When NBC’s adaptation of The Office first debuted in 2005, the series was panned for being a pale and uninspired imitation of its English predecessor. It took an entire season for showrunner Greg Daniels to figure out how to infuse his take on The Office with a quirky, satirical energy calibrated to appeal to American […]
A big reason that BoJack Horseman worked so well was contrast. It took place in a silly world of talking animals, and used that to explore deep human drama in relatable ways. It’s part of what made its oddball jokes work so well, as they helped balance out the darker moments that explored topics like […]
While the monsters in each of the nine Alien movies have been a little bit different, the nefarious corporate forces have remained the same. Ridley Scott’s original Alien didn’t need to mention Weyland-Yutani by name for it to be clear that a singular mega-company had cornered the market on space exploration. But subsequent Alien films […]
Ryan Coogler’s first Black Panther feature set itself apart by pushing audiences to think about how comic book heroes and villains would fit into a world shaped by horrors like the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Black Panther and its 2022 sequel, Wakanda Forever, used their characters to comment on our reality’s complicated and oftentimes ugly history […]
The first season of Twisted Metal was almost like a prologue. Peacock’s adaptation of the long-dormant PlayStation game series spent 10 episodes setting up its car-focused post-apocalyptic world and most of the major characters, all while rattling off a never-ending barrage of jokes. But it never really felt all that much like the games it […]
The third and final season of the industry-defining Squid Game confidently delivers each new round of the deathly games with spectacularly brutal aplomb – but its attempts at worldbuilding are disappointingly tired and uneven. Some of Squid Game’s most interesting dynamics from the first two seasons – the politics among the masked guards, the organ-harvesting […]
Before the multiverse, magic, or any of Marvel’s streaming series were important parts of the studio’s cinematic universe, there was Iron Man. After years of so-so movies, Iron Man reminded everyone that Marvel’s big-screen adaptations could be amazing with the right creative teams and stars attached. Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark was the MCU’s centerpiece […]
At its best, Netflix’s Love, Death, and Robots creates the same feeling as picking up a collection of sci-fi short stories. You don’t always know what to expect, and not everything is brilliant, but you’re guaranteed to experience something interesting. That was especially true of volume 3 of the animated anthology, which offered nine shorts, […]