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LEGION’s Noah Hawley Answers Your Burning Questions About the Season Finale

Major, major spoilers for the season finale of Legion abound! You have been warned.

Some TV shows are fairly straightforward to keep up with even if you aren’t giving them your full attention while watching. Legion is not one of those shows. Since the very first episode, it’s demanded a lot from its viewers, and tonight’s stunning season finale was certainly no exception.

But if you just finished watching and need to know what the heck just happened, no worries—Nerdist got the chance to speak with showrunner Noah Hawley himself during a recent press conference call, and he shared with us what went into all the most shocking moments from the season finale. Let’s break it down, question by question:

Why start the episode with the Interrogator?

We haven’t seen the Interrogator since the very first episode, and we certainly haven’t seen so much of him as we did at the start of the finale. But of course, humanizing complicated villains is right in Hawley’s wheelhouse after a few seasons of Fargo, so it’s no wonder he tried it again here for Legion.

“I knew I wanted to bring Hamish [Linklater] back because he’s so great in the role and such a great element to the show, so I ended episode seven with him appearing. Then as I sat down to write episode eight, I thought it would be interesting to see his world and start this episode from his point of view so he’s not just a horribly burned villain walking on screen,” said Hawley.

“He’s a person who has lost something and is struggling to hold on to his humanity and his sense of identity. So I started to write that sequence at the beginning, and then, of course, you bring him into the show, and now he has a much more sympathetic energy to him even though he’s justified that in his movie, David is the villain and Melanie is the villain. Once we see his movie, even for a moment, it changes the way we look at the people we thought we knew, which I think is interesting.”

Is Melanie Bird about to go full Magneto?

When the Interrogator is himself interrogated by the Summerland gang, Melanie is blunt with him—humans are going the way of the dinosaurs, and they’d better stop trying to get a leg up on mutants if they want to survive. If that rhetoric sounds familiar, it’s because we usually hear that sort of thing from Magneto in the X-Men movies, who despite his sympathetic backstory is still seen as a villain these days.

But Melanie’s not in full-on bad guy mode, Hawley says—at least, for now. In the movies, “There’s this idea that homo superior would mean that what we know as humanity will disappear eventually,” he clarified. “I don’t think that was her intention to say that, other than to say, ‘You need a sense of perspective here about the way that the universe works. You think you’re at the top of the food chain, but now there’s something even higher than you, so you should be a little less arrogant about how you deal with us, because if history teaches us anything, it teaches us that we’re the future and you’re the past.'”

I don’t know, dude, still seems pretty Magneto to me. But as X-perts more knowledgable than me have pointed out, that guy did make some valid points.

What’s up with Oliver and the Shadow King?

It’s rare you see a supervillain get a chance to fight another day like The Shadow King did during the season finale. But letting him escape was always part of the plan, according to Hawley. “I like this idea of having to face our demons and the idea that in the first season, that was an internal struggle for David,” he said. “Now we’re taking something that has so much power over him emotionally and psychologically and making it an exterior agent.”

Of course, as of the end of the last episode, it’s now a part of somebody else. After its showdown with David, the Shadow King sought out refuge in Oliver Bird’s body, and the two drove off into the sunset together. An odd couple, to be sure, but Hawley told us he’s eager to see what kind of dynamic will come out of pairing Aubrey Plaza and Jermaine Clement together, for the same reason that he had Clement and Bill Irwin in a scene together earlier this season.

“The energy of those two characters together creates such exciting possibilities in terms of storytelling,” he said, comparing their shared capacity for humor to Anton Chigurh’s haircut in No Country For Old Men—funny on its own, but deeply uncomfortable in context. “You take them and you like them and they have a great energy, and then dark things happen and it creates an entirely different experience of the story. In an uncanny way, comedians aren’t supposed to be like that. They aren’t supposed to act like that, and when they do it’s very unsettling. I think it’s gonna be really interesting to see what happens with them.”

Why an end-credit sequence, and what did it mean?

Remember when the leader of D3 told his crew to get the “Equinox” ready? Well, that’s what we might have caught a glimpse in those final moments of the finale. “If you stuck around for the end scene after the credits, maybe you have a sense of it,” Hawley told us coyly.

If what he says is true, then David’s already in for a whole heap of trouble once season two starts—and yeah, not letting him get a break after finally expelling the Shadow King from his body was extremely intentional.

“I think out of the frying pan and into the fire is a pretty good approach to storytelling, on some level,” Hawley revealed. “What he should do is do a retreat for a year and kind kinda be one with nature and eat three meals a day and take walks in the woods and learn how to be a person the way other people are persons, but he’s not gonna have that luxury because he’s on to the next crisis. I think that’s gonna continue to keep the pressure on him in a way—that stress on someone who is disjointed can be very disruptive.”

But why a post-credit scene in a TV show? “I think there’s a crowd condition of that, [since] Marvel uses it on the features side,” he said. But there was another reason other than fan-satisfaction, of course: “It’s the beginning of another thought, so I wanted to give people the end song and the feeling of watching the credits in order to let them to absorb the complete story they just watched, and then tease them as to what Chapter Two is going to be.”

Guess we’ll have to tune in next season to find out. Will you be watching along with us? Let us know in the comments!

Images: FX Networks

THE EXPANSE Recap: We Can’t Afford to Be Enemies Anymore

Fair warning: this recap includes spoilers for The Expanse that may turn your leaves yellow—don’t say we didn’t warn you ahead of time!

The hunt for Dr. Strickland (Ted Atherton) on Ganymede has become a long-term endeavor. Holden (Steven Strait), Naomi (Dominique Tipper), Amos (Wes Chatham), and Dr. Meng (Terry Chen) left behind the grieving widow on the ship they’d hijacked to search the big board of lost and dead before heading toward the pediatric unit. Meng walked through his old work, the once-beautiful grow room turned limp and dry and worthless, filled now with a triage of wounded people.

Amos blithely struggled to vocalize that he was the right amount of psycho for a hunting job that needs muscle, and that animal nature reared its meaty head first when the crazed, squirrelly Basia (Ryan Blakely) attacked Dr. Meng for what he felt was the abandonment of his daughter. After heaving some deep breaths, Basia pointed them in the direction of a potential scam artist named Roma (Steven Yaffee) who has been helping people find their lost loved ones using security camera footage.

In an unsurprising twist, it turns out that shipments of food haven’t been making it to the starving people of Ganymede who need it most, and many of them have turned to eating plants on the station. The problem? The plants have no nutritional value. They were only natural air-scrubbers to aid in food production.

 

The four teammates all get together again (just in time to see a naked girl rush out of Roma’s quarters), they met the Bizarro World Miller who’s all cock and no walk. Dude only accepted chicken as payment, but Amos bashing his head in with canned goods seemed to change his mind. Once again, Amos is plagued by having to play the heavy (and loving it).

With the security camera scan on full blast, Naomi challenged Holden holdin’ her back (sorry) as Amos beat Roma’s head in, recognizing that they’ve lost little bits of their humanity along the way. Similarly, Amos defended his actions to Dr. Meng (and to himself) by recognizing the need to fight the types of people who would exploit little girls like Dr. Meng’s daughter into sexual slavery. Some people deserve to be punished.

Dr. Meng also scienced the shit out of the station’s yellowing flora, ascertaining that the powers that be must be using distilled water instead of the proper mineral solution on the plants. If they kept it up long enough, a major failure would lead to a cascade of failures, mirroring the things-constantly-going-wrong plot structure of The Expanse‘s seasons. Rather than jumping into action to enact a science-y plan to save the most important food station in the system, Dr. Meng joylessly remarked on the nature of simple complex systems (it’s always the thing that goes wrong three things before the catastrophic failure that gets you) before declaring that Ganymede is dead already. In other words, don’t invite Dr. Meng to your birthday party.

As for finding Mei, Roma actually came through, discovering her and Dr. Strickland at the edge of a unit, leaving through a door into another sector where cameras aren’t allowed.

While they hunted for Mei, Gunny Draper (Frankie Adams) hunted for the ocean.

Still in the midst of negotiations with Mars, Errinwright (Shawn Doyle), Avasarala (Shohreh Aghdashloo), and Nguyen (Byron Mann) weighed whether Draper may have snapped under the pressure of her traumatic battle on Ganymede where she lost her entire crew. Regardless of their armchair psych assessment, it was clear to all of them that something during the battle bothered her, and her superiors ordered her to hide it. So far throughout this show, Avasarala’s super power has been seeing right through people, and Errinwright seems to be picking up the skill. He noted that Mars was using peace as a distraction, and, for once, Avasarala agreed.

“Cascade” marked the beginning of an incipient relationship between the two adversaries. They found themselves on the same page, with a common goal (with one checking Draper’s armor and the other her service record). Errinwright confessed his belief that Ganymede was yet another test for yet another Mao-built weapon and admitted working with him. As if Avasarala didn’t already know.

Their argument–one brewing for more than a season–ended with strange complicity from Errinwright, who expressed remorse and responsibility for his role in the deaths of hundreds of thousands. Is this the contrition necessary to give their relationship a fresh start?

Martens (Peter Outerbridge) raked Draper over the coals, interestingly crediting the same theory about her snapping from pressure. How little faith he has in his charge.

Perhaps pushed too far, Draper enacted a daring escape plan where she pulled a window pane off the wall with a butter knife, then proceeded to fall off a building after getting spooked by a seagull.

Draper’s subsequent stroll through a ragged marketplace offered new insight into what life is really like on Earth for some at the bottom. Scrounging and desperate, unwilling to be helpful without compensation. Fortunately, she met Nico (Milton Barnes), who was willing to trade her bone density meds for directions to the ocean with a mind to barter them for a month’s worth of medication for the slum’s children. She learned a darker side of Earth’s social stratification, he helped her find the horizon, and they both shed some of their biases about the monsters living on the other world.

The simple quiet of Draper arriving at the ebbing ocean was a gorgeous juxtaposition of what she had to go through to find it. She fell. Off. A. Building. All that for a glimpse of big water and toes-full of sand that Avasarala takes so stunningly for granted. Avasarala showed Draper the weapon on Ganymede, trying to prove to her that her team was set up as a sacrifice during a trial run. Did Draper believe her? It’s hard to say, but the seed of doubt was planted.

And, in what seemed like a totally different episode, Alex (Cas Anvar) got drunk, did some low-gravity ballet and uh-ohed at a No Fly Zone that is bound to complicate their escape. When one thing fails, five more things are bound to go wrong.

SOME STRAY THOUGHTS:

We really let Earth go, huh? Yeesh.
Was it the same seagull Draper saw upon arriving on Earth? If so, what’s its problem? Why does it have it out for the Gunny?
Should Alex really have getting schnackered and dancing on the ceiling? What if Holden and the gang found Mei and needed transport during his bender? Come on, Alex. Get it together.

How bad do you want those anti-grav boots? Scale of one to ten.

Images: NBC/SyFy

LEGION Recap: Chapter 8 is a Fantastic Finale

 Spoilers for Legion follow. Be forewarned. Shall we begin?

Well, that was certainly one heck of a ride! And I hope you all stayed after the credits like good superhero movie-loving nerds, because if you didn’t, you missed something big. Let’s get into it, shall we?

Last week’s episode marked the triumphant return of the Division 3 employee who first interrogated David in the pilot, and as this episode begins, we learn all about what he’s been up to since then. Well maybe “triumphant” isn’t exactly the right world — he and his army of goons might appear to have the upper hand as we open this eighth chapter, but his face and body were badly burned during David’s escape attempt, and the trauma of his recovery is wreaking havoc on his relationship with his husband and son. Yup, didn’t expect a flashback about how the evil shadowy government goon is actually a caring family man, did you?

Now that David’s aware of his full power, though, it doesn’t take much for him to easily subdue the Division 3 army via Katamari Damacy methods‚ aka crumpling them all up into a giant mass of angry stuck-together people. With the Interrogator (who we learn is named Clark) captive, the gang has different ideas of what needs to be done next. Ptonomy, unsurprisingly, wants to kill him; Dr. Bird wants David to read his mind and steal D3’s secrets; David just wants to try to reason with him and learn how to coexist with mutants; and Cary just really wants David to stop exerting himself and let ’em take the Shadow King out of his head already. And all the while, everyone at Division 3 can see everything that the Interrogator is seeing (including his husband, who appears to work there, too! That’s… adorable? Do you think that’s where they met? How dare this show make me care about the minor villains so much!), because he’s got a camera in his eye that’s recording everything.

Of course, Cary is right to think that getting rid of the Shadow King should probably be their main priority; he’s starting to break out of confinement. During their negotiations with Clark, Syd receives a sudden mental visit from Lenny, who’s able to communicate with her because of the time Syd and David swapped bodies. Unsurprisingly, she’s not on board with the whole “forcibly remove the Shadow King from David’s head” plan, and tells Syd that the only way she’s letting go of David is if Syd helps her escape; otherwise, he dies when they try to separate the two. Syd doesn’t quite buy it yet, but she is quick to fill Clark in on the details in the hopes that he’ll help save her boyfriend, which is some pretty potent foreshadowing for what’s to come later.

Speaking of which, it’s all about to pop off now as David’s taken to the lab and strapped to a machine that, I kid you not, looks exactly like the electronic cerebrectomy device from The Muppet Movie (Given that this series has already borrowed from the Muppets in the form of David’s terrified “Rainbow Connection” cover, I’m gonna go ahead and call this intentional). The machine, we’re told, will identify all the brainwaves in David’s head that don’t belong to him and suck them out, which also has the nifty side effect of allowing David to go on a psychedelic trip back through his own memories while Pink Floyd plays in the background.

Finally, David comes face to face with his demons, literally. He’s worried that the Shadow King is a part of him too, now, and asks Lenny point blank: “Who am I without you? What happens to me when you’re gone?” You know, the sort of typical stuff you worry about when you’re in recovery for a mental illness and you’re not sure how much of your personality is rooted in the behavior making you ill in the first place.

And as we all suspected when Lenny first floated the idea past her, Syd takes matters into her own hands and extracts the Shadow King from David herself with a well-timed kiss. Things go pretty nuts from there as he bounces from Syd to Kerry, and Ptonomy shoots up the whole lab trying to stop it from happening (dude, a machine gun? Are you really that bottom line-oriented that you’d be cool with killing all your friends?).

With the Shadow King’s psychic powers and Kerry’s rad martial arts skills, she’s nearly unstoppable until David gets in her way and the two launch themselves at each other like superheroes and villains are supposed to do. The good news is, the Shadow King gets forced out of Kerry’s body. The bad news is, he plants himself right into Oliver instead (who just got his memories of Melanie back, because twist the knife why don’t you), and he escapes in his body before anyone even realizes they’re gone. And together, they seem to be looking for something. Or someone?

There’s also one more good thing to come out of the aftermath: they might not have won, as David tells Syd, but he and Clark agree that Summerland and Division 3 should probably be working together to stop the Shadow King. Except, maybe nobody actually did tell the guys at D3 headquarters, because the end credits are interrupted by a GIANT ROBOT EYEBALL trapping David inside itself like a pokéball and flying away with him? Could that have been the “equinox” the D3 guys talked about deploying earlier in the episode? Or could it be something else entirely? (Fingers crossed for Mojo — I will have satisfaction, damn it!) Who knows, but I’m certainly going to tune in next season to find the heck out.

What about you? Now that the first season is done with and all (well, most) of our most burning questions about David have been answered, what did you think? Let us know in the comments!

Images: FX Networks

THE MAGICIANS Recap: ‘The Girl Who Told Time’ Finally Injects Hope into Season 2

Warning: the following recap contains major spoilers from Wednesday’s episode of The Magicians, “The Girl Who Told Time.” It is a recap, after all! Don’t say we didn’t warn you …

Remember when Jane Chatwin created a time loop in season one of The Magicians to figure out a way to stop the Beast from killing everyone? She changed one little detail each time to see if the outcome changed, and after 39 times, she finally figured out the one thing that changed everything: she turned Julia away from Brakebills. Julia was a student at Brakebills for all those earlier timelines, and she excelled in every subject. She was Dean Fogg’s star pupil, a meta-composition student like himself. But only Fogg had memories of all those 39 other lifetimes.

In this week’s episode, “The Girl Who Told Time,” we got a heartbreaking glimpse into more than one of those timelines, and seeing how happy and successful Julia was at Brakebills made her current reality all the more heartbreaking. Trapped by her friends in the clean room (the room without magic) for three months (of Fillorian time), with nothing but her thoughts, she realized that living without her Shade was wrong. That’s not to say she didn’t feel bad about how she practically fed Quentin to Reynard, but she knew she was supposed to be feel regret, and didn’t. She knew she was broken, and that meant she was dangerous.

I’m still uncomfortable calling a post-abortion Julia as “broken,” but at least now the show is taking her story in a positive direction. Because thankfully, Quentin while on one of Chef Josh’s magically “rad” drug trips (he took to self-medicating to help deal with the pain of letting Niffin Alice go), was able to see and speak to Julia’s Shade (in the form of her 12-year-old self). Turns out her Shade wasn’t gone, it was just lost. And that meant they could find her and reunite her with Julia. All hope wasn’t lost!

And that’s how those 39 timelines came back into play in a second way in this week’s hour. Fogg remembered that in the 23rd timeline, Alice was the sole survivor of the Beast and became obsessed with the afterlife, trying to get her version of Quentin back. In doing so, she learned quite a lot about Shades. So Julia, Fogg, and Quentin used something called a Tesla Flection to contact that version of Alice, and she told Quentin she learned about Shades after his body and Shade was destroyed by the Beast. She wanted to find his so he could rest in peace, and in her travels, she learned that Shades apparently go to the Underworld. It’s only accessible to the dead, but the living can get in with the help of a gatekeeper, an “ancient one,” a being older than the world itself.

But that’s as far as Alice got (and she even gave up three fingers in the pursuit of that knowledge). And in their research the next day, Julia shocked Quentin with her own discovery: a painting of an ancient one, aka a huge dragon. Because that’s going to be easy to find in the real world! But damn, if The Magicians goes into dragon territory, this season is about to get truly epic.

As for everyone’s shared Reynard problem, after Penny’s contract was processed by the Order of the Librarians and he and Kady were whisked off to the library of the Neitherlands, Kady did some research on how to kill a god. When the librarians told her that no such book existed, she felt hopeless. But after meeting a magician while out on Penny’s first mission retrieving an overdue book, Kady learned that the library did have the knowledge she was looking for … but they just wouldn’t give her access to it.

That same magician, Harriette (played by Marlee Matlin!), also cursed the overdue book she gave back to Penny, so when another librarian stamped it, he was forced to try and open a door to something called the Poison Room. He killed himself before he opened the door, however, and Penny realized just how dangerous his new job really was. Librarians would literally rather die than give out books from the Poison Room to the general public, since it contains knowledge on how to kill people and entire worlds. And of course, that’s where the book that Kady needs to defeat Reynard is: The Art of Killing Gods. Another storyline taking a turn for the hopeful!

Meanwhile, Fen was super cool with Eliot marrying someone else, since three person marriages were actually the norm with Fillorian royals. But she was feeling off about something else … the fairies she felt following her in the shadows. They came to collect their payment for fixing the Wellspring, and Fen was not OK with giving up her baby even though she agreed to do whatever Margo told her when it meant saving Eliot’s life. But a deal’s a deal, and the fairies kidnapped Fen in the final moments of the episode. Is there a way for Fen to get out of this deal, or is she locked in, even though she never agreed to the exact terms in the first place? This is surely going to put a damper on Eliot’s upcoming wedding festivities.

MAGICAL MOMENTS:

– The smash cut from Penny laughing about how the Order of the Librarians takes four weeks to process a book request so he’s got a long time until they process his contract to join, to Penny and Kady walking through a door and ending up in the library to find out his training started that day, was just perfect.

– Of course Eliot would become a groom-zilla for his second wedding to King Idri.

– I was so delighted by Eliot charming his would-be assassin Baylor into becoming his friend … until it was revealed that Baylor was just pretending to be Eliot’s friend so he could suggest making his second wedding open to the public, allowing the FU Fighters to invade the castle and “red his wedding.” But thanks to Margo being a total badass, she came up with a plan to nip that coupe right in the bud. She tracked the FU Fighter Baylor was passing notes to in his dirty dishes, had Chef Josh whip up a potion so strong it would render the FU Fighters catatonic, and had Josh deliver it to the army. The FU Fighters were not a problem … for the foreseeable future, at least.

– Eliot’s only request for Josh as his wedding chef is to make everyone in Fillory like him. Josh decided to just make a potion and put it in the food to literally make everyone like him, because why put forth any extra effort when you can just magically cheat your way forward? Eliot’s “I need this!” made me laugh way too hard.

– Apparently, “FuzzBeat,” the website that does serious news, listicles, clickbait and cat videos, is actually run by a magician who uses the site as a cover to provide encoded spells and magical education to magicians worldwide. Ha!

– Quentin is just getting dragged through s-t this season. The scene he shared with Alternate Reality Alice in the Tesla Flection was heartbreaking – they couldn’t even touch! At least he got to tell a version of Alice that he loved her no matter what before she disappeared and he broke down in tears. Man, Quentin really needs a win.

QUALITY QUOTES:

Eliot, turning into a groom-zilla for his second wedding: Congratulations, you failed.

Quentin: But wait, I’m not done.

Margo, dumping out his glass of wine: I think you were.

Quentin: Not cool. Those grapes died for nothing now.

Margo: Those grapes died so that you might live, because if you keep drinking, I will seriously cut a bitch.

Quentin: You never yell at Eliot for being drunk.

Margo: Because Eliot’s fun. You’re depressing. It’s been three months.

Quentin: Technically, it’s only been a couple of days on Earth. So …

Margo: Three months on Fillory. Of Emo Quentin. Not my favorite Quentin.

Quentin: I didn’t know that you liked any of the Quentins.

Kady: This is insane. Why the f-k would Fogg let Julia go?

Penny: I mean, haven’t you ever noticed? Fogg actually isn’t that helpful.

Kady: Reynard is my problem.

Penny: We’ve been over this. Rapist monsters are a universal problem.

Quentin: I let her go. I’m fine. I’ve been self-medicating, so. They don’t have Abilify in Fillory but I’ve been improvising.

Quentin: Holy s-t, are we at war?

Eliot: I wish we were at war. These are the place settings for the wedding. Much more dangerous.

Fen: I gather three person marriage isn’t normal on Earth.

Eliot: Not outside of Utah. Or some websites.

Fen: Those are cities made of pixels, right?

Eliot: Close!

Todd: My work study job, I type up Fogg’s memoirs. I guess he has like a crazy book deal. He’s led a seriously weird life. Did you know that he and Bob Ross had a dark artistic rivalry?

Penny: Just tell her we’re from the Order.

FuzzBeat assistant: Is that the new pilates place?

Penny, sarcastically: Yeah.

Margo: Why am I staring at a plate of half-eaten nachos?

Eliot: A question I’ve asked myself very often at 3 a.m.

Eliot: I actually thought I had won Baylor over. I thought I had rehabbed his soul.

Margo: Aw, honey, we both know rehab is about more than nachos and backgammon.

Eliot: Is it? Is it, Margo?

Josh: Wait, so you’re upset because the guy who tried to kill you is going to try and kill you … again?

Margo: Just floating this: would it be weird if I f-ked Josh?

Eliot: I certainly hope it would be weird.

What did you think of this week’s The Magicians? Tweet me at @SydneyBucksbaum!

Images: Syfy

The Magicians airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. on Syfy.

GHOST IN THE SHELL is the Best Anime Adaptation Yet (Review)

A world where the government sells their souls to sell our browser data to giant corporations sounds like the beginning of a dystopian cyberpunk saga for the ages, but unfortunately it’s the world in which we live. It’s also one where hacking scandals and data leaks dominate the headlines, illicit goods are peddled on the dark web, and the technology meant to connect us makes us more susceptible to criminals than ever before. In short, the world as it stands today doesn’t seem to be too far off from the one put forth 20 years earlier in Mamoru Oshii’s 1995 anime masterpiece Ghost in the Shell.

While on its surface, Ghost in the Shell tells the story of a cyborg operative leading an elite counterterrorist unit to stop a cybercriminal wreaking havoc on Tokyo, it is a deeply compelling sci-fi story that dives into matters of identity, existentialism, and what it means to be human. Now, two decades later, Rupert Sanders has attempted what seems like a Sisyphean task–adapting the fan-favorite anime and manga series to a live-action movie. Although the film has been mired in controversy since word one, Sanders has managed something that heretofore seemed impossible: making a successful anime adaptation.

The 2017 version of Ghost in the Shell is by no means a perfect movie. It feels like a cult classic in the making, the kind of film you’ll want to watch at midnight screenings with a room full of strangers that appreciate and adore it for all of its visual weirdness and narrative idiosyncracies. Scarlett Johansson stars as The Major, the world’s most advanced cyborg, and someone who is more machine than human. Her body–the titular shell–is almost entirely cybernetic, implanted with a human brain–her “ghost.” Although her body was the product of the privately owned Hanka Corporation, The Major works as an elite agent of Section 9, a government counterterrorist task force that is on the trail of a mysterious hacker known as Kuze (Michael Pitt). Yet as the Major gets sucked into this deadly game of cat-and-mouse, she learns that the truth behind her origins may be far darker than she ever realized. Without giving anything away, that is the plot of Ghost in the Shell in a nutshell.

As the Major, Scarlett Johansson delivers a performance that feels like a complement to the ethereal, man-eating alien she played in 2013’s criminally underseen Under the Skin. A reticent, introspective character, the Major is a human being trapped inside a robotic body that is technically the property of a massive corporation. Apart from questions of what it means to be human, especially when you have no memories of your past, Johansson’s Major wrestles with issues of consent; for example, when you do not “own” your body, who gets to decide what is done with it or to it? As body enhancement becomes more and more of a reality, and the healthcare debate rages on in the United States, it is an issue that feels increasingly prescient. Sanders doesn’t necessarily offer anything in the way of answers here; rather it feels like a suggestion for a great discussion topic for you and your friends to unpack after the credits have rolled.

Yet no man is an island, especially one that is grappling with what their existence truly means. Johansson is joined by an ensemble cast of talented actors who bring the skilled agents of Section 9 to life. Veteran actor Takeshi Kitano (Battle Royale) portrays Aramaki, the division leader who takes no grief from anyone and offers a compellingly gruff performance. Far and away, the best part of Section 9 is Pilou Asbæk (Game of Thrones) as Batou, the silver-haired, ocularly-augmented agent with a surprising love of stray dogs. Honestly, I would watch a whole other movie just about Batou and his bevy of foster dogs, but that’s a story of another day. Last but not least, as the villainous Kuze, Michael Pitt (Hannibal) proves why he is one of the most talented actors working today. In the hands of a lesser actor, the part could have fallen flat or seemed comical, but he brings a tortured sadness and sinister edge to the madman that is hacking into the human body and using it for his own nefarious ends.

The highlight of the film though is undoubtedly the incredible design work, which comes courtesy of the mad geniuses at Weta Workshop. While so much modern sci-fi is cursed by the dominant palette of boring, washed-out grays, browns, blacks, this is a world bathed in glowing neon lights, LED screens, and gigantic holograms hawking all manner of goods projected onto the sides of skyscrapers. It is a world that is simultaneously bursting with life, but seemingly empty inside — a fitting parallel for its protagonist. In addition to transforming Wellington, New Zealand into the bright yet gritty streets of Tokyo, they rendered an astonishing number of practical effects that are straight out of the anime. The iconic “shelling sequence,” in which we see the Major’s cybernetic body being assembled piece-by-piece, looks even better in this live-action version than it did in the original anime. It was the most challenging sequence Weta has ever undertaken, and the “shell” itself was created with 1,400 pieces of individually 3D-printed materials.

I would be remiss in my duties if I didn’t address the controversy surrounding this film, which as I mentioned has been part of the dialogue since it was first announced. Allegations of whitewashing have dogged the production since we learned that Scarlett Johansson would be playing the part of Major Motoko Kusanagi. I am a straight, cis-gendered white male, who is viewing this film from a position of distinct and entrenched privilege, and there are many others out there who are better equipped to speak more eloquently about this subject, and I urge you to seek out and listen to their perspective. While I thought Scarlett Johansson acquitted herself quite well in her portrayal of the Major, her casting is part of a larger conversation around the systemic dearth of starring roles for Asian actors–and, more broadly people of color –in Hollywood blockbusters like Ghost in the Shell. And if you are someone who has a thoughtful perspective on this issue, I urge you to pitch us a story on it so we can showcase a wider array of voices than ones that are straight white males like myself.

All things considered, Ghost in the Shell has been one of the most pleasantly surprising films of the year thus far. As a longtime fan of the source material, I went in with eyebrows preemptively raised because it seems like far too heady and, frankly, weird of a story to turn into a cohesive live-action film. Thanks to incredible world-building by the design team at WETA, a charismatic ensemble cast, and a deep appreciation of the original works by Rupert Sanders, this version of Ghost in the Shell is a thoughtful piece of science fiction with an uncomfortable relevance to the world we live in. More often than not it prefers to raise a question and let it trail off into a contemplative ellipsis rather than offer its own answers, which can be frustrating from an audience perspective, making you wonder if it’s all shell and no ghost. However, Ghost in the Shell is a film that stayed with me long after the credits rolled. It is not without its issues, but it remains one of the best live-action anime adaptations I’ve seen to date, and I look forward to seeing other films raise the bar that it has set for the genre.

Rating: 4 out of 5 cyberpunk burritos

Ghost in the Shell opens on March 31, 2017.

What did you think of Ghost in the Shell? Let us know in the comments below.

Image: Paramount

Dan Casey is the senior editor of Nerdist and the author of books about Star Wars and the Avengers. Follow him on Twitter (@Osteoferocious).

See AVATAR’s Appa and Other Characters as Cool Watercolor-Style Tattoos

I’m constantly impressed by the submissions I receive for Inked Wednesday. I’ve seen more styles of tattoos than I can recall, but this is the first time I’ve had a whole gallery of watercolor ink to share. I’m in love. This week is all about Russell Van Schaick. His artistic style includes subtle gradients, dreamy lines, and a notebook feel—I mean the latter as a compliment. It’s like I’m flipping through an artist’s paper portfolio, but Russell captures that vibe with ink on skin.

You only have to look at his work to see what I mean. Behold, this lovely Appa from Avatar: The Last Airbender:

Do you see all the different colors happening in his fur?!

I’m into the layout of this BB-8 tattoo. I mean, Mickey and Minnie balloons? Come on.

The gallery below is loaded with more of my favorite examples of Russell’s work. You’ll find Disgust from Inside Out, Harley Quinn, a clever Harry Potter design, and more. Of course, you can see Russell’s entire portfolio at Instagram—and I recommend doing so. He’s based out of the Hart & Huntington Tattoo Shop in Orlando, but if you’re in New York, you can catch him at the New York Tattoo Convention from March 31-April 2.

If you have nerdy ink on your skin or you’re a tattoo artist that applies pop culture, STEM, music, or other nerd-inspired ink (tl;dr: I want to see basically all the tattoos) on a regular basis, then please hit me up because I’d like to highlight you in a future Inked Wednesday gallery. You can get in touch with me via email at alratcliffe@yahoo.com. Send me photos of the tattoos you’d like me to feature (the higher resolution, the better) and don’t forget to let me know the name of your tattoo artist if you have it, as well the name of the shop he or she works out of. If you are the tattoo artist, give me links to your portfolios and/or Instagram accounts so I can share them with our readers.

Images: Courtesy of Russell Van Schaick

Nerdist Podcast: Brandon Routh

Brandon Routh (Legends of Tomorrow, Superman Returns) talks to Chris about clean coffee, Chris’ inability to have caffeine and how changing your diet can change your life. Brandon also talks about his childhood, auditioning for Superman and playing the role of Ray Palmer/Atom!

Image: Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty

Make Your Own Pokéballs (Out of Chocolate)

In both the Pokémon anime and games, Pokéballs are a underratedly amazing piece of technology. Before Pokéballs existed, though, was a time when the only way to capture Pokémon was by using modified apricorns, a type of fruit in the Pokémon universe with an especially hard exterior. You might remember Kurt from the Pokémon Gold and Silver, who you would give your apricorns to in order to receive special balls.

That mechanic was phased out of the games after the second generation, but for those of us still wanting to make our own Pokéballs, there’s a way—so long as you don’t mind that they’re made of chocolate. That sounds more like a selling point than a flaw to us.

This is possible thanks to a fun treat from Bandai (via RocketNews24) that’s available in Japan: the “Create Your Own Snack: Pokémon Gotta Catch ‘Em All Chocolate Maker.” For 250 yen (about $2.25), you can get a kit that’s basically like an in-home chocolate forge. The different kits contain molds for chocolate versions of Pikachu, Rowlet, Popplio, and Litten, as well as a chocolate Pokéball that your sweet little creatures will fit in. The process is basically as you’d expect: melt the chocolate, pour it into the molds, put the molds in the fridge, and soon enough, you’ll be like Willy Wonka if the candymaker owned a PokéMart.

That above is a video detailing the process of using the kit, so check it out, and if you happen to be heading to Japan in the near future, kindly bring us back as many of these kits as you can cram into your carry on, please and thanks.

Featured Image: Bandai

Attention, Rich Goths: DRACULA’s House is For Sale

Have you ever wanted to live in Dracula‘s castle? Well, if you happen to have a cool $3 million at your disposal, you finally can! Oh, but did I mention by “castle” I actually meant “fabulous Hollywood mansion,” and by “Dracula,” I meant “the original big screen vampire Count, Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi“? If you thought I meant the real Dracula’s castle in Transylvania, well sorry to say that one’s not for sale. I’m also pretty sure that one doesn’t have either a gym or a hot tub, so I think Lugosi’s house is the better deal.

Thanks to the Daily Mail, we’ve learned the beautiful, possibly haunted (!!), Tudor-style home in Beachwood Canyon—located just below the famous Hollywood sign—is once again up for sale by the current owner. Built in 1932, at the beginning of the Golden Age of Hollywood, Dracula star Bela Lugosi actually only resided there during the peak of his fame as one of the Universal monsters, from 1934-37. Lugosi would later fall on hard times and move to several regular, low-key apartments scattered all across the Hollywood area. And despite what Tim Burton‘s excellent film Ed Wood might tell you, Lugosi never lived in a suburban home in Baldwin Hills—his undead heart always belonged to Hollywood.

In the decades since, other well known celebrities have lived in the home, like Misery and American Horror Story star Kathy Bates, and Two and a Half Men actor Jon Cryer. But no matter which famous actors and actresses may have resided there, the house is always referred to by its original famous owner’s name, and is called “The Lugosi Manor” (or Castle La Paloma) to this very day.

Remember when we said it was possibly haunted up there before? Well, according to some, Lugosi’s spirit still resides there. Psychic Sylvia Browne—who should be familiar to anyone who grew up watching The Montel Williams Show in the ’90s—once did a paranormal investigation in the home and said she encountered Lugosi’s ‘earthbound spirit’ in one of the rooms, where he rested in a wooden casket, wrapped in his signature Dracula cape. He looked into Browne’s eyes and said: ‘You weren’t invited.’ Yeah, sounds like nonsense to me too, but you never know…Lugosi was buried in his Dracula cape.

Although the home has been updated with modern fixtures many times since it was originally built, many of the original features remain intact. You can see photos of the home, as well as random video shots of the exterior, in the video below.

Would you live in Lugosi’s (maybe haunted) mansion? Let us know down below in the comments.

Images: Universal Studios 

A Scientist Created a Drip-Free Wine Bottle

In modern times, the technology behind bottles hasn’t improved all that much. The most recent innovation of popular significance that I can think of is the mountains that turn blue when your Coors Light is nice and cold, but that’s more of a gimmick than anything. Now, Daniel Perlman, a biophysicist at Brandeis University, has come up with a new idea that’s a true step forward (via Uproxx).

Check this out:

This new wine bottle design makes it a lot easier to achieve a clean pour, without having to worry about your Merlot going anywhere aside from your glass. This is especially important as it gets later in the evening and your hand-eye coordination perhaps isn’t what it was a few hours earlier. The design itself is very simple, and we imagine it’d be easy for wine bottlers to implement. It’s basically your standard bottle with one change: there’s a shallow groove added near the bottle opening. This prevents drops of liquid from “catching” the bottle’s neck and causing a torrent of wine to run down it. It’s so simple, and yet so effective, as the clip above shows.

After three years of studying how wine leaves a bottle, Perlman finally came up with the perfect solution to unnecessary spills. By making the groove two millimeters wide and one millimeter deep, it’s virtually impossible for a renegade drop of wine to make it past that gap. Now, let us waste no more wine, for Perlman has shown us the light.

Featured image: Jeff Kubina