Category: Games

Throughout “Remembrance,” the premiere episode of CBS All Access’s Star Trek: Picard, there was one thought I couldn’t escape: It’s great to have the captain back.

For Star Trek fans like me, Sir Patrick Stewart’s Captain Jean-Luc Picard embodied Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry’s vision of a bright, optimistic future. Picard stood as a pillar of the best of humanity–strong and decisive when he needed to be, diplomatic and empathetic whenever possible, and always operating on a strong moral compass and a vast respect for life. While Kirk, Spock, and Bones were the vision of Star Trek for older viewers, it was Picard and his crew on Star Trek: The Next Generation that made me a lifelong Star Trek fan, as they suggested a future in which humanity could put aside all its worst tendencies and work to continually better itself.

Star Trek: Picard picks up the story of Jean-Luc a few decades after his final outing in the last of the four post-TNG movies, Star Trek: Nemesis, and it’s striking how much the new series feels both like a continuation of the best ideas of TNG, and reflective of the current cultural moment in a way its predecessor series no longer is. Picard is retired from Starfleet, forever grieving the loss of his friend and comrade, the android Data (Brent Spiner), and struggling under the weight of his own legacy. Star Trek: Picard is a darker, and in a lot of ways, more realistic look at the 24th century than we’ve seen in the past, and as a revival of the beloved character, it’s hard not to get excited about the possibilities.

The best parts of Star Trek: Picard are in its deviations from the Star Trek of the 1990s, or even from the flashier but somewhat sterile depiction of CBS All Access’s other flagship Star Trek series, Star Trek: Discovery. When we find the captain, he’s living in a Federation that has grown cold, isolationist, and even somewhat bigoted–it created a refugee crisis after it refused to help its former enemies, the Romulans, and instituted a full-on ban on a specific segment of people (albeit artificial ones) following a massive domestic attack. Both elements are easy reflections of our current world, and in trying to deal with them, Picard has been devastated to find himself facing a government that no longer reflects what he once considered its core ideals.

Within the first half of the episode, we get the old Picard back as he delivers a powerful speech from a place of moral certitude that recalls all the best moments of TNG. It’s hard not to get caught up as Stewart falls easily back into the character, calling up those quintessential elements that made him resonate so much throughout The Next Generation, even as it becomes clear that the world has moved on without him.

What makes the first episode of Star Trek: Picard compelling is how it presents the character in a place of failure. Having left Starfleet, Picard removed himself as an influence for good, and the world of Star Trek has suffered for it. It’s clear that Star Trek: Picard has a deep knowledge and abiding respect for the character of Picard and his history, instantly picking up long-running threads like his relationship with and feelings of obligation to the late Data. Picard’s status as a hero and leader has led him to buy too hard into his own legend; he’s spent the last 15 years being too rigid and unyielding. It’s a great place to start deconstructing the Picard we know and to make him more realistic and relatable in the modern world.

The rest of the first episode of Star Trek: Picard isn’t quite as powerful as everything surrounding the captain, though. Pilots have a lot of heavy lifting to do in terms of setting up story, and this one gets mired in lengthy scene-setting exposition on a couple of occasions. The most egregious is an interview scene that mostly just runs down the major events that occurred some 15 years ago, and while it gives Stewart a great moment to flex as an angry Picard, the whole thing is a clunky diversion from the more interesting development of his mental state.

The time spent delivering exposition is juxtaposed against writing that expects you to be pretty knowledgeable about The Next Generation and its movies, which creates pacing problems where some information is belabored, while other significant details are extremely easy to gloss over. If you don’t know or remember quite a bit about Picard and Data from TNG and its movies, or tidbits like the fact that Romulus exploded in 2009’s Star Trek directed by JJ Abrams, it’s very easy to get lost.

And when it’s not trying to catch us up on the intervening decades of Federation history since Nemesis, it’s throwing in action sequences that feel like they exist mostly to keep the audience from getting too bored. That action mostly surrounds Dahj (Isa Briones), for whom the episode foregoes character development in favor of giving her chances to kick the butts of futuristic-looking soldiers. She’s essential to Picard’s journey in this first episode and beyond, and it’s a shame we spend more time watching her wail on people than we do learning anything meaningful about her. Other characters, like Picard’s two Romulan servants who clearly have a strong affinity for him, get almost no development at all. The episode peppers in what feel like very meaningful details about their history with Picard, but their blink-and-you’ll-miss-it delivery make them feel more like background players than meaningful players in his life.

But there are also some inspired moments in the first episode, and Star Trek: Picard obviously has a lot of love for the series and characters that preceded it. “Remembrance” excels in creating a version of Star Trek that feels like it has more to say about the real world than the series of the past. This 24th century is a perfect foil to one of Roddenberry’s greatest creations in Jean-Luc Picard. While the first episode of Star Trek: Picard isn’t a perfect one, it’s the setup for a story that has a lot of interesting ideas beyond Star Trek’s preoccupation with sci-fi tech or utopian ideals, and that suggests a lot of potential. It is great to have Captain Picard back–and what’s more, it’s great to see him fighting to live in a world that feels more like ours, in hopes of making it more like what Star Trek has always imagined.

Disclosure: ViacomCBS is GameSpot’s parent company.

Though it may not be the most famous piece of literature in the canon of western horror, Henry James’s The Turn Of The Screw is still a pretty widely known and studied scary story. So there’s a good chance you’ve encountered it in one way or another, be it in a class in school or one of its many direct or thematic adaptations in movies and TV (such as The Others, or The Innocents). All of which is to say The Turning isn’t exactly trying to break new ground. Its only real goal ought to have been telling a familiar spooky story with a set of fresh faces. A low bar, to be sure–but, sadly, not one that it ever manages to clear.

Like the novella it’s based on, The Turning is the story of a live-in nanny (Mackenzie Davis) named Kate on a job to mentor two eccentric wealthy children, Flora (Brooklyn Prince) and Miles (Finn Wolfhard), at their sprawling, isolated estate. The children recently lost their parents in a tragic accident, leaving them in the care of their severe-yet-all-too-forgiving caretaker, Mrs. Grose (Barbara Marten), who believes them both to be “thoroughbreds” and beyond any and all reproach. Naturally, things start to go south almost immediately as the kids begin pushing the limits of Kate’s patience while the estate itself seems to slowly close in around her.

The Turning hopes to be one part psychological drama, one part classic gothic haunted house story, but it really only partially succeeds as the latter. The estate–Bly Manor in the book but never named in the film–is drenched in the sort of dusty, forgotten elegance that instantly gives it character. It feels like something that stepped directly out of the campy, over-the-top horror movies of the ’90s and early ’00s, like The Haunting or Rose Red, which is appropriate since the story has been updated to be a ’90s period piece. Don’t worry–you won’t be able to miss that particular detail, between the first line of dialogue literally coming from a news report about a memorial service for the recently deceased Kurt Cobain or the persistent shots of Mackenzie Davis tromping around in shiny black Doc Martens. It’s all very lush and faintly nostalgic, but sadly the only major win the movie is able to walk away with.

The rest of The Turning, from the performances to the story itself, is, frankly, a mess. The script admirably tries to thread the needle presented by James’s novella and ask if Kate is simply going insane, victimized by the pressure of her job and her relentless need to prove herself capable of taking care of the two children, or if the supernatural experiences she keeps having are real, but the balancing act topples almost immediately. Instead of a nuanced “was it all in her head?” question, The Turning feels like a smattering of jump scares and audio stingers mixed with seemingly random, abrupt reminders that Kate apparently has some family history with mental illness. Davis, despite obviously doing her level best to imbue Kate with as many layers as possible, is dismally one note. Wolfhard, who absolutely looks the part of the menacing, sociopathic prep school child, seems to wander aimlessly from scene to scene. Prince, while absolutely adorable, never actually becomes a character with any defining traits or motivations beyond being cute.

Worse yet, the ghost story at the heart of it all crumbles under any level of scrutiny. Kate is plagued by visions of the children’s former nanny, Miss Jessel, and the manor’s former groundskeeper, Quint. There are a handful of attempts to give either of these characters an actual arc to follow–something for viewers to grab onto and invest in–but it never takes. Quint’s apparently some sort of monstrous brute, but we never learn why. Jessel’s fate is supposed to be a major mystery, but the eventual reveal is quite literally shrugged off as an aside. In the end it just doesn’t matter if Kate’s visions of Jessel and Quint are real or in her head because it’s impossible to care about any of them.

The Turning is only a scant 94 minutes long, yet it somehow manages to feel inexplicably lengthy and boring. By the midway point, you’ll be wondering why Kate is even there to begin with–a problem the movie tries to hamfistedly explain away with several frantic phonecalls between Kate and her old roommate, wherein she resolutely explains directly to the audience that she can’t just leave because she made a promise to these kids she has no relationship with and only met a few days ago. As things begin to go completely off the rails, the movie only gets less and less coherent until, as abruptly as it starts, it ends. Almost as if the script forgot to have a finale altogether, the credits begin to roll, leaving the entire experience feeling like a waste of time.

FoxNext, a studio that Disney acquired after buying out Fox, has been sold off not long after being acquired by the House of Mouse. Back in September 2019, it was reported that Disney was looking to offload the studio, which is responsible for the mobile game Marvel Strike Force. This has now come to pass.

Variety is reporting that Disney has sold FoxNext to mobile developer Scopely, the team behind The Walking Dead: Road to Survival and WWE Champions. FoxNext is currently working on an Avatar mobile game, named Avatar: Pandora Rising.

Scopely’s Tim O’Brien told Variety that they were “hugely impressed with the incredible game the team at FoxNext Games has built.” Marvel Strike Force brought in over $150 million in revenue during its first year.

The sale includes Cold Iron Studios, which has been owned by FoxNext since 2018. Cold Iron Studios is working on a new shooter in the Alien universe, but Scopely plans to sell them off once the deal is closed, as they do not work on mobile titles. The studio consists of 50 people.

Disney has, in the past, moved away from publishing games, closing down studios like Epic Mickey developer Junction Point, Tron: Evolution team Propaganda Games, and Split/Second creators Black Rock. In 2016, Disney cancelled the Disney Infinity series and closed developer Avalanche Software, marking the end of their biggest gaming franchise.

Disney will continue to release mobile games based on its properties–in 2018, it signed a deal with developer Jam City, which has developed several games based on Disney and Pixar properties.

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Netflix has bought the rights to an upcoming Leonard Bernstein biopic that will feature Bradley Cooper in the title role. Not only is Cooper attached, but the film has a long list of top talent behind the camera, as detailed in a new story from Deadline.

Cooper will also direct and produce the movie, and he wrote the script alongside Josh Singer, who won an Oscar for Spotlight. Scorsese and a fellow film giant Steven Spielberg will also produce, as Todd Phillips, who directed Cooper in the Hangover trilogy before going on to direct Joker. Other producers include Emma Tillinger Koskoff (The Irishman), Fred Berner (Pollock), Amy Durning (The Catch), and Kristie Macosko (Bridge of Spies).

The untitled movie will cover 30 years and tell the story of the relationship between Bernstein and his wife, Felicia Montealegre. Bernstein is the famous American composer behind productions such as West Side Story and Peter Pan, among many others.

The film was originally set up at Paramount, and Scorsese is said to have been in line to direct it, before deciding to focus on The Irishman instead. The Spielberg connection is that he directed a remake of West Side Story for the screen in 2020, using Bernstein’s music. It’s also notable because this is the first time Netflix is working with Spielberg, who is Hollywood elite.

Spielberg has been critical of Netflix in the past, saying Netflix movies should not be eligible for the Oscars. Like The Irishman, the Bernstein movie will have a limited run in theatres before coming to Netflix. It’s expected to begin production in early 2021.

As for Cooper, he directed the Oscar-winning movie A Star Is Born, and the Bernstein movie is his first directorial effort since then. The Bernstein estate is working with the stakeholders on the movie. In fact, the report said Cooper has been “working closely” with Bernstein’s children for two years already.

A Bernstein movie featuring Jake Gyllenhaal in the lead role was in the works with Cary Fukunaga attached to direct, but that fell apart.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

Season 1 of Netflix’s Locke and Key, the highly anticipated adaptation of Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez’s beloved horror comic, hasn’t even hit Netflix yet–it arrives February 7. But although a second season hasn’t yet been officially greenlit by the streaming service, executive producer Carlton Cuse is in the process of writing Locke and Key Season 2.

“We’re writing Season 2, even though it hasn’t been greenlit. We’re working in a room,” Cuse told GameSpot during an interview with him and Locke and Key showrunner Meredith Averill.

Locke and Key follows the Locke family after a tragedy sends them across the country to take up residence in their ancestral home, Keyhouse–a mysterious mansion filled with magical keys. The comics ran from 2008 to 2013, and fans generally hold the series’ ending in high regard. Giving the way some adaptations have wound up lately, some fans might worry that the Netflix version will eventually diverge so much from the books that the story will become unrecognizable from the version we know and love. Cuse and Averill said that’s a distinct possibility, though they’re determined to tell a story that’s right for the medium of television.

“We can’t really answer that question yet,” Cuse said. “I think by the time we get to the end of the season, we’ll have a better sense of how much longer the show can go. We’ve spent a lot of time talking with Joe [Hill], and I think, in concert with Joe, we’ll figure out the answer to that question. I mean, it is a cool ending, but again, the show’s diverging from the comics and it becomes something [else]. We want to be sure that the ending works for the TV series and we’re not just forcing ourselves into an ending for endings’ sake. We want the ending to be something that really feels like it’s the right conclusion for our story.”

Averill expanded on that thought, acknowledging the various versions of this adaptation that have been attempted in the past, including the Fox-made pilot that screened at San Diego Comic-Con in 2011, as well as the Hulu pilot from a few years ago.

“We always joke that one day there needs to be a college course where they dissect the three different versions of the Locke and Key pilot, because I think it’s a nice lesson that in an adaptation, there’s not one way to kind of skin a cat, to forgive the grotesque saying,” the showrunner said. “But it really shows that there are different ways to tell the story, and this is just the version that we were most excited to tell, that we loved.”

However, there’s another potential hurdle in the show’s future: Successive seasons of the show will naturally need to take place over a longer period of time than the books do, and in the world of the comics, adults have a much harder time perceiving Keyhouse’s magic. When the show begins, Tyler Locke is 17 and his sister Kinsey is 16. What will happen when they’re 18 or in their 20s? How can the story stay the same if the Locke kids become the Locke adults?

“I think that’s something that hopefully will be explored [in future seasons],” Darby Stanchfield, who plays Nina Locke, told GameSpot.

“These are kids who are about to become adults, and we know in the story that when you become an adult your relationship to this world changes,” Connor Jessup, who plays Tyler, agreed. “I’m really curious to explore that.”

There’s one potential solution: In the comics, adults like Nina have an easier time perceiving the keys’ magic when intoxicated. Will the whole family need to be constantly drunk the longer the story goes?

“Gin for everybody!” Stanchfield laughed.

“Yes, I think’s that’s the message we’re trying to say,” Jessup joked.

Locke and Key hits Netflix February 7.

Disclosure: ViacomCBS is GameSpot’s parent company.

In news that should surprise no one, Marvel is reportedly moving forward with a sequel to Captain Marvel. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Marvel has hired WandaVision writer Megan McDonnell to script the sequel that will star Brie Larson again in the title role.

The writers/directors of the 2019 Captain Marvel, Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, are not coming back for Captain Marvel 2, according to the report. They are reportedly in discussions to direct an upcoming Marvel Disney+ series, but there is no word on what that will be.

THR also claims that Marvel is looking to hire a woman to direct Captain Marvel 2, which could hit theatres in the 2022. The report also claims the movie will be set in the present day, which is decades later than the first movie, which took place in the ’90s.

Captain Marvel, which also starred a digitally de-aged Samuel L. Jackson, as well as Jude Law, Ben Mendelsohn, Annette Bening, Djimon Hounsou, Gemma Chan, and Lashana Lynch, made more than $1.1 billion at the global box office.

Captain Marvel 2 will apparently be part of the MCU Phase 4, which kicks off in May with the new Black Widow movie starring Scarlett Johansson.

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