Chris Hardwick's Blog, page 1998

PACIFIC RIM: UPRISING Gets a New Release Date

John Boyega‘s first sci-fi action movie after Star Wars, Pacific Rim: Uprising, will be moved back a month from February to March 2018. Joining Host Jessica Chobot to talk about that and everything else in nerd culture (maybe not everything) are Associate Editor Kyle Anderson, Nerdist Producer Kate Meyers, and Nerdist Producer Jason Nguyen. Today, the Nerdist News Talks Back crew tackles Avengers 4, Stranger Things, and Pacific Rim: Uprising.

Avengers 4 begins filming soon, which means many of our heroes will be back to face another galactic threat (possibly more Thanos?). According to Collider, Jeremy Renner will be on set in just over a week, meaning Hawkeye will most likely survive Avengers: Infinity War. With Thanos coming to collect the Infinity Stones, some of Earth’s Mightiest are likely to meet their ends (we’re looking at you, Vision). In the above video, we discuss who’s safe and who might take a gauntlet to the face.

Speaking of dead characters, Sean Astin’s character is Stranger Things season 2’s Barb. In an interview with Screen Rant, director Shawn Levy said that Astin’s character will reach Barb levels of fan-favorite-ness. We don’t know if that means Astin’s character will die and be forgotten, but we do know that season 2 is going hard with its ’80s nostalgia. Maybe a Goonies reference or two?

You know what else is super ’80s? Giant robots. According to Deadline, Pacific Rim: Uprising will be delayed one month. While we’d love to see the film a month earlier, this move might benefit the studio. Black Panther comes out in February, and I can’t think of any movie that would want to compete with Black Panther. Without Guillermo Del Toro, there’s a chance that Pacific Rim might not maintain the charm of the first film, but we’re optimistic.

You can watch and interact live with Nerdist News Talks Back every weekday at 1:00pm PST on YouTube and Alpha, and catch up with the archives just after the show!

Image: Universal, Marvel, Netflix

STAR WARS Comic Will Take Luke, Leia, and Han to ROGUE ONE’s Jedha

The group of rebels responsible for stealing the Death Star plans in Rogue One made the ultimate sacrifice on Scarif. They all perished for a greater cause, and the Rebel Alliance used the data Jyn, Cassian, and co. retrieved to destroy the Empire’s planet-decimating weapon. After viewing Rogue One, I couldn’t help but wonder if there was an off-screen scene in the throne room on Yavin 4 honoring the rebels who made the victory possible. At the very least, the Star Wars ongoing comic will see Luke understand the contributions of the Scarif team in an upcoming arc.

StarWars.com shared the news about Luke, Leia, and Han going to Jedha in late July when they confirmed writer Kieron Gillen and artist Salvador Larroca would be taking over Marvel‘s Star Wars title with issue #38 in November. Jedha City was blown to bits by the Death Star in Rogue One, though the Empire covered up the incident and claimed the loss of the holy city was due to a mining incident.

Star Wars #38 cover by David Marquez

Gillen appeared on ABC News’ Inside Marvel: Darth Vader to talk, well, Darth Vader, but he also discussed the Star Wars comic. The first arc will go to Jedha, a place that’s become of a bit of a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Luke’s learning about the Force, so it’s not surprising the track would lead him to what used to be prime holy city territory.

I don’t know that I care much about what Luke could possibly learn about the Force on Jedha, but I am interested in a more emotional side of the story, too. Gillen told ABC News: “We basically get a Rogue One Star Wars intersection, because I really just want to see Luke respond to discovering people like Jyn, discovering the people who led to him being able to take a shot at the Death Star.”

I find this an important path for Luke because he got involved with the war against the Empire right before A New Hope. Unlike Cassian or Jyn, he hasn’t been in the fight for his entire life. He’s been farming on Tatooine, relatively unaware of what was happening in the galaxy. Pilots died alongside him in the Battle of Yavin, but the rebellion scored a big win–it’s not that they didn’t mourn or honor those who died, but they had a lot to celebrate when the Death Star exploded.

Putting Luke in a situation where he’s confronted with learning about rebels like Jyn is kind of a way to hit him in the face with the risks of fighting and the sacrifices others have made for the Rebel Alliance to get to its current position. That kind of experience could be key to his development as a Jedi and as a soldier. I think it will help him more fully understand the stakes.

Watch the entirety of ABC News’ Inside Marvel: Darth Vader to hear more about the ongoing Star Wars comic, as well as what’s happening in the Darth Vader series.

Do you like the idea of Luke, Leia, and Han visiting Jedha? How do you hope it will play out? Share your thoughts on the matter in the comments.

Images: Marvel, Giphy

How Will STAR WARS Keep General Leia’s Legacy Alive?

Late last year, Star Wars fans around the world mourned the loss the great actress and writer, Carrie Fisher, as she passed away unexpectedly. Unfortunately, losing Fisher also means that we’ve lost her iconic character, General Leia. According to Lucasfilm, the original plan was for Fisher to have a much bigger role in Episode IX. However, Star Wars: The Last Jedi will mark Fisher’s final appearance in the role of a lifetime. Today’s Nerdist News is investigating how her legacy will be kept alive.

Join host Jessica Chobot as she runs down three intriguing possibilities that came to mind after a recent interview with John Boyega. While talking with ABC News, Boyega said that the film will “send her off in an amazing way,” before adding that “she’s still kept alive in the franchise.” More tantalizingly, he also said that “she lives forever in a sense.”

“Lives forever?” What does that mean? The first possibility is that Leia could live on in the Force much like her father before her. She may not have become a Jedi, but she was unusually strong with the Force. We could kind of see that…except we don’t believe that Leia would enjoy that afterlife. It just isn’t her style.

The next theory is that Leia lives on while frozen in carbonite. Now that’s a fate that Carrie Fisher would probably endorse, simply because she had a wicked sense of humor. But even that just wouldn’t feel right for Leia, while adding another layer of tragedy to her life.

That’s why we believe that the film will ultimately keep Leia alive while concocting a reason she can’t appear for the final part of the trilogy. It wouldn’t offer too much closure for Leia, but it would keep her spirit alive in the franchise for an indefinite amount of time. We may not see her again in the movies, but Leia can live on in the novels, games, and other stories for years to come.

How do you think that Lucasfilm will handle General Leia’s fate? Share your theories below!

ESPN to Make DODGEBALL’s “The Ocho” Real for a Day

Building an entire day of television programming around an obscure fictional network from a movie that came out 13 years ago?

It’s a bold strategy, Cotton, let’s see if it pays off for ’em.

Actually, we’re willing to bet an oversized treasure chest of deus ex machina winnings that ESPN‘s one day homage to the classic Ben Stiller/Vince Vaughn comedy Dodgeball will be a hit, because they are making the movie’s parody network “The Ocho” a reality.

ESPN announced today that on August 8th (8/8) they will turn ESPNU into the the film’s fictional ESPN8, the parody network that aired the Dodgeball tournament where Not Your Average Joe’s Gym went on an historical Cinderella run to glory.

And just like The Ocho’s tagline from the movie promised, they plan on “bringing you the finest in seldom seen sports.”

Here’s the day long lineup of events they have planned, which includes a different type of dodgeball:

Midnight: 2016 American Disc Golf Championship
2 a.m.: 2016 WFTDA Roller Derby Championships
4 a.m.: 2016 Sky Zone Ultimate Trampoline Dodgeball
5:30 a.m.: Firefighters World Challenge XXV8
8 a.m.: 2016 Kabaddi World Cup Final
9 a.m.: World Darts Championship
11:30 a.m.: Arm Wrestling: Best of WAL 2016 Championship
12:30 p.m.: 2017 Championship of Bags
2:30 p.m.: EVO 2017 World Championship – Street Fighter
5:00 p.m.: Moxie Games
7 p.m.: U.S. Open Ultimate Championship

You can read their press release to learn more about some of these really obscure sports, like Kabaddi,”a contact team sport that originated in India involving two teams and unique rules” where “the goal is for each team’s ‘raider’ to tag as many of the opposing team’s players as possible and return to his/her home half all while taking just a single breath.”

We need that like Patches O’Houlihan needs a glass of his own urine.

But we’re most excited for the only program that has never run on any other ESPN property before, the Moxie Games, which they describe as “an uncanny, new and amazing event which combines a variety of sports into one, such as dodgeball and juggling, martial arts and volleyball, and table tennis and soccer.”

“Uncanny” is definitely one word for it, but based on that description we’d go with “bat**** crazy.”

And we know just the announcer team to call it.

Which of these sports do you most want to see on The Ocho? What other obscure events should air on it? Don’t dodge the question, answer us in the comments below.

Images: 20th Century Fox

Prosthetic Tentacle Appendages Are The Future

Due to a variety of recent innovations in bio-mechanical technology, prosthetic limbs are becoming more functional, better connected to the human body, and, attitude-wise, a lot more Furiosa. But most of the breakthrough prosthetic arms and hands in recent years were just that: arms and hands. For product designer and researcher Kaylene Kau however, a replacement arm and hand was only a starting point on a winding journey that ultimately lead to… a tentacle. A tentacle that works better than expected and would also, aesthetically speaking, make Davy Jones quite proud.

Image: Kaylene Kau

Kau developed the unique prosthetic arm several years back while she was an undergraduate student at the University of Washington, and it was subsequently posted to Coroflot. Kau says she was driven by one of her professors to “to push the boundaries of current upper-limb prosthetic design,” and the result of that request coupled with her fascinating and quirky imagination—seriously, check out some of her other projects like “Birds on the Street”—is a limb that both Turanga Leela’s mother and a Yivo-controlled Fry would be proud of. (Side note: there are a lot of tentacles in Futurama.)

In the clip above, Kau discusses the prosthetic, noting that it received mixed reviews from people who’ve seen it, sometimes earning praise for its form, while other times eliciting some creepy vibes. She also notes that in its prototypical form, the tentacle uses a wire to fold around objects that it’s grasping, whereas in a production model, it would use a motor that would, presumably, be connected to a person’s nervous system.

Image: Kaylene Kau

The basic functionality of the tentacular appendage is undeniable however, as it seems to work perfectly well for grasping and holding various objects. Kau says on her website that this is the primary function of a prosthetic limb, at least when it’s coupled with a dominant, normally functioning biological limb. All we can say is:

But do you love the tentacle?! Let us know what you think of this prosthetic limb design in the comments below!

Images: YouTube / TravisKOMONews

Telltale’s BATMAN: THE ENEMY WITHIN Trailer Gets Dark

Telltale Games has established itself as the go-to company for incredible story-focused gaming experiences based on our favorite pop culture properties. With breakout games inspired by Fables and The Walking Dead, the company has grown a legion of loyal fans who adore the expanded universes centered around our favorite fandoms. With the trailer for their second Batman video game, Batman: The Enemy Within – The Telltale Series, it looks like they’ve done it again…and made it really dark.

Following on from their successful Gotham debut in Batman: the Telltale Series, this new story seems to have taken a seriously dark turn, which for the Dark Knight is saying something. This trailer introduces us to a heavily horror-tinged representation of the Riddler. Long gone are his kooky clues, but say hello to some incredibly Saw-influenced torture machines and a new look very reminiscent of a certain Oliver Queen.

We’re also promised a return of the mysterious “John Doe” from the first game, who’s really only mysterious if you’ve never checked out a Batman movie or comic book before. That’s because, of course, this mystery man is (drumroll) the Joker! He appears briefly in this trailer to demand that Bruce Wayne return a favor, which can surely never end well for Bats. Plus, he takes what’s surely the first canon Batman/Joker selfie in known history.

The trailer also teases Commissioner Gordon looking like he was designed by the team behind Dream Daddy, generally smoldering away in his recently gained title. He became Police Commissioner during the first game after the previous Commissioner was killed by a notorious Batman villain, and now he’s ready to kick some bad guy butt and enable Bruce Wayne in his questionable mission of cleaning up the streets of Gotham with nothing but vigilante justice and billions of dollars.

These games are always an immense amount of fun. After the rather Bruce-heavy first installment–which saw an unexpected canon character take the role of the villain–fans will no doubt be super happy with this trailer. This time it’s Bat-heavy and sees Gotham’s most eligible costumed bachelor facing off against not one but two of his most iconic foes!

Are you excited to return to Telltale’s Gotham? Can’t wait to see what Jigsaw  the Riddler has up his green sleeves? Swing into our comments and let us know!

Images: Telltale Games

THE NEXT GENERATION’s LeVar Burton Joins STAR TREK ONLINE’s MMORPG

Although Discovery is the first Star Trek series to air in twelve years, the Federation Flame has been kept burning for fans the past several years via the Star Trek Online Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG for short), which made its debut back in 2010. The game is set 25 years after the events of Star Trek: Nemesis, the last canonical adventure in the Next Generation timeline.

Now, after 13 seasons into the game, a member of the original cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation is joining the digital cast as Geordi La Forge. That’s right, actor LeVar Burton is returning to his iconic role, now as a Starfleet Captain. You can check out the trailer for Geordi’s Star Trek Online debut below.

In the game’s mythology, the alliance between the Federations and the Klingon Empire has collapsed, and both sides are once again at war. The Romulans continues to deal with the fallout of the loss of their homeworld  (as shown in J. J. Abrams’ Star Trek reboot), while the Dominion (from Deep Space Nine) rebuilds its forces. The Borg have also returned to assimilate the galaxy.

Captain La Forge will be featured in two episodes of the popular MMORPG game. The first one is set to be released on September 12, as part of the 30th anniversary celebration of the debut of Star Trek: The Next Generation. The second episode will be released in October as part of Star Trek Online‘s Season 14 update.

The first episode, which releases in September is a Star Trek: The Next Generation-themed event titled “Beyond the Nexus.” Players will join Captain La Forge  as they investigate a distress call from a Galaxy class ship — the same designation as the Next Generation’s version of the Enterprise — whose crew is being mind-controlled by a mysterious energy source.

The episode marks the release of a fully realized Galaxy-class interior available for purchase and includes server-wide giveaways to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Star Trek Online is currently available on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

Has the addition of this classic Trek actor made you more interested in Star Trek Online? Be sure to let us know down below in the comments.

Images: CBS

JUNK HEAD is a Fun Trip Through a Stop-Motion Wasteland (Fantasia Review)

You’re going to notice Hori Takahide’s name show up a lot in the credits for Junk Head.

Director, producer, screenplay, voices, cinematographer, camera op, sculpting, puppets, lighting, animation…there’s probably no credit category on this film that Hori’s name doesn’t appear. “Labor of love” doesn’t quite cover it. The filmmaker spent four years alone creating the 30-minute short film that would eventually grow into the weird, whimsical, slightly depressing feature that will hopefully find its audience.

Junk Head takes place far, far into the future. It’s been 1,200 years since the humans and clones went to war, and now one human has been sent from his home near the top of a vast industrial structure into the lower, clone-controlled portions to retrieve some important DNA. Unfortunately, he’s blown out of the sky almost immediately, and his head gets placed in a swell new junk chassis.

But honestly, you don’t really come to Junk Head for the plot. It’s loose and fun and episodic, like a Harold Lloyd silent film filtered through the grunge of ’90s indie animation. The kind of post-apocalyptic sci-fi film that sends its hero on a grocery run to get mushrooms, introduces a mushroom-hungry con man to steal his stuff, and then introduces a thousand-toothed monster to eat that con artist. It’s weird, but it invites you to roll with it because it’s funny.

Also, the stop-motion animation is an excellent mix wondrous dark fantasy and clunky cute characters. The clones feel like the Minions after living in a rusty wasteland for a thousand years, and the movie itself looks like the living furniture from Beetlejuice got to make a project for LAIKA. Burton’s influence is all over this, to the point that the soldier in the opening gag look like the tiny mummy from Nightmare Before Christmas. This is also a universe with body parts harvested for food and aggressive scorpion/worm beasts of skin and bone terrorizing the honest workers.

Although the stop-motion toys around with its figures as dolls–shuffling along, arms hinging, tiny cloth garments folding with each movement–Hori also plays around with the camera work to create thrilling chase scenes and in-psyche freak outs alongside shots that let us hang out with his kooky figures.

Each mini-adventure is fun to watch. They generally find a punch line in the muck and grime of the wastes, proving that life goes on even if you’re merely scrounging in the metal scrap pile for your next meal. All of it weaves together once a crew who thinks our hero is a God meets the crew that thinks he’s a moronic version of WALL-E, but Junk Head has the same problem almost every episode film does: the ending isn’t big and satisfying. It happens, like everything else has happened, and it brings the adventure to a close. No more, no less. It doesn’t have the problem that fellow short-film-t0-feature, stop-motion dark adventure 9 does in stretching itself too thin, but it also doesn’t benefit from having a larger narrative purpose for our hero to fulfill.

Still, it’s a fantastic world to explore, and the talent that went into making it is enormous. The fact that one man did everything from costuming to editing to the music (with a small, supportive crew) is insane, especially because he churned out something that is on par with some of the best animation studios even if its tone and flavor are more oddball than average.

That he sneaked in some questions about the meaning of existence is just a moldy cherry on top.

4 out of 5 chest-teeth burritos

Images: Hori Takahide

Legendary Classic VOLTRON is the Latest LEGO Idea

It does my little kid, wanted-every-toy-under-the-sun heart a lot of good to see Voltron returning to both the animation sphere and the playable plastic realm, thanks to the fabulous series Voltron: Legendary Defender, about to begin its third season on Netflix (Friday, Aug 4). But the return of the giant robotic lions joining to form and even more giant robo-warrior has also meant a return to prominence of the original ’80s series, from the cast and crew of the new show curating their favorite episodes for Netflix, to this (hat tip to io9): a LEGO Idea submission will be turned into a set you can buy!

I remember having a hand-me-down Voltron figure from my cousin, which stood like 12 inches high, and I loved that thing even though the lions weren’t separable; not only does this LEGO Idea–which has gained the necessary 10,000 votes and has been submitted and accepted by the LEGO designers for mass production–feature all five individual lions that you can transform and combine, but, because it’s LEGO, you get the satisfaction of building all of it yourself. As great as LEGO is, and as movable as some of the sets are, could you imagine actually getting to build a transforming, snap-together 16″ thing all on your own?

The design, by user len_d69, weighs about 1 kg when all put together, and surely the LEGO folks will do a bit of re-designing to make it a little sturdier for mass production (probably it’ll come out next year), but it’s already a pretty perfect design visually speaking. I’m hoping this could lead to more sets, and maybe even some new series sets. I demand a Coran minifig, because any excuse to have a Rhys Darby character in LEGO form is okay with me.

Check out more images of the LEGO Voltron Idea below!

All the lions standing!

Voltron looking majestic AF.

This looks like it could be straight out of the ’80s!

Share your thoughts on the Voltron LEGO in the comments below!

Images: LEGO/len_d69

Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist. He’s written the animation retrospectives Batman: Reanimated, X-Men: Reanimated, Cowboy Rebop, and Samurai reJacked. Follow him on Twitter!

Hyperloop One’s Inaugural 192MPH Test Run Looked Like Space Mountain

Hyperloop One, one of the private companies bringing to life the out-there concept for a completely new form of transportation now known as the hyperloop, recently completed its inaugural test run for its proprietary system by sending a transportation pod flying down a concrete tube at 192 miles per hour. The test run went off without a hitch at Hyperloop One’s test track in the Nevada desert, and simultaneously garnered mad style points for looking very much like the classic Disney ride, Space Mountain.

Finally, we’re all going to be living in Tomorrowland! Hopefully without all the lines and pricey sodas.

Hyperloop One’s achievement, which comes via Gizmodo (and is available for your viewing pleasure in the clip above), stands as a proof-of-concept for its take on the mode of transportation that was theorized by American engineer and physicist Robert Goddard in 1909. And yes, that means that while Elon Musk may have brought it back into the limelight in 2013 with his own conceptual take on the unique form of transportation, the idea of propelling a pod at high-speeds down a depressurized tube has been in the design ether for quite some time.

This inaugural test was technically “Phase 2” of Hyperloop One’s initial testing and advanced the achievements of the first phase, which took place in May of this year. This time around, the first-generation pod reached a top speed of 192 miles per hour, covered a distance of 1,433 feet, and utilized an electromagnetic powertrain that developed 3,151 horsepower. For reference, the pod in the first test topped out at 69 miles per hour, traveled 315 feet, and developed 891 horsepower.

The pod is able to travel at such high speeds utilizing an electric drivetrain—which is explained in more detail in the video above—by sucking out a huge amount of the air inside of the tube. This effectively means that the pod faces very little air resistance, as it encounters an atmospheric density roughly equivalent to what a craft would experience at about 200,000 feet above sea level.

The ultimate goal for Hyperloop One’s take on the zippy tube (we’d still like that to be the nickname for this thing) is to have the transportation pod travel at insanely fast speeds between cities that are around a hundred or more miles apart. There’s been word of linking Abu Dhabi and Dubai, for example, which are 90 miles apart. Hyperloop One’s ‘loop could theoretically make that trip in 12 minutes. Going 500 miles per hour.

Aside from some insanely fast travel times, what’s most important here, clearly, is the fact that Hyperloop One’s tunnel looks exactly like Space Mountain. It’s just too bad nobody aboard the pod can see the Space Mountain-ish visuals as the pod has no windows.

Space Mountain ride at Disney’s Tomorrowland. Image: YouTube / TheCoasterViews

As far as the Musk man himself, according to a recent tweet, he has in own plans for the hyperloop in store.

SpaceX student Hyperloop top speed competition coming up soon! https://t.co/R7FAPf6HLB

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 2, 2017

What do you think about Hyperloop One’s take on the hyperloop? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

Images: YouTube / Hyperloop One