On the heels of Night 1 of Wrestlemania 36, there’s still a lot more in store. For the first time ever, WWE’s biggest annual show is taking place over two nights, without a live audience. All told, over 15 matches are being presented as part of this year’s showcase of the immortals.
The first installment of Wrestlemania 36 saw Braun Strowman win the Universal Championship, AJ Styles and the Undertaker compete in the first-ever Boneyard Match, and so many more memorable moments. If you missed the first half of the show, you should take a look at GameSpot’s results and review for Night 1.
Now, Night 2 is upon us. Brock Lesnar is defending the WWE Championship, “The Fiend” Bray Wyatt is luring John Cena into his Firefly Funhouse, and finally fans will see Charlotte Flair and Rhea Ripley face off. There’s so much planned for Night 2, and chances are you aren’t going to want to miss it.
Whether you’re tuning in or not, though, you aren’t going to want to miss out on what happens during the second half of Wrestlemania 36–or whether it’s any good. Luckily, GameSpot’s Wrestle Buddies Chris E. Hayner and Mat Elfring are here for you. Follow along with the Night 2 live review below, and keep an eye on the show results, as well.
Wrestlemania 36 Night 2 kicks off with the preshow at 6 PM ET/3 PM PT on the WWE Network. You can check out the full card below, followed by the match-by-match review. Then, if you missed out on Night 1, take a look at photos from the event.
Wrestlemania 36 Night 2 Match Card:
Liv Morgan vs. Natalya (KICKOFF SHOW)
Aleister Black vs. Bobby Lashley
Street Profits (c) vs. Angel Garza & Austin Theory (Raw Tag Team Championship)
Bayley (c) vs. Sasha Banks vs. Lacey Evans vs. Tamina vs. Naomi (Elimination Match for Smackdown Women’s Championship)
Otis vs. Dolph Ziggler
Edge vs. Randy Orton (Last Man Standing)
John Cena vs. The Fiend (Firefly Funhouse Match)
Rhea Ripley (c) vs. Charlotte Flair (NXT Women’s Championship)
Brock Lesnar (c) vs. Drew McIntyre (WWE Championship)
There is a lot to look forward to on the card, but all eyes are really on John Cena vs. The Fiend in the Firefly Fun House Match. After AJ Styles and Undertaker’s Boneyard match delighted the world on April 4, people are wondering if Cena vs. The Fiend will take things to that same, finely produced level. We sure hope so.
Additionally, there are four championship matches still left on the card, and considering we’ve already seen a couple titles change hands on night one, there may be a few surprises tonight. The most anticipated of these matches is Rhea Ripley vs. Charlotte Flair for the NXT Women’s Championship. Flair won the Royal Rumble back in January and picked Ripley to face her at WWE’s biggest event of the year. This is the first time an NXT Championship has been defended at Wrestlemania.
Below, you’ll find all the matches on the card for the entire weekend. The Kickoff show revealed what matches will be taking place tonight.
Wrestlemania 36 Night 2 Match Card:
Liv Morgan vs. Natalya (KICKOFF SHOW)
Aleister Black vs. Bobby Lashley
Street Profits (c) vs. Angel Garza & Austin Theory (Raw Tag Team Championship)
Bayley (c) vs. Sasha Banks vs. Lacey Evans vs. Tamina vs. Naomi (Elimination Match for Smackdown Women’s Championship)
Otis vs. Dolph Ziggler
Edge vs. Randy Orton (Last Man Standing)
John Cena vs. The Fiend (Firefly Funhouse Match)
Rhea Ripley (c) vs. Charlotte Flair (NXT Women’s Championship)
Brock Lesnar (c) vs. Drew McIntyre (WWE Championship)
Similar to the news about countries around the world setting drones loose to scold citizens who aren’t staying indoors, some inventive goofballs in England let a Dalek roll down the block while it barked commands at humans, promoting self-isolation.
Posted by the Sanford Police Twitter account, which isn’t a real police account (as that’s the name of the town in Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz), these lads are here for “s***s and giggles.” And giggles they indeed get as this roving cyborg alien from Doctor Who has a lot on its mind when it comes to staying put in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis. Take a look…
Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN and a member of the Television Critics Association. Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and Facebook at Facebook.com/MattBFowler.
With most everyone now basking in, or currently binging, the oddball glory that is Netflix’s Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness, series star Jeff Lowe (with wife Lauren Dropla) dropped a message online that should excite the ever-increasing Joe Exotic fandom.
In the video, Lowe says that Netflix is adding a new episode, currently filming now, that will arrive on the site next week. Check it out…
So our friend @christie_dish listened to the podcast, @HoldingKourt and after last weeks episode decided to send us this!!!
Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN and a member of the Television Critics Association. Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and Facebook at Facebook.com/MattBFowler.
In a recent article in The Washington Post, director Christopher Nolan – one of cinema’s most passionate defenders of film and the theatrical experience – declared that movie theaters are one of America’s, indeed the world’s, most important social confluences. Nolan, in his op-ed, describes a smaller theater in Missouri that, along with thousands of others, recently shuttered over coronavirus safety concerns. Nolan rightly pointed out that theaters are more than a mere delivery system for glitz and thrills (although they are that), but a living, vital business full of hard-working employees who make popcorn, sweep floors, and stand next to hot projector bulbs all in the service of the entertainment-and-art-hungry public.
This is not merely academic for this author. It was late January of 1995 when I started my very first job. I was 16 years old. My sister was already working as a concessionaire at the six-screen Mann’s Criterion in Santa Monica, CA, and it was on her recommendation that I was able to work there for a whopping $4.25/hr. I remember the time because I had to get special permission from the Criterion’s managers to wear my Tales from the Crypt Presents Demon Knight vest button, a film that was playing at a rival theater down the street. Would I be permitted to essentially advertise a film carried by a competitor? (It turns out it was fine).
I have worked in theaters ever since, once braving the mid-’90s blockbuster seasons (Independence Day was a nightmare to work, Batman Forever was a ball, and Titanic was way, waaay bigger than any of the Avengers movies). I also spent the better part of 13 years as a worker and then as an assistant manager at a local art house (where the biggest hits were downers like Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist). These days, I make ends meet by projecting films on 35mm (and sometimes 16mm) at a well-known repertory house in Los Angeles. Projectionists may sound like dark-dwelling button-pushers to a layman, but consider this: The projectionist, as the final worker who touches a film before it meets the eyes of the public, technically has final cut on every film.
With theaters across the globe closed down for the time being, and people like me and my co-workers waiting patiently for doors to open again, we cinephiles need to give serious consideration as to how to make these businesses survive.
Over the course of the quarantine, we’ve likely all said a sentence that begins with the words “When this pandemic clears up, and a cure has been administered, I’m going to go out and…” The problem with our pipe dreams is that if we don’t support the businesses we wish to return to now, they may not be there when we want to go back to them.
There are, of course, several ways to help out movie theaters during this time. Here are a few ways you can.
Buy Gift Certificates
Almost every business already has a gift card system in place. In fact, businesses love selling gift cards. Speaking from experience, employees often receive rewards (sometimes even incentive pay) for selling large numbers of them. That’s why those employees always push the cards so damn hard around the holidays. Why do businesses love gift cards? Because a measurable percentage of them go unused, meaning free money for the company.
Rather than buy a gift card that will idly go unused though, why not start buying gift cards on the regular? The money you would have spent on a ticket, a cup of coffee, and a box of chocolate-covered almonds can still go straight to the theater via a certificate purchased on a website. Buy a new gift card for as often as you’d be going to the theater. Then, once this is all over, the theater will still be open, funded by the money you would have spent.
Indeed, if you’re feeling jaunty and ambitious, you can even lay out a months-long schedule based on the movies you would have seen on opening night before they were all pushed back to next year.
Gift cards also let you spread the love a little more. Say you love to see the big blockbusters, but feel an occasional pang of guilt for re-watching a giant Disney movie when you know that the local arthouse playing Portrait of a Lady on Fire could use the financial aid more. With gift certificates, you can pretend like you’re finally watching the wide variety of arthouse and international movies you’ve always wanted to.
Join the Clubs
In Los Angeles, from where I’m currently writing, there is no shortage of movie theaters and cinema clubs that can be subscribed to. The American Cinematheque, for instance, features some of the best programming in the country, and has special deals for people who donate money on the regular.
Most cities tend to have local independent movie houses – or even giant multiplexes – that feature some sort of subscription program; Pay the fee, and, say, see a free movie once a month. Or get a free bag of popcorn. Some of these subscription programs are actually quite ritzy for the price, and reward obsessives (like myself) who go to movie theaters often. And here’s a little secret: Theater workers regard regular customers with a degree of (sometimes begrudging) esteem. After a while, regulars kind of become like other part-time co-workers. People you see too regularly to call strangers.
The benefits of clubs and subscriptions are not immediately redeemable while the theaters are closed, but you’ll have a jumpstart on any of the clubs that offer increased benefits for longtime members. Look up all the theaters in your home town, and figure out which ones offer memberships. Then join.
My personal movie concession of choice tends to be a single cup of strong black tea. Many, however, can construct entire meals out of the increasingly elaborate offerings from their theater concession stand. Some theaters even sell wine and beer, and others even sell cocktails. One of the reasons that the Alamo Drafthouse became the cinematic powerhouse that it did was that they offered their customers access to an entire restaurant-style kitchen.
Alamo Drafthouse is currently revealing their signature recipes on their website, which may not be a way to donate money to the cause but is at least a way to stay hungry for their wares once those kitchens reopen.
Other theaters have gone one step further, and have been selling their concessions right on the street. As reported by Variety, a theater owner in Fairfax, VA has been selling “curbside concessions” to passers-by, usually at a much lower price than one would pay inside the theater. Mark O’Meara was concerned that his staff of youths don’t have any kind of safety net during the closures and is keeping the theaters closer to the black for as long as he can.
There sadly is no resource listing where curbside concessions can be bought in your hometown, but it’s worth doing some internet research to find out. Indeed, what better way to top off a movie night at home (and, seriously, you should rent Emma. And The Invisible Man. They’re both worth the $20) than with real-life, Flavacol-infused movie theater corn buckets? You’re enhancing your night, and helping a local business.
Or Just Give Money Directly
And yeah, a lot of theater workers will likely accept donations if they’re having trouble paying bills. If you have a friend who works in theaters, ask how they’re doing and if you can Venmo them $5.
From someone who has worked more or less steadily in movie theaters since 1995, movie theater employees are important, and theaters are important. They are the providers. They are the community. Cinemas are the central social hub for event cinema, a great place to take a date, and a great way to remind yourself that cinema is an example of artistic largesse and awe. And the people who work at theaters are on the front lines of a tide of hungry consumers, enforcing ratings, displaying films as well as they can, and delivering your favorite – and least favorite – movies to you.
After all, we want theaters to be there when we get out.
Jake and Rob’s quest to be the biggest jerk ever in Animal Crossing: New Horizons continues in the second episode of The Vile Villager. Though the duo get sidetracked in their plans to create a truly ambitious level of mischief, they still manage to succeed in completing some truly terrible shenanigans.
They have a good reason though. That jerk of a rabbit, Zipper T. Bunny, has come to visit their island with the arrival of the Easter-themed Bunny Day event. Zipper’s incessant need to flood the island with eggs has made him more of an annoyance than Rob and Jake–and they can’t have that, they can’t have that at all. So the big plans need to be put on hold in order to complete the more logical next step: cut down all the cherry blossom trees and ruin Bunny Day for everyone.
Of course, there’s other mischief to get up to as well. You’ll have to watch the full video to see it all, but rest assured that Jake and Rob manage to once again prove that they’re probably the last people you’d ever want to share an island with. I mean, who goes through the process of collecting enough fish and insects to convince Blathers to move his entire operation to some unknown island and then never actually donate the additional specimens that the owl needs to stay in business?
If you’re bored and feel like you’re trapped at home, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is an excellent game to pick up and play–especially if you’re looking for a co-op experience to share with a non-gamer. In GameSpot’s Animal Crossing: New Horizons review in progress, Kallie Plagge writes, “New Horizons certainly has a slower pace than other Animal Crossing games, partially because you have to work to get things up and running on the island at the start. And while I’m impatient to discover what upgrades might be coming my way (and I need to mess around with Island Designer more), I still feel as though I’ve done a lot on my island. I’ve crafted tons of furniture, upgraded my house seven times, picked thousands of weeds, and done far too many drastic outfit changes. I’m as excited to see what random events await me each morning as I am to decorate my island and make it my own, and that’s sure to keep me coming back for the foreseeable future.”
A lot has changed in real life since I first started playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons at the end of February, and even since I wrote my review in progress in the middle of March. Having such a wholesome game during an objectively bad time has been something of a blessing for a lot of people, myself included, and I’d be lying if I said it hasn’t affected how I play New Horizons. I find myself turning to the game at night when I can’t sleep, or during the day when I’m stressed and I need a break. More often than not, an adorable villager or even just a sense of accomplishment from finishing my chores will cheer me up.
But that alone is not what defines New Horizons. The times I go to the game when I’m in a good mood are just as important as the times I’m seeking comfort. Even if I end the day anxious, I wake up excited to see what’s new on my island. I can’t wait to see who’s visiting for the day, to check out the bridge I just built or the new flowers that might be growing or how my new decor looks in the daytime. And I look forward to playing with my friends, trading items and design ideas and hitting each other with nets. New Horizons inspires creative self-expression and embraces kindness and friendship, and that is really what makes it such a joy.
Unlike in previous games, you’re not moving to a lived-in town in New Horizons; the island is completely deserted when you and two animals arrive as part of Tom Nook’s “getaway package,” save for the tiny airport. There’s no store or museum, all three of you live in tents, and Tom Nook himself operates out of a tent that he shares with his adorable nephews, Timmy and Tommy. Tom Nook clearly expected this whole thing to be a bit more glamorous (or at least popular), and in typical Tom Nook fashion, one of his first actions is to put you to work collecting tree branches and fruit to make a fire pit and drinks for a welcome party.
The party serves as an introduction to the resource-gathering aspect of New Horizons’ new crafting system, but it’s also the first of many endearing moments with the animals. In their high-pitched, sped-up way of talking, they chat about friendship and helping one another on the island. It feels like a proper community from the start, despite the small population size and total lack of amenities on the island.
The first few days are all about establishing the basics of any other Animal Crossing town, like the museum and Timmy and Tommy’s store, and this sets the stage for crafting. In addition to catching fish and bugs and picking fruit to make money, you also have to spend a good chunk of time at the start gathering resources to craft the furniture requested of you (and, in one case, to build a whole building). Because I wanted to unlock and upgrade things as quickly as possible, I spent hours each day for the first three or four days running around picking weeds, chopping trees for wood, shaking the same trees for branches, hitting rocks for clay, stone, and iron, and selling whatever I couldn’t use to craft for some extra bells.
It was a bit overwhelming to do all that in the name of fast-tracking my island progression, but generally, crafting fits neatly into Animal Crossing’s established daily chores loop. The act of gathering resources happens simultaneously with the other things I want to do each day–I shake my trees because two of them per day drop furniture instead of fruit or branches, and the branches I do get are a bonus in my search–and actually makes those tasks more lucrative than they were in previous games. Because of this, I don’t really have to go out of my way to get the resources I need to craft the furniture, tools, and other items I want.
You start out with an assortment of crafting recipes, and you can get new ones in a variety of ways that, like resource-gathering, are a natural extension of the existing Animal Crossing formula. You can buy some of them, find new ones most days washed up on the beach (in message bottles with letters attached, of course), or get them from your neighbors, among other methods. Finding a new recipe is an exciting reward for going about your day, because crafting goes beyond furniture and tools–I’ve found some surprising and creative recipes using ingredients I didn’t expect, like a giant teddy bear you can craft using regular teddy bears you might buy from Timmy and Tommy.
Complementing all of this is the Nook Miles program, which is based off of real-life travel rewards points. Nook Miles are a separate currency you can use to buy special items and abilities, like new hairstyles and colors you can switch to at a mirror–you can even use Nook Miles to pay off your first loan and get a real house. You get Nook Miles for doing all sorts of things, from getting stung by a wasp to catching 100 fish in a row without failing once. You can also get Nook Miles for shaking furniture from trees, which, if you’re counting, is the second extra reward you can get from doing that.
The Nook Miles system adds just enough direction if you aren’t sure what to do. I’ve only felt the need to chase the particularly difficult Nook Miles achievements just for completion’s sake; I’ve gotten most of my Nook Miles just by doing Animal Crossing things and having a nice time, and even though I spend some every day, I still have tons to spare.
While the day-to-day is rich with things to do, overall progression is a bit slow. It took a frustrating 33 days for Nook’s Cranny to upgrade where in previous games it would take around 10. The exact requirements for the upgrade aren’t totally clear to me, but it feels unnecessarily time-gated, and the unclear prerequisites exacerbated my impatience. There are also buildings and characters, like Brewster and The Roost, that are totally MIA right now. This may be due, at least in part, to Nintendo’s live-service approach to New Horizons, in which certain events and characters come to the game via free updates throughout the year. There’s definitely potential for more of the series’ cast of characters to appear over time, but currently, it’s disappointing that so many of them are absent. It’s of course fine to cut characters over time as a franchise evolves, but not having much in the way of grander infrastructure to work towards (whether new or returning) puts a damper on the feeling of building up a town from scratch.
In the meantime, it’s all too easy to absorb yourself in customization and self-expression. This starts with your character. You can actually choose your appearance for the first time in the series, including skin color, and none of the options are locked to gender. In fact, villagers will exclusively refer to players with gender-neutral pronouns–so when a friend visits, your villagers will talk about them instead of him or her. All hairstyles and clothing options are available to anyone, and you can change your face and hair at any time. Dressing up is further improved by a dedicated outfit menu that lets you preview a full outfit rather than switching in and out of clothes until you find something you like. It has never been easier or more enjoyable to express yourself through your character’s appearance in an Animal Crossing game, and I’ve been having a ton of fun trying on goofy outfits and changing my hair to match just because.
Crafting is, naturally, a big part of customization. You can’t craft everything–some kinds of furniture are only available in the shop or found randomly–but there are entire sets of furniture that can only be crafted, and those are largely the pieces that you can further customize with different colors and finishes. At first, I crafted whatever pieces I needed but hadn’t been able to buy, like a mirror, but I ended up styling an entire room around furniture I’d crafted and customized. It’s that extra bit of flexibility in design that helps inspire creativity and makes each person’s home feel unique to them.
More importantly, you can now place furniture pretty much anywhere outside. I found a sand castle in a tree and put it along my beach; later on I got a beach chair and a beach ball and created a whole scene on one part of the shore. I even crafted a cabin-inspired chair I would never put in my house because it fit the woodsy feel I wanted for the hills on my island, which made me realize how much use I could get out of furniture that isn’t necessarily my style.
And then there’s Island Designer, New Horizons’ brand-new terraforming feature. With it, you completely redesign the water features and hills of your island, which lends you an almost intimidating level of creative freedom in your island layout. The tools for waterscaping and cliff construction are a bit tricky to use and master, since it can be hard to gauge where exactly your tool will hit, but it’s a powerful creative tool overall. You can also create paths, plazas, flower beds, and more–and it’s a huge improvement on the equivalent in past Animal Crossing games, since paths are easy to place and impossible to remove on accident.
Animals will even stick to any paths you put down when walking around, which is just one of the little details that makes them more lively and endearing. I often stop what I’m doing to watch a villager do their thing. Animals will drink tea or stargaze or try to catch bugs, and some of them will put on reading glasses to read books at home. You can even run into them at the museum, where they’ll comment on the exhibits. Each of these details gives dimension to villagers; I wasn’t sure if I liked Stu, for example, until I stumbled upon him singing an adorable song to himself in the middle of town. I watched him for a very long time, and Flurry even walked up and watched him with me. Now they’re my two favorites.
Outside of how cute villagers can be, New Horizons is just beautiful to look at. The museum in particular blew me away; the exhibits are incredibly detailed, and walking through each of them genuinely feels like walking through a real museum. The fossil wing, for example, has lines along the floor that seem to chart evolutionary lines for different animals. Following the lines takes you from one display to the next, and at some points, the camera will even pan to get you a better view of whatever’s on display.
The cherry on top is sharing all this with friends. My friends and I trade items and tips and give each other spare crafting recipes. I went on a museum date just like one we’d been on in real life a year ago. It’s a joy to visit friends’ towns and see how they’ve decorated their islands–each time I visit someone, I leave with a new idea for my own island. And we all send each other letters and gifts in the game because, right now at least, we can’t see each other in real life.
New Horizons has a slower pace even than other Animal Crossing games, and at times, that can feel unnecessarily restrictive. But there’s still plenty to do, and each of those activities feeds into the next brilliantly for a rewarding and relentlessly cheerful experience. New Horizons certainly came at the right time, and its strengths are particularly comforting right now. I’m as excited to see what random events await me each morning as I am glad to have it during hard times, and that’s sure to keep me coming back for the foreseeable future.
Matt Hardy left WWE earlier this year to pursue his career in AEW. But even though he’s no longer with the company, his influence still lingers. Case in point: Wrestlemania 36‘s “Boneyard Match” between AJ Styles and the Undertaker. Rather than closing the first night of Wrestlemania with the title match between Braun Strowman and Goldberg–the safer, more conventional choice–WWE threw caution to the wind and allowed a heavily produced, cinematic segment to close their show–and you can read our review of it here.
The producers threw everything at the wall. The Undertaker, now in his biker gimmick from the early ’00s, pulled up to a spooky graveyard, filled with smoke, dramatic mood lighting, and pyrotechnics. Styles and Undertaker brawled everywhere. They beat each other with shovels and concrete blocks. Undertaker threw people off the roof of a house. The segment even had a jump scare spot, where Undertaker appeared behind AJ Styles, lit menacingly by a spotlight.
The match ended gloriously. The Undertaker used a mini-tractor to push dirt over AJ Styles’ grave. He unveiled the headstone, which read, “AJ Styles, 1977-2020.” And then he got back on his chopper and drove off into the night.
It was absurd, but it worked. And in a way, WWE has been preparing us, over a period of years, to accept this sort of ridiculousness. The Undertaker is an old guard wrestler from a more innocent time: where wrestlers had gimmicks rather than playing exaggerated versions of themselves. Papa Shango. Adam Bomb.
And even though all the other supernatural gimmicks have passed into history, the Undertaker has stuck around, grandfathered into the modern era through a combination of nostalgia, dark glamour, and Mark Calaway’s raw talent. Over three decades, we’ve been conditioned to accept that this man can levitate, materialize, shoot lightning, and come back from the dead. Nothing in the Boneyard Match challenged what we had been previously told about this character.
In fact, the Boneyard Match worked in Undertaker’s favor because the edits and camera angles hid what many wrestling fans are reluctant to admit: that the Undertaker has lost more than a few steps over the past several years. But thanks to movie magic, he looked just as spry and lively as he did 15 years ago.
This was the Undertaker that all of us want to remember. Immortal, timeless, and dangerous. And WWE was able to give us that, one more time, thanks to this unconventional, welcome approach.
WWE has one more produced segment up its sleeve for night two of Wrestlemania on Sunday, April 5. John Cena will take on Bray Wyatt in a Firefly Fun House Match. Come back to GameSpot that night for live coverage of the show, along with a review.
