Christian Bale, face lined and partly obscured by a huge moustache, plays Captain Joe Blocker, an ageing soldier whose past is filled with tales of war and murder. Possessed by a deep-seated hatred of Native Americans, Blocker is briefly incensed when he has an escort mission forced on him by his superior, Colonel Biggs (Stephen Lang): take an elderly and deathly ill Apache chief, Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi) from a fort in New Mexico, where he’s been imprisoned for years, and shepherd him back to his home soil in Montana....

Is it an insult or compliment? When a young Baratheon lord utters it during a joust in the first episode of House of the Dragon, it lands as both: “The Queen Who Never Was.” Baratheon makes this comment toward Rhaenys Targaryen (Eve Best), the oldest living grandchild of the long dead King Jaehaerys Targaryen. She once was favored by several households, including the Baratheons and the Starks, to be Jaehaerys’ heir during the Great Council of Harrenhal—she is, after all, the daughter of Jaehaerys’ oldest son and his Baratheon wife....

Fire & Blood, the novel on which House of the Dragon is based, begins nearly 100 years before Viserys I is named as heir, starting with Aegon I’s conquest of Westeros and his rule over the seven kingdoms. The book also details the reigns of Aegon I’s successors King Aenys I, King Maegor I, and King Jaehaerys I before reaching the starting point of the series. In a recent interview with his publisher, Penguin Random House, Martin didn’t say that he would have gone as far back as Aegon I, but he did say “I would have began it like 40 years earlier with the episode I would have called ‘The Heir and the Spare,’ in which Jaehaerys’s two sons, Aemon and Baelon, are alive....

Co-writers of the new audio drama Star Trek: Picard – No Man’s Land — Kirsten Beyer and Mike Johnson — want fans to know one thing: They think it all counts. “Before I was working on the shows, I was doing the novels and that was the only Star Trek out there,” Kirsten Beyer says. “So you know, it had better count!” A producer on Star Trek: Discovery, a co-creator of Star Trek: Picard, and now, a writer for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 2, Beyer’s Trek career began as a writer of Star Trek: Voyager novels....

Hulu’s 2020 The Hardy Boys adaptation is the fifth time the famous sleuthing siblings have appeared onscreen. The CW’s Nancy Drew, which is set to return for its second season in January, is the girl detective’s ninth, and that’s only if you don’t count several failed pilots that never moved forward. (Quietly judging you, CBS.) We’re clearly obsessed with these kids, likely because many of us grew up reading stories of their adventures, and wishing we ourselves could take part in them....

The David E. Kelley-produced crime drama Big Sky premiered its first episode Tuesday night on ABC. Due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, it’s thus far the first and only new pilot from ABC this fall season. And as you may have heard by now, it concludes with one hell of a bang. The series is set in “big sky” country in Montana and finds two young teenage girls, Grace and Danielle being abducted by a creepy trucker....

Thor: Love and Thunder is a movie that serves many masters. Part philosophical treatise on gods and belief, part bittersweet reflection on regret and making up for lost time, and part himbo road trip adventure complete with giant screaming goats, it’s a movie whose separate pieces don’t always mesh that well with one another but that somehow still ends up being more entertaining than it has any right to be....

The long-awaited trailer confirms that Dial of Destiny won’t be shy about playing the hits. Whip gags, Indy on horseback, a new artifact to find before the bad guys do, and at least one scene where our beloved protagonist is clearly in over his head. These moments are all accounted for, plus plenty of snarky quips from his new partner, his “goddaughter” Helena (played by the wonderful Phoebe Waller-Bridge). The film also confirms it’s bringing back Indiana Jones‘ greatest enemy: the Third Reich....

The internet can’t decide if it was Pablo Picasso or the Dalai Lama who said “learn the rules like a pro so you can break them as an artist”, so let’s split the difference and say it was Peter Andre. What Andre’s getting at is that rules will only take an artist so far (to ‘Mysterious Girl’) but transgression of said rules is necessary for an act of true creation (‘Insania’)....

“This movie I really want to feel like a throwback,” Krasinski says about A Quiet Place Part II. “So it was definitely all the Hitchcock stuff for sure. I watched [that] religiously, and then I watched Alien, but certainly Jaws is a huge touchstone for me. With the opening of [A Quiet Place Part II], I think there’s even visuals I wanted to feel from the sense of Jaws.” Without giving away any more than what’s in the trailers, A Quiet Place Part II opens with a flashback to the first day that monstrous creatures invaded our planet....

Killing Eve Season 4 Episode 1 Villanelle often starts the new season hiding out somewhere and fooling someone, but the question this season is whether she has actually turned over a new leaf, or is she just fooling herself. Given her focus on optics and an audience of one, it often seems like her soul’s restoration is more about vanity and only appearing to be a better person. But there are still just enough quiet moments alone where she seems to be looking for something better, a new path if not actual forgiveness, to keep us guessing....

One of the most surprising pop culture moments of last year was the climax of No Time to Die, the 25th film in the James Bond franchise and the final to star Daniel Craig as 007. There’s a fuller explanation of the story and ending here but what it comes down to is that, at the end of his battle with the villainous Safin (Rami Malek), a gravely wounded and infected Bond chooses not to make a spectacular escape and sacrifices himself so that Safin’s lair and the deadly pathogen he had developed are utterly destroyed by a missile strike… and Bond along with them....

“The world of Star Wars is expanding in a new and exciting way on Disney+, but it seems as if the next few shows heading our way are things that I’ve dreamed of since the prequel trilogy came out. With Ewan McGregor’s return as Obi-Wan Kenobi and more, the Disney+ 2022 slate is something that I definitely dreamt up and emailed over to Lucasfilm.” Read more at The Mary Sue Discover what the best science fiction show currently on television is right now....

“It’s been awhile since we’ve had multiple big budget blockbusters all fighting for space in one weekend, but that’s what we’re getting now that Lightyear has released. The Toy Story semi-spinoff putting Chris Evans into the space suit of the Space Ranger has had some stiff competition in the form of Jurassic World Dominion and Top Gun: Maverick, and it’s showing in its box office debut.” Read more at Gizmodo Fans of the Venomverse (or whatever Sony is calling it) rejoice!...

“Batman Returns (1992) is undoubtedly one of the most bizarre movies ever made. You wouldn’t expect anything less from a Tim Burton movie, but even then, it’s a hard movie to pin down. It’s a Batman movie, a comic book movie, and somewhere between an action and sci-fi movie—that much is clear. But is the superhero showdown also a Christmas movie? Read more at Mental Floss Could Hawkeye be taking another step further into making Agents of S....

“When we last saw our beloved Din Djarin, it was in The Book of Boba Fett. He was reuniting with Grogu (who had been training with Luke Skywalker) after helping Fett, the struggling crime lord, defeat the Pyke Syndicate who were threatening Fett’s rule over Tatooine’s underworld. Djarin and Grogu had both been struggling since they separated at the end of season 2, including Djarin even being banished from his strict Mandalorian sect for taking off his helmet!...

“Despite Wanda Maximoff’s fifty-seven year history with Marvel, comics haven’t been exceptionally kind to the Scarlet Witch, which made WandaVision’s deep exploration of her grief a breath of fresh air. Created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee in 1964, Wanda made her first appearance in comics way back in X-Men #4.” Read more at The Mary Sue. Read more at Gizmodo. Check out these facts about Judy Blume’s Are You There God?...

“It’s been a minute since anyone saw Nick Fury. Last seen in the credits of Spider-Man: Far From Home almost three years ago, Samuel L. Jackson’s mysterious ex-S.H.I.E.L.D. director will soon star in Secret Invasion, a new Marvel television series coming to Disney+ in 2022.” Read more at Inverse Over half the United States has One Piece as their most frequently searched anime program. Does this make it the most popular anime in the country?...

“Over the course of its twist-filled three episodes, Murder Among the Mormons, the latest Netflix true-crime docuseries about a series of deadly bombings in Utah in 1985, reveals itself to be a canny study of belief. The con artist, particularly one who traffics in forged documents, preys on the widespread instinct to trust that the spectacular item being offered up is authentic.” Read more at Thrillist. From Alfred Russel Wallace to Caroline Herschel, here are some under-appreciated scientists throughout history....

For the bulk of Marvel’s Loki episode 2, titled “The Variant,” the God of Mischief (Tom Hiddleston) teams with the Time Variance Authority’s Mobius M. Mobius (Owen Wilson) to chase a timeline variant who, according to Mobius, is an alternate version of Loki himself. The variant is killing the TVA’s Minutemen and collecting their timeline reset charges, which points to the variant having more on the agenda than just hopping through time murdering people....