Entertainment 86
HOW EXACTLY DID OPPENHEIMER’S SPECIAL EFFECTS TEAM RECREATE AN ATOMIC BLAST WITHOUT CGI?
Christopher Nolan raised many an eyebrow in late 2022 when he revealed that his upcoming World War II biopic Oppenheimer (opening on the big screen July 21) — had achieved the effect of a detonating atomic bomb without the use of CG.
This led many fans to jokingly speculate that the pioneering filmmaker with an eye toward stark realism had somehow convinced Universal Pictures to purchase and blow up an actual nuclear device in the middle of the desert. Thankfully, this wasn’t the case.
In an interview with Total Film for the magazine’s June 2023 Special Effects Supervisor Scott R. Fisher peeled back the curtain on his sixth team-up with Nolan. Given the film’s grounded material, the special effects team enjoyed a much lighter workload when compared to the larger-than-life visuals they were asked to create for previous outings like Interstellar and Tenet.
Gotham Knights to Get Heroic Assault, a Free Four-Player Co-Op Mode, In November
While Gotham Knights’ campaign will only support single-player or two-player co-op, a new mode called Heroic Assault will launch for free on November 29, 2022, that will let up to four players team up in arena-based challenges.
WB Games Montréal announced the news on Twitter and on Gotham Knights’ FAQ page, saying, “Gotham has thrown down a new gauntlet. Heroic Assault, the free 4-player co-op experience, is coming to #GothamKnights November 29, 2022.”
“Heroic Assault is an upcoming gameplay mode that is separate from the main story campaign,” Gotham Knights’ FAQ reads. “The standalone mode supports up to four players in online co-op and provides a dedicated arena-like environment with specific objectives to complete and enemies to defeat on each floor (30 floors total).”
For those hoping this would also bring four-player co-op to the main story campaign, WB Games Montréal has not said it is planning to bring four-player co-op to anything beyond Heroic Assault. Things can always change, but it doesn’t look to be in the cards at the moment.
Gotham Knights will be released on October 21, 2022, and will let players experience a story in a single-player or two-player co-op featuring Batgirl, Robin, Nightwing, and Red Hood.
WB Games Montréal previously shared with IGN why it chose to limit co-op to two players despite there being four heroes, saying, “focusing more on the idea of the immediate team-up of two allowed us to say, ‘OK, we can build a world that works perfectly well for either solo play or pairing off.'”
In our Gotham Knights final preview, we said that it “is not an easy game to demo, and while I walked away from my hands-on time less than impressed with many aspects of combat, I still found myself interested in playing more.”
Which Fighting Game Franchise Has the Most Iconic Characters?
Iconic characters in fighting games like Street Fighter’s Ryu and Ken or Scorpion and Mortal Kombat’s Sub-Zero are often as famous as the games that made them.
As the industry has evolved, numerous other iconic characters have entered the fighting game pantheon and made a lasting impact. Some franchise’s more iconic characters even live on outside their individual games, like Soulcalibur’s Ivy and Tekken’s King.
In honour of Street Fighter recently celebrating its 35th anniversary and Mortal Kombat its 30th: Which fighting game franchise has the most iconic characters?
Street Fighter 48.3%
Mortal Kombat 42.5%
Guilty Gear 0.7%
Tekken 3.9%
Soul Calibur 1.2%
King of Fighters 1.4%
Killer Instinct 0.7%
Dead or Alive 1.4%
Marvel’s Phase 6 Delays Could Be a Big Opportunity for Secret Wars
Marvel’s latest movie delays could help the Multiverse Saga end on an even stronger note.
Not everything in the MCU is good news. The release dates of several major upcoming movies have been pushed back, meaning we now won’t be seeing Avengers: Secret Wars and the end of Phase 6 until 2026. But where there are delays, there are also big opportunities.
Let’s take a step back and explore why these release date changes may actually be a good thing for the MCU, and why they could help the Multiverse Saga really stick the landing.
Marvel’s Phase 6 Delays
There’s been a lot of release date shuffling in the MCU recently, with the Blade movie being the first of many dominoes to fall. That upcoming Marvel reboot is reportedly experiencing some trouble behind the scenes. Star Mahershala Ali is said to be unhappy with the short, action-light script, and director Bassam Tariq recently dropped out of the film. The blade has now been pushed back into 2024, causing a chain reaction of delays that means the Fantastic Four won’t begin Phase 6 until February 2025 and Avengers: Secret Wars won’t cap off the Multiverse Saga until May 2026.
But the most interesting thing about these Phase 6 delays is what wasn’t affected. Even though Fantastic Four and Avengers: Secret Wars have both been pushed back, Avengers: The Kang Dynasty is still slated for release in May 2025. That means there will now be a full year separating The Kang Dynasty and Secret Wars.
This may simply be a sign that things are progressing more quickly on the fifth Avengers movie than they are on these other projects. The Kang Dynasty already has its director and writer and hasn’t dealt with the same setbacks as Fantastic Four or Blade. But there could be more to the decision to double the gap between the next two Avengers movies.
Phase 6’s Big Gap
Given that we’re still in the tail-end of Phase 4 right now, it’s no surprise we know very little about the plots of The Kang Dynasty and Secret Wars. We only just met one version of Kang in Loki: Season 1, and there’s no hint of the Fantastic Four or other key Secret Wars players yet. (Multiverse of Madness’ Variant of Reed Richards notwithstanding.)
But based on the comic book source material, we can make some inferences about the direction of the next two Avengers movies. The Kang Dynasty will likely pit the new incarnation of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes against Kang as the self-proclaimed Conqueror tries to bend the entire multiverse to his will. As with Avengers: Infinity War, it’s probably safe to assume the Avengers won’t save the day by the end of the film, setting up the rise of Battleworld and God Emperor Doom in Secret Wars.
One of the things that makes 2015’s Secret Wars comic so great is the fact that its premise allows for a huge amount of spinoffs and side stories. When you have a setting like Battleworld – a hodgepodge planet made up of fragments of dozens of dead universes – the possibilities are endless. Marvel Comics definitely took advantage of that, putting most of its ongoing comic book line on pause in the Summer of 2015 in order to focus on new books set in the chaotic Battleworld realm.
There was a comic called Thors, about the members of the all-thunder god army who enforce Doom’s will. There were multiple books revisiting classic X-Men crossovers like Age of Apocalypse and Days of Future Past. There was Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows, a comic set in a reality where Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson are still married and have a super-powered daughter.
The problem with only spacing out The Kang Dynasty and Secret Wars by six months is that the MCU has far less opportunity to explore the potential of Battleworld. But with a full year between them, Marvel has a lot more opportunity to play in the sandbox before moving into the climax of Phase 6 and the Multiverse Saga. That may very well be why The Kang Dynasty’s release date hasn’t changed.
Phase 6’s Mystery Movies
Granted, even having a year between these two Avengers sequels doesn’t guarantee Marvel will dig deeper into Battleworld. Marvel released two movies in between Infinity War and Endgame, and both were set before the Snap. The MCU movies never got around to exploring the state of the world during those lost five years, instead leaving it up to shows like WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier to fill in a few gaps later on.
But the difference between then and now is that Marvel releases much more MCU content each year. There have been reports of several untitled Marvel movies scheduled for 2025 and 2026, though it’s unclear how much those dates have been impacted by the other MCU delays. There’s also the possibility of unannounced Disney+ series that might debut during that time.
We can only hope that at least one or two of these mystery projects will be direct tie-ins to Secret Wars. Thor 5 could be an ensemble movie about the Thor Corps, pairing Chris Hemsworth and Natalie Portman’s characters with any number of other multiversal Thors. Marvel Studios could build on Deadpool 3’s Wolverine return by reuniting the full Fox X-Men cast for one final sendoff set against the backdrop of Battleworld. Or what about a series set on the Shield, the barrier protecting the rest of Battleworld from the ravenous hordes of zombies and androids? That could very well be Marvel’s answer to Game of Thrones.
Even if Marvel doesn’t actually introduce Battleworld until the Secret Wars movie, there are ways to expand and enrich this story in the year leading up to its release. If nothing else, Marvel should use that period to flesh out the Fantastic Four characters as much as possible. Secret Wars is both a story about the power of hope in the face of overwhelming darkness and an examination of the rivalry between Reed Richards and Victor von Doom. Doom is presented as the all-powerful saviour of reality, yet he proves unable to rise above his hatred of Reed and his own insecurities. It’s a story that banks heavily on the decades of Fantastic Four lore in the Marvel Universe.
Sony Paid $3.5 Million to Put Ark: Survival Evolved on PlayStation Plus
Sony paid $3.5 million to put Ark: Survival Evolved on PlayStation Plus for one month, while Microsoft paid $2.5 million to put it on Xbox Game Pass for six months.
As spotted by Kotaku reporter Ethan Gach on Twitter (below), a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission by Snail Games USA (the parent company of Ark developer Studio Wildcard) revealed the values paid by each company to feature the game in their “free games” line-up.
Ark appeared on PlayStation Plus in March 2022 and was, therefore, free for subscribers in the five-week period ranging from March 1 to April 4, a deal that Sony paid $3.5 million for.
Neither Sony or the developers involved have previously revealed how much these deals go through for, and while this could be a complete outlier and not representative of a standard agreement, its the first insight into the financial backend of PlayStation Plus that we’ve had since it began in 2010.
Microsoft, on the other hand, had reached an agreement to feature Ark on Xbox Game Pass for three years starting in 2019. Extending the deal later, the filing revealed that it paid the $2.5 million to feature Ark on Xbox Game Pass until June 30, 2022.
Looking forward, Microsoft also paid $2.3 million to guarantee that Ark 2 would be featured on Xbox Game Pass for three years after it’s released next year.
Similar to Sony’s PlayStation Plus deals, little is known about Microsoft’s agreements with developers for Xbox Game Pass, meaning this is also one of the first real insights we’ve had into how the process works.
Werewolf By Night Could Get a Sequel ‘If It All Makes Sense’
Director Michael Giacchino says he has “a lot of ideas.”
Werewolf By Night could get a follow-up “if it all makes sense”, with director Michael Giacchino explaining that he has “a lot of ideas” for the characters his MCU debut introduced.
The new Marvel ‘Special Presentation’ doesn’t just set up Jack (Werewolf By Night), but also Ted (Man-Thing), who form something of a double act., Giacchino made clear that he doesn’t necessarily see them as a one-off partnership despite the standalone feature they appear in:
“I have a lot of ideas of what to do with them, and it goes across the board from left to right. There’s a lot you can do with them. I think they worked amazingly together and really do feel like friends, which is incredible. Now’s our time to figure out what we want to do.”
Giacchino explains that his focus up until now has been on getting his first feature into the world, but he now has the time to think about what could come next: ” I don’t know which direction it’s going to go. I’m not sure. But most of our time had been just working on getting this thing out the door. Now that it’s out the door, I think we have time to look back and think about everything we’ve done and where we want to go. And if it all makes sense, we’ll see.”
It seems Kevin Feige already has ideas for the future of the pair after he explained that the movie introduces “a world that will ultimately become quite important to the future of the MCU.” It’s a notable world for Marvel for more than reason – not least how unexpectedly gory it is.
Werewolf By Night arrived this week as a Halloween-adjacent Marvel treat. In a 9/10 review, we said it’s “a wondrous homage to the classic Universal monster movies,” and added, “it will keep you on the edge of your seat with a slow, creeping tone that captures the very best of classic horror.”
Most viewed
Most commented