Over the weekend, many X users noticed that older Twitter images had mysteriously disappeared from the site. Now, the company has confirmed that an unspecified “bug” is responsible and it’s working on a fix.
The issue first cropped up Saturday, when older tweets that had originally included images began to show as un-clickable t.co URLs instead. X now says the bug affected “images from before 2014,” but as The Verge previously pointed out tweets from 2014 — including the iconic Oscars selfie from Ellen DeGeneres — were also at least temporarily affected.
The 2014 Oscars photo has since been restored but other older tweets still seem to have missing photos for now. “We fixed the bug, and the issue will be fully resolved in the coming days,” X said in a statement via its support account.
Over the weekend we had a bug that prevented us from displaying images from before 2014. No images or data were lost. We fixed the bug, and the issue will be fully resolved in the coming days.
X didn’t respond to a request for comment, or provide further details on the cause of the bug. The company said it hadn’t lost the underlying images or data. But it’s hardly the first time some aspect of the service has been disrupted over the last several months. Photos and links on the platform briefly broke in March as the result of API changes. The company was also recently caught slowing down links to a number of competitors and other websites run by entities Elon Musk has previously attacked. Musk has repeatedly complained about the state of X’s infrastructure, but has also drastically cut its budget for servers and laid off many site reliability engineers in an effort to reduce costs.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/x-is-fixing-a-bug-that-wiped-out-twitter-images-from-before-2014-224746265.html?src=rss
Steven Spielberg's wholesome sci-fi classic, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, became a cultural touchstone following its release in 1982. The film's hastily-developed (as in, "you have five weeks to get this to market") Atari 2600 tie-in game became a cultural touchstone for entirely different reasons.
In his new book, The Stuff Games Are Made Of, experimental game maker and assistant professor in design and computation arts at Concordia University in Montreal, Pippin Barr deconstructs the game design process using an octet of his own previous projects to shed light on specific aspects of how games could better be put together. In the excerpt below, Dr. Barr muses in what makes good cinema versus games and why the storytelling goals of those two mediums may not necessarily align.
MIT Press
Excerpted from The Stuff Games Are Made Ofby Pippin Barr. Reprinted with permission from The MIT Press. Copyright 2023.
In the Atari 2600 video game version of the film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (Spielberg 1982), also called E. T. the Extra-Terrestrial (Atari 1982), the defining experience is falling into a pit. It’s cruelly fitting, then, that hundreds of thousands of the game’s physical cartridges were buried in a landfill in 1983. Why? It was one of the most spectacular failures in video game history. Why? It’s often put front and center as the worst game of all time. Why? Well, when you play it, you keep falling into a pit, among other things ...
But was the video game E.T. so terrible? In many ways it was a victim of the video game industry’s voracious hunger for “sure fire” blockbusters. One strategy was to adapt already-popular movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark or, yes, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Rushed to market with a development time of only five weeks, the game inevitably lacked the careful crafting of action-oriented gameplay backed by audience testing that other Atari titles had. I would argue, though, that its creator, Howard Scott Warshaw, found his way into a more truthful portrayal of the essence of the film than you might expect.
Yes, in the game E.T. is constantly falling into pits as he flees scientists and government agents. Yes, the game is disorienting in terms of understanding what to do, with arcane symbols and unclear objectives. But on the other hand, doesn’t all that make for a more poignant portrayal of E.T.’s experience, stranded on an alien planet, trying to get home? What if E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is a good adaptation of the film, and just an unpopular video game?
The world of video games has admired the world of film from the beginning. This has led to a long-running conversation between game design and the audiovisual language of cinema, from cutscenes to narration to fades and more. In this sense, films are one of the key materials games are made of. However, even video games’ contemporary dominance of the revenue competition has not been quite enough to soothe a nagging sense that games just don’t measure up. Roger Ebert famously (and rather overbearingly) claimed that video games could “never be art,” and although we can mostly laugh about it now that we have games like Kentucky Route Zero and Disco Elysium, it still hurts. What if Ebert was right in the sense that video games aren’t as good at being art as cinema is?
Art has seldom been on game studios’ minds in making film adaptations. From Adventures of Tron for the Atari 2600 to Toy Story Drop! on today’s mobile devices, the video game industry has continually tried for instant brand recognition and easy sales via film. Sadly, the resulting games tend just to lay movie visuals and stories over tried-and-true game genres such as racing, fighting, or match 3. And the search for films that are inherently “video game-y” hasn’t helped much either. In Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Spider-Man ends up largely as a vessel for swinging and punching, and you certainly can’t participate in Miles’s inner life. So what happened to the “Citizen Kane of video games”?
A significant barrier has been game makers’ obsession with the audiovisual properties of cinema, the specific techniques, rather than some of the deeply structural or even philosophical opportunities. Film is exciting because of the ways it unpacks emotion, represents space, deploys metaphor, and more. To leverage the stuff of cinema, we need to take a close look at these other elements of films and explore how they might become the stuff of video games too. One way to do that in an organized way is to focus on adaptation, which is itself a kind of conversation between media that inevitably reveals much about both. And if you’re going to explore film adaptation to find the secret recipe, why not go with the obvious? Why not literally make Citizen Kane (Welles 1941) into a video game? Sure, Citizen Kane is not necessarily the greatest film of all time, but it certainly has epic symbolic value. Then again, Citizen Kane is an enormous, complex film with no car chases and no automatic weapons. Maybe it’s a terrible idea.
As video games have ascended to a position of cultural and economic dominance in the media landscape, there has been a temptation to see film as a toppled Caesar, with video games in the role of a Mark Antony who has “come to bury cinema, not to praise it.” But as game makers, we haven’t yet mined the depths offered by cinema’s rich history and its exciting contemporary voices. Borrowing cinema’s visual language of cameras, points of view, scenes, and so on was a crucial step in figuring out how video games might be structured, but the stuff of cinema has more to say than that. Citizen Kane encourages us to embrace tragedy and a quiet ending. The Conversation shows us that listening can be more powerful than action. Beau Travail points toward the beauty of self-expression in terrible times. Au Hasard Balthazar brings the complex weight of our own responsibilities to the fore.
There’s nothing wrong with an action movie or an action video game, but I suggest there’s huge value in looking beyond the low-hanging fruit of punch-ups and car chases to find genuinely new cinematic forms for the games we play. I’ll never play a round of Combat in the same way, thanks to the specter of Travis Bickle psyching himself up for his fight against the world at large. It’s time to return to cinema in order to think about what video games have been and what they can be. Early attempts to adapt films into games were perhaps “notoriously bad” (Fassone 2020), but that approach remains the most direct way for game designers to have a conversation with the cinematic medium and to come to terms with its potential. Even if we accept the idea that E.T. was terrible, which I don’t, it was also different and new.
This is bigger than cinema, though, because we’re really talking about adaptation as a form of video game design. While cinema (and television) is particularly well matched, all other media from theater to literature to music are teeming with ideas still untried in the youthful domain of video games. One way to fast-track experimentation is of course to adapt plays, poems, and songs. To have those conversations. There can be an air of disdain for adaptations compared to originals, but I’m with Linda Hutcheon (2012, 9) who asserts in A Theory of Adaptation that “an adaptation is a derivation that is not derivative — a work that is second without being secondary.” As Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin (2003, 15) put it, “what is new about new media comes from the particular ways in which they refashion older media.” This is all the more so when the question is how to adapt a specific work in another medium, where, as Hutcheon claims, “the act of adaptation always involves both (re-)interpretation and then (re-)creation." That is, adaptation is inherently thoughtful and generative; it forces us to come to terms with the source materials in such a direct way that it can lay our design thinking bare—the conversation is loud and clear. As we’ve seen, choosing films outside the formulas of Hollywood blockbusters is one way to take that process of interpretation and creation a step further by exposing game design to more diverse cinematic influences.
Video games are an incredible way to explore not just the spaces we see on-screen, but also “the space of the mind." When a game asks us to act as a character in a cinematic world, it can also ask us to think as that character, to weigh our choices with the same pressures and history they are subject to. Hutcheon critiques games’ adaptive possibilities on the grounds that their programming has “an even more goal- directed logic than film, with fewer of the gaps that film spectators, like readers, fill in to make meaning." To me, this seems less like a criticism and more like an invitation to make that space. Quiet moments in games, as in films, may not be as exhilarating as a shoot-out, but they can demand engagement in a way that a shoot-out can’t. Video games are ready for this.
The resulting games may be strange children of their film parents, but they’ll be interesting children too, worth following as they grow up. Video game film adaptations will never be films, nor should they be—they introduce possibilities that not only recreate but also reimagine cinematic moments. The conversations we have with cinema through adaptation are ways to find brand new ideas for how to make games. Even the next blockbuster.
Yeah, cinema, I’m talkin’ to you.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/hitting-the-books-the-stuff-games-are-made-of-pippin-barr-mit-press-143054954.html?src=rss
Netflix is getting the band back together with Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, an anime adaptation of the Scott Pilgrim graphic novel series. The company has dropped the first teaser for the eight-episode show, which centers around the titular character and his attempt to win a battle of the bands contest while facing off against the seven evil exes of his new girlfriend.
The anime follows on from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, a 2010 film based on the graphic novels. The main cast of Edgar Wright's movie are reprising their roles in the series, including Michael Cera (Scott Pilgrim), Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Ramona Flowers), Kieran Culkin (Wallace Wells), Chris Evans (Lucas Lee) and Brie Larson (“Envy” Adams).
The teaser apes many of the visuals of the movie and graphic novels, such as Scott blocking a flying attack from Matthew Patel with his arm and the rehearsal space of his band, Sex Bob-Omb. You'll also see Ramona dragging Scott through space toward a door with a star on it and the lovebirds sitting next to each other on a swing set. I don't remember seeing any dinosaurs in the film, though.
Bryan Lee O’Malley, the creator of the graphic novel series, is one of the showrunners, while Wright is an executive producer. Abel Gongora of animation studio Science Saru (Star Wars: Visions, Devilman Crybaby) is the director of the show. Scott Pilgrim Takes Off also includes new music from Anamanaguchi, the terrific chiptune band behind the soundtrack of the Scott Pilgrim vs. The World video game.
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is my favorite movie of the 2010s, and this teaser gets the look and the spirit of the universe spot on. I'm already counting down the days until Scott Pilgrim Takes Off hits Netflix on November 17th.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/netflixs-scott-pilgrim-takes-off-teaser-hits-all-the-right-notes-142355204.html?src=rss
Activision is bringing dogs (and one Dogg) back to Call of Duty. A decade after the debut of Riley, the faithful canine companion in Call of Duty: Ghosts, you can now take Merlin, the good boy pictured above, with you for quality companionship and savage finishing moves in season five (BlackCell) of CoD: Modern Warfare II and Warzone 2.0.
Activision says Merlin the Dog is an optional companion in multiplayer, battle Royale and DMZ modes. “[Merlin] provides the unparalleled benefit of companionship along with a devastating Finishing Move,” the announcement blog post reads. Strangely, players strap the canine to their belts when he isn’t in use. You can glimpse one of Merlin’s brutal finishes in the trailer below.
Activision stresses that “tactical pets” like Merlin can’t be harmed in the game. And since he’s only there for finishing moves and friendship, he doesn’t appear to provide a competitive advantage.
Activision
If you’re less into canines and more into D-O-Double Gs, Activision also has you covered. Snoop Dogg returns to the franchise, joining fellow hip-hop powerhouse Nicki Minaj, after his last appearance as an add-on for Call of Duty: Vanguard in 2022. A new season five operator bundle (including two skins) lets you play as the Long Beach rapper and cannabis connoisseur with a loadout that includes a “Toke Force 141” SMG, “Snoop Hustle” finishing move and “High Rider” hatchback vehicle skin.
Season five of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II and Warzone 2.0 is available beginning today across all platforms. The BlackCell tier of Battle Pass, required to enjoy canine companionship, costs $30.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/dog-of-duty-makes-a-triumphant-return-in-modern-warfare-ii-173538176.html?src=rss
X, formerly known as Twitter, has reinstated Kanye West after he was banned last December for tweeting an image of a swastika, The Wall Street Journal has reported. Elon Musk's platform only made the move after being assured that West would not post antisemitic or other harmful content. In addition, ads won't appear next to his posts and he won't be able to monetize the account.
Kanye has had multiple run-ins with Twitter/X. In October, Elon Musk welcomed him back after he went two years without tweeting — but he stayed just a short time before being banned again for saying he would go "def con 3 on Jewish people." Shortly after that Ye entered a deal to acquire the "free speech" social media app Parler, but that fell through soon after. West has paid a price for past comments, with major brands including Adidas and Gap cutting ties.
Shortly after acquiring Twitter last fall, Musk — who calls himself a "free-speech absolutist" — vowed to rethink permanent bans based on the site's rules, unless laws were broken. Since then, he has restored the account of Donald Trump (who has not subsequently tweeted), along with other controversial personalities, including avowed neo-Nazis. Earlier this year Israel’s Foreign Ministry said that Musk was responsible for a rise of antisemitism on the site, adding that Twitter is now “filled with antisemitic conspiracies and hate speech targeting Jews all over the world."
The news comes after Musk changed Twitter's name and logo to X. He recently placed a strobing X sign on the roof of the company's San Francisco headquarters. X subsequently told the city's building inspectors that the sign was temporary for an event. Yesterday, Musk tweeted that X's HQ would remain in "beautiful" San Francisco despite the city being in a "death spiral."
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/kanye-wests-twitterx-account-has-been-unbanned-again-075206407.html?src=rss
Tesla is facing allegations that it's trying to minimize complaints about performance. Reuters sources claim the company had a secret Diversion Team in the Las Vegas area to cancel range-related service appointments.
If a customer complained the range didn't live up to marketing claims, advisors would tell owners that Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) range figures were just predictions and battery degradation would reduce range. Tesla supposedly began tinkering with range estimates a decade ago to exaggerate figures when an EV was fully charged. Cars would only begin showing more accurate range numbers below a 50 percent charge. The company also used a 15-mile range buffer when the estimate reached zero, much as combustion engine cars still have fuel in the tank when the gauge reads empty.
Tesla isn't the only EV company accused of inflating its range estimates, but it may be worse than most. The standards body SAE International recently published a study indicating EVs typically fall 12.5 percent short of their official range in highway driving. One of the co-authors, Gregory Pannone, told Reuters Tesla's shortfall was 26 percent – over double that average. It’s also faced accusations of exaggerating EV driving range in the past.
– Mat Smith
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I’m not sure how much the Venn diagram of Barbz and Call of Duty players overlap, but here we are. Call of Duty Season 5 will feature Nicki Minaj as the first ever playable female celebrity Operator character. She'll appear in Warzone and Modern Warfare 2 as part of CoD's "50 Years of Hip Hop Celebration," along with Snoop Dogg and 21 Savage. She’ll arrive with her own storefront later this year, with items for sale, likely including the hot pink rifle you see above.
Sony has sold over 40 million PS5 consoles since the system's debut in November 2020. That's roughly eight million units sold since the start of the year. That unsurprisingly doesn't top last year's holiday sales, when Sony moved 7.1 million PS5s in one quarter, but the company says inventory is finally "well-stocked." It became Sony's fastest-selling console to date, but if it wants to beat the PS4, it has a way to go. The company had shipped over 117 million PS4s as of early 2022.
The investigation stems from Slack's 2020 complaint about Teams' inclusion in Microsoft 365.
Maybe everything Microsoft does deserves an antitrust lawsuit? The European Commission has announced a probe into whether Microsoft bundling Teams with its product suites violated EU competition rules. Slack, a rival messaging and communications app, filed its own antitrust complaint in 2020, alleging Microsoft's decision to include Teams with Microsoft 365 or Office 365 is illegal. In April, Microsoft agreed to remove Teams from its Office suite to prevent a probe, but said it was unclear how it would do so. The European Commission said it "is concerned that Microsoft may grant Teams a distribution advantage.”
Adobe has updated its Photoshop beta release with a Generative Expand feature that grows an image using AI-made content. Drag the crop tool beyond the original picture size and you can add material with or without a text prompt. This can help when an image is simply too small, of course, but Adobe also believes it can help when you want to change aspect ratios. This is likely just the start: Adobe is teasing more generative AI features arriving this fall.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-tesla-reportedly-formed-a-secret-team-to-quash-driving-range-complaints-111516812.html?src=rss
Call of Duty Season 5 will feature Nicki Minaj as the first ever female celebrity "Operator" playable character, Activision announced. She'll appear in Warzone and Modern Warfare 2 as part of CoD's "50 Years of Hip Hop Celebration," along with Snoop Dogg and 21 Savage.
Other celebrities including Lionel Messi, Kevin Durant and Snoop Dogg (multiple times now) have appeared in CoD in the past. Minaj, however is "Call of Duty’s first-ever self-named female Operator," the developer noted. "Playtime is over; this is not 'Chill Nicki'; this is Red Ruby Da Sleeze," it added, referencing Minaj's track and video released earlier this year.
Minaj will appear and have her own storefront later in Season 5, with items for sale likely including the hot pink rifle pictured above. Minaj's appearance was previewed last year in a YouTube video called Squad Up, which also featured Lil Baby, Bukayo Saka, and Pete Davidson — though there's no word if those people will also appear in CoD at some point.
The Season 5 website also shows information on the 9mm ISO sub machine, the AN-94 assault rifle and other weapons. CoD also previewed multiplayer additions like new maps for Livestock and Petrov Oil Rig. Meanwhile, Warzone 2.0 adds new locations like Verdansk Stadium. Season 5 will also include a reveal of the upcoming Call of Duty 2023 (Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3) — in Warzone. Season 05 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II and Call of Duty: Warzone are set to launch on August 2 at 9 AM PT across all platforms.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/nicki-minaj-will-be-a-playable-character-in-call-of-duty-051544179.html?src=rss
Ever since Strange New Worlds’ second season was announced, the big draw has been the crossover episode with animated sitcom Lower Decks. It would see Tawny Newsome (Mariner) and Jack Quaid (Boimler) taking their until-now animated characters into live action. Following an early screening at Comic-Con, the episode is now available to watch on Paramount Plus.
The following article contains spoilers for “Those Old Scientists.”
There’s an SNL sketch where William Shatner, as himself, exhorts a room full of Star Trek fans to “Get a Life!” It’s clearly intended in jest, given Shatner’s barely-suppressed smile and a twist where Phil Hartman’s manager forces him to instantly recant his rant. Depending on who you ask, the sketch was either taken in the spirit it was intended, or with outrage amongst fans who felt mischaracterized, and misunderstood. But it’s this dichotomy, between the legend and the truth that’s mined for laughs in “Those Old Scientists,” the crossover episode between Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks. Well, that and an affectionate elbow in the ribs suggesting that we could all do with being a bit less obsessive.
The (animated) beta shift is making a routine survey of a long-dormant time-travel portal, while Boimler and Tendi argue about who discovered it. Boimler brags it was found by Starfleet, but Tendi says it was Orion scientists, once again trying to dispel myths that all Orions are pirates. While messing around Boimler is standing on the portal when Rutherford accidentally sets it running, throwing him back in time. When he arrives on the other side, he’s now in the live action world of Strange New Worlds, and is greeted by Spock, Una and La’an. And with that, we’re into an animated version of the title sequence, complete with nacelle-sucking alien.
On the Enterprise, Boimler can’t help but express his shock, surprise and generally fanboy out in front of his heroes. He gets lectured by La’an about not polluting the timeline and, thanks to her adventure in “Tomorrow, Tomorrow and Tomorrow,” not getting attached. But, since this is the Boimler we know and love, he can’t help but throw spoilers out left, right and center. Not to mention his insistence on pointing out the difference between the history as he knows it, and the storylines as they’re presently unfolding on Strange New Worlds. For instance, he’s mightily disturbed by the fact that Spock – happy in a relationship with Chapel – is laughing, smiling and generally acting like he’s in love. After all, the Spock he knows – his Spock – isn’t this outwardly emotional, because that’s what the legend tells us. It’s almost as if he’s a stand-in for the sort of obsessive fan who tries to police the borders of what Star Trek is, instead of enjoying the journey.
At the same time, the Enterprise has to deal with an Orion vessel with undetermined intentions which then steals the time portal. Boimler urges Pike to be diplomatic, but winds up forcing him to trade a supply of much-needed triticale grain to get it back. Pike sees this – and the forced relocation of a planet-full of starving colonists – as preferable to having this guy on his ship any longer. When the portal is active and back in position, the Enterprise crew ready to get rid of this purple-haired irritation, Mariner leaps through, bravely declaring that she’s coming to the rescue. Except, the hardware had power enough for just one trip, and there’s not a fuel source available anywhere else in the quadrant. Leaving an eye-rolling Pike with the unwelcome possibility that they’re stuck with the Cerritos’ pair for good.
Boimler and Mariner wind up spending some time with their heroes, until they eventually realize that the Enterprise itself has a supply of fuel. Thanks to the naval tradition of using a component from the previous vessel in the construction of the next one, they can refine a chunk of NX-01 into fuel which can be used to send the pair home. (But not before the Strange New Worlds crew can reveal that they, too, are secretly as nerdy as a bunch of fans of their predecessors from Enterprise as Boimler is for this era.) They meet with the Orions again, and Pike pledges to claim that the Orions discovered the portal, giving their burgeoning science ship a small chunk of credit. And when Boimler and Mariner leap back to the future, the Enterprise crew drink an Orion cocktail that, in the closer, renders them all as animated characters.
“Those Old Scientists” is as pure a dose of fan service as Star Trek has ever produced, and I mean that as both a compliment and a criticism. Plenty of the elements, including the animated title sequence, reached straight into the lizard part of my brain and left me grinning like a loon. The screenplay, credited to Lower Decks’ executive story editor Kathryn Lyn and Bill Wolkloff, is crammed full of great gags. It helps, too, that Strange New Worlds has enough comic talent in its ranks to play an episode like this, and Carol Kane steals the show with the best gag in the episode.
But, and there is a but, the episode is a bit like cotton candy in that once the initial hit of sugar leaves your tongue, there’s little else here. We get a lot of scenes of Boimler and then Mariner telling the Enterprise crew how great they are, or are seen as such, by their successors. Most of these scenes take place sitting around desks, bars or lounges – telling rather than showing. I know that this is Strange New Worlds, and so the narrative will always belong with this crew rather than its guest stars. But the lower deckers are rendered passive observers in a narrative that could, or should, really have enabled them to demonstrate the dynamism they have in their own show. In the moment where Boimler and Mariner try to solve things on their own, they’re instantly shut down by La’an and Uhura and told to sit back on the bench. The worst served by this is Tawny Newsome, who is absent a major chunk of the episode and has little to do when Mariner does finally arrive in the past.
That cotton candy metaphor is probably the best way to sum up “Those Old Scientists,” a goofy snack between meatier meals, or episodes, either side. The fact it exists at all is a joy, even if it’s not as wonderful as it could have been, and I’d love nothing more than to see more forays into the real world by the Lower Decks crew. At the very least, with Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks in production at the same time, it’s a great time to be a Star Trek fan.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/star-trek-strange-new-worlds-drops-its-lower-decks-crossover-early-230033262.html?src=rss
At one point Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb dons his iconic uniform — a fedora cap, a smoking pipe, a slightly over-sized suit — like Batman wearing his cape and cowl for the first time. It's a look that serves as a sort of armor against mere mortals, who he woos with a peculiar charisma, as well as the military and political bureaucracy he battles while leading the Manhattan Project. It's also a way for Oppenheimer (played by Cillian Murphy) to ground himself as he wrestles with the major conflict around his work: Building an atomic bomb could help to the war, but at what cost to humanity?
Oppenheimer may seem like a curious project for Nolan: Since wrapping up his Batman trilogy with The Dark Knight Rises, he's thrown himself into increasingly complex projects (perhaps to atone for that disappointment). Interstellar was ostensibly a story about a man exploring the cosmos to find a new planet for humanity, but it also wrestled with personal sacrifices as his children aged beyond him.
Universal Pictures
Dunkirk was a purely cinematic, almost dialog-free depiction of a famous wartime evacuation. And Tenet was a bold attempt at mixing another heady sci-fi concept (what if you could go backwards through time?!) with bombastic James Bond-esque set pieces. Oppenheimer, meanwhile, is a mostly talky film set in a variety of meeting rooms, save for one explosive sequence.
Take a step back, though, and a film about an intelligent and very capable man wrestling with huge moral issues is very much in the Nolan wheelhouse. Oppenheimer'sswaggering genius fits right alongside Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne/Batman, the dedicated magicians in The Prestige or the expert dream divers/super spies in Inception.
The film, which is based on the biography American Prometheus by Martin J. Sherwin and Kai Bird, follows Oppenheimer from his time in Germany as a doctoral student, to his professorship at UC Berkeley. He mingles with notable scientists, including Albert Einstein himself, and makes a name for himself as a quantum physics researcher. We see Oppenheimer as more than just a bookish geek: He sends money to anti-fascists fighting in the Spanish Civil War, he pushes for unionization among lab workers and professors, and he supports local Communists. (Something that will come back to haunt him later.)
It's not too long before he's recruited to the Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb, and the myth-making truly begins. Like a Nolan heist film, he assembles a team of the brightest scientific minds in America and beyond, and he pushes the government to establish a town doubling as a secret research base in Los Alamos, New Mexico. The film is strongest when it focuses on the specificities of the Manhattan Project: the rush to build a bomb before Nazi Germany, the pushback from scientists terrified about the damage "the gadget" could do.
Universal Pictures
The movie firmly focuses on Oppenheimer's point of view, so much so that we mainly see him as a heroic tortured genius. Only he can put the right scientists together and motivate them to work; only he can solve the riddles of quantum physics to keep America safe. Some colleagues criticize his cavalier attitude about building an atomic bomb — they think it can lead to untold disaster, while he naively thinks it may be so powerful it may end all war. But, for the most part, we're left feeling that he was a great man who was ultimately betrayed by a country that didn't care for his post-war anti-nuclear activism.
I wasn't able to see Oppenheimer on an IMAX screen, unfortunately, but sitting front row in a local theater still managed to be a thoroughly immersive experience. That was particularly surp—rising since it's really a movie featuring people (mostly men) talking to each other in a series of unremarkable rooms. Save for one virtuoso set piece — the build-up and aftermath of a successful atomic bomb test is Nolan at his best — what's most impressive is how cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema makes those conversations utterly engaging. We've never seen Cillian Murphy's piercing blue eyes do so much work in close-up.
Universal Pictures
Still, it's an overall disjointed experience. The few featured women — Emily Blunt as Kitty Oppenheimer, Florence Pugh as the Communist activist Jean Tatlock — are sketched thin, even by Nolan standards. And the movie would have benefitted from more insight into Oppenheimer's thinking. It's a surprisingly standard biopic, even though it's three hours long and far more technical than any studio film this year.
At the very least, it would have been interesting to see Oppenheimer reckon more directly with the aftermath of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We see him confront President Harry Truman (Gary Oldman) in a vain attempt to stop building nuclear weapons, and the film points to his very public stance against future bombs. But even those scenes feel self-serving.
At the end of the film, Oppenheimer finally comes to understand something many of his colleagues have been saying from the beginning. Nothing will be the same because of him. There is no peace now, only the undying specter of nuclear annihilation.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/oppenheimer-review-sympathy-for-the-destroyer-of-worlds-130052032.html?src=rss
The Borderlands movie is finally getting a release date. According to a tweet from the game’s official Twitter account it will premiere in theaters on August 9th, 2024.
The film, directed by Eli Roth (best known for Hostel) is based on the popular video game of the same name. Borderlands follows Lilith (Cate Blanchett), a treasure hunter who returns to her home planet of Pandora (unrelated to the Avatar movie). She teams up with Roland (Kevin Hart), Tiny Tina (Arian Greenblatt), Krieg (Florian Munteanu), Tannis (Jamie Lee Curtis) and Claptrap (Jack Black) to find the missing daughter of Atlas.
A first look was released last year, though there’s no official trailer yet. It’s peculiar that they’ve decided to announce the release date for the movie more than a year out. What makes it even more odd is that the movie had reportedly wrapped up filming over two years ago in June 2021.
Delays for video game-based movies seem to be increasingly common. The Uncharted movie was delayed several months from its original release date. And when it did release, the film saw mixed reviews, including from Engadget's Devindra Hardawar, who said the Uncharted movie "boldly goes nowhere."The Super Mario Bros. Movie also saw delays in the film’s release. However, that movie set box office records for a video game movie. Barring any further delays, fans should expect to see Borderlands in theaters next year.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/borderlands-movie-is-set-to-be-released-next-august-210515223.html?src=rss
