Marvel originally hired Patty Jenkins to direct Thor: The Dark World, following her Oscar-winning movie Monster starring Charlize Theron. However, Jenkins dropped out just three months after joining the project, citing “creative differences.” But now, years later, Jenkins is speaking more about why she quit the movie, and it’s now plain to see why did not want to be a part of it.
She told Vanity Fair that she was wary to direct the movie because the script wasn’t good enough. She feared that, if the movie was a dud, people would blame her.
“I did not believe that I could make a good movie out of the script that they were planning on doing. I think it would have been a huge deal–it would have looked like it was my fault,” Jenkins said. “It would’ve looked like, ‘Oh my God, this woman directed it and she missed all these things.’ That was the one time in my career where I really felt like, ‘Do this with [another director] and it’s not going to be a big deal. And maybe they’ll understand it and love it more than I do.”
Jenkins added: “You can’t do movies you don’t believe in.”
After parting ways with Jenkins, Marvel hired Game of Thrones and The Sopranos veteran Alan Taylor to direct Thor: The Dark World. The movie was written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, who also wrote the final Avengers films, alongside Christopher Yost, who would go on to write Thor: Ragnarok.
Jenkins did get another shot in the superhero movie space with 2017’s Wonder Woman, of course, and this movie was an enormous critical and commercial success. She said in the interview that she has “nothing but positive things to say about Marvel,” in part because they gave her the chance in the first place. Jenkins also mentioned that Thor has finally found its “rightful director” in Taika Waititi, who directed Thor: Ragnarok and is also attached to direct Thor: Love and Thunder.
Amazon Prime is adding all of the classic Bond films to its library this April. Now is the perfect time for a movie marathon, what with everything cancelled and being forced to remain indoors at all times. If you’ve never seen the old Bond films, it’s definitely worth seeing at least some of these titles just to say that you have, like watching The Godfather or Citizen Kane.
In case you are new to the franchise, there is an enormous amount of material to start making your way through, although the Daniel Craig films are not include–it’s every Bond from from 1962 to 2002.
Here is a full list of all the Bond films being added:
Dr. No (1962)
From Russia with Love (1963)
Goldfinger (1964)
Thunderball (1965)
You Only Live Twice (1967)
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)
Diamonds Are Forever (1971)
Live and Let Die (1973)
The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)
The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
Moonraker (1979)
For Your Eyes Only (1981)
Octopussy (1983)
Never Say Never Again (1983)
A View to a Kill (1985)
The Living Daylights (1987)
Licence to Kill (1989)
GoldenEye (1995)
Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
The World Is Not Enough (1999)
Die Another Day (2002)
These titles are all available to stream in 4K Ultra HD. Whether you chose to watch them in sequential order, or just pick out the best ones is up to you.
While some of the films play as quite misogynistic these days, the writing and acting still stands up. Check out these classics come April 1 on Amazon Prime.
Amazon Prime members can also claim five free games this month.
Star Trek: Picard’s best aspect is also its biggest issue: It has one foot firmly in the past of the long-running sci-fi franchise, and another in a more modern, darker present. The show is a big, fan-servicey return to the story of legendary Starfleet captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart), complete with visits from a few beloved characters along the way, and no end of Easter eggs and references that often feel like high-fives to the dedicated viewers who’ve been enjoying the sci-fi franchise for decades, especially in the mid-1990s. Throughout its first season, it often works to update those series, reimagining some of their best ideas through the frame of the modern world. Though it can get bogged down in its attention to Treks of the past, Picard is a darker look at a future that challenges the franchise, not by just telling the stories of great people doing great things–but by amplifying their flaws and forcing them to choose to be better.
Picard picks up the story of Jean-Luc 15 years after he’s suffered a major failure: He attempted to lead Starfleet in an enormous rescue to save the endangered Romulans, the Federation’s oldest enemies. An immense tragedy, the destruction of the Starfleet’s rescue fleet, led to the Federation abandoning the plans to save the Romulans and Picard’s resignation in protest. More than a decade later, the series finds him languishing in his French vineyard, while Earth’s branch of the Federation has become isolationist and bigoted. Hardship and injustice have festered, especially against synthetic lifeforms, the apparent perpetrators of the tragedy–and Jean-Luc has done little in the intervening years to stop it. That’s a stark contrast to the unwaveringly principled captain seen in The Next Generation, which makes it a perfect starting point for Star Trek: Picard.
Picard is shaken out of his complacency with the arrival of Dahj (Isa Briones), a young woman being hunted by Romulan assassins, on Picard’s doorstep. Dahj turns out to be a synthetic created in violation of the ban from the remnants of Data (Brent Spiner), Picard’s former android crewmember and old friend, who died to save Picard’s life. Stirred by his loyalty and friendship for Data, Picard takes it upon himself to protect Dahj and her sister, Soji, gathering a ragtag crew and taking to the captain’s chair one last time.
The season is slow to start, especially as it gets bogged down in setting up a world that’s something like 30 years ahead of where The Next Generation left off. After the first three episodes, though, Picard hits its stride as it fuses two Star Trek identities: the more action-packed, adventure-focused takes of more recent Trek movies, and the moralistic, cerebral approach of The Next Generation. It’s a hybrid that mostly works, too, with Picard occasionally interspersing fun, well-produced action and fight scenes with the moral quandaries and diplomatic conundrums of the Enterprise’s voyages. In a lot of ways, slick CGI space battles and choreographed hand-to-hand fights between Romulan agents and super-fast androids make Picard a more modern take on the franchise. With the budget and the effects technology, some of The Next Generation might have looked a little more like Picard.
The darker, more modern take on Star Trek also makes Picard feel more relevant to the world in which we’re watching it. The show focuses on the plights of refugees, including the Romulan survivors who were scattered across the galaxy after the failed rescue, and the XBs, victims assimilated by the deadly cybernetic Borg who have been freed from enslavement to its Collective, but who are still mistrusted and exploited. The Starfleet of the future is more insular, abandoning much of its focus on exploration of the galaxy and understanding other life and cultures. It’s a Star Trek that uses the lens of science fiction to explore the plights and issues of a more reactionary world than the one in which The Next Generation was made.
But much of Picard’s power comes from its dedication to the past. Few opportunities slip past for references to The Next Generation, Voyager, Deep Space Nine, or the Star Trek movies. It’s not all just about appeasing Trekkers, though–Picard has a deep, encyclopedic knowledge of everything that’s happened to its characters over the years, and does a brilliant job of rejoining their stories, exploring their traumas, and advancing their characters in ways that feel true to them.
The new additions to Picard, however, function less well. Where returning characters like Jean-Luc and Voyager’s Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) get the benefit of the show building on their lengthy histories, the new ragtag crew often don’t really have enough to do, even as the show spends a little time rounding out their backstories. Jean-Luc’s often-drunk former first officer, Raffi (Michelle Hurd), exists to tap away on holographic computers; what interesting conflict she has with Jean-Luc, based on him abandoning her after the Romulan rescue along with everything else, evaporates not long into the season. The same is true for cyberneticist Agnes Jurati (Alison Pill), who struggles with her role in the creation of Dahj, Soji, and the other synthetics, but who gets back to normal for plot reasons.
Rios (Santiago Cabrera), the hardnosed captain of the ship Picard hires, is mostly just angry and stoic, and the childishly idealistic, sword-wielding warrior Elnor (Evan Evagora) seems to primarily exist for fight scenes and innocently misunderstanding situations for laughs. There’s also Narek (Harry Treadaway), a Romulan spy tasked with getting close to Soji, who struggles a bit with his task but never really evolves as a character because of it.
All of the characters are interesting, with well-built backstories and strong performances, but none can really take the room needed to grow with the show so often putting a hard focus on Picard and Soji, who spends most of the season unaware of her nature as an android and slowly catching up to a point the audience reached much earlier.
It all makes Picard’s 10-episode run feel just a touch too short to really expand on any of the new characters, especially with the show making lots of detours down the memory lane of The Next Generation. As mentioned, those looks to the past are strong if you’re an established Trek fan, but they often hobble the show’s present. Much of what goes on Season 1 of Picard feels like it’s setup for a more fleshed-out Season 2.
Still, there’s a lot Picard does right. Its update on the Star Trek formula is a sorely needed catch-up to the modern world that makes it feel like Trek has something important to say, and its signature optimism is a perfect fit for the times. It’s also keenly aware of everything that made Jean-Luc Picard such a resonant character, and it revisits those aspects without retreading old ground. On the whole, Star Trek: Picard does well to bring Treks of the past forward, and for fans of Jean-Luc and The Next Generation, it’s a powerful and emotional revisit to beloved characters.
Disclosure: ViacomCBS is GameSpot’s parent company.
Below, Capy’s unrelentingly difficult 2018 roguelike exploration title, is coming to PlayStation 4 on April 7 for $25. As previously announced, it’ll come with a new mode that will make the game more palatable for players who did not enjoy the level of challenge offered up in the original release, and Xbox One and PC players will get that mode as well in a free update.
Explore mode will lower the game’s difficulty without eliminating it, so players should still find it challenging–just not quite as difficult as the default mode (now called Survive mode).
Here’s the full list of changes in Explore mode, as outlined on Capy’s website:
Changes to Survival
No Hunger or Thirst
Can’t drink puddles or bottles
Bottles still need to be filled with water for cooking soup
Soups restore health
Death’s door teleport to island
Avoids the issue of jumping down without enough lamp juice to open the door
World Entity changes
Fire Pillars
Chance to drop embers
Fires don’t burn out until you die
Invincible, can’t be broken with bombs
No one-hit deaths
No iron maiden
EXPLORE Damage Changes
All damage is bleed damage, giving the player time to stop the bleeding
EXPLORE Checkpoints/Campfires
Don’t clear after use
Still only one active at a time
Mode-specific Saves
New Save slot for EXPLORE
New SURVIVE mode on main menu (original mode)
Existing progress saved as SURVIVE mode slot
Below received a 6/10 in GameSpot’s review, and it was criticized for the way it will “eventually turn into a slog for all but the most committed of players.” Explore mode has the potential to mitigate some of these complaints. It was initially available on Xbox Game Pass, but has since left the service.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons has finally arrived on Nintendo Switch. Even if you’re a series veteran, New Horizons introduces a lot of new elements to the mix that shake up the usual day-to-day gameplay in some interesting and unexpected ways. Nintendo has shown off some of these in trailers and presentations in the lead up to the game’s release, but there are still many others that you may not be familiar with, so we’re here to help.
In the video above, we go over nine things in New Horizons that you’ll definitely want to know about before settling down on your new deserted island home, from how to get the handy new ladder to how to move buildings and add best friends. We also share some more helpful tips, including a good trick to use when you’re trying to catch fish.
New Horizons has been receiving great reviews from critics, including GameSpot. We gave the title an 8/10 in our Animal Crossing: New Horizons review-in-progress. Reviewer Kallie Plagge wrote, “So far, I’ve played Animal Crossing: New Horizons for 80 hours over 17 days, and that anticipation hasn’t yet gone away. While I’ve spent a lot of time developing my island so far, I still feel as if there’s plenty left for me to do and see–there’s a lot in New Horizons to occupy your time with.”
