Bumblebee, the new prequel to the live-action Transformers movies, is chock full of 1980s Easter eggs and references to the ’80s era it’s set in, including simplified robot designs in line with their look from the original Generation 1 toy line.
But Bumblebee’s biggest callback to the franchise’s ’80s origins is the Easter egg that Transformers fans have waited for the longest.
During a scene where human protagonist Charlie (played by Hailee Steinfeld) tries to muster the courage to dive off a cliffside into the Pacific Ocean to impress some local kids, her VW bug (in reality, the Autobot Bumblebee in disguise) starts blaring a song on its radio to motivate her.
Season 7 of Fortnite rolls on with a new set of challenges to complete on PS4, Xbox One, PC, Nintendo Switch, and mobile devices. As usual, if you manage to finish all of the tasks from a given week, you’ll complete a corresponding Snowfall challenge–this season’s equivalent of the Hunting Party challenges from Season 6. In turn, you’ll unlock a special loading screen, which not only features a cool piece of artwork, but also a subtle clue pointing to a free item hidden somewhere in the game.
Just as in Season 6, the item in question is either a free Battle Star (which levels your Battle Pass up by one tier) or a Banner (which you can use as a profile icon) depending on how many weekly sets of challenges you’ve completed. If you’ve finished three weeks’ challenges, you’ll be rewarded with the loading screen pictured below. It depicts a group of characters standing in the hangar of Frosty Flights, one of the new areas introduced to Fortnite’s map at the beginning of the season.
If you look closely at the furthest hangar, just to the right of Sgt. Winter, you’ll be able to make out the faint silhouette of the Battle Star atop a stack of boxes, giving you a clear indication of where you need to go. Head to Frosty Flights at the beginning of a match, find the easternmost hangar, and the Battle Star will appear inside. Collect it as you would any other item to level your Battle Pass up by one tier, putting you one step closer to unlocking the new Ice King skin.
As is the case with other free Battle Stars, the usual caveats apply. You won’t be able to find the item unless you’ve completed three weeks’ sets of challenges and unlocked the aforementioned loading screen. The Battle Star won’t appear on the map if you haven’t first finished all of the necessary steps, so you won’t simply be able to go to the right location and collect it unless you’ve done the required work.
Developer Epic Games recently rolled out Season 7’s Week 3 challenges. This particular batch of tasks is fairly straightforward, although the one that may give you the most trouble if you aren’t familiar with Fortnite’s map asks you to search between three ski lodges. You can find all of our tips and guides in our complete Season 7 challenge roundup. You can also find our guides on this season’s free Battle Stars and Banners below.
This review contains spoilers for the series finale of Timeless, titled “The Miracle of Christmas.”
Turning any television show into a movie is an enormous undertaking, especially when that series is as complicated as Timeless. “The Miracle of Christmas Part I & II” manages to offer viewers a reminder of just how many lives the Time Team has lived together, and how unbreakable their bond is, in a way that should prove immensely satisfying for longtime fans.
This is particularly evident in the moment when Lucy (Abigail Spencer) flips through in her journal to revisit beloved memorabilia from their past missions: a theater ticket, a pamphlet from their time with the suffragettes in 1919, and a little something from the trip to Hollywoodland where the show’s central ship, Lyatt, set sail.
While Bumblebee may not have a proper post credits sequence, it does tack on an extra little bit of story before the credits actually roll, rounding out the plot and setting up for sequels–maybe? Bumblebee’s stinger (pun intended) doesn’t have a lot of meat to it, but it does start treading some strangely murky water when you actually look at it in the scope of the whole live action Transformers franchise, which Bumblebee appears to have rebooted–emphasis on “appears to.”
Needless to say, spoilers to follow–not just from Bumblebee, but from whole swaths of the Transformers franchise.
Bumblebee highlights the first major Earth-based interaction of Bumblebee the Autobot, and a human girl named Charlie who finds him as a VW Beetle in a junkyard. The whole story is set in the 1980s, not long after the “fall” of Cybertron to the Decepticon army. Charlie and Bee are chased around Earth for a while by two new Decepticons, Shatter and Dropkick, as well as John Cena, before eventually saving the day and–tragically–going their separate ways. Charlie gets a new car–a refurbished classic Camaro she and her late dad had been working on–and Bee, having effectively blown his VW Bug cover, takes a new alternate form of a black and yellow modern Camaro.
Then, following their bittersweet goodbye, we see Bee rendezvousing with a recently arrived Optimus Prime, who hopefully directs his attention to the sky where around seven Cybertronian crafts can be seen entering the atmosphere. It’s all very obviously working to set up the next movie in the sequence–though it seems to simultaneously be working to slot itself into the groundwork laid by the first Michael Bay movie back in 2007. It was that first movie in which Bumblebee chose a modern Camaro as his alt-mode, after all, and the place where the whole idea of Bee using his radio to talk was first introduced. If this movie does anything, it’s provide Bee a worthy origin story expressly for that 2007 debut, filling in all the gaps that any fan would ever want filled as charmingly as possible.
However, filling those gaps and answering those questions also creates new ones. The Bay arm of the Transformers franchise began getting seriously off the rails with its own history right off the bat by establishing the presence of the “AllSpark” (a mythological Cybertronian artifact) on Earth as early as the 1800s in the first film. Later, in the most recent installment of the Bay movies, Transformers: The Last Knight, it was implied that Cybertronians had reached Earth back in the days of Arthurian legend. Prior to that, Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen raised the idea that Cybertronians had been aware of Earth since antiquity and even been involved in the rise of Ancient Egypt.
But Bumblebee gives us a look at not only the fall of Cybertron itself–happening, apparently, in relative real time to the mid ’80s on Earth–but also explicitly tells us that this moment was actually the first time Optimus Prime had ever scanned for or sent anyone to Earth at all, making Bumblebee the first Cybertronian to set foot on the planet. This later seems to be supported by the arrival of the movie’s main antagonists, Decepticons Dropkick and Shatter, who make the whole “first contact” schtick an ongoing gag.
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Of course, this doesn’t necessarily mean that future installments in the post-Bumblebee Transformers franchise are going to have to work from the ground up. Everything regarding the timeline is just vague enough that, with a little narrative hopscotching, it’s possible to slot stories into the mix that justify the temporal strangeness. After all, if we’re to assume that the AllSpark just hasn’t been “activated” yet in the ’80s, it’s completely possible than the Transformers arrived on the planet and were none the wiser, left, and then came back when it was. The characters that would, in theory, be duplicates of robots who have already shown up in the Bay movies–like Starscream and Ravage–could easily just be seen here in older alt-modes or less advanced forms. There’s no real limit to the amount of hand waving that can happen in a universe like this.
Or, more likely, future Transformers movies are just going to cherry pick exactly what they want from the established canon and easily forego the rest. Bumblebee may not represent a direct, hard reboot of the entire franchise, but it’s certainly a major departure in tone and direction–while it may be making a vague attempt to at least loosely hold things together, it’s absolutely not beholden to weave the entire shared universe into one cohesive thing. And to be honest, that’s probably for the best.
Aquaman may only have a mid credits scene–sorry anyone hoping for more Deathstroke teases this time around–but it makes it count if you know what you’re looking for. We’ll break it down for you right here, right now, but first: Be warned, obvious and major spoilers from the movie to follow, so please proceed with caution.
Black Manta fans may have found themselves just slightly disappointed at their favorite villain essentially being defeated at about the midpoint of the movie, but never fear: David Hyde is far from done in the franchise. The mid-credits scene follows him from where we last saw him, knocked unconscious and thrown into the water off the Italian cost, drifting on a piece of wreckage out at sea. He’s not dead, but he’s certainly seen better days. Fortunately for him, an unlikely ally shows up just in time to make a heroic rescue: Dr. Stephen Shin–you remember, that guy who showed up for about half a second on the news with some strong opinions about Atlantis, right?
Don’t panic if you don’t. The movie doesn’t give Dr. Shin a ton of time in the spotlight, but we promise he is there, and better yet, he is actually from the Aquaman comics, so we’ve got some history to work from. A relatively recent addition to the Aquaman pantheon, Dr. Shin was introduced at the start of the New 52 era in 2011 as a friend of both Tom and Arthur Curry. He believed, wholeheartedly, in the existence of Atlantis, and was thrilled for a chance to interact with Tom’s half-Atlantean son. He even helped Arthur develop some of his abilities and powers, a role that was largely given to Vulko in the movie.
However, as time passed, Shin became increasingly frustrated about Arthur’s reluctance to share Atlantis’s location and eventually turned on him. He even tried to murder him, so naturally, you can imagine there’s some bad blood there. Shin eventually comes back around to help Arthur out when the aquatic monsters known as the Trench start attacking the surface world, however, so things (sort of) worked out in the end.
Of course, things aren’t exactly following the same trajectory for the movie universe. It doesn’t look like Shin has had any real connection with the Curry family at all, so where and why he got the ideas about Atlantis in his head remain a mystery. He does, however, seem to be suitably unhinged, which leads us to believe he’s definitely got “attempted murder in the name of science” potential somewhere down the line.
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Add to that the actual mid-credits scene itself, in which Dr. Shin rescues Black Manta and promptly becomes totally fascinated with his tech, and we’re looking at a recipe for full blown villain catastrophe. Manta may not have hung out in the foreground for too long in this first outing, but an alliance with someone like Shin would lay some real groundwork for a comeback. After all, Manta knows more about Atlantis than any human on the planet right now, as far as we know, and Shin has both resources and scientific platforms at his disposal. The two of them putting their heads together could mean a world of hurt for both Arthur and Atlantis itself.
That raises some questions. What, beyond the ethically dubious thrill of discovery, does Dr. Shin actually want? What beyond killing Arthur and avenging his father does Manta really want? What will Manta have to say about Orm now? And will Orm want in on Manta and Shin’s little cabal if he ever finds out about it?
Hopefully we actually will get an Aquaman 2 that is able to explore these potential plot threads–there are certainly enough of them to go around.
If you want the glow of a fireplace but not the fire insurance to actually own one, a virtual fireplace is your next best bet, especially for the holiday season.
The yule log TV tradition goes back to the black-and-white-era, when one or two networks might have broadcasted a yule log fireplace on an endless loop, with Christmas music tinkling in the background. Today, there’s a wide variety of streaming options for you to choose from.
Which one feels the most authentic and holly jolly? Here are the 10 best streaming fireplaces, ranked.
During a livestream, 343 Studios announced more details for Halo Infinite, the upcoming sixth mainline entry in Microsoft’s first-party series. Based on what was announced, it seems like Halo Infinite is still a long way off.
343 Studios is working on a new engine for Halo Infinite, which could push the game’s release date to after 2019. We can expect four-player splitscreen in Halo Infinite as 343 is testing the feature in the new engine right now. During the stream, 343 Studios also announced the armor customization in Infinite will be inspired by the system seen in Reach. Also, players who reach level 152 in Halo 5: Guardians will receive a special reward in Infinite. The studio did not announce what that reward might be.
The stream did reveal a few details for Halo 5 as well. 343 Studios announced the team did not have much left to add to the game in terms of armor and emblem customization. Although it was not explicitly expressed, it was implied that post-launch development on Halo 5 is winding down as more of the team refocuses on Infinite’s development. For more of the announcements during the stream, check out Reddit user murwo’s post.
343 Studios has teased that Halo Infinite features the coolest design that Master Chief has ever had. The developer hasn’t revealed many details about the game other than that. It hasn’t even been decided whether Halo Infinite will strive for a Teen rating like Halo 5 or return to the franchise’s Mature rating like in the past.
Halo Infinite is currently in development for Xbox One and PC, but it has no definitive release date.
