Chris Hardwick's Blog, page 2132

Funko’s STAR WARS Celebration Exclusives are Delightful

Do you hear that sound? It’s the pitter-patter of feet dancing in anticipation outside the Funko booth at Star Wars Celebration Orlando. The ultimate Star Wars fan event doesn’t kick off until April 13, but I can already feel the presence of determined collectors. You’ll have to be among the strongest to get a chance to get your paws on Funko’s exclusives at the convention. They’ve announced the first wave, and fans are drooling more than a hungry rancor.

You know what I like most about Funko Pop! vinyl figures? There’s an endless supply of inspiration. Just when I think they’ve featured all the characters, I remember, duh, it’s Star Wars and there are about a million choices and costumes to choose from. Plus, they do rad things like pair characters with vehicles. Please behold this Rey with her speeder:

I can hear “Rey’s Theme” in my head.

They also have Pop! figures featuring Garindan (he was in Mos Eisley in A New Hope), Han Solo in an action pose, holographic Qui-Gon Jinn, and Chopper from Star Wars Rebels in his go-to Imperial disguise paint job. How did Funko know my Chopper collection needed another figure? You can see all these vinyl beauties in the gallery below along with a prototype Boba Fett wobbler. Ooh.

Remember, this is only wave one. They’ll be rolling additional announcements about exclusives as Celebration approaches. I hope they give us more Rogue One designs, like Galen Erso, please. I mean, the dude is responsible for rigging a trap in the Death Star. I’d be thrilled to see another Hera with a Pop! version of the Ghost. Or how about a droids set? Or holographic Leia? My wish list is longer than 12 parsecs. Never mind the fact that I have almost no shelf space left.

If you want a chance at getting a priority ticket with a reserved time to visit the Funko booth at Celebration Orlando, you have to commit and enter the lottery. You can get more details at Funko. May the Force be ever in your favor or whatever the saying is.

Which items from the first wave of exclusives from Funko are at the top of your list? I’d trade an ambulatory strut to get the Chopper Pop! figure. Head to the comments and tell me what you’re prioritizing and what other characters you hope to see in future waves.

Did you know Rogue One had an alternate ending, though?

Images: Funko

Who Will Sylvester Stallone Play in GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2?

As you can probably tell by all of the new TV spots, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is less than two months away from smacking cinemagoers in the face with a sock full of Baby Groot. And we are totally down with that! So far, we’ve already seen Kurt Russell‘s Ego the Living Planet, but we have yet to see the mystery character portrayed by Sylvester Stallone. Would director James Gunn really pass up the chance to reunite Tango and Cash onscreen? That’s currently unclear, but today’s Nerdist News is following the clues and sharing our theories about who Stallone could be playing in the MCU. Let’s blast off!

Join senior editor and avatar of the Celestials, Dan Casey, as he runs down the possibilities for the Italian stallion. During a recent interview with Yahoo Movies, Gunn said “look for clues and you will find out the character Sylvester Stallone plays…He is fantastic in the movie. It’s a very important part of the Marvel cosmic universe.” Gunn noted that Stallone was on the set for a few days, which suggests that he had more than just a cameo appearance.

A rumor from the set of Vol. 2 noted that Stallone’s costume looked a lot like the Judge Dredd outfit he wore two decades ago. As much fun as that unofficial crossover would be, that may indicate that Stallone is playing a member of the Nova Corps. And while he’s a little too old to be playing Richard Rider or Sam Alexander, we think that he’d be perfect as Jesse Alexander; the long-missing father of Sam.

Other rumors have suggested that Stallone might be a member of the Ravagers, or at least appearing alongside them in the film. But perhaps the most intriguing theory is that Stallone may be one of the Elders of the Universe. If you know your Marvel comics, you may recall that the Elders include both the Collector and the Grandmaster, and they all had plans for the Infinity gems stones before Thanos took them for himself. It makes sense for the Elders to appear in this film, even if Gunn has already debunked that rumor. But perhaps Gunn is only doing that because we’ve gotten too close to the truth.

Who do you think that Stallone will portray in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2? Let’s discuss in the comment section below!

Automatic Bullseye Dartboard Uses Force of Engineering To Help You Stay on Target

It’s hard to have the zen confidence that Luke Skywalker has under pressure, while piloting an X-wing down a Death Star trench with a couple of TIE fighters on his back, par exemple. But while we may never be called upon to lead a rebellion against a dark empire (or maybe we will?), almost everybody 21 and older has had to go toe to 2.5-meter-away-toe with a dart board out at the local cantina. In that case, if the Force — beer and perhaps slightly more beer — doesn’t work for you, then Mark Rober’s Automatic Bullseye Dartboard most definitely will, because it’s essentially a reverse targeting computer.

Rober, who has worked at NASA JPL for 9 years, founded a company called Digital Dudz, and produced many scientific videos, has been working on the Automatic Bullseye Dartboard for three years with a former team member from NASA. The result of their efforts is a system that can track a dart, predict its trajectory, and then move a dartboard into position for nearly 100% bullseyes all within half-a-second and with sub-millimeter precision. It’s sort of like Luke is the dart, the Death Star is the board, and in this case, the Death Star is suicidal and really wants to be nailed in the exhaust port with a proton torpedo.

In the video, Rober discusses how the board works — a system of six cameras to track a dart moving through the air, a computer to predict its trajectory, and motors to quickly move the board’s bullseye into the spot where the dart’s predicted strike point will be. The system doesn’t work with any dart, however. It requires a dart outfitted with retroreflectors so that the six cameras can “blast” the dart with infrared light, radar-like, in order to track it.

Needless to say, the working board is quite a feat of engineering, and will work better than the Force (beer) at helping you to…

What do you think about Rober’s Automatic Bullseye Dartboard? Let us know in the comments below!

Images: Mark Rober

That TRANSFORMERS Band Covers the POWER RANGERS Theme Song

Nearly 20 years after their last cinematic adventure, the Power Rangers are heading back to movie theaters. And who better to welcome the Rangers back into the world of pop culture than their fellow metal-clad superheroes, the Transformers? Well, maybe not the actual Transformers, but the Transformers-themed rock band The Cybertronic Spree.

The band has released a new video covering the opening theme song for the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers TV series, mixed in with a little music from Doom. It’s a delightfully cheesy take on the original, and it’s quite funny to see these Transformers characters strike some very Power Rangers-inspired poses. We first wrote about The Cybertronic Spree last year, but they’ve been active on YouTube since 2013. The band’s gimmick is that they cover songs from the animated feature Transformers: The Movie while cosplaying as several of the most popular characters from the film. It’s nice to see the band branching out a bit with its latest cover.

The Cybertronic Spree branching into Power Rangers territory unearths a few questions about the relationship between the Mighty Morphin’ heroes and Transformers. Would Power Rangers have gone on to become a cultural phenomenon without Transformers paving the way a few years before? We suspect that Transformers, Robotech, and even Voltron all played a role in getting American fans ready for something like Power Rangers. But as you can see in the video, the fandoms can still co-exist quite nicely.

What do you think about The Cybertonic Spree’s Power Rangers cover? Transform and roll out in the comment section below!

Image: The Cybertronic Spree

8 things the new Transformers trailer rips off from other movies

X-FORCE: The Essential Stories of Marvel’s Militant Mutants

News has been swirling lately of an X-Force movie being the follow up to Deadpool 2, teaming Ryan Reynolds’ “Merc with the mouth” with the soon-to-be-introduced Cable and Domino. But for the uninitiated, just who are X-Force?

Essentially, X-Force began as a spin-off of the X-Men, at the height of that comics’ popularity in the early ’90s. There have been many different line-ups over the years, but the one constant has been they are the more militant, down n’ dirty version of the X-Men, who will cross the moral lines the X-Men won’t. If you want to get yourself acquainted with the team, here are some essential stories to read, some of which may very well influence the cinematic version.

X-Force: A Force To Be Reckoned With

Collects New Mutants #98-100, X-Force #1-4 (1991)

In a lot of ways, the original run of X-Force is the epitome of what mainstream superhero comics became in the early ’90s, for both good and bad. Lots of big guns, big muscles, aggressive characters, and more of a focus on art than on writing. But this is where the concept of X-Force began, and if you’re going to start somewhere, you might as well start at the beginning.

In 1990, Rob Liefeld, then a young artist who had taken over Marvel’s junior X-Men book The New Mutants with issue #87, realized that the title was running on fumes. As the mutant teens approached 100 issues, they weren’t really “new” anymore, and their previous mentor figures Professor X and Magneto had abandoned them. Liefeld realized the book needed a total reinvention. He designed a new mentor for the team, a grizzled cyborg named Cable with a mysterious past, who took the handful of Xavier’s students that were left and wrote all but two of them out, then brought in a ton of new characters he created to replace them, and after New Mutants #100, redubbed the team “X-Force.”

Even though he wasn’t a member of the team, one of the original new adversaries for X-Force was Deadpool, who first appeared in New Mutants #98, and was one of the first bad guys the team fought in the earliest days (yes, Deadpool was essentially a bad guy early on). Those earliest X-Force stories are pretty dated now – lots of splash pages with characters not saying a whole lot and running at each other.

But there was a crackling energy and fun in those issues, and there is no doubt that Liefeld tapped into something. There’s a reason X-Force #1 sold 5 million copies. Say what you want about his art–which gets criticized a lot–the designs of Cable, Deadpool, and Domino were instantly iconic, and have changed very little over the years. There’s reason they’re all still around.

Which Elements Can Be Used For A Movie

The basic idea of Cable and Domino gathering a team of mutants to turn them into a militant fighting unit, who takes the fight to the bad guys instead of waiting for them to attack? I would use that premise as the jumping off point for any X-Force movie, although I’d probably ditch the idea that they were Xavier’s former students. Oh, and obviously, I’d use Deadpool as a team member and not an adversary (I’d say that’s a given).

X-Force: Destination Unknown

 X-Force (Vol.1) #71-80 (1997-98)

Despite the original idea that X-Force would be a more militant X-Men that would take the fight to the bad guys, after Rob Liefeld left the book within the first year to found Image Comics, the title just fell into being another X-Men team book. Eventually, the team stopped working for Cable and went out on their own, and former New Mutants characters that had been written out of the title came back.

X-Force then became less about muscles and fights in the late ’90s and more about a group of kids with powers trying to figure themselves out. This run on the title isn’t talked about as much, but it did produce a memorable story in issues #71-80 of the original run, written by John Francis Moore and illustrated by Adam Pollina.

In this road trip story, the team’s car is broken down, so Moonstar, Siryn, Warpath, Sunspot, and Meltdown hitch a ride across country with a strange couple named Scooter and Louise. This is a storyline which is way more about young people figuring out who they want to be in life, and where they want to go next, than about big fights and world-ending catastrophes. Once the team realizes they have no mentor, no money, and no real reason for staying together as a team, they find the only real bond holding them together is friendship. While the original run of X-Force comics lacked in characterization, these stories more than make up for that, and finally give the team real personalities beyond just their surface traits and cool designs.

Sadly, I don’t think this run of issues was ever collected into trade paperback form, so you might have to read these the old fashioned way — by hunting down back issues at your local comic book shop.

Which Elements Can Be Used For A Movie

Honestly, this run of X-Force should be a bigger influence on Josh Boone’s upcoming New Mutants movie than a potential X-Force film, but it’s a crucial stepping stone in the evolution of the team regardless. It’s worth tracking down those issues and picking them up.

X-Force (Vol. 2)

Collected as X-Force by Craig Kyle & Chris Yost: The Complete Collection Volume 1 (2007-2008)

Now, it’s around this time the X-Force that readers really love gets formed, some fifteen years after the title was first introduced! (Hey, some things take time). This new version of the X-Force team was formed by longtime X-Men leader Cyclops, and kept as a complete secret from the rest of the X-Men.

Cyclops tasks Wolverine with gathering the best mutant hunters, trackers, and killers that he knows, including former X-Force members like Warpath, Wolfsbane, and Domino, along with newcomers like Archangel and X-23. Wolverine would forge this unit into a more militaristic black-ops branch of the X-Men, one who is willing to do what the regular X-Men won’t – kill their enemies, and leave no trace behind.

Creators Craig Kyle, Christopher Yost, and Clayton Crain really found the perfect mix of characters to make the book sing, and they actually fulfilled the long-ago promise of the book, which was the X-Men going after their enemies before they can strike first. Also, having an X-Force team with an all-star line-up of characters like Wolverine, Archangel, and Domino among them only helped elevate the book’s popularity.

Which Elements Can Be Used For A Movie:

Well, if we are to believe Hugh Jackman, not Wolverine (sadly). But, X-23 is still a member of this team, and everyone loved Dafne Keen’s performance in Logan, so why not have her aboard? Archangel was also introduced as part of the team at this point, and after being more or less wasted in X-Men: Apocalypse, this could be a perfect vehicle to redeem that character.

Also, actress Maisie Williams is supposed to be introduced as Wolfsbane in New Mutants, but could an older version of her character appear in X-Force as well? There is a lot to be mined from this iteration of the team to be sure.

Uncanny X-Force

Uncanny X-Force by Rick Remender: The Complete Collection Volume 1 (2010-2012)

If Craig Kyle and Chris Yost’s version of the team proved popular with fans, then this took their popularity to the next level. Writer Rick Remender kept the basic idea of a black-ops/”wetworks” style X-Men team led by Wolverine, and then added fan-favorite X-Men Psylocke and Fantomex to the mix. Maybe most importantly, they finally added Deadpool, the character Rob Liefeld had created along with X-Force way back in ’91, as a member of the team. That sure took long enough!

Written by Rick Remender and with spectacular art by Jerome Opena, their two-year run on Uncanny X-Force is still the most popular version of the team in the eyes of most fans. What made this group work, according to Remender, was that “this is a group of characters that have had their souls stained by evil forces in the past, a common thread connecting them. They’ve already made the hard compromises in the past; they’ve all taken life.” Well, that and they look really badass in a team lineup picture together.

In these stories, the team has to decide what to do with powerful mutant villain Apocalypse, who has been reborn as an innocent child. The team has to struggle with the moral dilemma of possibly killing an innocent child to prevent the return of a powerful despot. It’s all weightier stuff than had been included in any X-Force comics before it, but it proved to be the most interesting and memorable run on the title.

Which Elements Can Be Used For A Movie

After the big screen version of Apocalypse was not greeted with love by most fans, a story about his rebirth might not sit well with most moviegoers. But a team made up of Deadpool, Psylocke, Archangel, and possibly X-23 replacing Wolverine? How can the makers of the X-Force movie not be inspired by that?

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Which X-Force stories are your personal favorites? Be sure to let us know in the comments below.

Images: Marvel Comics

Science says X-23 is stronger than we might think.

DOCTOR WHO Series 10 Will Bring Back the Rare 3-Parter

Surely you remember the most recent trailer for Doctor Who Series 10, yes? You may have noticed a few instances of some jacked-up bald people who looked like a mixture of the Pyroviles from “The Fires of Pompeii” and the Master from Buffy. These are the Monks, a mysterious new race of monsters. And if it seemed like they were hitting them pretty hard in the trailer, it’s not merely because the producers like them a lot; they’ll actually feature in what writer Toby Whithouse has touted as a three-parter, a rare instance for Doctor Who.

In an interview with Digital Spy, Whithouse (the creator of TV show Being Human and the writer of many great Who episodes including last year’s “Under the Lake” and “Before the Flood“) said that he has written the final part in the saga of the Monks that’ll take place in episodes 6-8 of the upcoming run.

“Mine is the third part of a three-parter,” Whithouse explained. “Steven [Moffat]‘s done the first one, Peter Harness did the second and I’ve done the third. It’s set modern-day… and I think anything more than that and Steven will come round and kick me in the shin!”

What Whithouse doesn’t say, of course, is how the Monks will be involved in the individual episodes comprising the “three-parter,” and if the episodes will have anything more in common than the appearance of the villains. It’s very rare for any multi-episode arc to be written by more than one writer, or at least more than the same pair of writers.

Not including the classic series, where multi-episode arcs were the only way things were done, Doctor Who has only had one official three-parter, in terms of story numbering, and that was Series 3‘s final three episodes, “Utopia,” “The Sound of Drums,” and “The Last of the Time Lords.” Though “Utopia” felt very much like a separate episode (different setting, completely different plot structure, different director from the other two), they all three dealt with the return of the Master, the reappearance of Captain Jack Harkness, and the culmination of the Martha Jones storyline. It’s also hard not to lump episodes together when they end in cliffhangers for each other.

There have certainly been other thematic-linking trilogies in the show before, even if they aren’t officially grouped as such. The Series 4 two-parter “The Sontaran Stratagem” and “The Poison Sky” can be grouped with the next episode “The Doctor’s Daughter” as a loose “Return of Martha Jones” trilogy. I would also put Matt Smith’s final three episodes (“,” “The Day of the Doctor,” and “The Time of the Doctor“) into a thematic trilogy dealing with the history of the show and the ultimate completion of the Doctor’s initial 13-incarnation limit. And I’d even lump “Face the Raven,” “Heaven Sent,” and “Hell Bent” into a trilogy, even though they’re counted as individually numbered stories in the official tally.

I’m intrigued for something written by three different writers (though obviously all shepherded by Moffat) to be considered a trilogy. Part of me wonders if the stories themselves will be completely independent and just feature the Monks as villains, though if it takes place in modern day as Whithouse says, I’m betting we’ll get a fair amount of UNIT action too. Or at least I’m hoping.

What do you make of the Monk three-parter business, and about the monks at all for that matter? Let me know in the comments below!

Images: BBC

Kyle Anderson is the associate editor and the resident Whovian for Nerdist. Follow him on Twitter!

We found 5 things the BBC missed in their own damn trailer!

Trapping a Self-Driving Car is Surprisingly Easy

It looks like self-driving cars are the future, doesn’t it? Studies have suggested traffic would be quicker to navigate with a robot behind the wheel instead of humans, andriverless cars are getting better at understanding real-world environments, too, thanks to Grand Theft Auto. That said, they are definitely the future, as in not the present, because they’re not quite ready yet. Self-driving cars are already out there running red lights, and beyond things that like, there are serious ethical concerns to address.

Now, we can sadly add another point to the loss column, since British artist James Bridle demonstrated just how easy it is to trap a self-driving car, preventing it from going anywhere with just what looks like a bag of flour.

We don’t know precisely how the technology involved with self-driving cars works, but it seems simple enough to explain here. They’re equipped with a lot of cameras and sensors, and the job of some of those is to look at road lines to help the car figure out where it should and should not drive. Dotted white lines can be crossed, while solid white lines shouldn’t be.

If that’s a core part of the car’s logic, then tripping it up can be easy, as the video above shows. Just draw a white dotted circle surrounding a white solid circle. The car will drive through the dotted line, but by the time it processes that solid lines aren’t to be messed with, it finds itself surrounded by solid white on all four sides.

In the video, you can even see the car trying to think through this situation, nudging forward a little bit, looking for an escape but finding none. Although this test is artistic in nature, it raises a good point: Driverless cars can be pretty easy to mess with, so perhaps they’re not quite ready for prime time, at least until wrinkles like these are ironed out.

Featured Image: stml

HARRY POTTER-Inspired Butterbeer Ice Cream Apparating to the Frozen Food Aisle

Every Harry Potter fan wishes they could conjure up a tall glass of delicious Butterbeer to accompany the ritual marathon viewing of the films on Freeform. Sadly, Muggle grocery stores don’t carry the treat. However, they do stock plenty of ice cream, and the newest flavor coming to the frozen food department just might have you thinking you drank some Felix Felicis.

We first came across this magical news at The Huffington Post (though we would have imagined The Daily Prophet would have been all over this), and we guess that even a Death Eater will be eager to bite into Yuengling Ice Cream’s newest flavor, Butterbeer.

Inspired by the J.K. Rowling-created favorite drink of young witches and wizards of Hogwarts, the latest addition to their line is completely alcohol free, and is half buttercream ice cream and half butterscotch ice cream, with a butterscotch swirl twist, which they describe as a “magical decadence that will transport you to another place and time.”

Based on how much of this we expect to eat, even Professor Trelawney can divine that place will be the gym in the future.

The only place to drink an official Butterbeer is at The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios, but since we can’t always apparate there when we want, we’ll be keeping an eye out at our grocery store for this fantastic ice cream equivalent, which is already available in pints, and will be available in the coming months in quart size.

And we’re going to need the bigger size, considering how much ice cream we already eat during a typical Harry Potter marathon. What other food or drink from Harry Potter would make for a great ice cream flavor? Transfigure our comments section below with your thoughts.

Featured Image: Warner Bros. Studios/Yuengling Ice Cream

Body Image: Yuengling Ice Cream

Here’s Gollum Singing “Time After Time” Because Why The Heck Not

Smeagol. Cyndi Lauper. Since time immemorial, these two icons of pop culture have stood apart from one another — but today, they have finally combine forces for the mash-up we’ve all been demanding.

Okay, okay! I’ll stop fooling around. In all seriousness, this new video by viral YouTube sensation Ian Walters is simultaneously the most grotesque and the most gorgeous “Time After Time” cover I’ve ever heard. You’d think a centuries-old Stoorish hobbit would lose his ear for harmony after being twisted and corrupted by the One Ring Of Power, but you’d be wrong. Guess being stuck in a cave talking to yourself is a wonderful way to keep your vocal pipes in good health.

Like almost everything on the internet, this breathtakingly hilarious video was created to promote a Kickstarter project: Walters is currently attempting to fund his first full-length album under the moniker “Headphone Hair.” As of this writing, he only has a few thousand more dollars to raise with ten more days to go. And Headphone Hair’s music is… actually really good? As the description of Headphone Hair’s first EP, If This Means You…, suggests, it sounds “a lot like if Bombay Bicycle Club hugged Sufjan so hard that Andrew Bird popped out of his hoodie pocket like a little marsupial.” Check it out for yourself:

Like, if I caught this on song on the radio and had no idea it came from a guy who’s internet famous for his Gollum impression, I would definitely seek out more of his music online. The Gollum thing would just be a nice bonus.

Speaking of which, one of Ian’s Kickstarter rewards is that he’ll record a personalized Gollum parody for you if you pitch in $100. What would you want him to sing for you? Let us know in the comments below!

Featured Image and GIF Credit: New Line Cinema

Gallery 1988’s Tribute to MIKE TYSON’S PUNCH OUT!! is a Beautiful TKO

We all need to take a minute to appreciate how lucky we are that so many nerdy things in the world are cherished these days. What was once dismissed as geeky nonsense is now, in so many ways, popular and mainstream. And while there will always be the naysayers who, well, say “nay” about whether or not this is a good thing—we say nay to them for their aforementioned saying of nay because of the wonderful places like Gallery 1988. Their ability to curate and celebrate some serious pop culture artwork it is nothing short of a nerdy kid’s dream come true.

Their latest show is a tribute to the NES classic Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! and, boy, are we excited for every single bit of it. The game is nearly thirty years old and still so ingrained in our memories that we’re just about to risk every bit of income we have to get our hands on any and all of these pieces. The show—Don’t Cry, Mac: A Tribute to Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!—tasked artists with re-imagining the game’s characters in their own style making for an eclectic mix of prints and mixed media items. Here are a few of our favorites.

Stephen Andrade’s “X Marks The Spot” print is just phenomenal and seems like it could be a real pulp magazine cover from way back when. Hey, crazier magazines and covers have existed in real life.

Holy moly, these two are fantastic! Not only is one an actual 3D paper sculpture, but artist Adam Hoppus made the “The King of Video Land” as a print as well so you can hang it and be forever tempted to build it yourself. And yes, that’s most certainly the version of King Hippo from Captain N: The Game Master.

OK, so for $1,200.00 the DrilOne “NES” might seem a bit steep but hear us out. If everyone reading this gets enough friends to just give them a dollar and then you give us those dollars, we can get purchase this for the writer of this article and he’ll totally be your best friend. Deal? Cool. We’ll be waiting by the mailbox the 1200 bucks!

Some of our favorites are in the gallery below and all the pieces are available to purchase on Gallery 1988’s site.

Which ones are your favorite? Let’s discuss in the comments below!

Images: Gallery 1988

Featured Image: Gallery 1988 | “007 373 5963” by Belinda Rodriguez