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With a new trailer that revealed the return of Alfred Molina’s Doctor Octopus, Spider-Man: No Way Home is teasing an expansion of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that could encompass previous cinematic incarnations of the webslinger. Along with Molina and Jamie Foxx’s Electro, the cast is also rumored to include the return of both Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield’s versions of Peter Parker.

While Garfield has emphatically denied any involvement in the MCU film before, the actor offered another canny response when asked about the casting rumors in a recent Variety profile.

“I understand why people are freaking out about the concept… because I’m a fan as well. You can’t help but imagine scenes and moments of ‘Oh, my God, how f—ing cool would it be if they did that?’” Garfield said. “It’s important for me to say on the record that this is not something I’m aware I am involved in.

“I know I’m not going to be able to say anything that will convince anyone that I don’t know what’s happening,” he continued. “No matter what I say, I’m f—ed. It’s either going to be really disappointing for people or it’s going to be really exciting.”

Garfield also reflected on his own tenure as Peter Parker in the interview. Although his run came to an abrupt end after the release of 2014’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2, the actor still thinks back on his time making superhero movies fondly.

“It was only beautiful,” Garfield said. “I got to meet Emma [Stone] and work with her and Sally Field. I had karma with [Sony Pictures co-chairman] Amy Pascal, who was a mother figure, and we would fight, but ultimately, we loved each other on a deep level. We tried to meet as much in the middle as we could in terms of why I wanted to do this role, and what her needs were as the head of the studio.”

Spider-Man: No Way Home is set to hit theaters on December 17. For more about the upcoming MCU movie, read about how fans are arguing if an old villain is hidden in the teaser and check out our complete analysis of the trailer.

J. Kim Murphy is a freelance entertainment writer.

Halloween Kills was reviewed out of the Venice Film Festival, where it made its world premiere. It will hit theaters on Oct. 15.

Halloween Kills is a dark chapter in the story of Laurie Strode and Michael Myers, with a somber tone and even more gruesome murders than we’ve seen in previous installments. It finds fulfilling ways to expand the world of Carpenter’s original with a larger focus on the town of Haddonfield and characters from the 1978 classic, while unfortunately suffering from feeling like an incomplete experience.

The film starts with a flashback to the end of the original Halloween, expanding the role of Deputy Frank Hawkins (played by Will Patton in the present time) to show us what really happened when Michael was finally caught after his killing spree. Director David Gordon-Green and cinematographer Michael Simmonds do a great job of recreating the look of Carpenter’s original down to the film grain, and even find shockingly faithful ways to bring back old characters for new scenes. In fact, Halloween Kills feels even more closely indebted to the first film than the 2018 reboot/sequel did. There are nods to everything from Michael’s gruesome disposal of a dog in the original movie, to Easter eggs to the entire franchise (there are several references to The Curse of Michael Myers), in addition to the returns of several fan-favorite characters. Thankfully, the nods and cameos are more than just fan service; they enhance the franchise as a whole by building a thematic bridge between the original and the new films, connecting the trauma of the past with the resurgence of The Shape in the present.

The main story takes place immediately following the events of the 2018 Halloween, with Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode, Judy Greer’s Karen, and Andi Matichak’s Allyson leaving Laurie’s burning home, believing Michael to be dead. Of course, evil that strong never truly dies, and the Boogeyman comes home yet again. This time, however, the cast expands to include more than the Strode women and a bunch of innocent bystanders. Several characters from the 1978 original return, including Tommy Doyle (Anthony Michael Hall), Lindsey Wallace (Kyle Richards), Lonnie Elam (Robert Longstreet), and even former sheriff Leigh Brackett (Charles Cyphers).

Tired of living in constant fear, the townspeople of Haddonfield decide to form a mob and hunt down The Shape. This is a unique theme for a slasher movie, and one that Halloween Kills doesn’t really know what to do with. There are interesting questions raised about mob mentality and what fear does to a community, but the script never fully decides whether to condemn or celebrate it.

Even if he has the entire town looking for him, Michael Myers is in no way the underdog. If anything, this is a much angrier, darker, and more violent film than 2018’s Halloween, and it includes some of the most shocking and disturbing kills in the entire franchise. Where often the Halloween movies would cut away right as Michael gets the jump on someone and only reveal the aftermath of the crime, Halloween Kills fully displays Michael’s brutal butchering of his victims.

Seriously, these murders are gory. The shock value is best exemplified when Halloween Kills gives us our first proper look at Michael’s sadistic artistic expression via his grandiose and campy staging of mutilated corpses, which is more disturbing than any Silver Shamrock product. Even John Carpenter’s score is darker, slower, and more dramatic than any of his previous Halloween efforts, building up to what can best be described as the Empire Strikes Back of the Halloween franchise.

That’s not to say that Halloween Kills is completely devoid of fun. It still knows when to balance the scares with moments of levity, including two new comic relief characters, played by Scott MacArthur and Michael McDonald, that steal the show every time they’re on screen, much in the same way Julian Morrisey (Jibrail Nantambu) did in the 2018 film.

Most of the problems with Halloween Kills come from it being the second chapter in a trilogy that was announced prior to its release. Some characters sit out most of the action for seemingly no reason, while several themes and reveals are introduced and then dropped rather quickly, including some allusions to The Curse of Michael Myers that are sure to spark plenty of conversations among fans. Much of Halloween Kills is just table setting for the final confrontation, including an abrupt cliffhanger ending that makes this feel like half of a movie.

As far as horror sequels go, especially sequels to reboots, Halloween Kills does a lot right. For one, it honors the original in a way that feels not like empty fan service, but as a compelling companion to the material. The film’s darker tone instantly sets itself apart from its predecessors, diving more deeply into the themes of trauma and how it affects a community while delivering some truly gruesome kills. Sadly, it doesn’t really stand on its own, being too dependent on a conclusion that is still a year away, one that could either fix some of the holes in this movie, or expose even greater flaws. Because of this, it’s hard to recommend Halloween Kills as a standalone experience, but rest assured that when Michael is out on the hunt, Halloween certainly Kills.

Fallout 76’s newest season arrives today, despite a previous announcement that it would be delayed. Bethesda Game Studios says the Fallout Worlds update, along with the start of Season 6, is out today, adding Public and Custom Worlds game modes to Fallout 76.

Fallout Worlds introduces two new customizable ways to play Fallout 76. Public Worlds will feature a rotation of themed experiences that will shake up the world for all players. One example is an option called Happy Builder, that will reduce building restrictions and disable PvP.

The update also introduces Custom Worlds, which will be available for those who subscribe to Falloust 1st, the game’s premium membership. Here, players can create a game world tailored to their liking. Up to eight friends can play in one Custom World together, and players can even invite friends who don’t have a Fallout 1st membership. You can find more information on the new game modes by reading Bethesda’s official patch notes.

Bethesda says custom servers have always been the long-term goal for Fallout 76. Upon announcing the Fallout Worlds update earlier this year, Bethesda said, “Our modding community has been an enormous part of our games for over 20 years, and it’s always been our long-term goal with Fallout 76 to give you your own servers to customize for yourself and your friends.”

The studio originally decided to delay the new season because of a bug impacting microtransactions. While the developers continue investigating the bug, they are disabling purchased rank-ups at the start of Season 6. The devs say they will announce their plan to reintroduce rank purchases whenever they’ve solved the bug.

To apologize for the confusion caused by the update’s release timing, Season 6 will kick off with special events that will run from today through Monday, September 13.

For more, check out IGN’s Fallout 76 performance review, where we tested the FPS boost on Xbox Series X|S.

Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN. You can find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.

Spoilers follow for Episode 5 of Marvel’s What If…? For more, see our review of the previous episode of What If.

When you stream Marvel’s What If…? on Disney+’s website, you’ll notice episodes have titles like “What If… Captain Carter Were The First Avenger?” and “What If… Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands?” This week’s is simply: “What If… Zombies!?” Sure, it’s a jokey take on the naming convention the series has been using, but it’s also indicative of how much thought went into selling a zombie apocalypse that works in the MCU. Up to this point, What If has done pretty well at making each episode’s premise feel like a logical divergence from established history. But despite some entertaining action, Episode 5 shambles along, aimless and hungry for purpose as… as a… it’ll come to me…

Episode 5’s deficiencies come into clear focus when compared to last week’s best-yet episode. It was full of supernatural spectacle, but everything that happened was rooted in Doctor Strange’s struggle with his grief, so it was emotionally engaging. On the other hand, we’ve got this episode, which spends nearly all its time focused on moving the surviving heroes from zombie encounter to zombie encounter as they try to develop a cure. Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) explains the zombie outbreak started after Hank Pym’s trip to the Quantum Realm, where only Hope’s mother Janet Van Dyne returned. Janet was afflicted with a “quantum virus” which… turns everyone into zombies. Marvel’s already joked about sticking “quantum” in front of concepts that they don’t want to bother explaining in Ant-Man and The Wasp (Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania coming soon), and we’re far enough past the point of diminishing returns that unexplained “quantum” stuff just feels like lazy writing. It often feels like What If can’t decide whether or not to take the zombie apocalypse seriously or play it for laughs, and Episode 5 suffers from that lack of clarity.

The tonal inconsistency ends up affecting how the whole episode unfolds, resulting in questionable character choices. After What If spent a full minute of screentime on a Peter Parker vlog explaining the absolute basic rules of surviving against the walking dead (bites infect, headshots kill, they can smell you), it was enormously frustrating to have Bucky (Sebastian Stan) explore a pitch-black underground military installation alone, no questions asked. Letting someone go off on their own just to keep the plot moving felt like a huge cop out. Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) continuing to exclaim “blam, blam, blam” as he’s dragged to his death was a similarly distracting case of the episode ignoring its own reality in favor of fitting in just one more quip. The MCU: where the only thing more infectious than quantum zombie bites are snarky Starkian comments undermining anything serious going on.

The episode’s best moments come during a tense confrontation with Vision (Paul Bettany) at Camp Lehigh. It’s here that we get a sense of what a more focused, character-driven story could’ve delivered, as the usually-benevolent android has become corrupted by the zombie outbreak in his own way. His desire to cure the infected Wanda and his total disregard for the human cost of success was an interesting seed of an idea, but What If moves past it quickly in favor of letting Zombie Wanda’s chaos magic take center stage. What If’s action scenes continue to be its saving grace, and Episode 5 is no different… as long as you don’t think too hard about the zombified heroes still using their powers. There’s no word or phrase you could drop “quantum” in front of that’ll stop me from asking why a zombie Tony Stark is still able to pilot the most advanced flight suit on Earth, or how Doctor Strange, Wong, and Wanda can focus on casting spells and eating brains at the same time. All of the fights and action-heavy scenes are brutal, well-choreographed, and inventive, but only up to the point you’re willing to suspend the substantial amount of disbelief you’ll need to keep from asking questions deeper than “What If… Zombies!?”

Ironically enough, for having spent much of the season disappointed in it, the voice acting in Episode 5 is pretty good. Zombie-slaying veteran Danai Gurira is the obvious MVP as Okoye, whose dry wit and matter-of-fact attitude is a perfect fit for the dire circumstances. Any more time spent with the late Chadwick Boseman’s T’Challa is welcome and, though unintentionally prescient, his proclamation that “death is not the end” was more poignant than anything that happened before or after. It was also a real surprise to have David Dastmalchian’s Kurt (Scott Lang’s hacker buddy) so embedded in the story, providing a lot of laughs as the obvious odd man out. It’s a reminder that What If has a lot of untapped potential in the MCU’s minor, oft-forgotten characters, and hopefully we continue to see more familiar faces dropping in. I’ll keep holding my breath for a Justin Hammer/Flashdance mashup.

Escape The Undertaker, an interactive Halloween special starring WWE’s New Day and The Undertaker, is coming to Netflix on October 5.

According to Netflix, viewers will get to decide the fate of New Day’s Big E, Xavier Woods, and Kofi Kingston as they attempt to survive the wrath of The Undertaker at his mansion, which has been transformed into an extreme haunted house, “packed to the brim with supernatural challenges” to usher in the spooky season.

The special promises to deliver some trick or treats… or should we say beats, just in time for Halloween. Netflix released some first-look images for Escape The Undertaker, which continues the streaming service’s ongoing partnership with WWE. Check out the photos below for an early look at Taker’s capers:

The Undertaker, aka Mark Calaway, officially announced his retirement from WWE last year. “For 30 long years, I’ve made that slow walk to this ring and have laid people to rest time and time again,” he told spectators at the WWE Survivor Series. “And now my time has come. My time has come to let The Undertaker rest in peace.”

Though he isn’t stepping back into the ring, The Deadman is rising from his grave once more for Netflix’s Halloween special. The WWE legend wrote an ominous note to his fans on Twitter to tease his starring role in the project. “Be careful whose door you knock on… never know who is on the other side!” Taker warned.

Escape The Undertaker will be released on Netflix on October 5 as part of this year’s Netflix and Chills lineup, which features a skele-ton of hair-raising, door-locking, keep-the-lights-on treats for streamers this coming season. Other notable additions include the forthcoming final season of Lucifer, the second season of Locke & Key, and Mike Flanagan’s Midnight Mass.

Adele Ankers is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.

With Forza Horizon 5 just around the corner, Xbox Game Studios and Playground Games have revealed a huge list of cars that players will be able to choose from when setting out across the game’s vast and diverse Mexican landscape. Despite the list already containing several hundred cars, the developer has confirmed that there’s still more to come.

Forza Motorsport’s official website currently lists 426 different vehicles to drive. Playground announced a number of debutants on the list as well as confirming that more cars would be added in due course. The post reads, “stay tuned, because this isn’t the final list for launch date. We’ll be expanding it with even more cars and manufacturers in the weeks leading up to Nov. 9, so be sure to check back regularly for all the latest updates.”

As mentioned, a number of cars will make their Forza debut in the upcoming installment of the series. From the behemoth that is the 2020 Ford Super Duty F-450 DRW Premium to the beautiful 1991 Jaguar Sport XJR-15, the Forza team says that its new additions “are the most diverse they’ve ever been in Forza history.”

From Mercs to McLarens and Audis to Aston Martins, Forza Horizon 5 doesn’t appear to have spared any expense with its selection of included makes and models. As well as the developer’s promise to announce further content in the lead-up to launch, Playground Games has also said that it will be bringing back its Festival Playlist for Forza Horizon 5, meaning that a number of new-to-franchise cars and fan favorites will make their way into the game in the months after its release. You know, if the hundreds of cars available at launch just aren’t quite enough.

Forza Horizon 5 looks to be another step up from the fourth iteration of the franchise. Not only does the game begin by literally dropping you into a volcano (and that’s just one part of the game’s hugely diverse map), it also features a new events lab mode that gives players many of the tools the team at Playground Games had when designing in-game levels.

For more on Forza Horizon 5, make sure to check out this piece where we sat down with the team at Playground Games to ask about their partnership with Mercedes, how they are pushing the game’s engine further than ever and what additions they’ll be adding to the series. Forza Horizon 5 will launch for PC, Xbox Series X|S, and Xbox One on November 9.

Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.