CES 2019 is currently taking place in Las Vegas and although it is ostensibly a show focused on the future of technology, over the years it has become a melting pot for different cultures and forms of entertainment. Video games naturally complement tech, so the industry is represented well, but other forms of entertainment also share the spotlight. The comic book world, for example, also make an appearance, as does music.
In the video above we talk to Darryl McDaniels, who represents both comics and music. Better known as DMC, founding member of the legendary hip hop group Run-DMC, McDaniels went from being a pioneer in the music industry to a unique voice in the comic book space.
In the past, McDaniels has enthused about his passion for comics at length, having grown up as a fan of Marvel and idolizing Stan Lee. In his adult years he founded Darryl Makes Comics, an imprint on which he publishes his own series, aptly named DMC, in which he is a hero. The anthology series combines his love of comics with his experience as a leading voice in hip hop, and draws from New York City and the various cultures within it, filtered through a fantastical, superheroic lens. In the interview McDaniels talks about his passion for comics, the transition into writing for the medium, and the parallels between superhero fiction and hip hop.
Disney’s new live-action Aladdin movie isn’t the only film based on the classic folk story currently in the works. The Asylum, an independent movie studio that specialises in low-budget, straight-to-DVD, B-tier movies like Sharknado, Transmorphers, Snakes on a Train, and Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies, is making an Aladdin parody movie.
The new Aladdin “mockbuster” was revealed by way of a casting call sheet discovered by SlashFilm that calls for actors to play Aladdin, Genie, and others. Jafar and Jasmine’s name are nowhere to be seen, and that might be because his character is owned by Disney. You can probably expect these characters to show up under different names.
The rest of the Aladdin story and characters appear to be available for use in the parody movie because they exist in the public domain.
The Asylum’s new Aladdin movie is expected to start shooting in Los Angeles this week. The studio is known to move quickly, and it would seemingly make sense to see the movie launch later this year, perhaps close to Disney’s Aladdin to piggyback on the hype.
Star Trek: Discovery returns for a second season on CBS All Access on January 17. Before we jump into the new season, let’s recap the most important plot points of Season 1. Here is everything you need to know for Season 2.
Star Trek: Discovery made its series premiere back in September 2017, with a weekly release of 15 episodes in its first season. Season 1 takes place about a decade before Star Trek: The Original Series, and focuses on the crew of the USS Discovery during a war between the Federation and the Klingons.
Michael Burnham
Season 1 follows Michael Burnham, who we first meet as First Officer of the USS Shenzhou. During an investigation of a damaged satellite, she finds an ancient vessel and is attacked by a Klingon, who she kills by accident. The Klingon soldier’s death motivates his group’s leader, T’Kuvma, to unite the Klingon houses against the Federation. Against her captain’s wishes, Burnham fires on the Klingons first in hopes of preventing a war. She fails–T’Kuvma kills Captain Georgiou, and Burnham then kills T’Kuvma. Burnham is arrested for mutiny and stripped of rank.
During a prison transfer after six months, Burnham’s shuttle has an emergency and is rescued by the USS Discovery. Captain Lorca, the ship’s commander, asks Michael to work for him as a science specialist, helping Lt. Paul Stamets develop a new spore drive propulsion system that could help them win the war that she started. Burnham saves the tardigrade known as Ripper who is being tortured as a host for the spore drive. Burnham suggests a human host replacement, which ends up being Stamets, who injects himself with tardigrade DNA. It works, but takes a toll on him and isn’t a permanent solution.
By the end of Season 1, Michael undergoes a full redemption arc, from mutineer to getting pardoned by the president of the Federation after an act of diplomacy ends the war with the Klingons. She is reinstated as a Commander in Starfleet, and she becomes the Chief Science Officer of the Discovery.
Also, Michael is Spock’s foster sister, as Spock’s parents Sarek and Amanda took her in and raised her on planet Vulcan after she was orphaned at a young age. Her relationship with Spock will come into play in Season 2.
Klingons
The Klingon species was redesigned and given more development in Season 1. We first meet the Klingon House of T’Kuvma, which possesses a ship with cloaking technology. T’Kuvma’s goal was to fulfill an ancient prophecy through uniting the 24 Klingon houses. This was once achieved by the first Klingon emperor, Kahless.
T’Kuvma is killed by Michael Burnham, which makes him a martyr and unites the Klingon Empire against the Federation. Voq, T’Kuvma’s torchbearer who was formerly an outcast, takes command of T’Kuvma’s ship, the Sarcophagus, with warrior L’Rell. After the ship is stranded for months without a working drive and is running out of food, Kol of House of Kor arrives with supplies. Voq and L’Rell go to retrieve components to repair the drive, but return to find that the crew have made Kol their new leader.
L’Rell pretends to submit to Kol but is secretly loyal to Voq, who is left to die on the wreck of the Shenzhou. She coordinates a way for him to get help from the House of Mo’ Kai. They put Voq through the worst surgery of all time so he can assume the identity of Lt. Ash Tyler, a captured human Starfleet officer. When the surgery is complete, Voq comes to believe he really is Ash Tyler. L’Rell places him on a prison ship with intentions to have him escape and return as a sleeper agent within Starfleet. He does, and becomes romantically involved with Michael Burnham. However his body can’t handle both personalities, and L’Rell heals Ash by removing what was left of Voq’s memories.
Later, Emperor Georgiou from the Mirror Universe is brought back with Burnham posing as the presumed-dead Captain Georgiou–she plants a bomb deep within Qo’noS, the capital of the Klingon Empire. Michael Burnham gets the detonator and gives it to L’Rell, telling her to use it to coerce the Klingon High Council into ending the war with the Federation and making L’Rell the new leader of the Empire.
Mirror Universe
In Episode 9, The Discovery makes one last spore drive jump to safety but arrives in the Mirror Universe. The jump renders Stamets unconscious and they are unable to jump again. This mirrorverse is ruled by the Terran Empire, led by Emperor Georgiou, the Mirror Universe version of Burnham’s former commanding officer. They are a cutthroat, repressive government that rules by terror, quick to use torture as a form of discipline. They are opposed by a resistance made up of species including Vulcans and Klingons, with the mirror versions of Sarek and Voq among their leaders.
Burnham finds out that Captain Lorca of the Discovery is actually from the Mirror Universe, and has purposely been trying to get back to it. The mirror version of the Discovery has been hunting Lorca for the death of their captain: Michael Burnham. With his old crew, Lorca kills Georgiou’s men and takes over, but Georgiou returns and kills him.
In the mirrorverse, Michael Burnham was raised by Georgiou, but mirror Burnham was conspiring against her own adoptive mother with Lorca. Emperor Georgiou helps Burnham to return to her universe and offers to sacrifice herself, but Burnham saves her and they are transported back to the prime universe together.
Where We Left Off
At the end of Season 1, the Federation-Klingon war ends and L’Rell becomes the new leader of the Klingon empire. The crew of the Discovery become heroes in the eyes of the Federation. Ash Tyler says goodbye to Burnham, and decides to join L’Rell on her journey. In the final moments of the first season, the Discovery sets course for Vulcan but receives a distress call from the USS Enterprise. From the trailer for season 2, we know that Captain Christopher Pike of the USS Enterprise will be taking command of the USS Discovery.
If you want to know what we thought about Season 1, go check out our spoiler review video above. And if you’re still confused about the mirrorverse, we explain the history of Star Trek’s Mirror Universe and the Terran Empire in this video. What are your hopes for Season 2 of Star Trek: Discovery? Let us know in the comments below. Also, come back to GameSpot for our upcoming breakdowns of the first episodes of Star Trek: Discovery Season 2!
At least as far back as the 2005 Ms. Marvel series, there’s been a clear desire on Marvel’s part to elevate Carol Danvers into one of the premier heroes of the Marvel Universe. In that time, we’ve seen her take up the mantle of Captain Marvel, don an iconic new costume and serve as a driving force behind major conflicts like Civil War II. But through it all, it’s never felt as though Marvel has a clear idea of who Carol is and how she should be portrayed. The constant revolving door of creative teams, relaunched books and status quo changes lately hasn’t helped one bit. Frustratingly, that sense of indecision is felt throughout the course of Captain Marvel #1.
This latest Captain Marvel relaunch unfolds in the aftermath of The Life of Captain Marvel, with Carol ending a yearlong sabbatical from Earth and grappling with the discovery of her Kree heritage. She’s eager to reconnect with old friends, resume her duties as an Avenger and generally get back into the groove of being human again. Life, as it generally does, has other plans for Carol Danvers.
Update: HBO teases new masked characters, and a couple of familiar ones including Rorschach, Doctor Manhattan and Jeremy Irons’ Ozymandias, in new cast footage from the upcoming TV show.
AMD announced its latest gaming GPU, the Radeon VII, this morning at CES 2019 in Las Vegas.
The Radeon VII is touted as the world’s first 7nm gaming GPU with 25% more performance at the same power consumption as previous AMD GPUs. It includes 60 compute units running up to 1.8GHz and 16GBs of high bandwidth memory. Features like Async compute, rapid packed math and shader intrinsics were mentioned as well.
Radeon VII will go on sale on February 7 at $699 and will be bundled for a limited time with Resident Evil 2 Remake, Devil May Cry 5 and The Division 2. Seeing as Devil May Cry 5 and The Division 2 are both coming out in March, it’s likely this bundle will simply include download codes for these games.
The upcoming Captain Marvel movie will not only introduce audiences to the high-flying titular hero but also reveal the origin of Nick Fury. While visiting the southern California set of Captain Marvel, IGN and a small group of press spoke with actor Samuel L. Jackson about how the movie will show us a very different side of Fury while also showing the beginnings of how he got the idea for the Avengers.
We’re used to seeing Fury as the spymaster in charge of SHIELD — before it collapsed courtesy of Hydra, anyway — but Captain Marvel’s ‘90s setting turns back the clock to when he was but a lowly desk jockey without much purpose or direction to his life. According to producer Jason Schwartz, “It’s the mid ‘90s, the Cold War is over, the war on terror hasn’t begun yet. It’s a little bit of a slow period for worldwide espionage.”
Asus has pulled the wraps off its flagship GPU at CES 2019; the liquid-and-air cooled GeForce ROG Matrix RTX 2080 Ti. The company reserves the Matrix branding for only its extreme high-end GPUs, and this one is certainly worthy of that title. The GPU sandwiches a closed-loop cooling apparatus dubbed Infinity Loop between the PCB and a three fan array, with the liquid handling the cooling of the GPU and memory, and the fans cooling the radiator and VRMs.
The pump, tubing, and radiator are all hidden behind the fan assembly, and despite all this cooling technology the GPU is still only a three-slot affair, making it nearly same size as some high-end air-cooled versions of this GPU. Asus claims the integrated closed loop cooler runs quieter than a GPU with an external 120mm radiator, and that its performance nearly matches that of a GPU with a 240mm radiator.
IGN’s weekly PlayStation show returns in 2019 with your host Jonathon Dornbush, as well as Lucy O’Brien and Brian Altano, to take a look ahead at the PS5. With the news of strong PS4 holiday sales success, we address the inevitable next generation and whether we actually feel the need for it, or if we’re ok to wait and focus on the PS4 for awhile. And we take our best, long shot prediction for when Sony will reveal and release its next system.
Additionally, the trio takes a preview of games coming out in January, including Kingdom Hearts 3, Resident Evil 2, and more. Timecodes below:
Timecodes:
– PS4 sales numbers and the state of Sony’s current-gen system – 3:00
