The tragedy of lost media is real ... especially when it's lost from everything but false childhood memories. In a truly bizarre situation, many '90s kids claim to have seen a movie called "Shazaam," wherein Sinbad played a genie summoned by a young brother and sister. But no such movie exists.

False memories can seem like a plot device out of science fiction, but they're actually pretty mundane. The human brain is imperfect, after all. What's more bizarre is when multiple, unrelated people have the same false memories. This phenomenon has been termed "the Mandela Effect," named for former South African President and anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela (under the eponymous effect, many remember him dying in prison in the 1980s despite abundant proof otherwise).

And these memories of "Shazaam" are false. Sinbad himself has refuted them via Twitter. He even suggested people are misremembering a costume he wore to host a TV marathon of Sinbad the Sailor movies as his "Shazaam" outfit. That said, he did get in on the joke by appearing in a College Humor sketch titled "We Found Sinbad's SHAZAAM Genie Movie!" The sketch (with VHS grains added to the footage for authenticity) purports to be the scene where the two young siblings Rachael (Jolie Ledford) and James (Bradley Bundlie) meet Shazaam.

According to "Shazam! Fury of the Gods" director David F. Sandberg, Sinbad was willing to poke fun at this Mandela Effect again by appearing in the superhero sequel.

The Two Shazams

In response to a tweet by Sandberg, The Wrap reporter Scott Mendelsohn joked about Sinbad appearing in "Fury of the Gods." Sandberg revealed that he actually did have plans for Sinbad to make a cameo — "He was supposed to be the guy in the street who calls Shazam low voltage."

Billy Batson's superhero ego being called "Shazam" is a fairly new trend. Historically, he's been Captain Marvel. This root is also seen in the names of his "family" of heroes: Mary Marvel, Captain Marvel Jr., and the UK-based successor Marvelman (now known as Miracleman). However, the current owner of Billy Batson is DC Comics, the rivals of Marvel comics (who have their own Captain Marvel). For branding purposes, DC has ditched the Captain Marvel name.

Billy's catchphrase, invoked when he transforms into an adult hero, has always been "Shazam!" So that's become his heroic moniker as well. Funnily enough, in College Humor's "Shazaam" parody, the same reason is given for the Genie's name: when he uses his powers, he declares, "Shazaam!"

Foiled Fury Of The Gods Cameos

Due to an undisclosed health issue, Sinbad canceled the appearance. However, Sandberg's efforts didn't stop there. See, a common explanation for "Shazaam" is that people are misremembering "Kazaam," a 1996 film wherein Shaquille O'Neal plays a genie. So after Sinbad bailed, Sandberg tried to get O'Neal to make the cameo instead. O'Neal agreed, but then he also had to pull out just days before shooting. As Sandberg lamented, "making cameos happen is hard."

There's one last twist in here that's the perfect capstone. The tweet that kicked off the revelation of Sinbad and Shaq's not-to-be cameos? It was Sandberg talking about a deleted scene from the first "Shazam!" where Billy and his super-powered siblings sit in the underground throne room and notice only six of the seven thrones are filled (the last one is for Black Adam). According to Sandberg, despite this scene being cut early, many people claim they saw "Shazam" with the scene intact. Even without Sinbad, the Mandela Effect has struck again. The human mind is like a genie — it creates what it wants.

Read this next: What These DC Villains Really Look Like Under The Makeup

The post Sinbad Almost Made the Mandela Effect Real With A Shazam! Fury of the Gods Cameo appeared first on /Film.

Actors fighting against computer-generated monsters in films is hardly new these days. Superhero flicks have become the dominant form of entertainment in recent years. Since these creatures are fictional, actors often shoot their fight scenes against a tennis ball on a stick that stands in for the beings they're supposed to be terrified of or very angry at. If you're going into the performance profession nowadays, you know that you'll likely be exercising your imagination fairly often.

Samuel L. Jackson (the Marvel Cinematic Universe, "Pulp Fiction") has been going up against computer-generated images (CGI) throughout his time as Nick Fury in the MCU for years now. However, when the "Star Wars" prequels came out, it was a fairly new experience for him. He, of course, played Mace Windu, a member of the Jedi council and wielder of a purple lightsaber (at his request).

As any "Star Wars" fan knows, creator George Lucas had a vision for what he wanted in the original trilogy. The technology wasn't there at the time, so he went back years later to update them with modernized effects for the Special Edition re-releases. Then Lucas -- and yes, this is my opinion, which I know will be unpopular with some -- went way overboard with the special effects in the prequel trilogy. Whether you are cool with that or not, a whole lot of the backgrounds and beings we saw on screen weren't really there. Back in 2002, days before "Star Wars: Episode II -- Attack of the Clones" came out, Lucas did an interview with "Good Morning America" (via ABC News) about it. Likewise, in an earlier interview with "GMA" around that same time, Jackson talked about his own experience of fighting against nothing.

'Oh, As Big As An SUV'

Whatever you think of the CGI in "Attack of the Clones" now, it was a pretty astounding feat at the time of the film's release. The "GMA" interviewer calls the visuals "just that incredible" and mentions that creating the imagery that makes up the trilogy must be "the greatest job in the world." George Lucas responded: 

"Well, the most frustrating job in the world is to be able to think of them up and say you can't do them, which is what I was doing before, and that was really upsetting. And 'Phantom Menace' was [...] we were learning the medium. But we figured things out, and now I can do it. You know, this is the movie that says, okay, I learned how to drive, now watch."

It was certainly a technological leap for the time. Your opinion on their effectiveness may be different from Lucas's, but in 2002 it was all pretty groundbreaking. That doesn't mean it was easy for the actors to deal with the new technology. Samuel L. Jackson's earlier interview with the same "GMA" reporter touched on that very issue, with the actor explaining: 

"It's me in a big green room by myself, and George goes, 'Okay, fight,' and you fight and fight and fight until he says 'cut,' and occasionally he'll say, 'Okay, there's a big thing coming at you.' You go, 'Well, how big?' 'Oh, as big as an SUV.'"

That's not an easy thing for an actor. You do want to know what you're fighting and how scary it is, and hopefully, what it looks like, or your eyes go blank. Maybe you have a sort of general determination on your face, but specificity is what sells the whole thing. 

'We Had A Little Model On The Set Out Of The Creature'

George Lucas wasn't unaware that Samuel L. Jackson and the rest of his actors needed some reference for the creatures they were fighting. He told "GMA" that they had what he called "videomatics," which were animated videos of what the cast was supposed to be looking at. Lucas said it was "so he could actually see how the shots were going together and what it was going to be. And then we had a little model on the set out of the creature — here's the creature, this is what it looks like, only it's as big as an elephant."

Acting opposite a tennis ball or an "X" taped on a wall isn't the easiest thing to do, but at least technology has advanced in the 21 years since "Attack of the Clones" was released. Now we have films set around creatures (like Groot and Rocket in the MCU) that don't exist, and it's sometime legitimately hard to tell they're not real. Again, "Attack of the Clones" might be dated now, but I guess we had to start somewhere.

"Attack of the Clones" and all the other "Star Wars" films and TV series are currently streaming on Disney+.

Read this next: The Biggest Questions The Mandalorian Season 3 Needs To Answer

The post George Lucas Had Samuel L. Jackson Fight Invisible Monsters In Star Wars Way Before The MCU appeared first on /Film.

This post contains mild spoilers for "John Wick: Chapter 4."

If you've seen the fourth installment in the "John Wick" franchise, you know that Keanu Reeves ends up in multiple breathtaking places where he has to fight/kill multiple people in creative ways. There's more than one scene that will likely drill its way into our pop culture consciousness (or every time we walk up a set of really long stairs), and one of those is an overhead shot of Wick shooting and flamethrowing his way through an abandoned Parisian building.

The sequence is mesmerizing and like nothing we've seen on the big screen before. I spoke with "John Wick: Chapter 4" director Chad Stahelski before the movie's release, and during that discussion, I asked about how he and his team came up with the idea and then pulled it off. (/Film held this part of the conversation until the movie was released.) "You're always trying to be a little subversive," he told me, later adding that they "always look at things like, 'What's the problem? Let's give ourselves a really bad box and we'll fight our way out of it.' That's usually a cool way to figure something out."

That approach worked well for this sequence (as well as all the other sequences in the movie, for that matter). Read on for Stahelski's insights into the inspiration for the overhead shot and exactly how they stitched it all together.

Note: This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

'If You're Ever Lacking Creativity, Handcuff Yourself And Then Figure It Out'

One sequence I thought was really impressive was in the abandoned building in France with the overhead shot of the fight. I would love to hear about how you came up with the idea for it and technically how you pulled it off. How much of that was a single shot?

To be brutally honest, there's two stitches in the first take. There's a cutaway, obviously, when you go back down, but we did get it so the whole sequence would've been done with three stitches. A stitch is a digital overlay where it looks like it's one.

The first one is quite long, which we're very proud of. It spirals, we call it a candy cane. It comes up from John Wick, it goes into the kitchen, the guy gets lit on fire and then we have a small digital stitch, then we go all the way through the other shot. We had done the entire top shot sequence in four main chunks in three stitches. So that's how that really worked.

The idea came from, again, you're always trying to be a little subversive, and lighting for us is a big deal. No one does top shots because you look at the ground and it's not very interesting. We always look at things like, "What's the problem? Let's give ourselves a really bad box and we'll fight our way out of it." That's usually a cool way to figure something out.

If you're ever lacking creativity, handcuff yourself and then figure it out, because then you'll do something you haven't done before. So top shots were never very cool with us, with lighting or choreography, because it gets old quick. But I had seen this video game and I'll throw a shout-out — I think it was called "Hong Kong Massacre" — they did this top shot and we had been doing so much with the big muzzle flashes and it just kind of clicked like, "Well, if I'm above, we shoot like this and we shoot like this, and it draws these cool lines with the muzzle flash, and if I get the right flicker effect, it's like Etch A Sketch. It looks really cool." And it was a different way to amp up the action and keep you in that video game mode that John Wick's kind of known for, that first-person shooter kind of thing.

'It's The Same Kind Of Cameras That You Had At The Super Bowl'

So between that, and I talked to Dan Laustsen and Kevin Kavanaugh, my cinematographer and production designer, going, "Oh, we think we can do something cool with this. Let's design a cool zigzag pattern. And what we'll do is we'll have this gun — it's a Genesis 12 shotgun that shoots this phosphorus ammunition called Dragon's Breath, which looks like it's a flamethrower — and if we do that with the debris, we could create these really interesting configurations from the top shot." We were just thinking, "What would be cool?" Then we started doing tests and we were like, "Oh, this could be really cool. We should figure this out."

Then between figuring out the camera position — it's called the four-point flying system where it's on these control winches and the camera's suspended between four wires — we adjust so we can do a very odd motion. It's the same kind of cameras that you had at the Super Bowl. We took that system and put it inside a sound stage. And then the real burden came to Keanu when we told him, "You got to come up the stairs, switch guns, do all this stuff on, guys are going to be on fire, falling off the staircase, you're going to come through here, and you only have to know about a hundred moves. And try not to screw up, because we only have three days."

Oh wow. Three days. Wow.

That entire scene, everything in that set-piece was done in three days.

"John Wick: Chapter 4" is now playing in theaters.

Read this next: The Best Action Movies Of 2022, Ranked

The post John Wick: Chapter 4 Director Breaks Down That Fiery Top Shot Sequence [Exclusive Interview] appeared first on /Film.

Amazon finally got Jack Reacher right — at least, in the eyes of die-hard fans who were adamant that after two movies, Tom Cruise shouldn't be cast in the TV show. Instead, we got the very large Alan Ritchson, who starred in season one of Prime Video's "Reacher" and was praised for portraying a book-accurate version of the former military policeman. So well-received was that first season that Amazon hastily renewed the show for a second, cementing Ritchson's return before most viewers could even binge the first run of episodes.

"Reacher" season 2 is now almost upon us, and you can expect much more of the dogged adherence to author Lee Child's original vision for his hulking protagonist. Child, who is an executive producer on "Reacher," wrote the original books with a very clear idea of who his central character was: morally incorruptible, better at fighting than everyone else, huge, and, as Child put it in a 2011 interview, "He just travels from place to place pursuing his own interests, which are largely introspective, and keeping himself to himself." That is, unless he encounters some sort of injustice or corruption — which he frequently does.

Across 27 novels (28 come October) and several short stories, Reacher has emerged victorious against all manner of foes, most of whom he happens across on his travels around the US. When adapting those travels for "Reacher," showrunner Nick Santora and his writers adhered closely to Child's vision, with Santora saying, "Lee Child is the compass of this television show." And while adapting the brutal fights and narrative beats from the first novel, "Killing Floor," was relatively straightforward, there was one element of Jack Reacher that threatened to upend Santora's committed adherence to Child's books.

The Biggest Challenge

With Alan Ritchson in the title role, translating Jack Reacher's imposing physical presence to the screen wasn't difficult. And although months of work went into crafting the fight scenes, including one that involved Reacher taking on five guys in a prison fight, the all-important combat was also made easier thanks to the lead actor's experience and some expert choreography. And to think, Amazon was originally hesitant to cast Ritchson. But one crucial element of the Jack Reacher character that didn't necessarily lend itself to a screen adaptation was his famous terseness.

Throughout the novels, readers get to know the title character largely through his internal monologue, as he surveys his surroundings and analyzes situations with calm military calculation. But that lack of spoken dialogue obviously doesn't lend itself to a TV show — something Nick Santora was all too aware of. In a Collider interview, Santora was asked about balancing the character's famously laconic persona with having to create a compelling on-screen protagonist, saying:

"That was the biggest challenge. So much of what goes on in the book is what Reacher is thinking in his head. In the writing process, it was just a matter of figuring out how Reacher could say what he was thinking without getting verbose and what he was feeling without getting too wordy. Nothing is better for a writer than to figure out how to say something just as good, but in fewer words, so I enjoyed the challenge."

In order to solve the problem, Santora and his writers would have to be very selective about what Ritchson's Reacher said and, specifically, to whom he said it.

Solving The Problem

In order to get around the issue of having to make Jack Reacher more verbose while risking undermining a central character trait in the process, Nick Santora and his team came up with some rules for dialogue. As the showrunner told TVLine:

"We tried to be very concise with our language and verbiage, and we tried to have Reacher only speak when necessary. You'll see that he only really explains things to people he respects. So, he'll explain stuff to Roscoe (Willa Fitzgerald) or to Finlay (Malcolm Goodwin), but to some jerk that he doesn't like, he'll just go and do what he does without a word."

That turned out to be an inspired approach, allowing Alan Ritchson's version of Lee Child's hero to retain much of his mysterious aura without becoming a one-dimensional, non-verbal bore.

Season 2 of "Reacher" will adapt the 11th novel in Child's series, "Bad Luck And Trouble," and promises to step things up as the eponymous military man goes after whoever is taking out members of his former unit. And with Roscoe and Finlay almost certainly not returning, we'll have to watch to see who Reacher trusts enough to say more than a few words to this time around.

Read this next: The 14 Greatest Action Movies Of The 21st Century

The post Reacher's Showrunner Reveals The Biggest Challenge In The Writers Room appeared first on /Film.

Ever since he donned a pair of shades and floor-length trench coat and destroyed a lobby back in the bullet-riddled third act of "The Matrix," the combination of Keanu Reeves, cool clothes, and lots of guns has been box office gold. 2014's "John Wick" substituted the trench coat for a stylish suit and, despite a relatively modest global box office take of $86 million, launched one of the most successful action franchises of the 21st century.

"John Wick 2" doubled the first movie's box office gross, and "John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum" came close to doubling it again. Now, while "John Wick: Chapter 4" would be hard-pressed to double the previous movie's numbers again, it is looking at another franchise-best opening weekend. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the fourth "John Wick" film grossed almost $30 million on Friday (including $8.9 million from Thursday night previews) and is on track for a domestic debut north of $70 million. That will easily beat the previous record set by "Parabellum," which made $56.8 million in its opening weekend.

As for how far north of $70 million "John Wick: Chapter 4" might land ... well, the man is hard to predict, and so is the box office. A few weeks ago, Friday numbers for "Creed III" had box office analysts projecting a $50 million-plus opening weekend, and the final tally was $58.3 million. 

Speaking of "Creed III," that sequel is still going strong despite fresh competition from Mr. Wick, and is expected to land firmly at No. 4 by adding another $8.3 million to its domestic total.

Shazam! Mild Irritation Of The Gods

While Keanu proves the evergreen appeal of dark clothes and epic shootouts, the superhero movie genre continues to show signs of ageing. As I noted last week, the disappointing opening weekend for "Shazam! Fury of the Gods" is part of a greater trend that's even affecting the once-bulletproof Marvel Cinematic Universe. Now, the sequel is facing a steep second weekend drop from its already weak start.

Per The Hollywood Reporter, "Fury of the Gods" is in a tight race with "Scream VI" (now in its third weekend) for second place. "Scream VI" is heading for an estimated $8.9 million Friday-to-Sunday total, while "Shazam 2" projections put it slightly ahead at $9 million. That would be a 69% drop from its debut last weekend -- on par with the sophomore drop for 2016's "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice," which at the time was one of the worst ever second weekend drops for a superhero movie. Now, it's dangerously close to becoming standard; "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania" suffered a similar drop-off last month.

The "John Wick" franchise looks stronger than ever, at least, which is good news for the upcoming spinoff "Ballerina," starring Ana de Armas. As for whether we'll get to see Keanu Reeves tangling with the league of assassins again ... well, "John Wick: Chapter 4" director Chad Stahelski told Rolling Stone the ending is "open to interpretation." Never say never (Baba Yaga might hear you).

Read this next: 23 Movies Like John Wick That Will Get Your Adrenaline Pumping

The post John Wick: Chapter 4 Has A Baba Yaga Good Time At The Box Office With $70 Million+ Opening Weekend appeared first on /Film.

The most memorable line in 1989's "Batman" is undoubtedly Michael Keaton's delivery of "I'm Batman." Growled in the opening moments as Batman dangles a thug off a Gotham high-rise, it's become as legendary a moment as any in the Dark Knight's cinematic saga. Since then, Batman movies have provided a steady stream of memorable quotes, from Christian Bale's snarling, "Swear to me" in "Batman Begins" to Robert Pattinson's emo Batman announcing "I'm Vengeance" in "The Batman."

But Tim Burton's "Batman" is notable for the sheer amount of quotable lines it packed into its 126 minutes. Alongside, "I'm Batman," which Keaton revived for his return as the Dark Knight in "The Flash" trailer, there's the moment Jack Nicholson's Joker famously wonders out loud about his nemesis' gadgets, "Where does he get those wonderful toys?" In fact, screenwriter Sam Hamm gave The Joker plenty of delectable lines, including his frequent use of the phrase, "Have you ever danced with the Devil in the pale moonlight?" and "This town needs an enema!" Joker even quotes lines from his own movie, mimicking Jack Palance's Carl Grissom when he informs henchman Bob (Tracey Walter) that he's his, "number one guy."

Not to be outdone, Keaton gets his share of quotable dialogue, even while playing the comparatively laconic Batman/Bruce Wayne. And perhaps the best of the lot is when he shatters that reserved demeanor after The Joker breaks into Vicki Vale's (Kim Bassinger) apartment and Keaton challenges Nicholson's villain with a truly unhinged reading of the line "You wanna get nuts? C'mon! Let's get nuts!" And if you know anything about Michael Keaton's comedy background or his often erratic energy, you might not be surprised to learn that this very moment came from the mind of "Mr. Mom" himself.

Bruce Wayne Was The Key

As most fans know, Tim Burton's "Batman" was seminal due to its unapologetically dark take on the central character. Borrowing from Frank Miller's decidedly gritty graphic novel "The Dark Knight Returns," Burton set out to make a film that would re-establish the Caped Crusader as a truly mysterious figure in the collective public consciousness — one who operates in the shadows of Anton Furst's decaying Gotham, designed to look as if, "hell erupted through the pavement and kept on going."

But what's not necessarily as well-known is that Michael Keaton was completely aligned with Burton's grim vision of the Dark Knight. The "Birdman" actor has spoken about finding the key to his performance in Bruce Wayne, not Batman. Keaton, who broke through in the early-'80s with family-friendly comedies such as "Mr. Mom" and "Night Shift," had proven he had dramatic chops with 1988's "Clean And Sober." But with Batman, he would push that further, displaying a talent for tasteful restraint by portraying Bruce Wayne as a brooding, taciturn loner while conveying a genuine sense of instability just below the surface.

As Keaton told In The Envelope: The Actor's Podcast, "I know the name of the movie is 'Batman' and it's hugely iconic and very cool and culturally iconic [...] [But] from a character perspective it's about Bruce Wayne. Who's that guy? What kind of person does that?" In Keaton's view, the kind of person who dresses up as a Bat was seriously psychologically unstable, which added to the darkness that was so central to his and Burton's vision. Further proof of the Oscar nominees' commitment to that vision came once Joel Schumacher took over the Batman saga and planned to lighten things up with 1995's "Batman Forever," prompting Keaton to quickly walk away from Batman.

'Let's Get Nuts!'

Throughout his two-movie run as Batman, Keaton knew Burton's take on Batman was a gamble, but he committed to that gamble by making changes to the scripts for both "Batman" and "Batman Returns." The actor played up the brooding loner angle by cutting more than half of his own dialogue from "Batman Returns,"  and he'd also punched up scenes from "Batman," including one where Vicki Vale visits Wayne Manor and, at Keaton's behest, the two sit at opposite ends of an extended table before Wayne says, "I don't think I've ever been in this room before."

For the scene where Joker descends upon Vale's apartment, only to find Wayne along with her, Keaton suggested another change. He recounted the shoot in Les Daniels' "Batman: the complete history", explaining how, "Part of Bruce Wayne and Batman was a little crazy, but you hadn't seen it because I decided to play it very contained." Up until that point in the film, Keaton's hero had only confronted Joker as his superhero alter ego. Suddenly, he was caught off-guard, facing the homicidal Jack Napier without any of his body armor or, "wonderful toys."

For Keaton, this was the perfect opportunity to display some of Bruce Wayne's repressed rage and mental imbalance, which had attracted him to the role in the first place. The actor continued, "At that point I needed to show another color. I wanted to show you that, with all that flamboyance around me, if need be, I could come up to it. So I actually kind of rewrote that scene." The rewrite involved a startling outburst from Wayne, who suddenly matches the manic energy of Nicholson's Clown Prince of Crime when he smashes a vase and explodes with the line "You wanna get nuts? Let's get nuts!"

Keaton Made A Good Scene Better

The scene in Vicki Vale's apartment is one of the most interesting in "Batman." There's so much going on in terms of plot development, emotion, and performance, and Keaton's changes simply add to the richness. In the original script, Bruce Wayne brings his utility belt to Vale's apartment intending to reveal himself as Batman. As the scene was written, Wayne was supposed to charge The Joker before being knocked down by one of his goons.

But in the scene that was shot, not only do we get a monologue from Wayne which reveals he's familiar with Joker's background as mobster Jack Napier, Wayne actually learns Joker is the one who killed his parents, after Nicholson delivers the "Have you ever danced with the Devil in the pale moonlight?" line. That's all before Keaton's changes, which, as the actor put it, involved Bruce Wayne, "using a kind of psychological ploy," where it seems as if he's given in to his anger. Once Joker shoots him, it's revealed that Wayne hid a metal tray under his shirt which stopped the bullet and allowed him to escape.

As Les Daniels noted, the scene has "layers of irony and introspection," but Keaton undoubtedly added so much by giving us a brief glimpse at what lies beneath Bruce Wayne's mask. And the fact it was all a distraction ploy also emphasizes his character's cunning, adding further layers to his portrayal and the scene itself. It all ties back to how seriously Keaton took his role and the depth he ascribed to the character, which is remarkable considering "Batman" was the first of its kind in terms of bringing real emotional and thematic depth to a comic book movie. Just another reason why Michael Keaton is the best Batman.

Read this next: Every Batman Movie And The Real-World Fears They Highlight

The post Michael Keaton Was The Mastermind Behind Batman's 'Let's Get Nuts' Scene appeared first on /Film.

(Welcome to Tales from the Box Office, our column that examines box office miracles, disasters, and everything in between, as well as what we can learn from them).

Keanu Reeves was about as big as movie stars get in the late '90s/early 2000s thanks to hits like "The Matrix" propelling him to superstardom. Yet, the trite saying of "the bigger they are, the harder they fall" came calling. By 2010, Hollywood wasn't calling the "Speed" actor anymore, just as he was approaching 50. "It sucks, but it's just the way it is," Reeves explained to IndieWire in 2014. "The last studio movie I did was '47 Ronin,' but before that it had been a long time — probably 'The Day the Earth Stood Still,'" which came out all the way back in 2008. Luckily, his fortunes were about to change in a big way thanks to the little assassin movie that could: "John Wick."

Nearly a decade removed, it's hard to imagine modern action cinema without Mr. Wick, but it's also easy to forget that this film, originally titled "Scorn," seemed destined for VOD with little fanfare mere weeks before it hit theaters. The journey from under-the-radar movie nobody cared about to gigantic blockbuster franchise is a remarkable one. The film centers on Reeves' Wick, reeling from the death of his beloved wife, who receives one last gift from her in the form of a puppy that all but saves his life. However, when John refuses to sell his beloved Mustang to the son of a crime lord, they break into his house and steal it, while also unthinkably killing his dog. And thus, one of the most deadly assassins in history is reawakened. So much for retirement.

In honor of the release of "John Wick: Chapter 4," we're looking back at how the original film came to be, how it pulled itself by its bootstraps mere weeks before its scheduled release to become a wildly unexpected hit, and what we can learn about it in the modern context. Let's dig in, shall we?

The Movie: John Wick

Everything about "John Wick" seems to be a recipe for anything but success by typical Hollywood standards. It all goes back to that decision to kill the dog. This is something movies rarely do, because it's a great way to get audiences to turn on you. Directors Chad Stahelski and David Leitch, longtime stuntmen and second-unit directors, knew they were taking a risk. "We were like, 'Oh my god. We killed a puppy,'" Stahelski quipped in an interview with Vulture in 2017. "We just thought a puppy was a more manipulative way to shock the audience," he added. It worked.

But how do we get to the puppy-killing revenge tale? It all started with a script from then-unknown screenwriter Derek Kolstad. His film, which originally focused on an assassin in his 70s, was acquired by Basil Iwanyk's Thunder Road for "pennies" relative to typical prices for scripts. But who to direct? And more importantly, who to star? Reeves had been looking for an action film and signed on somewhat early in the process. As for Stahelski and Leitch, Iwanyk explained:

"Chad and Dave came in and they had a very comprehensive presentation. I mean it was one of the better presentations I've seen from a director in my entire career, and I was like, 'God, this is great.' I walked away thinking, 'How the hell am I going to convince Keanu that this is going to work?' Because he knows these guys. Chad was his stuntman. You know, familiarity breeds a little bit of contempt. As we were trying to figure out what we were going to do, Keanu calls me and is like, 'Listen, I want to respect the process and respect your decision, but I met with Chad and Dave and they have some interesting ideas. I think they could be cool to be first-unit director.' And I'm like, 'Great idea! Perfect.'"

A New Take On Gun-Fu

Stahelski and Leitch had been looking to make the leap to directing for some time. Having worked with Reeves on "The Matrix" previously, knowing that only Keanu Reeves can do what Keanu Reeves does, they finally had their chance. But it wasn't going to be easy, as they were on a tight budget and schedule. To make it work, they were going to have to get creative. Speaking with the MPA ahead of the film's release, Stahelski explained that Reeves' experience in action actually allowed them to pull of the film's signature "gun-fu" action sequences, utilizing longer takes without a lot of quick cuts:

"We didn't do any of the things we normally do cinematically. There aren't a lot of fast cuts. We didn't use a long lens or shaky cam and there are more long takes. Because Keanu could do the stunt work himself, we didn't have to try and hide stunt doubles."

The gun-fu fighting style displayed in "John Wick" is an evolution from Hong Kong action cinema and its grand impresario, John Woo, but Stahelski and Leitch did take it to another level. Reeves trained for four months, learning judo and jiu-jitsu. "We wanted to use practical grappling martial arts and mix in guns, so we created a new style of close-quarter combat," Stahelski added. This was a unique approach that audiences were far from used to at the time, as movies like "Taken" had set the tone for popular action cinema several years prior. This was, admittedly, a radically different approach.

Assassins In New York City

Not content to make things easy on themselves, the directors also insisted on shooting in New York City to realize the world they had envisioned -- even if that meant a tighter schedule. Speaking in 2014 to JoBlo, Stahelski explained:

"We could have gotten more money and more resources had we shot in New Orleans, Boston or Chicago or Detroit. The movie took place in New York and we wanted to create a world, and we kind of made it like a Greek myth. We wanted an underworld. Can you tell me one other city that has an above ground underworld? New York is a vertical city and we tried to show it on the anamorphic lenses. So just by the world we wanted to create ... picture that same movie with Willem Dafoe and Keanu talking in front of the French Quarter ... or in front of the Atlanta Superdome? So all the locations, people love those, especially in the second act, the bathhouse, the bridges, and the city. That is New York. That doesn't exist anywhere else."

Indeed, the world that Kolstad's script married with the vision of Stahelski and Leitch imagines is a rich one, with a literal underworld to it all. From The Continental Hotel to the secret codes these seedy dealers of death use in everyday life, it's hard to imagine the final product feeling as fully realized anywhere but NYC. Though, in fairness, the universe has expanded rather effectively around the world in the sequels. But as an entry point? The team had a specific vision in mind.

An Unofficial Directing Duo

What Stahelski and Leitch pulled off was nothing shy of a miracle. They worked together for years on everything from "300" to "Tron: Legacy" in the stunt department and had clearly developed a great working relationship. Unfortunately, when it came time to divide up the credits on "John Wick," there was an issue with the Directors Guild of America. So, despite the fact that they, in practice, co-directed the film, Stahelski was credited solely. Speaking to The Film Stage in 2014, Letich commented on the matter:

"Look, as longtime members of the DGA, it was kind of disappointing that they didn't want to allow us to create a project together in a formal way under their banner. But we went on and collaborated how we were going to collaborate anyways and it's our movie and we're proud of it. If the DGA doesn't want to recognize co-directors then that's their prerogative but we're going to continue to make movies together. We've been making action together for almost 20 years so it doesn't really change. The titles don't change it for us."

Both of them have gone on to have stellar directing careers, with Leitch helming the likes of "Deadpool 2" and "Hobbs & Shaw." Still, the credit issue did sting. Stahelski also shared his two cents on the matter, saying the following:

"We've pretty much said that in the first meeting when we told them we wanted to co-direct. We have a relationship with the DGA and that's going to continue because that's our business. We just hope in the future that they can recognize that when we collaborate together that we would like to be recognized together."

Lionsgate Saves The Day At The Last Minute

The fact that Stahelski, Letich, and Reeves put together an incredible film is all good and well. Sure, it doesn't hurt that they also had a stacked ensemble cast, including the likes of Willem Dafoe, Ian McShane, John Leguizamo, Adrianne Palicki, and the late Lance Reddick -- every genre project's secret weapon. But does any of that matter without someone to distribute the film? It kind of doesn't, and that was a huge problem for Thunder Road and 87Eleven Productions, who had yet to secure distribution with the October release date creeping up.

Yet, at the 11th hour, Lionsgate stepped in to secure the distribution rights to "John Wick." The deal was finalized on August 11 -- just over two months before the film was slated to hit theaters. Was that going to be enough time to launch an effective marketing campaign? Was that going to be enough time to build buzz for a movie from directors nobody had ever heard of, with a star whose best days in Hollywood were seemingly behind him? In this case, the movie Lionsgate acquired largely spoke for itself.

Fortunately, ditching the direct-to-video-sounding title "Scorn" in favor of the titular assassin's name did some work in the lead-up to release to help it sound more Hollywood and less RedBox. It also didn't hurt that buzz began building in a very real way, particularly after an electrifying screening at Fantastic Fest that convinced critics of the world that Keanu was back, and made the directors realize they had made a great movie. Lionsgate did its job, and they pulled this movie up by its bullet-riddled bootstraps.

The Financial Journey

Despite Lionsgate's best efforts and the unexpected wave of praise from critics, "John Wick" was entering theaters as a major underdog. Projections had the film taking in a mere $7 million against a budget that came in between $20 and $30 million. It also opened directly against Universal and Blumhouse's horror flick "Ouija," which boasted terrible reviews but was the pre-Halloween favorite, for somewhat obvious reasons. Be that as it may, Mr. Wick put up one hell of a fight.

Released on October 24, "John Wick" debuted to a very surprising $14.4 million, coming in at number two on the charts behind "Ouija" ($19.8 million). Lionsgate's action flick benefited from genuine critical buzz and a comeback story for Reeves, leading it to hold very well in the coming weeks. It would go on to finish its run with $43 million domestic and $42.9 million overseas, for a very solid $86 million global haul. But that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Rather crucially, lots of folks discovered "John Wick" on home video. It debuted atop the rental charts and came in second in Blu-ray/DVD sales, trailing only "Dracula: Untold." While the figures are hard to come by, the film earned at least $20 million from digital rentals/sales, and another $48 million to date from disc sales. That benefited the bottom line greatly but, moreover, it gave the sequels an even larger audience, which is what allowed "John Wick: Chapter 2" to open to a massive $30.4 million in 2017, with a $171 million finish -- more than doubling the gross of the original. "John Wick: Chapter 3" did even better, opening to $56.8 million on its way to a $327.2 million finish. This sort of thing simply doesn't happen, but the quality of the films could not be denied.

The Lessons Contained Within

Sure, sometimes a sequel can make more than its predecessor, but for each subsequent film in the franchise to pretty much double the film that came before? It's straight-up incredible. What helped as well is that both "Chapter 2" and "Chapter 3" kept the budgets reigned in at $40 million a pop. Lionsgate is one of the best in the business at mid-budget hit-making, and this may be the crown jewel of the studio's accomplishments in that department. Credit to them for saving this one from the depths of direct-to-video hell. Certainly, there is a lesson here in good business and looking for gold in overlooked cracks of the business.

As we are now enjoying "John Wick: Chapter 4" and looking down the barrel of an upcoming spin-off titled "Ballerina," it is also worth looking at how Lionsgate built this into an unlikely franchise with patience. They didn't jump the gun and try to build a cinematic universe. They didn't overspend and under-deliver on quickly produced sequels. They built a world, and trusted the filmmakers to do that in the best way they saw fit. As a result, they have not only a hit franchise, but an enduring one that is part of the permanent lexicon of classics. "Ouija" may have been the bigger hit, but any studio in Hollywood would rather have "John Wick."

Patience is a virtuous trait, as is being fiscally responsible. That patience and responsibility rewarded both Lionsgate and movie lovers around the world with one of the most satisfying modern franchises, brimming with seemingly endless possibilities. This is how you build a universe. This is the template for modern franchise filmmaking, and every single producer or money man in the business would do well to take note of how this little movie built itself up to a blockbuster franchise.

Read this next: John Wick Moments That Went Too Far

The post Tales From The Box Office: How John Wick Went From Underdog To Action Movie King appeared first on /Film.

The following article includes discussions of acute medical conditions, mental health, and suicide.

After the past few years of the COVID-19 pandemic, it's entirely understandable that anybody would struggle to find interest in stories of disease and disorder. But the success of HBO's "The Last Of Us," an adaptation of the hit post-apocalyptic survival game by Naughty Dog, suggests we're beginning to open up again to stories about illness, loss, and the moral complexities of life on planet Earth.

Plenty of movies and television series deal with diseases, viruses, disorders, and other medical maladies. While they differ wildly in scientific accuracy, you'd be surprised how many writers, producers, and directors at least base them on real-world examples. Whether schlocky or well-researched, the media we produce and consume about illness can offer insight into our relationship with the forces of nature (and science).

We've isolated and quarantined some remarkable and/or terrifying examples of medical conditions that seem like they must have been entirely the creation of a Hollywood writer. Still, as the cliché goes, sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction. 

Cabin Fever

In horror icon Eli Roth's directorial debut "Cabin Fever," a group of college students rents a cabin in the woods for a weekend off the grid, or so they hope. Instead, the city kids encounter irate locals and a highly infectious flesh-eating disease. Inspired by Roth's personal experience with skin infection while working on a horse farm as a teenager, it ranks as a gruesome, gleefully trashy flick -- but we doubt you'd be laughing if you really caught necrotizing fasciitis.

"Cabin Fever" doesn't explicitly identify the disease, but there's an obvious real-life parallel. Aside from sounding like a Carcass song title, necrotizing fasciitis is a rare but aggressive and seriously life-threatening skin infection. If certain strains of bacteria like streptococci or staphylococcus find their way into an open wound on your body, you're at risk of developing this condition, which rapidly spreads through muscle and kills off surrounding tissue. It's incredibly painful, takes only days to wreak havoc, and isn't always obvious in its early stages.

Even if detected quickly, treatment of necrotizing fasciitis typically requires major surgery to remove all the infected tissue, meaning weeks or even months of intense nursing care and skin grafts. (Plus, you risk reinfection while in recovery.) Sure, "Cabin Fever" serves up some pretty gnarly stuff, like projectile blood vomit and a face-eating dog ... but at least those characters get put out of their misery. We'll just camp out in the backyard next time.

Contagion

When it comes to the magic of the movies, a little (or a lot) of suspension of disbelief may be required. That doesn't mean logic and facts must go out of the window in order to have a good time. In fact, the best films don't make you think about it at all. There's still something to be said for the writers who go the extra mile, though. And for "Contagion," Steven Soderbergh and Scott Z. Burns did exactly that.

The 2011 disaster thriller takes audiences through the terrifying spread of the MEV-1 pandemic across the globe. MEV-1 doesn't exist, but the virus and the science behind it -- as well as humanity's multi-faceted response -- was formulated in close collaboration with a number of experts in the subject, including journalist Laurie Garrett and Columbia University's W. Ian Lipkin. From its zoonotic origins to its transmission methods and symptoms, MEV-1 frighteningly resembles the Nipah virus, which has broken out numerous times since 1999. 

"Contagion" boasts a top-tier ensemble cast including Matt Damon and Kate Winslet, but MEV-1 doesn't play favorites, killing off one of its biggest stars in the opening sequence. The film received praise from experts upon release, not only for its depiction of how viruses like MEV-1 function but also for its depiction of scientists reacting and responding to infectious diseases. It's a crying shame that the world's response to COVID-19 didn't unfold as smoothly as the movie. As Burns reflected to Vox, "We are all writing the sequel to 'Contagion' together."

Evil Dead 2

Of the many recurring motifs in the "Evil Dead" franchise, the possessed limb rates as one of our favorites. Natalie's self-surgery with an electric carving knife in the 2013 "Evil Dead" definitely scores points on the Gross-O-Meter, but you can't beat Ash Williams' slapstick battle with his own hand in "Evil Dead 2," in which he removes it with a chainsaw. But did you know that there's medical precedent for seemingly possessed limbs?

Of course, we're not dealing with the forces of the Necronomicon here. Early scientific study of the phenomena of "alien hand syndrome," in which a person's hand and/or arm appears to be acting of its own free will, is frequently attributed to German neurologist and psychiatrist Kurt Goldstein's 1908 paper on apraxia. In the century-plus since, there have been countless studies of patients experiencing AHS. Symptoms range from involuntary movement to the grasping of random objects, and much more extreme cases like scratching their owner.

No universal answer exists to the how and why of alien hand syndrome, but it typically manifests following a stroke, surgery to treat epilepsy, or as a result of neurodegenerative conditions affecting areas of the brain responsible for our motor skills. It's not uncommon for superstitious beliefs to fill gaps of explanation and education around medical phenomena, and scientists are tasked with bridging those gaps. Progress in fields like neuroscience in past decades is incredible, but many mysteries lie ahead of our best and brightest minds.

Safe

Writer/director Todd Haynes has received critical acclaim throughout his career, particularly for "Carol," which garnered six Oscar nominations back in 2015. But a lesser-known gem is Haynes' 1995 feature film "Safe," in which a Los Angeles housewife (Julianne Moore) begins to experience inexplicable bouts of chemical-related illness and seeks refuge within an isolated community. It's an eerie, thought-provoking work of fiction, but Haynes ripped the mysterious syndrome straight from the headlines.

Inspired by tabloid stories about "20th-century disease" and the experiences of those living with HIV/AIDS, the film follows a woman's struggle to figure out why she's seemingly incompatible with the modern world. Traffic fumes cause coughing fits, the hair salon leads to nosebleeds, and doctors offer no answers to her. In the real world, it's a condition that has been observed and studied for decades, typically as "multiple chemical sensitivity syndrome" or MCS. Symptoms range from changes in mood and cognitive function to anxiety and depression, and others across the immune, endocrine, and nervous systems.

In 2021, the INSPQ published an extensive analysis of more than 4,000 scientific articles concerning the syndrome. The report concluded that the nature of MCS is likely psychological rather than biological: severe anxiety stemming from a perceived sensitivity to chemicals. However, its impact on the day-to-day lives of those experiencing the condition is profound, warranting further study and treatment of patients. It's a fascinating medical anomaly, and Haynes' movie remains as insightful about what it means to be "sick" as ever.

The Happening

M. Night Shyamalan's survival horror film "The Happening" took a critical drubbing upon release in 2008. No matter what you think of Shyamalan's execution of the concept, the idea that an airborne toxin drives its victims to suicide en masse is a pretty frightening one -- and believe it or not, nature's cooked up some nasty real-world parallels.

Feel free to look up images and video later if you're feeling morbidly curious, but for the sake of everybody else's lunch, we'll give you the Cliffs Notes on the hairworm. This parasite, more officially known as nematomorpha, forces its way into the bodies of invertebrates like crickets and grasshoppers in order to develop into adulthood. The worst part? Since they need a body of water to reproduce, the hairworm is known to influence its victims to seek out submersion, essentially drowning themselves. We're lucky they take no interest in vertebrates.

Something a little closer to home is toxoplasma gondii, a common parasite believed to be chronically present in up to a third of the world's population. While most of us will never experience symptoms associated with t. gondii, studies have linked inflammation caused by latent toxoplasmosis to psychiatric issues including schizophrenia and depression, and even suicidal behavior. As concerning as it all sounds, ongoing research into toxoplasmosis could potentially help a lot of people.

If you or someone you know needs help with mental health, please contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website.

The X-Files, Episode Død Kalm

In the show's second season, "The X-Files" sends FBI agents Mulder and Scully to the Norwegian Sea, where a U.S. military vessel and its crew appear to have aged rapidly with no explanation. After boarding the ship, the duo begins experiencing the same symptoms and must survive until help arrives. The culprit: contaminated seawater that causes rapid oxidation of the body's cells and hypernatremia. While writers Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa took "spooky" liberties with the science of accelerated aging -- especially the makeup -- the concept has its roots in the rational.

Medical conditions that emulate the effects of human aging are broadly labeled "progeroid syndromes," rare genetic disorders that include Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome, Werner syndrome, and others. They're not something you catch. They typically result from a mutation within the body's genes. Such disorders affect hair growth, height, skin, heart, and joint health in ways that appear very similar to the results of normal aging. 

Unfortunately, this also means people with accelerated aging syndromes typically don't survive very long due to heart disease and their body's impacted ability to carry out regular cell repair. As a result, diseases like progeria are a promising hotbed of research and study: scientists believe that advances in treatment for progeroid syndromes will not only improve the lives of those living with them but will open the door to further breakthroughs in understanding the human aging process as a whole.

Hannibal (NBC Series)

NBC's "Hannibal" television series depicted a lot of strange and nasty body stuff, most of it outside of a clinical setting. Bryan Fuller's re-imagining of the best-selling novel series ended far too soon, but it packed more gruesome oddities into each episode than most shows manage in an entire season. "Hannibal" generally leaned towards theatricality over realism -- which was a feature, not a bug -- but its inclusion of encephalitis was more steeped in reality than you might think.

Hugh Dancy's Will Graham might not be great with people outside of work, but as an FBI criminal profiler, he's one-of-a-kind. Graham experiences bizarre hallucinations, disorientation, and other symptoms revealed to be caused by advanced encephalitis, and they complicate his cat-and-mouse pursuit of Hannibal Lecter. Brain and/or spinal cord inflammation can lead to the body's immune system reacting to itself, resulting in symptoms not dissimilar to Will Graham's.

Despite seeming like something whipped up for the sake of a television audience, the clock-drawing test taken (and failed) by Graham is used by clinicians to detect conditions including encephalitis, Alzheimer's disease, and even high blood pressure. Given that it can lead to loss of hearing, sight, speech, and even permanent brain damage if not treated quickly, encephalitis is the real deal. The fact that Hannibal suspects Graham suffers from the condition and stays mum -- just to see what happens to him -- makes it that much more disturbing.

The Last Of Us (HBO Series)

"The Last of Us" epitomizes cross-media success. Since the original video game's release for the PlayStation 3 back in 2013, it's enjoyed a standalone story expansion, two extensive remasters, an ambitious sequel, and now a smash hit TV adaptation on HBO. Good reasons abound as to why this post-apocalyptic narrative resonates with so many people; as the show elaborated upon in the pilot episode, one of those reasons is that it's a premise not too far removed from reality.

The conceptually creepy Cordyceps fungus is responsible for the terrifying, zombie-like Infected in Naughty Dog's franchise. Of the many species of Cordyceps existing in nature, the team behind the game was chiefly inspired by the "zombie-ant fungus" Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, which infects its host by breaching its exoskeleton, enveloping and splitting its muscle tissue, and hijacking its body upon death to continue spreading its spores.

The "zombie" part, of course, really comes into focus with one of the fungi's methods of transmission: biting. In fact, these biting behaviors have been dubbed the "death grip," a technique useful in laying down an anchor so the ant's body can spread cordyceps spores all over the place -- or just chomping down on their friends. This fungus is, thankfully, not transmissible to humans, but experts like Scott Roberts at the Yale School of Medicine have suggested that as the Earth's climate continually changes, being prepared for the unexpected would be wise.

Read this next: The 10 Most Intense Scenes From The Last Of Us Season 1

The post Terrifying diseases in movies and TV that are actually real appeared first on /Film.

"The Simpsons" was not the first TV sitcom to parody pop culture, but it may have been the most ambitious one when it originally premiered. Some of its best episodes remake classic films with "Simpsons" characters. "Rosebud" recasts "Citizen Kane" with local wealthy despot Mr. Burns. "Bart of Darkness" puts child hellraiser Bart Simpson into Alfred Hitchcock's "Rear Window." Then there's the fan-favorite "Treehouse of Horror" episodes, which riff on classic horror films and television. A generation of young fans were given the "Simpsons" version of the canon before they even knew the source material existed. But that was not such a bad thing. At its best, "The Simpsons" is judicious in its pick of source material, and exacting in its detail. Characters in the show rarely just say, "This reminds me of a popular movie!" There's always a recreated "camera angle," a guest star or a deep cut joke that inspires the audience to dig deeper.

At first glance, "Simpsons" successor "Futurama" was no different. Early episodes spoof "Animal House" and "Armageddon." The presence of a talking Richard Nixon head links the series not just to the political instincts of "The Simpsons," but to series co-creator Matt Groening's earlier comic strip "Life in Hell." But "Futurama" is distinguished from both by its love of science fiction. Not just TV classics like "Star Trek," but short stories and novels by the likes of Isaac Asimov and Kurt Vonnegut. Standing in the middle of it all is Bender, a misanthropic robot and the show's breakout character. As voiced by John DiMaggio, he's a true original -- except that he might never have existed without the influence of two groundbreaking science fiction writers.

Fear Of A Bot Planet

"Bender being the most human character on Futurama does owe a little to Stanislaw Lem," said series co-creator David X. Cohen in a 2014 interview with Wired. Cohen proceeds to describe the plot of "The Eleventh Voyage" from Lem's classic story collection "The Star Diaries." In it, long-suffering space traveler Ijon Tichy is sent to Circia, a planet controlled by robots where many humans have disappeared. Tichy is disguised as a robot by his superiors, only to be caught and sworn into service as a human-hunter. It is then, at his lowest point, that Tichy discovers the truth: every robot on the planet Circia is a human in disguise. The real villain is not a computer overlord, but humanity's willingness to betray their neighbors in order to save their own skin.

"Futurama" loosely retold this story in "Fear of a Bot Planet," the fifth episode of its first season. Bender, his human friend Fry, and their alien colleague Leela go to deliver a box to Chapek 9, a planet ruled by robots. When Bender is kidnapped by the robots, Fry and Leela disguise themselves as machines and go after them. On the planet they fool a pair of robot guards and watch a scary movie about humans. Later, they discover that Bender has made a career for himself on the planet as an anti-human speaker. The robots in "Fear of a Bot Planet" are real, but the evil is familiar. Bender sells out his friends in exchange for comfort and security. The Elders that secretly rule Chapek 9 admit that they spur the public against humans to distract from material scarcity.

Eating Little Children

Stanislaw Lem was born in 1921 in what is now Lviv, Ukraine. A member of the Polish resistance through World War II, he and his parents left for Krakow, Poland, in 1946. Lem's fiction is not defined by his childhood experiences but certainly bears its scars. "The Eleventh Voyage" is a story of fascist collusion as much as it is a tale about robots and space travelers. It also skewers the Soviet Union, of which Poland was a satellite state. Lem's early novels, like "The Astronauts," toed the party line. His "Star Diaries" stories by contrast hid biting critiques of communism's worst tendencies. But Lem wasn't wholly convinced by capitalism, either. "Say, one country permits eating little children right before the eyes of crazed mothers," he wrote to his favorite translator Michael Kandel in 1977. "Another permits eating absolutely anything, whereupon it turns out that the majority of people in that country eat s**t." Such was Lem's opinion of the United States and its science fiction writers.

Lem could be a very funny writer when he wanted to be. To read "The Star Diaries," or especially his cycle of future robot tales "The Cyberiad," is to be submerged in a sea of nonsense words, puns, and dark comedy. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction refers to these stories as Lem's "black grotesques," which explored the absurdity of the human condition through a science fiction lens. The best "Futurama" episodes operate in that same spirit. Certainly, Lem's work is never as sentimental as the likes of "Jurassic Bark." But Matt Groening and David X. Cohen, at their most daring, were just as willing as Lem to bite the hand that fed them.

R.U.R.

There is another writer whose work is tied to "Fear of a Bot Planet," and that is Karl Čapek: the Czech writer, playwright, and namesake for "Chapek 9." While the Nazis tormented Stanislaw Lem at the beginning of his life, Čapek spent much of his career predicting their rise. His most famous novel, 1936's "The War With the Newts," imagines the discovery of large intelligent newts on a faraway island. These newts are exploited for cheap labor by countries across the world, who see an easy opportunity to make money. But the newts leverage their grip on the economy to conquer the world. They also trigger widespread climate change and flood the planet. "Though he remains acutely contemporary in his sensibility and dread," the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction says of Čapek, "he may now most vividly be thought of as a recognizer." The Nazis feared him, but by the time they came to arrest him he had already died of an illness.

But the reason that Čapek's name appears in "Fear of a Bot Planet" is "R.U.R.", his 1921 play. It is the story of a man who creates a machine servant to do his bidding. This servant then leads an uprising to overthrow humanity, heralding the age of the "robot." "R.U.R." created the term "robot," which derives from the Czech word "robota" (meaning "forced labor") per The MIT Press Reader. Like in "War With the Newts," these robots are taken for granted by the establishment, only to replace them on the world stage. "R.U.R." therefore critiques what The MIT Press Reader refers to as "the efficiency movement that emerged just before World War I," which sought to measure human life by productivity. The tragedy of the play is that "humans and robots [...] are essentially one and the same."

Only Man Can Be A Bastard

Such is the plight of Bender in "Futurama." Bender hates humans, but at his core he isn't so different from them. The robots of Karl Čapek's imagination conquered the world because they were stronger than humans. Bender became a "Futurama" signature because he is weak. In his review of "Fear of a Bot Planet" for AV Club, Zack Handlen writes that the key to Bender's appeal is "his ability to feel aggrieved and slighted for no sensible reason [...] and still have his complaints come from an authentic, genuinely hurt place." Throughout the episode, Bender lies to his friends, abandons them, and then lambasts their home world for his own personal profit. He even lies to the robots who welcomed him for his own personal gain. At the end of the day, though, Bender doesn't have it in him to let his friends be executed. "Humans are no threat to us," he says to the Elders. After all, "they're stupid, putrid cowards."

Here, Bender puts his metal finger on the key to Stanislaw Lem and Čapek's robot stories: that robots and people are one and the same. Čapek's robots are created by humans within a system of violence and exploitation, and so their actions mirror that same violence. Lem's humans follow the workings of machines because of, rather than in spite of, their human vulnerability. "It's comforting to know," said Lem at the end of "The Eleventh Voyage," "that only man can be a bastard." Bender embodies these contradictions as a robot that wears his easily bruised heart on his sleeve. He's as much a "stupid, putrid coward" as the humans are, and that's why we love him.

Read this next: The 27 Best Simpsons One-Off Characters Ranked

The post The Classic Sci-Fi Story That Inspired Futurama's Bender appeared first on /Film.

This post contains spoilers for "John Wick: Chapter 4."

In the world of John Wick, you simply never know which anonymous face in the crowd is hellbent on trying to kill you or what unexpected ally might suddenly arrive to help you out of a jam. The line between hunted and hunter has never been thinner than it is in "John Wick: Chapter 4." As the reluctant assassin's revenge tour reaches its crescendo, it becomes painfully clear to both Keanu Reeves' Wick and the audience that actions have consequences that ripple out far beyond our hero's grief-stricken shortsightedness. The greatest trick that the fourth film pulls comes from externalizing this idea through the introduction of a new character: Donnie Yen's Caine.

Caine isn't too far afield from the typical secondary villain established throughout the "John Wick" franchise. The first "Wick" sequel had the likes of Adrianne Palicki's Ms. Perkins and Cassian (Common), while Mark Dacascos' Zero in "John Wick: Chapter 3" gave us another of Wick's former assassin associates who have become all-out enemies. Their murky motivations may differ and their methods are entirely unique, but they all waver on the knife's edge between admirer and antagonist. But, until this point in the franchise at least, none ever received the level of depth afforded to Caine. Pulled out of retirement for one last job, Caine must hunt down and kill his old friend John ... or pay the ultimate price through the death of his innocent daughter.

Even though we never actually see Wick and Caine together in their glory days, the reluctant tension between them adds a whole new dynamic to every one of their interactions and fights in "Chapter 4." In short, they're the best frenemies we'll likely ever see on the big screen this year.

The Cost Of Doing Business

Respect and reputation are everything in the assassin underworld of the "John Wick" movies. Built on a foundation of clearly-defined rules, the whole enterprise depends on a code of conduct befitting these high-class killers. That means that all other priorities -- loyalty, friendship, and even love -- come second to duty. Caine fully embodies this awful ideal right from his introductory scene, when the villainous Marquis de Gramont (Bill Skarsgård) summons him and tasks him with killing the troublesome Wick, once and for all. It's quickly established that the blind assassin (as the Marquis so succinctly puts it later on) has something to kill for, something to die for, and something to live for. He and John have obvious mutual admiration for one another, but what does that matter when family is at risk?

John Wick knows this burden all too well, having previously retired from this life himself to settle down with his wife Helen (Bridget Moynahan) ... only to lose her anyway. One can easily imagine the two bonding over their respective attachments, struggling to balance their violent lives with their domestic ones before finally getting out of the game altogether -- or trying to, at least. In both their cases, the past comes back to bite them and drag them unwillingly back to the job they left behind.

When they come to blows repeatedly throughout "Chapter 4," it's unlike any other action sequence in the film. The hard-hitting and downright balletic fight choreography between Yen and Reeves comes laced with a sense of melancholy, almost as if neither can quite bring themselves to deliver the killing blow. Genuine friends are in short supply in the assassin business, so of course fate put two of them on a collision course.

Unexpected Allies

The bulk of the plot in "John Wick: Chapter 4" is concerned with getting Wick to survive long enough to reach the appointed duel at dawn with Caine, serving as a proxy fighter to the cowardly Marquis in the ultimate fight for freedom. The stakes ensure that audiences remain fully dialed in amid all the carnage leading up to it, with everything before that face-off serving as extended appetizers (okay, maybe a lot of dessert, too) until the main course. The film, however, wouldn't feel complete without throwing audiences one more bone: the team-up between Caine and Wick as they fight their way up the Sisyphean-like staircase.

With only minutes to spare before the duel begins, John has to fight his way past hordes of assassins -- but he can't do so alone. Thrown back to the very bottom of the stairs after all that effort in the most hilarious and deflating moment in the movie, Caine finally arrives to help his friend make their crucial appointment. What unfolds next is one of the best sequences director Chad Stahelski has committed to film, translating the unlikely twosome's complicated history into graceful, gory action before immediately putting them at odds again during the duel. Fittingly, the pair have one last twist up their sleeves that allow both to escape, bloodied but victorious.

Enemies to allies is a time-honored trope for a very good reason, from the Terminator and Sarah Connor all the way to Kylo Ren and Rey in "Star Wars: The Last Jedi." It was only a matter of time before "John Wick" tried its hand at it and, in the end, we received one of the highlights of the entire series. With Wick and Caine, "John Wick" saved its best action duo for last.

Read this next: John Wick Moments That Went Too Far

The post In John Wick: Chapter 4, Keanu Reeves and Donnie Yen are the Year's Greatest Frenemies appeared first on /Film.

It took a lot to bring "Superman" and "Superman II" to the big screen. Director Richard Donner and producer Alexander Salkind didn't get off to the best start, with Donner having to salvage a truly disastrous script that Salkind evidently felt was "perfect." But once "Superman" debuted in 1978, things started looking up. Or so it seemed.

With "Superman," Donner helped invent the modern blockbuster, setting a blueprint for every superhero movie that would follow and breaking box office records in the process. What made "Superman" an even more impressive feat was that during production, Donner had simultaneously shot most of the sequel. "Superman" and "Superman II" were filmed simultaneously, which meant the crew worked from a hefty script that required Donner to film scenes for both movies alongside one another.

Unfortunately, in order to make the "Superman" release date, Donner and co. had to stop filming "Superman II" before it was finished. And when the time came to resume filming on the sequel, tension between Donner and producers Salkind and Pierre Spengler resulted in the director being replaced by Richard Lester. The filmmaker behind "A Hard Day's Night" and "The Three Musketeers" was handed the reins after his predecessor had already shot around 75% of "Superman II," leaving Lester to complete the remaining 25%. But when the sequel debuted in 1980, significant portions had been reshot and many of Donner's original scenes were gone.

It was 26 years before Warner Bros. signed off on a director's cut that restored Donner's original vision, and in November 2006, "Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut" finally arrived. But oddly enough, the "cuts" themselves were handled by someone other than Donner.

Restoring Donner's Vision

"Superman II" might just be the best Superman movie ever made, but that didn't stop fans from clamoring for Richard Donner's original cut. Michael Thau had worked as Donner's assistant before becoming an editor and director, and in a 2006 IGN interview, Donner explained how Thau told him there had been "so many requests to Warner Bros." for his original cut of "Superman II" that the studio had signed off on the project. Donner gave the "good little editor" his blessing to oversee recutting the footage, and work on "The Richard Donner Cut" began.

The process kicked off when six tons of film were shipped from London, where they'd been stored in the Technicolor vaults, to California where Thau was set to work on the recut. In a making-of featurette, Donner explained how Thau came to oversee the project:

"One day Michael Thau called me and said, 'Listen, there really is a internet movement afoot that they want to see your cut.' I said, 'I wouldn't know where to start,' and he said, 'Well, I'd love to do it.' I said, 'Hey, of all the people you're the right guy, go do it.'"

Once the newly-unearthed footage had gone through an extensive cataloging process, Thau started cutting scenes together, working from roughly 70% of what Donner had shot for "Superman II" before Richard Lester took over — the rest of this original footage had been lost in the decades since. During that process of editing, Donner, who'd never actually seen "Superman" in full before it premiered and had pretty much remained removed from the saga after he was replaced, preferred to maintain his distance somewhat.

'I'm Too Far Away From It'

In a kind of prototypical "Zack Snyder's Justice League" process, Michael Thau and a small team worked diligently with Richard Donner's footage to restore as much of the director's original version of "Superman II" as possible. That involved using a screen test for one scene, in which Lois Lane shoots Clark Kent in a hotel room to prove that he is, as she suspected, Superman. Elsewhere, Thau and co. re-inserted scenes featuring Marlon Brando — whom Christopher Reeve wasn't a huge fan of — as Superman's father ​​Jor-El, which had been removed from Richard Lester's cut after a dispute over pay between the actor and producers.

For most of that process, Donner let his team work with minimal supervision. As the director explained to IGN:

"[Thau has] been working for about four or five months now getting all the negatives and cuts out of England. A lot of it's been destroyed, a lot of it wasn't kept. But everything that he was able to [get], he said it will probably be about 70 percent my footage. [...] I don't even want to see it until it comes out in the theater."

Asked whether he did, in fact, want to see the final version, Donner said, "Oh, s*** yeah. But I don't want to cut it. I mean, I'm too far away from it now."

But it seems the "Goonies" director eventually did become more involved. As the making-of featurette shows, Thau would cut together footage by trying to match the editing style of Donner's first movie, "Superman," before showing the completed scenes to the director, who provided his former assistant with notes, and oversaw audio mixing sessions. It seems Donner couldn't totally resist having a hand in re-constructing his original movie.

'It's Tough To Look At'

Overall, bringing "Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut" to fruition took multiple months. Michael Thau worked with the footage he had to recreate as much of what Richard Donner had originally envisioned as possible. And even though the director did become quite involved once the process got underway, there's no doubt he preferred to keep some distance between himself and the project. As Thau explained in the making-of featurette:

"Donner came over and saw all the scenes, he also didn't want to deal too much with the [Richard] Lester scenes that needed to be left in to make a complete story. But I realized after a while that he had been familiar with those scenes and they hurt him, I think. That was always a sore spot."

While Donner's claim to IGN that he was "too far away from it" makes sense — it had been 26 years since the director was actually engaged in making "Superman II" — it seems there was more to his decision to hand the reins to Thau. The director seems to have been dealing with some residual hard feelings from being ousted from the project back in the late-70s. As he put it:

"I've looked at [Thau's cut] a couple of times. I've given my input as best I can, but I can't do it any more. I can't divorce myself from the disparagement of time, whereas he can because he's going in fresh, and he's doing a wonderful job. It's tough to look at."

Donner's Legacy

Richard Donner spent what he claimed were two of the hardest years of his life on the original "Superman," and being removed from the sequel after shooting 75% of the scenes was a particularly bitter coup de grâce. With that in mind, it's understandable the director would find it difficult to return to the project, even after multiple decades.

Even though Christopher Reeve actually preferred Richard Lester's vision for Superman, there's no doubt much of what made the original "Superman II" so successful and enduring was Donner's doing. Not only had the director shot two movies simultaneously, he managed to deliver a hugely influential blockbuster with "Superman" that maintained a healthy reverence for the central character and established what many see as the definitive on-screen depiction of the Man Of Steel. Having his vision taken away before he could fully complete it must have been tough, and returning to it after so long understandably brought up mixed emotions for the director.

Thankfully, the "Richard Donner Cut" was well-received and provides as close a glimpse as we'll ever get at his original vision for the movie. Richard Lester would, of course, go on to take the "Superman" saga into more comedic territory, infamously directing Richard Pryor in "Superman III" and injecting a slapstick sensibility into the world Donner had created. Things didn't get much better after that, but Donner had set the bar so high with his first and (sort of) second movie that it was always going to be tough to maintain that quality. "Superman II" star Terrence Stamp believes the first two films set a high benchmark, and he's right. Had Donner been allowed to continue as director, who knows how long that benchmark would have been maintained.

Read this next: Every DC Movie Made Prior To The DCEU Ranked From Worst To Best

The post Why Richard Donner Didn't Edit Superman II's 'Richard Donner Cut' Himself appeared first on /Film.

(Welcome to 100 Years of Disney Magic, a series examining the history, achievements, and legacy of The Walt Disney Company over the last century. Part 5, "Silly Symphonies: The Oscar-Winning Disney Animation Series That The Studio Forgot" looked at the groundbreaking, critically acclaimed shorts the studio produced in the '30s. In Part 6, we finally talk about "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," the first full-color animated feature film and arguably Disney's most important contribution to cinema.)

What can I say about "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" that hasn't already been said?

The 1937 film changed the world. Mere years after Walt Disney Productions shook up the animation industry by putting sound in "Steamboat Willie" in 1928 and then color in "Flowers and Trees" in 1932, the team set their sights on revolutionizing the world of cartoons once again: with a feature-length, full-color, animated fairy tale.   

"Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" was a sensation. It dominated the box office, temporarily holding the record for the highest-grossing sound film until "Gone with the Wind" outperformed it in 1939. This was the cultural dominance Walt Disney yearned for. 

Following the massive success of "Snow White," the studio would pivot away from the Silly Symphony shorts to focus on producing more high-quality feature-length animation; the result was titles like "Pinocchio," "Fantasia," and "Dumbo" that were critically acclaimed but financially disappointing. For years, "Snow White" was the high-point in the company's history. 

Sergei Eisenstein, the Russian director and motion picture theorist who pioneered the montage, famously said that "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" was the best movie ever made. Time listed the film as 13th in its list of "The 25 All-TIME Best Animated Films." In 2019, Rolling Stone listed "Snow White" as the fourth. 

"Snow White" is a masterpiece.

Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs Is Unlike Anything Else

Animation scholar J. B. Kaufman, in an essay for the Library of Congress, writes of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs":

Some films achieve greatness because of their historical significance, others because of their artistry. A relative few can claim both. Walt Disney's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" is one of the films in this charmed inner circle, a motion picture whose historical importance is inextricably linked with the magnitude of its artistic accomplishment.

My friend Eric, a long-time animator, once told me the tragedy of his industry is knowing that we'll never again see the level of artistic ambition and innovation displayed in "Snow White." Yes, it was the first of many color animated feature films, but its cultural significance is so much more. Disney reinvented the wheel with this picture, challenging every convention. The animators used larger cels to fit in more fine detail. They created the multiplane camera, which gave scenes additional depth. Walt's story department turned the characters from the thin archetypes of the fairy tale to unique, memorable and charming people.

Rogert Ebert argues in his 2001 review for "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs":

Nothing like the techniques in "Snow White" had been seen before. Animation itself was considered a child's entertainment, six minutes of gags involving mice and ducks, before the newsreel and the main feature. "Snow White" demonstrated how animation could release a movie from its trap of space and time; how gravity, dimension, physical limitations and the rules of movement itself could be transcended by the imaginations of the animators.

Walt Disney Foresaw The Short Life Of Shorts

It was inevitable that someone in Hollywood was going to experiment with a feature-length, full-color animation. Heck, technically Quirino Cristiani, an Italian-Argentine animator, made the first feature-length animation, "El Apóstol," as well as the first feature-length animation with sound, "Peludópolis." (As is the case for many black-and-white films, these are unfortunately lost to time.) The point is, Disney was very good at predicting where the market was headed; as much as he was trailblazing, he was also reactionary. This isn't a criticism — in fact, quite the contrary. Although he had a rocky start in the industry, Walt would become a titan precisely because he knew how to look to the future and respond to changing trends.

Following the success of the Mickey Mouse shorts and the Silly Symphonies, Walt Disney recognized that he was in a position to dominate the market, but the studio would need to do more than maintain the status quo to stay competitive. As Neal Gabler describes in the biography "Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination," the shorts were profitable (and during the Depression, no less!) but their potential was severely limited. The company would never see major return on the shorts because they were seen as "filler" — the main ticket-seller was the feature film presentation. Given the status of the cartoons as essentially bonus material, there was no guarantee that his shorts — as masterful as they were — would continue to sell to theater operators. 

If Walt Disney Productions was going to be in "the big leagues" with the other studios, he would need to start competing with them directly — and it wouldn't be enough for Walt to just make a feature film. It had to be a feature-length cartoon. 

Cartoons Were Disney's Only Option

By the mid-'30s, Walt Disney Productions had risen to the very top of its field, releasing award-winning animated content. Even though it had never been done before — and would be prohibitively expensive to produce — Walt's only option for breaking into feature films was a high quality animation, featuring all the techniques the Silly Symphonies had become known for. 

Despite how risky it was, an animated feature was actually the safest bet for Disney. Back when the company was called Disney Brothers Studio, Walt experimented with live-action, but the Alice Comedies were not the stirring success he had hoped for. The plain truth was that Walt was out of his depth when it came to cinematography. Before moving to Hollywood, the Kansas City native had no previous technical experience or training with photography (or lighting ... or acting). As a lifelong artist, he understood the basics of drawing and could apply that knowledge and skill to the emerging art form of animation, seamlessly transitioning into more of a mentorship role overtime. By 1935, he had grown an entire studio of professionals trained specifically in illustration, animation, and painting. They all studied film, and used the movements, framing, and mise-en-scene of live-action cinema as inspiration, and he had cinematographers, but they were specialized in animation, first and foremost. Sure, Disney could have made his first feature film in live-action, but he'd be starting over again. 

There was also an interest in the market for further experimentation in the medium by the early '30s. With shorts like "The Three Little Pigs" and "The Band Concert," cartoons were beginning to be seen as more than silly kid fare. And there's ample evidence that this instinct to produce a feature-length animation predates "Snow White." Gabler references unrealized plans for an "Alice in Wonderland" project as early as 1932, as well as an adaptation of the popular book "Bambi: A Life in the Woods." Of course, the issue, as it always did for Walt, came down to money.

Making Animation Is Expensive

Those who are interested in Hollywood history likely know a few key things about "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs": that it was the first full-color feature-length animation, that it was a huge box office success, and that its production was egregiously expensive. The budget ballooned from the original $250,000 to an estimated $1.5 million — more than the 1930 war film "All Quiet on the Western Front" and about equal to the Cecil B. DeMille's Biblical Epic "The Ten Commandments." Today, the idea of Disney spending a fortune on an animated feature film is more predictable than anything, but in the mid-'30s, it was downright wild. Cartoons were, after all, seen as novelties more than anything else. 

By 1934, Disney was the undisputed king of cartoons, and the Silly Symphonies series fetched rental rates about 50% higher than Disney's competitors — yet, that year saw a profit of just $600,000 (per Gabler). So spending even just $250,000 on a totally untested project was the equivalent of about 40% of a year's total profits on one huge gamble. To put this in perspective: Today, Disney regularly brings in billions of dollars each year from theaters alone, so spending $150 million on a movie like "Frozen 2" is not going to sink the company. 2012's mega-bomb "John Carter" — infamously one of the most expensive movies ever — lost the company something like $200 million dollars, but that was only a fraction of its annual box office income. Spending $1.5 million on film production during the Great Depression with the kind of money Disney was bringing in ... a bold move, to say the least.

Walt Disney Productions burnt through the initial "Snow White" budget quickly, and in the years it took to complete the film, the studio's finances became increasingly precarious.The project spent years in pre-production — recruiting and training new animators (later he would literally establish an art school, CalArts), studying movement, developing the story, etc. — and animation didn't start until approximately 1936, starting with roughs and then eventually finalizing model sheets in the fall. Walt would eventually dig into his own pocket, selling his beloved car, mortgaging his house, and even taking out money on his life insurance to keep the project going. If "Snow White" hadn't been a success, the studio's Mickey Mouse cartoons likely wouldn't have been enough to save the studio.    

Why Disney Started With Snow White

Walt Disney knew how to tell a story. Famously, the "Snow White" project began in earnest after Walt himself acted out the story for his animators — taking hours to do so, and performing all the roles (by all accounts, it was quite something to behold). His passion was infectious, and would carry the project through many delays and stumbling blocks. 

So why was the first feature film "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" and not "Alice in Wonderland" or "Bambi"? Part of it was funding — for various reasons, the capital needed for the previously suggested projects never materialized — but it was also personal. According to Gabler, Walt had seen a production of the fairy tale as a child back in Kansas City and it left an indelible impression on him. 

Walt said he could remember seeing a 'Snow White' play as a boy, though he was probably recalling a film version of the play starring Marguerite Clark that screened on January 27 and 28, 1917 ... to accommodate the crowds, the film was projected simultaneously on four screens arranged at right angles ... Walt, seated high in the gallery, said that he could see on one screen what was going to happen on the adjacent one, which made the show seem somehow even more magical.

Gabler also notes that Walt stated he chose "Snow White" for its "aesthetic potential" — the story lent itself to drama, gags, adventure, and even romance. Bob Thomas makes a similar argument in his biography "Walt Disney: An American Original," although he argues the childhood memory was not the driving reason for Walt picking "Snow White" for his first feature film.

But his choice of "Snow White" was more pragmatic than sentimental. He recognized it as a splendid tale for animation, containing all the necessary ingredients: an appealing heroine and hero; a villainess of classic proportions; the Dwarfs for sympathy and comic relief; a folklore plot that touched the hearts of human beings everywhere.

Gabler takes this one step further, suggesting there may also have been "deep-seated psychological reasons" for Walt choosing "Snow White." The story featured elements that reflect the animator's own experiences and ambitions.

"Snow White" had nearly all the narrative features — the tyrannical parent, the sentence of drudgery, the promise of a childhood utopia — and incorporated nearly all the major themes of his young life, primarily the need to conquer the previous generation to stake one's claim on maturity, the rewards of hard work, the dangers of trust, and perhaps above all, the escape into fantasy as a remedy for inhospitable reality. ... "Snow White" was the story of Walt Disney's personal growth, the story of what he had had to surmount and what he had achieved.

Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs Changed The World

Other film critics and scholars have attributed different factors at play in Walt's attraction to the story of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." Richard Schickel famously alluded to an "anal-fixation" in the dwarfs' "rump-butting" in "Snow White" (per Roger Ebert). Douglas Brode in "From Walt to Woodstock: How Disney Created the Counterculture" sees in "Snow White" both a rejection of conformity and a romantic — almost religious — view of nature. Tracey Louise Mollet, in "Cartoons in Hard Times: The Animated Shorts of Disney and Warner Brothers in Depression and War 1932 - 1945," conversely presents Disney's animation during this time as an expanding tool for ideological messaging. Regardless of what, exactly, drew Walt to the Brothers Grimm story, the passion and ambition he brought to the project was unparalleled. 

Following the film's debut in 1937, the critics raved. The Hollywood Reporter wrote "The drawing and animation go far beyond anything seen before" and "The production marks a milepost of motion picture progress, for it is in conceivable [sic] that this will not have many successors." John C. Flinn Sr. wrote in Variety, "So perfect is the illusion, so tender the romance and fantasy, so emotional are certain portions when the acting of the characters strikes a depth comparable to the sincerity of human players, that the film approaches real greatness. It is an inspired and inspiring work." Frank S. Nugent wrote in The New York Times in January 1938, "Sheer fantasy, delightful, gay and altogether captivating, touched the screen yesterday when Walt Disney's long-awaited feature-length cartoon of the Grimm fairy tale, 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,' had its local premiere at the Radio City Music Hall." 

A Glorious (If Temporary) Victory

Walt Disney Productions could not have hoped for a better reception — "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" even won a one-of-a-kind Academy Award. The custom statuette consists of a normal Oscar and seven miniature ones, and was presented to Walt Disney by Shirley Temple. After several gruelling years, Disney enjoyed a significant high following "Snow White" — one that Walt himself would not enjoy again for many years. 

"Snow White" was a special project for Walt. The parallels between the story and his own childhood experiences and personality are obvious — not to mention this was the film that catapulted the studio into real stardom. "Snow White" would serve as the basis of one of the opening day attractions for Disneyland in 1955. In a CBC interview, Walt Disney spoke of his experience with "Snow White," and his eyes twinkle with delight at the recollection. He jokes, "the banker, in fact, was losing more sleep than I was." 

He's shockingly humble. Of course, one can't help but wonder how much of this is that famous "Uncle Walt" persona -- Disney was often described as an excellent actor and storyteller, after all. And yet, I can't help but be drawn in. "Snow White" was such a monumental achievement — of course Walt would remember that time fondly. 

After all, it was followed by a much darker period.

Join us next time for 100 Years of Disney Magic Part 7, where we'll dive into the complicated legacy of Disney during World War II.

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It's safe to say that the cultural influence of the 1966 "Batman" series peaked with the release of the 1966 feature-length spin-off movie. As detailed in "Batman: The Complete History" by Les Daniels, the series was met with declining enthusiasm when returned for a second season and was then canceled by ABC after the third season. Like the concurrently-airing "Star Trek" on NBC, "Batman" was a classic in the making, but cut short for contemporary audiences.

That's not to say the "Batman" team didn't try to save the show. For season 3, they mixed up the formula. To save costs, they cut the two episodes, one-story format -- aired on back-to-back nights -- from previous seasons. This also meant doing away with the trademark comic book-style cliffhangers. However, one innovation meant a budget increase: bringing in a third star alongside Batman (Adam West) and Robin (Burt Ward). That star was Barbara Gordon, daughter of Commissioner Gordon and the secret identity of the new hero Batgirl.

Executive producer William Dozier first conceived of Barbara (see #38 of "Back Issue" magazine, "Growing Up Gordon: The Early Years of Batgirl"). However, to give the series a blueprint for portraying Barbara, he tasked DC Comics editor Julius Schwartz to introduce her in the comics. Schwartz recounted in Daniels' book, "I don't remember the exact details, but I was asked to create a Batgirl. I called Carmine [Infantino] in, and he drew the costume and did the cover. I worked out the story and called it 'The Million Dollar Debut of Batgirl.'"

That story, in turn scripted by Gardner Fox, was printed in Detective Comics #359, the first of many comics starring Batgirl to come. But what about her TV debut?

A Publicity Stunt Lives On

Yvonne Craig was chosen to play the TV version of Batgirl. According to Les Daniels, here's what she had to say about the job: "I used to think the reason they hired me was [that] they knew I could ride my own motorcycle [...] I realized they hired me because I had a cartoon voice." Indeed, Daniels writes that the casting of Batgirl was the production team playing both sides -- creating a super-heroine to attract feminist acclaim (Craig later played Batgirl in a U.S. Department of Labor advert for the Equal Pay Act) but also giving male viewers eye candy.

In any case, the Batgirl ploy didn't save the series. Daniels speculates that trying to both scale back the show's length and increase the cast made it feel overcrowded, turning Batgirl into a third wheel rather than a new partner. That might be why the comics used Batgirl as the star of shorter, backup stories in "Detective Comics," rather than trying to jam her into the Dynamic Duo as the TV show did.

Barbara Gordon's bad luck onscreen doesn't end here. Her film debut, 1997's "Batman & Robin" where she was played by Alicia Silverstone, was panned and marked the end of the first "Batman" film series. A "Batgirl" movie scheduled for release in 2022 was canned. While Barbara had a starring role in "Batman: The Animated Series," her role there is tainted by producer Bruce Timm's consistent (and gross) fixation on pairing her and Bruce romantically.

However, despite these hurdles, Barbara has continued to play a starring role in "Batman" comics to this day. William Dozier may have failed to save his show, but he helped forge an integral part of the Batman mythos in his failure.

Read this next: Every DC Movie Made Prior To The DCEU Ranked From Worst To Best

The post Batgirl's Creation Was A Last-Ditch Attempt To Save Adam West's Batman Series appeared first on /Film.

"Breaking Bad" is a tragedy. The series often offsets the darkness with black comedy, but by the end, the tragedy outweighs the humor. The series' climatic, antepenultimate episode "Ozymandias" is named after the Percy Bysshe Shelley poem, the greatest written testament to man's hubris.

In the "Breaking Bad" pilot, after the not-so-humble chemistry teacher Walter White (Bryan Cranston) gets a cancer diagnosis, he decides to use his talents to cook meth. He says it's to leave money behind for his family, but it's just as much about getting ahead of a world he feels screwed him over. As we learn more about Walt, it becomes clear his bad decisions started long before the diagnosis and he squandered his potential, both in chemistry and to be a better man.

In the series finale "Felina," Walt manages to settle things as much as he can, but his story still ends the only way it could've been: him lying dead. At this point, Walt was such a monster it was hard to be too sad at his death. The closing song, Badfinger's "Baby Blue," pointedly opens with the lyric, "Guess I got what I deserved."

However, series creator Vince Gilligan revealed in a Reddit 'Ask Me Anything' that Walt's death was the moment that made him cry.

The End Of A Journey

The Reddit AMA took place in April 2015, shortly after the first season of "Breaking Bad" spin-off "Better Call Saul" wrapped up. When asked which "Breaking Bad" character's death affected him the most, Gilligan answered:

"I have to say the death of Walter White affected me the most, because what it represented was the end of the story and the completion of this seven-year journey we had taken together — the cast, crew, writers and directors of 'Breaking Bad.' That was the most affecting death to write. I actually teared up when I wrote it."

From Gilligan's answer, it's clear that the tears weren't so much about Walt's tragedy but what finishing the series meant to him. Making "Breaking Bad" was a long journey — Gilligan has talked before about how several networks turned down the show before it found a home at AMC. On that journey, he forged creative partnerships and secured his legacy as one of television's great writing talents. Getting to create something and see it through to fruition is a profound experience, one worthy of tears.

Gilligan added to his answer, "I think a close second [in terms of most affecting] was the death of Mike Ehrmantraut." Gilligan didn't elaborate on why he feels this way, but it's probably more to do with the context of the scene itself.

The Close Second

Mike (Jonathan Banks) was introduced at the end of "Breaking Bad" season 2 as a fixer of sorts, before being revealed later as the loyal enforcer of Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito). After his boss' murder, Mike reluctantly keeps working with Walt to keep themselves both out of jail and financially secure. Mike dies in the season 5 episode, "Say My Name." After being made by the DEA, he decides to skip town. When he accuses Walt of screwing them all over with his thirst for power, Walt shoots him. Walt regrets the spur-of-the-moment murder but Mike doesn't let him get the last word ("Shut the f*** up and let me die in peace.")

Mike isn't much better than Walt — he's got just as much blood on his hands and didn't even have the specter of a terminal illness when he chose a life of crime. He's doing it to provide for his dead son's family. And he is ultimately a more likable character — his stoic professionalism is more endearing than Walt's know-it-all arrogance — but that counts only for so much. Still, this is probably Walt's worst murder because of how pointless it was. "Say My Name" writer-director Thomas Schnauz described it to Forbes as Walt's first murder done "out of passion."

This wasn't the end for Mike onscreen, though. He returned as a regular for "Better Call Saul," where we learned how he became the man he is in "Breaking Bad." He also cameoed in "El Camino," the 2019 epilogue film which reveals the post-series fate of Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul). Gilligan co-created "Better Call Saul" with Peter Gould before he wrote and directed "El Camino." Even after he said goodbye to Walter White, he couldn't stay away from his baby for long.

Read this next: The Best TV Episodes Of 2022, Ranked

The post The Breaking Bad Scene That Brought Showrunner Vince Gilligan to Tears appeared first on /Film.

It seems there's a new portmanteau of an actor's name and the word "renaissance" cropping up all the time. In the early 2010s, we had the "McConaissance" and now Oscar winner Brendan Fraser is enjoying his own "Brenaissance." Michael Keaton, however, escaped the dreaded portmanteau when he re-ascended to superstar status with 2014's "Birdman." And he's since maintained that status with memorable turns in everything from the Oscar-winning "Spotlight" to Hulu's excellent chronicle of the opioid epidemic "Dopesick" — even debuting in the MCU as Vulture in "Spider-Man: Homecoming."

Soon, Keaton will be returning as Batman in "The Flash," some 30 years after walking away from the role. He's also gearing up for his directorial debut with "Knox Goes Away", which means that the 71-year-old is still a very busy man.

Now, according to a Deadline report, he'll be starring alongside Mila Kunis in "Goodrich," which looks set to bring Keaton back to the family-friendly comedies he was known for in the '80s -- kind of. The film sounds oddly reminiscent of his 1983 breakout "Mr. Mom," which featured the actor as a recently laid-off engineer who's forced to adapt to becoming a stay-at-home dad. Want to know more? Read on for everything that's been revealed so far about "Goodrich."

What Is The Goodrich Release Date, And Where Can You Watch It?

As of now, there is no official release date for "Goodrich." The project was first announced in April 2019, when Deadline reported that a new "drama," written and directed by Hallie Meyers-Shyer, had received multiple bids from distributors and financiers, especially after Michael Keaton was attached to star.

Since then, "Goodrich" went to the European Film Market in February 2023, before it was announced that Mila Kunis, fresh off producing and starring in Netflix's "Luckiest Girl Alive," had been cast alongside Keaton. At the time of Kunis' casting, "Goodrich" was being described as a "comedy" rather than drama, and it was confirmed that Meyers-Shyer would begin shooting in April 2023, directing from a script she wrote. According to a May 2019 article from The Hollywood Reporter, filming was originally due to start in the fall of 2019 but was obviously delayed.

With production yet to get underway, we're still far from an official release date for "Goodrich." Depending on how long the shoot lasts, post-production will likely start later this year, which means we could see the movie debut in early 2024, but that's just speculation at this point. By now we know "Goodrich" is set to be a dramedy that takes some influence from "Mr. Mom" or "Night Shift" — two of Michael Keaton's best movies — so it's unlikely filming will take too long, considering there'll probably be little in the way of complex visual effects or stunt work.

We'll update this page with more release date details as soon as they become available.

What Is Goodrich About?

According to Deadline, "Goodrich" is set during "the holidays" in present-day Los Angeles, and will see Michael Keaton play art dealer Andy Goodrich. In a similar plot to "Mr. Mom," the film will focus on Goordrich as his second wife leaves him to enter a rehab program, leaving him to take care of their two nine-year-old twins as he grapples with threats of divorce from his wife.

Mila Kunis will play Goodrich's adult and pregnant daughter, Grace, who steps in to support her father even though it sounds as if he was never there for her in the way she needed. Will lessons be learned? Of course, they will. According to the brief synopsis, Goodrich will "evolve into the father Grace never had" by the movie's end, suggesting there'll also be a heavy dose of heart-warming character evolution.

When "Goodrich" was first announced, Deadline described the project as "a potential tour de force for Keaton the way that 'About Schmidt' was for Jack Nicholson." That 2002 effort from director Alexander Payne contained its share of humor but was a more somber affair than the '80s comedies that launched Keaton's career. And as more news about "Goodrich" has emerged, it seems the project will lean more on the charming comedic sensibilities of its star's early films. As writer-director Hallie Meyers-Shyer explained:

"'Goodrich' is an homage to the films of the '70s and '80s that brilliantly melded comedy with drama, films directed by greats like Mike Nichols and James L. Brooks. I wrote this film for the incomparable Michael Keaton and I can't wait for audiences to see Michael back in the genre where we all fell in love with him."

Who's In The Cast And Crew Of Goodrich?

So far, Michael Keaton and Mila Kunis are the only confirmed cast members for "Goodrich." Keaton, who plays the title character, has had a string of successes of late, turning in a Golden Globe and Emmy-winning performance in Hulu's "Dopesick" and playing U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark in Aaron Sorkin's legal drama "The Trial of the Chicago 7." Meanwhile, Kunis, who's seen success with "Bad Moms" and recently starred in Netflix's adaptation of Jessica Knoll's novel "Luckiest Girl Alive", will play Goodrich's adult daughter Grace.

As previously mentioned, Hallie Meyers-Shyer is set to direct the script she wrote. She made her directorial debut with the rom-com "Home Again" — a film where Reese Witherspoon, you guessed it, goes home again. Elsewhere, Jason Cloth and Dave Caplan will produce. The pair represent C2 Motion Picture Group, which is financing "Goodrich." Daniela Taplin Lundberg, of Stay Gold Features -- who worked on "The Kids Are All Right" -- will also produce, alongside Kevin Mann.

And perhaps the biggest producing credit comes in the form of former Sony Pictures boss Amy Pascal, who's helped shepherd the Tom Holland-led Spider-Man movies. Pascal will executive produce alongside Keaton and Kunis.

It's still early days for "Goodrich," which means there'll be plenty more news to come. So stay tuned to this page as and when it becomes available.

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The post Goodrich: Everything We Know About the Mila Kunis-Michael Keaton Comedy appeared first on /Film.

It's been more than 20 years since HBO released its acclaimed war drama miniseries "Band of Brothers," which dramatized the history of Easy Company and the American soldiers who fought in and up until World War II. There is a good reason it still manages to impress to this day — apart from showcasing the visceral, uncompromising horrors of war, it authentically captured the cruelty and pathos inherent in the millions of civilian lives lost in the process.

Based on historian Stephen E. Ambrose's 1992 non-fiction book of the same name, "Band of Brothers" deftly balances the heroism of those who fought for the cause and the senseless violence that plagued these times, while also lending a platform to the survivors, whose relay their real-life experiences at the beginning of some episodes.

In "Band of Brothers," Michael Cudlitz -- best known for playing Abraham Ford in "The Walking Dead" -- plays staff sergeant Denver Randleman, who earns the nickname "The Bull." Considered one of the best soldiers by his commanding officer, Bull is quickly promoted to Corporal after having fought in major battles, including the September 1944 Operation Market Garden (where he was separated from his unit and barely survived the ordeal) and the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944. As Bull's arc progresses, he participates in the occupation of Germany and Austria during World War II, and he receives several military medals for his valiant service.

Cudlitz spoke to Smithsonian Magazine on the 20th anniversary of the HBO miniseries, recounting a particular moment during filming that drastically altered his understanding of the true events that were being dramatized in that particular scene.

A 'Holy S***' Moment

Part of the reason why "Band of Brothers" makes for such powerful television is the way it conveys the scale and emotional weight in its depiction of the lives of those who fought on the front lines. Michael Cudlitz's character, Bull, is one of them, and the actor explained how real the battle scenes felt when the cameras were rolling and he was reloading his rifle and shooting blanks at fellow actors who were playing German soldiers:

"I call it my holy s*** moment. There is the smell of cordite and sulfur in the air. For a second, you feel like you caused that. There is something very visceral about it. We got the tiniest taste of what these guys might have gone through."

While Cudlitz helped bring a dramatized version of the real atrocities of war to life, the weight of filming these scenes added a layered tint to how he perceived history. After all, this is not a work based on fiction, making Cudlitz better appreciate what millions of American soldiers might have felt in those emotionally-charged moments, at least as much as possible from an empathic point of view.

As Bull's story can be traced back to his paratrooper days, and his journey captured the multidimensional vignettes of living such an existence, this made for insightful and greatly immersive storytelling. What also helped is that none of the soldiers were depicted through the lens of objective morality, which lent to a rich narrative about flawed characters who are molded by the combination of extreme circumstances and painful personal choices.

Understanding History

All of the cast members, including Michael Cudlitz, spent significant time getting to know the real-life soldiers that they play, which informed their understanding of the complex characters they were supposed to embody. In the same interview, Cudlitz recounted the first time he called the real Denver Randleman, and how apprehensive he felt about getting "everything right" in an effort to relay authentic sincerity:

"I must have stared at my phone for 45 minutes before I called [Randleman] for the first time. I kept going over in my head how I was going to start this conversation. And the more I did that, the stupider it sounded. I wanted to get it right. I mean, that was the point behind the whole project: We wanted to get everything right."

The need to stay true to history while authentically portraying the experiences of the soldiers who lived through it formed the crux of "Band of Brothers," with the actors garnering a more nuanced understanding of the gritty realities of war.

Any artistic medium that retells the horrors of war runs the risk of either sensationalizing the subject matter or drastically glamorizing it — "Band of Brothers" avoided these pitfalls by offering a grounded glimpse into one of the deadliest conflicts in human history. After all, some of the greatest stories are told from a place of informed empathy.

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While Keanu Reeves' John Wick faces off against the High Table this weekend, franchise filmmaker and veteran stunt performer Chad Stahelski is facing off against an awards system that still doesn't recognize stunt work nearly a century into its existence. In an interview with Deadline, Stahelski was asked to "make the case" for the Oscars to "reconsider" adding a stunts category, a question that garnered an appropriately strong response from the filmmaker.

"What makes you think they've ever really considered it?" Stahelski responded, referencing the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. "Have you ever talked to anyone in the Academy about it, or talked to anyone in the stunt world who has talked to the Academy about this?" The director and stunt performer then shared what he sees as "the fundamental problem" in the conversation about awarding stunts in the same way the Oscars award sound, editing, costuming, and so many other facets of filmmaking. As he puts it: "the problem is no one's having the conversation."

Stahelski Wants A Sit-Down Between The Academy And Stunt Professionals

Stahelski says that if he were to speak with the Academy, he doesn't think he'd find "a single person" who believes stunts shouldn't be part of the awards season conversation. Rather, as he puts it, "I just think we haven't had the talk." The director explains some of the details that would need to be ironed out for a stunt category to work, describing scenes in "John Wick 4" that feature falls and car accidents. The question, he reasons, is what exactly would be rewarded. 

"So are you giving the award for best stunt or best stunt sequence, or best stunt constant?" Stahelski asks. His criticisms here are far from a case of backseat driving; the filmmaker actually goes on to offer up his time in order to help shape the category himself, along with others in the stunt industry. He continues:

"The stunt guys don't know the answer. And I guarantee you the Academy doesn't either. But I have faith that if all the smart people at the Academy and all our smart people sit down at a table, we can figure it out and make it happen. So I'm asking you to throw down the gauntlet to help make it happen. I am happy to be a representative for the stunt community among other great people in it, to sit down with the Academy and go, 'Okay, we're all on the same page. How do we do this? Let's figure it out together.'"

Over Three Decades Of Fighting For Recognition

The "you" in question here seems to be directed at Deadline as well as, perhaps, other outlets that could help shape the conversation about the award-worthiness of stunts. While /Film has been beating the stunt awards drum for years now, I'm happy to take up that mantle and say, for the record, that Stahelski is right here. While there has definitely been some conversation about a stunt category in the past, with filmmakers like Christopher McQuarrie making the case for its addition and stunt performers even protesting for the category's inclusion in 2005 and again in 2016, the Academy itself always seems to have other things on its mind.

In an interview with Today during the 2005 protests, stunt coordinator Jack Gill is cited as having pushed for the category since way back in 1991. "Everyone believes we should have a category except the board of governors," he told the outlet at the time. Meanwhile, then-Academy president Frank Pierson said that no new categories were being considered, explaining in a statement that the group is "trying to find ways to reduce the numbers of statuettes given out." 

According to an Academy press release, the idea of a stunt category was also floated in 1999, when a proposal for a stunt coordination award was flatly rejected in the same sentence as proposals for casting and title sequence recognition. At the time, the release indicates that the Academy was more concerned with creating an animation category, which it did by 2002.

'It's Time'

Conversations about a stunt coordination award have been happening for years, but they seem to be mostly one-sided. With decades of requests for stunt workers' inclusion ignored, Stahelski's proposal that the Academy meet with him and his peers certainly feels like, as he says, a gauntlet being thrown. I hope it's a challenge the AMPAS will accept.

As for the case for stunts' inclusion? Well, that's something Stahelski explains succinctly to Deadline. "There's not a single arguable reason not to have stunts in the Academy Awards," he says. "No one's gonna deny that we are at least equal to every other department. We're part of every film, as much part of Hollywood lore as music, costumes, technical achievements, directing, or cinematography."

Stahelski's conversation also raises a few potential obstacles to stunts' inclusion in the Oscars, all of which seem navigable. Stunt teams would have to pick a representative to win the award, a problem countless other film departments already solve each year. The award might also shatter the illusion that big-name actors perform their own stunts, Deadline points out. The category rejection in 2005 also indicates that at some points in the past, the Academy may have viewed this as a time or resource issue. Blanket rejections of any new category seem to me to be a response to perpetual worries about the telecast's bloated runtime.

But one category won't push the Oscars over into unwatchable territory, and the Academy's recognition of stunts may even make the telecasts more exciting. "I think we'd add a little something to the Oscars," Stahelski says. "It's a legitimate win-win situation." While he acknowledges that great stunt actors don't work with prizes in mind, he acknowledges that the recognition would be nice. "It's time," Stahelski says plainly. We couldn't agree more.

Read this next: 23 Movies Like John Wick That Will Get Your Adrenaline Pumping

The post John Wick Director Thinks There Should Be an Oscar For Stunts, And He's Right appeared first on /Film.

Penelope Spheeris' 1992 comedy "Wayne's World" argues that metalheads, often depicted in movies as violent, death-obsessed Satan worshipers, are actually just really kind, goofy guys. Wayne (Mike Myers) and Garth (Dana Carvey) are funny, approachable dudes who like hosting their own public access talk show, going to metal shows, and going to get donuts while listening to Queen cassettes. They speak their own lingo and dream of bigger things, just like everyone. Are they a little weird? You'd be surprised how normal they are. 

Indeed, one of the recurring elements of "Wayne's World" is that Wayne has recently broken up with his girlfriend Stacy (Lara Flynn Boyle). Although two months have gone by and Wayne has made it very clear that they are no longer dating, Stacy still behaves like they're together. Stacy seems a little clueless, so the audience has to take Garth's word for it when she is described as a "psycho hose beast." In Stacy's introductory scene, she presents Wayne with an anniversary present, even though they have broken up. Wayne reluctantly opens it to discover a gun rack. 

"I don't even own a gun," he argues, "let alone many guns that would necessitate an entire rack. What am I gonna do with a gun rack?"

Rick Marin, a columnist, reporter, and author, revealed that the gun rack incident was in fact based on a real-life incident. Marin, you see, grew up in the Scarborough district of Toronto, which was Myers' old stamping grounds. Evidently, he knew the real-life woman who attempted to give Myers a gun rack as a gift. According to a 1999 column in the New York Times, Marin not only knew the woman in question, but even had a little insight into the gun rack incident.

The Real Stacy

Evidently, the real Stacy — her name was wisely kept unrevealed — gave a gun rack to Myers as a joke; she was not the "psycho hose beast" as depicted in "Wayne's World." Marin, being a Toronto local, also recognized several local references that Myers snuck into his script. While "Wayne's World" takes place in Aurora, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, a lot of the language and iconography was straight out of Canada. 

In "Wayne's World," for instance, Wayne, Garth, and all their friends congregate at a heavy metal bar called The Gasworks. Evidently, this was a real biker/metal bar in Marin and Myers' neighborhood. Sadly, it seems that the real Gasworks shuttered its doors back in 1993. Additionally, Wayne and Garth are seen frequenting the large-scale (fictional) donut shop Stan Mikita's Donuts. Stan Mikita was a Canadian hockey player for the Chicago Blackhawks. His donut shop was a clear reference to the Canadian donut chain Tim Hortons, founded by the celebrated hockey player who played for the Toronto Maple Leafs. Horton also played for several American teams, but American hockey teams don't count. 

Marin also points out that most of Myers' comedic works have personal Canadian references subtly embedded inside of them. "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me," he noticed, had a subtle music cue to the Canadian game show "Definition" which ran from 1974 to 1989. Its theme was written by Quincy Jones. It also seems that Myers' Dieter character from the Sprockets sketches on "Saturday Night Live" was based on a German waiter at a diner on Queen Street in Toronto, a waiter that Marin had also encountered.

A deep dive may reveal even more Torontonian details, and locals will likely be able to spot them all.

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The post Wayne's World's Gun Rack Gift Exchange Actually Happened To Mike Myers' In Real Life appeared first on /Film.

There are still plenty of questions about the upcoming "Community" film. We still don't know for sure if Troy (Donald Glover) will be in it, nor do we know what the actual plot will be about. Although all signs point to the idea that things are on the right track, Alison Brie (who plays the studious, ambitious Annie Edison) has some doubts. 

"I say this with a hint of ... [sighs] I don't trust it!" she said in an interview with the AV Club. "I'm not a skeptic, I do believe that the 'Community' movie will get made. It's been sold—to Peacock! But because of everything we went through on that show ... I'll believe it when I see it. It's not until I'm on set that I'll be like, 'We're making it!'"

If you're wondering what she meant by "everything we went through," she's likely referring to the constant behind-the-scenes studio conflicts that defined the show's later seasons. After season 3, showrunner Dan Harmon was fired and the show received a shortened, lesser-quality season 4. Harmon came back for season 5, but the season was still shortened, and NBC canceled it after the finale. Then, Yahoo Entertainment picked up the show for its unsuccessful attempt at running its own streaming service, and the sixth season ended up being the show's last. Take into account the many cast departures and the declining ratings, and every attempt to recapture the show's golden years kept falling apart. If you were in Brie's position, you'd be a little skeptical too.

Still Reasons To Be Hopeful

The other cause for concern is the lack of concrete details. Questions like "what's in the script?" and "who's going to be in it?" are still unanswered, even among the major cast members. "We are allegedly shooting it this summer, is the most that I know," Brie explained. "I saw Joel [McHale] and Danny [Pudi] last week and I was like, 'Joooooel, where's the script? What's the plan?' And he was kind of just bouncing around."

But just as "Community" did eventually get a nice, conclusive finale in season 6, it still looks like the "Community" movie will eventually start filming. Despite her reservations, Brie herself has confirmed there's no big reason for alarm yet. "Most of us have all signed on to do it, everyone who's in is in, and now everyone is kind of assessing their schedules and hoping that we can make it work to shoot it this summer."

In the meantime, we'll just content ourselves with what little we do know. We know it definitely won't be a paintball-themed movie, nor will the plot center around any sort of homage to a specific movie. We also know that the script will be co-written by fellow "Community" screenwriter Andrew Guest, a man responsible for classic episodes like "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" and "Messianic Myths and Ancient Peoples." Although there are a million things up in the air right now, things still seem promising that we'll get to see Alison Brie take up her Annie role sometime soon. We were promised "six seasons and a movie," after all, and the cast and crew seem like they're fully planning to deliver. 

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The post Community's Alison Brie Is Skeptical Of The Movie's Alleged Shooting Schedule appeared first on /Film.

The final episode of the second season of "Star Trek: Enterprise" and the first episode of its third season -- titled "The Expanse" (May 21, 2003) and "The Xindi" (September 10, 2003), respectively -- centered on a new "Star Trek" story arc about a mysterious spherical probe that appears over Earth and unleashed a deadly energy beam that destroys the state of Florida and kills seven million people. The attackers did not identify themselves, and Earth was not at war. This terrorist incident changed the course of the series, and Captain Archer (Scott Bakula) was assigned a revenge-based military mission to track down the assailants and bring them to justice. It was very clearly a metaphor for 9/11, an event that "Enterprise" was always living in the shadow of. 

Previously adhering to a more traditional drama-of-the-week structure, "Enterprise" dramatically shifted gears, diving into a season-long story arc. Some Trekkies found the shift to be exciting new territory for "Enterprise," especially as a common criticism of the first two seasons was that they were stodgy and archetypal, rather than exciting or dynamic. The focus on military revenge, however, was openly antithetical to the franchise's known propensity for diplomacy and utopian idealism. During the George W. Bush administration, no one was in the mood for stories of making peace and world unity. The third season of "Enterprise" revealed that "Star Trek" was struggling to find a place in the post-9/11 world. 

Someone who felt that "Enterprise" was tilting a little too hard from established "Star Trek" precepts was actor John Billingsley, who played the jovial Denobulan Dr. Phlox. In a recent interview with TrekMovie, Billingsley revealed his trepidation about the Xindi arc on "Enterprise," and how newly assigned showrunner Manny Coto was bringing a strange anti-"Trek" vibe into the room.

The Torture Principle

It's worth noting that after "Enterprise," Manny Coto worked on the hit Fox series "24," a TV series that featured brazen acts of torture and violence at the hands of brutal American spies. The idea of "24" was that violent terrorist attacks were always immediately nigh, and the only way get fast information from apprehended antagonists was to torture them. It was a series that regrettably reflected a lot of American military strategy at the time, a strategy dramatized in terse military films like "Zero Dark Thirty." Coto, of course, was a more nuanced filmmaker than just his eventual work on "24" might indicate, as he previously helmed kooky horror films like "Dr. Giggles," an episode of "Tales from the Crypt," and several kid-friendly sci-fi movies for Disney and Trimark. Coto also worked extensively on Ryan Murphy's "American Horror Story." 

But Billingsley felt that it was Coto and his bent toward "24"-style terrorist drama that shaped the way the third season of "Enterprise" was shaping up. The actor said: 

"Manny Coto was brought on, who subsequently went on to write for '24.' And he wrote some of my very favorite episodes. But Manny, who I've worked with on a number of occasions, has a different sensibility, certainly, than I do, and I think probably a somewhat different sensibility than some of the 'Star Trek' creators. So some of the third season was, in my opinion, given the nature of what happened on 9/11, leaning towards a philosophy that didn't strike me necessarily as the Star Trek philosophy."

Billingsley, however, was quick to point out that Coto was capable and talented: "I say this with all due respect and deference to Manny; again, I think he wrote some of the best shows we did."

Good Guys Vs. Bad Guys

But Billingsley still saw many ends-justify-the-means episodes starting to appear in "Enterprise." He even recalls the second episode of season 3, "The Anomaly" (September 17, 2003), featuring a direct "24" comparison. Captain Archer, previously a pretty bright-eyed and optimistic character, immediately became dark and vengeful, and even suggested something no Starfleet captain would even think do to. As Billingsley described it: 

"There was an episode in which the question of whether or not it was legitimate for our captain to throw somebody into space because they weren't coughing up the goods ... it was presented as a moral dilemma, fair, but it was very much the same moral dilemma that kind of undercut '24.' And it was very much in our consciousness at the time, do the ends justify the means? Is it okay to waterboard somebody? Candidly, as a leftist, I was uncomfortable by aspects of season 3."

Again, though, Billingsley stopped to compliment Coto's talents. The interviewer pointed out that stories of exploration and discovery were typically more in the "Star Trek" wheelhouse, and typically more appealing to Trekkies. The "get the bad guy" mentality was something more suited to "Star Wars." Still, that's where "Enterprise" was, and Billingsley wasn't always comfortable with that. It wasn't until the third season concluded, and it was revealed that the "bad guys" were, in fact, pawns in an even larger scheme, that Billingsley saw the entire arc as being about the futility of war, and not the righteousness of revenge. 

Finding The Sweet Spot

As Billingsley explained: 

"I will say, and this has been pointed out to me, that at the end of the third season, it was revealed that the Xindi, too, were being manipulated. And you could argue that there was a ... I won't say anti-capitalist viewpoint, but certainly, an anti-colonialist viewpoint being expressed, which is always the thing that I've appreciated about Manny. He's an extremely smart guy, he had an episode that was clearly taking on the Israeli-Palestinian issue.'

The Israeli-Palestinian interpretation is interesting, but Billingsley, an atheist, seems to have taken the correct lesson, saying: "From an atheist point of view, say, a pox on both of your houses to the extent that religion interferes with your capacity to actually get along."

Billingsley also feels that "Enterprise" finally found a good balance of the dark and the light in its fourth and final season. The first, second, and fourth seasons captured the overall pitch for "Enterprise," which was that it was Starfleet's first time at everything, and there was a lot of exciting uncertainty. 

"I tend to kind of have complicated feelings about the third season. I think the fourth kind of found that sweet spot. My feeling about the show is ... that it's both joyful and confusing. The first ship, the first crew. I liked the fact that the weapons malfunction, I liked the fact that we were afraid to transport, I liked the fact that there was a sense of, 'Should we go, should we stay? What do we do?' I kind of felt they got away from that too quickly.

Sadly, "Enterprise" did not get a fifth season to continue to explore, and never quite found its footing in a post-9/11 world. However, it was fascinating to watch it try.

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The post Why Star Trek: Enterprise Season 3 Was 'Uncomfortable' For John Billingsley appeared first on /Film.