If anyone could make the Dark Side sound good, it was James Earl Jones. The actor, who died Monday at the age of 93, provided the voice for Darth Vader in more than a dozen Star Wars properties, from A New Hope to Star Tours. He made the Force sound …
Read More »The Untold Story of How Ridley Scott Saw 'Star Wars'—and Ended Up Making 'Alien'
In 1977, still smarting from the box office failure of his first film, The Duellists, Ridley Scott, ever the steely Northumberland pragmatist, decided that he needed to pick himself up and do what he’d always done throughout his career: He would put his head down and barrel forward with work. …
Read More »'The Acolyte' and the Long-Awaited Death of Review-Bombing
You know you’ve gone too deep into YouTube fandom when you can’t remember which dude with an expensive microphone told you what while speaking straight to camera. Still, earlier this week, that was the particular sarlacc pit I had been sucked into. Word had spread that fans were review-bombing The …
Read More »Shockbuster Season: Why the Death of the Summer Movie Is a Good Thing
Forty-seven years ago today, everything changed. True believers might already know what it was: On May 25, 1977, Star Wars hit movie theaters and irrevocably altered nearly everything pertaining to the act of moviegoing. Lines around the block, overly excited nerds, an appetite for action figures. Star Wars taught Hollywood …
Read More »RIP ‘Red vs. Blue.’ Machinima Is Gone—but Its Legacy Is Everywhere
Red vs. Blue is officially over. On Tuesday, Warner Bros. Discovery released Red vs. Blue: Restoration, the final installment in the long-running saga that was once at the forefront of a whole new form of entertainment: web videos created from in-game footage. Machinima signaled a new world where that footage—of …
Read More »What Kind of Battery Would You Need to Power a Lightsaber?
When you think of Star Wars, what's the first image that comes to mind? Lightsabers, right? Everyone loves lightsabers. You can buy some nice replicas, and there are even classes on lightsaber training. But what about an actual working lightsaber? What it would take to make a real one? Today, …
Read More »Meet the Disney Imagineer Building You a Real-Life Holodeck
Lanny Smoot builds lightsabers for a living. No, not like the ones kids used to create with flashlights and plastic tubes—realistic extendable ones, with penumbral edges and laser-blocking abilities. Like an actual Jedi. He’s whipped up giant electromagnetic eyes, too, as well as an omnidirectional HoloTile floor, which adapts to …
Read More »'The Mandalorian' Is Getting a Movie—Which It Should Have Been All Along
Today in news we weren’t expecting in the second week of 2024: The Mandalorian is getting a movie. Titled The Mandalorian & Grogu, the movie, according to Lucasfilm, will begin production this year with Jon Favreau, who created the TV series and served as showrunner, set to direct. This is …
Read More »Taylor Swift, Star Wars, 'Stranger Things,' and Deadpool Have One Man in Common
When I meet Shawn Levy on an August day in Brooklyn, I expect him to be sweating. Why? For one reason, it’s sticky-humid outside, and I’m dripping like a swamp creature. The other is that the big blockbuster Levy has been filming these past few months, Deadpool 3, might not …
Read More »The Creator of 'Andor' Is Fired Up About the Streaming Data Wars
Frank D. Gilroy, the father of Andor creator Tony Gilroy, went on strike in 1960. The elder Gilroy, a Bronx-born screenwriter who would later win a Pulitzer Prize for his play The Subject Was Roses, was part of the union effort that secured residual payments for screenwriters for television reruns. …
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