Cruise playing against type as the hapless Cage, with Emily Blunt’s heroic Sgt. Rita Vrataski relentlessly putting the screws on him until he’s worthy. — KIRSTEN HOWARD

IMAGE CREDITS: TRISTAR PICTURES (LOOPER), TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX FILM CORPERATION (THE MARTIAN), WARNER BROS. (HER, EDGE OF TOMORROW, DUNE, MAD MAX: FURY ROAD), SONY PICTURES (DISTRICT 9, INCEPTION)/PHOTOFEST

9. HER (2013)

8. District 9 (2009) South African writer-director Neill Blomkamp came out of nowhere with his debut feature, where the inhabitants of an alien spaceship that appears over Johannesburg are confined to an internment camp called District 9. Plans on both sides–by the government to relocate the “prawns” and by the aliens to return to their ship–go awry as the inept bureaucrat (Sharlto Copley) leading the government operation inadvertently begins mutating into a “prawn” himself due to exposure to alien fuel. Shot in a semi-documentary fashion and relentlessly intense from start to finish, District 9’s reputation as one of the best sci-fi films of the 2000s is well-earned, using its premise to touch on racism, xenophobia, and segregation, with South Africa’s own shameful history of apartheid lurking in the background. Superb. — DK

6. Dune

(2021)

Long regarded as one of those “unfilmable” books, Frank Herbert’s classic novel about humanity’s far future was considered too dense and complex to truly translate to the screen. And indeed, it took three tries to get it right: following David Lynch’s disastrous 1984 feature and an ultimately disposable 2000 Sci-Fi Channel miniseries, director Denis Villeneuve nailed it with his epic big budget film, an ambitious movie that captures both the vast cosmic scope and eerie personal mysticism that has made this material so compelling for nearly 60 years. Working with an incredible cast that fit their roles to a tee, Villeneuve created a film that is largely faithful to the first half of Herbert’s book while bringing it to the screen with jaw-dropping visuals. Splitting the book into two parts was both a wise decision and a risky one, as the hero’s journey hinted at in the first half gives way to something much darker in the second. How Villeneuve handles that remains to be seen, but in the meantime, Dune is a glorious adaptation of a science fiction landmark. — DK

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5. EX MACHINA (2014) A machine achieves sentience. It’s one of the pillars of the science fiction genre since at least Metropolis. Yet it’s arguable no sci-fi has gone to the lengths of imagining the difficulty of achieving (and thereby proving) artificial intelligence that Alex Garland’s Ex Machina embarks on. Practically a parlor room mystery between a programmer (Domhnall Gleeson), a mad tech bro CEO genius (Oscar Isaac), and his creation, Ava (Alicia Vikander), this movie strips its elements down to the narrative basics and reaches back to an era where mood and aesthetics outweighed plot or special effects mechanics. It’s true Vikander’s Ava is a technical wonder but it’s her performance that invites true scrutiny and debate where the full implication of an AI future is considered.— DAVID CROW

3. Inception (2010)

2. Arrival (2016)

Inception is less concerned with the hard science that exists about its subject of choice—what dreams may come—than it is with using “dream logic” as a backdrop to craft one of the most satisfyingly knotty crowdpleasers in recent memory. At the end of the day, Inception is a heist movie that plays with narrative form and structure to fold in on itself, not unlike the cityscapes of Paris during one famous scene. Something of a cinematic manifesto for Nolan, Inception is also a thrillingly robust action movie that never talks down to viewers. It instead asks the audience to keep up as it uses “dream infiltration” to weave a labyrinthine adventure that is as dizzying as it is visceral whenever a train manifests on a city street or a hotel hallway rotates on its axis. — DC

Based on the Ted Chiang tale “Story of Your Life,” Arrival details the first contact between human and alien life through the science of linguistics. Language professor Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is recruited by the government—after a dozen massive ships appear around the globe—to attempt to decode the aliens’ tongue, find a way to communicate with them, and learn what they want. But Banks, haunted by memories of a terrible tragedy in her life, discovers that the aliens’ language unlocks her own mind in ways that she couldn’t have foreseen. Director Denis Villeneuve displays his knack for taking cerebral, literary sci-fi and turning it into a compelling, thrilling, and ultimately deeply moving theatrical experience. Filmed science fiction has rarely been better.— DK

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4. Interstellar (2014) Finishing higher on this list than many might have expected in 2014, there’s a strangely haunting quality to Christopher Nolan’s space epic that lingers nearly a decade later. As its enigmatic filmmaker’s most heartfelt and sentimental movie, Interstellar bends time and gravity itself—and even educated millions about the theory of relativity—in order to talk about the love between fathers and daughters. There’s of course more going on in Interstellar than just that. This is a secular end times myth which imagines a future where humanity is forced to save itself by adapting to life among the stars, and crafts it in old-fashioned adventure that would do Jules Verne proud. For here we have a collection of scientists who are steeped in the scientific research of our day (the film even correctly predicted what a black hole would look like) going on a wild quest where their kids get older but they stay the same age. How fitting they cast Matthew McConaughey. Also, that Hans Zimmer organ score soaked in religiosity is still one of the best filmic symphonies from this century. — DC

1. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) The Mad Max movies are often thought of as action films, and with good reason. But it’s worth noting that they are also a remarkable series of stories set in a fully developed, consistently engaging post-apocalyptic world as imaginative as anything we’ve seen in films more often referred to as sci-fi. All of which makes the franchise not just one of the great action properties but also one of cinema’s best sci-fi sagas. That is why director and co-writer George Miller’s return to the world of Max Rockatansky was so highly anticipated; here is one of the rare directors who gets the combination of action and sci-fi right. His long-awaited fourth film in the cycle, Mad Max: Fury Road, was a triumph in every way and a towering masterpiece in both genres. It expanded both the world and journey of Max (Tom Hardy), added a relevant, impressive, and multi-dimensional new character in the form of Furiosa (Charlize Theron), and delivered one stunning sequence after another, right up to its mind-blowing final chase. Mad Max: Fury Road is genre fare but it’s a magnificent example of the kind of immersive, senses-enveloping, imagination-stretching storytelling that blockbuster cinema and a director like Miller can do best. Its themes, particularly about the patriarchal traps placed around women, its imagery, and its sheer kineticism never get old. There’s a reason why this tops the list, and will likely continue to do so in years to come. It’s a stone cold classic. — DK

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T H E E B AY C O L L E C T O R ’ S G U I D E T O

CELEBRATING

OBI-WAN

KENOBI Feel the power of the Force with these great Obi-Wan Kenobi collectibles! BY CHRIS CUMMINS

This article is part of Collector’s Digest, an editorial series powered by eBay. Easily the most anticipated Star Wars project of 2022, Obi-Wan Kenobi is hitting Disney+ on May 25 (also the date on which George Lucas’ original movie, Star Wars, premiered back in 1977). As of now, we know tantalizingly little about the show other than the fact that it features Obi-Wan Kenobi—Ewan McGregor returning to the role he made his own in the Prequel Trilogy —keeping a distant watch over young Luke Skywalker while contending with the Empire’s continuing mission to eradicate the Jedi. Presiding over all this evil is none other than Obi-Wan’s former Padawan-turned-Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Vader, once again played by the prequels’ Hayden Christensen. You should expect a rematch between Obi-Wan and Anakin Skywalker following the latter’s brutal defeat

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against the lava-rich backdrop of Mustafar, which led to him becoming fully engulfed by the Dark Side. Additionally, expect appearances by Uncle Owen (Joel Edgerton, also returning) and Aunt Beru (Bonnie Piesse), as well as the Grand Inquisitor (Rupert Friend), a terrifying Jedi hunter. If the footage released so far for the six-episode miniseries is any indication, this is shaping up to be the coolest television event of 2022. It will also spark yet another wave of Star Wars mania that will have fans looking back on nearly 45 years of collectibles from a galaxy far, far away. With that in mind, we thought that we would provide you with this rundown of noteworthy merchandise featuring characters who will be showcased on Obi-Wan Kenobi.

OBI-WAN KENOBI PRODUCTS Let’s kick things off with Obi-Wan Kenobi himself. As initially portrayed by Alec Guinness, the character is both kindly and mysterious, with more than a hint of mischief behind his wizened eyes. He is the doorway through which audiences learn about the traditions and practices of the Jedi Knights. This is why a good chunk of Obi-Wan merch is representative of his nobility. Or at least it attempts to be.

The Obi-Wan Kenobi Tankard Crafted by sculptor Jim Rumph and sold by California Originals, this beautiful and durable stein can hold your beverage of choice—is anything cooler than drinking from ObiWan’s head?—while the Jedi gazes off into the distance. This was one of a series of deluxe drink vessels that Rumph produced in 1977, and it marks an early example of Star Wars merchandise.

Kenner’s Early Bird Certificate No one anticipated how successful Star Wars was going to be, and as such, there were only a few items initially available to consumers. (Resulting in Kenner’s infamous Early Bird Certificate cardboard promise for action figures to come— arguably the weirdest Christmas present of the 1970s). While this item is abundant on eBay, it will likely cost you a minimum of $125. Not that you can put a price on nostalgia or quality.

Kenner Obi-Wan Kenobi Action Figure Speaking of Kenner, let’s not overlook the importance of the Obi-Wan Kenobi action figure itself. With its divisive telescoping lightsaber and cool brown duds, this thing became the stuff of legend as kids paired old Ben against their Darth Vader figures for playground fights across the world. One of Kenner’s initial 12 Star Wars figures, this is a piece of pop culture history. Over the decades, there have been many Obi-Wan figures, both from the Original and Prequel Trilogies, yet there is a simplistic charm to the initial one that’s still heartwarming. There are countless other Obi-Wancentric products out there, from lightsaber hilts to fast-food premium posters to Funko Pops.

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DARTH VADER COLLECTIBLES Then there’s the Dark Lord of the Sith himself, Darth Vader. Ranking alongside Mickey Mouse and Superman in terms of one of the most merchandised characters ever, we could easily do an entire magazine just dedicated to the erstwhile Anakin Skywalker.

Darth Vader Ceramic Lamps The initial rush of Star Wars fandom resulted in a ton of knockoff products featuring the film’s characters. Our personal favorite is the Darth Vader ceramic lamp that still litters flea markets and comic cons to this day.

Darth Vader Action Figure

We can’t emphasize enough how Kenner’s Darth Vader action figure was instantly iconic. It was probably one of your all-time favorite toys.

Darth Vadar Lives Pin Did you know there’s an official product that looks like a phony? We are, of course, talking about 20th Century Fox’s own infamous “Darth Vadar Lives” pin. Rushed onto the market during the summer of 1977, this inexpensive and ubiquitous item is as much a confirmation that Vader would return as it is a landmark moment in inexcusable copy-editing mistakes.

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OR’S T C E L L O C DIGE S T

Star Wars #1 Marvel Comic

In the time before home video, the best way to experience Star Wars outside of movie theaters was through Marvel’s comic. Beginning with a six-issue adaptation of the film, Marvel’s Star Wars went on to showcase events and characters in a way that demonstrated how creative licensed comics can be. Marvel’s debut issue, and its presentation of Darth Vader in his glorious four-color wonder, remains a sight to behold all these decades later.

Proctor and Gamble Star Wars Poster As Star Wars mania raged in 1978, Proctor and Gamble offered three mail-away posters that could be redeemed through purchasing their products—the most striking of which chronicled the fateful final battle between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader. Illustrated by renowned artist Ken Goldammer, this poster features the pair’s fight overlaid on top of an image of a disco ball-esque Death Star. After all, it was the 1970s.

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AUNT BERU AND UNCLE OWEN When it comes to the supporting characters in Obi-Wan Kenobi, their merchandising isn’t nearly as vast. But there are still some interesting choices.

Owen and Beru Lars Action Figures Both Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru have been given their own standard action figures in Hasbro’s ongoing figure line (the latter comes with a pitcher of blue milk, natch).

Owen and Beru Skeletal Remains Figures Some enterprising and/ or demented fans over the years have created their own Beru and Owen figures that detail how they spend the majority of the Original Trilogy—i.e., as charred skeletons. These custom carded figures sporadically come up for auction, proving that there’s a tasteless dark side to fans’ humor, too.

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THE GRAND INQUISITOR One of the more recent additions to Star Wars canon is the Grand Inquisitor. The leader of Darth Vader’s feared order of Jedi executioners, the Grand Inquisitor seeks out and destroys any individual who survived Order 66.

OR’S T C E L L O C DIGE S T

Grand Inquisitor Funko Pop and Action Figure After debuting on Star Wars Rebels, the villain quickly became a fan favorite and was subsequently immortalized as a Hasbro action figure and a Funko Pop figure. If the reaction to his sinister appearance in the show’s trailer is any indication, the Grand Inquisitor is poised to become the breakout character of Obi-Wan Kenobi, so it’s probably best to snatch up his old merch now while it is still affordable.

Star Wars: Darth Vader #6 Comic The Grand Inquisitor made his comic debut In the sixth issue of Marvel’s acclaimed Darth Vader comic book. Both mysterious and visually striking, the character was able to look fearsome alongside of the Dark Lord of the Sith which is impressive, most impressive…. Unlike Obi-Wan’s training of Anakin, you can’t go wrong with any of these products. Check them out as you wait to see how the Jedi’s upcoming adventures turn out. And remember, the Force will be with you, always.

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MOUNT GEEKMORE: THE TOP FOUR OF EVERYTHING, LITERALLY SET IN STONE.

BATMAN’S BEST BADDIES Gotham’s top screen villains.

BY MIKE CECCHINI ILLUSTRATION BY JESSICA KOYNOCK

Danny DeVito as The Penguin

Heath Ledger as The Joker

Zoë Kravitz as Catwoman

Frank Gorshin as The Riddler

Perhaps no villain better sums up Tim Burton’s time in Gotham than Danny DeVito’s Penguin. Batman Returns takes Oswald Cobblepot, long portrayed as an awkward crime boss with an umbrella fetish, and turns him into the stuff of nightmares: a deformed vision of rage with sharp teeth, whose soul is ultimately even uglier than his appearance. DeVito’s performance would have been intense enough even without the makeup.

Heath Ledger’s Joker is not only one of the most compelling supervillain performances ever put on film, but he’s also one of the best movie villains of a generation. In Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, Joker is the perfect mix: alternately a master criminal, mischievous agent of chaos, and unhinged killer. Never has Batman faced a more terrifying foe. Ledger’s performance is an achievement that hasn’t been matched.

Let’s be clear: there has never been a bad live-action Catwoman. But Zoë Kravitz is the first to truly embody the modern totality of Selina Kyle. As the first screen Catwoman to be presented as Batman’s equal, the Selina we meet in The Batman is not villainous, more than capable of getting in and out of trouble on her own, and would probably have sought her own destiny without ever crossing paths with the Dark Knight.

The first live-action interpretation of a Batman comics villain remains one of the best. There’s a reason that the Riddler, a character who had only appeared in three comic book stories before 1966, became a Rogues Gallery mainstay after Frank Gorshin brought him to vivid life on the classic Batman TV series. Manic and unpredictable, Gorshin’s Riddler is a giggling livewire, with true menace bubbling underneath.

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