Telsa Inc.’s chief executive officer has a new title, as Elon Musk becomes the company’s “Technoking,” according to a filing submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Alongside Musk’s change in title, the company’s chief financial officer Zach Kirkhorn is now the “Master of Coin” over at Tesla. There’s no explanation for why both Tesla execs have new job titles at the company. However, Musk and Kirkhorn will retain their current positions as chief executive officer and chief financial officer, respectively, according to the filing.
The Wall Street Journal reports that both men’s title changes are a response of sorts to “signs of a bumpier road ahead” in the coming years. Rivaling companies like Chinese electric vehicle maker Nio are starting to cut into the company’s “market-share lead in electric-vehicle sales.”
The items in an upcoming Call of Duty store refresh for Black Ops Cold War and Warzone have seemingly leaked ahead of time, and one weapon in particular is one of the game’s most unique to date.
Coming to the in-game store on March 21 will be the NecroKing Mastercraft bundle, which includes the “Ice Drake” AR, according to the leak. As you can see in the image below, this gun is meant to look like a dragon, with the rounds emitting from the dragon’s mouth. It looks like something out of Game of Thrones. A Dragon Claw charm is also reportedly included with this bundle.
New Store Bundles for Black Ops Cold War & Warzone: — March 18: “Super Charged” Reactive Bundle — March 21: “NecroKing Mastercraft” Bundle, featuring this Ultra “Ice Drake” Mastercraft AR: pic.twitter.com/IMTpbxHDcJ
The images come from COD Tracker and CharlieIntel. Also coming to the in-game store is the Super Charged Reactive bundle, according to the leak; it supposedly launches on March 18.
Activision has yet to formally announce these new store bundles, but that information should come shortly as part of the developer’s latest weekly update blog post.
In other news, zombies are beginning to spread across the Warzone map, and Activision has released a warning to players to be on high alert. It’s expected that this is part of an ongoing tease for a nuke event that will destroy Verdansk before it’s relaunched with a Black Ops theme.
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Director and actor Taika Waititi won a Grammy for Jojo Rabbit, and he had a delightful and on-brand response to taking home the honor.
Posting on social media, he said, “Lol wtfffff” in response to the win. During his acceptance speech, Waititi said, “Well, thank you very much for this honor. I guess they’re just giving Grammys to anyone now. I’ll take it. Thank you.”
The director went on to say he can “barely remember anything” from Jojo Rabbit because he made it so long ago. “It seems like it’s never gonna go away,” he said of the Oscar-winning film. He gave his speech from his trailer in Australia where he’s currently filming Thor: Love & Thunder.
Waititi won the Grammy for Best Compilation Soundtrack Album for Visual Media for Jojo Rabbit. As people have mentioned, Waititi is now half-way to the elusive EGOT, which is the designation for people who have earned an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony award.
As mentioned, Waititi’s current project is Thor: Love & Thunder, which is due for release in February 2022. Recently, on-set photos emerged showing Matt Damon, Melissa McCarthy, and others.
Shadow Complex Remastered is now playable via backward compatibility on PS5, developer ChAIR Games has announced. According to the tweet, both the PS4 digital versions and the Limited Run Games-published physical edition of the game will now work on PS5.
Shadow Complex Remastered is a highly-regarded Metroidvania that was originally released for the Xbox 360 in 2009, breaking several sales records at the time. The game was remastered and published by co-developer Epic Games and released on every major platform in 2015 and 2016.
The Limited Run Games physical edition of Shadow Complex Remastered is now playable via backwards compatibility for Playstation 5! The PS4 digital version is also backwards compatible. pic.twitter.com/4XlkUxAKzJ
Fans have lobbied for a sequel to Shadow Complex for years at this point, but so far their pleas have gone unheeded. In a 2016 interview with GameSpot, ChAIR Games creative director Donald Mustard stated that Shadow Complex 2 already exists in a rough form, but will require at least “a year to a year and a half” of work to complete. Currently, ChAIR Games is working on Spyjinx, an espionage-themed strategy game for mobile devices. Since ChAIR is owned by Epic Games, the beta version of Spyjinx was taken off of the iOS App Store due to the ongoing legal battle between Epic and Apple over Fortnite revenue share.
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The Outer Worlds has been patched to include next-gen enhancements for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. People on social media are reporting that The Outer Worlds received an update today, March 15, that boosts the game’s frame rate up to 60fps.
A video posted on Twitter shows that the 1.0.7 update makes The Outer Worlds look a lot smoother on PS5 with the higher frame rate. An Xbox user reported that the update is about 26 GB big.
Developer Obsidian has not released any official patch notes for a new update to The Outer Worlds, but we’ll report back with all the key details when they are released.
It’s going to be a big week for The Outer Worlds, as the game’s Murder on Eridanos expansion is coming to PlayStation, Xbox, and PC on March 17. This endgame-focused expansion centers around a classic murder-mystery on the planet Eridanos, with your character having to solve a complex and strange “whodunit” to uncover who assassinated the spokesperson for a new brand of space vodka.
The $15 USD expansion will mark the end of content coming to The Outer Worlds. For more on the game, be sure to check out our gameplay video above that showcases the opening sections of the DLC, along with a look at one of the side quests.
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Epic and Nintendo are releasing another piece of special-edition Fortnite hardware, a pair of themed Switch Joy-Con controllers. The controllers come with a Fortnite-themed paintjob, and just for good measure, they include some cosmetic DLC as well. The Joy-Con two-pack is coming on June 4.
The package includes a blue left Joy-Con and a yellow right Joy-Con, and the yellow one has an extra design element to look like Peely the banana. The set also includes the Fleet Force bundle, which grants you back bling, glowing weapons, and 500 V-Bucks. The announcement didn’t give a price for the set, but Joy-Con bundles typically cost $80.
Nintendo has offered special hardware based on the popular battle royale game before, having made the system itself sport a Fortnite makeover. The Wildcat bundle also included a yellow-and-blue color scheme, but reversed and with other Fortnite design elements on the Switch itself and the dock.
Gear up in style with the Joy-Con Fortnite Fleet Force Bundle, available June 4! Includes a uniquely designed yellow Joy-Con and blue Joy-Con, 500 V-Bucks & a download code for in-game cosmetics.
Meanwhile, Fortnite Chapter 2, Season 6 is on the horizon, set to release on March 16. Epic has started to issue teasers hinting at how the story may handle the big seasonal changeover. Downtime for will begin at midnight ET on March 16, and the patch is said to be larger than usual.
Just a few weeks after its launch, Nvidia’s RTX 3060 has had its Ethereum blocking measures circumvented by a beta driver the company issued itself to users.
The latest 470.05 driver for Nvidia GPUs has lifted the restriction on Ethereum mining on the company’s latest card, which was marketed as the first in the RTX line to feature silicon-level restrictions for mining. Various outlets have now confirmed that the driver overcomes this without any additional tweaks, with ComputerBase, HardwareLuxx, and PC Watch all confirming hash rates well over double previous rates before the driver update.
This is bad news if you were planning to secure the already scarce card, and it drastically reduces the value proposition of Nvidia’s planned mining-focused CMP GPU range. Gaming GPUs are more valuable on the secondhand market given their ability to output video and still play games without issues even after extended mining periods, giving miners options to recoup costs if profitability dives over the next few months.
Coupled with the silicon shortages that have been making GPU production difficult for both Nvidia and AMD, both companies have taken aim at miners to try and find a solution around stock issues for gaming clients. AMD is planning to launch its new RX 6700 XT in waves on its own website to prevent day-one sell outs, but it’s almost impossible to determine who is buying up cards in large quantities regardless.
This is especially embarrassing for Nvidia, which tried to market the security measure as more sophisticated than just a driver limitation. “It’s not just a driver thing,” wrote Nvidia’s head of communications Bryan Del Rizzo on Twitter last month. “There is a secure handshake between the driver, the RTX 3060 silicon, and the BIOS (firmware) that prevents removal of the hash rate limiter.”
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Amazon’s Lord of the Rings TV series has lost a cast member, who quit the project after Amazon reportedly decided to go a different direction with his character.
Tom Budge announced on Instagram that he has left Amazon’s series over the creative changes. “After recently seeing the first episodes shot over the last year Amazon has decided to go in another direction with the character I was portraying,” Budge said.
He included a video of the Johnny Cash song “Ring of Fire” in his post, which will surely prompt speculation regarding his intentions of using that song.
“I must thank the creative team for their encouragement towards trying something that I believed was new, exciting, and beautiful,” he said. “And I sincerely thank the extraordinary cast and crew for their love, support and friendship over what has been a very difficult and unusual experience. Alas, some things just cannot be.”
Very little is known about Amazon’s Lord of the Rings series, apart from the fact that it’s set in the Second Age, which is long before the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. We don’t know which character Budge was playing nor do we have any idea about the changes he’s talking about.
If you’re a fan of the Lord of the Rings film franchise, odds are that after you watch the Extended Editions there was no going back to the theatrical cuts after seeing how the additional material enriches the story. That goes triple for Zack Snyder’s Justice League. What was released as a sloppy, lighthearted team-up of quippy heroes rises like a dead Kryptonian from a Genesis Chamber… ready for a second chance (you know, after trying to murder his Leaguemates). The fabled “Snyder Cut” elevates Justice League into something well worth watching.
The set-up of Zack Snyder’s Justice League, in broad terms, remains the same as the theatrical cut: after Superman (Henry Cavill) sacrifices himself to kill Doomsday, Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) resolves to put together a team of heroes to defend Earth from an oncoming alien threat. But with double the runtime to spend on establishing context around key events, how that story is told this time around far more coherent and engaging. Where the theatrical cut raced from action scene to action scene, Zack Snyder’s Justice League is a methodical slow-burn and has a much deeper interest in exploring its characters and lore than you may expect.
Nearly every character in Zack Snyder’s Justice League, from the top down, has a clearer journey and more dimension. There’s no one that exemplifies that better than Ray Fisher’s Cyborg, who saw the vast majority of his backstory cut in Justice League’s 2017 release. It’s frankly stunning how engaging Victor Stone is here compared to the robotic (sorry), bland iteration in the theatrical cut. Snyder’s version of Victor plays up the gothic horror aspect of the college student given a second chance at life through his father Silas’ (Joe Morton) experimentations with a Mother Box, and their conflicted relationship is given new dimension in several new scenes together. Victor’s struggle to accept his new circumstances is played with nuance by Fisher and colors everything the character does, from his early reluctance to aid the heroes to his eventual acceptance of his responsibility to use his power for good.
Like Cyborg, Batman’s characterization is almost entirely different this time. This Bruce Wayne has been irrevocably changed by Superman’s sacrifice, and here serves as the standard-bearer for the hope that Jor-El sent his son to Earth to inspire. Bruce’s struggle to put the isolation that’s come to define him in the past and assume a leadership role amongst these wildly different heroes is given gravity by how earnestly Affleck plays his reverence for the Man of Steel and the ideal he represented. This is the kind of Bruce Wayne who will turn to a skeptical Alfred (Jeremy Irons), grin, and say “Faith, Alfred! Faith!” That’s a far cry from being one “Martha” away from running Superman through with a Kryptonite spear. Also, he gets to drop an absolute banger of an F-bomb at one point. Hearing Batman say f*** is rad.
Bruce’s faith in Superman, as we know, pays off. Superman’s resurrection plays far better with more of a lead-up and, once he gets over his “destroy whoever ever I see” instinct, Clark gets a moment to shine back at the Kent family farm. His reunion with Lois Lane (Amy Adams) and Martha Kent (Diane Lane) is much more emotional thanks to Snyder’s increased focus on how devastated the two were by his death. However, one way in which Snyder’s cut doesn’t vary much from the theatrical cut in conception is that Superman’s role is limited by design; but here at least, he’s far more prevalent as a symbol for our heroes.
Snyder presents Ezra Miller’s Barry Allen as farther along in mastering his powers than the theatrical cut did, including an entirely different introduction scene. The boost in confidence he gains from that levels out the earlier version’s manic energy. He remains the comic relief character and fills that role well, as he’s still a green enough hero to freak out when entering the Batcave for the first time. Snyder doubles down on Flash in the finale, with spectacular use of the Speed Force that raises the bar for his eventual solo film.
Like Cyborg, Arthur Curry (Jason Momoa) has little interest in playing nice with the team at first. Snyder draws out Aquaman’s eventual decision to join the League with more explanation about why he’s resisted his Atlantean heritage, the focus of restored scenes featuring Willem Dafoe’s Vulko (and Vulko’s luscious locks, which apparently he decides to start man-bunning by the time we see him in 2018’s Aquaman). Arthur’s story feels like little more than a set-up to give him a fuller arc in his own movie, but at least this time we have a clearer picture of where Arthur’s at and some of why he harbors so much resentment towards Atlantis.
Of all the heroes, Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) ends up benefitting least from the extra runtime. As the Amazons prove to have the most information on Darkseid and his prior failure to conquer Earth, Diana is often relegated to delivering historical exposition. In battle, though, Wonder Woman is deadly as hell. Free from the restrictions of the PG-13 rating imposed on the theatrical cut, Snyder has no problem letting Diana’s inner demigod off the chain, notably in her first fight scene where she just obliterates a room full of terrorists and cracks a couple of skulls against the walls as she goes.
Meanwhile, attention is paid to the near-universal criticism lobbed at the theatrical cut’s villain Steppenwolf, where his vague motives and uninteresting personality left his only real contribution to the movie giving the League someone to punch in the final battle. Zack Snyder’s Justice League repositions Steppenwolf as an outcast, desperate to make good on his failures and get back into Darkseid’s good graces by delivering him Earth. With a more imposing costume and savagery on the battlefield the R-rating takes advantage of, Steppenwolf starts off with actual motivations this time (and his eventual fate is so much cooler). But once Darkseid decides to start taking his calls again, Steppenwolf stalls out a bit. It doesn’t help that Snyder introduces another McGuffin that Darkseid’s after, and the Big Bad’s desire for it starts to overshadow what Steppenwolf’s doing with the Mother Boxes back on Earth.
The action benefits from Snyder’s experienced hand in that department. Clashes between heroes and villains feel more visceral this time and each hero gets multiple moments to shine. However, while each battle does play out with more energy, it’s in these scenes where some of the additional, less polished VFX work is more noticeable.
It’s not just the action that’s been revamped: Danny Elfman’s score has been replaced by a much punchier one courtesy of Junkie XL, aka Thomas Holkenborg. Snyder’s Justice League also eschews the widescreen format of its theatrical release in favor of a 1:33:1 square frame that seems destined to fill IMAX screens when we’re in happier times. The new framing doesn’t detract from the experience of watching from home, but it certainly feels more suited to a big screen. If it’s a big enough bother, most TVs have a zoom function that you could use to make it fill the screen (but come on, don’t do that.)
While the majority of changes Zack Snyder’s Justice League makes to the theatrical cut feel vital, some of the material veers into fan service for its own sake. When so much of the movie is working with only what it needs to spin its four-hour yarn, that becomes more noticeable. For instance, while Superman’s black suit may be comics-accurate for a revived Man of Steel, its significance is only passingly referenced, which felt like a missed opportunity to say something about Clark’s ideology post-resurrection. And it’s no secret that Martian Manhunter debuts here in this version of Justice League, but his contributions are minimal and do more to distract than to serve the story. Case in point: his entrance kind of retroactively ruins a sweet moment between two characters once you know one was actually the shape-shifting green man from space.
Similarly, while the epilogue’s newly shot Knightmare scene may give us another window into days of DC future yet to pass, it feels a little indulgent to spend time seeding out story arcs that will most likely go unfulfilled; especially as this scene is tacked on after an otherwise-cogent coda which nicely sums up the characters’ arcs. With that said, the touted encounter between Ben Affleck’s Batman and Jared Leto’s Joker, while brief, doesn’t disappoint. The bloody history between the two looms large over their tense exchange, which is a highlight for both actors’ tenure in their roles.
For better or worse, the superhero niche of pop culture is full of bizarre cultural artifacts, from the comics themselves to the TV and movies they inspire. Zack Snyder’s Justice League–more colloquially known as “The Snyder Cut”–is just another in a long line of puzzling cape-and-cowl franchise moments. The four hour long re-cut of the 2018 box office bomb, complete with extra scenes and re-shoots will land on HBO Max on March 18 and–well, if you’ve ever been brave enough to ask the question “is it possible for a superhero movie to feel like watching paint dry?” This one’s for you.
It will be easier to recount the parts of Justice League that actually do see some benefit from the re-cut treatment first. Villain Steppenwolf has been given a design overhaul that looks much better than its theatrical counterpart and an entirely new subplot dealing with his motivations has been added for extra context and it does work, for the most part. DC Comics big bads like Darkseid and DeSaad have been added as well, granting the bizarre MacGuffin fetch quest and resulting CGI punch out some gravity. This, however, makes up about twenty total minutes of the extra-long runtime and most, if not all, of the extra villain scenes are done with a distracting mishmash of old and new VFX that give them a dated video game cut-scene feel.
The new stuff also feels very, very crowded with a bunch of vestigial old stuff that remained from the theatrical version. Yes, Steppenwolf has a motivation now and an explicit set of stakes, but they’re all pasted on top of the rest–the Lord of the Rings flavored motherbox MacGuffins, “The Unity” terraforming gambit which we still learn about entirely through non sequitur expository one-liners–it’s all still there. The excess might feel decadent had any of it been delivered in an interesting way, but instead we’re left with characters (mostly Wonder Woman) practically looking directly into the camera to explain the backstory to the audience.
While Wonder Woman and Batman are relegated to exposition machine status and Superman only shows back up over two hours in, Cyborg, Flash, and Aquaman get some added screen time. Unfortunately, Cyborg is the only one who actually sees any benefit from the bonus content with some genuinely interesting glimpses into Victor Stone’s inner world, motivations, and existential responsibilities with his unique powerset. Barry Allen, on the other hand, gets a strange and ultimately deeply uncomfortable moment with a woman he rescues that makes him come off as equal parts obnoxious and creepy. The woman is, of course, Kiersey Clemons’ Iris West, but she’s never actually named and has no dialogue so there’s nothing to indicate this character’s identity at all if you weren’t already clued in to the casting choice well in advance. Meanwhile, Aquaman shares a few new scenes with Vulko (Willem Dafoe) and Mera (Amber Heard) that do little but meander aimlessly around vague Atlantean concepts that, since Justice League’s original theatrical release, have been better explored in the solo Aquaman film.
Snyder’s bizarre choice to render the movie in a 4:3 pillarboxed aspect ratio gives it the feel of a sloppily cut together amateur fan video–the sort of thing you might have encountered in a Quicktime player back in the early ’00s on someone’s Final Fantasy villain fan shrine. This effect is exacerbated by the relentless use of slow-mo musical stingers. The first hour has no fewer than three scenes where what would have been a ten-second blip is smeared out into a minute or more, complete with its own mournful, dirge-like soundtrack. The back half trades in music for voice overs, exclusively from the perspectives of fathers and sons, but the function is the same–racking up runtime in the most unenjoyable way possible.
Taking up time seems to be the name of the game for most of the cut–whole scenes exist to engineer deeply contrived explanations for things that need no explaining while actual gaps in the plot’s logic are dismissed out of hand. If you were worried about how, exactly, Batman’s bracers can withstand the energy blasts from a Parademon, The Snyder Cut has you covered in meticulous detail. If you want to know why Cyborg, who has direct access to every single piece of technology on the planet at his fingertips, Batman, who has a satellite that can pinpoint any object on Earth, or Superman, who can hear conflict happening across the globe from anywhere, can’t seem to find an entire Russian town cut off from the grid by a giant, glowing energy field without the help of a sci-fi GPS tag, you’re out of luck.
At this point it really must be said that a streaming release is the Snyder Cut’s only gift to us. Being able to pause and resume it freely is the one thing standing in the way of it feeling like a cruel endurance test.
That said, it would be pointless to critique Justice League against anything but its own rubric. In a pop culture ecosystem dominated by massive franchises, reinvention of superhero characters is the norm, so any effort spent trying to wring hands about how Batman doesn’t feel like Batman when he’s mowing down aliens with a gatling gun or Superman doesn’t work when he’s scowling is moot. These characters, in the form Snyder has given them, probably could have worked if they existed in a better movie. The performances–when they’re actual performances and not CGI ragdolls being hurled around the screen–are solid. But they never get to be more than that–a cluster of serviceable actors doing an okay job at not looking like they’re addressing ping pong balls on sticks in front of green screens.
None of which is to say that the theatrical version is somehow the superior cut of the film–it’s not. The temptation to crown a “winner” between the two versions is obviously there, but doing so largely misses the point. You now have a choice between a slightly shorter uninspired mess of a movie, or a longer one.