Chris Hardwick's Blog, page 2119

The IT Trailer Is Even Scarier With Mike Myers’ Cat in the Hat

We strive to have a positive attitude about things here at Nerdist, but that can be challenged when it comes to movies like The Cat in the Hat. After all, it is the movie that persuaded Theodor Seuss Geisel’s widow to declare that there’d be no more live-action adaptations of Dr. Seuss books allowed (sorry, anyone who was hoping for 5,001 Fingers of Dr. T). And it’s definitely the moment when pop culture decisively turned on Mike Myers, who inexplicably chose to play the Cat like a fur-covered version of his mother-in-law-inspired Linda Richmon character from Saturday Night Live.

What if we got it wrong, though? What if Myers’ Cat was, in fact, a manifestation of our fears, designed to “salt the meat” before devouring us? He might be better at it than even a vintage clown, and in this trailer mash-up for Stephen King‘s It that we first saw at io9, he takes Pennywise’s place with aplomb. It works so well we’re tempted to suggest that if he came back as a horror villain, Mike Myers could give his Halloween namesake Michael Myers a run for his mask in the scares department. Pain’s world! Carnage time!

Hey, maybe Thing 1 and Thing 2 are actually the John Carpenter shape-shifting alien adapting to a Dr. Seuss world. It makes so much more sense now.

Is the Cat in the Hat as scary as the Clown Under Ground? Party on to the comments and tell us which one is more excellently terrifying.

Image: YouTube/But Without

These RICK AND MORTY Season 3 Promos Make the Multiverse Even Stranger

How do you win April Fool’s Day? Adult Swim did it by releasing the first episode of Rick and Morty season 3 a few months early, with zero fanfare and a sudden collective craving for Szechuan sauce. Today, Adult Swim just can’t stop winning, and the network has unleashed 8 new Rick and Morty promos, some of which you may have glimpsed if you caught the livestream, to get us through the rest of the hiatus.

There will be no spoilers for the third season premiere in this post, but these videos may make a little more sense if you’ve seen that episode. The season premiere was an unexpectedly deep dive into the series’ mythology, and so are all of these clips! In the first one, Rick and Morty have a very Pokémon-like battle while using two different Mr. Meeseeks against each other. And as you’ll see in the clip above, that fight escalated way too quickly!

The Daily Dot helpfully curated the clips, but we can provide some added context for each one. In the second clip, Rick’s former lover, Unity, advertises a dating service for itself. As fans of the series recall, Unity is a hive mind that can take over entire planets and civilizations one person at a time. But even as drones, people and aliens still want to be loved!

Next up, Summer has a very disturbing encounter in the bathoom…and we’re just gonna blame this one on Rick. We kind of doubt that sort of thing happened before he moved in!

Remember the time that Beth shot Mr. Poopybutthole? He may not be in the season premiere, but Mr. Poopybutthole certainly hasn’t forgotten about that…

In one of the more unsettling clips, Rick and Morty return to Buttworld, a parallel destination that is also glimpsed in the season premiere. It’s not a good place to visit, and you certainly wouldn’t want to live there!

Beth’s visit to the garage may be the most disturbing video of the new clips, but it’s clearly not a new situation for her. Who among us doesn’t have a few relatives chillin’ in giant tubes with something grotesquely alien living inside of them?

It’s been a long time since we’ve seen Gearhead on this series, but we’re sure that he still wants to be called Revolio Clockberg Jr., which is the name his people gave him. Now, Gearhead has been re-imagined as the leading character in a very Gigantor-like anime series.

Finally, we were left with a fresh glimpse of Rick TV, which is presumably a look at the television and movie programming from across the multiverse. There are a few familiar faces from the first two seasons, and even some unexpected mashups with Aliens and other classic films.

Rick and Morty season 3 still has 13 new episodes to debut after last night’s premiere episode. Adult Swim still doesn’t have a premiere date, but we’ll let you know as soon it gets announced!

What do you think about the new promo videos for Rick and Morty? Let us know in the comment section below!

Image: Adult Swim

Remember Gumby-esque Rick and Morty?

See a Storyboarded T-Rex Scene Cut From the First JURASSIC PARK

First and foremost, this totally isn’t an April Fool’s joke. It seems that die-hard fans of the Jurassic Park novel almost got one of the book’s most tense scenes but, sadly, it was cut before filming started.

The scene was shared via AintItCool.com from the Jurassic Time YouTube channel, and shows what was planned to adapt the river raft scene from the book. In it, Alan, Lex, and Tim have to sneak past a sleeping Tyrannosaur that’s deep in a much needed post-meal nap. Grant manages to inflate a raft and the three are off on a river adventure to less toothy shores. Although only a storyboard, the tension still remains (likely due to our countless viewings of the film) where we’re left wishing the T-Rex doesn’t wake up. However, because it’s Jurassic Park, no one ever gets an easy win and the Tyrannosaur wakes up after some baffling shit-talking by Lex.

The T-Rex gives chase gives swim? but is thwarted by its one true enemy, the falling tree. Grant and the kids are then in the clear to continue their adventure.

All research into this scene being cut seems to mention cost as the main factor, which is certainly understandable. Combining digital and practical effects in the scale of a T-Rex for a water based scene would have been incredibly expensive and immensely difficult to pull off. Still, probably not as difficult as the river-rafting levels of the Sega Genesis game. This thing was a nightmare.

What are your thoughts on the storyboard scene? Wish it was in the film? Going to send this to the “THE BOOK WAS SO MUCH BETTER” people in your life? Let’s discuss in the comments below!

Images: Jurassic Time | Universal Pictures

7 Free Games You Should Play This Weekend

The days are longer now. The sun doesn’t retreat to the west before 8:00 PM, offering more light to cast an unsightly shadow against your computer screen as you settle in to find something to play. You’d think with the arrival of spring there would be more time to devote to games that were released in March like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild or Mass Effect Andromeda, but dedicating 60+ hours to something is a lot harder than it sounds.

It’s tempting to want to sit down and run through an RPG that requires a lot of attention, but there are some fantastic alternatives out there if a break is required. Itch.io is a platform where game developers post their projects–often for free (although I would encourage you to support the developers if you can). Here are seven games that you should play right now, especially if you’re in the market for something that breaks the mold.

Packing Up The Rest of Your Stuff on the Last Day at Your Old Apartment by TurnFollow.

Packing Up is a first person game set inside of an apartment that you’re in the process of moving out of. It’s hot. The fan is on full blast, causing the posters by the window to move about frantically. There are 32 items for me to pack into three boxes of varying sizes, where I can delegate how to stack my belongings. What I take is up to me. As I walk around to inspect every item, there is a memory is attached to each object: the math textbook I neglected to stow away was full of messages left by friends, and the dinner plates I carefully stacked on top of a basil plant caused me to wonder if I had ever used them, since they were found in my closet. It reminded me a lot of when I would go into a frenzy and decide to reorganize my room once every six months. After picking up the music player and placing it in the shoebox, I was left with silence. A moment to reflect.  Packing Up is sure to conjure up the nostalgia that comes with leaving a space after having lived in it for so long.

Robin by Robin.

In Robin, you play as a woman with chronic fatigue syndrome. A puzzled doctor cannot figure out what’s wrong with you, and sends you home. You spend the weekend deciding what tasks you wish to complete, provided you have the energy to go through with them. Every action takes up a lot of willpower, so it becomes a matter of: what am I capable of doing? As I look at the dirty clothes on the floor, I wonder if those are more important to tend to than eating. The clothes could wait, right? But I don’t want to live in filth. So I’ll do the dishes instead. But now I’m exhausted, and I wasn’t able to finish doing everything that I wanted to do.

After I went to bed, a wall of text stared back at me, pointing out everything I had neglected to do. Having to choose between showering and reading wouldn’t normally be an important decision, but to me, every action was a calculated risk. Playing through Robin is a reminder that we all face invisible battles, and if you managed to get out of bed, that’s a start.

It’s Always Monday by Alonzu.

Mondays are the worst, right? Well, in It’s Always Monday, the game takes that expression and offers a commentary on the traditional 9-5. I took on the role of Bob, who works a cushy office job. There are expense reports to be written, coffee to be made, and a trail of sticky notes left on my computer reminds me that there are only 4 more glorious days until Friday; more specifically, they remind me that I’ll be “free.” As I walked around the office to talk with my co-workers, instead of normal cooler talk I was met with defeated conversations about the monotony of office work. “Sometimes I ask myself, why did I bother to get up?” a faceless employee asks.

When that got a little too heavy for me, I opted to walk around and explore instead. The environment is bleak and grey, with muted walls and no windows. The door marked as “exit” is literally chained up, a glaringly obvious comment about working in a corporate environment. Eventually I was able to find freedom, although it wasn’t the kind of liberation I was expecting. It’s Always Monday is dark and may cause an existential crisis, but it’s definitely the kind of commentary that deserves to be acknowledged.

Awkward Dating Simulator by Kate.

At first glance, I assumed that Awkward Dating Simulator would be a text adventure where I would be playing a character that was on a first date, which I would inevitably ruin. It turns out I was very wrong. There are a series of questions (“What would be a perfect day for you?”) followed by a prompt (“hold hands”) that you must answer…with an actual person, sitting near you. This game is to be actually used in tandem with a real date, and it’s fantastic. It’s like a local co-op multiplayer game, except the potential to become uncomfortable increases tenfold. It’s an incredibly interesting idea, which could either work as an icebreaker or backfire terribly. But love is about taking risks, right?

I Ruff You by SoGoodGames.

Speaking of love, I Ruff You is a short dating simulator that placed me in the paws of a very good boy and allowed me to explore a small dog park to find a suitable bachelor. It turns out wooing other canines is a hard task, and I immediately blew my chances with the corgi after making the mistake of sniffing his food. It’s silly, and the dialogue is full of woofing, snarling, drooling and tail wagging. Eventually I was able to form a relationship with the chihuahua, and we spent the rest of our days chasing tennis balls and barking lovingly at each other.

Morphé by Pixelfoot Games

Morphé is the epitome of a relaxing game. The only goal is to spend the afternoon relaxing on the mountaintop, and create ambient music to go along with your mood. It rained the day I decided to download this, so being able to retreat to a beautiful low-poly environment and orchestrate whatever tunes my brain could come up with was a lovely endeavor.

I’m awful at composing music, but that didn’t matter here. Morphé encourages the player to experiment with sound by walking around and activating “obelisks”. They controlled the shape of sounds, allowing for me to fine-tune and customize until I reached the desired result.

Empty by DustyRoom.

The objective of Empty is to rotate the view to align objects of a same color. Objects that become invisible disappear, which allows you to progress. It’s an incredibly zen puzzle game with a mesmerizing soundtrack that caused me to zone out while I dragged my mouse inside each tiny room, trying to figure out different ways to complete “cleaning” the space. Once I was finished, the space would turn a bright white. There is no timer or score, so I was able to relax and imagine every possible outcome without fear of having to start over. Inside each room are objects–a purple vase can be matched with a purple wall or a purple rug. There’s not much outside of matching colors, but the complexity is challenging and had me stumped several times.

What free games have you played recently? Let me know in the comments.

Images: TurnFollow, Robin, Alonzu, Kate, SoGoodGames, Pixelfoot Games, DustyRoom.

 

RICK AND MORTY Has Made Fans Demand That McDonald’s Szechuan Sauce Return

WARNING: This article contains spoilers for the Rick and Morty season 3 premiere that aired last night.

After creating fake memories, transporting his intelligence from body to body, and playing brutal mindgames on Morty, Rick Sanchez concluded last night’s early April Fool’s Rick and Morty season premiere by explaining his motivations: revenge on son-in-law Jerry, and a craving for the sweet, sweet Szechuan sauce that McDonald’s introduced as a tie-in to Disney‘s Mulan. And no, this wasn’t a made-up pop-culture joke: as you can see in the commercial above, it was a real thing.

You have to wonder what Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr., which ran a massive rebranding ad mid-show to demonstrate a new move away from sexy commercials, thought about the fact that McDonald’s seems to have gotten a bigger pop-culture boost, presumably without paying for it. Fans are already starting petitions for McDonald’s to bring back the sauce, and you can sign online if you agree–they’re pretty close to the 7,500 goal last time we checked.

While the Golden Arches might not do such a thing because a cartoon aimed at adults asked, it bears repeating that there is a live-action remake of Mulan coming from Disney, and while it reportedly won’t feature any songs, nobody has ruled out fast food tie-ins. It’s almost like some sort of cosmic convergence.

Perhaps the bigger question, though, is why aren’t people talking about Shoney’s, which was revealed as Rick’s mental safe space? They’re tougher to find in many parts of the country, but totally worth the search. A tie-in menu is probably too much to hope for when your lead character is always belching up green drool and has a friend named Mr. Poopybutthole, but we can dream. Ooo-wee!

Are you signing the Szechuan sauce petition? What other canceled fast food sauces would you like to see return? Comment below with your sweet, greasy memories.

Image: Adult Swim

Can Kyle explain the deliciousness of nugget sauce?

Scott Snyder Talks Reuniting With Greg Capullo for DARK NIGHTS: METAL

The planets have aligned and the higher powers have answered our prayers, for word has come down from the deities at DC Comics that Greg Capullo and Scott Snyder are reuniting in the Batman event, Dark Nights: Metal. All the sacrifices we have made to the dark gods have finally paid off, guys. Capullo. Snyder. Back together on Batman. We could not be more excited.

“I’ve been planning Metal for as long as I’ve been writing Batman,” Snyder said of the project. “But this is bigger than Batman. Greg and I started dropping clues during Court of Owls, we continued through our Joker stories and we placed our biggest hints in the run that culminated with Batman #50. And now we’re back to tell a story that breaks everything apart. This will be the definitive project of our careers. Metal takes us in an entirely new direction. Greg and I will dig beneath the surface of all the stories we’ve told to find a place of terror and twisted nightmares.”

“Metal has a lot of meanings in the story,” Snyder said. “There’s the Nth Metal, but there’s also the spirit of heavy metal. That get up and play no matter what. That is very much Batman.”

One of the best things about Snyder and Capullo’s run on Batman was their commitment to epic, sprawling tales. Their Batman was a character of deep mythology and huge events. They didn’t just rest on the decades of Batman history, they created their own history (and future), one filled with secret cult, massive disasters, and a mechsuit that kinda looked like a bunny rabbit. Snyder and Capullo’s run was unlike anything we had seen from the Bat Family of books and is often cited as one of the best superhero books of the modern age. Rightfully so, because it was absolutely spectacular.

“This is all really because of the support we have received from the fans. We’re doing it because of them,” Snyder said. “We wanted to get the band back together, but we didn’t want to just play the greatest hits. We wanted to do something bigger, because the fans have always been so good to us. We wanted to give them a huge rollercoaster ride.”

 

 

Dark Nights: Metal looks to continue that epic tradition. We don’t know a ton about the story yet, other than a few teases Snyder gave us. “Metal will be celebratory, huge, and crazy. I’ve said it before: I am going for out-of-control dinosaurs and lasers.” He told us that it will involve Nth Metal and just about every corner of the DC Universe, but it is bigger than we can possible imagine. “If Batman is a kiddie pool, we’re about to go swimming in the ocean,” Snyder said of the scope of the event.

Snyder stressed that Metal was, in a way, a tribute to DC events he read as a kid, not only in scale but in shear insanity. “The DC events I grew up with were so big and insane, you almost couldn’t wrap your head around the. Just bonkers stuff. I wanted to capture that feeling.”

Snyder has been doing great work with Batman over on the All-Star Batman title while Capullo joined forces with Mark Millar for the creator -owned series Reborn over at Image Comics, but that spark that a Capullo/Snyder joint brings has been sorely missing. We’re so fired up for this book and can’t wait to see more from it. All we have right now is an image of bloody Batman holding two battle axes, so we’ll just stare at that for the next few weeks. Our souls are ready for this insanity.

Dark Nights: Metal launches in August 2017. We’ll keep you updated as we learn more about the project. What does the cover suggest to you? Leave all thoughts and speculation below.

Image: DC Comics

Will any of these guys be involved, ya think?

New THE MUMMY Trailer Looks More Action Than Horror

It would appear that, much like Dracula Untold, which was and then wasn’t the first attempt to start a new Universal Monsterverse, the new The Mummy is going to lean more heavily on an ass-kicking Mummy rather than a creepy one. There are scenes in the new trailer that literally feel like moments on the rollercoaster ride at Universal Studios. Sofia Boutella gets to continue her streak of bad girls in heavy prosthetics, and Tom Cruise does all of the falling and hanging off of things and near-drowning we’ve come to expect.

The biggest surprise, perhaps, is that this feels much closer so far to the Brendan Fraser Mummy films than the original Universal black and white movies, and that makes sense from a bean-counting perspective, since those movies were mostly huge, and did indeed spawn a slightly larger universe with all the Scorpion King spinoffs. But the humor that was integral to those seems lacking–if the Tom Cruise who shows up turns out to be the Knight and Day Tom Cruise, however, that could be interesting. If he’s straight up Ethan Hunt, though, I just hope Russell Crowe‘s Dr. Jekyll gets into it with him a bit.

On the other hand, if the big twist is that Cruise actually becomes the Mummy by movie’s end, it would be one hell of a hook for a larger universe. He made a pretty decent vampire once upon a long ago, and is usually more fun when he taps into his dark side a bit.

Are you wrapped up in this concept yet? Tell us in comments how you want your Mummy.

Image: Universal

This Short Film Focuses on the Mom Left Behind During Fantasy Adentures

For all of you out there who’ve ever wanted to watch an orc wield a flatscreen TV in battle with a sword-swinging teenage girl, Reed Shusterman’s Goblin Queen has got you covered. It also has a fresh twist on the weathered trope of a chosen one magically transported from her troubled life in this world to a fantasy realm where they’re made ruler of an army on the cusp of war with evil.

Instead of taking us to Narnia or Middle-earth or wherever else, this sharp short film makes its budget count by keeping us tethered to the real world as the enchanted pendant-bearing Amber Lynn (Amy Letcher) goes off to the fantasy realm where she’s the Goblin Queen. It ties us to her mother Winona (Stacey Moseley) who’s as overbearing as she is desperately worried about her daughter’s safety.

Goblin Queen from Reed Shusterman on Vimeo.

It honors beloved tropes while tweaking them, effectively wondering what the Dursleys must do when Harry Potter whisks off to wondrous adventure, leaving them behind to pay the water bill and put the roast on.

Goblin Queen is also genuinely touching, pitting a mother and daughter against each other as natural enemies who care deeply for one another, even as Amber Lynn is dealing with dangers way above her maturity level. The time she spends in the fantasy realm becomes a beautiful metaphor for how quickly children grow up. It’s been months (years?) of mystic battle for Amber Lynn but only half an hour for her mother. She looks up from her wine, and her daughter’s an adult.

What did you think? Leave us a comment below.

Images: Reed Shusterman

ANNABELLE: CREATION Trailer Is Jump-Scary as Hell!

I have to be honest: I did not care for the first Annabelle, the spin-off of The Conjuring featuring a scary doll attached to a demonic something-or-other. It was a weird mix of Rosemary’s Baby and The Room (seriously) that just didn’t work, even for a wuss like me who used to be terrified of dolls and mannequins as a child, so I was cynical about a prequel. Then I watched the trailer above, and it has already scared me more than the entirety of that last movie. I mean, the first jump shock in this–you’ll know it when you see it–deserves two zombified thumbs up all by itself.

The synopsis reads like so:

Several years after the tragic death of their little girl, a dollmaker and his wife welcome a nun and several girls from a shuttered orphanage into their home, soon becoming the target of the dollmaker’s possessed creation, Annabelle.

Is the nun going to become the one from The Conjuring 2? Probably not; nuns just make any scary story scarier, especially if you can remember being taught by one. But Annabelle, or the demon that resides inside her, seems like the jealous type.

Fun fact: the real-life “Annabelle” doll that inspired the one in The Conjuring was a Raggedy Anne. That would have made for a very different franchise.

Are you down for more Annabelle? Could she win in a fight with Barbie? Am I totally wrong about the last movie? Don’t dilly-dolly…conjure up some comments below and you can wring my ‘Belle.

Image: Warner Bros.

First Look at VOLTRON: LEGENDARY DEFENDER’s Prince Lotor

SPOILERS for Season 2 for Voltron: Legendary Defender lie ahead. Be forewarned.

Few finales are as equal parts triumphant and dread-inducing as the second season finale of Netflix and DreamWorks’ excellent Voltron: Legendary Defender. You can read the whole thing in my recap of “Blackout” but it essentially ended with the Voltron crew effectively defeating Emperor Zarkon, but losing Shiro in the process. And not only is that hanging over everything, but we also learned from Haggar that another, perhaps deadlier villain is on the horizon…Prince Lotor! At WonderCon this evening, fans got their first glimpse of the new baddie, and you can watch it below!

Ha ha ha! You guys, we all got April Fool’d HARD. The above video played for the waiting audience at the WonderCon panel (which I’m hosting…as we speak…how am I writing this?!?!?) as a fun prank by the Voltron creators. Obviously, Prince Lotor is not a cow; that’s the face of fan favorite space cow Caltenecker whom the crew picked up in the episode “Space Mall.” You’ll have to wait to see what Prince Lotor really looks like later this year.

But wait, what’s this?! I’ve buried the lead. Yes, as many of us had hoped, Voltron: Legendary Defender is officially returning for a third season on Netflix sometime later this year. This fact was long rumored but was officially confirmed at the panel Saturday by executive producer Joaquim dos Santos and co-executive producer Lauren Montgomery. The mystery of what became of Shiro and how the team will cope with his absence will also obviously be a main thrust of those episodes, and we can bet the high from their sword-flaming victory won’t last too long.

Are you jazzed for season 3? What do you imagine Prince Lotor looks like? Will he be totes dreamy? Let me know what you think in the comments below!

Images: DreamWorks

Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist. You can find all of his Voltron season 2 recaps right here! Follow him on Twitter!