Month: May 2019

Dark Phoenix is the latest–and possibly last–movie in the current series of X-Men movies. It was originally set to be released in November 2018, but has been delayed following reshoots and finally arrives next month. Star James McEvoy has now revealed one of the reason for the reshoots.

In an interview with Yahoo Movies, McEvoy explained that the entire ending of the movie had to be reworked in order to avoid similarities to another superhero movie. “The end [of Dark Phoenix] changed a hell of a lot,” he said. “The finale had to change. There was a lot of overlap and parallels with another superhero movie that came out… a while ago. And we had no idea that we were… we were basically trawling through the source material it seems.”

Although McEvoy declined to state which rival comic book film had the similar ending, he gave some hints when he spoke about the location for the original ending.

“The story ended in space in a much more significant way,” he revealed. “We actually shifted that to be back on Earth [for the reshoot], most notably, so that we can involve our main characters and see them come together. We wanted the family to be the thing that motivated Jean to finally embrace her identity, and finally, to allow love to be what allows her to transcend and evolve.

“But in the first iteration, they weren’t present when she’s going through a lot of the third act stuff. So we rejigged it so that we could dramatize the degree to which this divided family had come back together for her… that she could witness that, and, and bring [Jessica] Chastain into that sequence.”

While there have been several superhero films released since Dark Phoenix started production in 2017, it’s worth bearing in mind that Captain Marvel is the only one that had a significant part set in space.

Since Dark Phoenix was shot, Disney has bought all of Fox’s entertainment assets, including the rights to the X-Men, as well as the Fantastic Four. While the studio has not announced its plans for these franchises, it has been confirmed that Marvel studios head Kevin Feige will be in charge of the properties and it is likely they will be incorporated into the Marvel Cinematic Universe at a later date.

Dark Phoenix also stars Sophie Turner, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Tye Sheridan, Olivia Munn, Alexandra Shipp, and Kodi Smit-McPhee. It’s directed by Simon Kinberg and releases on June 5.

Twenty-three people died last night. I couldn’t do anything about it. Even if I had known how to save them I doubt I’d have been able to succeed. In Pathologic 2–a reimagining of the original Pathologic, itself a nightmarish adventure game from another era–you play a doctor who can barely save himself, let alone the wretched lives of those he encounters. Failure is your constant companion. Some games make you work hard for success, promoting that the rewards taste greater this way. Here, you’re reduced to a beggar, pleading for the merest scrap, and even then Pathologic 2 will likely deny it to you.

Right from the outset, Pathologic 2 leaves you feeling disoriented. The prologue flits from one short, cryptic scene to the next, pausing only to let you ponder whether what you just experienced–a man waking from a coffin on a train, a fistfight among stone monuments, a giant bull, you murdering three men–actually happened or if it was a dream sequence or even some kind of hallucination. Once you’ve reached the game proper, two things become clear. One, you have arrived in town at the summons of your father, a respected surgeon, only to find him dead and you a suspect. Two, no one can give you a straight answer about anything.

This may give the impression that Pathologic 2 is something of a murder mystery. And in a sense, it is. Your father’s death is the driving narrative force behind your exploration of your childhood home town. However, as you wander the streets seeking answers from important figures and old acquaintances, you reveal more mysteries to investigate. Why is the supply train late? Why are crows suddenly circling the old cathedral? What is this game the gangs of street children are inviting you to play? What’s up with the impossibly-designed structure looming over the western horizon? And most notably, what’s behind the apocalyptic plague now sweeping the town?

For the most part, Pathologic 2 is content to provide little in the way of answers to such questions, preferring instead to deal in metaphors, obscure Steppe mythology and sudden leaps of dream logic. Talking to a major NPC can very often feel like two people slinging nonsequiturs at each other until dialogue options are exhausted and the plot ticks inexorably forward. The writing here is mostly good, drawing on a range of rich imagery, so this is a deliberate stylistic choice to unsettle players through confusion and obfuscation rather than the result of inadequate translation from the developer’s native Russian.

This sort of scattered, dizzying feeling of events that just won’t quite come into focus is illustrated by what passes for the game’s quest log. As you accumulate clues, they are added to your Thoughts screen and are represented by a floating collection of nodes, each one an idea or hunch that may connect to others or may be drifting all alone. Some of them do correspond to specific locations on the town map, helpfully proffering a rare moment of explicit instruction to “Go here,” but typically they’re little more than reminders of leads you should try to follow up somehow, if you have the time.

The passage of time is a constant pressure that reaches its heavy, nagging hands into every aspect of your travels. It’s there in the day/night cycle that sees the streets become dangerous when the sun goes down and the plague’s death toll ringing out when the clock strikes midnight. And it’s also in the urgency felt by leads that expire if their deadlines pass unattended, causing you to lose out on experiencing situations that only occur at certain hours. You can’t be everywhere and you can’t save everyone, as the loading screens are at pains to frequently remind.

It’s hard enough finding the time to save yourself. Not because you’ve been accused of murder and it’s going to be difficult to clear your name, but because Pathologic 2 is a survival simulation at heart, and one that is unusually obsessed with the physical body. You have an overall health bar that is supported by secondary hunger, thirst, exhaustion, and infection meters, and it is to the game’s detriment that you spend most of your time fretting about survival instead of contemplating the more metaphysical matters of the story.

These survival mechanics might have made you feel stressed about the dire circumstances you’re in–and on a deeper thematic level got you thinking about the collection of blood, nerves and bones you comprise–but the execution here is lacking. You’re in a desperate situation, there’s a plague that has everyone scared, there’s a genuine shortage of supplies, so yes, it makes sense that you’d be forced to scavenge for scraps of food and barter with other townsfolk for some repairs to your clothes. The idea is sound. In practice, Pathologic 2 has you rummaging through every trash can, hitting up every NPC for a trade, and breaking into every home you pass in the hopes of finding a way to support the dozen or so meals you need to consume each day just to stay alive.

Worse, this tedious busywork is a huge distraction from the reasons why you’re doing any of it. I love all these strange people, and their haunting, inscrutable ways. I want to understand their strange, bleak lives in this strange, bleak town. But the trials you’re forced to endure to reach that understanding are too painful. It hurts. Ultimately I just wanted to walk across town to chase up a plot thread without having to first break into a house to find some peanuts in a drawer that I could trade with an urchin for a fish that I could eat so as not to collapse from hunger before I reached my destination.

Pathologic 2 is the product of a perverse design philosophy. It’s alternately intriguing and off-putting; it draws you in with its eerie, dreamlike setting and cast of unnaturally eccentric characters, but then it pushes you away with its nagging, mundane demands. In the end, I was resigned to let failure take me.

PC gamer alert! We joined forces with Logitech to give away a prize bundle that includes a lightspeed wireless gaming mouse, a G935 headset, a gaming wheel and G613 keyboard for one lucky reader, just in time to play all the new titles that will be announced during E3 2019.

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