It took the sci-fi sequel Blade Runner 2049 many years to reach the screen, but there’s little denying that director Denis Villeneuve did an incredible job of capturing the visuals and atmosphere of Ridley Scott’s original 1982 movie. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a financial success, and Villeneuve has since moved onto another huge sci-fi project–a new adaptation of the classic novel Dune, However, the director has now revealed he wants to return to the world of Blade Runner.
In a new interview with Empire, Villeneuve explained that he wasn’t looking to do another Blade Runner sequel, but a different story set in the same universe. “It’s such an inspiring place, the Blade Runner world,” he said. “The problem is have is the word ‘sequel.’ I think cinema needs original stories. But if you ask me if I’d like to revisit this universe in a different way, I can say yes. It would need to be a project on its own. Something disconnected from both other movies. A detective noir story set in the future… I wake up sometimes in the night dreaming about it.”
Blade Runner 2049 was released in October 2017. It only made $260 million at the worldwide box office, and it was reported that it could have lost up to $80 million. Scott himself, who was a producer on the film, subsequently described the movie as “slow [and] too long.” Nevertheless, it received strong reviews–in his review for GameSpot, Michael Rougeau said it was “as close to a perfect sequel as has ever existed.”
As for Dune, that’s set to hit theaters on December 18, 2020. Villeneuve has assembled an amazing cast for the movie, including Timothy Chalamet, Oscar Isaac, Rebecca Ferguson, Stellan Skarsgård, Jason Momoa, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, and Dave Bautista. There’s also a Dune TV spin-off in the works, titled Dune: The Sisterhood, but Villeneuve isn’t involved with this.
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From the first few moments of the premiere episode of Star Trek: Picard, it’s clear that the story isn’t just about famed Captain Jean-Luc Picard–it’s also about Data, one of his closest friends. Data was an android who served on the U.S.S. Enterprise under Picard throughout Star Trek: The Next Generation and its subsequent four films, and Data’s influence is still being felt by Picard and the universe at large even decades later.
Part of the reason Data is such a big deal in the new streaming series is that he remains basically one-of-a-kind in the universe. He was a sentient android created by the cyberneticist Noonien Soong and spent his life endeavoring to be more human. Other than the two androids Soong built before Data, B-4 and Lore, there are apparently no other artificial lifeforms who are quite like him. That’s not for lack of trying, though; as we learn in the first episode of Star Trek: Picard, the Federation created a number of “synthetics,” or robots who look a bit similar to Data, but who apparently weren’t sentient (although there are those who said the same of Data himself, as TNG fans know).
Data’s relationship with Picard, and the Federation in general, was built up over the course of Star Trek: The Next Generation and its films. But you don’t have to watch the entire series and four movies to understand the important facts about Data that come up in Star Trek: Picard. All the relevant Data backstory referenced in Picard’s premiere comes from just four TNG episodes–episodes we’ll summarize here to save you a few hours. And if these sound intriguing, check out our list of the 10 essential Data episodes and you can learn even more about the unique being.
Measure of a Man (Season 2, Episode 9)
One of the best early Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes has a big bearing on what’s going on in Star Trek: Picard. In “Measure of a Man,” a cybernetics researcher, Bruce Maddox, wants to disassemble and study Data in hopes of creating more androids like him. Data isn’t into it–he doesn’t think Maddox has the skills necessary to do the procedure without Data potentially losing the essence of who he is. Maddox argues that Data doesn’t have a choice; as a machine, Data isn’t a person, but rather the property of Starfleet. Therefore, Data has no right to refuse to take part in Maddox’s experiments.
The argument eventually goes to court, with Picard serving as Data’s advocate in arguing that the android is alive and therefore has rights, and Picard’s first officer, Commander Will Riker, forced to argue against Picard as Maddox’s advocate. Picard eventually prevails after he suggests that creating more androids like Data in a world where they have no rights would be tantamount to creating a slave caste. Picard always shows a profound respect for life throughout TNG, and in “Measure of a Man,” he gains even more respect for Data and artificial life in general–a feeling that’s obviously still a major part of him in Star Trek: Picard. And the events in the trial cause Maddox to gain a new respect for Data as well. The pair continued corresponding over the years (Data narrates a lengthy letter to Maddox about his typical day in Season 4, Episode 11, “Data’s Day”). That’s the same Maddox who Picard hears has disappeared when he visits the Daystrom Institute in the first episode of Star Trek: Picard.
The Offspring (Season 3, Episode 16)
After attending a cybernetics conference, Data discovers a way to replicate his positronic net–essentially, his brain–to create another android. He uses that knowledge to create Lal, who he considers his offspring. Lal selects her own gender and appearance, choosing to present herself as a human woman, and thus becomes Data’s daughter.
Data tries to raise Lal and teach her how to fit in aboard the Enterprise, an experience he finds incredibly rewarding. Of course, Starfleet again wants to study the androids, and attempts to separate Lal from Data to take her back to the Daystrom Institute. Before that can happen, however, Lal’s positronic net starts to break down. She eventually dies, although Data downloads her memories into himself so he can keep a part of Lal with him.
Like “Measure of a Man,” “The Offspring” further establishes the idea of synthetic life based on Data’s design and Picard’s respect for it. It also builds on the idea of Data as a form of life and his ability to produce offspring, both of which are a big part of Star Trek: Picard’s first episode.
Star Trek: First Contact (1996)
Data spends most of Star Trek: First Contact as a captive of the Borg Queen after she and her drones manage to board and take control of part of the Enterprise. The movie establishes some changes to Borg lore by adding the Queen, and suggests that she wants more than to just assimilate more drones–she wants a true equal. To that end, she grafts real skin onto Data to help him become more human, trying to convince him to join her. Picard eventually rescues Data and together they defeat the Queen and the Borg on the Enterprise, while Riker and the rest of the crew stop the Borg’s attempts to disrupt humanity’s first contact with alien life (it’s a time travel movie, just go with it).
First Contact does a lot of heavy lifting in reestablishing Picard’s lingering trauma over being assimilated by the Borg, and builds on his close relationship with Data–though he’s planning to destroy the Enterprise to defeat the Borg, he goes back to rescue Data rather than leaving him behind. Data played a major role in saving Picard from the Borg when he was assimilated in TNG, and the captain felt he couldn’t leave his friend behind, even though there was a good likelihood Picard and Data would both have been killed in the attempt
Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)
The final of the TNG movies brings Picard’s relationship with Data to an end. After the Romulan Star Empire makes overtures toward peace with the Federation following the installment of a new leader, Shinzon, Picard and the Enterprise head to Romulus for negotiations. They discover that Shinzon is actually a clone of Picard the Romulans created in hopes of installing a spy in Starfleet, a plan they eventually abandoned. Shinzon eventually gained power as a wartime commander, and means to destroy the Federation with a weapon that uses a powerful kind of radiation.
The movie is mostly about Picard worrying about what kind of man he could have become under different circumstances, but the part that matters is that Picard heads over to Shinzon’s ship to destroy it–with the belief that he’s going to die in the process. At the last moment, Data arrives with an emergency transporter, a little gizmo that can automatically beam a single person back to the Enterprise with the press of a button. Data slaps the emergency transporter on Picard and then destroys Shinzon’s ship himself, dying in the process.
Nemesis also introduces B-4, a prototypical brother of Data that Shinzon discovered. Though Data attempted to download his own memories into the prototype, B-4’s appearance in Star Trek: Picard suggests the transfer didn’t take. So as of Star Trek: Picard’s first episode, Data is gone, and Picard is still feeling his loss even years later. Data still resonates with the people who were close with him, and with the scientific community in the Federation that studied him. He might be gone, but Data’s influence is a huge part of Star Trek: Picard, and it doesn’t seem like it’ll be waning anytime soon after Episode 1.
Disclosure: ViacomCBS is GameSpot’s parent company.
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Star Trek: Picard jumps ahead in the timeline of Star Trek further than any story we’ve seen so far–barring time travel jaunts into the distant future we’ve seen at times, like in Star Trek: Enterprise. It picks up the story of Captain Jean-Luc Picard years after he’s retired from Starfleet and his role as an admiral, with a number of Star Trek characters returning from series including Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager.
But Star Trek: Picard isn’t just drawing on the stories told in contemporary series as it expands on the life and career of Picard. It also takes a cue from a somewhat less-likely source: the 2009 Star Trek film directed by J.J. Abrams. Though that movie and its sequels, Star Trek: Into Darkness and Star Trek Beyond, take place in an alternate timeline to tell new stories about the iconic Captain Kirk and the crew of his Enterprise, the story still has some influence on the main Star Trek timeline–and on the events of Star Trek: Picard.
The influence comes from the setup of Star Trek 2009, which established a big change in the Star Trek universe: In the backstory for Abrams’ movie, a supernova destroys Romulus, the homeworld of the Romulan Star Empire. Star Trek fans know that the Romulans have been one of the United Federation of Planets’ longest enemies. During the events of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which first introduced Picard and his crew, the Federation and the Romulans were in the middle of a tenuous cease-fire, with the territory between them known as the Neutral Zone. Though the Federation and the Romulans sometimes were at odds during the series, for the most part, they left each other alone.
The Romulans were still a threat even well after the end of TNG, however. In Star Trek: Nemesis, the last of the Star Trek movies to feature the TNG crew, some Romulan military leaders planned a massive, devastating attack on the Federation. Picard and the Enterprise crew managed to circumvent that attack and prevent a war, with the help of Romulan commanders who weren’t so keen on restarting hostilities.
Cut to Star Trek 2009, which starts its story in the original Star Trek timeline, known as the Prime timeline. In that story, a supernova destroys the Romulan homeworld, and with it, millions (or billions) of Romulan lives. In the movie, Spock (at this point an ambassador) attempts to stop the supernova and save Romulus utilizing a strange substance known as Red Matter, which can be used to create black holes. Spock’s plan is to use a black hole to basically suck up the supernova and save the planet–but the star explodes before he can execute his plan, and Romulus is destroyed.
That event leads the commander of a Romulan mining ship, Nero, to chase down and attempt to kill Spock in order to take revenge on him. Instead, however, both Nero and Spock’s ships are drawn into the black hole Spock creates, which catapults them back in time. Nero’s presence in the past alters some formative events in the life of Captain Kirk, fundamentally altering history–and creating a new alternate timeline for those movies, known as the Kelvin timeline.
But the destruction of Romulus is an event that still occurred back in the Prime timeline, before time travel became a thing (in this context), and Star Trek: Picard picks up after that event. In the premiere episode of the CBS All Access series, we learn that it wasn’t just Spock who tried to prevent disaster on Romulus. In response to the planet’s impending doom, the Romulans asked the Federation for help in saving its citizens. Some in the Federation were reluctant, but Jean-Luc Picard managed to convince Starfleet to mount a massive rescue effort, and to create an armada of ships to get it done. That was 14 years before the events of the first episode of Picard.
Unfortunately, tragedy struck before the rescue effort got underway. A group of rogue synthetics–essentially, non-sentient androids–attacked Mars and the Federation’s Utopia Planitia shipyard, where the rescue armada was utterly destroyed. After that, the Federation refused to help the Romulans despite Picard’s instance, and the planet was annihilated, just like in Abrams’ movie.
Though Star Trek: Picard doesn’t mention the Spock connection, the destruction of Romulus looms large in the new series. It’s clear in the first episode that the Federation’s relationship with the surviving Romulans is going to be a major part of the show–but we’ll have to wait and see how that relationship develops.
Disclosure: ViacomCBS is GameSpot’s parent company.
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At the Daystrom Institute in Star Trek: Picard, we see the disassembled form of an android that looks like Data: B-4. The android was discovered in Star Trek: Nemesis, making him the third of the androids we’ve seen that were built by Data’s creator, Noonien Soong, in his own image. B-4 was the oldest, a less-sophisticated version built by Soong; he was followed by Lore, who was much more human but unstable; and finally by Data. In Nemesis, Data tried to download his memories into B-4, but B-4’s positronic brain couldn’t handle the information. B-4 is still around, but has been decommissioned, especially in the wake of the synth revolt on Mars.
Nioh 2 for PS4 is one of the few big spring releases that has managed not to get delayed in the last few weeks, and a new story trailer helps set the stage for the action. In it we see a mixture of historical drama and mystical elements as feudal Japanese warriors do battle with spirit stones.
You play as a hired mercenary abandoned by your parents, who were human and Yokai. Your parentage means you can transform into a supernatural Yokai form, which thrusts you into the middle of a raging war.
The first Nioh was a critical success, including in GameSpot’s review which gave it a 9/10. The mixture of a feudal Japanese setting and tough-as-nails Dark Souls combat earned its fans, and it’s among our most anticipated games of 2020.
Nioh 2 is coming to PS4 on March 13, and multiple special editions are offering different bonuses. For more details check out our pre-order guide.
While Disney has found great success over the decades making animated and live-action versions of classic fairytales, the source material for these stories is often much darker than what gets to the screen. Hansel and Gretel is one of the most famous fairytales of all time, but it has never had the full Disney movie treatment–perhaps because it involves lost children and a witch who wants to cook and eat them. Frankly, it sounds more like the plot of a horror movie, and that’s clearly what the makers of the upcoming scary adaptation Gretel & Hansel thought too. A new clip from the movie has now been released.
The clip shows the two siblings of the title encountering a house deep in a wood. This is a time of famine and plague, so naturally the possibility of finding some food inside lures Hansel instead–but there’s also someone very scary in there too. Check it out below.
Gretel and Hansel are played by Sophia Lillis, who starred as the younger Beverly Marsh in two recent It movies, and newcomer Sammy Leakey, with Alice Krige (Star Trek: First Contact) as the witch. It’s directed by Oz Perkins, who previously made the acclaimed indie horrors The Blackcoat’s Daughter and I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House. Perkins is also the son of the late Anthony Perkins, who played Norman Bates in Hitchcock’s classic Psycho. Gretel & Hansel hits theaters on January 31, and you can also watch the trailer here.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Perkins spoke about what to expect from this new version of the classic story. “In the title, the names are reversed, which obviously caught my attention,” he said. “It’s awfully faithful to the original story, it’s got really only three principal characters: Hansel, Gretel, and the Witch. We tried to find a way to make it more of a coming-of-age story. I wanted Gretel to be somewhat older than Hansel, so it didn’t feel like two 12-year-olds–rather, a 16-year-old and an 8-year-old.
“There was more of a feeling like Gretel having to take Hansel around everywhere she goes, and how that can impede one’s own evolution, how our attachments and the things that we love can sometimes get in the way of our growth. Sophia Lillis is really fantastic. She has one of those faces that the camera immediately understands, which is something that rarely happens. For my style and for my taste, which tends to be minimalist and a little bit more mannered, she’s really a dream.”
HBO’s adaptation of Brian Wood and Riccardo Burchielli’s comic series, DMZ, is shaping up to be a big deal, with a major star cast in the lead for the pilot. Rosario Dawson has been cast as Alma, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The character, a medic who is looking for her lost son, is actually an original creation for the TV show who did not appear in the book.
DMZ is set after a second civil war has ripped up much of America, and is focused on a version of Manhattan that has been declared a demilitarized zone. The comic ran for 72 issues between 2005 and 2012.
The pilot will be directed by Ava DuVernay, who is best known for directing Selma and A Wrinkle in Time, and who also directed 2019’s magnificent Netflix series When They See Us. She is also directing DC’s The New Gods, which she also co-wrote. Roberto Patino, the co-executive producer of Westworld season 2, is showrunner.
Dawson recently starred in Zombieland: Double Tap, and played Jane Ramos in 18 episodes of Jane the Virgin (she’s not the titular character, just for the record). She also played Claire Temple across several Netflix Marvel shows.
It’s not yet known when DMZ will premiere on HBO, and filming has not yet begun.
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Infinity Ward has provided an update on the ongoing issue with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare that has, in some cases, wiped players’ stats and reset other elements of the military shooter. The new problems with Modern Warfare come just after the newest patch came out, featuring a new crossbow weapon and more.
A new fix has been released, and because it’s a “backend” patch, you don’t need to download anything, Infinity Ward said in a blog post. The update addresses two main areas, the first of which are loadout slots.
People who created classes in the slots will notice that they have been reset to default. While less than ideal, Infinity Ward said this will only happen once. Those who never created additional classes in the slots won’t see any changes. The new patch also addresses a bug that could cause the game to kick players back to the multiplayer screen when they clicked on the slots.
The second item addressed in the new Modern Warfare patch relates to the error prompt that some players have experienced. Players who saw the error prompt and clicked “Yes” had their multiplayer statistics wiped, but Infinity Ward says not to worry. All progression-related statistics–including weapon progression, rank, XP, and more–are still intact and will be restored later.
Infinity Ward says you can still play Modern Warfare with the confidence of knowing your stats are being tracked. However, in some cases, the studio might have to roll them back once a fix is ready.
“We’re actively working on a fix for this, but do not have one to deploy tonight,” Infinity Ward said late in the night on January 22. “You are still able to play the game as usual and your progression will still track, but please be aware that once we do have a fix, we may have to roll back your stats to the state they were in prior to today’s update.”
Keep checking back with GameSpot for the latest on this matter.
For more on Modern Warfare, check out the full January 22 patch notes. You can also get a glimpse at what’s coming down the road by checking out the DLC roadmap.
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Captain Marvel 2 is officially in production at Marvel Studios, and Megan McDonnell from Disney+’s WandaVision is in final negotiations to write the script for the much-anticipated sequel.
As reported by THR, Marvel is also searching for a female filmmaker to helm the movie and is hoping to release Captain Marvel 2 in theaters in 2022. Furthermore, it is said this new story will move from the 1990s of the original to the present day.
Sources have also stated that Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, the original writers and directors of 2019’s Captain Marvel, will not be returning but “are in talks to remain in the Marvel Universe and direct a possible Disney+ series.”
As for McConnell, WandaVision is her first big credit and is one of the first Marvel live-action series headed to Disney+. Starring Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany as Wanda and… well… Vision, the new series is said to focus on Wanda Maximoff becoming Scarlett Witch.
Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].
Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN who can’t wait and is so excited he just can’t hide it. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.
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.
