Spider-Noir is a strange mix of the familiar and the strange. On one hand, you have a web-spinner doing battle against classic villains like Sandman and Tombstone. On the other, the hero here is Ben Reilly a.k.a. the Spider, a superhero who turned private investigator after a tragedy took away the love of his life. And that doesn’t even get into how the series nods to classic film noirs, starting with Humphrey Bogart staples The Big Sleep and The Maltese Falcon. For star Nicolas Cage, Bogart is the best guide to mixing hard-boiled detective fiction with spectacular superhero adventures. “The…

John Steinbeck’s 1952 novel East of Eden is being adapted yet again to question if identity truly is based on what you choose. Now Netflix has released a trailer for the upcoming limited series starring Florence Pugh that makes clear it’s choosing a new narration of the original story.  The novel follows the lives of the Trask and Hamilton families across a multigenerational, interconnected saga about good, evil, greed, violence, and neglect. The story, which takes place between the American Civil War and the end of World War I, begins with Adam Trask and his half-brother Charles Trask, whose father’s…

Like any superhero concept that’s existed for more than 80 years, Green Lantern has undergone some significant changes. Most notably, the Green Lantern introduced in 1940 had a magical ring vulnerable to wood, while today’s Green Lanterns are sci-fi superhero space cops with power rings. Furthermore, some beats in the Green Lantern story have aged poorly, and get retconned or ignored over time. One would expect Chris Mundy, creator of the HBO series Lanterns to make liberal use of retconning, choosing not to adapt the time that Green Lantern Hal Jordan repeatedly used a racial slur to refer to his…

Doctor Who has a new streaming home, but not quite in the way that fans were likely expecting. AMC+ has acquired the streaming rights to the popular sci-fi series, and most of the show’s “reboot” era—over 150 episodes from 2005 to 2022—will be available on the streamer from June 11. But his news will likely have surprisingly little impact (at least for the moment) on the franchise’s larger future, a fact that is sure to frustrate those still desperate for any crumb of news about what’s next for the beloved time-traveling space adventure. The deal covers the bulk of Doctor…

The past few years have been strange for Superman fans. On the big screen, you had David Corenswet famously convincing James Gunn to put the Man of Tomorrow’s underwear on the outside for 2024’s Superman. On the small screen, the second season of My Adventures with Superman gave Kal-El new duds with undies on the inside. The depictions once again got fans arguing about the Man of Steel’s best look. Yet, just when things looked bleak for Team Visible Underwear, the trailer for season 3 of My Adventures with Superman has arrived, as if on a quest for peace. In…

Ahsoka Tano is finally slated to return to Disney+ subscribers’ screens in early 2027. But now that Ahsoka season 2 has a general release time period, the future of live-action Star Wars television is starting to take shape — and it might all hang on the Togruta jedi. From Ahsoka season 1’s premiere in August 2023 to now, live-action projects made for Disney+ are in a significantly different environment. When new episodes of Ahsoka were dropping weekly, The Mandalorian was still a show and not a movie, the last episode of Obi-Wan Kenobi had released just a year before, and…

The long-awaited (and long-teased) fight between Battle Beast and Conquest is finally hitting shelves June 17 in Invincible Universe: Battle Beast Issue #10. Readers will finally learn how Battle Beast ends up in the Viltrumite prison Allen releases him from, all while enjoying the carnage-filled brawl between two of the strongest characters in Invincible. Robert Kirkman and Ryan Ottley’s Battle Beast comic spinoff follows the titular galaxy-hopping warrior as he pursues his ultimate goal: death in glorious combat against a superior opponent. Since the end of the original Invincible comic run, and with reignited fervor spurred on by the Prime…

The following contains Major spoilers for Good Omens season 3. Though many of us were nervous that this day might never actually come, the Good Omens finale is here and brings the beloved story of the angel Aziraphale (Michael Sheen) and the demon Crowley (David Tennant) to an end. But will fans be satisfied with the ending they waited so long to see?  It’s certainly true that much of “The Finale” feels rushed — a side effect of being forced to condense a story originally intended to be told over six episodes into 90 minutes — and occasionally has to…

This article contains spoilers for Mortal Kombat II. The 2021 Mortal Kombat film did a lot right. It bought Joe Taslim, Tadanobu Asano, and Hiroyuki Sanada into the franchise, it put game-accurate fatalities onto the big screen, and it gave us Josh Lawson as a wise-cracking Kano. But the movie also made some strange decisions, most of which director Simon McQuoid corrected in the sequel. Mortal Kombat II did away with arcana and new character Cole Young (the latter in a more spectacular form than the former), and, more importantly, put a Mortal Kombat tournament in the Mortal Kombat movie.…

When Marvel released Moon Knight on Disney+ back in 2022, it was a curious thing. Caught somewhere between needing to include the rather expected CGI battles of a Marvel show and its desire to meditate on the chaos of living with dissociative identity disorder, Marc Spector’s six-episode miniseries divided viewers who either couldn’t get enough of the antihero’s hijinks or felt exhausted by them, with star Oscar Isaac’s English accent, based on idiosyncratic U.K. presenter Karl Pilkington, becoming a surprisingly large part of fan discussions about the actor’s portrayal. Mortal Kombat II writer Jeremy Slater was originally brought on to…

This article contains spoilers for The Punisher: One Last Kill. It takes less than five minutes for The Punisher: One Last Kill to kill a puppy. The second scene follows an unhoused veteran (John Douglas Thompson) sitting down to enjoy a meal with his dog. That’s when a group of young men arrive to punch him in the face, steal his hat, and toss his pet in front of an oncoming truck. Thematically, the scene exists to demonstrate that the world is an ugly, cruel place. But if, by chance, you happened to look down when the dog met its…

Some reactionary types have long charged the movie business with being godless. But when it comes to Christopher Nolan‘s The Odyssey, they may be right… more or less. In a Time profile about the director and his take on Homer’s epic, Nolan revealed that he decided against casting for Poseidon, Zeus, or other gods who intercede in the affairs of Odysseus, Telemachus, and Agamemnon. “I became more interested in the idea that to people in that period, evidence of gods was everywhere,” Nolan admitted, pointing to the power of modern cinema. “The wonderful thing about cinema, and IMAX in particular,…

Stop me if you’ve heard this one. One of the big two comic book publishers is launching a new imprint, one that puts a dark spin on existing characters. Living in a world driven by a fundamental evil, these heroes lack some of their defining features. And yet, the contrast only gives the heroes a chance to restore hope. Up until recently, that description fit only the Absolute Universe, DC Comics‘ wildly successful spinoff. But yesterday, Marvel announced the Midnight Universe, a new take on some of their most important heroes. “The Midnight Universe draws in longtime fans and newcomers…

Everybody knows about zombies, right? They’re flesh-eating monsters, reanimated corpses that rise from the grave to devour the living, feasting especially on their brains. But every horror fan can tell you that version of the monster came from George A. Romero, whose 1969 Night of the Living Dead defined the zombie genre—even if he intended his monsters to be ghouls. Director Maya Annik Bedward wants to set the record straight with the documentary Black Zombie by exploring the phenomenon’s roots in Haitian culture. “In Haiti everyone knows about the zombie, and what it represents for them. Stories of zombies and…

Some character deaths are heavily foreshadowed, giving audiences time to prepare for what is coming. Others hit you like a punch in the gut. The shock comes not only from losing the character, but from realizing the story is willing to take risks. Here are fifteen character deaths that took us totally by surprise. IMDb Ned Stark – Game of Thrones The character seemed positioned as the long term lead of the series. His sudden execution completely changed audience expectations about who was truly safe in the story. IMDb Newt – Alien 3 Revealing the character’s death at the beginning…

It might not quite be Friday the 13th, but Thursday the 15th will be a homecoming for the Voorhees brood after nearly 20 years in the wilderness. Indeed, it’s now been confirmed that Oct. 15 will mark the return of Jason Voorhees—or at least the community that made him, including dear old mamma via the new A24-produced television series Crystal Lake. The show, which appears to be a prequel/reimagining of the harried “lore” we ascribe to the Friday the 13th franchise, is confirmed for that October launch on the Peacock streaming service, and furthermore has announced Linda Cardellini in the…

We all know that the Fast & Furious franchise is about family. We all also know that too much family can be a bad thing. But Vin Diesel is not, nor has he ever been, like the rest of us. As befitting a guy whose character Dom Toretto has an ever-expanding family tree, Diesel clearly thinks that big family is big fun. That’s why he appeared on stage for the NBCUniversal upfronts to announce that Peacock will stream four television shows set in the world of cars that can go to space. “For the last decade, we have realized that…

In The Dark Knight Rises, Bane tells Batman that he was born in the shadows. Which is, of course, a lie. Bane was born in the comic books, specifically Batman: Vengeance of Bane #1 (1993), by writer Chuck Dixon and artist Graham Nolan. That comic established Bane as a revolutionary from the Latin American island Santa Prisca, a tactical genius in a luchador mask who augmented his remarkable strength with the drug venom. But The Dark Knight Rises remade Bane into a slightly different character, one mostly defined by the incredible vocal decision made by actor Tom Hardy. Drawing inspiration…

My Brother’s Killer solves a murder case gone cold. The documentary, directed by Rachel Mason, traces the 36 years since the brutal murder of 25-year-old William “Billy London” Arnold Newton in West Hollywood.  Mason is an Emmy-nominated director known for Circus of Books, a 2019 documentary featuring her parents’ experience owning a gay pornography bookstore in West Hollywood. She first learned about Billy from a 1990 article in The Advocate.  “I couldn’t let it go in my own mind,” Mason says. “While I was pursuing this documentary, I learned about a podcast called The Dinner Party Show with Christopher Rice…

The Punisher is one of Marvel‘s most popular and complicated heroes. Driven by his trauma in the military and the murder of his family, Frank Castle lives only to deliver (capital) punishment to the guilty. With turns on series such as One Life to Live, Who’s the Boss?, Ugly Betty, and Poker Face, Judith Light is a television darling. In short, the two seem to have little in common. And yet, Light will not only appear in the Marvel Special Presentation The Punisher: One Last Kill, but will also play one of the most unpleasant villains in the antihero’s rogues…