Marvel Studios disrupted its decade-long tradition of including a post-credits teaser for its next movie for the first time in Avengers: Endgame. Rather than getting a glimpse into whatever the MCU had waiting in the wings, fans sat through Endgame’s credits to be treated only to the Marvel Studios logo and the clang-clang-clang sound effect of Tony Stark’s hammer forging his Iron Man armor. No “The Avengers will return” message, no playful post-battle dinner break, just the slightest nod to the origins of the franchise to send audiences on their way. Avengers: Endgame spoilers ahead.
Except, that won’t be the case for much longer. According to Deadline, starting this weekend the new Spider-Man: Far From Home trailer will now take the place of the solemn post-credits void. Released earlier this week complete with a “spoiler warning” given by Peter Parker himself, Tom Holland, the trailer sets up a few interesting things in the MCU–a multiverse, for one, and the fallout of a post-Tony Stark world, for another. It also provided us with a more in-depth look at Jake Gyllenhaal’s new potential villain, Quentin Beck aka Mysterio.
Before the movie, Holland’s message will play–not as a spoiler warning for Endgame, but as a reminder to “stick around after the movie” for a preview of Far From Home.
When Endgame first came out, opting out of the usual post-credits stinger felt like the right choice, according to GameSpot’s Mat Elfring, who wrote, “Aside from the fact that this all brings a natural conclusion to the Infinity Saga, even though Spider-Man: Far From Home ends Phase 3 now, we don’t need to see what comes next because we get great resolutions during the final moments of the movie. We don’t need to be hyped up for the next movie because the focus at the end of Endgame should be on where our favorite heroes end up before the credits roll.”
Spider-Man: Far From Home hits theaters on July 2. Phase 4 movies beyond that still have not been specifically announced, although we know many of the films and TV shows to expect. Disney recently revealed a bunch of Marvel release dates for the coming years, although it didn’t specify which films those were each for. We’ll apparently be learning more about what’s to come later this summer.
Epic Games has announced it’s hosting a Fortnite party just after E3 2019. The two-day event will start on June 15 at The Forum in Inglewood, California. Though not officially tied to E3, it is relatively close to the Los Angeles Convention Center and takes place just a couple days after E3–and its press conferences–end. If you’re already going to the industry event you may want to stay a couple days to relax and party.
The event will kick off with a Creative tournament on June 15 featuring celebrities and streamers. That tourney will include a new player-made game designed just for the event. Then on June 16, the event will host the Celebrity Pro-Am. Planned attendees include Ninja, Brendon Urie from Panic! At The Disco, Dillon Francis, KittyPlays, Cray and Jordan Fisher.
Pre-sale registration through Ticketmaster is now open, which will register you as a “Verified Fan” and gain you access to the sale period. That will put you in the pool to be notified about the ticket sales, to begin later. Battlepass pre-sale tickets will begin on Saturday, May 11 at 10 AM PT through Monday, May 13. Then Verified Fan pre-sales will begin on Wednesday, May 15 at 10 AM PT and run through Thursday, May 16. General public sales will begin the next day.
Tickets for the event will start at $35, and includes both days of events and tournaments along with other themed Fortnite activities like ziplining and Fortnite Mini Golf. You can even eat at Durr Burger, Pizza Pete’s, and Sofdeez Ice Cream Shop.
In the game proper, Fortnite Season 9 has just kicked off with a new futuristic theme. You can see the new skins and goodies and what’s changed for this season, and check out our challenge guide to unlock all the loot. There also appears to be another movie-themed mode on the way, after a leak of a John Wick update.
Sony released Raising Kratos this morning, a feature-length documentary following Santa Monica Studio’s development of God of War for PlayStation 4. This nearly 2-hour long documentary covers the entire production cycle of the game, from inception to demo crunches to the game going gold.
The Detective Pikachu movie does a great job of making the world of Pokemon feel real and lived in. There’s a whole lot of backstory from the Pokemon movies and TV show sprinkled throughout (not to mention just a ridiculous number of Pokemon hanging around), and the movie is aware of and referential to a lot of it–which offers a bunch of cool callbacks and Easter eggs for Pokemon fans, and a great deal of world-building for those who aren’t as familiar with the franchise.
But Detective Pikachu’s self-awareness also means it’s willing to make jokes about some of the weirder bits of Pokemon lore, like the backstory surrounding one cute Pokemon who may be the world’s saddest: Cubone.
Early on in the movie, Tim heads out in an attempt to capture a lonely Cubone with his pal Jack. As Jack notes, capturing a Pokemon is as much about the Pokemon choosing to team with the human as it is the reverse, so Tim tries to talk to the Cubone and gain its trust, and makes a comment about the skull the Cubone wears on its head: the skull of its dead relative, as Tim notes. If you’re unfamiliar with Cubone’s backstory, that sounds a bit weird, but the actual lore surrounding the Pokémon is even weirder.
Tim’s right: Cubone wears the skull of a dead relative as a hat. In fact, that’s the skull of its dead mother. The circumstances of how every since Cubone’s mother died is never discussed, but it’s seemingly a pervasive tragedy. Wearing the skull doesn’t seem like a great way to deal with that trauma, to say nothing of how extremely morbid and fairly gross it is.
To make the whole thing a little sadder, here’s the official Pokemon Company Pokedex entry for Cubone, which is the one that appears in Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire:
“Cubone pines for the mother it will never see again. Seeing a likeness of its mother in the full moon, it cries. The stains on the skull the Pokemon wears are made by the tears it sheds.”
Yikes. In the movie, Jack jokes that Cubone would be a great Pokemon for Tim because they’re both lonely, but that is a lot of baggage. It gets even more intense.
In the movie, Tim and Jack find the Cubone because of its mournful cries (which echo in the skull and come out as a sad melody, according to Pokemon Yellow), which Jack said his mother previously heard. Pokedex entries in Sun elaborate on that even further: The crying sounds are how a Cubone predator called Mandibuzz finds its prey. So not only is Cubone constantly sad and crying, but those cries will often lead to it getting eaten by another Pokemon.
The Moon entry at least adds a bright spot, suggesting that Cubone can heal from its trauma (if it survives!) and get over its mother’s death, stating that when it comes to terms with the tragedy, it will evolve into the larger, tougher Marowak. But rather than just go about its life finally happy, Marowak trades its sadness for a new drive: vengeance. Sun and Moon’s Pokedex entries say Marowak goes after revenge on Mandibuzz–which suggests Mandibuzz killed its mom in the first place.
One last tidbit: Sun and Moon added special versions of first-generation Pokemon to fit the games’ tropical Alola region, and the Alolan Marowak gives a slight bit of additional context. Though Cubone’s mom is dead, she’s not actually gone, according to the Pokedex:
“The bones it possesses were once its mother’s. Its mother’s regrets have become like a vengeful spirit protecting this Pokemon.”
Just to sum up, Cubone wears its mom’s skull on its head, its cries of mourning get it attacked by a predator, it finally deals with its loss and evolves into a revenge machine, and it gets help from its dead mom’s spirit in its never-ending battle with Mandibuzz.
Guess it makes sense that Detective Pikachu didn’t want to get much deeper into the ridiculous Game of Thrones drama surrounding Cubone. Hopefully that Cubone who didn’t feel like getting caught by Tim is okay.
The Detective Pikachu movie has finally arrived in theaters, and the pop culture hive mind has reached a consensus: It’s good!
There’s one scene that stands out above all the rest in terms of humor, inventiveness, and sheer insanity. That, of course, is the Mr. Mime scene glimpsed in the movie’s trailers.
When the trailers first debuted, it seemed like a pretty good joke–Tim Goodman (Justice Smith) and Pikachu (Ryan Reynolds) interrogate a Mr. Mime, who attempts to flummox the detective duo using his psychic miming powers. Tim and Pikachu decide to play along, and hilarity ensues as Mr. Mime gets a taste of his own medicine. But nobody guessed based on those previews how far the scene would go–or how dark it would get, as the movie briefly starts to resemble the Quentin Tarantino classic Reservoir Dogs more than something based on an animated show about kids who collect cute creatures.
Naturally, when we got the chance to chat with Detective Pikachu director Rob Letterman and star Justice Smith, we had to ask about the Mr. Mime scene. How did it come to be? What were its inspirations? And as they planned out a scene in which the movie’s heroes maybe burn a Pokemon to death with psychic fire, were they ever worried that it was getting too dark in tone?
Letterman said the inspiration for the scene was actually even “darker than Reservoir Dogs”–a movie in which, famously, Michael Madsen dances around to the song “Stuck In The Middle With You” while sawing off Kirk Baltz’s ear.
“I had to pitch it to The Pokemon Company, and I used a frame grab from Seven,” he explained, referencing the 1995 David Fincher movie about the hunt for a serial killer. The director had the art department paint Mr. Mime over Kevin Spacey during an interrogation scene, and when The Pokemon Company let him know–“miraculously,” as Letterman put it–that they were somehow OK with that tone, he went from there.
Kevin Spacey in Seven
Letterman began “scouring the internet” for mime reference materials and footage, and he came across the physical comedy of New Zealand performer Trygve Wakenshaw. “I chased him down, found him in Prague, flew him to London…In rehearsal, we’d basically workshop that scene the way you do a stage play, with Trygve, until I got all the physical comedy jokes done,” Letterman recalled. The scene then evolved through countless rehearsals, with Ryan Reynolds, in facial capture gear, riffing his lines as Trygve and Smith improvised the miming.
“It sort of evolved just through performance, and the traditional way you would rehearse with the actors,” Letterman said.
“It was a lot of fun, but we definitely thought that that scene was going to get cut while we were shooting it,” Smith added. “But it ended up being a lot of people’s favorite scene in the movie. I know it’s one of my favorite scenes.”
With Smith’s performance captured, the scene went to the animators, who used Trygve’s “crazy performances” (as Letterman put it) as inspiration for Mr. Mime’s movements.
“We had the most talented effects animators around the world. They all poured a lot of love into that scene,” the director said.
Yet despite being one of Detective Pikachu’s best scenes, it almost didn’t make it into the movie at all–and Smith wasn’t the only person who thought it would get cut. “Full confession, the day we started shooting it, when Justice showed up, there was a stool and a lamp, and that was it,” Letterman recalled. “I remember Justice and I looked at each other like, ‘This is never going to work. We’re going to cut this in a second, there’s no way this is going to come together.'”
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And, in fact, Letterman did try to cut the scene at one point, but the film’s producers intervened. “I tried to cut it early on,” he said. “I was like, ‘I’m not even going to bother animating. There’s no way. It’s just too weird and crazy.’ And, fortunately, the producers told me I was an idiot, and we can keep going. So, we dove in and just started to build it.”
As for whether the scene is too dark in tone, it actually seems to fit surprisingly well. Pokemon as a franchise has fans of all ages, even though you could argue that it’s primarily aimed at kids. Detective Pikachu is definitely safe for young fans as well as older ones, but with its gritty, noir-ish gumshoe vibe, it may be the most mature Pokemon’s ever been.
“I think that’s what the movie does well–it has an edge to it,” Smith said. “I think we actually embraced that, because we wanted it to have this film noir aesthetic–we wanted it to be kind of gritty.”
Pokemon Detective Pikachu starring Ryan Reynolds is now in theaters. The movie, which is based on the 2018 3DS game, explores a different side of the Pokemon universe than you might be used to. Here, in Ryme City, Pokemon live alongside people in a battle-free zone, doing work and providing companionship. But still, Detective Pikachu is a little different.
The movie focuses on Tim Goodman (Justice Smith), who travels to Ryme City after his father, Harry, has an accident. There, Tim meets Detective Pikachu (Reynolds), who he is able to communicate with–yet no other humans can understand him. Together, they investigate what happened to Harry and to Detective Pikachu’s memory. They meet quite a few Pokemon along the way.
Detective Pikachu includes Pokemon from every generation of Pokemon games to date aside from the unreleased Pokemon Sword and Shield. Many of these Pokemon appear throughout Ryme City, walking or flying among humans and other Pokemon. Others appear in posters and signs or are otherwise mentioned in the movie, which means they exist in the world somewhere. This feature includes every single Pokemon or Pokemon mention we found in Detective Pikachu. Spoilers ahead!
