Paramount Pictures has announced that a new edit and restoration of The Godfather: Part III will be given a limited theatrical release this December, followed by a home release.
The revised version of Francis Ford Coppola’s final film in The Godfather trilogy, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, has been retitled as Mario Puzo’s The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone, acknowledging the film’s original title that was rejected by Paramount in favour of a more simplified name. The studio said Thursday that the new cut achieves the original vision that Coppola and screenwriter Mario Puzo had for the last chapter in the Corleone saga.
“For this version of the finale, I created a new beginning and ending, and rearranged some scenes, shots, and music cues,” Coppola confirmed in a statement. “With these changes and the restored footage and sound, to me, it is a more appropriate conclusion to The Godfather and The Godfather: Part II and I’m thankful to Jim Gianopulos and Paramount for allowing me to revisit it.”
In order to achieve the finest presentation for the upcoming release, Coppola’s production company American Zoetrope and Paramount Pictures’ restoration team spent six months searching through 300 cartons of negatives to pull out over 50 original takes to replace lower resolution opticals in the original negative, before working from a 4K scan to undertake the film’s meticulous frame-by-frame restoration.
“Mr. Coppola oversaw every aspect of the restoration while working on the new edit, ensuring that the film not only looks and sounds pristine, but also meets his personal standards and directorial vision,” Andrea Kalas, the Senior Vice President of Paramount Archives, said about the new edit and restoration of The Godfather: Part III, which also boasts an enhanced audio track.
The original release of The Godfather: Part III hit theaters 16 years after The Godfather: Part II, and focused on Michael Corleone’s efforts to free his family from crime and find a suitable successor to his empire. The film picked up seven Academy Award nominations, though it failed to win any, making it the only film in the trilogy to not pick up an Oscar. Despite being a box office hit, the third installment is generally considered to be the most disappointing film of the epic saga.
Need a podcast with chill hype vibes? Great, because another episode of GameSpot After Dark is now available and it is the most chill hype gaming podcast in the world. On this week’s episode we talk about the hot new games we’re playing, including Marvel’s Avengers, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2, and Spiritfarer.
In the news section, we delve into some of the big announcements that came from the Nvidia stream, namely the beastly new line of GeForce graphics cards that are on the way and will make you seriously consider dipping into your savings for. Will the gang spend an exorbitant amount of money to buy them while also on the cusp of two new game consoles? Tune in to find out.
Jake, Lucy, Tamoor, and Jean-Luc also talk a bit about the recent indication that backwards compatibility might be quite limited on the PS5. This news came by way of a Ubisoft support page which suggested a significant chunk of previous-gen games on Sony’s new console might be out of the question.
Of course, there’s also the listener questions section, during which we help a time-limited dad figure out what game to play, come up with video game-themed beers, and play a game involving video game title portmanteaus–it’s a great time.
Below you’ll find all the necessary links to find the show on iTunes, Spotify, SoundCloud, and Google Play. We’ve also included an RSS link so you can put that into your podcast application of choice.
As Tenet continues its release in some markets, we’re taking a look back at filmmaker Christopher Nolan’s entire feature-length filmography, exploring each of his films one day at a time. Today we conclude this series (for now!) with his tenth feature, Dunkirk.
Full spoilers for Dunkirk follow.
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Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk is a culmination of his filmmaking strengths. Another non-linear story split between three timelines, it builds on the director’s six prior collaborations with editor Lee Smith, turning varying perceptions of time into the film’s main antagonist (the saga’s historical villains, the Nazis, are barely seen or mentioned). In the process, Nolan and Smith create a World War II epic in which the lens of history is occasionally turned inward, taking aim at structures by questioning the hierarchies of one’s own “side” in war, while remixing dramatic structure itself.
Granted, this historical introspection often falls short — it’s an action movie first and foremost, and doesn’t seek to challenge established, often whitewashed views of history — but its structural experimentation makes it one of Nolan’s most intense, incisive and emotionally engaging works. With the help of composer Hans Zimmer, whose score feels like the foundation for the film’s winding approach to time, Dunkirk proves to be a unique achievement, splitting the difference between “prestige” war drama and Nolan’s brand of blockbuster entertainment.
In the final installment of our deep dive into Nolan’s films, we explore what is arguably his strongest collaboration with Smith and Zimmer (neither of whom were available for Tenet), and the renewed visual panache brought to his work by cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema. We also look at how Dunkirk’s approach to history might’ve been tightened with a few minor narrative tweaks.
The “Mole” section of the film, focused on the 400,000 soldiers stranded at Dunkirk beach, follows two sets of characters. On one hand, British Naval Commander Bolton (Kenneth Branagh) and Army Colonel Winnant (James D’Arcy) provide dramatic exposition to frame the 1940 Allied evacuation — between land, air and sea — while yearning for hope just out of reach. “You can practically see it from here,” Bolton says. “Home.”
On the other hand, a British private named Tommy (Fionn Whitehead), a disguised French soldier dubbed “Gibson” (Aneurin Barnard) and British Highlander Alex (Harry Styles) help root the film’s POV in a story of soldiers attempting to escape and survive the ordeal. (None of these characters except “Gibson” are named in the film, but for clarity they’re referred to here by their names in the credits.)
From the get-go, Tommy finds himself not only at odds with oncoming German fire, but with hierarchies and national delineations. The film’s very first line (“English! I’m English!”) sees Tommy having to clarify, to his French comrades, that he’s on their side so they stop trying to kill him. Shortly after, the young private joins a queue of British soldiers waiting to board a rescue ship, but he’s asked to leave by a fellow Briton, who tells him it’s only for grenadiers.
In the film’s opening scenes, the army’s internal, structural conflict feels on par with external dangers (Nazi gunfire, manifesting mostly as sound, and Heinkel bomber planes in the distance; they may as well be part of the backdrop). The human antagonists in the film — at least, those whose faces we see — are higher-ranking British soldiers who make their inferiors disembark from rescue boats, pushing them out if necessary.
Tommy finds an ally in the Frenchman “Gibson” (the name of the dead British soldier whose uniform he steals). As they attempt to board a departing ship by carrying an injured soldier, they pass through a French regiment being denied safe passage by a British officer. These soldiers are all in the same predicament, but the ship is reserved for British troops. A covert conversation involving Bolton and Winnant clarifies why that is: Publicly, Prime Minister Churchill has announced that the British and the French will leave bras dessus — arm in arm. Privately, their orders are to ensure the return of as many British troops as possible for the next leg of the war.
Where The Dark Knight Rises treats hierarchies and unquestioned orders as an appendix (they’re the impetus for John Blake giving up his badge and following in Batman’s footsteps), Dunkirk depicts them as a central theme running throughout its story. Early on in the “Sea” section, Mr. Dawson (Mark Rylance) takes his ferry, the Moonstone, out to the English Channel without waiting for it to be commandeered by the Navy, while the “Air” timeline sees RAF pilot Farrier (Tom Hardy) turning back from his established course to save soldiers swimming away from a German bomber. This climactic rescue mission features the intersection of all three timelines, and would not have occurred had Dawson and Farrier followed strict orders to head straight for Dunkirk beach.
Several of these swimming soldiers, like Tommy and Alex, were caught in a deadly dilemma not long before, which brought the film’s approach to military structures into sharp, unnerving focus. Aboard a sinking Dutch merchant vessel, Alex and his fellow Highlanders decide that Gibson ought to disembark. The lightened load might help them float, though it would likely result in Gibson being killed by enemy fire. Alex’s reason for picking Gibson? He believes him to be a German spy, and so as an enemy combatant, his life is less valuable.
However, when Gibson reveals himself to be French, the circle which Alex and the Highlanders draw around their in-group begins to shrink. Gibson being their ally means nothing, since he isn’t British, but is merely impersonating a British soldier for safety. That circle grows even smaller when Alex decides that if Gibson’s sacrifice isn’t enough, Tommy — who disguised himself as a Highlander to blend in — would be next; he isn’t one of them either. “We’re regimental brothers, mate,” Alex tells him. “That’s just the way it is.”
It’s a harrowing scene, one in which characters who have only ever helped Alex are cast aside for his survival. However, one wonders how much more of an impact these narrowing circles might’ve had if the film had widened its historical scope.
A Historical Blindspot
Dunkirk explores how fear makes in-groups grow smaller and more conditional. However, the structures on which the film focuses are pretty narrow to begin with from a historical standpoint. White French and British soldiers weren’t the only combatants stranded at Dunkirk, and the hierarchical delineations were even more rigid for Indian troops fighting on behalf of the British Empire, and for Moroccan, Tunisian, Senegalese and Algerian soldiers fighting for France.
Dunkirk explores how fear makes in-groups grow smaller and more conditional.
India wouldn’t gain independence from Britain until 1947 — two years after World War II, and four years after a man-made famine in which Churchill’s policies killed 3 million people. It was a horrific chapter of WWII history, comparable to the Nazi holocaust, but often ignored in order to lionize Churchill’s and Britain’s achievements in the era. Meanwhile, Morocco and Tunisia would remain under French occupation until 1956, Senegal until 1960, and Algeria until 1962. And so, a distinctly French and British story that deals with World War II from an in-group, out-group perspective, without dramatizing the effects of colonial history, is missing a prime opportunity to establish the real-world structures and hierarchies shackling the soldiers at Dunkirk, which were much more rigid, and would’ve made for more powerful dramatic fodder.
Granted, the production was still putting out last-minute casting calls for local Indian and Senegalese background actors as little as 10 days prior to shooting. One might be able to chalk this lack of historical framing up to a lack of available extras — however, the film’s focus only on white main characters serves as a reminder of how potent its story of transcending in-group, nationalist survival instincts might have been had it, say, been able to dramatize a historical element like the segregation of Indian troops from their British superiors. It would have fit right in with the story being told. Transposing this element of segregation onto a story of white characters feels historically dishonest, as does the whitewashing of the merchant and civilian vessels which eventually came to the soldiers’ rescue, a quarter of which were operated by Indians and East Africans.
This historical whitewashing doesn’t make it a bad film; the actual number of soldiers it centers on is small to begin with, but its blinkered focus does serve to reinforce an ugly form of imperial nostalgia. It props up the kind of British historical grandeur that continues to permeate these military stories — like 2018 Churchill hagiography Darkest Hour, set contemporaneously — without confronting or even acknowledging the colonial oppression that often went hand-in-hand with protecting the British empire. If anything, it makes Dunkirk a far less complex film than it could have and perhaps should have been, from a narrative standpoint.
However, there’s also plenty of complexity to be found in the film’s non-linear construction, starting with how it frames the passage of time.
Where prior Nolan works like Inception and Interstellar explained their time dilations through dialogue — the relativity of time was a plot mechanic that connected multiple timelines — Dunkirk presents its keys up front. A more “realistic” film, it establishes, through on-screen text, that its Mole, Sea and Air segments will unfold over the course of about one week, one day and one hour respectively.
The film presents three real-world elements of Operation Dynamo: the stranded soldiers, requisitioned civilian vessels, and the British Royal Air Force. In doing so, it dramatizes three vastly different experiences in war, and three different physical realities in which they take place, each with their own unique relationships to time. For the soldiers on land, who await salvation that may never come, the film’s 106-minute runtime feels painfully stretched. Key scenes have Tommy, Alex and Gibson simply sitting by the water, waiting for rescue while those around them give up hope.
Those same 106 minutes span about a day for Mr. Dawson, his son Peter (Tom Glynn-Carney) and their teenage handyman George (Barry Keoghan). They spend much of the film’s runtime on the water, though at no point do they come close to making landfall. The film never frames their physical proximity to Dunkirk beach. Instead, they seem to float infinitely, in an in-between space as other characters move nearer toward them. On the water, it can be hard to tell exactly how fast you’re moving against the current; paradoxically, even forward momentum can feel like stillness, adding to the desperation with which Dawson attempts to carry out his mission.
And finally, the timeline in the air sees Farrier, Collins (Jack Lowden) and their commander (voiced by Michael Caine) racing against the clock. Their battle is not only with the Heinkel bombers, but with their limited fuel — which they need to conserve for a return journey — and with gravity. This section is in a constant state of free-fall, framing the entire film as one continuous climax.
Tom Hardy is the focus of the “Air” timeline as RAF pilot Farrier.
For the soldiers on the beach, for whom time has no end, escaping onto the Channel is a vital reprieve. On multiple occasions, Tommy, Gibson and Alex board vessels meant to take them out to sea, as if they’re attempting to break into the “middle” timeline. But each time they do, they’re prevented by bombs, torpedoes and fellow Britons forcing them back onto land — a space where days blend into nights as they wait.
Fittingly, Farrier’s key moment of dilemma (and Collins’ moment of rescue from drowning) both involve breaking into the middle timeline as well. The characters on land and in the air are engaged in a battle with time itself, desperate to escape time moving either too slowly, or far too quickly. And so, floating in the Moonstone’s relative stillness is a moment of relief for anyone crossing over into this middle section — whether Collins, the once land-locked soldiers, or the shivering, shell-shocked officer played by Cillian Murphy.
The film uses Murphy’s character to further establish time’s harsh, unforgiving impact. We first meet him when he’s rescued by Dawson, but later in the film, we’re also shown his prior interactions with Tommy, Gibson and Alex — a memory of sorts, but one unfolding in the Mole timeline’s outstretched present. In this nighttime “flashback,” his brief moment of screen time portrays him as a much livelier, more jovial man than when we first saw him (after the ship he eventually boards is attacked by a U-boat). The intervening events have robbed him of some vital part of himself. And though we don’t see the attack that stranded him, all subsequent assaults on our characters begin to carry more weight, now that we know what’s at stake and what might await them on the other side, even if they survive.
However, more than just presenting three timelines moving at different speeds, what makes Dunkirk feel like a complete, harmonious story (albeit one with jagged wartime edges) is the specific ways those timelines coincide. Like the “kicks” in Inception — a film where the simultaneity of action is vital to the plot — Dunkirk’s peaks and valleys are made to align through meticulous cross-cutting, even though they unfold hours, even days apart. Moments of failure, desperation, and victory not only correspond across all three timelines, but are made to feel like they impact one another as well. Collins’ heroic antics in the air, for instance, lead to him being stranded at sea, and to Dawson’s own heroism while rescuing him; shortly thereafter, Collins and Dawson work together to rescue the stranded soldiers as the film reaches its first apparent climax.
During this scene, Farrier turns around to attack a German bomber plane, which has its sights set on the characters in the water, just as Collins pulls Tommy aboard the Moonstone. The young soldiers from the beach and the RAF pilots have both crossed over into the “middle” timeline, as all three stories culminate. A second climax arrives soon after, when Farrier glides over the beach, attacking a German fighter plane before it bombs Commander Bolton on the mole below. Meanwhile, the Moonstone narrowly dodges fire from an oncoming plane as well.
It’s unclear whether the plane Dawson evades is the same one Farrier attacks after his engine shuts down. But it’s meant to feel like it is. The film cuts directly from one fighter narrowly missing the Moonstone to another being gunned down over the mole much later. This cut even maintains visual direction and momentum between the planes, with two moments of victory climaxing in unison; all three timelines continue to converge emotionally, even though logistically they’ve crossed through one another.
Once again, Nolan creates the illusion of simultaneity to deliver a rousing climax — though what also assists in creating this illusion is the film’s expert soundscape; not only the overpowering sound mix, which makes bullets and missiles roar and tear through the film’s very fabric, but the eerie score by Hans Zimmer, which plays a trick similar to the film’s overlapping narrative structure.
A Score in a State of Climax
The relationship between time and music in Nolan’s films is particularly notable in Inception. Sleeping characters are alerted to the end of a dream when someone plays Edith Piaf’s “Non, Je ne regrette rien”; in these dreams, time appears to run more slowly, so Zimmer’s score during climactic moments takes after a slowed-down version of Piaf’s song. The result is potent and ethereal, but it’s an isolated phenomenon within the film. Dunkirk, meanwhile, takes a similarly cerebral approach over its entire runtime.
Of Zimmer’s six collaborations with Nolan, Dunkirk may feature his most thrilling musical work. Not only does he re-use the motif of a ticking clock — as it happens, the ticking in question was recorded from Nolan’s own wristwatch — he also uses a Shepard tone. This auditory illusion has appeared in several Nolan films, from the held notes of David Julyan’s The Prestige score, to the rising mechanical whir of the Batpod in The Dark Knight. But here it forms a key structural and thematic blueprint.
The Shepard tone, named after cognitive scientist Roger Shepard, is achieved by overlaying three tones separated by an octave each, all rising along a musical scale. As the highest-pitched tone fades out, the lowest-pitched tone fades in, before the series begins again. However, to the human ear, this doesn’t sound like the sequence resetting; instead, our brains interpret it as the tone rising for perpetuity.
This effect can be heard in compositions throughout the film, beginning with opening track “The Mole.”
The result is a score that feels like it’s always building in intensity, but this principle wasn’t just applied by Zimmer. Nolan claims to have written and structured the film with the Shepard tone in mind, an approach clearly visible when one deconstructs the relationship between its three timelines. Like the Shepard tone, the edit jumps between three parallel stories, each rising in intensity. As it hops between them, the film’s bigger picture feels like it’s in a constant state of climax, anchored by the extended denouement that is its “Air” section, even though the other two timelines have their own narrative ebbs and flows.
An early scene, in which Tommy and Gibson attempt to board a ship by carrying an injured soldier, lasts about four minutes. For all of those four minutes, the score appears to rise in both pitch and tempo (as it did during Interstellar’s water mountain scene), turning each subsequent hurdle for the characters into its own little climax. Simple acts during this foot chase, like slipping past the British officer holding the French soldiers back, or walking a thin plank across a damaged section of the pier, are imbued with rip-roaring intensity on par with any major action scene in Nolan’s films.
The final section of this “chase” merely involves Tommy and Gibson running from a recently drawn gangplank to one that’s still lowered, just a few meters away. But the score reaches its crescendo here. It’s coupled with diegetic sounds like the cheers of nearby soldiers and the urgency of the ship’s ringing bell, so these final few moments become chaotic.
Maintaining this feeling of chaos throughout the film is no easy feat. From a visual standpoint, it also required a level of finesse that Nolan’s films felt like they were missing in previous years, but a level they were also building to over the course of his career. Finding cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema appears to have been a vital part of that journey.
Capturing Chaos and Intimacy
As Patrick Willems notes in his video on Nolan’s use of IMAX, the director’s early films had a simple, logistical approach to visual storytelling. Each shot was focused on relaying a singular piece of information. The movement of his camera — that is, the few times his camera did move — was geared more towards subtly establishing mood, like tracking sideways during intriguing conversations or keeping up with subjects in motion, and less towards the shot itself being used to obscure or to reveal, let alone a given shot changing in any meaningful way while it plays out.
It’s a precise approach that gels with Nolan’s precise approach to time, but until films like Interstellar and Dunkirk, rare were the moments in which one could find even a lateral pan to reveal something, or a shot moving through the space or between two characters. Even the number of times the camera racks focus over Nolan’s career can be easily counted — a mere six prior to Inception! The label of “cold and clinical” is often misapplied to his narrative content, but if one were to foist it upon the logistical aesthetic of his first few features, it wouldn’t be unfounded (even if that aesthetic stems from precision in editing).
But these recent collaborations with Hoytema — Interstellar and Dunkirk — have also seen Nolan layer practical effects all through the background and foreground. These tangible elements are an intrinsic part of each chaotic environment, rather than the central focus of a single shot or stunt in an otherwise ordinary setting (the way they’d been in films like The Dark Knight). In space, and in war, the surroundings are just as challenging and dangerous as any human antagonist, so Nolan holds his shots longer and frames them wider, allowing us to absorb more of the characters’ world.
A cockpit rig used during the Dunkirk shoot.
A key beach scene toward the beginning of Dunkirk makes the march of death feel inevitable. In closeup, Tommy covers his head while bombs are dropped closer and closer to him, advancing from background to foreground, killing scores of his fellow soldiers along the way, out of focus and in the distance. Quentin Tarantino hailed it as one of the greatest shots in war movie history. But death also creeps up on the characters in more subtle, more intimate ways.
Nolan’s stories move, often unrelentingly, with few moments to stop and ponder. That is, until Dunkirk, in which one entire timeline — “The Mole” — is dedicated to time feeling outstretched, despite the film’s overall climactic feel. It features grim shoreside interludes, often intercut with shots of the beach which Hoytema captures with wide lenses and deep focus, as if the sand were expanding infinitely. Soon after, scenes like Tommy, Gibson and Alex sitting along the water see the camera pushing-in slowly and racking focus from a rear group shot, to an over-the-shoulder of a man shedding his gear and walking into the sea, capturing the trio’s proximity to his hopelessness.
When this angle is reversed, a similar effect takes hold. The camera pushes in on a group shot, until it goes tighter and tighter, into a two-shot on Tommy and Gibson, eventually pushing its way into a closeup capturing Tommy’s reaction to the man’s apparent suicide. The camera guides us, slowly and methodically, through Tommy’s internal struggle to keep hope alive, as the score seems to echo endlessly. Zimmer’s composition “The Tide” recedes and advances like the sea, as we push in slowly on another officer (Michael Fox) talking about bodies returning to the shore; the camera glides towards him like a creeping wave, bringing with it the fear of death.
Moments in which the camera edges towards each closeup are necessary to ground the pulsating action in a definite, desperate human perspective, shot against wide-open surroundings that feel desolate and grey. But when the film is at its most chaotic, it shifts gears rapidly, often employing shallow focus in crowded frames. In the torpedo scene aboard the rescue ship, particularly when the torpedo strikes, the camera lands on a crowd of people, spread from foreground to background, as the set shakes violently from side to side. The long lenses here flatten the image and exaggerate lateral movement, not only making the impact feel enormous, but capturing in detail the ripple effect of this impact in all directions.
In other timelines, like in the air, the chaos stems not from the camera moving loosely within space, but from being locked on its axis, fixed to the bodies of the airplanes (a method we saw Hoytema employ briefly in the opening scenes of Interstellar). Whether mounted to the inside of a cockpit rig to capture pilots’ faces, or latched onto the side of actual Spitfires — capturing tails, wings and noses against the vast open sky — the tactile feel Hoytema brought to Interstellar is re-fashioned here, orienting us within a world where mere proximity to these details feels dangerous.
Each bolt of the plane’s body is hyper-visible on 70mm IMAX film. Every vibration signals a sharp turn; every sudden jolt under enemy fire feels like being struck by a bullet. Every time a ship overturns, we’re locked onto its axis as the water rises sideways and the camera tilts along with the rotating set. There’s tangible danger to every action set piece, rather than a feeling of excitement; it’s more Titanic than Pearl Harbor, more about unrelenting loss than inflicting damage.
However, mounting the camera to the body of a plane also offers a sense of serenity after Farrier reaches the beach. Tension remains, but it slowly recedes as we see him manually lower his landing wheels. These shots of Farrier’s plane capture not only the sky, but the sand below and the waves caressing the shore — as if all three timelines, air, land and sea, now exist in harmony. The score eases up as well, replacing rising Shepard tones with hopeful melodies that quickly dissipate — as if silence is the only escape. Elsewhere, the ticking clock finally ceases, as Tommy falls asleep on a train.
Although, when he awakes, things aren’t as simple as having escaped the carnage.
The Cost of War
As Dunkirk comes to a close, it does so with scenes that now feel like a staple of Nolan’s films: a closing montage of characters reckoning with events, and with lies they’ve had to tell, as voiceover binds their stories together. This first appeared in The Prestige, followed by The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises and Interstellar; in Dunkirk, the choice of closing narration is a version of Churchill’s “We shall fight on the beaches” speech to British Parliament, paraphrased to highlight the conflicted nature of the events.
Tommy reads the address to Alex from the morning’s paper, as the young Highlander hangs his head in shame. Churchill calls the battle at Dunkirk a “colossal military disaster,” but the paper skips forward to a vital line from later in the address: “But there was a victory inside this deliverance.” Alex, who could barely look a passerby in the eye just seconds ago, now looks up to see that same civilian offering him celebratory drinks, which he graciously accepts. In this moment, his entire outlook on the hellish battle has been reoriented, through the power of words that shift its narrative framing.
However, there’s also a lurking uncertainty to this re-framing. Where the white lies in previous Nolan films felt like final outcomes of each plot, the idea that “survival is victory” — a tagline seen on the movie’s posters — is challenged throughout the story. Tommy, for instance, accepts that Gibson needs to be sacrificed so that he and the other British soldiers can live, but the price of survival doesn’t sit well with him. “I’ll live with it,” he says. “But it’s wrong.”
Victory or not, the truth of survival in war is that it comes at a cost. The PTSD-afflicted soldier who Peter and Mr. Dawson brought aboard the Moonstone survived, but what was left of him? Peter even lies to him to shield him from the fact that he accidentally killed George; would this soldier, now a shell of his former self, already wracked by the guilt of having injured George, have been able to bear that burden?
Back on land, Peter disguises the news of George’s accidental death, and has the papers report that he died heroically. When Mr. Dawson sees the story the next morning, he and Peter share an uneasy look. Perhaps George will be hailed a hero by his father and his teachers, people he hoped to finally impress. But Dawson and Peter know the real story, and the real cost of war, having lost not only George, but Peter’s fighter pilot brother the previous year.
The film’s closing images speak to the duality of canonizing survival as a victory when it exacts such a heavy price. The screen fades to black on an image of Farrier’s burning plane, standing defiant after his capture. The film ends here, for all intents and purposes — but it momentarily turns back on to show us one last disquieted moment. Tommy looks up at a celebrating Alex, but he himself seems unconvinced. The final few frames, before the screen cuts to black once more, are of Tommy dropping his gaze, as if hanging his own head in shame.
Nolan’s characters have often engaged in forms of self-delusion, whether constructing and performing hyper-masculine identities (Following, Batman Begins and The Prestige), or lying for a supposed greater good (Insomnia, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises), or even trying to “edit” their own memories (Memento, Inception and Interstellar). The Dunkirk evacuation is deeply embedded within Britain’s cultural memory, a story that exists at a cross section of these aforementioned ideas, between the prowess bestowed upon soldiers, the idealized self-mythology of Britain circa World War II, and the horrors of colonialism either forgotten or ignored.
Nolan has even commented on how differently the French look upon the events of Dunkirk — as a source of shame, since it preceded Nazi occupation — while the British tend to look upon it more favourably. It’s considered a point of national pride, despite 3500 of their soldiers being killed, with an additional 40,000 being captured (not to mention the deaths of a thousand Dunkirk civilians, whose lives Tommy can be seen rummaging through when the film begins). Rather than presenting the events as victorious outright, the film’s closing moments seem to wrestle with that rosy view of history.
As Tommy reads the final words of Churchill’s speech, Alex, now distracted by all the cheering, asks him to repeat a specific line. He does: “We shall defend our island whatever the cost may be.” The first time we hear this line, the camera is focused on Alex’s joyful release. The second time, it captures Tommy’s uncertainty. He continues reading Churchill’s closing words, which are juxtaposed not with the celebration outside, but with bodies and helmets left behind on Dunkirk beach. It’s hard not to wonder if that cost is worth it.
In a year defined by delays and cancellations, DC FanDome proved to be a ray of light. This entirely virtual event gave fans their first glimpses of movies like The Batman and The Flash and video games like Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and Gotham Knights. But the best part? FanDome isn’t over just yet.
DC is currently gearing up for a second virtual event dubbed DC FanDome: Enter the Multiverse. This FanDome redux will not only spotlight many of the TV and animated projects that missed the cut the first time around, it’ll also be a more interactive experience where fans can choose the content they want to watch. DC has released a teaser trailer for Enter the Multiverse, which you can watch in the video player above or embedded below. And after that, read on to get the full scoop on the new event from DC Publisher/Chief Creative Officer Jim Lee.
The entertainment industry has struggled to deal with the realities of the COVID-19 pandemic in any number of ways, including pivoting away from traditional, in-person conventions like San Diego Comic-Con and Star Wars Celebration in favor of completely virtual events. We were curious if Lee and his colleagues took any lessons from events like Comic-Con@Home. But as it turns out, DC was already pushing forward with FanDome in late spring, once it became apparent traditional conventions weren’t on the cards for 2020.
“The planning for this proceeded all the other events that I know of,” said Lee. “The decision was made from the highest levels – Jason Kilar, Ann Sarnoff and Pam Lifford – this idea of creating a virtual event that would celebrate our fans and really replace a lot of the real-life events that have fallen to the wayside during the pandemic. Recognizing that we only had, I think at the start, maybe three and a half months, what could we build?”
Lee continued, “I think the fact that we hadn’t done something like this before was actually an advantage for us because it allowed us to swing for the fences. We weren’t hampered or held back by any other previous experiences or expectations. We just knew we wanted to deliver top of class, an amazing experience for our fans. So that was really the North Star that drove all this.”
Lee told us helping with the building and designing of FanDome was a surprisingly pleasurable experience that actually reminded him of his early comic book career, when he and fellow Marvel artists like Todd McFarlane and Erik Larsen left the company to establish Image Comics.
Lee said, “It really spoke to kind of my entrepreneurial roots, when I got into this business, because we were creating something that didn’t exist, that we hadn’t built before.”
Why There Are Two FanDomes
The announcement that FanDome had been split into separate events came fairly late in the game. We were curious what exactly prompted that decision, and why DC opted to space the two events out by several weeks rather than, say, air both halves over the course of one weekend. Lee told us the decision was due both to technical challenges (particularly the need to format certain content for both computers and mobile devices) and a concern about fans being overwhelmed with too much content in a short span of time.
Lee said, “I’ll just share from my own personal experience, sitting down with the scheduler, the first day we put it out there, and I had seen a lot of this content already, the vast bulk of it. I still felt very anxious and riddled with anxiety, making the decisions of what to watch given that some of it was linear and would be live-streamed and so you couldn’t miss those elements. Then trying to squeeze in the other content into a finite period of time, 24 hours.
Lee continued, “I still think even with the splitting of events, it’s going to be challenging for fans on 9/12 to squeeze in all that they want to see. That said, there is a ton of great stuff. So, I think it was primarily that need to accommodate the desire of the fans to engage with as much content as we created, and also allow people the freedom to be able to engage with content on any device, any place.”
Lee made it clear the goal with DC FanDome: Enter the Multiverse isn’t to replicate the formula of the first event, but to offer a very different and much more interactive experience. All the navigation and personalization features that were originally teased for FanDome will be in place this time. Rather than airing one continuous stream of panels, DC will instead offer a much larger block of content and allow fans to pick and choose what they want to watch.
“It’s less about a Super Bowl experience that we all share at once and more about choosing your own adventure of what you want to explore, deep diving into the topics that matter the most to you, and really customizing the content that you interact with for that 24 hour period of time to your own taste. It’s all about your experience, your FanDome and what interests you in regards to the DC Mythology. It’s very interesting contrasting the two and how were really hitting both ends of the spectrum of how fans look at the content we create and how they want to engage with that content and how we want to engage with them with this content.”
Lee gave us the rundown of how exactly this second, more interactive FanDome will work.
“So there’s two ways you can go about it. If you go to DCFanDome.com, there’s a scheduler there which has all the content separated into five categories organized by theme. So there’s FunVerse, there’s KidsVerse, InsiderVerse, WatchVerse and NewVerse and you can then go through and select all the panels that you want to watch. There are over 300 panels and videos and they add up to over 100 hours of content itself. So you’ll have all the things that interest you, and then the day that it goes live, you can just click on the links that you’ve assembled and watch the content as you wish.”
“Or you can just go to [the website] and you’ll see the five categories of content separated out and you can click on your mobile device or on your desktop explorer, and you click on ‘KidsVerse’ and it’ll show you all the content that sits within KidVerse. You’ll see unique thumbnails for every panel or event. Then you can just click on what you want to watch, as you wish. So you can either plan the day ahead and pick all the things that you want to see in advance, and then essentially click through the links and watch what you want.”
“You can then share that content with your friends or on social. There are deep links to every panel or event within FanDome. So you will be able to basically text your friend or put on Twitter, ‘Hey, here’s an amazing panel that I just watched.’ We’ll be able to also engage with the fans in this way, by sharing my schedule, my playlist of content for the day. Different actors or talent that are involved in productions that either hosted or were involved in panels, they’ll be able to share out deep links to the content they created for DC FanDome. It will be super accessible and easy for fans who haven’t even put any time or thought into what they want to watch, to just basically hit those links and go to the content that interests them.”
The first FanDome was nothing if not eventful, with everything from new film and game trailers to teaser art showcasing Dwayne Johnson as Black Adam and Ezra Miller’s Flash teaming up with Michael Keaton’s Batman. Enter the Multiverse will have some reveals of its own, though it appears the focus is a bit more on the TV and comic book side of things this time around. Most of the major CW-verse and DC Universe shows will have panels, including an expanded version of The CW’s Flash panel from the first FanDome.
Arrowverse fans should probably keep a close eye on the panels for Batwoman and the new Supergirl spinoff series Superman & Lois. We’re hoping to see our first glimpse of Batwoman’s new lead Javicia Leslie in the costume. Lee actually drew Leslie’s Batwoman as part of a massive FanDome poster montage, though he wouldn’t confirm whether we’ll see the real deal during Enter the Multiverse. But he did tease some significant reveals on the TV and comics fronts.
“I think that’s just by virtue of the fact that there were so many more TV shows than movies,” Lee said. “So many more comics than even TV shows. So I think it just gives us the opportunity to go in super deep with all the content that we create across all the different divisions within Warner Brothers… We’ve got the comic book content, we’ve got gaming content, animation content, TV content, even film content it’s all in there. And it’s all about showcasing things that might not necessarily get the airtime or attention.”
Lee told us Enter the Multiverse is also an opportunity to shine a spotlight on some of the unsung heroes behind DC’s movie and TV projects.
“We’ve had panels where we were pulling in stunt people from different TV shows and film productions, and they’re actually meeting for the first time in these panels. It’s really interesting seeing them engage and talk about their craft and their experiences and their anecdotes. You get a real interesting sneak peek behind the scenes. The creation of this content is not limited to just the directors and the talent. But there’s so many different people, groups of people and creatives that come in and make these productions, that stand up these productions. People will be able to hear them speak about their craft and what they’ve done on September 12th.”
Ubisoft is holding their upcoming press conference, Ubisoft Forward, in September and we have all the info you need to know to tune in. The publisher has already announced some games they will be showing off new details for, including, Watch Dogs: Legion, Hyper Scape, and the recently re-named game, Immortals Fenyx Rising (previously known as Gods & Monsters).
Ubisoft Forward September 2020 Date and Start Time
Ubisoft Forward’s September livestream will take place on Thursday, September 10. There will be a pre-show beginning at 11:00am PT, and the main show will kick off at 12:00pm PT, 3:00pm ET, 8:00pm BST. If you’re joining in from Australia, the livestream will start at 5:00am AEST on Friday, September 11.
How to Watch Ubisoft Forward in September 2020
We’ll be streaming this event on our homepage and across all of our platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Twitch, and YouTube. Here’s the full list of places to watch Ubisoft Forward.
Ubisoft didn’t reveal too much in their blog post on the event, but they did say there will be a Brawlhalla matchup featuring the developers from Blue Mammoth, along with the Ubisoft News team. The teams of The Division 2, For Honor, Ghost Recon Breakpoint, and Roller Champions will also have updates they will share at the 11am PT pre-show start time.
For the main show, Ubisoft revealed that updates will be shared for Rainbow Six Siege, Watch Dogs: Legion, Hyper Scape, as well as Immortals Fenyx Rising. Other “yet-to-be revealed surprises” are also in the lineup, along with deep dives for two unreleased games after the main show.
Viewers can receive in-game rewards and items if they log into their Ubisoft account during the livestream.
The ABC News special Chadwick Boseman: A Tribute for a King – A Special Edition of 20/20 is now available to stream on Disney+.
The official Disney+ Twitter account just announced the new addition to its library, which can be found under the “extras” section of Marvel Studios’ Black Panther movie.
Originally airing on ABC on August 30, the 40-minute special, hosted by Robin Roberts, celebrates Chadwick Boseman’s life, legacy, career, and the cultural imprint he made on and off-screen. It features tributes from celebrities, political figures, and fans across the world, as well as special words from those who starred alongside him and knew Boseman best while also shining a light on the medical condition that he privately battled.
The world mourned when it was announced last week that Boseman had died at the age of 43 following a private four-year battle with colon cancer. As well as playing King T’Challa in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Boseman will be remembered for several other iconic roles throughout his illustrious acting career, having played real-life figures such as Jackie Robinson in 42, James Brown in Get on Up, and Thurgood Marshall in Marshall.
Those who worked with Boseman, including the community of the MCU, have been sharing their heartfelt condolences and fond memories of the late actor on social media. Black Panther director Ryan Coogler penned a touching tribute to the stalwart star of his movie, saying that he “had the warmest laugh in the world, and eyes that [saw] much beyond his years, but could still sparkle like a child seeing something for the first time.”
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Adele Ankers is a Freelance Entertainment Journalist. You can reach her on Twitter.
Additionally, if you buy a new game for $29.99 or more, you’ll save 30% off any pre-owned game you also pick up. Beyond that, there’s a bunch of discounts on T-shirts, Funko Pops, and other gear. You can check out the full sale here, or keep on scrolling to see some of the highlights. There’s a lot here, so let’s dive in.
The Super Mario 3D All-Stars release of Super Mario Galaxy has fans confused about how the game’s motion controls will work on Nintendo Switch, and a Nintendo clarification hasn’t necessarily helped explain things.
Released in 2007, Super Mario Galaxy arrived on the Wii and took advantage of the console’s motion control peripherals to activate Mario’s spin ability and fire star bits in Co-Star mode. Fans have been wondering how this will work on the Nintendo Switch Lite due to a paragraph on the Super Mario 3D All-Stars website which notes that “detached Joy-Con controllers are required and sold separately” to enjoy the game’s motion features.
The re-release will allow players to “Gently shake a Joy-Con controller to activate Mario’s Spin ability or pass a Joy-Con controller to a friend for some extra help in Co-Star Mode.” However, the Nintendo Switch Lite’s Joy-Cons are baked into the device and cannot be undocked – so extra clarification is needed to understand how the game will play on the Switch Lite.
Nintendo has clarified how the game’s pointer functionality will work in Handheld Mode in a statement to Polygon. “Super Mario Galaxy is supported in TV, Tabletop and Handheld Modes. In TV and Tabletop modes, motion controls are required for pointer functionality,” the statement reads. In Handheld Mode, pointer functionality has been adapted to use Touch Screen.”
This means that on the Nintendo Switch Lite, the pointer functionality will work through the touch screen on the device. But this doesn’t clear up how other motion controls will work on the base Switch Lite unit, if at all – does this mean other players will have to sit close and tap the screen to help out? Mario’s spin ability also requires a physical gesture – how will this work on a device without detached Joy-Cons? IGN has contacted Nintendo to ask for further clarification on the game’s motion controls.
The Boys, Amazon’s rowdy comic adaptation about a world where superheroes are secretly awful people, has surprise-dropped the first three episodes of Season 2. The season was set to drop on September 4, but these episodes have released a day early.
Amazon Prime subscribers can start watching right now. The show will drop weekly going forward, but you can binge through the first three episodes, at least.
The show, which stars Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, Erin Moriaty, and Antony Starr, was critically acclaimed in its first season. That’s also the case with Season 2, with GameSpot’s review of the first three episodes heaping praise upon the show’s return.
“The Boys is a series about the people in power doing anything they can to keep that power–and Butcher and the Boys remain the only crew who can stick it to them,” wrote reviewer Michael Rogueau. “If the rest of Season 2 stays on the same path as the first three episodes, it’s going to prove the perfect commentary for the tense times in which we live.”
It’s been a while since Season 1, of course–if you need a reminder of what happened, GameSpot’s got you covered.
The Boys Season 2 arrived early, so let’s dig in to all the references and other hidden nuggets we could find.
Amazon’s The Boys is one of the best shows on TV, and not only because there’s not technically a whole lot going on right now in Hollywood. Wonderfully, to make 2020 a little more bearable, Amazon released the new season’s first three episodes–“The Big Ride,” “Proper Preparation and Planning,” and “Over the Hill with the Swords of a Thousand Men”–a few hours early. Surprise!
If you loved The Boys Season 1 as much as we did and were just as excited for Season 2, chances are you already binged Season 2’s initial three chapters. And if so, you must have noticed just how jam-packed these episodes are with background props, pop culture references, and countless other types of hidden nuggets. In just these three episodes, we managed to spot over 60 Easter eggs and other references–mind, that was after watching them each about five times, not to mention reading Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson’s original comics while we were at it. What can we say? We’re obsessed.
If you want to know what we think of The Boys Season 2 so far, check out our review of Episodes 1-3. If you’re curious how the versions of the characters in the show stack up against their counterparts in the comics, we have you covered there too. And if you want to know what you can spot when you go over every frame and each line of these episodes with a fine-toothed comb, read on for everything we spotted that you might have missed your first time through.
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1. Yankee White
Stan Edgar says Vought requires a “top secret Yankee White” designation for Compound V. Yankee White is the term for a super high security clearance level within the US government.
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Get Smart
2. Cone of Silence
Edgar also uses the phrase “cone of silence,” a reference to a fictional device used in the Frank Herbert novel Dune, as well as in the 1960s spy show Get Smart.
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3. Black Noir’s Kill Bill shoutout
Black Noir encountering the child after killing the “supe terrorist” is reminiscent of the scene in Kill Bill vol. 1 in which Beatrix encounters Copperhead’s daughter after killing her. Of course, Uma Thurman doesn’t wave around a stuffed animal.
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4. What lies before us
Homelander says Translucent’s body “lies before us” in the glass coffin, but anyone who watched Season 1 knows that casket is empty, since Hughie blew Translucent up with a bomb shoved up his rear. In Season 1, The Deep found what was left of him buried at sea.
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5. Maverick
After killing Translucent in Season 1, Hughie learned that the supe had a son. At his funeral, we learn that his son’s name is Maverick. Translucent was such a douche–of course he’d name his son after Top Gun. That said, we wonder whether he’ll pop up again–and if, like Homelander’s son, he might have powers of his own.
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6. Vought News Network
As if Vought wasn’t corrupt enough already, the company apparently has its own news network. Unsurprisingly, the branding and logo look a lot like Fox News. No one’s ever accused this show of being subtle.
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7. #Voughtify
In addition, the song Starlight sings at Translucent’s funeral, “You’ll Never Truly Vanish,” is streaming on a fictional service called #Voughtify–a play on Spotify.
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8. TMZ
The bartender threatens to call TMZ if The Deep doesn’t leave. TMZ is an infamous celebrity gossip website.
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9. Pressure
The song that arrives with the title card is Billy Joel’s “Pressure,” from the 1982 album The Nylon Curtain. Recall from Season 1 that Hughie loves Billy Joel–the artist will come up again throughout these episodes. Related: Note the James Taylor t-shirt Hughie wears later in the episode.
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10. Haitian Kings
Hughie walks by a mural for the Clarkson Avenue Haitian Kings. Some Googling helped us determine that this is not a real gang, although the Latin Kings are.
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11. Conspicuous posters
In the pawn shop, the camera passes some conspicuous posters. One is for Terminal Beauty 3, a movie starring Popclaw (and apparently Billy Zane) that we glimpsed part of in Season 1. The other is for an unidentified “feminine product” made by Vought, and branded with the superhero Liberty–a figure who comes up one other time in these episodes.
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12. Comic book shop? What comic book shop?
The pawn shop sells comic books, which of course all feature The Seven, including Homelander, Black Noir, A-Train, and The Deep. In the Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson comic books on which the show is based, Hughie and Butcher meet frequently with a character named The Legend who lives in the back of a comic book shop.
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13. Making Shockwaves
The New York Post’s “Billy the Butcher” cover is the eye-catcher in this shot, but the back page features some new info about A-Train’s speedster rival from Season 1, Shockwave. Not only has Shockwave set a new speed record during A-Train’s incapacitation–he’s also rumored to be in talks to join The Seven, apparently as A-Train’s replacement. Then again, you definitely can’t believe what you read in tabloids.
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14. Church of the Collective
There’s also a poster for the Church of the Collective, the Scientology-like cult that The Deep joins in these episodes. Their imagery (as seen on the poster and later, on the book) is even designed to look similar to the cover of L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics.
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15. Alden Ehrenreich
Annie is apparently PR-dating Alden Ehrenreich (or so Hughie suspects). The actor played Han Solo in Solo: A Star Wars Story. Hughie condescendingly calls him Ansel Adams, a 20th-century photographer.
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16. Splash Zone Sandusky
Splash Zone is a real waterpark, although it’s not in Sandusky, it’s in Springfield, Ohio. Sandusky is, however, the home of the real-life amusement park Cedar Point, which has its own water park, formerly Soak City now Cedar Point Shores.
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17. The Mariana Trench
The Deep references swimming in the Mariana Trench, the deepest point in the ocean. The massive underwater canyon is almost 7 miles deep.
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18. Fresca
Fresca is a real drink, created by The Coca-Cola Company in 1966. Why it’s being featured so heavily in these episodes is still a mystery, although there’s been a historical association between cults and specific beverages ever since the members of the Jonestown cult drank cyanide-laced Flavor Aid in their infamous 1978 mass murder-suicide–the source of the expression “drinking the Kool-Aid.” We might have to start using “Fresca” instead after this season.
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19. Vought-Con
Eagle the Archer mentions Vought-Con, an apparent fictional convention meant to parody Comic-Con. Wonder if Vought held their 2020 convention digitally?
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20. Seth Rogen cameo
Seth Rogen is one of the show’s executive producers. In this cameo, he’s on a show called LOLTV to look back on Translucent’s film roles, including Translucent: Invisible Force 2.
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21. A Closer Look with Chris Hansen
Chris Hansen hosted the mid-aughts show To Catch A Predator, in which he entrapped and confronted would-be sexual predators.
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22. Monsieur Charcuterie et Petit Hughie
Frenchie uses these nicknames for Butcher and Hughie, which come straight from the comics.
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23. Marvin T. “Mother’s” Milk
It was mentioned once in Season 1, but Mother’s Milk’s real name is actually Marvin T. Milk. The explanation for his nickname in the comics is, uh, interesting, so we’re still waiting for the show to do some version of it.
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Lee Marvin in The Dirty Dozen
24. Leaders
Frenchie references several fictional and real leaders when discussing why he believes The Boys need Butcher: Lieutenant Colonel/Colonel John “Hannibal” Smith from The A-Team, The Dirty Dozen actor Lee Marvin, and The Beatles manager Brian Epstein.
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25. La Croix
There are La Croixs in Stillwell’s fridge. La Croix is a trendy carbonated water drink that’s become popular in the last few years. Apparently Stillwell hadn’t received the memo about Fresca from the Church of the Collective yet.
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26. Blindspot
Blindspot is an invention for the show–not a character from the comics, like many of the other minor heroes mentioned or features on The Boys. He’s an obvious parody of the Marvel hero Daredevil.
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27. DivaCups
Homelander tells Ashley she’d be working at DivaCup if not for his recommendation that she get Stillwell’s job. DivaCup is a brand of menstrual cup, a type of tampon alternative.
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28. Eagle the Archer
Eagle’s self-doubt about using archery in a modern setting echoes real-life conversations around the Marvel hero Hawkeye, who uses a bow and arrow to fight supervillains and aliens. In the comics, Eagle the Archer is a completely different character who makes an extremely brief appearance during World War II in a flashback issue.
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29. News Easter eggs
The news show features multiple Easter eggs in the sidebar, including references to the G-Men, a supe team featured in the comics; Swatto, another supe from the comics; and Dawn of the Seven, a parody of Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. There’s a giant billboard for it later in this episode when the Boys meet with Raynor, and in Episode 3, we get treated to a script reading from the fictional movie’s writer at Vought HQ.
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30. Heroes to aspire to
Hughie knows he’s no Lee Marvin, but he believes he can be a Harry Potter, John Connor (Terminator), or “whatsername from The Hunger Games” (Katniss). Great pop culture references, Petit Hughie.
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31. Stormfront’s livestream
Stormfront’s livestream is brimming with Easter eggs. Look at the usernames of her commenters and you can spot references to The Legend (a comics-only character), Jack From Jupiter (another comics character), Lamplighter, A-Train, Homelander, Queen Maeve, Starlight, Shockwave, Popclaw, and Ezekiel, plus a user named “Maeve*Beats*WW42,” which could be a veiled meta reference to the upcoming DC film Wonder Woman 1984 (42 is half of 84). The comment “Stormfront will rule the 7” might be a hint of things to come.
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32. Lance Corporal Dan Miller
Stormfront points out that “army boy” is an actor who played “hotel clerk #2” from a Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders episode called “The Devil’s Breath,” which is a real episode of a real show. We have no idea if there’s really a “hotel clerk #2” in it, as we haven’t seen it, and IMDB doesn’t list one.
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33. Stormfront’s earrings
Stormfront sports earrings in the shape of lightning bolts–a symbol of the Nazi SS. One of her livestream commenters even points them out. In the comics on which the show is based, Stormfront is more or less openly a Nazi, although the character in the show is very different.
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34. You ain’t John Cusack
Mother’s Milk chides Hughie following Hughie’s previous speech by telling him he’s no John Cusack and lacks a “motherf***in’ boombox.” This is a reference to the 1989 movie Say Anything, in which John Cusack’s character holds a boombox over his head and plays the song “In Your Eyes” by Peter Gabriel in a grand romantic gesture that’s since become iconic.
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35. Congresswoman Neuman
Congresswoman Neuman is a reference to a The Boys comics character known as Vic the Veep, real name Victor Neuman. Vic, the vice president in the comics, is instrumental in Vought’s plan to install The Seven in the US’s national defense. Clearly, Congresswoman Neuman is very different from Vic the Veep.
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Soldier Boy and Butcher in the comics
36. Vought’s origin
During Stan Edgar’s lecture on Vought’s origin, he describes Frederick Vought, the company’s founder, switching sides during the war, which really happened following WWII. He also mentions Soldier Boy, a supe from the comics who supposedly fought in World War II.
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Tek Knight in the comics
37. Tek Knight Lives
Edgar tells Homelander to get to the premiere of Tek Knight Lives. Tek Knight is another supe from the comic books.
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38. Tony Cicero’s
In the Episode 2 flashback following the events of the Season 1 finale, Butcher wakes up in the parking lot of a Tony Cicero’s. This is a running gag on the show–in Season 1, the Boys held Translucent captive in the back of a Tony Cicero’s. There’s a scene in which Hughie repeatedly punches a wall with the restaurant’s logo on it.
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39. BDP
Mother’s Milk is wearing a t-shirt for Boogie Down Productions, a New York hip-hop group originally composed of KRS-One, D-Nice, and DJ Scott La Rock. Their debut album was released in 1987, and La Rock was murdered five months later.
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40. Savesmore Supermarkets
In the background of Eagle the Archer’s apartment, you can see a poster for Savesmore Supermarkets, featuring Eagle himself. Eagle really is small-time compared with The Seven. Also, it’s a weird choice for him to hang that promotional poster on his own wall.
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41. Goo Goo Dolls
Deep says he did shrooms at a Goo Goo Dolls concert with “some poly-sci chick from Oberlin.” The Goo Goo Dolls are a New York rock band formed in the mid ’80s and popular throughout the ’90s and beyond, and their popular song “Iris” plays during Deep’s drug trip later. “Iris” was written for the soundtrack of City of Angels, starring Meg Ryan, who is Jack Quaid’s (Hughie) mother. In addition, Oberlin is a private liberal arts college and music conservatory in Ohio.
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42. Edible Arrangement
Butcher sends an Edible Arrangement, a somewhat-trendy bouquet of fruit and chocolate, to Raynor’s funeral. This is a callback to Season 1, when Raynor remarked that she’d send one to Butcher’s funeral. Butcher’s probably right when he says that “Raynor would have loved that.”
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43. Deep’s gills
During The Deep’s drug trip, his gills are voiced by comedian and actor Patton Oswalt.
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44. Save the Music
Deep’s gills mention the “VH1 Educator Awards.” This is possibly a reference to the VH1 Save the Music Foundation, which works to build music programs at schools, though we’re not sure if there’s a related award show.
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45. Maggie Shaw
Queen Maeve reveals in this scene that her real name–or possibly her pseudonym, as we don’t actually know much about her past–is Maggie Shaw. The Boys Wiki has this listed, so it may have been revealed previously, but we’re not sure when.
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46. Precious Moments
The porcelain figurine Queen Maeve brings Elena is reminiscent of the cheesy but popular Precious Moments figurines that have been sold since 1978.
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47. Botched
When Maeve tells Elena that “watching Botched doesn’t make you a f***ing medical expert,” she’s referring to the reality show that has run on E! since 2014. The show follows two doctors as they attempt to rectify apparently botched plastic surgeries.
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48. You’re Only Human (Second Wind)
Hughie’s love of Billy Joel continues as he obsessively watches the 1985 music video for Joel’s song “You’re Only Human (Second Wind).” In the extremely dorky video, a teen contemplates suicide following a minor fender bender. Joel appears as a black-clad angel and takes him on an It’s A Wonderful Life-style journey through his future. The song and video appear again at the start of Episode 3. And although this is likely coincidental, it’s interesting to note that Joel’s black trenchcoat vaguely resembles the leather dusters worn by The Boys in the comics.
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49. Kevin
The gills also reveal Deep’s real name: Kevin.
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50. You Are So Beautiful
You probably recognize the song that Kevin and his gills sing to one another, but you might not know its history. “You Are So Beautiful” was written by Billy Preston and Bruce Fisher and released in 1974 on the album The Kids & Me. It was popularized when another musician, Joe Cocker, covered it on his album I Can Stand a Little Rain.
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Jay-Z in the 2006 video for “Show Me What You Got”
51. Cristal
When Starlight condescendingly recommends A-Train not hit the sauce so hard following his recovery, she mentions the drink Cristal, an iconic type of cuvée champagne that has a surprisingly tumultuous relationship with the hip-hop community.
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52. Backpack surprise
As Stormfront walks away, you can clearly see where Starlight stashed the Compound V as A-Train approached: in Stormfront’s backpack.
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53. 12 Years A Slave
Maeve recounts a story from the Oscars part for the movie 12 Years A Slave. The 2013 film is an adaptation of Solomon Northup’s 1853 memoir of the same name, in which the freeborn African-American man recounts being kidnapped and sold into slavery.
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54. Jiffy Pop
Homelander requests some Jiffy Pop from Becca. Jiffy Pop is a brand of popcorn invented by Frederick C. Mennen in Indiana in 1958. Homelander likely views Jiffy Pop as quintessentially American.
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55. Homedefender
Visit any Halloween store and you’ll find cheesy knock-off superhero costumes. In the world of The Boys, these are obviously based on The Seven, because this show’s production design is ridiculously detailed and great.
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56. Brooklyn Bridge
The apparent terrorist in the costume store who Kimiko kills is looking at a picture of the Brooklyn Bridge, likely as a target for attack. In the alternate history of the comics, the Brooklyn Bridge was destroyed on 9/11 instead of the World Trade Center, due to The Seven’s intervention–in a scene that was reinterpreted and adapted during Season 1, when Homelander and Queen Maeve failed to save the hijacked plane.
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57. Pippi Longstocking
Stormfront’s account of Pippi Longstocking’s super-strength and temperament are accurate as far as we know. The character first appeared in an eponymous series of children’s books by Swedish author Astrid Lindgren that were originally published in 1945.
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58. Liberty
The start of Episode 3 brings a juicy one: Mallory asks Butcher whether he’s ever heard of an “old supe” named Liberty. Here’s our theory: Liberty is Stormfront’s previous identity, or possibly the identity of her mother or another figure from Stormfront’s past.
Stormfront in the comics is a full-blown Nazi, and if the show version is as long-lived as some supes from the comics supposedly are, she might have been around earlier in the 20th century–say, during World War II. Even if that’s not the case, Liberty could be someone related to Stormfront, or a mentor figure. In Episode 1, Stan Edgar told Homelander the story of Frederick Vought, a Nazi scientist who created Compound V and later switched sides. This figure might have been one of his early successes, made the trip to the Allied side with him, and assumed the ultra-American identity Liberty.
Here’s some more evidence: Stormfront shares her name with an infamous white supremacy and neo-nazi website (note: link goes to Wikipedia). The site was formed in the 1990s, but according to books cited on that Wikipedia page, it was built on the foundation of an early internet message board system in the ’80s. That message board system was called Liberty Net. Heck, even Stormfront and Liberty’s color schemes match. Finally, Edgar personally installed her on the team. What do you think?
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59. Saving America
When A-Train leaves the club and enters the bright sunlight he’s passed by a bus that features an ad from the marketing campaign that Homelander and Queen Maeve were shooting in Episode 1 when they met Stormfront.
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60. Hans Zimmer and Hitchcock
The movie storyboard scene has several pop culture references. The writer mentions Hans Zimmer, the iconic film score composer behind movies like Gladiator, The Dark Knight, and many more. Lin Manuel Miranda, who apparently wants to do the voice for Translucent, is the iconic creator of the popular musical Hamilton. And when Stormfront refers to “unknowable Hitchcock b****es,” she’s talking about influential 20th-century horror filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock, whose treatment of female characters has been criticized.
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61. Hughie’s message
Hughie leaves Starlight a message on her burner phone saying “we did it” in reference to the Compound V’s exposure. Later in the episode, Homelander is lurking in the shadows Hughie asks Starlight whether she got his message. No doubt Homelander will put two and two together and Starlight is basically screwed.
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62. “Yellow”
The moment when Stormfront uses a racist slur against Kimiko’s brother is inspired by a moment from the comics in which Stormfront and “The Female” fought.
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