The Chilling Perfume Bottle is a Perfume weapon found only in Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree expansion. This weapon is great for Dexterity/Intelligence hybrid builds, as it can deal icy damage in a wide area while building up Frostbite on any baddies caught in the mist. If that’s up your alley, you won’t want to…
The Chilling Perfume Bottle is a Perfume weapon found only in Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree expansion. This weapon is great for Dexterity/Intelligence hybrid builds, as it can deal icy damage in a wide area while building up Frostbite on any baddies caught in the mist. If that’s up your alley, you won’t want to…
As X-Men ’97 made a big splash with fans on Disney+ this year, the behind-the-scenes story proved to have its own bit of drama. Just a week before the animated revival was to premiere on the streamer, Marvel had mysteriously let go of the creator of the show, Beau DeMayo. Circumstances around the separation have still not been fully revealed, but at the time of DeMayo’s departure, he had also done work on season 2 of the show. Recently, DeMayo posted on his social media that Marvel will not credit him for the second season with the post saying, “Above is #XMen fan-art I posted on Instagram for Gay Pride in June. On June 13, #Marvel sent a letter notifying me that they’d stripped my Season 2 credits due to the post.”
DeMayo had been revealed to be one of those developing the script to the chronically troubled Blade movie and he continued in his post, “Sadly, this is the latest in a troubling pattern I suffered through while on working on #XMen97 and #Blade.” According to The Hollywood Reporter, Marvel would not stand idly by in silence as the company released their response to his claims with their own claim that they cut ties after an investigation. A Marvel spokesperson revealed in a statement,
Mr. DeMayo was terminated in March 2024 following an internal investigation. Given the egregious nature of the findings, we severed ties with him immediately, and he has no further affiliation with Marvel.”
As of now, DeMayo has not responded to Marvel’s statement. It was revealed by sources that once his time at the studio had ended, the two parties had reached an agreement about the “issue of tweeting about the show,” although DeMayo continued to do just that. No further details about these claims from Marvel has been divulged.
While attached as a possible writer of the Blade reboot, DeMayo pitched an idea on social media for a Wesley Snipes Blade film after reports of Ryan Reynolds pushing for one last sequel to his franchise. His pitch read, “Vampire dystopia where they learned to daywalk and took over. Humans are cattle. Brother Voodoo, part of the human resistance, learns Blade was desiccated/entombed and resurrects him so they can hunt Varney and the Darkhold cult to wipe out all vampires. Treat it like Kurosawa.“
The post Marvel responds to fired X-Men ’97 creator Beau DeMayo’s claims with a statement of “egregious findings” appeared first on JoBlo.
Happy Friday! Time to wake up your gray matter to get your weekend rolling. Going to see Alien: Romulus? If you haven’t checked out the previous Alien movies, you might not have the stomach for that. But let’s start with your brain.
Happy Friday! Time to wake up your gray matter to get your weekend rolling. Going to see Alien: Romulus? If you haven’t checked out the previous Alien movies, you might not have the stomach for that. But let’s start with your brain.
PLOT: Mike is happy living a simple life as a construction worker in his native New Jersey – until his long-lost high school sweetheart, Roxanne, shows up with more on her mind than romance. Knowing he’s the right man for the job, she recruits Mike on a dangerous intelligence mission in Europe that thrusts them back together into a world of spies and high-speed car chases, with sparks flying along the way.
REVIEW: Spy franchises work when the main characters are augmented like Jason Bourne or elite veterans like James Bond and Ethan Hunt. When starting a new franchise, it is tricky to balance it and make it believable that an average nobody can quickly become a hero. The Union represents Mark Wahlberg’s second attempt in three years to play a seemingly average guy who has hidden skills that make him a vital resource to save the world. In 2021’s Infinite, that concept was dead on arrival, but Wahlberg is trying again with The Union. Partnering with Halle Berry along with J.K. Simmons, Mike Colter, and more, The Union is yet another run-of-the-mill action movie that tries to play with the spy genre to generate another Mission: Impossible but fails to find the spark that you need to light the franchise fuse even with the star power of Wahlberg and Berry front and center.
The Union opens with Roxanne Hall (Halle Berry) and Nick Farrow (Mike Colter) on a mission in Italy to recover a stolen data drive when enemy agents kill everyone and take the device. With the blessing of her boss, Tom Brennan (J.K. Simmons), Roxanne heads back to her childhood hometown in New Jersey to recruit the perfect agent for the job. That is where we find Mike McKenna (Mark Wahlberg), a construction worker who still lives at home with his mother Lorraine (Lorraine Bracco) and sleeping with older women like Nicole (Dana Delaney) as well as drinking at the local bar with his friends from high school. Roxanne, Mike’s former girlfriend who broke up with him when she went off to college, reveals that she works for a covert agency known as The Union. What makes The Union unique is that they exclusively hire working-class people rather than military experts or career law enforcement to fly better under the radar. That includes physical trainer Frank Pfieffer (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) and tech expert Foreman (Jackie Earle Haley), who used to be a foreman in an Amazon facility. With only two weeks to prep Mike, the team gets to work, and we get the tried-and-true montage sequence.
Roxanne makes a flippant remark that they normally get six months to prep an agent but have only fourteen days to get a 47-year-old guy who has never left New Jersey to be a competent and functioning spy, which strains every possible definition of credulity. Mike learns to expertly drive sports cars, run across rooftops blindfolded, and endure reflex and memory tests because he already knows how to do so much working as a welder on skinny rooftop worksites. I mean no disrespect to construction and other essential workers, but it is a bizarre concept to select superspies. Once in the field, Mike and Roxanne try to track down Juliet Quinn (Jessica De Gouw) before the data is sold to enemy factions, who will discover the names and locations of agents, including those employed by The Union. There is also a potential mole embedded within The Union that throws another wrench into the already convoluted plot. By this point, we are forty minutes into a one-hundred-minute running time, well past the time to ratchet up the action.
That may be the inherent issue with The Union: it is not all that exciting. We are introduced to Roxanne’s team, who mysteriously disappear during the key third-act sequences of the film, so the focus remains on Wahlberg and Berry. While the credit sequence shows off photos of the two actors in the 1990s when they first met, there is little chemistry between them. While both Wahlberg and Berry convincingly play characters in their mid-forties, only Berry seems to have the vigor to play an active spy, while Wahlberg seems to be along for the ride. In many ways, Berry plays Roxanne as a blend of her characters in Swordfish and her Bond girl Jinx. Had the story done away with Wahlberg’s Mike entirely and made this a vehicle for Halle Berry on her own, I think it may have turned out a lot better. J.K. Simmons is likable enough as the gruff boss, and Jackie Earle Haley is underused in what could have been a cool Q-esque character. Wahlberg’s attempt to play an affable everyman fails utterly and completely.
Written by Joe Barton and David Guggenheim (Designated Survivor), The Union comes from veteran television director Julian Farino, who has most recently worked on series like Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Ballers, In Treatment, and Florida Man. There is nothing nearly on par with Farino’s filmography that shows he could handle big-budget movie action sequences, and apart from the solid third-act rooftop and car chase scenes, he does not have that much to do. The movie has a decent soundtrack and some solid location shooting in London and Trieste, but there are equally as many scenes that look like they were shot on a soundstage. The script also tries to add comedic moments meant to lighten the tone, but then the film digs into the action-angle and undermines the dramatic tension. Had this movie been a comedy, it may have worked better as Wahlberg feels very out of place amongst the otherwise solid ensemble. I appreciate the soundtrack and attempt to craft a workmanlike atmosphere, but it never really comes together.
The Union is ultimately a waste of talent and a promising concept with the miscasting of Mark Wahlberg, who has long made it his bread and butter to play average guys. With a sore lack of chemistry between Wahlberg and Halle Berry, The Union feels forced and never turns into the thrill ride it should have been. While the final half-hour is pretty fun, it cannot salvage the weak movie that preceded it. Halle Berry remains an entrancing screen presence, which should have been a franchise-starter for her and her alone. I wish I had enjoyed this movie more, but it is another bland action movie on Netflix that is mercifully less than two hours long. You are in trouble when the brisk running time is all you can say positively about a film.
The post The Union Review appeared first on JoBlo.
When it was first announced that Fede Álvarez would be writing and directing a new Alien movie, fans were a little upset when they learned that the project was destined for Hulu, bypassing theaters completely. Thankfully, 20th Century Studios pivoted, later announcing that Alien: Romulus would be released theatrically and not on Hulu.
While speaking with Variety, Álvarez said that the initial Hulu plan was “a reaction to theaters being completely gone” in the wake of the pandemic. “That decision was not made at the point where theaters were healthy,” Álvarez said. “[But] it was always going to be an ambitious movie for [a streaming] platform.” The studio made the choice to push for a theatrical release as production got underway, and Álvarez said it was a motivating moment for the entire cast and crew.
I remember making an announcement to everybody that this movie was going to in theaters, and there was a big cheer. I was like, wow, even the gaffer cares that this goes into theaters!
Set between the events of Alien and Aliens, Alien: Romulus will follow “a group of young people on a distant world who find themselves in a confrontation with the most terrifying life form in the universe.” The film stars Cailee Spaeny (Priscilla), David Jonsson (Industry), Isabela Merced (Madame Web), Archie Renaux (Shadow and Bone), Spike Fearn (The Batman), and Aileen Wu (Away from Home). In addition to directing the movie, Fede Álvarez also co-wrote the script alongside Rodo Sayagues.
The film has been receiving largely positive reviews, with our own Chris Bumbray calling it the best installment of the long-running franchise since the first two perfect movies. However, that’s not to say that there aren’t a few clunky moments that detract from an otherwise kick-ass movie. “The fact that director Fede Alvarez was able to make a slam-bang Alien sequel that trumps every other film in the franchise, save the first two, is cause for celebration,” Bumbray wrote. “Yet, it does suffer from the fact that its director was perhaps hampered in his effort to make a lean and mean Alien movie with an ill-advised directive to connect the film to Ridley Scott’s Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. This leaves the film feeling like it’s 75% kick-ass, and 25% space bio-engineering nonsense.” You can read the rest of Bumbray’s review right here.
The post Fede Álvarez on Alien: Romulus making the leap from Hulu to theaters appeared first on JoBlo.
After revealing the official title of Avatar 3 at D23 last week, director James Cameron spoke with Entertainment Weekly to explain the meaning behind Avatar: Fire and Ash.
“It took a long time to come up with a title that I felt resonated with what’s in the film,” Cameron said. “I don’t think I could say too much about it until you actually see the film and you see what it means, but if you think of fire as hatred, anger, violence, that sort of thing, and ash is the aftermath. So what’s the aftermath? Grief, loss, right? And then what does that cause in the future? More violence, more anger, more hatred. It’s a vicious cycle. So that’s the thinking.“
Although Fire and Ash leads one to think of apocalyptic imagery, Cameron wouldn’t necessarily call it a dark film. “I think it goes to darker places than the previous ones did, but it’s still obviously this open, glorious, grand adventure, which is what we aspire to do every time we set out,” Cameron explained. “But we’re not afraid to go into the dark places of our characters, which I think is also good. I think that’s also what people really feel they want when they get to know a character well, either through a series or whatever it is that they follow. They want to know more. They want to know more about them, find out what their limits are, so to speak. And we do that.“
The sequel will also introduce another biome of Pandora, where the “aggressive, volcanic race” of Na’vi, known as the Ash People, reside. Oona Chaplin plays Varang, the leader of the Ash People.
Avatar: Fire and Ash is currently set for a December 19, 2025 release, followed by Avatar 4 on December 21, 2029 and Avatar 5 on December 18, 2031. Cameron even has ideas for a potential Avatar 6 and 7, but that all depends on if the demand for the franchise is still there., “There’ll be just far enough apart that they remain events, hopefully, in the lives of fans, of people who want to follow us, but not so far apart that it’s like there’s a generational difference between one movie,” Cameron said. “We’re fortunate we survived that, right? We got over that hurdle. So now we believe it’s going to come at the right pacing.“
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Activision has reportedly sent a cease and desist letter to the devs behind H2M Mod. The highly anticipated fan mod for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Remastered was focused on recreating and remastering the online multiplayer of Modern Warfare 2 for PC players.
Activision has reportedly sent a cease and desist letter to the devs behind H2M Mod. The highly anticipated fan mod for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Remastered was focused on recreating and remastering the online multiplayer of Modern Warfare 2 for PC players.