Author: Trafficblast

Westworld‘s third season is eagerly anticipated and during the Comic-Con 2019 panel, we got some information on what’s in store for fans as well as a trailer, which you can watch above. The panel was attended by showrunners Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan, as well as stars Jeffery Wright, Evan Rachel Wood, Thandie Newton, Tessa Thompson, and newcomer Aaron Paul.

The trailer showed Newton’s character, Maeve in World War II and there was a whole lot of time jumping with other prominent characters like Evan Rachel Wood’s Dolores and Aaron Paul’s new addition, Caleb, in a sleek future city full of robots. This undoubtedly means Season 3 will be confusing web for fans to untangle and theorize over. Maeve is shown alongside Nazis, though it’s unclear whether she’s fighting them or working alongside them.

The Man in Black is apparently still around and ooking a bit rough, and Bernard’s voice over sounds like he’s talking to someone about Dolores, indicating this unknown person may need to stop her.

Thompson began by referencing her supposed demise the end of the previous season. “You never really die on Westworld though, right?” she said. Discussing the Man in Black, who is played by Ed Harris, Nolan said that the final post-credit scenes were written on the back of a napkin by Harris, who handed it to the showrunners to be shot.

“Will the Man in Black be back,” he wondered, before adding, “I’m not going to call him and tell him he’s not on the show anymore,” indicating Ed Harris’s enigmatic antagonist has plenty more mischief to make.

According to Nolan, Season 3 takes played in “a new world,” though when the suggestion that it was a new park was made he replied, “I didn’t say that.” Nolan went on to discuss how the show’s vision for the future it depicts.

“I grew up with my brother who made me watch Blade Runner once a week. That movie set the design for what the future looks like–and it’s brilliant, it’s a gorgeous movie, but we wanted to find something different than that. The thing about dystopias is that they can look really beautiful.”

Aaron Paul’s character is called Caleb and he’s a construction worker. “I am such a psychotic fan of Westworld,” Paul said. “I just had an out of body experience watching that trailer. I have a robot, his name is George. He’s a very helpful robot and I love him. He’s red.”

Caleb has a complicated past and is described as “a little bit white hat, a little bit black hat.” Paul extrapolated, saying Caleb is “just trying to survive in the world and, occasionally, that means doing bad things.” This would certainly explain his position in the trailer, either following or being escorted by a very dangerous looking Dolores.

Discussing the end of Season 2, Luke Hemsworth teased, “There’s a whole other thing going on [in the conversation between Hemsworth and Thompson at the end of Season 2] that everyone missed. The thing about my character is that he’s not very good at his job.”

“When we started, Westworld was a dystopia but I think now three seasons in, it’s maybe the best case scenario?” Nolan hedged, while discussing the themes that Season 3 is now grappling with. “I think we’re entering into the age of artificial stupidity … we’re trying to figure out what the rest of the world looks like, if that is indeed where the show is happening. There’s the netflix effect where there’s an algorithm determining what you’ll watch next and whatnot.

“These concepts are far in the future, but they’re also kind of not. They’re kind of right now. In Season 3 we discard metaphor–we deal with the world as it is literally, which is a giant shitshow,” Nolan laughed.

The panel’s moderator noted that, while the architects in the show are old white guys, their progeny are incredibly powerful women. Nolan was then asked if Ford was based on a real person. “He’s a composite of a lot,” Nolan said, before Joy agreed.

“One of the weird things happening with AI is that they’re privately funded, they’re very anonymous. Market advantage is to go in stealth mode,” Nolan said, referring to the way people tend to not know what’s going on in the world of AI development. “These projects are happening out of the public eye. That may not be a big deal. Or it may be the single biggest mistake we’ve ever made.”

“This is not just science fiction, this is in someways reality,” the moderator prompted, and Nolan agreed, “The show is heightened, but some of this is happening right now.”

Discussing her character, Charlotte Hale, Tessa Thompson said many see her as a supervillain. She then seemed to invoke the spirit of her character. “But they’re robots–they’re not human, they’re not,” she laughed, “I never know how to talk about this show! I never know what I can say.”

“There were moments in season 2 when we were shooting that I was already Holores (Ed’s note: This is the name given to Dolores in Charlotte’s body), and I didn’t know it,” Thompson recounted. “Once I knew where we were going, I could get on the phone with Evan and get some tips about how to do that.

“There’s one thing that Dolores does, when she sits down, her right hand is always in her left. Every single time,” Wood offered, highlighting the subtleties of Dolores as a character.

The next character in the spotlight is Bernard and Jeffrey Wright attempted to talk about whether his empathy was learned or programmed. “I guess that’s the question of the show,” Wright said, unable to answer it. “The question is the thing. It’s all about that question.”

“Being tortured by Anthony Hopkins and by Dolores for a couple of seasons lends itself to a certain internal turmoil,” Wright joked, highlighting Bernard’s withdrawn demeanor.

Thandie Newton then reflected on her character, Maeve. “I’ve never had to go through anything like [Maeve’s experience]. The set up is extraordinary. The second season was really, really hard. This incredible being who has learned so much and managed to find her free will, but chooses to sacrifice that.

“But I still got to kick some ass,” she joked. “[Maeve] is an expensive piece of hardware and she’s treated like she has no value–and yet we know that she really is an extremely expensive piece of hardware, so we get to see her discovering her own value. That’s something amazing about [Westworld, the Hosts] are never, ever told how much they’re worth, so Maeve finding her agency is amazing.”

The moderator puts the question to the panel that Westworld seems to say there’s an error in the source code of humanity.

“Maybe it has something to do with these beautiful actors,” Joy replied. “I think when you’re pretty shy growing up, you start looking at the world from an outsider perspective, almost like a robot–trying to figure out when it’s safe to jump in. You see both beautiful things that people don’t notice, but you also see [terrible things]. You can’t help but see a really vast spectrum.

“I don’t think humanity is doomed, but I do think that we’ve capitulated [to] cycles of violence and tribalism. I don’t know what it’s rooted in but the implications of it are really difficult. Our technologies have evolved and it feels like we should be able to overcome this, we should be able to broker solutions–there’s a disconnect there.

“The show is violent, but nowhere near as violent as the world,” Joy continued. “If you look at the statistics of things like violence against women, we’re not showing more violence than there is in the real world–we’re putting a lens on it and we want to make people uncomfortable with it. It should make people uncomfortable.”

Asked whether the show has changed the way the cast sees everyday life, Aaron Paul said he sees the world a little differently now. “The story they were telling in the first two seasons made me look at the world [through] a more focused lense–it also makes me think that maybe we’re all just living in a simulation,” he laughed.

“I consider myself a very non-violent person,” Thompson continued. “Last season there’s a scene when Holores walks through and shoots some guards, and she walks through and steps on one of them. In the moment I felt really cool, I thought I was a badass. But later in the day, there’s a scene where I have a gun to someone’s head–and suddenly, that violence had a huge effect on me. I struggled with that. It made me think about the way we think about violence in the world and the violence that we pay attention to–what we can ignore in the world.

“I have been privileged to be non-violent,” Thompson continued. “I haven’t had the life experience that’s forced me to be in violent situations, so it helped me to have that experience on the show and realize that I have that in me as well.”

Jeffrey Wright then offered his perspective: “[Technology] is a huge driving factor in wealth disparity, and I’m grateful that we get to have that conversation in this show, especially in season three. The tools that we’re addicted to in real life are such massive tools of wealth disparity and the show really engages in that. So to answer your question about when the show takes place? It takes place right now,” Wright laughed.

At this point, fans offered their own questions to the panel, the first being whether morality is subjective, as it relates to Dolores.

“Things aren’t black and white and the longer I work on the show I see that more and more–but some things are, right?” Rachel Wood replied. “Like the system is rigged. We change the rules constantly. We call people heroes who are doing the same things villains are doing. There are so many grey areas. That’s why I love Dolores–it’s difficult for me to do a lot of the things she does, but I understand why she’s doing them.

“I’m really excited for people to see her this season because I feel like she’s constantly growing. She’s always a thousand steps ahead of everyone most of the time, but she’s still taking all of this information in and still learning and growing,” Wood added.

Another attendee asked Aaron Paul what draws him to less-than-perfect characters, calling to mind his role as Jesse Pinkman in Breaking Bad. “I just like to get beat up, man,” he replied.

On the subject of Thandie Newton’s favorite Maeve seen, the actor said there were too man. “I really relish the scenes I play in Season 1 where Maeve is completely vulnerable, physically naked, is just bottling every situation she’s in.”

Westworld Season 3 is coming to HBO in 2020.

At San Diego Comic-Con, fans attending the Star Trek panel were treated to the first trailer for Star Trek Picard, the CBS All Access show that brings one of Starfleet’s most respected officers to screen once again–and with a number of familiar faces in tow. Picard is set many years after The Next Generation and, in the time he’s been away, much has happened. While the details remain vague (and will likely only be explored once the show premieres), the end result is that Picard has retired and now runs a vineyard.

The trailer opens in the vineyard, where Picard opens some doors and stares at his old belongings. It’s noted that Data sacrificed his life for Picard. “I wanted to belong here, but it never felt like home,” he says. A woman comes to Picard for help, and Picard discusses her with another officer. “If she’s who I think she is, she’s in serious danger,” he explained.

Picard is then shown enlisting a crew to join him. He pours a drink out, and at this point it’s revealed that Seven of Nine will return. “What the hell are you doing here, Picard?” she says, to which he replies, “Saving the galaxy.”

The classic order of, “Engage,” is said, and then Data is shown, taking part in a card game. “I don’t want the game to end,” Picard says, showing his sentimentality. “I can see that, Captain,” Data offers in return.

Patrick Stewart, who plays the iconic character, also appeared during the panel and, as you can imagine, the crowd was very excited to see him. “We never know do we, when our best moment will be? And that is now,” he said. There were a whole bunch of other characters confirmed for the show, including Riker. Check out the full breakdown of the Star Trek: Picard panel for more.

It was a pretty exciting hour for fans of the sci-fi series, as the Stak Trek panel also provided new insight into Star Trek Discovery Season 3, Lower Decks–the new animated series developed by Rick & Morty writer Mike McMahan–and Short Treks, the short film series.

Star Trek Comic-Con News

For more on what’s been happening at the show, check out our SDCC 2019 hub, where you’ll find all the latest news. We’ve also put together a roundup of all the coolest trailers from SDCC, so it’s the place to go if you want to catch up on what TVs and movies have in store for us.

Disclosure: CBS is GameSpot’s parent company.

One of San Diego Comic-Con‘s biggest panels is dedicated to Star Trek: Picard, an upcoming CBS All Access series that focuses on the beloved Starfleet officer decades after the events of The Next Generation. And, as announced during the panel, familiar faces from his past will return and they were shown briefly in the first Star Trek: Picard trailer, which premiered at SDCC.

Alongside Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard, a number of other Star Trek alum will be making appearances in the series. This includes Brent Spiner, who played Data; Jonathan Frakes, who is known for playing Captain Riker; Jeri Ryan, who portrayed the Borg Seven of Nine; and Marina Sirtis, who was Counselor Deanna Troi.

During the panel, Stewart explained why he decided to reprise his role once again for Picard: “I decided over a year ago [to do it]. For a long time I had been saying, ‘Thank you but no.’ But as the subject matter of this series became clearer and clearer to me, and I met this writing team, I knew that something unusual was going to happen and I wanted to be a part of it. So here I am. And very, very happy to be here.”

Alex Kurtzman, one of the creators of Star Trek: Discovery and producer of many of the new Star Trek projects said Picard is entirely different [than Discovery]. It all started with Patrick. He didn’t want to repeat what he had already done. He really challenged us. It forced us to think outside the box. What is it about this great captain that everybody loves so much? All of us sat down and we asked lots of questions about what Star Trek meant to each of us and to Patrick. Then these storylines began to emerge about Picard.

“Picard is not just a philosopher but a human being. The choices he makes are not made in a vacuum. He’s the leader we all want. Picard and Patrick are one in many ways. TNG reflected a more innocent time, it was always telling great stories, complicated stories, but we live in a much more complicated time now. Picard, in the best way, is still standing up for what matters. He’s still standing up for the ideals we believe in. Age has not changed his resolve.

Star Trek Comic-Con News

“We’re not seeking to reinvent TNG. But Picard has to soul search. You need a darkness to make the world lighter and brighter. He doesn’t have the same resources. He needs to dig deeper into himself. In the darkest of times, the best part of ourselves will emerge.”

Producer Kirsten Byer also added that “the great thing about taking this part of Picard’s story forward [is] it’s an extraordinary opportunity to see the most unknown, inexperienced part of his journey.” Another producer, Heather Kadin, said, “Patrick has lived it from the inside out. Not only did he not want to do what he had done on TNG, we didn’t want to do what we did on Discovery. This is its whole own lyrical, dramatic, and grounded piece.”

Showrunner Michael Chabon discussed the process of writing Picard, which involved “having to write so much so frequently in a way that is so collaborative, [with] not just our writers but with our cast [and Patrick too].

“Patrick came and helped us critique and review and share the story,” Chabon continued. “It’s an ongoing collaboration. I’ve learned to trust Patrick’s judgment of the character on a daily basis. We knew we had to have a cast that was worthy of and could stand next to an actor as incredible as Patrick.”

Other cast members also provided insight into their characters. Allison Phil plays a researcher but didn’t get into details much beyond that. “I get to play somebody who is deeply confused of her place in the world, treading water for a long time waiting for it. Everybody here is pretty broken in different ways. There’s a lot of lonely sad sacks.” Michelle Hurd takes on the character of Rafi, a “delicious character to bring to life,” thanks to a struggle with demons.

Isa Briones plays Dodge, a young woman looking for Picard for answers and help, while Santiago Cabrera is Chris Rios, an ex-Starfleet member that is helping Picard, albeit reluctantly.

Executive producer Akiva Goldsman also offered his take on the show. “We pointedly did not want to make a sequel to Next Generation. Tonally, it’s a little bit of a hybrid. It takes on hope for a future that is, in many ways, better than the world we live in today. Star Trek is aspirational. In serialized storytelling, the characters can evolve. It’s a different kind of Star Trek show made up of lot of the old Star Trek shows.”

Returning The Next Generation Characters

As the panel went on, Jonathan Del Arco, Brent Spiner, and Jeri Ryan appeared to talk about their characters. Jeri Ryan began by saying one of the creators of Picard, after four glasses of champagne, pitched the idea to her. She kept hearing about it but never thought it was going to happen. “But here we are,” she said, “It’s pretty surreal.”

Joking, Spiner said he heard about the Picard series and called the producers to ask if they had anyone in mind for the role of Picard and they hung up on him. “But then I spoke to Patrick, and he said, ‘There’s a possibility, would you think about coming on the show in some way?’ and then joined up. He said being on the set again was something he couldn’t turn down.

“To think that this was going to happen and there was a possibility that I might be there, there was no way I was going to miss,” he explained.

“We have more fun than should be allowed in a very expensive series,” Stewart chimed in. “What’s extraordinary about this experience … I am astonished and grateful for the speed at which this has become a team. We still have about three episodes to go and we are already cemented as a team.”

While details on the story of Star Trek: Picard remain thin, it has been revealed that, after his time aboard Enterprise, Picard was promoted to Admiral rank and went on to lead a rescue armada on a mission shrouded in mystery. Following the mission, Picard left Starfleet and retired to a run a vineyard. Star Trek: Picard is set roughly 20 years after the events of The Next Generation and it is believed that the mysterious rescue mission contributed to his departure. This will no doubt be explored in the series.

On July 12, a Star Trek: Picard poster was released on Twitter by Patrick Stewart. It reveals that Picard’s new No.1 is an adorable dog, who is called Deniro. Picard is expected to air on CBS All Access at the end of this year under the direction of showrunner and acclaimed novelist Michael Chabon.

There was plenty of other Star Trek news during SDCC 2019. Along with the Star Trek: Picard panel, there was time dedicated to Star Trek: Discovery, where new cast members that will appear in Season 3 were revealed. An update on Short Treks–a series of short films coming ahead of Season 3– was also provided, along with details on Lower Decks, a new animated Star Trek show from a Rick & Morty writer.

Disclosure: CBS is GameSpot’s parent company.

Season 9 of Fortnite: Battle Royale has seemed to be building toward a giant kaiju fight of some sort, and sure enough, that’s precisely what happened during the game’s latest big in-game event. A giant monster-robot fight known as The Fight Showdown took place on July 20, and the carnage that ensued has resulted in some changes to the map. The robot was able to come out on top, but not before losing an arm. Despite that, it was able to breach the Loot Lake vault and later use a huge sword that was hidden in the island, with its hilt having been a statue.

The live event itself may be over, but you can rewatch exactly what happened in the video above.

AMC’s Preacher is fast approaching its fourth and final season, and the studio took to San Diego Comic-Con to debut a trailer for the last episodes.

The final season comes with the tagline, “It All Goes to Hell,” and this trailer looks suitably chaotic to fit the theme. It’s chock full of the otherworldly creepiness you’ve come to expect, complete with an apparent nuclear explosion and a very organized apocalypse dossier. It’s our first real look at footage from the season after the short teaser released in April. Check it out below.

Preacher stars Dominic Cooper (Need for Speed) as a man of the cloth, sort of. It’s based on the Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon comic series originally published under the Vertigo label, which was recently retired.

SDCC has also brought plenty of news about AMC’s other adult-oriented comic adaptation, The Walking Dead. The original series is losing one of its biggest stars, while the movie is bringing back another one. Plus its spin-off series, Fear the Walking Dead, has been renewed for another season.