Chris Hardwick's Blog, page 2042

Behold the Epic Summer Romance of a Scarecrow and a Dancing Robot

Writer/director Kibwe Tavares most recently showed us what life is like for a big ego in a sleepy town when he snaps a photo of an unbelievably massive fish. Part of the thrill of Jonah was its CGI manipulation of an entire town, and Tavares continues that streak of jaw-dropping visual design with Robot & Scarecrow.

This new short film is more about feel than about plot. Set against the whirling sunshine of a summer music festival, a performing robot (Holliday Grainger), who seems just as much prisoner as pop star, ducks her security detail to appreciate the sights and sounds of the concert with a scarecrow (Jack O’Connell) who’s drawn by the music to break free from his perch.

It’s a free and easy kind of insta-romance that–like most euphoric things–isn’t meant to last.

Robot & Scarecrow from Factory Fifteen on Vimeo.

The true stand out of Robot & Scarecrow is the mo-cap wizardry. Led by visual effects coordinator Greet Kallikorm, the team has assembled two gorgeous, seamless fantasy beings. It’s as if they plucked them directly from our dreams and dropped them into a field at Coachella.

The believability of the design and the way it alienates the characters from the non-non-humans in the crowd goes along way in letting us sink into the story and the environment. So much of the scene–marked by wild mosh pits, flying colored dust, and half-naked revelers–is defined and redefined by the absence of the robot and the scarecrow. This isn’t a world they belong to, which is why it’s all the more dramatic when they find a way to participate in it hand in hand.

What do you think?

Image: Factory Fifteen

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA’s Edward James Olmos Gave Katee Sackhoff the Best Acting Advice of Her Life

How many people can say Edward James Olmos, he of Battlestar Galactica and Blade Runner and Stand and Deliver, taught them to act? According to his BSG costar Katee Sackhoff, that’s what he did for her—and in a mere half minute.

In a group interview with EW alongside fellow BSG cast members Grace Park (Boomer) and Michael Trucco (Anders), Sackhoff, who played Kara “Starbuck” Thrace, got a quick lesson in cutting the BS and giving an authentic performance between takes on season one’s “Act of Contrition.” During an emotionally charged moment, Starbuck claims responsibility of the death of Commander Adama’s (Olmos) son Zak (Tobias Mehler). As she typically did, Sackhoff was following her mother’s advice of “Fake it until you believe it,” a direction she’d been falling back on for years. And Olmos had noticed.

“I had this one moment with Eddie where I was just joking around…He walked up to me and said, ‘If you tried this much, you’d be so good,” said Sackhoff. The actress was taken aback for a moment, and Olmos went on to explain that to truly deliver in the scene, she’d have to “think about what’s going on instead of being Katee.” Once she could take a moment to think, Olmos assured her, she’d be able to go back to being Katee. Sackhoff accepted his advice and, driving his point home, Olmos told her, “You’re really good at faking it.”

Having heard him loud and clear, Sackhoff approached the scene with fresh eyes. “It was the first time I had lived as another person,” she said, remembering how she had literally sobbed through filming as she internalized her character’s grief over Zak’s death. After that, Olmos concluded, “Now, you can go back to being Katee, because now, you know how to do it.” You might say she had a plan now.

For Sackhoff, it was a lesson in overcoming the fear of vulnerability and how far off-the-cuff advice can go when you’re performing with a legend. And for Park, Trucco, and fans of the show, it was a reminder that Edward James Olmos is every bit as badass as William Adama himself.

What artistic craft do you want to be schooled in by EJO? Let us know in the comments!

Images: SyFy

How DETROIT: BECOME HUMAN Lets You Start a Bonkers Android Riot

What happens when an android starts to feel? It’s an age-old question that’s been explored in countless science fiction epics. More often than not, whatever world the the story is set in erupts in chaos. In the case of the upcoming PS4 exclusive, Detroit: Become Human, that is a possibility, but not the only option, thanks to Quantic Dream’s (Heavy Rain, Beyond Two Souls) complex choice-driven gameplay. After last year’s impressive showing, Sony brought the heat to their E3 press conference again this year with a trailer showcasing the game’s third and final protagonist.

During the latest look (below), we were introduced to Marcus (portrayed by Jesse Williams), a rogue android who has “woken up” and is ready to rally his fellow droids to rise up against against the humans that have been using and mistreating them. Amidst the uprising, the new protagonist and his companion, North, are hellbent on freeing and converting androids that are being kept at a store in the city. As we saw in the trailer, things can go very wrong, very fast, if you aren’t careful. Luckily, we were able to go behind-the-scenes with the developer for a full break-down of what was going on during the mission, and the myriad of complex ways the player can alter the situation.

As Quantic Dream’s co-CEO Guillaume de Fondaumiere pointed out during our presentation, there are more than two ways to tackle a mission. On top of that, how you initially arrive to a scene, as well as the characters’ respective states of mind, will be different for each player, depending on the decisions they’ve already made. If you’re familiar with the studio’s previous titles, or other games in the choice-driven category, this set-up should sound old hat by now. With Detroit, QD seems to have perfected the formula in a way that’s truly remarkable.

At the start of the demo, Markus and North set their plan to infiltrate the local android store, Cyberlife, and free their brethren, in motion. After hiding from police, the pair emerged to find an open courtyard, with the store ahead. Before pushing onward, Markus surveyed the area and noted points of interest. There were several androids nearby that he was able to convert (a.k.a. awake emotionally), a drone patrolling the area, and more items to interact with. Instead of charging through and setting off the alarm, Markus and North traced the system to a nearby ditch. Despite the system’s eventual deactivation, the authorities were alerted and they were faced with three choices: hide, abandon the mission, or act natural.

After opting to completely abandon the mission (which royally annoyed North), de Fondaumiere gave it another go and explained how to take out the drone that spotted Markus. By entering reconstruct mode, he was able to view the drone’s flight path, and possible ways to intercept it. While perching atop a nearby street lamp wasn’t a good enough vantage point, the roof of an adjacent building was. Taking things a step further, Markus was also able to simulate the drone takedown, and glean how to get up to the roof in the first place.

Once he was sure that it’d work, Markus scaled the building and victoriously leapt in the direction of the drone. With that out of the way, he and North started to look for a way in to the store. The best way in? Hot-wiring and ramming a truck into the glass doors, that’s how! With the dirty work out of the way, and the androids within the store on the side of the resistance, Markus had a decision to make: either lead the pack down a path of violence, or play the pacifist and hope the public receives the message and agrees to peace. Whatever the case, all of the androids you’ve converted will follow your lead, so it’s best to act with purpose.

Suffice it to say, it was mass chaos in a matter of minutes. A few quick time interactions (which make use of the analog stick and Dual Shock 4’s touchpad) later and the crew was damaging property, graffitiing, creating a blackout, and even starting a pyre via ripping a wooden bench out of the ground, tossing it in a gazebo, and lighting it on fire—oh my! Staring a riot never looked so fun. After each new choice, the balance between violence and pacifism levels teetered back and forth on the screen.

While we obviously don’t know the full effect, we do know that raising hell in the mission is going to have a heavy impact on not only how the humans react (likely in fear) to what’s going on,  but how the other two protagonists fair. At the end of the demo, we got a brief taste of the backlash; Markus and a group of anti-deviants (Connor’s group) were separated by a trail of dead deviant android bodies. Things are going to be rough for the resistance from here on out.

Just from this scene alone, it’s already apparent how much thought has gone into the game’s choices, and how they’ll affect the rest of the story. There are three main characters—all of which can die if you don’t play your cards right. As such, the replay factor is through the roof. I can’t wait to watch my own personal experience unfold before my very eyes when the game officially launches.

Are you ready to start an android riot? What do you think will happen to Markus and the rest of the characters? Let us know in the comments!

Image: Sony

PREACHER Season 2 Takes the Series Back to Its Comic Book Roots (Review)

Let’s get the fun stuff out of the way first: Season Two of Preacher does not fail to deliver on the dismemberment. Nor does it forget to cover every available surface with blood spray, turn outrageous violence into humor, or get very weird just for the hell of it–basically, everything you need for a good TV show.

Perhaps more importantly, however, this season improves on its predecessor by starting to delve into its source material. Despite the serious buzz surrounding Preacher‘s initial season, one complaint from viewers was that the show strayed too far from the comics. Showrunners Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg‘s decision to keep the action in Annville for Season One forced them to mostly rely on original plotlines, which might be fine for other comic-based TV series, but isn’t a great plan when your source text is created by people as hugely skilled as Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon. There will be a disparity between Ennis and Dillon’s work and your work, and viewers will notice.

Although Preacher Season Two doesn’t stick 100 percent to the comics, it draws much more story elements from them than Season One. As a result, the characters are allowed to move in something closer to their natural environment, which gives them greater scope for development. Ruth Negga‘s Tulip, for instance, has softened up a tiny bit–not in any way that looks like appeasement, but just enough to suggest that she might be a decent person underneath it all, at least by Preacher‘s metric of decency. We’re also starting to see how Dominic Cooper‘s Jesse handles ideas of tradition and masculinity now that his entire social structure has exploded. Meanwhile, the darker side of Cassidy’s roguish hedonism is beginning to show, underscored by the gleefully self-destructive edge Joseph Gilgun lends to the role. (By the way, Cassidy’s accent, which was a little they’re-after-me-Lucky-Charms in Season One, has now bypassed the character’s supposed Dublin origins entirely and veered all the way into Northern Ireland for some reason.)

It helps, too, that the changes made to the source material are more in keeping with the overall themes of the comics than they were in the previous season. In the comics, Jesse is preoccupied with protecting Tulip from any collateral damage incurred by his acts of violence and his disturbing past, which is part sincere concern and part outmoded masculinity; Tulip is more than capable of holding her own when bullets start flying, and provides backup to or rescues Jesse on several occasions. While this isn’t entirely absent from Jesse’s character in the show, some of those concerns have been reassigned to Tulip, who continually strives to keep Jesse from finding out about her contract killing career. With both lovers trying to shield each other from their pasts, the focus shifts from Jesse learning about gender equality to a couple needing to learn about emotional openness. It’s a 21st-century update on their relationship.

Another thematic gem that shines through these alterations is the source material’s dark comedy. Ennis and Dillon were masters at going from harrowing to hilarious in the blink of an eye, and original sequences like this are woven throughout Preacher Season Two, such as a man less worried about the limb that’s just been blown off his body than he is about getting quarters for a soda vending machine. It’s not an easy line to walk, as a sequence where a character undertakes a series of increasingly cartoonish suicide attempts reminds us. Here, the scenes are played for laughs, yet never without shying away from the emotional trauma that has driven the character to this point; the camera lingers on the person’s face, reminding us that their actions come from a place of heart-freezing loss. The balance could have gone horribly wrong at any moment, especially considering the sensitivity of the subject at hand, but the show pulls it off. Just like the comics would.

It’s a very good sign, not only because it makes for a better show, but because it implies that Rogen and Goldberg are looking at what made the comics so wonderful in the first place. If they’re applying deeper levels of insight to the adaptation process, the show is likely to continue on an upward trajectory, which means this ride is going to get wild. And if that’s the case, we should definitely stick around to see how far it goes.

RATING: 4 OUT OF 5 BURRITOS

Season Two of Preacher premieres Sunday, June 25th on AMC at 10 PM EST.

Images: AMC/Sundance TV

This A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM Adaptation Isn’t So Sweet (LAFF Review)

In theory, A Midsummer Night’s Dream ought to be one of William Shakespeare’s more cinematic plays, what with it taking place in an enchanted forest full of fairies and magic to which two young would-be couples escape. Indeed, it has been made into cinematic spectacle more than once: a 1935 film that cast James Cagney as Bottom and a 1999 version that used Stanley Tucci as a memorable Puck. A spectacle the 2017 version is not; other things it is not might include “effective” and “entertaining,” depending upon your perspective.

Re-setting the action from Greece to Hollywood (while nonetheless still calling it “Athens”) isn’t inherently a bad idea, but there needs to be a reason for it. Director Casey Wilder Mott intends his adaptation to be a commentary on class systems then and now, with studio executives substituting for royalty, film students in place of traveling theater troupes, and beach hippie stoner types as the fairies. That’s a decent enough starting point, but so what? When most of the action involves second-generation Hollywood talent walking around Topanga Canyon at night, getting enchanted and unenchanted, what is that commenting on? And why do we care, when the love spell storyline ends almost as quickly as it begins?

Part of the problem is maintaining Shakespeare’s five-act structure for the screen; by the time the primary love story has been resolved, there are still 20 more minutes or so of musical numbers, weddings, and a painfully drawn-out Star Wars joke. For an hour-and-44-minute movie, that should be the place to trim the most. Or maybe one of fairy king Oberon’s songs could go.

In the original text, comic relief thespian Bottom (an overly screechy Fran Kranz) is given the head of a donkey by supernatural mischief-maker Puck; here, what with Puck being a pot-smoker, it makes sense that he’d interpret “ass” a different way, and that one semi-amusing tweak has naturally been the centerpiece of the movie’s trailer. But unless you find the idea of a butt-headed man having fully clothed sex with a fairy queen grinding atop him inherently hilarious, it’s not enough. And the bright red and purple filters so many scenes are shot through are seriously strain-inducing on the eyes.

I suspect the inspiration here was Joss Whedon‘s Much Ado About Nothing, a modern-set Shakespeare adaptation the director filmed quickly and cheaply with friends like Clark Gregg and Nathan Fillion. But you can’t really do that with a more fantasy-oriented tale like this one, even with a Brechtian framing device suggesting we are watching somebody’s AFI student project (AFI, as “Athens Film Institute,” gets name-dropped quite a bit, and even given a mini-commercial). Besides, if you’re not Joss Whedon, trying to be him, while arguably a noble goal, is really hard.

Cast members you may recognize, like Rachael Leigh Cook and Lily Rabe, are fine but add little, while Avan Jogia’s Puck is so obviously modeled on Anthony Kiedis from the Red Hot Chili Peppers that I wished I were watching the real thing instead. At one point, he makes everyone in the woods fall asleep by deeply exhaling a cloud of “purple haze” marijuana smoke. It would not surprise me in the least to learn that this adaptation were conceived in much the same way.

Rating: 1 out of 5 burritos…out of respect to the original author

Images: LAFF/5B Productions/Indie PR

Luke Y. Thompson is a writer-type guy who thinks LAFF itself is the real midsummer night’s dream.

Will Ferrell’s ANCHORMAN Was Almost About Mountain Survival and Ninja Orangutans

Anchorman wasn’t Will Ferrell‘s first feature film, but it was one of the movies that marked his transition from Saturday Night Live star to the big screen. However, Ferrell and his collaborator/director, Adam McKay had a very difficult time getting Anchorman made. And the film that ended up in theaters was pretty far from their original vision.

While making an appearance on The Bill Simmons Podcast (via The Ringer) Ferrell shared the initial plot that he and McKay used to introduce Ron Burgundy and his friends. “The first version of Anchorman is basically the movie Alive, where the year is 1976, and we are flying to Philadelphia, and all the newsmen from around the country are flying in to have some big convention. Ron convinces the pilot that he knows how to fly the charter jet, and he immediately crash-lands it in the mountains. And it’s just the story of them surviving and trying to get off the mountainside.”

That sounds amazing. Now that we know what kind of story that Ron Burgundy was created for, it’s difficult to picture him in anything else. And that wasn’t even the craziest part of the first script. “They clipped a cargo plane, and the cargo plane crashed as well, close to them, and it was carrying only boxes of orangutans and Chinese throwing stars,” continued Ferrell. “So throughout the movie we’re being stalked by orangutans who are killing, one by one, the team off with throwing stars. And Veronica Corningstone keeps saying things like, ‘Guys, I know if we just head down we’ll hit civilization.’ And we keep telling her, ‘Wrong.’ She doesn’t know what we’re talking about. So that was the first version of the movie.”

Okay, now we really want to see this version of the movie. There hasn’t been any word on Anchorman 3 in a long time, but this story could be reconfigured for a sequel. Or perhaps this could retain the original ’70s setting by rebooting the Anchorman films with all of the same cast members fighting the throwing star orangutans. We’re down for that! Or maybe Paramount can team with Fox to make it War for the Mountain of the Ninja Apes?

What do you think about Ferrell and McKay’s original vision for Anchorman? Toss us a star and share your thoughts in the comment section below!

Images: DreamWorks/Paramount Pictures

The Ladies of UNCHARTED: THE LOST LEGACY Are a Badass Pair

When Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End released last year, Nathan Drake’s nearly nine year adventure came to a close. While Nate’s chapter has ended, Naughty Dog has at least one more tale to tell in the same universe with Uncharted: The Lost Legacy—which is set to launch exclusively on PS4 August 22. The standalone title was one of the most surprising reveals during PSX last year, and held the coveted opening spot during Sony’s E3 2017 press conference.

During a behind-closed-doors gameplay presentation at the show, we got a bit more insight into the dynamic between Uncharted‘s new leading ladies: series’ favorite Chloe Frazer (Uncharted 2, Uncharted 3), and fellow badass (and the villain of U4), Nadine Ross. As per usual for an Uncharted title, the girls are hunting for a long lost treasure–in this case, the Tusk of Ganesha–in an exotic and beautifully realized setting, India’s Western Ghats mountains. The most fascinating thing here, however, is the intriguing pairing between Chloe, an impulsive and unpredictable treasure hunter, and her companion Nadine, the calm and collected former leader of the paramilitary Shoreline organization.

While it is especially exciting to see a first party developer put such a diverse pair of women at the forefront of a video game (Chloe is Indian/Australian, while Nadine is South African), I can’t help be drawn to the complexity of the characters themselves, and how their differing personalities are going to both clash and complement each other as the story progresses. We got a delightful taste of how they’re going to work together (or not) from a ten-minute extended gameplay demo.

At the beginning of the scene, we found Chloe and Nadine at the top of a rock formation, looking off into the distance at the likeness of Ganesha carved into the cliff. “Worth it?” asked Chloe, in reference to the view. “Impressive,” remarked Nadine. The site was certainly worth it and one I can’t wait to explore. After making it to the ground, Chloe suggested a route, while Nadine insisted on taking point. After a cheeky “lead the way” from Chloe, the ladies pushed forward.

The entertaining fight for dominance continued from there. While hiding in the bushes, Chloe once again laid out the plan for taking out the two enemies in front of them: “you take left, I take right.” Instead of sticking to the plan, however, Nadine demonstrated her combat prowess by leaping onto one of the men while simultaneously kicking the other. When Chloe responded with: “That works too,” the group of viewers in the meeting room let out a hearty chuckle.

Naughty Dog’s knack for picking an engaging (and hilarious) pair has always been the heart of the series. It’s great to see it translate so well to a standalone adventure with different protagonists at the helm. Nadine’s no-nonsense focus is a nice balance to Chloe’s wit. Though action, combat, and traversal are always remarkable in the world of Uncharted, and on perfect display in the footage we saw, it is the relationship between the characters themselves that I can’t wait to watch develop.

Couldn't make it to #E3? See the reveal of the Uncharted: The Lost Legacy gameplay demo next Tuesday, 6/20. Details: https://t.co/Sfyzpe7Gcw pic.twitter.com/U51vqqZFcm

— Naughty Dog (@Naughty_Dog) June 16, 2017

At the very end of the demo, the girls stumbled into a tomb where they came toe-to-toe with the game’s menacing villain, Asav, a rebel leader who has been rallying his forces and creating turmoil in India. He was impressed (and disgusted) by their ability to find the Eye of Shiva artifact while his men hunted for a week and came up with nothing. According to Chloe, he must have chosen the wrong experts. It looks like The Lost Legacy‘s dynamic duo are  going to have their hands full when the game launches in two weeks.

Thirsting for more details? Naughty Dog will be unveiling the extended demo next Tuesday. According to Naughty Dog’s blog, Creative Director, Shaun Escayg, and Game Director, Kurt Margenau will be sharing more details about the game and answering viewer questions.

Are you excited to see Chloe and Nadine in action? Which other characters would you want to see paired up? Let us know in the comments below!

Image: Naughty Dog

Looking at DOCTOR WHO Series 10, After 10 Episodes

It’s always a strange time when you realize there are only two episodes left in any given Doctor Who series. Especially when–in the case of Series 10–we wait over a calendar year for a new batch of episodes and almost as soon as it begins, it’s about to be over, and we’ll have another long, dark period. Ah, such is the way of Doctor Who. But I think part of the reason it’s seemed to have gone by so quickly is that the series started so strong, but has fallen off rather sharply. Not that any episode has been bad, but it’s definitely a series of halves.

For exactly the first five episodes of the series, I was raving from the rooftops that the show was doing something it hadn’t in a very long time: gone simple with the storylines but complex with the characters and point of view. “The Pilot” is perhaps one of the best companion introduction stories ever made; “Smile,” while not the best in terms of plot, proved to be an excellent two-hander for the Doctor and Bill to go off on an adventure together; “Thin Ice” might still be my favorite episode of the year, with a great historical setting, a compelling creature, and a ton of wonderful racial and moral quandaries; “Knock Knock” is at once a hilarious Doctor-hanging-with-modern-kids story and a creepy mood piece; and “Oxygen” combined hard science with brilliant capitalist satire.

And then the second set of five episodes has felt strangely off. A big part of this is certainly down to the experimental mid-series 3-parter, which introduced the threatening Monks, a race that wanted to subjugate the Earth through love and devotion and the changing of memories/historical records. I will always applaud the attempt to do something completely outside of the norm, and a connected series of three episodes that are separate and individual but don’t feel like “to be continued” stories was a neat idea. The problem, though, is that they work much better thematically than they do in practice.

I praised “Extremis” at the time as a cool way to do a prologue for a two-parter about alien invasion. I still think it’s a great idea, having a simulation of the Doctor defeat the villains, simply because he’s the Doctor even if he’s fake. However, “The Pyramid at the End of the World” didn’t really continue along those same lines, becoming instead about how one little series of accidents could destroy the whole world, and that conquering a planet isn’t nearly as effective as being asked to conquer it.

And yet again, in the culmination, “The Lie of the Land,” we explore another theme–that of being lied to by a regime, and discovering the truth in the era of fake news. In all three cases, the themes in the episodes are deeply resonant, but they seemed to overtake the stories at hand more than they perhaps should have, and following the five episodes at the top of the series, it felt very much like the show was different. It also doesn’t help that we’re meant to care about what the Monks are doing, but we know absolutely nothing about them. They were ciphers at best, and seemingly able to do anything.

Another huge aspect of the three Monk episodes is the realization of what the Vault is and who was inside of it. Once a mystery of that nature is uncovered, that becomes the most important thing, and following the super portentous three-parter and the realization of Missy as the strange, evidently rehabilitating center to this puzzle, going off on a Martian adventure with Victorians and Ice Warriors, and especially heading to Scotland to find out what happened to the 9th Roman Legion, feel like enormous digressions.

“The Eaters of Light” was an episode I was really looking forward to, not least because it’s written by Rona Munro, the writer of the very last classic series story back in 1989. And while there is absolutely nothing the matter with the episode–it’s got great characters, Bill is excellent in it, the concept and monster are top-notch–its placement in the series feels incredibly off and kept me from enjoying it fully.

Based on things said in the episode–specifically Nardole chiding the Doctor for not continuing his vow to guard the Vault–and the general attitude of Bill, this is clearly an episode that was meant to be slotted in earlier in the series. The final scene with Missy was obviously shot much later, and there are ADR lines to establish that they’d just come back from Mars. But they super didn’t. My guess is this episode was the most mobile, and was meant to be shown in between “Oxygen” and “Extremis,” but perhaps only having one episode in between the Monks and the two-part finale seemed too fast. Either way, having two episodes in a row now of two armies having to come to an agreement for the betterment of a planet (and the Doctor and Bill being relatively unrelated to the resolution) left me wanting.

That said, despite the inconsistencies of the recent five episodes, I still thing Series 10 has enough goodwill with me to make me incredibly excited and curious to see how the final two episodes shake out, and with two Masters and some old-ass Cybermen involved–not to mention more direction from the great Rachel Talalay–we’re in for some excellence. I can feel it in me bones.

What do you think about Series 10 thus far? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Doctor Who airs Saturdays at 9/8c on BBC America.

Images: BBC America

Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor and the resident Whovian for Nerdist. Follow him on Twitter!

GAME OF THRONES’ Jaime Lannister Goes to Jail in SHOT CALLER (LAFF Review)

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau has been called upon to do many distasteful things during his Game of Thrones tenure, from incest to attempted child murder to having his hand chopped off. But unless I blinked and missed it, he never, ever, had to stick a balloon full of drugs deep into his butt for safekeeping. So thanks for giving us that, Shot Caller, and for being discreet about it. By holding the camera in a close-up of Coster-Waldau’s face, the movie lets us see him emote every different grimace that an obviously heinous bit of sense-memory work induces. It’s a tour de force of facial expressions, and absolutely must be included on the highlight reel when he gets that lifetime acting award some day.

Director Ric Roman Waugh specializes in hard-hitting, violent dramas about decent family men forced to behave like criminals (Felon, Snitch), and his latest star has made a name for himself as a potentially redeemable scumbag. As such, the two are practically a platonic love connection. Coster-Waldau plays Jacob, a.k.a. “Money,” whom we first see emerging from a maximum security prison sporting longish hair and a handlebar mustache. After a while, the narrative flips back to 10 years prior, when he’s an Aaron Eckhart-looking white-collar worker in the field of finance, happily married and kinda dorky but, as he’s about to find out, also one DUI away from prison.

The narrative flips back and forth, gradually adding perspective to his post-prison plans by showing how an unassuming suit first became a muscular, tattooed White Nationalist with a plan. It’s all a process to protect his family, he rationalizes…even when they no longer want a thing to do with him. See, even though the only blood on his hands initially comes from an irresponsible accident, it’s considered a violent crime and gets him thrown in with the worst of the worst, where his lawyer advises him to come on tough right off the bad. He does, and the gangs notice; before long, he’s doing things for them that range from bad (the butt balloon) to worse (murder). He’s no good to his wife and kid dead, right? But he’ll be killed himself by his new “brothers” if he doesn’t toe the white power line (a line, incidentally, that’s very flexible on the racism when it comes to mutually agreeable sales of arms and narcotics).

While Coster-Waldau’s English accent is solid when he’s doing Game of Thrones, his “American” has a much more audible Danish undertone. Technically, this ought to make him less believable in a movie where nobody around him sounds like that, but for folks who grew up with ’80s movies, it actually gives him a Dolph Lundgren vibe that plays like a cool throwback. As his prison buddy, Jon Bernthal initial starts out typecast (he’s even named “Frank”), but once he’s on the outside, that exterior breaks down quickly in refreshing counterintuitive fashion.

Orange Is the New Black makes the animals/prisoners connection explicit in its opening song; Shot Caller does so by literally putting its inmates in outdoor zoo cages that get progressively smaller. It also outright says what many pet-owners already know: the “animals” are actually the bosses of you, and not vice-versa, in part because they’ll revert to instincts you’re not prepared to unleash.

Antonio Pinto’s score is a bit much at times; during scenes in which Jacob feels sad, it can feel as if we’re being bludgeoned with the world’s largest violin. And with so much actual bludgeoning onscreen, that’s just not necessary.

Rating: 3.5 medium-rare burritos out of 5

Images: Saban

Luke Y. Thompson is a member of the L.A. Film Critics Association, and is fond of the word “bludgeon.” Tweet him @LYTrules.

Ryan Reynolds Poses in Front of the X-Mansion in First DEADPOOL 2 Photo

Deadpool 2 has begun principal photography in Vancouver, and it appears that the first place that they’re going to be filming scenes is none other than the most iconic location in the entire Marvel Mutant franchise, the X-Mansion. Ryan Reynolds is celebrating the official start of production by posting a pic on Twitter of himself in his Wade Wilson costume in front of the iconic X-Men film location, which you can see down below.

Dropped by the X-Mansion. Big fucking surprise. No one’s home. pic.twitter.com/svbUMEdKbb

— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) June 17, 2017

So, does this mean that Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters will figure into Deadpool 2 in a more significant way, or will this be just like last time, where there are only the same two X-Men ever at home, Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead? I’d bet that it’s just going to be those two mutants again, if only for the sake of it being a running gag. But who knows? Despite his constant talk of Logan being his swan song to playing Charles Xavier, Patrick Stewart has said he’d love to play a role in a future Deadpool movie. I would certainly be a fun cameo.

The Vancouver location for the X-Mansion is actually one of many over the years. When people talk about the lack of continuity in the X-Men film franchise, almost no one ever brings up that the X-Mansion has been altered somewhat in just about every single movie in the franchise. The first X-Mansion was located in Ontario, and X-Men: First Class used a castle in the U.K.  X2, X-Men: The Last Stand, X-Men: Days of Future Past, X-Men: Apocalypse and the first Deadpool used maybe the most well known location, which was located at Hatley Castle, in Vancouver Island, British Columbia. It looks like Deadpool 2 is going back to the most iconic and used location.

Joining Ryan Reynolds and director David Leitch (John Wick) for the sequel are Josh Brolin as Cable, Jack Kesy (possibly as Black Tom), and Zazie Beetz as Domino. Also making a comeback from the first film are Leslie Uggams as Blind Al, Brianna Hildebrand as Negasonic Teenage Warhead, Stefan Kapicic as Colossus, and Karan Soni as everyone’s favorite taxi driver Dopinder.

Deadpool 2 hits theaters on June 1, 2018. Are you pumped? Let us know in comments.

Images: Marvel / Twentieth Century Fox