‘Tis the season for going to the movies with your family to celebrate the holiday cheer — but if film critics would have you avoid one in particular, it would be Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly’s Holmes & Watson.
The Sony movie — which wasn’t screened for critics in advance of its Christmas Day release (never a good sign) — was eviscerated by all 20 of its counted reviews as of this article’s publication. Not a single film critic granted Holmes & Watson a positive review, which means it sits at zero percent rotten on Rotten Tomatoes.
The New York Times’ Ben Kenigsberg advises that “smuggling in booze to dispel the sense of dull routine could only help,” while The Hollywood Reporter’s Frank Scheck writes, “You can feel the flop sweat emanating from the third onscreen pairing of Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly.” IGN’s William Bibbiani scored the movie as “bad,” concluding, “The lazy gags, wasted supporting cast and unfocused writing make the film an unfunny chore, which evokes but doesn’t come close to their earlier comedic outings.”
There is a scene in Etan Cohen’s Holmes & Watson where Sherlock Holmes, played by Will Ferrell, puts on a bad fake mustache and somehow fools Dr. Watson, played by John C. Reilly, into thinking he’s a completely different person. It’s not a great joke, but it’s illuminating. The filmmakers also seem to think that by slapping on a ramshackle disguise they can trick audiences into thinking Holmes & Watson isn’t just a pale imitation of Talladega Nights and Step Brothers.
But when Step Brothers and Talladega Nights would whiff a joke, both movies quickly moved on to a better one. Holmes & Watson is a collection of limp comic set pieces and repeated riffs on the same three gags: Joke A. The 21st century is different from the Victorian era; Joke B. Holmes isn’t as smart as he thinks he is; and Joke C. Blunt force trauma to the face.
On this week’s episode of IGN’s weekly PlayStation show, Beyond!, I, host Jonathon Dornbush, along with Brian Altano and Lucy O”Brien, welcome God of War director Cory Barlog for the final episode of 2018. With God of War named IGN’s Best Game of 2018, the crew and Cory reflect back on God of War’s success, development, and the overall work of Cory and the team at Sony Santa Monica Studio. If you’ve already seen IGN’s God of War spoilercast, think of this as a part 2 to that conversation (which means, yes, there will be spoilers).
If there’s one thing that’s been a hallmark of Vikings since the very beginning, it’s the deaths of major characters that viewers hold near and dear. Still, in the latest episode– titled “Hell”–a death came that was particularly surprising, even to the show’s creator Michael Hirst.
In a battle against King Harald Finehair (Peter Franzén) and his forces Bishop Heahmund (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) was killed, bringing his short story in the Vikings universe to a close. With his final breaths, as he was being pierced by arrows, he screamed out “Lagertha,” showing his ultimate allegiance to the former queen of Kattegat one last time.
It was only the end of Season 4 that saw the introduction of Heahmund, who became enamored with Lagertha (Katheryn Winnick) in Season 5. So it comes as something of a shock that he was dispatched of so quickly. “It was a bit of a surprise for me,” Hirst told GameSpot. “These things sometimes, you have different possibilities in your head and then you think, not just about that character but how they fit into the pattern–the general pattern of where you want to take the other characters.”
And while Heahmund’s death will have a lasting impact, especially on Lagertha, his death also meant something to the tale being told about the bishop himself. In the episode, he saw visions of Hell that led him to believe his soul was doomed, after aligning with the pagans and falling in love with one. For Hirst, that’s what was so surprising. He didn’t realize that in writing Heahmund’s story the way he did, he was also crafting the most logical ending for a bishop and a warrior for Christ.
“Because he felt he was a great sinner and that he was bound for hell, itt was difficult for me then to think how I could regroup and where I could take it,” he admits.
In the end, though, Heahmund died in a way that was true to himself, regardless of where he may have ended up in the afterlife. “He’s not particularly, political and scheming he’s a warrior–a warrior for Christ,” Hirst said. “And so when all those things were added up, then it made sense, that he should die, spectacularly, and he should die recognizing that, although he was going to hell, he loved her. He loved her. To me, that was a beautiful thing that despite his real fear of going to hell he was willing to admit that he was in love and that was great.”
Still, Hirst admits it would have been nice to keep Heahmund around, should it have made sense in the story. “I thought Johnny was brilliant,” the writer said. “He’s absolutely wonderful, but it just seemed a kind of natural place to do that, poor guy.”
As is usually the case with Vikings, though, nobody is truly safe or eternal. Viking history is long and caked in the blood of the fallen. From Ragnar Lothbrok to Christian monk Athelstan. When the time comes, everyone in this world faces certain death and chances are it’s not going to be pretty.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey’s rendition of ancient Greece is a massive, sprawling world to explore, chock full of secrets, puzzles and historic battles. Using a combination of traffic, comments and user feedback and search inquiries, we’ve been able to see what’s really had players stumped since Alexios and Kassandra first set sail in early October 2018.
Insurgency: Sandstorm is an excellent multiplayer shooter that successfully avoids the common pitfalls of military simulation, but still manages to deliver an immersive, at times disturbing, sense of realism to its modern, Middle Eastern setting. Its arsenal consists of some of the best-realized firearms in any video game to date thanks to stellar sound design, punchy animations, and obsessive attention to detail. Elsewhere, though, things aren’t quite as glamorous: I found most of its maps to fall into the “just okay” category due in part to poorly defined restricted areas that, on top of being annoying to encounter, are easily exploited. Still, Insurgency: Sandstorm punches well above its weight, offering phenomenal gunplay that shows up much of its big-budget competition.
God of War’s impressive open-world is filled with plenty of tough enemies, collectibles, and exciting mysteries. Through IGN’s analysis of user feedback, search data, and traffic, we’ve deciphered which of God of War’s challenges players need most help completing.
There are some very mild spoilers for end-game challenges in this article. However, we’ve done our best to mask the challenges by keeping things vague.
Black Ops 4 isn’t short on content, and its three main modes are substantial. Multiplayer introduces more tactical mechanics without forcing you into them, and it largely strikes a good balance. Zombies has multiple deep, secret-filled maps to explore, though its returning characters don’t hold up and prove distracting. Finally, Blackout pushes Call of Duty in an entirely new direction, making use of aspects from both multiplayer and Zombies for a take on the battle royale genre that stands on its own. Sure, there isn’t a traditional single-player campaign, but with the depth and breadth of what is there, Black Ops 4 doesn’t need it. — Kallie Plagge [Full Review]
With Christmas in the rearview, Aquaman is finally in theaters, and chances are you’ve seen it–which means you inevitably have a lot of questions. We kind of, sort of, mostly loved the movie, despite its problems, but we were also pretty confused about much of its worldbuilding and plot points. For example: What exactly is the timeline of Atlantean history? How long did King Atlan spend in his self-imposed exile after the fall of Atlantis? And how long ago did he record that message for the future king? How much time has passed since Atlanteans lived in what is now the Sahara desert, and how could a clue that’s seemingly millions of years old point Arthur and Mera to a Greco-Roman era statue in Sicily?
Luckily, Warner Bros. gave us the opportunity to sit down with Aquaman’s screenwriters, David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick and Will Beall, as well as DC’s famed writer and Aquaman executive producer Geoff Johns. Of course, we asked them to clear this all up.
The main Aquaman timeline problem comes from the fact that Arthur and Mera surmise the Deserters Kingdom under the Sahara desert has been there since “before the Sahara was a desert,” which a quick Google search tells us was around 7 million years ago. In addition, Atlanteans who broke off into the various Seven Kingdoms of Atlantis went down wildly divergent evolutionary paths, transforming over time into CGI fish people, CGI crab people, and CGI deep sea monsters, which doesn’t happen overnight. Those facts suggest that the fall of Atlantis may have really occurred millions of years ago.
Yet at the same time, Atlan’s voicemail message–the one that Arthur and Mera viewed in the chamber under the desert–pointed them to a statue in Sicily that’s at most a few thousand years old. How do the writers explain that seemingly kraken-sized plot hole?
“Well, there’s definitely a lot of different ways to skin this cat,” Johns told us. “One is that Atlan actually lives longer than [other Atlanteans]. Atlanteans live longer than humans, and he’s a king, with that trident, so clearly he lived a long, long time in isolation. I think that is probably the easiest explanation.”
In other words, King Atlan–the same king who reigned during Atlantis’s downfall–may have survived in exile at the Hidden Sea at the Earth’s Core for millions of years. His trident’s vaguely defined magical powers, which are never really explicitly defined in the movie, might have had something to do with it.
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“[Atlan] is hanging onto the trident, and it’s holding him together in some way,” Beall added.
“Yeah, it’s holding him together,” Johns agreed. “I think he was there a long, long time.”
Does that mean Arthur is effectively immortal as long as he wields it? Maybe we’ll find out in future Aquaman movies (fingers crossed). But if the trident isn’t responsible, the writers have another theory that could explain Atlan’s long life: The energy blast that sank Atlantis may have had unknown effects on those who would have been nearest its epicenter.
“I think [Atlan] had some power beyond other Atlanteans, and he was at the ground zero of that explosion, so who knows how that energy affected him?” Johns posited.
One problem with that theory is it means Atlan survived in exile on the other side of that weird portal thingie for millions of years, then at some point swam back up through the Trench Kingdom, scouted around for potential clue locations, found that statue in Sicily, recorded that cryptic voicemail, and then swam back down through the portal and resumed his lonely vigil. Maybe he decided that the quest for his trident was a little too difficult, like video game developers who add more objective markers in a post-release patch. On the other hand, the Karathen–which, by the way, was voiced by Julie Andrews–seems to have had plenty of victims over the years, although it also states that it hasn’t feasted in ages. So who knows?
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There’s yet another theory that has less to do with Atlan’s age: The Deserters Kingdom in the Sahara may have actually survived into much more recent history. That’s only possible if a hidden body of water once existed under the Sahara, which real life science suggests is actually possible. Johns floated this theory as well:
“Also, just because we believe that the Sahara was dry for millions of years doesn’t mean there wasn’t some water underneath it in this hidden kingdom at some point,” Johns said.
Either way, it’s pretty incredible that the best Aquaman’s writers and executive producer can offer about the movie’s timeline is theories. If anyone should be able to explain this stuff, it’s them. Of course, they could have also taken the route chosen by Venom director Ruben Fleischer and simply fessed up to the plot hole. Instead, Johns and Aquaman’s screenwriters decided on a middle path: They’re not sure exactly how the movie’s timeline works out, but according to them, it’s not impossible.
Considering we’re really just nitpicking here, we’re going to say that’s good enough for us and officially close this investigation. Aquaman is in theaters now.
It may be hard to believe, but 2018 is nearly over. That means it won’t be long before January rolls around, bringing PlayStation Plus members a new set of free PS4, PS3, and PS Vita games to add to their collection. Sony has announced January’s lineup, so let’s dive in and see what you’ll be able to download from PSN between January 1 and February 5.
PS4 owners can pick up Steep, an extreme sports game from Ubisoft that lets you ski, snowboard, and glide in a wing suit to go from a mountain’s snowy peaks to its powdery base. The other PS4 game for January is Portal Knights, which takes the building component of Minecraft and constructs around it an RPG that encourages crafting and exploration.
If you’re reading this in 2018, it’s not too late to pick up your free PS Plus games for December. They include the racing game Onrush and the horror game Soma for PS4; Steredenn and SteinsGate for PS3; and Papers, Please and Iconoclasts for PS Vita.
PS Plus members should note that, starting in March 2019, Sony will no longer give away free PS3 and PS Vita games for PS Plus members. If you subscribe to PS Plus primarily for those free titles, you’ll want to turn off your subscription’s auto-renewal option or cancel it then.
PlayStation Plus Games For January 2019
PS4
Steep
Portal Knights
Fallen Legion: Flames of the Rebellion (also on PS Vita)
PS3
Zone of the Enders HD Collection
Amplitude
PS Vita
Fallen Legion: Flames of the Rebellion (also on PS4)
