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I recently partnered with IMAX to do a sponsored video on TikTok for the new concert film, Twenty One Pilots: More Than We Ever Imagined. As some of you may know, I’m a big Twenty One Pilots fan and a big IMAX fan, so this was an exciting cross section of my interests!

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Thanks to this amazing community. I appreciate you all!

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The Oscar nominations were announced recently, and the 10 nominees for Best Picture are:

Bugonia

F1

Frankenstein

Hamnet

Marty Supreme

One Battle After Another

The Secret Agent

Sentimental Value

Sinners

Train Dreams

But what is “best picture?” How does this all work, and WHY should we care?

The Oscars are the awards given out by the The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which is a group of over 10,500 people that work professionally in the film industry.

There are 19 different branches in the Academy that each represent a different area of expertise. They definitely don’t cover every possible job, but they do include many of the major roles involved in making a movie.

1. Actors

2. Animation

3. Casting Directors

4. Cinematographers

5. Costume Designers

6. Directors

7. Documentary

8. Executives

9. Film Editors

10. Makeup Artists and Hairstylists

11. Marketing and Public Relations

12. Music

13. Producers

14. Production and Technology

15. Production Design

16. Short Films

17. Sound

18. Visual Effects

19. Writers

Now you might be tempted to think each of these branches equates to a specific Academy Award, but that’s not quite how it works. For instance, there’s a branch of Executives, but we don’t have a “Best Executive” award. There are currently 24 different award categories:

Best…

1. Picture

2. Director

3. Actor

4. Actress

5. Supporting Actor

6. Supporting Actress

7. Adapted Screenplay

8. Original Screenplay

9. Animated Feature

10. International Feature

11. Documentary Feature

12. Animated Short

13. Casting

14. Cinematography

15. Costume Design

16. Documentary Short

17. Film Editing

18. Live Action Short

19. Makeup and Hairstyling

20. Original Score

21. Original Song

22. Production Design

23. Sound

24. Visual Effects

This list changes from time to time, for instance, Best Casting is a new category.

There are certain qualifications that a movie needs to meet to be nominated for an Oscar. For instance, most categories require a feature length movie to be over 40 minutes and to be screened in theaters three times a day for at least a week, with one of those screenings being between 6pm and 10pm. And it doesn’t even need to be in very many theaters, if it plays in a few major cities that’s enough. Which is why a movie like Frankenstein is able to be nominated, even if it never even made it to a theater near you.

So by the end of the year, there’s a list of eligible movies that gets sent out to Academy members. For most of the categories, only members from the branch that correlates with the award would vote for a nomination. So members of the directors branch would vote to nominate other directors.

For the biggest and most prestigious award, “Best Picture” the entire Academy gets to vote. And some branches only get to vote in that category because they don’t have an award that correlates with their branch.

Once all the nominees are selected and it comes time to choose the actual winner, the entire Academy can vote for all categories. Most of the categories determine the winner by plurality, which just means whoever gets the most votes wins.

BUT that’s not how Best Picture works.

For that, the members rank the 10 nominees. Whichever movie gets over 50% of the votes wins. If a single movie doesn’t get over 50%, then the movie with the least votes is eliminated and people who voted for that as their top choice have their votes added to the film that was next on their list. If their second choice was eliminated, then their vote counts for their third pick and so on.

To my knowledge, there’s never been an exact definition given for what “Best Picture” means. Obviously each voter gets to pick their personal preference, but are they just choosing the one they enjoyed the most? Or is it the one they believe best utilized all the different aspects of filmmaking to tell its story? Or is it the movie their friend made?

So… The Academy Awards is essentially the film industry awarding itself. And yes, there’s a lot of inner conflicts that go on, not only because the Oscars are prestigious, but because they can often help bolster careers for people and profits for movies. All that said, we can view the Oscars as people in the film industry awarding their own peers.

As opposed to something like the Golden Globes. Those awards are given out for both film and TV by a voting body of international entertainment journalists. So the Golden Globes are essentially given by the press.

Then you have the Critics Choice Awards, which are given out by a voting body of over 600 members that represents journalists and critics. Then each of the different unions or guilds that represent certain crafts will give awards, like the Screen Actors Guild, or the Writers Guild.

And we could go on and on, because there’s tons of different organizations that give out awards during this time of year.

So why do the Oscars usually feel like they’re the most prestigious award? Well a big part of it is historical legacy, they’ve existed since 1929. And since it’s the people who professionally make movies that vote for the movies they think were the best of the year, it can also feel like they’re the most knowledgeable. Aside from that, the Oscars have always been heavily publicized and as I mentioned earlier, they can have big financial impacts because of that.

But most of us in the general audience will not be members of the Academy. So why should we care about the Oscars?

Well first off, we should always keep in mind that the Oscars are not some definitive authority on good movies. It’s actually impossible to declare that a movie was the best of the year in any official way, because that’s subjective.

BUT… at the same time, it’s no small feat to be one of these 10 movies that were nominated out of hundreds of possibilities each year.

Movies act like a window through time. In the future, people will look back on 2025 and one of the tools they’ll use to learn about us is the art that was created, recognized, and consumed.

So, if we take a look at these 10 movies we can take a cultural snapshot. We can consider what these movies are about, who they appealed to, and why they’re being recognized. By answering those questions we can see a kind of reflection of our current culture.

Which is why, as we lead up to the Academy Awards in March, I’ll be doing breakdowns of each of the 10 Best Picture nominees. Specifically, we’ll be looking at them through the lens of why I think they were nominated.

I did this last year as well, and one of the major themes I had caught onto was power dynamics, and specifically the abuse of power. These stories often featured characters that were at the mercy of powerful people, and rarely did those powerful people choose to use their position to help anyone.

I’m curious to see if we’ll find another shared theme amongst our movies this year.

As we go along I’d love to hear your thoughts and insights on these movies and I’d love to hear what you think defines “Best Picture”. I’m looking forward to chatting with you as we go through these movies!

Here’s what to know about movies getting a wide release in theaters this month!

Technically we already had our first weekend in January, but because it was so close to the holidays, most of the movies available were ones that had been released in late December. Not many studios want to compete with big holiday release movies like Avatar: Fire and Ash.

But there was one exception.

Weekend of January 2nd

The Plague

R | 1h 38m | Director/Writer: Charlie Polinger | Starring: Joel Edgerton, Everett Blunck, Kayo Martin

This is a psychological thriller about a group of middle school boys at a water polo camp over the summer. It looks like it’s the first full length movie from the writer and director, Charlie Polinger, who has mostly done short films before this, so that’s cool. If this came to a theater near you on the 2nd, you can probably still catch it this weekend!

Weekend of January 9th

Primate

R | 1h 29m | Director: Johannes Roberts | Writers: Johannes Roberts, Ernest Riera | Starring: Johnny Sequoyah, Troy Kotsur, Jess Alexander

Primate is a horror movie where a family’s adopted pet chimpanzee starts to attack them and their friends. Without spoiling too much I think there is a specific reason the chimp starts to attack people, so I don’t think the movie is trying to vilify chimpanzees… if you were worried about that.

It’s directed by Johannes Roberts who also directed 47 Meters Down and Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City.

Greenland 2: Migration

PG-13 | 1h 38m | Director: Ric Roman Waugh | Writers: Mitchell LaFortune, Chris Sparling | Starring: Gerard Butler, Morena Baccarin, Roman Griffith Davis

This is the direct sequel to 2020’s Greenland, which might’ve flown a bit under the radar since the pandemic resulted in its release on streaming instead of theatrical. Both movies star Gerard Butler and the first movie revolves around his character trying to save his family as a comet heads for Earth. I won’t spoil the movie but obviously the sequel happens sometime… after that. So this is going to be a disaster/survival thriller.

The director, Ric Roman Waugh also directed the first movie.

I Was a Stranger

PG-13 | 1h 43m | Director/Writer: Brandt Andersen | Starring: Yasmine Al Massri, Yahya Mahayni, Omar Sy

I Was a Stranger is a fictional drama that’s set amongst the Syrian refugee crisis. It follows multiple different families in an interconnecting story. The director, Brandt Andersen, has produced a lot of movies but this is his directorial debut.

Is This Thing On?

R | 2h 1m | Director: Bradley Cooper | Writers: Bradley Cooper, Will Arnett, Mark Chappell | Starring: Will Arnett, Laura Dern, Andra Day

Is This Thing On? stars Will Arnett and Laura Dern as a recently divorced couple who are now trying to navigate their new lives. For Arnett’s character, that includes picking up the hobby of doing stand up comedy.

The movie is co-written and directed by Bradley Cooper, who most people know as an actor, but this will be his 3rd movie as a director after A Star Is Born and Maestro.

Weekend of January 16th

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple

R | 1h 49m | Director: Nia DaCosta | Writer: Alex Garland | Starring: Jack O’Connell, Ralph Fiennes, Emma Laird

This is technically the 4th movie in the series but it’s more like the 2nd.

28 Days Later came out in 2002 and depicted a man waking up in the hospital 28 days after the “rage virus” has devastated Britain. The virus doesn’t technically turn people into zombies, but it’s a similar vibe. A sequel called 28 Weeks Later came out in 2007, and then we got 28 Years Later just back in June of last year.

When they made 28 Years Later, it was part of a new planned trilogy. And The Bone Temple is the second movie of this new trilogy. I don’t know that you really need to be familiar with the first two movies, but since The Bone Temple directly follows 28 Years Later, you’ll probably need to watch that one at least.

The movie is written by Alex Garland who wrote 28 Years Later and the original 28 Days Later, along with tons of other movies like Ex Machina and Annihilation.

It’s directed by Nia DaCosta who also did Candyman and The Marvels.

Charlie the Wonderdog

PG | 1h 35m | Director: Shea Wageman | Writers: Steve Ball, Raul Inglis, Shea Wageman | Starring: Owen Wilson, Sebastian Billingsley-Rodriguez, Tabitha St. Germain

An animated movie that stars Owen Wilson as a dog with superpowers. It’s distributed by a company called Viva Pictures and to my knowledge, they’ve mostly done direct to video movies, but recently they’ve been releasing more theatrically. Especially animated movies that were produced outside of the US. This one was animated by an independent studio in Canada, for instance.

Night Patrol

R | 1h 44m | Director: Ryan Prows | Writers: Tim Cairo, Jake Gibson, Shaye Ogbonna | Starring: Dermot Mulroney, Justin Long, Jermaine Fowler

Night Patrol is a horror thriller set in LA where a cop discovers a secret threat in his childhood neighborhood. And there might just be some vampires involved.

Dead Man’s Wire

R | 1h 45m | Director: Gus Van Sant | Writer: Austin Kolodney | Starring: Dacre Montgomery, Bill Skarsgard, Al Pacino

Dead Man’s Wire is a crime thriller directed by Gus Van Sant who directed movies like Good Will Hunting and Milk. It’s inspired by the real life story of a hostage standoff that occurred in Indianapolis in 1977.

All You Need Is Kill

R | 1h 22m | Directors: Ken’ichiro Akimoto, Yukinori Nakamura | Writers: Yuichiro Kido, Hiroshi Sakurazaka | Starring: Ai Mikami, Natsuki Hanae, Mo Chugakusei

An anime adaptation of the Japanese sci-fi novel. We’ve actually already seen the Hollywood version of this adaptation with Edge of Tomorrow in 2014. The movie made pretty significant changes to the original story, so this will probably be a more loyal adaptation of the source material.

Weekend of January 23rd

Mercy

PG-13 | 1h 40m | Director: Timur Bekmambetov | Writer: Marco van Belle | Starring: Chris Pratt, Rebecca Ferguson, Kali Reis

A sci-fi thriller set in a near future where AI is in charge of our justice system. One of the detectives that has advocated for the AI program is then ironically accused of murdering his wife and is put through the justice system himself where you have 90 minutes to prove to the AI judge that you’re innocent.

It stars Chris Pratt as the detective and Rebecca Ferguson as the AI Judge. The director, Timur Bekmambetov also did Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and the 2016 Ben-Hur remake.

The Testament of Ann Lee

R | 2h 17m | Director: Mona Fastvold | Writers: Brady Corbet, Mona Fastvold | Starring: Amanda Seyfried, Lewis Pullman, Thomasin McKenzie

This is one of those movies that the studio hopes will be an award contender. That’s why it got a limited release back in December so that it could qualify for 2025’s award circuit and build buzz going into award season.

It’s a historical drama but also a musical. It stars Amanda Seyfried as Ann Lee who founded the Shakers, which if you’ll remember from US history class, was a religious movement that operated in the US in the late 1700s.

The director, Mona Fastvold is probably best known for her work on the mini series The Crowded Room, but she also co-wrote this movie with Brady Corbet who directed The Brutalist.

Return to Silent Hill

R | 1h 46m | Director: Christophe Gans | Writers: Christophe Gans, Hiroyuki Owaku, William Josef Schneider | Starring: Jeremy Irvine, Hannah Emily Anderson, Robert Strange

Return to Silent Hill is technically the 3rd movie in the Silent Hill series, but from what I understand this movie has a standalone story. These movies are based on the popular video game series and this entry will specifically be adapting Silent Hill 2. It’s a horror story about a man that is drawn to the mysterious town of Silent Hill when looking for his wife.

It’s directed by Christophe Gans who also directed the first Silent Hill movie which was released back in 2006.

Clika

R | 1h 22m | Director: Michael Greene | Writers: Michael Greene, Sean McBride, Ski-ter Jones | Starring: Nana Ponceleon, Cory Aycock, Josh Benitez

Our last movie for this weekend might actually be a limited release. Generally I like to keep this list to wide releases so that you can actually go see the movies no matter where you live, but this one was unclear, so take it with a grain of salt.

Clika tells the story of a musician who has one of his songs go viral and tries to capitalize on that success and achieve his dreams, but this leads him into some dangerous situations.

Weekend of January 30th

Send Help

Not Yet Rated | 1h 53m | Director: Sam Raimi | Writers: Damian Shannon, Mark Swift | Starring: Rachel McAdams, Dylan O’Brien, Bruce Campbell

Send Help is the newest horror/thriller from Sam Raimi who of course directed the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man movies, as well as many others, including The Evil Dead.

It stars Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien as work colleagues who end up in a survival situation where their power dynamic is flipped. I don’t really want to say more than that because I think the premise looks fun and it seems to me like the trailers are giving away too much.

Iron Lung

R | 2h 7m | Director: Mark Fischbach | Writers: Mark Fischbach, David Szymanski | Starring: Mark Fischbach, Troy Baker, Sean McLoughlin

Iron Lung is a new horror movie that is written by, directed by and stars Mark Fischbach, a popular YouTuber also known as Markiplier. It’s an adaptation of a video game and is set in a future where all the habitable planets in the universe have disappeared. This will be Mark Fischbach’s feature debut.

The Moment

R | 1h 43m | Director: Aidan Zamiri | Writers: Aidan Zamiri, Bertie Brandes, Charli XCX | Starring: Charli XCX, Alexander Skarsgard, Rachel Sennott

The Moment is kind of a confusing movie. It’s apparently a mockumentary, so it’s not a real story, but it pretends like it’s following Charli XCX on tour. And Charli XCX plays herself. When I say “mockumentary” we typically think of funny ones like What We Do in the Shadows or The Office, but tonally this is more like a drama or thriller.

The director, Aidan Zamiri, has mostly done music videos, so this seems like a movie that is deliberately blurring the line between fiction and reality.

Shelter

R | 1h 47m | Director: Ric Roman Waugh | Writer: Ward Parry | Starring: Jason Statham, Bill Nighy, Naomi Ackie

And lastly we have Shelter, which also might not be getting a super wide release but we’ll just have to see. This is the latest Jason Statham action thriller. It follows a man that gets more than he bargained for when he rescues a girl on a remote Scottish island. But of course, he has some history that allows him to be really good at fighting bad guys.

Funny enough this is directed by Ric Roman Waugh, who also directed Greenland 2. So this guy has two movies coming out in a single month. Kinda wild.

And that wraps it up! Which movies are you looking forward to? Let me know!

Just in case you’d like to see my credentials, this is me in an OFFICIAL video by Netflix where “superfans” (that’s me, I’m the superfan) got to taste test tie-in snacks.

Stranger Things released its first season back in 2016, and quickly became one of the most popular TV series of all time.

But when creating the series, the Duffer Brothers were mostly influenced by movies. They didn’t want the feeling of episodic TV, they wanted their show to feel like one big movie – the same kinds of movies they grew up watching in the 80s. They not only set the story in the 80s, but gave it the same vibe as a lot of the material they encountered growing up, primarily the works of Steven Spielberg and Stephen King.

So 80s nostalgia plays a big factor, but it’s more than that, it’s the Duffers recreating the types of stories THEY wanted to see. And it all started with The Vanishing of Will Byers.

Season 1

On November 6, 1983, in the small quiet town of Hawkins, Indiana, Will encounters a terrifying creature and disappears from our world.

Throughout Season 1, the rest of our characters are essentially trying to solve this same mystery - where is Will Byers? First, are Will’s friends - Mike, Dustin and Lucas.

While searching for Will in the woods, they happen upon a strange girl who calls herself Eleven. She doesn’t talk much, but she has that number tattooed on her arm, along with a shaved head and best of all – telekinetic powers.

The boys soon realize that Eleven’s appearance and Will’s disappearance must be connected. Our next group is the pairing of Joyce, Will’s mother and Jim Hopper, the town Sheriff.

In Hopper’s investigation, all clues eventually lead back to the Hawkins National Laboratory. Supposedly a research site for the US Dept of Energy, Hopper soon starts to suspect they’re covering up a massive conspiracy.

And our third group are the teenagers, Nancy Wheeler, Mike’s older sister, her boyfriend Steve Harrington, and Jonathan Byers, Will’s older brother.

They get pulled into this story when Nancy drags her friend Barb to Steve’s house for a party. Nancy and Steve go upstairs for some alone time leaving Barb. She is then attacked by some creature and disappears – just like Will.

Hopper’s investigation eventually leads him and Joyce to a woman named Terry Ives. Terry is now in a catatonic state and lives with her sister, but she was once part of some government experiments. Before she became like this, Terry used to claim that the government took her daughter Jane from her. And who do we think Jane might be?

Back at Mike’s house, Eleven recognizes a picture of Will and tries to explain to the boys that Will is hiding from the monster. Using their Dungeons & Dragons knowledge as a metaphor, the boys decide to call it The Demogorgon.

From their science teacher, the boys learn about the concept of alternate dimensions – that other worlds exist alongside ours but just aren’t accessible by humans - unless we could open a gate through time and space.

And this is where we start to learn more about Eleven through flashbacks. She’s been living at the Hawkins Lab as part of some kind of secret government experiment led by Dr. Martin Brenner, who Eleven calls “Papa.” Turns out, Eleven can do a lot more than throw things around with her mind.

Using a sensory deprivation tank to amplify her powers, Eleven can use telepathy to tap into other people’s minds. When she does this, it’s like she enters a void and can see and hear that person.

Because its the 80s, the government of course uses this to have her spy on agents in the Soviet Union. But Eleven’s powers are even stronger than that. She is able to see into an alternate dimension – a world that’s a mirror to our own, but decaying. The boys call it — The Upside Down.

While looking for a Soviet spy, Eleven accidentally encounters the Demogorgon. She’s so terrified that her powers open a tear in space time, opening a gate between our dimension and the Upside Down.

And it is this world that both Will and Barb were pulled into when they were attacked by the Demogorgon.

Now the government goes to great lengths to cover all of this up. They assassinate people that have come across Eleven. They brainwashed Terry Ives. They even FAKE Will’s death so that everyone will stop looking for him.

All of our main characters come together and connect all the dots. They build a makeshift sensory deprivation tank for Eleven to find Will and Barb in the Upside Down. Unfortunately, Barb is a goner. But Will is alive, hiding in his fort.

Joyce and Hopper go to Hawkins lab and negotiate a deal with the government. If they can go through the gate and get Will from the Upside Down, they’ll keep all of this quiet so the conspiracy isn’t exposed.

Meanwhile, Jonathan and Nancy determine that the only way Joyce and Hopper will survive is if they distract the Demogorgon. So they lay a bunch of traps for it at the Byers house. Steve shows up, hoping to reconnect with Nancy. He’s in way over his head but ends up fighting the Demogorgon alongside them.

The kids stay behind to keep Eleven hidden, but the government tracks them down. To protect her new friends, Eleven wipes out the entire squad of agents. But this unfortunately attracts the Demogorgon. Which doesn’t turn out so well for Dr. Brenner. Eleven then sacrifices herself to destroy the Demogorgon and save her friends.

Joyce and Hopper manage to find Will and bring him back to this dimension. But we get a hint that Will may not be saved after all, when he coughs up a slug-like creature.

Season 2

It’s now 1984. While the group is thrilled to have Will back, Mike is heartbroken over losing his first love, Eleven. Dustin and Lucas however are looking to add someone new to the group – Max Mayfield who just moved to Hawkins from California.

As part of the deal Hopper made with the Hawkins laboratory, Will is still under their supervision, but Dr. Brenner has been replaced by Dr. Owens who seems much nicer.

Will reports seeing visions of a giant shadowy, spider-like monster in the Upside Down, but the doctors chalk it up to PTSD.

Meanwhile, Hopper has a secret up his sleeve. He returns to his remote cabin where Eleven is waiting for him. Turns out, when she defeated the Demogorgon, she transported herself to the Upside Down. But she found a gate and came back where Hopper found and hid her so she wouldn’t be taken by the government again. They now have a father/daughter kind of relationship.

Will’s visions of the Upside Down get worse until he tries to face the creature he keeps seeing. This goes horribly wrong and Will ends up possessed by the monster. Because of this, the group is able to learn quite a bit.

The creatures from the Upside Down act as a kind of hive mind and Will is now part of it. The group learns that this thing controlling Will isn’t an animal like the Demogorgon, it’s an evil entity with plans of its own. It is given another DND inspired name - The Mind Flayer.

Even though he is possessed, Will is able to tell the rest of the group through morse code that the only way to stop The Mind Flayer is to close the gate.

In the end, Eleven uses her powers to close the gate and banish the Mind Flayer back to the Upside Down. Will is back to his old self, and everybody is reunited. The only problem is that the Mind Flayer isn’t very happy about being defeated and clearly has plans to try and overtake Hawkins once again.

Season 3

9 months later, it’s now July 1985. As we’ve discussed, Stranger Things likes to deliver its plot by forming groups of characters and then bringing them back together in the end.

Our groups this time are first – Robin, Steve, Dustin and… Erica, Lucas’ younger sister. They end up discovering that there is a fully operational Russian base underneath the Starcourt Mall. And its goal is to open another gate to the Upside Down. See, they had been trying to do it in Russia but decided the gate would be more stable in Hawkins since there had already been tears here.

And I know this plot sounds kind of ridiculous – but it’s actually the epitome of the 80s, Red Scare. The ultimate fear of the Red Scare - this idea that communist Russia was secretly taking over our society, would be something exactly like this. That right under the nose of something so purely American as a shopping mall, the Russians would be plotting our demise.

Now for a good chunk of the season, one of the other groups is Mike, Lucas and Will in a kind of stand off with Max and Eleven. For a while this is pretty innocent middle school stuff, but things become become serious when Eleven uses her telepathic powers to spy on Billy, Max’s step brother.

Billy has unfortunately become the tool of THE MIND FLAYER. Similar to how Will was possessed last season, Billy is operating as an agent of the Upside Down. He lures people to a remote location and then they are also possessed by the Mind Flayer.

Separately, Nancy and Jonathan are piecing together that something is going on in Hawkins as they encounter people with strange behavior. Little do they know, these people are being possessed by the Mind Flayer.

And for our last group, Joyce, Hopper, and Murray Bauman learn more about the Russians’ goal to open up a new gate.

All these plotlines converge when the Mind Flayer finally calls upon all of the people that Billy has infected. They eventually turn to goop and form – A PHYSICAL VERSION OF THE MIND FLAYER.

But the question is – why would it want to do this? Well, the Mind Flayer has realized that the one thing stopping it from taking over our world is Eleven. She closed the previous gate so it just needs to get rid of her. This leads to a battle against the Mind Flayer at Hopper’s cabin. Eleven is able to fend off the creature, but she’s wounded in the process.

Everyone eventually meets up at the Starcourt Mall where the goal is to stop the Russians from opening the gate which will by extension stop the Mind Flayer. While Joyce, Hopper and Murray go down to the gate, the rest of the gang faces the monster. The only problem is that Eleven has overexerted herself and her powers are gone!

And as Mind Flayer’s little helper, Billy shows up to be more of a problem. However, Eleven reminds him of his most cherished memories that she saw earlier when they made a telepathic connection. He then chooses to sacrifice himself to save the rest of the group.

Down in the Russian Base, Hopper also sacrifices himself to disable the Russian equipment and close the gate. Thanks to Billy and Hopper, the Mind Flayer is defeated once again.

Having lost her father figure, Eleven now joins the Byer family. With too much grief in Hawkins, they all move to California.

Season 4

Eight months later in 1986, a new evil has come to Hawkins. We first see this when Chrissy meets her end at the hands of Vecna.

Vecna, once again named after a DnD character, is some kind of entity from the Upside Down. He preys on the vulnerable, using psychic powers to make them see the things they fear, and eventually taking their life. When this happens to Chrissy, she just so happens to be in Eddie Munson’s trailer.

Eddie is the leader of the DnD group known as the Hellfire club, which includes our old pals, Mike, Dustin, Lucas and eventually Erica.

Things only get worse when Vecna claims another victim, turning the town into a frenzy. So Eddie goes into hiding, but Dustin is able to convince Max, Steve, Nancy and Robin that Eddie is innocent and they need to help him.

Our second group is out in California. Mike has gone to visit the Byer family, only to find out that Eleven is having a terrible time adjusting to normal life and is constantly bullied. But when the government finds out about the spooky things going on in Hawkins they snatch El out of the blue…

Turns out, it’s good old Dr. Owens again. And he’s actually leading a faction of the government that believes Eleven is the key to saving our world from being taken over by the Upside Down.

The other part of the government, led by Jack Sullivan, believes Eleven is actually responsible for what’s going on in Hawkins is trying to hunt her down.

Owens takes Eleven to a secret facility where she can regain her powers. Once there, Eleven discovers who’s really in charge… Dr. Brenner. Turns out, he wasn’t killed by the Demogorgon and is now trying to finish what he started. Eleven agrees to go through the process so that she can save her friends from Vecna.

Once Will, Mike and Jonathan realize Eleven has been taken, they try to go after her, and are joined by Jonathan’s new friend, Argyle.

And you might be thinking why isn’t Joyce helping? Well, because Joyce is headed to RUSSIA. With Murray! Because guess what?

Hopper didn’t die! But he was captured by the Soviets. It’s now up to Joyce and Murray to rescue him.

Back in Hawkins, things get much worse when the gang realizes that one of Vecna’s targets is Max.

Nancy and Robin do a little investigative work and discover that Vecna has actually attacked people before. Years ago, the Creel family fell victim to Vecna, but it was blamed on the father Victor. Nancy and Robin visit him and realize that he survived because music kept him grounded in reality when Vecna tried to attack. They then use this information to save Max at the last second.

The group then realizes that at each of the places where Vecna has taken a victim, a gate to the Upside Down is formed. Vecna’s real goal is to open 4 gates to destabilize the barrier between our world and the Upside Down. He takes his third victim in the middle of the lake right, and even though Max has been saved for now, she’s still the final target.

Meanwhile over in Russia – Joyce and Murray manage to sneak into the prison and save Hopper at the last minute from A DEMOGORGON. Turns out the Soviets have been feeding inmates to the Demogorgon while they research it.

Back at the bunker, Eleven is recovering her powers by unlocking suppressed memories.

From her memories, we learn that there were MANY kids in the Hawkins Lab experiment, BUT they all met a gruesome end. And it’s starting to look like Eleven is responsible UNTIL…

We meet this guy. He tells Eleven that Dr. Brenner is a liar, the lab is a prison and they need to escape. He proves that he knows what he’s talking about when he reveals that he is actually ONE, the very first of Brenner’s experiments. Eleven agrees to help One escape.

At the same time Eleven is reliving these memories, Nancy is surprise attacked by Vecna. With their telepathic connection, we finally learn that…

Vecna was once… Henry Creel. He was actually the one responsible for the death of his mother and sister and his father took the fall. Because of his psychic powers, Henry was discovered by Dr. Brenner and taken to the Hawkins Lab where the experiments began.

Henry lived for years in the Lab, biding his time until Eleven came along. Once she agreed to help him escape, he launched an attack on the lab. But he didn’t stop with the scientists, Henry wiped out the children so that nobody could threaten him. Knowing that Eleven was the most powerful he left her alive and hoped she would join him, but instead,

Eleven overpowered Henry and banished him to another dimension. It was there that he became Vecna. At first, the process severely injured him, but then he soon discovered the entity that we came to know as the Mind Flayer.

With his powers he forces it under his control (or so he claims), and we learn that it’s been Vecna / Henry / One pulling the strings all along.

After unlocking her memories, Eleven regains her powers and decides to return to Hawkins – but things go haywire when Sullivan shows up to try and stop her. Dr. Brenner dies while trying to save Eleven, and Owens is captured. But with her newfound powers El stops the government forces in their tracks. Mike and the others arrive just in time to save her.

With all of the new information they’ve learned, the gang in Hawkins hatches a plan. To lure Vecna out, Max will allow herself to be attacked. Meanwhile Vecna’s physical body will be vulnerable in the Upside Down. So Steve, Nancy and Robin will attack him while Max provides that distraction. Dustin and Eddie will then act as decoys so the creatures of the Upside Down come after them instead of the others.

Eleven decides she can help Max fight Vecna remotely, so Eleven and Vecna soon face off inside of Max’s mind. And Eleven… loses this fight.

So Max DIES.

And to make matters worse, in the Upside Down, Eddie succumbs to his injuries and also dies.

However, thanks to support from Mike, El is able to break free and attack Vecna once more.

At the same time over in Russia, Hopper and the others have learned the kids are trying to fight Vecna. Because it’s a hive mind, they know if they attack the Upside Down creatures here, it will weaken Vecna. So Hopper does just that.

Then at the SAME TIME as that… Robin, Steve and Nancy get to Vecna’s body and light him up.

Between all three of them, they are able to push Vecna back for the moment. Eleven then uses her abilities to revive Max, though she’s still severely injured.

And it turns out… that her temporary death was enough. The fourth gate opens and suddenly, all of Hawkins is thrown into chaos.

Everyone reunites back in Hawkins and there’s lots of emotional hugs all around, except of course for Max who remains in a coma. Vecna has disappeared, but it’s not long before he shows that his plan is falling into place…

And that’s where we’ve left off before our finale season!

So, are you excited for the final season? What are some of your theories?

With the release of their new album, Breach, Twenty One Pilots concluded a 10-year, multimedia, cross-album storyline. The City Walls music video depicted the ending for our main character, Clancy. Or at least an ending. That’s the thing about this story. Endings and beginnings seem to merge together.

If you caught my breakdown before the release of Breach, you may remember that the story of Clancy can serve as a thematic analogy for the inner battle faced by people struggling with mental health, and in particular, severe depression. It’s a very personal topic for the band, and especially Tyler Joseph.

At the end of Paladin Strait, we left Clancy in the hands of Nico or Blurryface, a representation of Tyler’s fears, insecurities, doubts, and anxieties.

Since then, we’ve seen the release of 2 lore-related music videos. The first is The Contract which seems to depict something going on within Clancy’s mind. Suddenly he’s in a kind of void, surrounded by a shadowy figures with glowing eyes.

And I’ll note quickly here that TOP has done a phenomenal job in rewarding long time fans with callbacks. Even though the official lore began with the Blurryface album, and only really got going with Trench, the band used a lot of their earlier metaphors and themes to create the world of this story. “Glowing Eyes” is just one of many examples of this which references a song of theirs from a technically nonexistent album called Regional At Best.

Anyway, The Contract music video was all a bit mysterious but I think the conclusion that came in the next video helps us understand a lot of this, so let’s come back to it.

City Walls picks back up in the same moment Paladin Strait ended. The Torchbearer and the Banditos rush the Bishop’s tower to go and help Clancy, but in the meantime Clancy starts to fight back on his own and let’s just say – Nico is not a pushover. During this final fight, we keep seeing flashbacks to past moments within Clancy’s story.

First is the moment from the heavydirtysoul music video in which Clancy escaped Dema.

The next is when Clancy had joined the Bandito group, but was captured by Nico again in the Levitate video.

And the final one is the moment he was captured by Nico in Jumpsuit.

In all of these memories, Clancy starts to run away from Nico, but then turns back to stand and face him. All while this is going on, The Torchbearer and the Banditos are struggling to break into the room.

Clancy has lost the instruments he uses to fight back, but uses one final weapon - this symbol, which is of course…

The Twenty One Pilots symbol. As I mentioned last time, there’s no direct meaning for this symbol. Put simply it means TOP, but it’s become synonymous with the band’s fan base. It’s a symbol that for many people has come to mean hope, to continue fighting in the battle against yourself, to stay alive.

This seems to destroy Nico and all should be well, but the story then takes a turn. Clancy dons a robe, his throat has darkened – he has now become Nico. Clancy then starts handing robes to the Banditos, but the Torchbearer refuses to take one and leaves. This leaves us with Clancy at the center of 9 bishops, Nico and the Niners, effectively recreating what he just fought to destroy.

On the outside, we see an exchange between the Torchbearer and a Bandito. There had been hints before, but from this we finally learn that there has been a cycle of Clancy’s and Nico’s.

Let’s now go back to The Contract music video. The fight to stay alive has always been depicted as a vicious cycle within Twenty One Pilots music, and this music video showed us a visual representation of it. Throughout the video we see duplications of Clancy, as if there’s multiple versions of him repeating these same exact things.

I personally think the glowing eyes are the many past versions of Clancy watching this occur yet again. Towards the end of the music video, everything starts to leave this void, until we’re left with just Clancy and The Torchbearer. The Torchbearer offers Clancy his jacket, as if to say, let me help you, but Clancy doesn’t take it.

This was reflected in their live performances as well, where for most of the shows, this offer would happen and the two would walk to the stage together, watching Dema burn – a symbol of the ultimate victory, to destroy the place in which Clancy finds himself trapped. But in the final shows, Clancy refused to take the jacket and decided to go at this alone.

Back to this scene with the Bandito and the Torchbearer. Dema is not burning, it’s standing strong as ever. This has all happened before. And it will probably happen again. It seems incredibly tragic, but there’s a sign of hope – the sun is rising and The Torchbearer says the next Clancy is out there somewhere. And we’re going to try again.

The battle to conquer the darkest parts of ourselves, never really ends. And I think while it may have been incredibly cathartic to finally see Dema, the representation of the dark mental place we can trap ourselves in, burnt to the ground, it may not have reflected reality for most people.

The truth is, most of the time, we will relapse. Old habits, thoughts and behaviors we thought we’d conquered will rear their ugly heads again. Blurryface has always been depicted as a part of Tyler, and this proves to be true yet again with Clancy becoming Nico. Despite his best efforts, he lets the doubts, the anxieties, the fears take control and define who he is. It can feel like a failure, but the victory is in making the choice to keep trying again.

The music video then bleeds into another song from the album, Intentions, but the really interesting thing is that the melody is actually a song called Truce from their 2013 album, being played backwards. The lyrics from Truce state:

The sun will rise and we will try again. Stay alive, stay alive for me.

In the moment when Clancy was fighting Nico, the lyrics are:

It might be the furthest we’ve reached. Now move it up, move it up, it’s a breach.

With each cycle, Clancy has made it further. There’s been progress, he’s breached - which means he’s broken through some barrier. That breach, no matter how small, is a victory.

Each of twenty one pilots albums deal with this overarching theme of mental health but in specific ways.

In Blurryface, we’re really getting to know that character, and all the ways he manifests. We’re identifying and acknowledging our fears and anxieties.

In Trench, we’re getting to know the place those fears and anxieties put us in with Dema, and making attempts to leave it behind.

In Scaled and Icy, we’re learning about coping mechanisms, seeing how if we just bury these things without truly dealing with them, we may be able to coast for awhile, but we’re not really in control.

In Clancy, we feel the determination and fear of trying to fight back against our anxieties.

And in Breach, we feel the bittersweet feeling of acknowledging the cycle once again, and accepting progress over despair. But…Breach is also a key acknowledgement of the people that stay by our side throughout all of this. The people that go through their own cycle watching others go through theirs. The Torchbearer recognizes the cycle almost better than Clancy does. He’s by his side, always. And yet sometimes, he gets shut out. But he does not give up.

Breach is simultaneously about the process of moving forward despite all the struggle and the people that help us do it. And how they don’t give up on us no matter how many times we have to repeat that cycle.

And with this comes the end of an era for Twenty One Pilots. Please let me know what you thought of City Walls and the album. Let me know if I missed anything and any other thoughts you might have!

The Conjuverse is inspired by real life paranormal investigators, Ed and Lorraine Warren, who have claimed to investigate over 10,000 cases, some of which are pretty famous, such as the Amityville and Enfield hauntings. As a result of their investigations, the Warrens owned a massive collection of supposedly haunted objects, which they used to showcase as an Occult Museum.

This room of haunted objects is like The Conjuverse’s Infinity Stones. Any one of these things has the potential to show up in one of the Conjuring movies and cause some spooky chaos.

THE CONJURING (2013)

This movie focuses on the 1971 haunting of the Perron family. But before we even get to that, the very first scene introduces us to a character that isn’t really important to this movie, but would go on to be one of the biggest villains of the Conjuverse… a doll known as Annabelle.

A couple of roommates find that their apartment gets much creepier when one of them is given this doll as a gift. When it trashes their apartment, they try to throw it away only for it to mysteriously find its way back. The roommates now fear the doll is possessed.

But thank heavens, The Warrens are on the case. They explain that the doll isn’t actually possessed because inhuman spirits - aka demons - don’t possess objects, they possess people. This demon used the doll as a conduit so that it could try to get one of the roommates. The Warrens then take the Annabelle doll for safekeeping, so it ends up in that creepy collection of theirs.

But back to the main case – the Perron family move into a new farmhouse and scary things start happening. The mom, Carolyn, wakes up with bruises, the clocks all stop at exactly 3:07am, etc.

Now, all of the Conjuverse movies have a similar tone and style. There’s a format to the scares and it was all established here in the first movie. Movies like this sometimes fall into the trap of being a series of jump scares. The problem with this is that they can feel cheap or predictable.

But when James Wan directed The Conjuring, he wasn’t afraid to let the tension build. It seems obvious now, but at the time, the style of these kinds of movies was much quicker, to try and keep the audience’s attention. This movie lets certain moments drag out for an excruciatingly long time. But if you’re going to give all that build up to a jump scare, it better be a good one. And The Conjuring definitely had some clever moments.

The Perron family calls the Warrens for help. They bring in a team of paranormal investigators and eventually determine that a witch used to own the house. When she died she cursed anybody that would try and take her land. The witch’s spirit manages to possess Carolyn, and plans to sacrifice the children. But Ed and Lorraine work together to perform an exorcism and save the Perron family.

Regardless of what you think of the real life Warrens, within the Conjuverse Ed and Lorraine are basically our superheroes. Lorraine has clairvoyant powers that give her visions and a sixth sense when it comes to paranormal entities. Ed functions like a priest even though he is in fact, not a priest. He often ends up holding a cross and shouting prayers at evil spirits.

Ed and Lorraine are the beating heart of the Conjuring franchise. They don’t appear in all of the spin offs, but it all ties back to them. They clearly love each other, and truly want to help the people they meet. I think this is the sleight of hand trick that The Conjuring movies pull – they bring people in because of the scares, but they make a genuine effort in giving you someone to cheer for, so you actually care whether the demons win or not.

The Conjuring earned $320 million against a budget of $20 million, becoming one of the most profitable horror movies of all time. So what does a studio do with all that money? Spin-offs people, spin-offs. Set just a year before The Conjuring our next movie follows John and Mia, a young couple about to have their first child.

Mia already has a porcelain doll collection, and I bet you’ll never guess who shows up…

ANNABELLE (2014)

Annabelle, you little rascal! Except the doll isn’t known as Annabelle… yet. See, John and Mia live next door to the Higgins, who are sad because their teenage daughter, ANNABELLE, ran off to join a “hippie cult.” Only problem was the cult was more interested in evil than it was in peace and love because Annabelle returns to attack her parents. Annabelle ends up in John and Mia’s home where she is killed by the police, while holding Mia’s new doll.

John and Mia eventually learn that the cult Annabelle was a part of were trying to summon a demon. Mia believes that demon is now trying to get the soul of her child. She attempts to sacrifice her own soul to save her child, but at the last moment John and Mia’s friend, Evelyn, sacrifices her soul so that Mia can stay with her daughter.

But by the end, the doll mysteriously ends up in a pawn shop where it’s purchased by a mother, for her daughter, which directly leads us to where it is at the beginning of the Conjuring. And this doll in the background, is an easter egg for the real life Annabelle doll, which was a Raggedy Ann.

THE CONJURING 2

Ed and Lorraine’s next case came in The Conjuring 2. Peggy Hodgson is a single mother living with her four children. As if that wasn’t hard enough, Janet becomes possessed by the spirit of an elderly man who previously lived and died in the house.

Ed and Lorraine are called to investigate. While they’re trying to figure out how to get Bill’s spirit to move on, Lorraine is actually being haunted by her own demon. It typically comes in the form of a freaky looking Nun. At one point she has a vision where she asks what the Nun wants and it shows her a prediction of Ed’s death. The vision is so intense, Lorraine even tears up her bible.

The Warrens begin to realize that Bill, as crotchety of an old man as he is, has no real reason to keep haunting the Hodgson family. And that’s when Ed realizes that some of the things Bill has said through Janet, haven’t made sense until he puts it all together…

It’s then that Ed and Lorraine realize the true villain isn’t Bill, but the demon that’s been haunting Lorraine, the Nun. Even “The Crooked Man” - a twisted version of a toy the kids have - was just a manifestation of this demon. So Ed and Lorraine return to the house to try and cast the demon out.

Now here’s the thing about demons - if you know their name you have control over them. So how do the Warrens figure out the name in time to rescue Janet?? Turns out… they already know it! When Lorraine had that vision of the demon and she carved up the bible - she actually carved the name into the bible… Valak!

So, right as Ed and Janet are about to meet their end, Lorraine rushes in and stops Valak by speaking its name and condemning it to hell. The next Conjuverse movie would go back in time to show how a certain doll was actually created. That’s right, it’s…

ANNABELLE CREATION (2017)

Annabelle, you little scamp! So just to be clear, this movie occurs before the first Annabelle movie.

Sam Mullins is a dollmaker. He and his wife Esther, lose their daughter in a tragic accident. Guess what her name is? Brittany. Just kidding, it’s Annabelle.

Years later a bunch of orphans come to live with the Mullins. The orphan girls are explicitly told not to go into Annabelle’s old room but Janice does it anyway, because the movie needs to happen. She opens a closet lined with pages from the Bible, and discovers a doll. This of course causes a whole bunch of scary things to happen in the house.

We eventually find out that years ago, the Mullins were tricked. They believed that they were receiving visits from their daughter’s spirit, so they gave it permission to live inside the doll, but it was actually a demon preying on their grief. The demon then attacked Mrs. Mullins so they locked it away in the closet.

Now that it’s been released, it possesses poor Janice. But on the bright side she’s cured of her polio. Under the demon’s control, Janice attacks all the other orphans and their guardian, Sister Charlotte. They manage to lock Janice and the doll back in the closet but… Janice escapes.

The police take the doll as evidence, but nobody knows where Janice went. Until we see her in an orphanage going by the name Annabelle. The movie ends just as the Higgins from the first Annabelle movie show up to adopt her.

The Higgins raise Janice – who just to recap, is still possessed by a demon – as their own and she is now the same Annabelle that returns years later and attacks Mia. WOAH!

THE NUN (2018)

We now get our earliest movie in the Conjuverse… meant to show the origin of Valak from The Conjuring 2.

Set in 1952, the story follows Sister Irene. And yes, she looks a lot like Lorraine because the actresses are sisters in real life. A lot of fans hypothesized they were actually the same person within the story, but they’re not. So DROP IT.

Sister Irene is called to investigate a dark presence at a monastery in Romania. The history of this particular demon goes all the way back to the Dark Ages. An ancient rift to hell exists beneath the monastery which had been sealed by some Knights. But the rift was reopened during World War 2, allowing Valak to enter the monastery.

With the help of Father Burke and a handyman named Maurice, Irene manages to seal the rift, but Valak secretly possesses Maurice.

20 years later, Carolyn Perron from the first Conjuring movie watches the Warrens give a presentation about how they tried to help with an exorcism of a man named Maurice. During that exorcism, Maurice grabs Lorraine, showing how she first came into contact with Valak.

The next Conjuverse movie brings things back to the Warren’s creepy collection and guess who is at the center of the chaos?

ANNABELLE COMES HOME (2019)

Oh Annabelle, you little scallywag! This one takes place between The Conjuring 1 and 2, but after the other Annabelle movies.

Ed and Lorraine go away to work on a case, leaving their daughter Judy in the care of babysitter Mary Ellen, who is just an absolute gem. Her friend, Daniela however… is just the worst.

Daniela is obsessed with the Warrens reputation and finds a way to sneak into their room of evil objects, despite multiple warnings not to. We’ll cut her a little slack because she’s really just trying to communicate with her dad that recently passed away. She messes with a whole BUNCH of stuff in the room, but the worst is of course, the Annabelle doll, which is so powerful it acts as a beacon for other spirits. So once she lets it out, it activates many of the other cursed objects.

This results in them having to fend off an angry bride, a guy with a coin collection, a werewolf, even a haunted board game.

They are eventually able to lock Annabelle back in her case, all before Ed and Lorraine return home. Lorraine lets Daniela know that her dad is okay and loves her. Aw, thanks Lorraine.

THE CURSE OF LA LLORONA (2019)

Now this is technically where The Curse of La Llorona, would be, but according to the studio, this is not an official Conjuring movie. Hey, I don’t make the rules, sorry, we’re not talking about it.

THE CONJURING: THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT (2021)

Ed and Lorraine’s next case, starts with them trying to help with the exorcism of a young boy named David. Just before Ed suffers a heart attack, he sees the demon leave David and possess Arne.

Ed wakes up a month later in the hospital, but Arne, still possessed by the demon, has already committed a horrible act. He becomes the subject of the first ever murder trial where possession is used as a defense.

The Warrens learn from a former priest studying the case that a witch’s totem had been in David’s house, one that’s associated with a specific cult – the same one that Annabelle joined back in the first Annabelle movie. Ed and Lorraine learn that they need to destroy the witch’s altar to stop the curse from being passed on.

Once they find it, it’s revealed that the witch is actually the daughter of the priest. She uses her powers to try and force Ed to attack Lorraine, but Lorraine is able to stop it with the power of love!

They destroy the altar and save the day. Arne’s sentence is reduced to 5 years for manslaughter.

THE NUN 2 (2023)

And finally, we catch up with Valak, Irene and Maurice. As a reminder this is our full timeline now.

As we know, Valak has managed to carry on through Maurice, who is working at a school in France. Valak is as evil as ever, and is continuing to cause death and chaos, so Irene is sent to investigate since she’s had experience with this demon before. This eventually leads her to the school, where she reunites with Maurice only to realize he has been the vessel for Valak.

Irene also learns that Valak is trying to exterminate the bloodline of St. Lucy, which is revealed to include both Irene and Lorraine Warren. This is intended to explain where Irene, Lorraine, and Judy Warren get their clairvoyant powers - as descendants of St. Lucy.

Irene is seemingly able to banish Valak once more, but as we already know, it actually still resides within Maurice. A final scene shows the Warrens receiving a call to go and help with his exorcism.

CONCLUSION

SO. The Conjuverse is defined first and foremost by moments of long tension followed by inventive jumpscares.

But as it developed, we began to see a series of interconnected plots which have both overarching villains…

…and overarching heroes.

Last Rites is supposed to show the Warrens taking on their final case. Will we see the return of Valak? Or Annabelle? Or maybe one of our heroes like Irene? Let me know what you think!

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Alien: Earth is a new series releasing on FX and Hulu. It’s the first ever TV series in the long running film franchise. The show is helmed by Noah Hawley, who’s known for writing the Fargo and Legion series.

There’s seven films in the official Alien canon, which does not include the Alien v Predator movies, but we’ll come back to that.

The original Alien came out in 1979 and is set in the year 2122. The sequels, which includes Aliens, Alien 3, and Alien Resurrection all continue the plot thread from that original movie with Ellen Ripley being the central character.

In 2004 and 2007, we got two entries in the spin off series, Alien vs Predator. These combined the Alien and Predator franchises and also gave an origin story for the Xenomorph species from Alien. If they were canon to the Alien timeline, they would be the earliest stories, because they’re set in 2004.

BUT… In 2012, the Alien franchise was kind of rebooted with two prequel movies that ignored what had been established in AVP and created a new origin for the Xenomorphs. This was Prometheus and Alien Covenant.

The most recent movie, Alien Romulus went ahead and stuck itself right in the middle of this big timeline. After the original Alien, but before the original sequels.

So, where does Alien Earth fit in?

Alien Earth will take place two years before the original Alien, in 2120. Just to be clear that’s after Prometheus and Covenant, but before everything else.

Noah Hawley has said that the plot will be a parallel storyline to the rest of the franchise, not directly tied to any specific character or plot point. He’s also said that he’s mostly taking inspiration from the original movie, so we’ll focus on that to get a bit of context. Spoiler alert!

Alien follows a group of future blue collar workers, basically “space truckers”. The 7 person crew is operating a ship called the Nostromo, hauling resources back to Earth from a mining colony. They get a distress signal from a nearby planet and investigate.

One of their crew members comes back on the ship with a creature attached to his face that fans now call a facehugger.

A little while later, a new creature bursts out of the man’s chest. The creature grows rapidly, soon becoming…

a full size Xenomorph. It takes out the crew one by one despite their best efforts to destroy it. It's also revealed that those efforts have been sabotaged by one of their crew, who is actually a synthetic – an artificial intelligence intended to look human.

He was placed on the ship by the Weyland-Yutani corporation to protect the company’s interests at all times, which in this case, is bringing the Xenomorph back for research at the crew’s expense. By the end, Ripley is the last woman standing and she manages to defeat the Xenomorph by ejecting it into space.

Alien is an incredibly important movie in the history of sci-fi horror. And the horror in the movie comes from multiple directions. The obvious one is the creature itself, the movie’s monster. But there’s a lot of subtext going on as well.

The Alien’s purpose in attacking humans is not to eat them, like many other movie monsters. It’s to reproduce. The Facehugger comes from an egg.

When it attaches to its first victim, it impregnates him with an alien embryo. He then dies when he’s forced to give birth to the creature. So a lot of that subconscious fear comes from this particular kind of assault, and it’s no coincidence that the writers chose the first victim to be a man.

Another fear is in the development of Artificial Intelligence. One of the crew members isn’t even human, but this is kept hidden from them. When he’s revealed as a synthetic, it’s a gut punch because the characters and audience realize there’s been TWO monsters all along.

And that secret monster is born out of another prominent fear. The synthetic represents the interests of the mega corporation, Weyland-Yutani. The power this company wields and the lengths it will go to for financial gain, including the sacrifice of 6 people, is yet another element of horror.

With Alien Earth, being a “parallel story” I think it’s more important to understand the concepts of Alien - the themes, the underlying horror, rather than any specific plot points. I haven’t seen the show as of the time of writing, but we do know the premise and can start to see how it will expand on the core ideas of the world of Alien.

The story revolves around a ship that has been on a deep space mission collecting samples of alien life. It has now crashed back on Earth and we’ll follow our main character Wendy, as her and her team go to research the ship.

Wendy is a synthetic hybrid. She’s had a human consciousness transferred into a synthetic body. So the show is clearly looking to further explore the nature of our relationship with artificial intelligence. Wendy works for a massive company known as Prodigy, so I’m sure we’ll continue to see commentary about the nature of mega corporations and their power in society.

And we all know that the ship is going to have Xenomorphs on it or it wouldn’t be an Alien show, but the Xenomorph we all know and love is not the ONLY creature aboard the ship. Noah Hawley mentioned that since the franchise has been going so long, it’s lost a lot of the horror of discovering the biological process of this creature, which was core to the original. Every step in its reproductive cycle is a kind of awful revelation.

So, he wanted to bring in new creatures that would allow audiences to have the same kind of discovery, not knowing what these new organisms will do next.

Another thing that’s interesting to consider is the structure of a horror movie when applied to TV. Alien, like other horror movies, depicts the ongoing demise of its characters. How do you apply that to an 8 hour series? You can’t sustain the same kind of tension that a movie does for that long, it just doesn’t work. Noah Hawley’s solution is to focus primarily on characters. To make a dramatic story first, one that would be engaging even if there were no monsters.

Now one thing that might be difficult for fans to grasp about the premise is the setting. In the official Alien canon, Xenomorphs have not yet made it to Earth. Alien Resurrection’s plot revolved around the characters stopping that from happening. In Aliens, Ripley struggles to get anyone to believe that the Xenomorph exists.

With all that in mind, it’s a little odd to think Xenomorphs have already made it to Earth even before Ripley will encounter them in deep space aboard the Nostromo. It’s also odd to think there might be other creatures that rival the danger of the Xenomorph, since the entire series has positioned the Xenomorph as a perfect organism, the most dangerous creature of all time.

But… if Alien V Predator, ended up being canon somehow, then Xenomorphs technically would have been on Earth even earlier. It might be tempting to suspect this for a couple different reasons. Both the Alien and Predator franchises have recently seen a resurgence with Alien Romulus and Prey being well received by audiences.

Fede Alvarez, director of Romulus, has said on a couple occasions that he’d love to work with Dan Trachtenberg, who directed Prey. It’s also been confirmed that Alvarez is working on a sequel to Romulus. Meanwhile Trachtenberg is directing another Predator movie set to release in August, Badlands. And low and behold, who is one of the main characters in this movie?

A Weyland-Yutani synthetic. With all of this AND the idea that there’s mysterious other creatures on that ship in Alien Earth, do we think there might be any Predators featured in the show? Personally, based on what I’ve read about Noah Hawley, it seems like he really wants to do his own thing without having to be beholden to other movies and properties, so I doubt it, but it would be fun to be wrong!

Let me know if you’re excited for Alien Earth! I’d love to hear your thoughts on it!

These shorts would have played at movie theaters before a full length movie. Like how Pixar sometimes releases a short film before one of their movies. They were made during what’s known as The Golden Age of Animation, the time period where we got the original Mickey Mouse cartoons, Looney Tunes, Tom & Jerry, and Popeye, which was produced by Fleischer Studios, who also produced…

…these Superman shorts. This series is responsible for creating a number of Superman hallmarks like his famous intro: Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound!

As well as the catch-phrase, It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superman!

And of course, Clark Kent using phone booths to change into Superman. For anyone that wasn’t reading Superman comic books, which only started a couple years earlier, this might have been their first exposure to Superman. And audiences wouldn’t have to wait too long to see the first live action depiction of the character.

Which was a 15-part serial released in 1948. These short films were part of an ongoing story. One film would play in theaters for about a week and then they’d release the next one. So essentially TV before TV was widely available.

The series depicted Superman’s origin story for the first time on screen, and every depiction of the character after that has stuck pretty close to that blueprint. Superman is actually an alien named Kal-El from the planet Krypton. Right before Krypton was destroyed Superman’s parents sent him off in a space pod and he landed on Earth. He’s raised by Jonathan and Martha Kent on their farm, and even this early they instill Superman with his core values of Truth and Justice. You might have heard it as “truth, justice and the American Way”, but that part wasn’t added until the 50s TV series.

Once Superman becomes an adult he moves to the fictional version of New York City, Metropolis. There he maintains his secret identity, working for the newspaper, The Daily Planet, as Clark Kent alongside love interest, Lois Lane. The serial was so successful, they released a sequel, Atom Man vs Superman, as another 15-part series in 1950. This one heavily featured the character, Lex Luthor, Superman’s arch nemesis, who would continue to be a consistent character in many future iterations of Superman.

It was only a year later in 1951, that people got an entirely new live action Superman. But this time, it was, at 58 minutes long, technically a full-length movie called Superman and the Mole Men. It was pretty low budget, because it was intended to be a sort of backdoor pilot for the TV series, Adventures of Superman, that ran in the 1950s.

The story mostly revolves around Superman trying to stop a mob of angry townspeople from harming a species of mole people. The Mole people are innocent, and only came to the surface due to the oil drilling going on near the town. So even back in 1951, Superman was fighting against prejudice to preserve, truth, justice, and what he sees as the American Way.

Now we enter a pretty big time gap for theatrical depictions of Superman. Almost 30 years later we get 1978’s Superman.

And as much as those earlier depictions contributed to Superman’s cultural legacy, this movie immediately comes to the forefront upon its release. So much of the DNA of modern superhero movies can be found here. It was essentially the first big budget superhero movie.

And it WAS a big budget. In fact it was the most expensive movie ever made up to that point, and luckily for the studio, the highest grossing movie that year. It was also critically well received, and nominated for several Oscars, including a Special Achievement in visual effects.

You can see on the poster, the famous tagline from the movie, “You’ll believe a man can fly.” The effects were significantly more impressive at the time. But I actually think the tagline, “you’ll believe a man can fly” refers to more than the special effects, whether the marketing team intended it or not.

One of the defining features of Christopher Reeve’s Superman is earnestness. Reeve plays the character with so much genuine goodwill that you believe he believes the things he’s fighting for.

And you might think, well sure, those were simpler times. Except they weren’t. The historical context of 1978 was LOADED with the decline of American optimism. Trust in authority and institutions had taken massive hits with things like the Watergate scandal, the Vietnam war, and government resistance to the Civil Rights Movement.

And this element wasn’t lost on the filmmakers. The first time Superman tells Lois in an interview that he fights for “truth, justice, and the American Way” Lois responds, “You’re gonna fight every elected official in this country.” Despite this, Superman brings an absolute belief in goodness to Metropolis. It’s a reflection of the values that were instilled in him back on the farm in Kansas. The American Way, according to Jonathan and Martha Kent, is not to react with violence or a show of power just because you can.

It’s helping those in need, people who are not in a position to help themselves. And holding accountable the people who ARE doing harm in the world. Which in this case, is a billionaire with a power complex who is buying up land, and then destroying a whole coast to make his real estate more valuable. So in short, I think the audience “believed a man could fly” because they wanted to believe it. They wanted to buy into the optimism of Superman.

Christopher Reeve would go on to star in three more Superman movies, but by the fourth movie, enthusiasm was dwindling. Superman would go on a near 20-year hiatus from movie theaters until…

2006’s Superman Returns. Just because it took this long to get another Superman movie doesn’t mean Hollywood wasn’t trying all those years. There were a number of canceled projects along the way.

One of the most famous of these is Superman Lives. There’s a lot of information out there about this canceled movie, even a full documentary. Mostly because Tim Burton got pretty far into the development process following the success of his two Batman movies. He had even cast Nicolas Cage in the role as a long-haired Superman, but after $30 million of development, Warner Bros decided to put things on hold.

The solution on how to reboot Superman eventually turned into simply doing a sequel to the Christopher Reeve Superman movies, which is how we got Superman Returns. The idea here was to ignore the third and fourth Superman movies, and do a sequel that carried on after Superman II.

At the beginning of Superman Returns, he’s been missing for five years, off in search of any remains of his home planet, Krypton. When he gets back, Lois is married and has a five year old kid. Her and the rest of the world seemed to have moved on, so this movie is primarily asking, what if the world doesn’t need Superman? How does that affect the character and his morals, that duty he’s committed to?

And with it coming out decades after the movie it's trying to be a sequel too, it's kind of a meta narrative, where the movie is asking, do audiences still need Superman as a heroic, inspirational character? By the end, the answer leans much more toward yes, we need that hope and optimism.

Warner Bros would reboot Superman again only 7 years later with 2013’s Man of Steel. In its early days, Christopher Nolan was heavily involved in the development of Man of Steel as he wrapped up his Dark Knight trilogy. He was interested in helping to produce a modern take on Superman the way he had with Batman, and Zack Snyder was brought on to direct.

And this is where we see Superman enter his dark and gritty era. Henry Cavill still brings a lot of earnestness to the role, but the story also focuses on the weight and significance of Superman’s responsibilities. Superman’s very presence sparks global controversy. The political sector doesn’t know what to do with him or how to control him, and the public doesn’t know if he should be loved or feared.

And as a more realistic, or modern take on Superman, this makes sense. The grim and moody thought process the film takes Superman through is a reflection of the times in which nothing feels simple anymore. The way we experienced the world as a culture drastically changed from 2006 to 2013, just in terms of the progress of the internet, social media, and having all of it accessible on our phones. Public discourse became much more rapid and honestly more hostile. So if you place Superman in that modern context, you can GUARANTEE there would be massive controversy over his existence as an alien with godlike powers.

Ultimately, Superman still believes in truth, justice and the American Way, but it takes a lot more work to figure out what that means and how to achieve it.

And things only got darker as Zack Snyder continued his take with Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice. Seeing these two in conflict is entertaining on paper, but is it ultimately satisfying to see characters who are supposed to be heroes fighting for the greater good, fighting each other instead? Well, that’s up to you, but there’s no arguing that it’s a far cry from the spirit of traditional Superman stories.

Zack Snyder was supposed to direct Justice League, but things get complicated here. In short, Joss Whedon, who had done the first two Avengers movies, was brought in to rework the project into something with more of an Avengers vibe. Things ended up a bit messy and audiences generally did not respond well.

A few years later Zack Snyder was allowed to release his extended cut of Justice League exclusively to Max, which maintained the darker style he had been building. But Warner Bros. decided to pivot yet again…

Which brings us back here, with 2025’s Superman. And we can already see that this depiction of Superman is intended to be much more in line with the spirit of the character that came to the screen almost 50 years ago. A lot of people may just watch it as casual summer entertainment, and that’s okay, but I think an interesting angle would be to consider how it’s a reflection of our time in the same way that the Supermen of 1978, 2006, 2013, or any others, were reflections of their time.

What has changed in our culture that’s resulted in a much more optimistic and hopeful Superman returning to the big screen? Is it that things are looking up? Or that things are looking so down, that we need stories that help us hope again? A story that help us discover what truth, justice and the American Way, really is again? And… will we respond to it?

Click here to watch this breakdown on TikTok

Jurassic World: Rebirth is the 7th movie in the series, and it actually features a cast of new characters and a new story. But it also presents patterns and themes that show up throughout the series, so here’s a little context.

In the first movie, John Hammond brings several experts to a remote island in the hopes they’ll give their endorsement for his new business venture. Turns out, that business is bringing dinosaurs back from extinction and using them as the main attraction for a theme park.

This was done by taking dinosaur DNA from the blood of ancient mosquitos that fed on dinosaurs and then got preserved in amber. Essentially, scientists found a way to clone dinosaurs.

At its core, Jurassic movies are always about the hubris of mankind. In case you didn’t know, hubris is a word that originated in Ancient Greece and referred to the act of trying to imitate the Gods. And since that would have been an arrogant thing for a mortal to do, hubris also refers to extreme arrogance.

John Hammond believes that because he has the means to bring back creatures that have been extinct for millions of years, it gives him the right to do so, to essentially create life. He’s playing at being God and his overconfidence will prove to have disastrous consequences. And we’ll see that pattern occur in every single Jurassic movie.

The experts, Alan Grant, Ellie Sattler, and Ian Malcolm, try to warn Hammond but he refuses to listen.

And those consequences begin to appear with Dennis Nedry, a disgruntled employee. He plans to steal dinosaur DNA samples and sell them to a competitor. Nedry initiates a park-wide shutdown that allows him to steal the samples. But it also allows the dinosaurs to escape. Nedry pays the price when he comes face to face with one of those dinosaurs.

Hammond desperately tries to regain control of the park, but as more and more people get eaten by dinosaurs, the more obvious it becomes what a mistake this was in the first place. Especially because his hubris resulted in him risking the lives of his own grandchildren.

Luckily, the kids, along with Hammond, Alan, Ellie and Ian, make it off the island, despite some close calls. Hammond abandons his dream and shuts down the park.

But did you know there was a 2nd island with dinosaurs on it? No you didn’t, you had no idea. In The Lost World, we find out that while the original park was on the island Isla Nublar, Isla Sorna served as a research facility.

Now in any of the Jurassic movies, there’s probably multiple characters that commit that sin of hubris we talked about. But in this one the primary offender is Peter Ludlow, Hammond’s nephew who is taking over the company. His first order of business is to capture the dinosaurs on the 2nd island, and bring them back to start a dinosaur zoo in San Diego.

Hammond, having learned his lesson in the first movie, sends a separate team to try and stop this, which includes Malcolm. The two teams clash at first, but end up uniting thanks to the fact that dinosaurs are trying to eat them. You’d think after your small army is mostly eaten by dinosaurs, you’d learn a lesson but instead, Ludlow decides to transport a T-Rex back to San Diego. In a surprise to nobody, it escapes and wreaks havoc.

And this was not how the movie was supposed to end. The original ending had a bunch of flying dinosaurs attack the helicopters while they were trying to escape. The T-Rex running loose in a city wasn’t supposed to happen until the third movie, but Spielberg was feeling a little burnt out while making this, and knew he wasn’t going to direct the third one. So he made the more exciting idea the conclusion to the 2nd movie.

Anyway, Malcolm eventually lures the T-Rex back to the ship and it's taken back to the island. But not before Ludlow pays the price for his arrogance and greed in the jaws of a T-Rex. And after all that surely nobody would go anywhere near the islands with dinosaurs on them right?

In Jurassic Park III, some dingus decides to take his stepson parasailing next to Isla Sorna. There’s some hubris right there for you, but it gets worse. The kid’s birth parents recruit Alan Grant under false pretenses, offering him a large amount of money to guide them on a “flyover” of the island. In reality, they’re tricking him into joining their rescue mission.

But the foolishness does not stop there. When the group happens upon a nest of Raptor eggs, Billy, Alan’s research assistant, can’t resist stealing a few for himself. This, of course, does not end well and Alan is separated from the group. But he luckily finds the son, Eric.

Eric has stayed alive by coating himself in T-Rex urine which scares off other dinosaurs. Alan asks how he got T-Rex urine and Eric says, “you don’t want to know.” Actually, that’s exactly what I want to know, Eric.

The group eventually reunites, narrowly avoiding the Spinosaurus only to get trapped by Raptors who are still made about their eggs. Turns out they just want their eggs back. And everyone gets rescued! Except of course the people that were eaten earlier.

We wouldn’t get another Jurassic movie until 14 years later with 2015’s Jurassic World, which acted as a sort of reboot. The idea this time around is – what if Hammond’s vision for the original park had actually worked? In other words, what if we totally ignored the lesson we all were supposed to learn? A new company has taken over Isla Nublar and done just that.

And we’ve got hubris all over the place here. Claire and Simon, the park manager and owner, see all the dinosaurs not as animals, but as assets. This flawed mentality reaches its breaking point when they create a new dinosaur, the Indominus Rex.

Then we’ve got Owen and Hoskins. Owen is studying Raptor intelligence, teaching them how to obey commands. And Hoskins wants to sell the raptors as military weapons because… he’s a moron.

Naturally, the Indominus Rex escapes, but Masrani wants to protect his investment and orders park security to take it down with non-lethal weaponry. Which seems like a great idea and will probably work!

Nah, it doesn’t work, it eats them all. Masrani changes his mind and personally hunts the Indominus down with an armed helicopter. Unfortunately it takes a bit of damage…

Hoskins uses this situation to try and prove his whole “Raptors as weapons” theory. But turns out, the Indominus Rex is part Raptor. So it assumes the role of Alpha and takes control of the Raptor Squad. And guess who gets his comeuppance?

Claire has a change of heart and teams up with Owen to subdue the Indominus Rex, which they do with some help from the other dinosaurs. The park is shut down once more.

In Fallen Kingdom, Isla Nublar is about to be destroyed by the island’s volcano and all the dinosaurs are under threat of re-extinction. Thank heavens there’s a rich guy to save the day. Benjamin Lockwood and the manager of his estate, Eli Mills, have volunteered to move the dinosaurs to another island that will function as an animal sanctuary.

Owen and Claire go to help only to realize that the extraction team sent by Mills has no intention of taking the dinosaurs to any sanctuary. Instead, Mills is planning to… and here comes that hubris… sell the dinosaurs on the black market.

This includes another Frankenstein dinosaur, the Indoraptor, which is basically a smaller, leaner version of the Indominus Rex.

Whether you ended up liking it or not, I do think the story tried to do something interesting here. The 2nd half is stylized like a haunted house movie, with the Indoraptor stalking people through a big scary mansion.

But we’re not done with our hubris yet. It’s revealed that Lockwood’s granddaughter, Maisie, is actually a clone. Lockwood lost his daughter and in a state of grief, used the same technology for cloning dinosaurs to clone his daughter. So, when Owen and Claire are faced with the decision to destroy the dinosaurs or not, Maisie releases them because she feels a kinship with them.

Both Lockwood and Mills follow the pattern we’ve been seeing and pay for their crimes. We’re also left with the cliffhanger implying that dinosaurs may once again rule the earth.

In Dominion, four years have passed and dinosaurs are roaming the Earth. But that’s not important, because giant locusts are ruining crops.

Ellie Sattler and Alan Grant realize that crops sold by the Biosyn corporation are not eaten by the locusts, so they try to uncover this corporate conspiracy. Biosyn also happens to own and operate a valley that houses and researches dinosaurs, which is good since the movie is supposed to have dinosaurs in it.

Meanwhile Biosyn finds and kidnaps Maisie the clone so they can use her genetic code for their own purposes, so Owen and Claire have to save her. This time around the hubris mostly falls to Lewis Dodgson.

He was the competitor that Nedry was going to sell DNA to back in the first movie.

Dodgson tries to destroy that evidence of his corporate conspiracy, but it gets out of control and causes a lot of chaos at the facility. Which results in his poetic ending mirroring that of Nedry’s.

And on the bright side, the whole gang gets back together, people from the old movies and the new movies. They manage to escape the island with the cure to the locust infestation. And the world has to adapt to having dinosaurs in it again.

And that brings us right up to Jurassic World: Rebirth. Like I said, this story is mostly new, but it does take place in the same continuity, a few years after the last movie, so it begins in a world where dinosaurs have been common in society for some time, however, they’re dying off due to the different environment of the Earth after a million year time gap. The only place they really thrive is at the equator. So, a group of operatives representing a pharmaceutical company go there to try and extract material that could help create life saving medication.

And I’m sure it will all go very well with no problems whatsoever.

I have 3 reasons why the prologue in The Lord of the Rings is one of the most effective pieces of storytelling in cinema history. And we almost didn’t get it.

Director Peter Jackson and his writing partners, Fran Walsh & Philippa Boyens had been trying to work out how exactly to do the prologue the entire time they were making the movie. He said that it was the most difficult aspect of the whole movie! It was a problem they just couldn’t solve, so when the movie was essentially done, they decided to cut it entirely. But they turned in this cut of the movie to the studio, New Line Cinema, and the one big note they got back was: YOU MUST HAVE A PROLOGUE.

They felt like they were being sent back to their own personal hell. They were in London at the time, because the only thing left to do was record the musical score. So, they had their editor bring all his equipment and come to their place in London then forced themselves to hash it out, at the same time the music was being recorded.

You might be wondering why the prologue was such a challenge. Well it all has to do with delivering exposition – making sure the audience has all the information they need to understand the plot. And when it comes to stories with dense plots, especially ones adapted from dense books, even the best filmmakers struggle with how to do this in an efficient and entertaining way. Here’s an example of two very different versions of a prologue for the same story:

That was from the 1984, Dune. In this case, to make sure the audience had some basic info they just have a lady appear on screen and talk directly at us. It’s not very entertaining, but it’s efficient. Now, compare that to the 2021 Dune:

This version still uses narration but it’s less informational and also accompanied by lots of visual exposition as well. I prefer this because I think it’s more cinematic, BUT, admittedly, some information is lost. I think it’s fair to say one film delivers the exposition in a direct but kind of boring way, and the other does it in a more cinematic, but less informative way.

And that’s the same choice that they were struggling with when trying to create the prologue to The Lord of the Rings. How much information is necessary and how do we make it not boring? After enough trial and error, they figured it out, and ended up making one of the greatest opening sequences of all time. And the First Reason for that was that they treated it like its own story.

Reason #1

A lot of movies follow a three act structure that has story beats at specific points in the story. Let’s say the movie is 100 minutes long. By the end of Act I - around 25 minutes in, the main tension is established. Will the characters achieve this goal?

Around 50 minutes, we’re at our midpoint, and this is where something happens that causes the tension to rise. Achieving the goal becomes harder.

Around 75 minutes, there’s a kind of culmination. The characters achieved their goal or they didn’t. Sometimes this is the “all hope is lost” moment. This ends Act II.

At some point in Act III, we have a Twist. Now this isn’t always a literal twist like “he was the bad guy all along.” It can be, but it’s just that circumstances change. Something is revealed that allows us to get to our resolution or ending.

Now, the Lord of the Rings Prologue is about 7 and a half minutes long. It starts by introducing The One Ring, and how Sauron is going to use it to control the world. 25% of the way in, at minute 1:52, the narrator says, and there were some who resisted. There’s Act I. Sauron is going to use the ring to take control, but standing in his way is this army.

We have this big battle sequence, and right around 3 minutes and 50 seconds, Sauron is defeated. That’s essentially 50% of the way in. It’s our midpoint. The goal gets more difficult because Sauron is gone.

Around minute 5:37, the Ring ends up with Gollum. There’s the end of Act II, about 75% of the way through the story. All hope is lost, he’s gonna keep that thing forever.

Then we get the twist. The ring is picked up by the most unlikely creature imaginable, a hobbit. The most unlikely creature? Well that sounds like a twist to me. Which allows us to get to our resolution.

And that plot structure only works, if the story has a point of view. The writers tried telling the Prologue from multiple perspectives. From Sauron’s POV, from Isildur’s, from Elrond’s. But it was only when they realized that the Ring itself is a protagonist or antagonist here, that the story should be told from its perspective. Which is why all of those story beats work.

1. The Ring is created and gains a purpose.

2. The Ring meets resistance.

3. The Ring loses Sauron

4. The Ring ends up with Gollum

5. The Ring is picked up by Bilbo

6. The Ring now resides with the enemy.

Funny enough, even though the studio demanded the Prologue be included, they also made a rule that it could only be 2 minutes long. Peter Jackson has said that this was the only big fight they had with the studio. The writers knew that they needed it to be longer if they were going to tell that story. And luckily they won that fight, or we would have never gotten the iconic opening.

Reason #2

The second reason this prologue works so well is because the filmmakers weren’t afraid to take inspiration from other movies, even ones that were wildly different in tone. The need for the prologue may have been exposition, but Jackson initially wanted it for a different reason. And the idea came from none other than James Bond movies.

007 movies almost always start with some crazy action scene. Jackson always admired the way those scenes “plucked the viewer out of the world they came from, and placed them in the hands of the filmmaker.”

Which is why less than two minutes into the movie we’re pulled into this epic battle. Jackson desperately wanted a big impressive battle upfront since he knew we wouldn’t get another one until the end of the 2nd film. And even though this one is short, it promises us what the scale of this story will be.

Reason #3

And the third reason this prologue is so great, is the technical execution in every cinematic category. Cinematography, production design, costumes, music.

For instance, the camera never stops moving. The truth is, we are being spoon fed information by the narrator but it doesn’t feel that way because the cinematography tells us, the story is constantly moving, there’s energy in what we’re seeing.

None of what we’re seeing feels like typical movie props, costumes or sets. The designs are so specific and detailed, they feel like they’ve been plucked from a real place. In a lot of other movies where we have an introductory scene like this, production might not be willing to dedicate a lot of time and money to something the audience won’t see again. But each of these scenes shows huge attention to detail right off the bat.

And the music. So many different pieces of music from this movie are instantly recognizable because the entire score is distinct. It feels epic and ominous, and ancient somehow. Thank you to the composer, Howard Shore.

All of these elements combined together accomplish the biggest task of all: hooking you enough that the next 45 minutes of the movie that’s doing Act I one again, goes by a lot faster. If the prologue wasn’t there, I think Bilbo’s birthday and these Shire scenes might have felt tedious, but not when we have this vital information.

We know he has a ring that can bring about the end of the world, and we already saw what that looks like. Massive stakes loom over this simple little event, giving it a natural tension until the next major story beat happens.

And that’s why I think the prologue in The Fellowship of the Ring is one of the greatest movie openings of all time.

Normally I do this sort of thing for movie franchises and TV series. You might be wondering, “What could I possibly need to know before an album?” Well, when it comes to Twenty One Pilots and the story behind their music… a lot.

Twenty One Pilots has been telling a single unified story for years now, using any type of media you can think of. And when I say a story, I don’t mean that in loose terms. I mean they have an entire lore with its own world, characters, even a kind of magic system.

Their upcoming album Breach is intended to be a conclusion to this storyline. So let’s take a look at the big picture for where the story is up to this point.

Blurryface

The album, Blurryface, catapulted musical duo, Tyler Joseph and Josh Dun into mainstream success. You’ve definitely heard hits from that album like Stressed Out and Ride. Across all of Twenty One Pilots’ music, the theme of mental health is a near constant. Tyler Joseph has long fought his own personal battle with severe depression and has analyzed that struggle from every possible direction through his music.

This album introduced a character fans would come to know as Blurryface, the personification of Tyler’s insecurities and doubts. Within the songs themselves, Blurryface is represented by a deep ominous voice. Visually, Blurryface’s influence is signaled using the color red. And since the character is a personification of Tyler’s inner struggle, he’s usually represented as having taken over Tyler himself.

In 2018 fans noticed something odd about a video posted on the band’s website. Hidden text that flashed on the screen for less than a second. Fans realized it was a link to a another site, but when you went there, you got a scary error message:

However, if you typed the original link in the search bar and added the violation code, it brought you to a new website known as…

DMA ORG. There, fans discovered a letter from somebody named Clancy, and this is where the Twenty One Pilots lore really takes off. Over the next several months, additional letters, pictures and other material were uploaded to this secret website. This and later information would eventually tell a story that goes something like this:

Clancy lives in a walled city known as Dema. The city is sectioned into districts, each run by one of nine Bishops. The Bishops govern the city through a religion known as Vialism in which the only way to paradise is self-destruction.

It is illegal to leave the city, but Clancy has tried and failed many times. He’s heard there’s a rebellion group outside the city called the Banditos. Having left Dema and the bishops behind, these rebels live in the otherwise wild and green continent known as…

Trench

The final music video for the Blurryface album had been heavydirtysoul in which Tyler is shown repeatedly speeding down a road in a car driven by a shadowy figure. Using music as a metaphor, Josh helps Tyler escape the vehicle and the cycle he’s trapped in, by destroying it.

With the release of the Trench album, this moment was then used as the inception point for the story involving Clancy. Because the first music video, Jumpsuit, picks up in that same setting. Tyler, now playing the role of Clancy, leaves the destroyed car, journeying into the world of Trench. This makes the heavydirtysoul music video the story of Clancy initially escaping Dema.

Clancy makes it pretty far into Trench, but somebody is coming after him. The leader of the nine bishops who fans came to know as Nico. But he goes by another name…

The veil, the red robe, the black paint on his face, all recalls the depictions of Blurryface from the previous album, only now, he’s been given a more concrete identity for the evolving story.

Right as Nico is about to capture Clancy, the Banditos show up. They don’t directly help Clancy, but provide him with an extra bit of inspiration to resist Nico just a little longer. Despite that, Clancy is unfortunately caught.

Now this would be a good time to acknowledge that even though the elements of this story are getting more specific and increasing in scale, the thematic purpose remains the same. Just as Blurryface was a kind of analogy in which Tyler could discuss his relationship with his inner anxieties, the city of Dema and the world of Trench become a representation for Tyler’s continual battle to escape that dark place he often finds himself in, emotionally and mentally.

With all of that in mind, it gives every layer to the story a purpose. For instance, why doesn’t the rebel group just save Clancy from being taken again? Because they can’t help Clancy escape the city that oppresses him. They can’t overpower the bishop for him. They can offer support, but it’s something Clancy will have to do himself.

But that doesn’t mean they don’t try in the next music video, Nico and the Niners. Here we get our first glimpse inside the city of Dema, and the practices of Vialism. While the Bishops conduct their rituals, the Banditos sneak their way into the city to rescue Clancy. Josh depicts a character within the story known as The Torchbearer. A guiding light for Clancy.

Most Twenty One pilots songs have a kind of double meaning. They can be about a theme or idea completely unrelated to the lore, but they’ll often have specific references – like symbols and codes that give fans additional tidbits of information, about the deeper storyline in some way. But a few songs, such as this one, deal directly with the story. By the end of the music video, Clancy has left Dema with the Banditos.

In the next video, Levitate, Clancy attempts to join the rebel group. He wears their colors, learns their strategies for avoiding capture by the bishops but it appears that Nico’s hold on Clancy is too strong. He’s snatched away from the Banditos once again, and dragged back to the city.

Scaled & Icy

Then in 2021, the band announced the release of their new album, Scaled and Icy, alongside a livestream experience. The flyers for the livestream had logos reading: A production of DMA ORG. It was also going to be hosted by a morning show called Good Day Dema.

The official statement was that the album was called Scaled and Icy as a reference to “Scaled back and Isolated” which is how the band felt during 2020. However fans were pretty quick to notice that Scaled and Icy clearly meant something more. Mix those letters around and it was revealed to be an anagram for

Clancy Is Dead.

And if that’s not sneaky enough for you… there’s also a hidden message in the album art. The Dragon scales here spell out the word Destroy.

And then right beneath that appears to be a jumble of shapes. Don’t ask me how fans figured out this next part, but the shapes fit perfectly onto a map of a street in Ohio, where the band is originally from. The name of the street is, of course, Clancy Way.

As a result of all these clues, and a number of eerie things throughout the livestream, fans gathered that this entire album was a product of the Bishops. They were using Clancy’s music to serve their own purposes. This would later be made clear in yet another hidden message. The band released a holiday single called Christmas Saves the Year, and on the package behind little Tyler there, there’s a barely visible message:

SAI is propaganda. Or, Scaled and Icy is propaganda. In the music video for Saturday Clancy finds himself aboard a submarine, performing for a bunch of people at some kind of party. The submarine is manned by people who look like bishops, or maybe serve the bishops. Either way, he’s clearly still under Dema’s control.

That is until a giant creature breaks through the submarine.

Trash the Dragon is the same dragon on the cover art and had been showing up throughout the Scaled and Icy era, for example in the music video for Shy Away. And as with all things in Pilots’ lore, there’s an extensive rabbit hole you can go down to figure out the inspiration behind the dragon, BUT WE DON’T HAVE TIME FOR THAT. As a result of the dragon’s actions, Clancy and the Torchbearer, have escaped from Dema’s control.

In the next music video, The Outside, we see that one of the Bishops was actually responsible for Clancy’s escape. Through a miraculous ability called Seizing, the bishop was able to control the dragon. For his betrayal, the other bishops destroy him.

Meanwhile, Clancy and the Torchbearer wash up on an island where they happen across a group of little creatures that look like this.

Like the dragon, this might seem out of the blue, but this little guy was known to Twenty One Pilots fans already, as Ned. He first appeared in the music video for Chlorine. Ned serves as a representation for Tyler’s creative expression and how difficult it is for him to get things just right. Once Tyler is able to satisfy this little creature, it grows at a rapid rate.

Ned still represents this, but now becomes an integral part of the story. See, the result of Tyler’s creative expression, represented by Ned’s antlers, is that he is able to fight back against his inner demons, represented by the Bishops.

Clancy takes control of the Bishop through that same miraculous ability, clearly demonstrating to the other bishops, you’re not the only ones in control anymore. I can fight back. The music video ends with Clancy and The Torchbearer signaling to the rest of the rebellion, and we see many other torches pop up in the distance.

Clancy

Last year, the band released the album, Clancy, which began with the music video Overcompensate. This depicted Clancy holding a secret meeting with citizens of Dema, instructing them on how to fight back, brewing a rebellion. But how did Clancy sneak back into the city without the bishops knowing?

Well he didn’t. He used his newfound ability to control somebody within Dema.

In the next music video, Navigating we see Clancy and The Torchbearer crossing the continent of Trench to meet up with the rest of the Banditos. However, the big reveal here is that The Torchbearer was never actually with Clancy all this time. It was something that Clancy was imagining to help keep him going. This is mirrored in another music video from the Trench album, My Blood. I think it could be saying all kinds of things about the impact of a true friend when dealing with a mental health crisis, but it's open for interpretation.

Now that Clancy is officially reunited with the Banditos and the real Torchbearer, we come to what we all thought was supposed to be the finale.

Paladin Strait, depicts Clancy and the Banditos marching on Dema. The Bishops use their power to raise up and control all the people that have succumbed to Vialism, forcing them to fight on their behalf against the rebellion.

Meanwhile, Clancy sneaks into the city, climbing the central tower, so that he can confront the bishops. He manages to reach the tower, and knocks out all of the bishops except of course…

Nico, or Blurryface.

Nico grabs Clancy, threatening to take control once more. And just as the music video ends, Clancy’s eyes open, showing just a little bit of defiance. Fans were left on a kind of cliffhanger. Some thought that really was the conclusion and it was meant to be open ended. But others were convinced this wasn’t over.

During the Clancy World Tour, Tyler and Josh did what they do and served up a never ending stream of clues, hints and codes that hinted there was more to come. Eventually, using actual morse code fans had discovered in letters at a traveling fan exhibit, they were able to reveal a single word: BREACH.

Breach

Which of course, the band soon announced as their next album, and the actual finale to this story. Breach will be released in September, but the first song and music video, The Contract is out NOW.

So, what’s in store for Clancy and his fight against Blurryface? We’ll all have to find out, but I would LOVE to hear your theories on what’s going on in The Contract music video. Because I have no idea.

Twenty years ago this month, people dressed as Master Chief from Halo and walked right into some of the biggest Hollywood studios carrying a sealed document that contained a Halo screenplay and a list of terms. The studio executives were only given a couple of hours to read the script and decide if they wanted to make the Halo movie.

Microsoft had pulled this stunt to try and start a bidding war between the studios, and after all that, how did we never get a Halo movie?

With the recent success, it may seem obvious for Hollywood to adapt video games. We’ve had Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Mario Bros. and Minecraft on the big screen, and The Last of Us and Fallout TV series. The Hollywood we’ve come to know is an industry that’s obsessed with IP, but things weren’t always this way. Not only has Hollywood become more dependent on IP, but they’ve also become much more open to video games as source material.

One of the earliest video game adaptations was 1993’s, Super Mario Bros. which was considered to be a critical and commercial failure. Hollywood clearly did not understand why Mario resonated with people. Which you can see by how bizarre this movie was.

And this was pretty much the case for the next 20 years or more of video game adaptations. There were some exceptions, like the Resident Evil franchise. Critics didn’t like it, but they made enough money to make 6 movies.

But I don’t think there was a true “big hit” video game movie in terms of reception and box office, until Sonic. Which is kind of hilarious because it started with the whole ugly Sonic disaster.

Point is, until recently, the consensus on video game movies was negative - either from a critical standpoint, or a financial one, or both. Hollywood seemed to think video games adaptations weren’t worth serious consideration.

But around 2005, a Hollywood insider convinced Microsoft to take the first step themselves. They paid screenwriter Alex Garland around a million dollars to write a Halo script. At the time, Garland was primarily known for writing 28 Days Later, but would later go on to write movies like Ex Machina, and Annihilation.

That script, along with Microsoft’s terms for a deal, would then be offered to the studios as a complete package, which was not normal. Studios are usually heavily involved in a project’s development, especially ones with big franchise potential.

And what Microsoft was asking for wasn't typical either. In addition to a flat fee, a mandatory budget amount, and fast tracked production, they wanted 15% of the box office gross.

Microsoft had heard about a deal that was made a couple years earlier for the movie, The Day After Tomorrow. Studios were given a 24 hour period to read the script and decide whether or not to agree to a set of terms. Even though this wasn’t the norm, it somehow worked. So Microsoft said, why don’t we just do that? Then we can control the financial aspects of the deal up front.

They must have known this wouldn’t be easy though, because they added a little showmanship. And that’s how we got to the point where people in costumes were delivering the Halo script and a list of demands, directly to studios.

Now at this point, the Halo video games were hugely successful. Fans wanted a big screen adaptation. And a full script had been written by a promising writer. But almost every studio passed on the deal immediately. Why? For the most part, because Microsoft’s terms were simply too much. But there was also a little bit more to it.

One of the agents that had helped come up with this whole stunt later said…

“What the games industry doesn’t understand is that this town is all about lunch.”

—Larry Shapiro

What he meant is that even though the studios compete with each other, the people working for the studios have relationships with each other. People like to say “Hollywood is a small town”. So when Microsoft tried to start a bidding war it didn’t really work, because the executives just called their friends at the other studios:

“Hey, Master Chief just brought a Halo script to my office.”

“Yeah me too.”

“So you buying?”

“No. You?”

“No. K, love you bye.”

So most studios passed, but there were two that showed some interest – Universal and 20th Century Fox. But even here, Microsoft had the same issue. The studios called each other and decided to team up. “We’re the only two studios left. Let’s partner up and counter offer.” So Microsoft lost all of its leverage and had to walk back on some of their demands.

But a deal still moved forward with Universal and Fox in partnership with Microsoft. Peter Jackson, who had recently directed the The Lord of the Rings trilogy, signed on as a producer. At one point Guillermo Del Toro was going to direct. In the meantime, other screenwriters worked on the script, including D.B. Weiss who would go on to write the Game of Thrones series.

After Del Toro dropped out, Neill Blomkamp was hired to direct. At the time he was relatively unknown, but gained some recognition by making a series of short films to promote Halo 3.

Some people think this was more than just marketing though. They theorize that it was a proof of concept for Blomkamp’s take on a Halo movie. And most fans responded positively to the style, that it felt like a genuine war movie, but in the Halo universe.

Unfortunately, Blomkamp would not get to make his Halo movie but ended up recycling some of his ideas into District 9. The Halo project fell apart because Fox dropped out of the partnership, leaving Universal to try and renegotiate the deal, which didn’t work, so it was canceled.

Around 2013 the Halo adaptation was revived again when it was announced that Steven Spielberg would be producing an official TV series. The project spent years in development hell, but finally resulted in the Paramount+ Series that released almost ten years later in 2022. The show had a pretty mixed reception and the biggest complaint was that the plot deviated drastically from the games’ story.

Which brings me back to Alex Garland. In an interview years after he’d written the Halo script, he said that he was basically asked to adapt the first Halo game as directly as possible. He said

“On something like Halo, I’m a writer for hire. They have a thing they want to do. I’m not bringing anything to the party... They are saying ‘we would like you to do this’ and I’m trying to do it as well as I can.”

It seems to me like he performed an assignment and maybe wasn’t all that passionate about the script. But what he said next is the really interesting part:

“Video games don't need film adaptations… I think games are probably the single most interesting, evolving medium around at the moment so they should just focus on making themselves as good as possible. And they'll obliterate everyone soon, and I'm sort of looking forward to that.”

That was in 2012. And this is the current list of video game adaptations that are set to be released or are at least in development:

Movies:

• Mortal Kombat 2 (October 24, 2025)

• Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 (Dec. 5, 2025)

• Street Fighter (March 20, 2026)

• The Super Mario Bros. Movie 2 (April 3, 2026)

• The Angry Birds Movie 3 (January 29, 2027)

• Sonic the Hedgehog 4 (March 19, 2027)

• The Legend of Zelda (TBA)

• Ghost of Tsushima (TBA)

• Horizon Zero Dawn (TBA)

• Helldivers 2 (TBA)

• The Sims (TBA)

• Gears of War (TBA)

• Return to Silent Hill (TBA)

• Death Stranding (TBA)

• Days Gone (TBA)

• Dredge (TBA)

• Uncharted 2 (TBA)

• Pokemon: Detective Pikachu 2 (TBA)

• Stray (TBA)

• BioShock (TBA)

• Space Channel 5 (TBA)

• Comix Zone (TBA)

• A Minecraft Movie 2 (TBA)

  TV:

• The Last of Us: Season 3 (TBA)

• Twisted Metal: Season 2 (2025)

• Fallout: Season 2 (TBA)

• The Witcher: Season 4 and 5 (TBA)

• God of War (TBA)

• Mass Effect (TBA)

• Gears of War (TBA)

• Ghost of Tsushima Anime (2027)

• Assassin's Creed (TBA)

• Splinter Cell: Deathwatch (TBA)

• Devil May Cry Anime Season 2 (TBA)

Some of these may never see the light of day, but Hollywood is obviously investing in a huge way in video game adaptations. In fact, one of the most recent announcements is that Garland himself will be working on the Elden Ring movie for A24. We’ve come a long way since 1993.

On the positive side I think this is because of the leaps and bounds video games have made in terms of storytelling. Video games have put forth some of the best narratives period. Not just “good for a video game” but phenomenal stories that function in ways movies and TV can’t. Hollywood is finally coming around to the idea that they could take some inspiration from the medium they used to look down on.

On the negative side, the clear signal is also that Hollywood is simply more interested than ever before in valuable IP. They seem more and more willing to throw money at a project they may not even understand, if they think it’ll help them make money because it already has a fan base.

There’s two sides to this coin, so what do you think? Is Hollywood wise to adapt video games? Or should they leave them alone and make their own stuff? Let me know!

Click here to watch this explanation on TikTok

I’ve seen a lot of people online trying to justify Joel’s decision to save Ellie in the hospital and prevent a cure from being made by claiming that the Fireflies would not have been able to actually make a cure. I believe that’s a flawed perspective.

When some people raise the idea that the Fireflies couldn’t make a cure, it’s because they struggle to accept the real world implications of how a cure would work. They have issues with the idea of making a vaccine with limited resources, that the vaccine could be distributed effectively, etc.

To be clear, I am not debating any of that. I understand that the reality of making and distributing a cure would be a lot more complicated than the story implies. I would say that people who struggle with this have a problem with the suspension of disbelief the story requires. Just to make sure we’re on the same page:

Suspension of disbelief is the idea of temporarily accepting an idea that’s not realistic or probable to enjoy a story. Harry Potter requires you to accept that magic exists, right?

The Last of Us already asks us to suspend our disbelief in accepting that a cordyceps mutation would affect humans as it does here. Yes, cordyceps is real and has unique effects in some animals, but it doesn’t turn them into vicious monsters, so we’re already accepting some things that are not probable. But how much we’re willing to accept is purely a personal limit, so if it’s a logistics thing for you, I’m not arguing with you.

What I will push back against, is when people try to claim that Joel made the right decision because of this idea that a cure wouldn’t really work. That reasoning is incorrect because within the story, within the fictional narrative of The Last of Us, the cure was going to work. That’s how it’s presented to the audience, that’s what all the characters believe, and it’s never called into question by the story itself.

Everything in the narrative leads up to the decision Joel has to make at the hospital. He begins the story as a broken man, closed off to the world. He refuses to “look for the light” as the Fireflies say. But as he takes this journey with Ellie, she fills that void for him. She makes him feel like life is worth living again, and he loves her like a daughter. So when he gets to the hospital, the stakes are clearly presented:

If he allows the Fireflies to sacrifice Ellie, a cure can be made, and by extension humanity can be saved. If he chooses to stop them, he keeps Ellie alive but the hope for a cure is destroyed. I recently replayed the games just to be sure. I promise you, every bit of dialogue, every document you look at – it all strengthens the idea that a cure was possible.

Look at the scene when Marlene tells Joel what’s going on.

Joel doesn’t try to debate whether or not the procedure is going to work, his sole concern is that he’ll lose Ellie. He even says “find someone else” suggesting it’s really just a personal issue for him — that he cares about Ellie, not the concept of what the Fireflies are doing.

The rest of the conversation between Marlene and Joel has nothing to do with the possibility of success, it’s about the emotional toll of sacrificing Ellie. Marlene says, “This isn’t about me. Or her. There is no other choice here.” She’s referring to the larger stakes at play. Despite the individual sacrifices, this is something that could help everyone else, all of humanity. It’s bigger than them.

Joel then replies, “You keep telling yourself that.” This isn’t a comment indicating that he doesn’t think it’s going to work. It’s a look into Joel’s perspective. Ellie means enough to him that saving the whole of humanity is not worth losing her.

Moments later after Joel has taken out numerous Fireflies and the surgeon, he sees Marlene again in the garage and the moral debate is presented one more time. And yet again, there is NO debate about the viability of a cure. It’s entirely about whether or not the sacrifice would be worth it. Marlene points out that while Ellie might live, what kind of life will she be leading in the post apocalypse? She’ll have to contend with the desperation and danger of this world, surviving against infected and raiders, and who knows what else. Her and everyone else, but she could also save everyone from that.

Marlene even goes to the extent to claim that it’s what Ellie would want and here’s the interesting part – she can see on Joel’s face that he knows it’s true. Joel doesn’t try to deny it. Deep down, he knows that Ellie would be willing to sacrifice herself if it meant she could help everybody. And in all fairness, this is another bit of suspension of disbelief because at that moment there was no way to actually confirm what Ellie thought, because she was unconscious.

But Ellie has been talking the whole game about how much it would mean to her to be able to restore hope to this world. It’s in line with her character, and it’s in line with typical storytelling that Joel would know what she wants without her having to explicitly say it. By doing this, the story dispels any notion that the moral dilemma presented has anything to do with the idea of Ellie’s consent.

Which leads me to the main point. People seem to be trying to find little loopholes around the primary question the story is posing, instead of just taking it at face value. I don’t know exactly why people feel compelled to do this, I have a few theories, but either way, it’s doing a disservice to the story and its themes.

The choice Joel is making is unequivocally: Am I willing to sacrifice ONE person that I love for the benefit of everyone else? And for Joel the answer is NO. The needs of the many do not outweigh the needs of the few. In fact they don’t outweigh even his need.

Now, it might sound like I’m dragging Joel here. I’m not. Because the reason the story is so great, is because it present that question, right back at the audience. And who of us is going to pretend that this would be an easy decision?

If it were your loved one on the operating table, what would you do? And more importantly WHY would you do that? These kinds of questions are so important to think about because even though this is a fictional scenario and world, we face similar decisions every single day. Probably not with the same stakes, but our decisions affect those around us and the story asks us to confront why we make the choices that we do.

So, if someone says that Joel was right because the cure wouldn’t have worked – they’re skirting around the whole point of the story and avoiding a difficult moral question the story is trying to ask.

Without that moral dilemma, there is no story. What would be the point? It would just be a series of and then… Joel saves Ellie from infected, and then saves her from raiders, and then saves her from Fireflies. The end. What a cool tough guy Joel is. Okay.

There’s no point to that story. It doesn’t say anything about us as people, or cause any reflection, or raise any interesting questions. You don’t have to like any of what happens in the story, but you can’t just make up reasons that aren’t really there to pretend the story isn’t what it is.

And just to address a few lingering ideas…

In the immediate aftermath of the hospital, Ellie wakes up in the car and asks Joel what happened. It’s important to understand here, whether it’s the game or the TV show, what Joel tells Ellie here is a lie. That might seem obvious to some of you, but I’ve seen people repeating what he said, seemingly thinking it was true. It’s not. He’s lying because he knows Ellie would not be happy about the choice he made.

In case there was any doubt that Joel believed a cure was possible, the opening scene of Part II dispels that entirely when Joel tells Tommy, in no uncertain terms, that he understood the decision he was making. The TV series does a similar thing in the porch scene in Season 2, Episode 6.

And lastly, another big point people like to bring up to undercut the idea of a cure is that Abby’s dad wasn’t a real doctor. They claim he was a veterinarian, or only had a bachelor’s in Biology and thus wasn’t qualified to make a cure or perform the surgery.

1. He is not a vet. In one of the first scenes he’s in he’s trying to save a Zebra, so somehow people ran away with that and claim he’s a vet, but that is never suggested.

2. The idea of his credentials is not a thing the story goes out of its way to bring up. When you’re playing the game, you have cutscenes. The gameplay stops and you watch a little movie. These are where major plot points are delivered, and there’s never a detailed conversation about why or how Abby’s dad is the guy. He just is. The closest thing you get is somebody saying “he’s the only person on earth that could have made a cure.” And that’s because, once again, the idea of the cure not being viable is NOT AN ELEMENT of this story.

3. While you’re playing the game you can find additional artifacts – notes and other documents around the environment that shed light on events and the world. These are optional and could be missed. But this is where people get the idea that Abby’s dad only has a bachelor’s in Biology. Because there might be a note that mentions it or you can see his degree on the wall, or something like that.

   

Like I said, I just replayed both games and tried finding every document I could and do not remember this in a significant way. And I was looking for documents. I took my time. Even if that exists, I think it would be a bit silly to assume that that’s the only education that Abby’s dad received or completed.

But it doesn’t really matter because I think it’s even sillier to think that the developers would undercut their entire story by hiding some random collectible deep within dozens of hours of gameplay that derails everything by suggesting the doctor wasn’t capable. If they wanted to bring that up as part of the moral question, I think it would be in a much more significant way.

And it’s worth noting that the idea of the doctor not being qualified was obviously not even an issue in the first game when the whole moral dilemma was presented. It was only raised when we got more information about him in the second game. Again, it seems like people have a need to skirt the difficult questions the story is raising.

I think some people would rather find obscure pieces of information to potentially defame a character so they can feel justified in hating them without acknowledging that’s the whole point of the story.

In conclusion – if you don’t like what happened in the story, that’s fine, that’s up to you. If you have trouble with the suspension of disbelief the story is asking for, that’s also fine, that’s a personal preference. But if you’re feeling inclined to disregard the primary thematic goals of the story so you can avoid the tough questions it raises, I would suggest taking a moment to examine why you feel that way.

But it’s always possible I’ve missed something. If you have any thoughts, let me know, I’d love to discuss it!

Click here to watch this recap on TikTok

Mission: Impossible (1996)

Agents of the IMF, or Impossible Mission Force, are typically portrayed as classic spies. They know how to handle a weapon but their default strategy is to use gadgets, stealth, and trickery to outwit their opponents. They’re often performing heists and sting operations, but with big, global stakes.

In our very first mission with Ethan Hunt, the protagonist of all eight movies, everything goes wrong and his whole team is wiped out, including his mentor, Jim Phelps.

It turns out this mission was a setup by the IMF to find a traitor and since Ethan is the only survivor, they assume it’s him. Thus, Ethan becomes a disavowed agent — his government has disowned him, he's gone rogue. He sets out to clear his name by finding the actual traitor, all while being pursued by his own agency, led by a man named Kittridge.

Throughout the series, Ethan often finds himself needing to steal a McGuffin. Some kind of object, a secret hard drive or a nuclear weapon, something that fuels the plot. Here, to expose the real traitor, Ethan needs to steal a list of IMF operatives from his own government. Which is how we get this famous scene:

He does this with the help of expert hacker, Luther, who ends up being one of the few characters that appears in every Mission Impossible movie.

The actual traitor is revealed to be Ethan’s mentor, Jim Phelps, who faked his own demise and is now trying to frame Ethan for everything. Ethan is able to catch Jim, clear his name and in the final scene we see that he has taken Jim’s place as an IMF team leader.

MI: 2 (2000)

The second movie is definitely the black sheep of the Mission Impossible family. Plot wise, it’s pretty standard, but stylistically it’s a little different.

An ex-IMF operative is working with a pharmaceutical corporation to release a deadly virus that they’ve already manufactured a cure for, so they can profit from the sudden demand. The story revolves heavily around Ethan’s relationship with Nyah, who is pretending to be in a relationship with the bad guy. So Ethan is constantly having to choose between the mission and her safety.

By the end, they destroy the virus, take out the bad guys, and Ethan and Nyah walk into the sunset together.

MI: 3 (2006)

But apparently it didn’t work out, because at the start of the third movie, Ethan is about to settle down with his new fiancé, Julia. Ethan is retired as a field agent and Julia has no idea about his work in the IMF.

But he’s convinced to go back for one final mission because the villain, Davian, is responsible for the death of an agent that Ethan trained, and he wants revenge.

So, he sets out to capture Davian, and uses one of the most consistent and unique tools in the IMF’s bag of tricks - MASKS. The IMF has the ability to create masks and voice chips that can make you look and sound like anybody. And in every single movie, there’s at least one scene involving masks.

Ethan impersonates Davian while the real Davian is taken by Ethan’s team. As villains tend to do, Davian escapes anyway and at the same time, his agents kidnap Julia. To save her, Ethan is forced to steal something called “The Rabbit’s Foot”. Naturally, because of this he’s disavowed (for the 2nd time).

Ethan recruits the help of Benji, who like Luther, becomes a permanent member of Ethan’s team.

Ethan saves Julia, defeats Davian, and recovers Rabbit’s Foot — which we learn is some kind of world-ending threat, “an anti-god” as Benji calls it, but we never find out what exactly it is because Ethan opts to leave the IMF to go with his wife, Julia.

MI: Ghost Protocol (2011)

But sadly Ethan seems to have left Julia behind because now he’s chasing a man named Kurt Hendricks, who’s trying to get Russia’s nuclear launch codes. To gain information on Hendricks, Ethan’s team infiltrates the Kremlin, but Hendricks is one step ahead of them and causes an explosion that destroys the Kremlin and pins the whole thing on Ethan and his team.

Now, there’s something to keep in mind about the IMF. As the Impossible Mission Force, they’re obviously a last resort, the people you call when all else has failed. They don't get orders or commands, they are offered missions, should they choose to accept. They have the choice to accept or reject missions because if they’re caught, their government will “disavow” all knowledge of their actions. They’re on their own.

Because of the Kremlin incident, the US President initiates Ghost Protocol, which disavows the entire IMF. Ethan and his team are once again rogue agents (Ethan’s 3rd time in four movies).

Ghost Protocol is the entry where we truly saw the beginning of Tom Cruise doing insane, real life stunts.

Ethan and the team eventually manage to stop Hendricks mere seconds before a nuclear missile strikes San Francisco. But we have one last reveal, about Julia. Ethan knew that she would never be safe because of his past as an IMF agent, so they agreed to part ways, giving Julia a secret identity to keep her safe.

MI: Rogue Nation (2015)

We’ve had recurring characters up to this point, but Rogue Nation is where we see plot points start to carry over as well. Ethan is up against Solomon Lane who leads The Syndicate, which is essentially an anti-IMF. An organization of rogue operatives seeking to upend the established world order through radical means. The biggest problem is that Ethan’s own government doesn’t believe the Syndicate exists.

In fact, Hunley, the director of the CIA, convinces a Senate committee to dissolve the IMF. You guessed it, Ethan is disavowed once again (this being the 4th time, but who’s keeping track?). But his team remains loyal and continues to help him from within the CIA.

Ethan also ends up working with British agent, Ilsa Faust, who is working undercover within the Syndicate. Ethan discovers that Ilsa is being forced to work for Lane by the British government, even after her cover is blown. This is because the British agency, MI6, is actually responsible for the creation of the Syndicate, originally intending it to be a secret force that could operate without oversight, but Lane took it over.

Ethan helps to vindicate Ilsa and prove that the Syndicate is real, by impersonating the MI6 Chief and tricking the Prime Minister into revealing the truth right in front of Hunley… who sums up the idea of Ethan Hunt very well:

The team also manages to capture Lane, hopefully disrupting the Syndicate for good.

MI: Fallout (2018)

But that was too good to be true, because in the 6th movie they’ve reorganized under somebody named John Lark, and they’re trying to acquire several plutonium cores which will allow them to launch multiple nuclear strikes.

Because Hunley was so impressed with Ethan and his team, he is no longer the CIA director, but is now leader of the IMF. He tasks Ethan with stopping John Lark however, Hunley’s CIA replacement, Erika Sloane, doesn’t trust the IMF and demands that her own agent, Walker, go along on the mission.

Ethan impersonates John Lark so he can intercept the plutonium cores. However he learns that the seller is not interested in money, and to get the cores, Ethan has to recover a human asset, none other than Solomon Lane, the actual leader of the Syndicate. Ethan manages to bring Lane and the plutonium cores to a secure location. Only then does Walker reveal himself to be the real John Lark, having worked as a covert Syndicate operative all along. He and Lane escape with the plutonium, killing Hunley in the process.

Ethan and the team track them to the site of the nuclear devices — a remote medical camp near the Himalayas, discovering that the radiation will poison a 3rd of the world’s water supply. And to add to Ethan’s stress, Lane arranged to have Julia working at the medical camp.

So, Ilsa, Benji, Luther and Julia team up to disarm the nuclear devices and stop Lane, while Ethan gets into a helicopter fight with Walker to secure the detonator, which he does in true Ethan Hunt style, with only seconds to spare.

MI: Dead Reckoning (2023)

We’re almost done. This movie and The Final Reckoning were intended to be a part one and part two, so the plot of this one is pretty important to understand the new movie.

The primary villain this time around is actually an artificial intelligence known as The Entity. In the opening scene we see The Entity hack a Russian submarine called the Sevastopol, tricking the crew into launching a missile against themselves and sinking the sub.

Elsewhere, there’s a global race between world powers to acquire both halves of a key. The governments believe the key controls the entity, but they’re not sure what it unlocks.

Naturally, the IMF sends Ethan and his team to get the key and we discover what the Entity really is – the most powerful AI ever created. It has infiltrated all of cyberspace and now controls information itself. It’s deleting information and creating fake information in its place, attacking the truth itself so it can deceive people into doing what it wants. Once Ethan learns this, he of course determines it’s too powerful for ANY government to control and resolves to destroy the Entity.

Ethan gets close to obtaining the key, but is sidetracked when a thief, Grace, steals the key for herself.

Ethan pursues Grace and ends up face to face with Gabriel, a servant of The Entity who believes the world would be better under the Entity’s control.

He demonstrates The Entity’s power by declaring either Ilsa or Grace will die that night, no matter what Ethan does. Ethan believes yet again, he can save everyone, but The Entity deals a fatal blow when it ends up being correct and Gabriel kills Ilsa.

However, Grace managed to keep the key. And here, we get a bit more background story for Ethan. The IMF finds people with special skills in dire situations and offers them a choice. Should they choose to accept, their slate is wiped clean and they become ghosts, choosing to fight for the greater good within the IMF. Long before Ethan joined the IMF, Gabriel caused the death of someone Ethan cared about, and framed him for it. Ethan was about to spend life in prison when the IMF offered him the choice. In a way, Gabriel set in motion the entire events of Mission: Impossible.

Since Grace has found herself on the radar of every government in the world, she is offered the choice and decides that after working with Ethan and his team and seeing how they care about each other, she will join them.

But to destroy the Entity, Ethan and and his team now need to find out what it unlocks, so they have Grace impersonate a seller and meet the buyer on a train hoping to learn more. The buyer ends up being none other than Kittridge, the IMF leader all the way back from the first movie, only now he’s the director of the CIA and trying to control the Entity on behalf of the US government.

But of course, who else is on the train? Gabriel AND the Director of US National Intelligence. The Director explains that the US created the Entity and lost control of it. They’re the ones that had The Entity infiltrate the Russian submarine at the beginning of the movie, but it was only intended to reveal the sub’s location, not destroy it. The AI went rogue. The key unlocks the data core of the Russian sub which now holds the source code for the Entity, and is the only thing that can control or destroy it.

The Director is trying to recruit Gabriel to get rid of this evidence, not realizing Gabriel works for the Entity. Instead Gabriel gets rid of him.

Ethan still believes nobody should have that power, so he recovers the key himself, outwitting the CIA agents that have been pursuing him the whole movie, as well as Gabriel.

He also manages to find one last ally in Paris, Gabriel’s top agent. Ethan had the opportunity to kill her but chose not to, and as a result she now tells Ethan everything she learned about The Entity.

The movie ends with Ethan, Benji, and Grace resolving to find the submarine so they can destroy the Entity’s source code. Luther goes to a secure site off-grid so he can work on a way to stop the Entity without it knowing their plans. They are of course still being pursued by Gabriel, the CIA, and other world powers but we’ll have to see what happens in The Final Reckoning. No, I’m not getting paid to do this, I just really like Mission: Impossible.

Spoiler alert for Season 1 of HBO’s The Last of Us as well as The Last of Us video game.

Joel is a single dad, looking after his daughter Sara with some help from his brother, Tommy. Unfortunately, a new kind of fungal infection sparks a global societal collapse and in the chaos, Sarah tragically dies.

Twenty years later, Joel is living in Boston. Society is still largely collapsed, but some cities have become Quarantine Zones governed by FEDRA, the Federal Disaster Response Agency, which at this point, is essentially the only government still standing and has strict regulations for the people living in the Quarantine Zone.

We also hear a little bit about a rebellion group known as the Fireflies, who are opposed to FEDRA’s rule but more on them later.

Joel’s ultimate goal right now is to find his brother Tommy, who went missing on his way out west to Wyoming. Joel and his current partner, Tess have been smuggling goods to FEDRA guards in exchange for leads on a working vehicle.

But a new opportunity presents itself when they run into Marlene, the leader of the Fireflies, who offers them a deal. She’ll give them a working truck they can take to Wyoming and all they have to do is…

…safely escort this teenage girl to the Massachusetts State House and hand her over to another group of Fireflies.

Joel and Tess are suspicious of the Fireflies’ motives, but with no other options they accept. Ellie turns out to be an incredibly feisty, rebellious, and foul-mouthed kid —but it’s not entirely clear why she’s so special until they’re caught by a guard and Ellie tests positive for infection.

The three are able to escape and Ellie claims she is immune to the infection. Again, Joel and Tess are suspicious, but they have to get Ellie to the Fireflies alive to get their truck, so they continue onward and unfortunately run into…

The infected.

As I mentioned before, in the world of The Last of Us, the infection is caused by a fungus known as Cordyceps.

Cordyceps is a real life fungus, but it currently only affects insects and a few other species. However what it does is pretty terrifying.

The fungus releases spores that will penetrate an ant’s exoskeleton, and alter its behavior. The ant is compelled to leave its nest, and go to a climate that better suits the fungus’ growth. Once there the fungus will devour the still living ant as it grows and eventually releases more spores.

In the Last of Us, cordyceps have mutated to the point of affecting humans. And there’s a progressive stage of infection. At first it’s kind of like your typical zombie, but over time it just gets worse and worse.

For instance, one of the later stages is called a “clicker” because by this point, their head has essentially turned into a fungus itself, so they’re essentially blind. As a result, they use a crude form of echolocation to hunt you, which is why they’re always making a clicking sound.

In the video game, in addition to direct contact from an infected person, the fungi also travels through airborne spores. However in the show, the infected operate a little differently, even though they look pretty similar.

Instead of spores, the infected in the show have these tendrils. The tendrils are in each of the infected, but can also form vast networks, making them kind of like a hive mind, which was not a part of the game, but an interesting dynamic.

While encountering the infected, Ellie is bit, but again, she shows no signs of the infection progressing, proving she is actually immune. Sadly, Tess was also bit and is not immune. This devastates Joel, but Tess is finally hopeful again because she realizes why Ellie is so important. Tess and Joel have just been surviving, they’ve become ruthless people, they’ve kind of lost their humanity, but Ellie now represents the slightest glimmer of hope with her immunity. If the Fireflies can figure out a way to recreate that immunity, maybe things can go back to the way they were.

Knowing she’s doomed anyway, Tess sacrifices herself to allow Joel and Ellie to escape.

Unfortunately, all of the Fireflies that were meant to take Ellie were eliminated by the same infected Joel and Ellie just encountered, but Ellie knows the Fireflies were planning to take her out West.

I’m going to give pretty broad strokes for some of the intervening episodes so we can keep a grasp of the central plot points. For instance Bill and Frank’s story occupied a whole episode and was incredibly well told and very much gives some life and depth to this world, but it doesn’t have a massive impact on what happens to Joel and Ellie, so we’re pressing forward.

Joel and Ellie continue trekking across the US, but there’s dangers that sidetrack them along the way. What you really need to know is that Ellie goes through several traumatic events that force her to confront the reality of the outside world. She’s spent most of her life living in the Quarantine Zone, which is no cake walk, but the brutality on the outside is shocking even to her. Joel is more accustomed to it, but he has to experience the trauma anew, because he’s witnessing it alongside Ellie.

For instance, Ellie gets blood on her hands for the first time when Joel’s life is in danger and she has to help him take the life of another human being.

As Joel and Ellie continue traveling, they build a mutual respect and even admiration for one another. Joel is reluctant to acknowledge how much he cares for Ellie because he doesn’t want to have to experience the pain of losing a daughter all over again, so he remains emotionally unavailable.

We also learn that the reason Ellie discovered she was immune was another a tragic experience. While exploring an abandoned mall, her and her friend Riley, with whom she has a budding romance, encounter infected and are both bitten. They decide to enjoy their last moments together, but we of course know that while we don’t see it, Ellie would have had to watch Riley’s infection slowly take over while she herself was immune.

At this point we should be catching on to the fact the world our characters inhabit in this story is a miserable one. It’s filled with death and despair, BUT — I would argue that there’s a purpose to all this. It’s not sad and bleak just to be edgy. It’s putting our characters in the worst spot possible so that their battle to choose hope feels like a genuine struggle.

When a story revolves around the idea of choosing hope in the face of despair it can sometimes feel a little obvious to the audience. It may still be pleasant, but we were never in doubt about the characters’ ability to overcome their challenges and sorrows.

But when we’re placed in a world like the Last of Us, that conflict and the tension of whether or not our characters will be able to make any sort of moral choices that value life and optimism, is really in question. You’re not sure if they’ll be able to.

Once they reach Wyoming, Joel is reunited with his brother Tommy who is living in a thriving community in Jackson. It actually seems livable and reminiscent of how things used to be.

And it’s here that we’re presented with the new perspectives that Joel and Ellie have formed over the course of their journey. Ellie was initially resistant to anyone telling her what to do, but having seen the horrors of this real world, and knowing that her immunity could potentially mean something important to humanity, she wants to continue on and find the Fireflies.

Joel however, is really struggling at the thought of losing Ellie and thus, does not want to accompany her further. Ellie misinterprets this as Joel not caring, which is devastating because Joel has become one of the few people she can trust. But Tommy knows what’s really going on since he knows about Sarah Joel’s daughter, and he’s eventually able to convince Joel to go with Ellie.

On the way, we have a few more traumatic experiences but…

With the worst seemingly behind them, Joel and Ellie reach the Fireflies base in a hospital in Utah. It’s only after Ellie is already under anesthesia that Joel is told the procedure of turning Ellie’s immunity into a potential cure for humanity will also result in her death.

Joel is faced yet again with the threat of tragic loss. Only this time - the stakes are not so simple. Joel has spilt plenty of blood protecting Ellie thus far, but the circumstances now are entirely different. Ellie’s sacrifice could mean that hope for all of humanity is restored, but at the expense of Joel’s own personal hope.

He lost a daughter once and the universe delivered him a 2nd one, and he’s now being asked to lose her too. So we go back to that question about whether our characters will choose hope, and we’re confronted with this dilemma where that choice isn’t even quite clear, at least for Joel.

Is it more hopeful to choose a path of redemption for everyone, or to restore hope in himself by preserving Ellie’s life at the expense of others?

For us, the choice may feel simple. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. But here is where I’ll make the argument that I think there is a stark difference between the experience of playing the game and watching the TV show. The route in which you get to this point in the story is a little different, but this final conflict is essentially the same.

However, in the game, you have spent dozens of hours playing AS Joel. You’ve literally walked around in his shoes, fought off numerous people and infected, and all the while gotten to know and love Ellie. So when you get to this point, you’re in his headspace. It’s a lot easier to think, “No way. I’ll set fire to this whole building before I let them take Ellie.”

And we’ve spent enough time with Joel in the show to get a glimpse of that, but I don’t know if it’s quite as visceral.

All that said, when Joel makes the decision that he’s not willing to lose Ellie, the fallout is shocking in both the game and the show. Joel proceeds to be a one man army and takes out all the Fireflies throughout the hospital to save Ellie.

When Ellie wakes up, Joel tells her a lie, that the Fireflies determined a cure could not be made from her immunity so he took her away. You’d think Ellie might be glad to be alive, but she’s actually devastated. She was hopeful for humanity, and she was going to be able to directly contribute in a meaningful way to restoring that hope for everyone and then she learns it was all for nothing.

So, if Joel taking the lives of all the people in the hospital wasn’t enough, we now see another dynamic in which Joel’s decision may have been more selfish than we realized. He’s chosen his own hope and comfort over Ellie’s own hope and her desire to help everyone.

The game and the show end in a similar scene – Ellie senses that Joel may not be telling the truth and asks him to swear on it. She gives him one final opportunity to tell her what really happened and… he lies to her again.

It’s an absolutely heartbreaking scene because we know that Joel is a broken man and he’s just clinging to this last bit of life that he has.

And it’s not clear whether Ellie really believes him or not, but she decides to trust him again because like I mentioned before - he’s really the only person she can trust, he’s the only person in her life that hasn’t left her.

So these two characters end this part of the story at a kind of impasse where Joel is trying to keep his hope and his relationship with Ellie alive, but by doing so is breaking the very foundation of their relationship in the process.

So that’s where we head into season 2, but I have just a little bit more info for you, having played the video game, The Last of Us Part II. Don’t worry, I’m not gonna spoil season 2 or the video game, but I did want to address some things.

The story of the 2nd game, which season 2 of the show will be partially adapting, was divisive for fans of the first game. I would love to talk more about that, but I don’t want to do it here so as to not spoil the show.

All I’ll say is that if you’ve just watched the TV show, but you’ve heard about the 2nd game’s divisive reception, I would recommend not letting that taint your experience watching the 2nd season. I personally believe the story of the 2nd game was phenomenal, and will probably do a longer breakdown on this later.

But in the meantime, I hope this was helpful!

Okay I have a pitch for a show and you’re gonna LOVE IT. Remember MTV’s Cribs?

It ran for 19 seasons in the 2000s and was basically just tours of celebrity homes? The closest thing today would probably be those Architectural Digest home tours.

Somewhere between Cribs and Architectural Digest Home Tours, there’s a beautiful show where we’re just touring the home theaters of well-known filmmakers. Hear me out.

When Steven Spielberg sits down to watch a movie at home, just for fun, what does that look like? This is the guy that made Jaws, Jurassic Park, E.T., Indiana Jones, Saving Private Ryan, Schindler’s List, and so much more. For somebody that’s made some of the greatest movies of all time, what’s the standard that he has to have to just watch a movie at home?

And you might think like I did at first — that’s interesting but do you really need a whole show for it? You could probably just find a picture of it on the internet. After a brief bit of research, the only thing I could find for Spielberg’s was a text description from a Wall Street Journal article from 2012:

“With a touch of his iPad, he can unlock a hidden door that opens onto a corridor leading to the projectionist booth and lobby. In his 1940s Art Deco-styled screening room, with frosted-glass sconces, cherry-wood ribbing and fluted bronze panels, Mr. Spielberg sits in the back, on the highest tier of the stadium seats, directing the entire experience with his remote.”

Which is cool and all but not enough. I need to see this man in his true element.

I want all the specs: How big is the screen, what kind of projector, how many speakers? What’s he got stocked on snacks, what’s his preferred movie treat? Does he stream stuff? Or does he go 4K blu-ray only?

And that would obviously be the real movie nerd segment. But then there would also be an interview segment. And this is the vibe we’d be going for:

I think the appeal of this show would be a more casual and intimate vibe. This “interview” would be way more laid back than most interviews we typically see with a famous filmmaker. If your questioning starts with something as simple as as “what’s your favorite movie snack"?” I think you’d pretty quickly get to see another side of them. They would get the chance to talk about all kinds of things they normally don’t get to but probably want to, even if they’re trivial.

So you’d come for a theater tour and stay for a unique opportunity to get to know more about the personality of the people who are making the stuff that means something to you.

And I use Steven Spielberg as the example because he’s my personal favorite, but there’s so many filmmakers out there and I’m not just talking directors. I’d love to see writers, producers, actors, cinematographers, production designers, costume designers, etc.

I don’t think this show would be that hard to make either. I mean I can be the host obviously… and if you have to pick someone more charismatic that’s fine, but I’ll tell you right now, nobody, and I mean NOBODY is going to respect those home theaters more than me. So if you have to get someone else to host that’s fine, but I’m going to be be RIGHT off camera, I mean RIGHT OFF cause I want to be there and this was MY IDEA.

Anyway, I can’t be the only one that’s wondered about this kind of thing, right? And if I see this pop up somewhere and I’m not involved, I’ll get you.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences or AMPAS is made up of a bunch of branches. They can range from expected categories like writers, directors, actors, etc. to groups like executives, representation and even marketing.

All of these branches add up to over 10,000 members and the rules for becoming a member of each of the branches are different, but it’s usually based on some level of involvement and achievement in that category.

When it comes to the awards, there’s also different rules for each of the 20+ categories. For instance, most categories require a feature length movie to be over 40 minutes and to be screened in theaters at least a week for at least three times a day, with one of those screenings being between 6pm and 10pm, etc.

From the list of eligible movies in a year, there comes a process of preliminary voting. After that a “shortlist” is created. There’s another round of voting, and from there, you get the list of nominees. In these rounds people would only be voting in their branches. So writers would be voting for nominees for Best Screenplay.

When it comes to the official nominees, the entire Academy can vote for all categories to determine each of the winners. Most of the categories are determined by simple majority so whoever gets the most votes wins.

BUT that’s not how the award for Best Picture works.

For that, the members rank the 10 nominees from their favorite to least favorite. And whichever movie gets over 50% of the votes wins. If a single movie doesn’t get over 50%, then the movie with the least votes is eliminated and people who voted for that as their top choice have their votes added to the film that was next on their list.

If their second choice was eliminated, then their vote counts for their third pick and so on.

Members are not required to watch all of the nominated movies to vote. They are asked to only vote for movies they have seen and they don’t have to vote in every category. They can choose to abstain, but it’s entirely up to them. However, this rule is currently being amended so that voters do have to watch every film in a category before voting.

Now, if it’s the Emmy’s or the Golden Globes or other award bodies, the voting process and who is voting is going to look little different. For instance the Golden Globes is voted on by journalists, while the Oscars are voted on by industry peers.

In some ways, the Oscars can end up resembling your high school’s student body officer elections. It’s kind of a popularity contest and people of course, vote for their friends.

And this isn’t just me assuming that this happens. One of the sources you can look at, is almost every year the Hollywood Reporter releases a few “Brutally Honest Oscar Ballots” where they have a few different members of the Academy - under the condition of anonymity - say exactly what they’re thinking about voting.

Hollywood Reporter Brutally Honest Oscar Ballot

And who knows, maybe what’s said in these articles are actually meant to be inflammatory to sway voters, but it’s hard to imagine that people wouldn’t be at least a little biased about voting for their peers.

But there’s some other elements to awards season that are much more applicable across the board.

And it basically comes down to an FYC campaign. FYC stands for “For Your Consideration”, as in, “please consider voting for this movie for an award.”

This is basically like its own marketing campaign entirely focused on convincing voters to vote for a specific movie. And studios will spend A LOT of money on these FYC campaigns.

As just one recent example that there has been a lot of discussion over…

Emilia Perez was screened at the Cannes Film Festival after which Netflix purchased the distribution rights for $12 million. And they have now likely spent several times that amount on just the FYC campaign.

Even if award organizations were truly trying to recognize the “best picture” of the year, it would be an impossible task because art is subjective. Ultimately whether something resonates with somebody — Oscar voter or not — comes down to personal preference.

But on TOP of that, there’s the simple fact that award recognition converts into monetary value, which is why huge entertainment/media corporations care about winning and would spend money on something like an FYC campaign.

We could talk all day about how exactly winning awards could increase a studio’s bottom line, cause there’s lots of different ways. Whether they claim to care or not, the general public is more likely to watch a movie that seems like it’s won a lot of awards. It also lends a level of prestige to certain studios and filmmakers that can affect the immediate value of future projects. Those are just a few examples.

The point is, the companies that paid for a movie very much want it to win awards and will also pay for a campaign aimed at doing just that.

And if you don’t live in LA or maybe New York, you might not have ever seen an FYC ad, but picture what it’s like during political campaigns and you’re constantly seeing ads targeted at you, the voter, and it’s similar.

When it comes to award season for the rest of us who aren’t members of any voting body, it’s really easy to fall into one of two camps:

You can think that it’s all nonsense, because it’s just a bunch of Hollywood insiders patting themselves on the back. OR you can put a lot of value in it and feel angry that your favorite movie isn’t getting the recognition you feel it deserves.

And I would argue that you don’t have to be in EITHER of those camps. As we’ve discussed, there are plenty of reasons to take these awards with a grain of salt. They are not and never will be a perfect system for recognizing the best movies or TV shows of the year. But at the same time, there is something of value in coming together and looking back to recognize some of the best artistic contributions that were put into the world.

Sometimes the award committees get it wrong, sometimes they get it right. And even though a lot of this is personal opinion, certain movies can eventually triumph by standing the test of time.

For instance, Shakespeare In Love, infamously won the 1999 Best Picture, beating out Saving Private Ryan. Decades later, I think it’s safe to say Saving Private Ryan is the more revered movie. Shakespeare In Love is also considered to be one of the early examples of the modern FYC campaign and it was championed by none other than Harvey Weinstein — who of course is now widely known to be an absolutely evil and disgraceful person. But he was the one behind the idea of doing the equivalent amount as a political campaign to get a movie he produced to win awards.

But for every Shakespeare in Love, there’s also a Lord of the Rings. The Academy Awards have always resisted recognizing specific genres like sci-fi, fantasy, and horror. For some reason the voting body seems to view these movies as lesser, more “entertainment” than art. Obviously that’s not true, and Lord of the Rings was one of the few genre movies to earn respect in a profound way. It was nominated for 11 Academy Awards and won 11 Academy Awards, tying itself with Titanic and Ben-Hur for the most Oscars won, and setting a record for the highest wins in a clean sweep.

We can use award shows like the Oscars as an opportunity to engage in discourse about relevant and topical art. But we don’t have to view them as an end all be all. There are lots of movies that win awards that don’t deserve it and even more that don’t win awards and do deserve it. But regardless, it all makes for an interesting way to view and discuss the cultural landscape.

Full spoilers for the show up through its Season 2 finale!

Now that we’ve got two full seasons of Severance to consider, it’s fun to see how different theories came true, and others didn’t. The best theories are always the ones that actually tie back into the themes of the story being told so…

What is Severance trying to say?

In the goat scene of the finale, Drummond mentions that Kier has a dream to create a “pain free” world.

And of course, in theory that sounds nice. At first thought, I think most of us would be glad to avoid our painful experiences, be it emotional or physical pain. In fact, I think most of us would be enticed by the idea of not having to endure any unpleasant experiences, even basic things like work.

And that’s exactly what Severance creator Dan Erickson thought when he was working corporate office jobs and coming up with the idea for Severance.

But once you apply a specific process to that idea — which in Severance involves putting a chip in someone’s brain to essentially create two separate identities — it raises all kinds of philosophical questions. Perhaps one of the biggest being:

Who Are You?

Who would you be if you detached yourself from all of your painful experiences? All of your traumas, anxieties, fears, heartaches?

Who would you be if your existence was limited to JUST a painful experience?

Are either of these full lives, or lives half-lived?

Back in season one, the first time we saw Mark go down the elevator to the Severance floor, we were treated to a stark contrast. Suffering through the loss of his wife, Mark is sobbing in his car, a completely broken person.

As he descends, the pain vanishes. Innie Mark is unburdened by that loss. He’s content, cheerful even. It’s hard to debate that this seems like a more pleasant experience.

But it didn’t take long for us as the audience to view innie Mark’s situation as something negative. The very first episode of Season 1 is titled, "Good News About Hell” and I think most of us would agree that if our 9-5 work life was the only life we had, “hell” might be a proper term for that existence.

But why? Why do we reach that conclusion after we so visibly saw the difference in Mark’s state of mind between his outie in pain, and his innie who is relatively content?

I think some element of it would have to be that we know what Mark and the other innies are missing by not being able to live a full life. And whether or not we realize it, by extension, that must include the painful experiences as well.

And yet, that doesn’t make us any less resistant to pain. The technology of Severance doesn’t exist at this point, but we constantly have things that are sold to us on the basis of removing pain and inconvenience from our lives.

As just one example, think of how much has been invested in social media algorithms with the sole purpose of developing a platform that can expertly serve up an endless stream of content specifically catered to your interests and your interests alone.

Or how the world is marching to a future filled with artificial intelligence replacing all kinds of processes, marketed as a way to make our lives easier.

In both of these situations there has been and will continue to be a high price for society to pay, but if there’s money to be made, then people will only be concerned with whether or not they can, rather than whether or not they should.

Which of course brings us back to Lumon and its founder, Kier. At the beginning of the show, Lumon seemed like a fairly standard sci-fi representation of a corporate entity, even if a little on the dystopian side.

But the more we experienced Lumon from the perspective of those within its walls, the more it felt like a pseudo-religious cult. The employee manuals read like scripture, the founder of the company is a prophetic figure, there are secret rituals and ceremonies, etc.

For season one, my interpretation of this element was that the show was critiquing our current societal relationship with corporations. That our adherence to the system, as employees or customers, is like that of religious worship. And I think that still applies, but over the course of season two, I think that got even more complex.

As I understand it, the outside world essentially views Lumon as a typical massive corporation and only those on the inside experience the more cult-like aspects. And it makes it all the more insidious when you realize that Lumon may very well have developed this cult of belief, specifically to control its people. Rather than employees you can have loyal disciples.

And Lumon absolutely understands the power of propaganda in cementing that belief system, which is why they have a whole department creating extravagant paintings that canonize events at the company, or special rituals that portray the main tenants of the belief system, etc.

But no matter how weird and deep this gets, it would seem the ultimate goal is STILL, to capitalize and profit on people’s desperate desire to escape pain.

A Pain Free World

Which brings us Gemma. By the end of season two we understand that Lumon, through Mark’s help, was able to create 25 different identities within Gemma, each one dedicated to different painful experiences. Some of them were as mundane as going to the dentist. Others were seemingly mundane but perhaps had emotional pain mixed in, like having to write an endless amount of thank you letters on Christmas. And of course Cold Harbor was revealed to be the extreme anguish of losing a child.

I think Lumon’s goal is to create a world in which people could literally sever themselves from any painful experience they might encounter, aka a pain free world. We already know they’re testing this to some degree because of the birthing cabin which we saw in season one and two.

But of course, for this to work, they have to completely dehumanize the innies who are forced to experience the pain on their outies’ behalf. And they do this regularly. Which even in Season One, we as the audience knew was wrong, but season two truly drives this home.

No matter what kind of existence it is, this life is the only one the innies have and despite the pain, they absolutely want to go on living.

I imagine a lot of people were frustrated or devastated when Mark didn’t exit the door with Gemma in those last moments, but it’s obviously about so much more than which woman he loves.

Exiting the door represents nonexistence for innie Mark. It would be a life without pain, but without joy. It would be without anything. If he turns around and goes to Helly, he knows he’s staying in “hell” and that pain probably awaits him. But with that pain is also joy, evidenced by Helly standing right in front of him.

Who could blame him for making that choice?

But there is also one last element that may help shed light on that and many other moments. Dan Erickson said this in an interview:

When we know this, it’s a little bit easier to see how Mark and Helly could hold hands, running into an uncertain future. Fueled by an adolescent mentality, not only do they not have much forethought for the future, but they’re willing to take risks, choosing to live despite the threat of pain because frankly, they haven’t experienced that pain.

And of course, there are so many questions still to be answered.

Regardless of whatever questions the show decides to answer in Season 3, or what new questions it raises, don’t be surprised if they continue to revolve around primary questions:

1. How far will we go to escape pain?

2. How does the lack of pain change our very identity?

3. And how will people seek to profit off of our attempts to escape?

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This movie breakdown is for a very specific audience:

PARENTS.

Your kid wants to show you a movie. They’re telling you how great it is. You sit down together and watch it. You do your best not to look at your phone, not to fall asleep, not to randomly get up and tell them not to pause it.

But you just don’t get it. It’s okay, I’m here to bridge the gap and this time we’re talking about:

EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE

This movie came out in 2022, so why now? After years of seeing internet comments from people talking about how their parents didn’t get it I felt I’d see if I might be able to help. But more importantly, I think its themes are always relevant.

To be clear, I’m not saying you have to like this movie. You can think whatever you want about it, but hopefully I can help you see why the story resonates with so many people.

Let’s start with getting some of the logistics out of the way. This movie deals with the concept of the multiverse and I know it can feel like a lot, but I promise, it’s not. The multiverse is just a storytelling device, an idea that allows us to look at certain themes with a new perspective.

You remember Groundhog Day, right? Bill Murray gets stuck in a time loop, where he keeps living the same day over and over. It leads to some fun and goofy scenarios, but also some more contemplative and thoughtful scenes. The movie uses the time loop as a way to examine certain themes like:

What would you do if there were no consequences to your actions? Is each and every day of our lives important?

In Everything Everywhere, the multiverse idea is just like the time loop — it’s a plot tool that is going to bring our themes into focus.

We all make tons of decisions every single day. Small choices and big choices.

Well, the multiverse theory says that every time we make a choice there’s an alternate timeline or reality where we chose differently.

We’ve all wondered what our life would be like if we’d made different decisions. Sometimes we’re filled with regret, and other times we’re probably grateful that we avoided disaster. But it’s something we’ve all thought of.

So if a story allows its characters access to these alternate realities, it allows them to actually do what we all wish we could, and see EXACTLY what would have happened if they made different choices.

They can answer questions like:

Would I be a different person? Would my life be better? Do I have some unrealized potential? Could I have been rich and successful? Could I have achieved my dreams?

A very early version of this kind of story might be It’s a Wonderful Life. George Bailey is able to witness an alternate reality, one in which he doesn’t exist and it allows him to see the impact of his life.

Now if we take the multiverse concept one step further, and acknowledge that everybody in the world is making choices all day everyday, then the number of alternate realities is infinite, which by extension means, anything is possible. If you can imagine a reality, no matter how strange, the multiverse theory says that it exists, somewhere.

And I’m pretty sure this is where the movie lost some of you. Maybe you saw something like the hot dog fingers, and just felt it was too weird.

The reason a lot of people find this funny is because it’s the silliest interpretation of the multiverse.

If in our reality, homo sapiens became the dominant species because we evolved from apes that had opposable thumbs…

…then there’s some reality where a mutated human ancestor had fingers that looked like hot dogs, and THEY became the dominant species. It’s also funny because it’s a reference to another classic movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey, but I digress.

If you don’t find that funny, it’s okay, because even though it’s definitely meant to be silly, this and the other weird realities in the movie, directly contribute to the point the movie is trying to make. And what is the point, you ask?

Everything, Everywhere All At Once is about the daily battle each of us faces between HOPE and NIHILISM. At least this is my interpretation. The movie has lots of interesting themes, but I’m going to focus on this.

And just so we’re all on the same page — when I say Hope, I mean the deliberate choice to believe that things matter. That there’s a point to life.

So then of course Nihilism would be the exact opposite. Life has no meaning, purpose or value.

And this story specifically looks at how we all approach this battle differently, particularly in the context of generational family relationships.

I don’t know how old you are, but I’d say it’s pretty likely that if you’re on the parent side of this discussion you probably didn’t grow up with the internet. Especially with the way we have it now, always accessible in the palm of our hand. But your kids probably have. They’ve grown up in a reality where there is an instant and immediate way to consume anything and everything all the time.

And this is very much represented in the character of Joy, the daughter.

As a brief reminder on the plot - Evelyn, the mom, is brought into the multiverse because…

…a version of her daughter from an alternate reality is threatening to destroy the Multiverse.

We eventually learn that this is because the alternate daughter was exposed to so much of the Multiverse that all of those realities became jumbled in her brain. So that version of Joy was literally experiencing Everything, Everywhere All At Once.

And if your head is starting to spin a little bit, don’t worry. We don’t need to concern ourselves with the logistics for now, we’re focused on what the story is getting at.

For Joy, growing up in the world she inherited felt like she was experiencing everything, everywhere all at once. And it’s incredibly overwhelming. To go back to the idea of the internet era we find ourselves in, I think we can see how that feeling could apply to all of us, but especially young people.

So what happened to Joy as she was trying to handle the rapid intake of information? Do we remember her bagel?

Again, the filmmakers approach the idea in what, initially, seems like a silly way. We all know about everything bagels.

It’s just a bagel with a lot of ingredients on it, but Joy asks what would happen if she actually put everything on a bagel? Literally everything in her human experience?

The bagel becomes A BLACK HOLE.

Remember, we’re not getting caught up in the details. In the greater analogy here, maybe the bagel represents the feeling people get when they try to process all the complexities and contradictions of the world around them. It feels like they’re facing a black hole, devoid of light and reason and hope. Just nothingness.

Humans have always had to deal with questions about life:

What happens when we die? Is morality universal? What’s the point of life?

But only in our current times have they had to ask the big questions while there is also a constant stream of opinions that claim to be authoritative on every topic imaginable going directly from the device in their hand, into their brains.

The stress of it all makes Joy embrace the idea that nothing actually matters because it’s the only way she can find any relief. Nihilism to her is the only escape. So the bagel becomes a symbol for that idea.