Disney’s live-action Mulan remake, which arrives in theaters March 27, now has six new character posters — including Yifei Liu’s Mulan and Jet Li’s Emperor — ready for perusing.
Below you’ll also see Donnie Yen as Commander Tung, Yoson An as Cheng Honghui, and Gong Li and Jason Scott Lee as villains Xianniang and Böri Khan. Plus, some official images from the film itself!
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.
There was a moment I had while playing Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training for Nintendo Switch, which is currently only available in Australia and Europe. I had just finished my daily set of three exams to calculate my “Brain Age,” the metric used to assess how strong and flexible your mind is. The lower the score the better, and 20 is the absolute best you can get. Anyway, the disembodied head of Dr. Kawashima popped up on the screen to deliver my result–it was 27! Wow! What a great score. I had some issues with one of the tests, but I had set a couple of new records the others, so I was feeling pretty happy with myself. But that emotion didn’t last very long.
“Oh dear!” the head lamented, “I miscalculated your Brain Age”. He threw up a new number: 59. “Your Brain Age is a little underwhelming.” I could’ve snapped the Joy-Cons off my Switch then and there.
Dr. Kawashima, or at least this polygonal version of him, is an insensitive jerk. He pulls dumb stuff like that, he’s visibly disappointed when he’s telling me that I can do better, and the only time he’s encouraging or visibly pleased (at which point he’s freaking ecstatic) is when I make a really significant improvement on something. Improving incrementally? Maintaining a superb result day after day? Nothing. Maybe just a “good for you” if I’m lucky. I have Asian parents, so I’m used to this level of support. But when it’s coming from a video game, from a cartridge I can easily rip out and never look at again, this low level of encouragement and high level of trolling really discourages me from wanting to keep going with it. Especially when I’m mostly doing math anyway.
I’m disappointed because I know Nintendo knows how to motivate me to keep coming back. Their video games are often very morish. I’ve been playing Ring Fit Adventure pretty consistently over the past few months, and a big part of the reason I’ve (surprisingly) kept coming back to it is because of the consistent positive reinforcement and the feeling that you’re only ever making progress, not losing it. Ring Fit Adventure only ever has helpful advice and encouragement for me, and every session I have is positive. There’s never any judgment if I’m having an off day, and I always feel welcomed back. Brain Training shows me my dips on a graph and makes me sad.
Am I just upset because I’m starting to realise that I’m actually stupid? Eh, maybe a little. But believe me, I would happily just own it and keep on working at if it wasn’t for the other frustrating issue: the occasional, but hugely detrimental, issues with handwriting detection.
The first Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training came out for the Nintendo DS, and it made a huge deal about how you held the dual-screen console sideways like a book and wrote your answers with the console’s included stylus. It had a pretty great version of Sudoku, and I played a lot of Sudoku on that thing (Sudoku was really big back then). My Brain Age was also much better than it is now. Now that Brain Training is on the Switch, it comes with its own stylus and requires you to hold your Switch sideways as well. It’s still very novel, but because of the reliance on this kind of handwritten input in a number of minigames, you’re likely to run into a lot of issues depending on how you write certain letters and numbers.
The DS version of Brain Training had these issues too, but for some reason it feels far more egregious on the Switch. Maybe it’s the new fat Switch stylus versus the more precise and pointy DS one. Maybe it’s some change in how the software translates strokes, or the ways certain activities are designed. Maybe it’s all exactly the same and just a factor of my growing impatience as I get older and grumpier. I’m pretty sure I don’t have terrible handwriting–my letters are usually bold and clear, maybe even a little cartoony, and the game can detect what I’m writing 98% of the time. But if I find myself getting caught in that 2% trying to get it to recognise a “5” or a “Y,” I’ll be screaming, because my results, progress, and my self-esteem are on the line.
Here’s an example: There’s an exam in Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training for Switch where you get two minutes to memorise the placement of 25 numbers on a 5×5 grid, and then two minutes to recall them. The catch is, you only get one guess for each square, so if you guess wrong, you lose that opportunity for a point. The last time I took this test, the game had real trouble interpreting how I wrote the numbers “5” and “9,” so as soon as I would finish writing something like “25,” I could see that the game interpreted it as 18 for whatever weird reason, and I wouldn’t have a chance to hit the erase button in the split second before it buzzed and basically told me, “No, that’s wrong. The number that’s supposed to go here is 25.”
There’s a similar, slightly more gracious exam with the same kind of memory test, but you’re trying to remember and write down all the four-letter words the game showed on a previous screen. You don’t get locked out at all here, but when the game keeps misinterpreting the letter you’re trying to write for another one? Well, your mind gets preoccupied with constantly erasing and rewriting the letter in the hopes that it will catch, and your focus is pulled away from all those words you were trying to juggle in your head. It can be infuriating.
The daily exercises that game has you do to prepare for these exams are mostly free from these issues. I can multitask and make an avatar jump hurdles while picking out the highest number in a lineup, no problem. I can mimic hand shapes and do finger calculations (which are tracked with the right Joy-Con’s IR sensor, a pretty neat feature) faster than you can blink. I can sight-read music and play it on the touchscreen piano perfectly (because I’ve had years of training, but nevermind that). And when I perform all these tasks, I get that satisfying brain-squeezing sensation that makes me feel like I’m working my mind and getting smarter probably.
But when it comes to calculating your Brain Age, the game throws a whole different set of activities at you, most of which are specific to the examination mode and largely involve writing letters and numbers. That’s when things get disastrous and Kawashima thinks I have rocks in my head. That’s when he starts trolling me and telling me how disappointed he is. Brain Training’s handwriting detection is not perfect. And it needs to be perfect if I want to feel like my mistakes are on me.
I have fond memories of the original Brain Training for Nintendo DS, and after how taken I was with Ring Fit Adventure, I was eager to hop back on Nintendo’s weird lifestyle software train and ride it anywhere it would go. But Brain Training for Switch is pushing me away. Hopefully, now that we’re in the age of software updates and user telemetry, the writing detection is something that Nintendo can improve over time. And maybe Tipp and whatever the sentient Ring from Ring Fit Adventure is called can give Dr. Kawashima a few pointers on how to talk to players, too.
Activision Blizzard has announced an Esports streaming exclusivity deal with YouTube, making it the official partner for live broadcasts of all Activision Esport leagues and events.
The new multi-year deal will bring Esport broadcasts of games like Overwatch, Call of Duty, and Hearthstone exclusively to YouTube. The new deal will be kicked off with the start of the Call of Duty League season, which officially began today.
“This is an exciting year for Activision Blizzard Esports as we head into the inaugural season of Call of Duty League and our first ever season of homestands for Overwatch League all around the world,” said Pete Vlastelica, CEO of Activision Blizzard Esports. ““It’s our mission to deliver high-quality competitive entertainment that our fans can follow globally, live or on-demand, and to celebrate our players as the superstars that they are.”
Activision’s new partnership with YouTube will give it exclusive streaming rights to some of the biggest Esport franchises around — Overwatch League and the Call of Duty League.
“Both the Overwatch League and Call of Duty League are the quintessential examples of world class Esports content,” said Ryan Wyatt, Head of YouTube Gaming. ” I couldn’t be more excited for Activision Blizzard to choose YouTube as its exclusive home for the digital live streaming of both leagues.”
All broadcast’s can be viewed by visiting each league’s official YouTube channel. Further, in addition to livestreams, fans will also be able to check out archived streams and other special content.
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Andrew Smith is a freelance contributor with IGN. Follow him on Twitter @_andrewtsmith.
Given how “so completely consumed in Joker” Harley was at that stage, Robbie said Harley’s next film appearance was “either going to be all or nothing” when it comes to Joker’s involvement. “It was either going to be a complete Harley/Joker story or Joker has got to be out of the picture,” Robbie explained. “I really wanted to see Harley in a girl gang and I felt there was a huge gap in the market for a girl gang ensemble action film. I felt like no one was doing that and I couldn’t understand why, especially a comic book movie.”
Robbie continued on about why Jared Leto’s Joker isn’t in Birds of Prey: “From the very beginning it was a conscious choice of they have to be broken up at this stage, so I have a whole backstory in my head [of] what’s happened between what you saw at the end of Suicide Squad and what you see at the beginning of Birds of Prey. But ultimately that’s a rocky road and where (this) movie starts off? They break up.”
With Joker out of the picture for Harley’s second screen appearance, Birds of Prey needed an antagonist that would speak to the specific demands of this “girl gang” action movie which sees Harley team-up with Black Canary, Huntress, Renee Montoya, and Cassandra Cain. And that villain ended up being Gotham City gangster Roman Sionis, aka Black Mask.
Birds of Prey screenwriter Christina Hodson called Sionis “a narcissist” who is “against each of these women.” These more personal vendettas between Sionis — who Hodson claimed was “so fun to write” — and the Birds of Prey allowed for a story that was more down to earth and for a villain whose agenda didn’t involve the usual comic book-y schemes for world domination.
“Each of them has such a personal reason why they don’t like him and why he doesn’t like them,” Hodson explained. “That natural kind of antagonism with each of them feels personal and grounded rather than feeling like, ‘I’m going to blow up the world,’ big Machiavellian-like mustache-twirling. And that felt so right in this world.”
Hodson hailed actor Ewan McGregor for doing “so much great, fun, cool, weird stuff” with the bad guy she had written. Cast member Chris Messina, who plays Sionis’ sadistic henchman Victor Zsasz, echoed Hodson’s praise for McGregor’s performance: “He’s terrifying in the film and he’s so charming, beautiful, captivating, and funny as hell but when he turns, he turns on a dime and he’s ferocious.”
Part of that turn to ferocity seems to involve Roman Sionis donning the titular skull-faced, ebony mask that is a signature element of his DC Comics counterpart. It had long been uncertain whether McGregor’s Sionis would even don the black mask in the film until a recent promotional music video — which you can watch below — revealed Sionis wearing it.
McGregor found the experience of acting behind a mask “quite cool” and “interesting.” The actor was reticent to say much about his masked scenes for fear of spoiling the film but admitted “it was quite cool wearing the mask. It was interesting with the mask and quite helpful in this case for that.”
Welcome back to Game Scoop!, IGN’s weekly video game talk show. This week we have the results of a big survey that asked gamers what next-gen console feature is most important to them. Another big game got delayed, another Mortal Kombat Kollection is on the way, and Half-Life Alyx is done and playable. Watch the video above or hit the link below to your favorite podcast service.
Their sources point to the 2018 Jason Statham movie The Meg as a model for the new Anaconda, suggesting a more action-oriented approach this time — and maybe even a much bigger serpent this time around.
The original Anaconda hit theaters in 1997. Starring Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, and Jon Voight, the film follows a documentary crew who venture into the Amazon rainforest only to run afoul of a gigantic, man-eating snake. Despite generally negative reviews, Anaconda inspired three sequels and the 2015 crossover movie Lake Placid vs. Anaconda.
The original movie was also the source of a 2014 RiffTrax Live special, with co-host Michael J. Nelson referring to Anaconda as “indisputably the best digital snake movie of 1997.” We can’t argue with him there.
This news comes as we’re also learning about another big Hollywood remake. Disney is redoing 1942’s Bambi in the vein of 2019’s The Lion King, with a photorealistic, CG-animated approach.
The WWE Royal Rumble match is defined by its winner–the man or woman who goes on to main event WrestleMania and compete for the WWE Championship. But due to the Rumble’s structure, the person who works the hardest and the person who wins it are not always one and the same.
This gallery is for the standout WWE Superstars in Royal Rumble history: who lasted longest, eliminated the most competitors, or did both. Lasting long is a distinction that carries cachet; traditionally, the role is assigned to a veteran, who can direct traffic and call audibles from inside the ring. There’s a lot of moving parts to a Royal Rumble. For it to go down the way it was scripted backstage requires a ton of communication and coordination.
Make sure to tune in on Sunday, January 26, to watch the 2020 WWE Royal Rumble live on pay-per-view and the WWE Network. And if you liked this gallery, be sure to check out our gallery on the most shocking eliminations in Royal Rumble history.
In October of 2016 the world lost one of the greatest platforms for short-form comedy of all time. The app that gave us masterpiece skits such as ‘Chris, Is That A Weed?,’ ‘And They Were Roommates,’ ‘Um, I Never Went To Oovoo Javer,’ and ‘Fre Sh A Vacado’ was cruelly taken away from us. In its wake, the world mourned and, if we’re honest, we never got over that loss. To this day, Vine lovers spend hours reliving the glory years. Like a person sadly scrolling back through their ex’s Instagram thinking about what went wrong and how it could have been different, we latch onto compilations like Vines That Keep Me From Ending it All, Vines That Butter My Croissant, Vines That Give My Depression A Suppression, and Vines That Are Cleaner Than Your Grandma’s Kitchen on YouTube to recapture some of the glory.
Fans were given hope when Vine co-creator Dom Hofmann announced he was creating a successor called Byte and, despite some doubt as to whether it would be realized, the app has launched on iOS and Android. Designed for the modern age of social media, Byte allows users to shoot six-second videos and upload them, which others can share (ReByte).
In a Twitter post announcing its launch, Hofmann described Byte as “both familiar and new” and said the team behind it hopes it will “resonate with people who feel something’s been missing.” If you’re wondering whether that’s you, take a look at the image below and if you know who that lad is going to see, it is.
The next step for Byte, and what distinguishes it from many other social video platforms, is its partner program, which will be implemented to pay creators. “Byte celebrates creativity and community, and compensating creators is one important way we can support both,” reads a tweet from the Byte Twitter account. As of yet, details on the partner program have not been provided.
While getting a Vine successor from one of the original creators is certainly a big deal, whether it succeeds remains to be seen. Byte joins a competitive landscape–one that is very much built on the successes of Vine. Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram all offer users a way to deliver bite-sized videos to their followers and have additional social networking hooks. TikTok is perhaps the most direct competitor to Byte and its where much of the same kind of content is now being produced. (Read: TikTok has big Vine energy). Stars are being created on TikTok daily, and major celebrities have a presence there. Global corporations are also recognizing its marketing capabilities and potential to reach a massive audience. TikTok is very much having its moment right now, and it may be difficult for Byte to draw attention away from it.
Nevertheless, a new video platform that evokes the heyday of Vine is certainly exciting. Plans to compensate its creators give it an edge in theory, and if it can execute could be just enough to make Byte competitive.
Mat: Everything is pointing to Lesnar winning the match, which leads me to believe there will be a unification of both Raw and Smackdown’s main event championships. There is nothing I want less than Lesnar to win, but with the build up to the match, that’s where it seems to be headed.
However, this would be a great time for WWE to pull of something really cool like giving Drew McIntyre a big push. At the end of the Rumble, it could come down to McIntyre and Lesnar, and McIntyre could eliminate the beast, becoming this year’s Rumble winner. Ultimately, he would then challenge Lesnar for the title at Wrestlemania, already setting up a nice story between the two.
Chris: I just… I don’t know, man. Brock being in this does absolutely nothing for me. I’m sure it’ll set up a rematch with Cain Velasquez at Wrestlemania, which also does nothing for me. I don’t think either man will win. The winner is going to be Roman Reigns, who will go on to challenge The Fiend at Wrestlemania. I’d love to be wrong and have something exciting and fresh happen–like Mat’s suggestion of Drew McIntyre winning. Let’s be honest, though. Roman is winning.
Chris Pereira: I’ve fallen out of watching wrestling in recent years, but I did spend a Sunday night last January watching what I thought was the 2019 Royal Rumble. The new PPV was, in fact, happening the following Sunday, and I was watching a replay of 2015’s main event. Based on what I gleaned from this experience, I think Sin Cara has a real shot this year.
Editor’s note: No one tell Chris P. that Sin Cara isn’t with WWE anymore. We don’t want to break his heart.
