Inhaltsverzeichnis für July 2019 in SFX

Get sci-fi news and features at gamesradar.com/sfx SCI-FACT! The Second Chance antique shop in Toy Story 4 was established in 1986 and has the street number 1200 – just like Pixar. TS3 WASN’T MEANT TO BE THE END 1 With Andy going to college and the toys finding a new home with Bonnie, Toy Story 3’s ending felt like the perfect finale. But Pixar didn’t see it that way. “[Writer] Andrew Stanton was adamant that it was never intended to be the end,” producer Jonas Rivera tells Red Alert. “It’s just the ending of a movie. What really unlocked it [for us] was the truthful observation that it’s the ending of Andy’s story, but Andy, as important as he is, was always the external story. The real internal story is…

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POP QUIZ: HOW MANY LINES DOES BOBA Fett have in The Empire Strikes Back? If you said “four”, give yourself a pat on the back. Few characters in cinema history have made a bigger impression with such minimal screentime for no reason other than the fact they look really flippin’ cool. So it comes as little surprise that Lucasfilm’s first ever live-action Star Wars series, set to debut on new streaming service Disney+ later this year, should centre on a Mandalorian’s (mis)adventures through the galaxy. Played by Game Of Thrones’ Red Viper, Pedro Pascal, the eponymous Mandalorian has the potential to be every bit as enigmatic and charismatic as Star Wars’ most notorious bounty hunter. He even has one over Boba Fett in the mysterious stakes – no one even…

Back in 2016, after scoring the Dark Knight trilogy, Man of Steel and Batman Vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice, Hans Zimmer told the BBC, “I have officially retired from the superhero business,” suggesting that BvS “was very hard for me to do, to try to find new language”. So it’s a pleasant surprise to see Zimmer’s name in the credits for Dark Phoenix. How did Kinberg entice him back? “A few ways. One was by begging – that sometimes works. He’s a hero of mine. I’ve been writing my screenplays to his scores for years now,” says Kinberg. “I just started stalking him via email. Finally he came to Montreal, where Dark Phoenix was shot, to do a concert and I at least got him to agree to come and…

What’s “Smithereens” about then? This is a story about what it’s like to kidnap someone, rather than what it’s like to be kidnapped. Chris is a guy who’s in an extreme situation, and he’s not a kidnapper any more than I am or you are. But it’s what he’s driven to to get answers. It’s really a story about grief, and it’s full of heart. Hypothetically: you’ve kidnapped someone. Who would you demand to speak to? I’m Irish myself, so the Catholic Church! The organisation. That’s the thing that makes me the most angry. You just want to go, “How can you preach that and practise that? Answer the question!” Which is what this film is about. That you go, “I want to speak to the top guy. I will…

THE END OF GAME OF THRONES is the end of an era. Not only for television, which it redefined as a blockbuster medium. Nor its fans, who have followed every death, twist and battle with obsessive devotion. But its cast, for who the show’s end represents the passing of eight years of work and life. SFX sat down with eight stars to find out how it feels to leave Westeros behind… SOPHIE TURNER (Sansa Stark) I think Game Of Thrones means everything to me. It’s been my adolescence, it’s been half of my life basically, and the only half I can really remember. It’s my family. I had substitute fathers, substitute uncles, substitute brothers. I met my best friend on there. It’s the best acting class I could have ever…

▶RELEASED OUT NOW! PG | 104 minutes ▶Director Rob Letterman ▶ Cast Ryan Reynolds, Justice Smith, Kathryn Newton, Bill Nighy It sounds like a cheese dream. The first ever live-action Pokémon movie, starring Ryan Reynolds as a wise-cracking talking Pikachu who wears a little deerstalker hat and solves crimes. But not only is Detective Pikachu somehow real, it’s one of the funniest, most visually accomplished and fanpleasing videogame adaptations that’s ever been made. Our reluctant hero is Justice Smith’s Tim, a former Pokémon trainer who’s travelled to Ryme City – a Poké-metropolis awash in neon and noir – to look for his estranged father, a detective presumed dead after a car crash. What he finds instead is his father’s surviving partner – a talking Pikachu with amnesia, who only he…

UK BBC One, Tuesdays US TBC ▶ Showrunner Russell T Davies ▶ Cast Russell Tovey, Rory Kinnear, T’Nia Miller, Ruth Madeley episode 1.01 “Our Friends In TheNorth, but moving 15 years into the future”: a brilliant pitch you’d think had been done before. But no, Russell T Davies is the first to plant his flag on this territory. Kicking off in 2019, then leaping to 2024, part one of his family saga efficiently introduces likeable Manuncian clan the Lyons and establishes the tone, which mixes bewilderment at the state of the world with down-to-earth domestic drama – a scene that signals cracks in Daniel Lyons’s relationship via a spat about washing your hands seems characteristically bathetic. Thanks to a strand about a Lyons kid’s desire to become “post-human”, it’s actually…

▶ UK/US Netflix, streaming now ▶ Showrunner Leah Rachel ▶ Cast Sivan Alyra Rose, Uma Thurman, Kyanna Simone Simpson, Nicholas Galitzine EPISODES 1.01-1.10 While we’re pretty certain the NHS doesn’t screen for such things, every horror fan knows that body transplants from psychopaths are a very bad idea. Initially, the hoary old haunted spare part chestnut appears to be the basis of Chambers, a teen-fronted twist on The Hands Of Orlac featuring a vengeful ticker rather than murderous hands. But as the series progresses you realise there’s more going on. This is hinted at in the opening episode when Navajo reservation escapee Uncle Frank tells his mixed-race niece, Sasha, “In four hours the entire universe had to conspire together to save your life.” He’s not wrong. Her new heart materialises…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2017|15 |Blu-ray & DVD (dual format) ▶ Director Rainer Sarnet ▶ Cast Rea Lest, Jörgen Liik, Arvo Kukumägi, Heino Kalm Prepare to acquire a new favourite mythological beast: the Kratt. Made from household objects like irons or scythes as part of a pact with the Devil, this magical creature from Estonian folklore gathers treasure on behalf of its creator. It’s just one of many memorable aspects of this fairy tale, which recalls the work of Ingmar Bergman, and is as cruel as anything the Brothers Grimm collected. The black and white cinematography is stunning, as ghostly all-white figures parade through a misty forest, dust motes dance in the air, or the camera zooms in on the bark of a tree. The lived-in faces of the (largely…

EXTRAS ▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2019 | 15 | DVD Originally titled TheRusalka, this siren tale draws on Slavic folklore. A grieving man searches for the monster that killed his husband. Meanwhile, a mute man falls in love with the beautiful, troubled young woman who seems to inhabit the lake. Guess the connection. All the actors are good, there’s some lovely cinematography and the first half has a strong ambience. But as the film crawls along, it does start to feel like you’re just watching three Urban Outfitters models standing around in a lake. + Extras None.…

EXTRAS ▶ RELEASED 27 MAY 2018 | 15 | Blu-ray & DVD (dual format)/Blu-ray/DVD ▶ Director Mari Okada ▶ Cast Manaka Iwami, Miyu Irino, ▶ Ai Kayano, Yoshimasa Hosoya You’ve heard the phrase “weaving a tale”? This fairytale anime (unwieldy full title Maquia: When The Promised Flower Blooms) takes the idea literally in a story about a secluded clan whose members live – and stay young – for centuries, and spend their days weaving Hibiol, a special cloth that chronicles the passing of time. Quite why they’ve committed themselves to this monumentally dull task and what the cloth is actually for is never made clear, but don’t worry about that. Just think of it as a metaphor for the waft and weft of life. Then the village is attacked by…

▶ RELEASED 10 JUNE (download 27 May) 2019 | PG | Blu-ray (4K/standard)/DVD/download/VOD ▶ Director Dean DeBlois ▶ Cast Jay Baruchel, America Ferrera, F Murray Abraham, Cate Blanchett While plenty of movie sagas keep their characters in a state of arrested development, How To Train Your Dragon has never been afraid of evolution. This is a world where geeky outsider Hiccup can become a Viking chief, and events have consequences, whether it’s the loss of a limb or a loved one. The new spanners in the works for this third instalment are ruthless dragon hunter Grimmel (played with sinister relish by F Murray Abraham) and a love interest for Hiccup’s scaly bestie, Toothless. And because of the saga’s past form, you’re never quite sure if this trilogy closer is going…

Get sci-fi news, reviews and features at gamesradar.com/sfx ▶ RELEASED 23 MAY 344 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Jeanette Winterson ▶ Publisher Jonathan Cape Just over 200 years ago, while staying in a Swiss villa, an 18-year-old woman came up with an idea which created a genre. Since then, Frankenstein has been re-realised and reimagined many times, creating more classics of book and screen in the process, but the most interesting versions have always been ones which re-examined the core questions of the novel. What makes us human? Can that ever be replicated in our creations – and how would we react to them if it could? This latest take on the tale, by Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit author Jeanette Winterson, tackles just those questions, and is based…

▶ RELEASED 30 MAY 214 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Julia Armfield ▶ Publisher Pan Macmillan Sometimes a collection of short stories comes along that keeps you up through the night, pulling you from one page to the next. Julia Armfield’s debut collection is just such a book, its bite-sized pieces of fantasia telling tales of strange women and what lurks beneath their skin. Armfield won the White Review Short Story Prize for “The Great Awake”, a ghostly piece about an insomniac city where sleep takes on physical form and separates itself from its hosts. But that’s far from the only treasure here. “Mantis” tells the story of a girl whose skin shreds and whose muscles spasm, but who still yearns to be pretty. Then there’s “Stop Your Women’s Ears…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 576 | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Authors Adrian Tchaikovsky ▶ Publisher Macmillan For all that science fiction and fantasy are closely related fields, the odd eyebrow was raised by Adrian Tchaikovsky taking the 2016 Clarke Award for Children Of Time. Tchaikovsky was, after all, a fantasy writer having an away-day from his regular gig, better known as the author of fantasy sequence Shadows Of The Apt. Which perhaps goes to show how genre categories can limit the imaginations even of genre readers because, as Children Of Ruin proves, should there be any doubt, Tchaikovsky is no hard SF dilettante. Rather, he’s a nerdy hard SF mechanic, a man who, to judge by the Children books, is fascinated by the way the genre enables him to tinker with ideas…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 334 pages | Paperback/ebook ▶ Author Chris Humphreys ▶ Publisher Gollancz People who don’t read many fantasy novels think the genre doesn’t change much, but this one proves how far it’s come. Elements of it are badly dated in the wrong way. The most obvious is in its quartet of civilisations – the world is split into four, with the different areas now coming into contact with each other for the first time as one seeks to conquer the rest – which are just too analogous to real-world historical ones. Going from the Precolumbian-like Ometepe to the Greco-Roman Mediterranean Corinthium to the Vikingesque Midgarth is like switching areas in a theme park, and while the main characters are well-drawn, the supporting ones feel dropped in to…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 320 pages | Hardback/ebook ▶ Author Matt Whyman ▶ Publisher Headline There’s no denying that this lavish Making Of spreads the word as decreed on high, with party line toed throughout. Even so, you couldn’t realistically hope for a better companion to the Good Omens TV series. While occasionally repetitive – there’s only so many times you can read how Neil Gaiman scripted the show after a last request from his co-author Terry Pratchett; or about the epic scale of the lavish BBC/Amazon production – this is superior stuff. As well as wrangling contributions from all the surviving key players (among them Gaiman himself, the stars, director Douglas Mackinnon, and Pratchett’s long-time assistant and “representative in this world” Rob Wilkins), author Matt Whyman editorialises a little…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Publisher Dynamite Entertainment ▶ Writer Kieron Gillen ▶ Artist Caspar Wijngaard ISSUES 1-4 If you find DC’s Watchmen sequel Doomsday Clock morally dubious then this anarchic and affectionate postmodern reinvention of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s landmark 1985 series could be the antidote. Ostensibly a revival of the old Charlton character who provided the template for Watchmen’s malevolent Ozymandias, it sees Kieron Gillen highlighting all sides of his multi-faceted character, as Peter Cannon is pitted against an evil alternate-universe version of himself. It boasts many sly nods to Moore and Gibbons’s opus: for example, the first issue begins – just as Watchmen finishes – with a fake alien invasion. And when one of Cannon’s cohorts meets a sticky end, they leave a Rorschachstyle imprint behind. It’s…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Reviewed on PC ▶ Also on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 ▶ Publisher Focus Home Interactive VIDEOGAME Regardless of how you feel about the Brad Pitt movie it’s adapted from, this game perfectly captures the horrors of a pyramid of zombies attempting to overcome anything to feast on your grey matter. Masses upon masses of the ambling, groaning things move at quite a pace, and seeing your entire horizon fill with Zeds, as they’re known, is quite the visual spectacle. It’s also spectacular fun to mow them down with a full arsenal of weaponry, including a very bloodthirsty chainsaw. It channels Valve’s Left 4 Dead as much as it does its movie source material though, leaning heavily into four player co-operative gameplay (online or offline with…

NEWS INTERVIEWS INSIGHT CHUCKY! Get sci-fi news and features at gamesradar.com/sfx SCI-FACT! In Fabric is produced by Rook Films, the company behind the celebrated Ben Wheatley’s work. To look at the films of Peter Strickland is like being transported into a rarefied universe, somehow both familiar and otherworldly. “I guess that’s what I look for personally when I watch a film – I want to lose myself in something,” he says over coffee at London’s Hospital Club. “I don’t want to see real life. I don’t want to see social realism. I get enough of that reading the paper!” From his 2009 debut, the rape-revenge drama Katalin Varga to Berberian Sound Studio (2012) and The Duke Of Burgundy (2014) – films immersed respectively in Italian giallo and 1970s soft-core erotica…

Get sci-fi news and features at gamesradar.com/sfx SCI-FACT! New showrunners, Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg, were executive producers and writers on Once Upon A Time Is it possible to live with a moral compass after the apocalypse? That’s a question The Walking Dead has explored, and now it’s migrated to Fear the Walking Dead, specifically through Morgan Jones (Lennie James). A survivor from The Walking Dead’s pilot, Morgan is starting his second season on the spin-off series, doublingdown on his commitment to humanity with his intention of building a system to help other survivors in need. Also starting their second season, as executive producers and co-showrunners, are Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg, who tell Red Alert that what it means to do good is at the heart of the narrative…

“THIS MOVIE, IT’S ABOUT THIS new generation: what they’ve inherited, the light, and the dark. And asking the question as they face the greatest evil: ‘are they prepared? Are they ready?’” JJ Abrams dropped this tantalising info nugget in the first five minutes of the Episode IX panel at Star Wars Celebration in Chicago. Little did the 2,000 people in attendance know that 90 minutes later, the galaxy’s ‘greatest evil’ would be on everyone’s lips. For Emperor Palpatine is back in Episode IX. Or, as everyone discovered mere moments after a familiar cackle sent shivers down collective spines, he’s back in The Rise Of Skywalker. The how and why is still a mystery (though we have some theories which you can read on p38), but Palpatine’s return is revealing. Where…

WHEN STAR WARS ERUPTED in 1977, it gave a shot of fame to everyone – not just the billboard-friendly faces but the unseen troupers too, the talent encased in gold plating or masked by the black visage of a Sith Lord. Anthony Daniels. Dave Prowse. Kenny Baker. Their modestly British names were enshrined on the backs of bubblegum cards and breathless pages in Star Wars Weekly, as synonymous with that galaxy far, far away as the topline players. “The big chance came, and so I took it,” remembered the late Peter Mayhew, who brought rangy, soulful life to Chewbacca, Han Solo’s Wookiee sidekick. “Star Wars was such a unique opportunity that I couldn’t refuse. It’s an opportunity that only strikes once, so you might as well make the most of…

RAY-BANS, SHARP SUITS AND protecting Earth from the scum of the universe. Classic style never dates, it just comes back again. “We’re sort of reigniting it,” says producer Walter F Parkes, keeper of the Men In Black franchise for over 22 years. While Will S mith and Tommy Lee Jones defined the dapper alien-zappers across three movies, latest entry Men In Black: International – a sidequel, if you must, not a reboot – introduces two new agents in the form of Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson, reunited after their turn together in Thor: Ragnarok. “We all felt that Men In Black 3 completed not quite a trilogy, but the end of a story was told,” Parkes tells SFX. “The revelation that, in fact, the relationship between Tommy and Will was…

YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO KNOW anything about Brightburn. If you’ve seen the poster, watched the trailer or read anything about James Gunn’s top secret “evil superhero” horror project, it’s only because the filmmakers didn’t have a choice. If it was up to director David Yarovesky, you wouldn’t even know what the film was about until you watched it. “I have memories of walking into Cloverfield and my friends telling me I was going to see Voltron,” laughs Yarovesky, only half joking. “It was this big mystery that came out of nowhere. If you read a blurb of the Brightburn plot in some trade announcement two years ago, it would have been a pretty boring introduction to a pretty exciting idea. So we went completely dark. Some of my closest friends…

THE NETFLIX/MARVEL TV universe is dead – or, at least, on its last legs, stumbling towards an open grave. We first had reason to suspect it’d come to this when Iron Fist got the chop on 12 October last year. Cancellations for Luke Cage and Daredevil pretty much confirmed it long before official word came in February. Why did the axe fall? There are various theories. The imminent launch of streaming service Disney+ means any continuing Marvel shows on Netflix would effectively act as ads for a competitor’s brand. Then there’s audience figures: Netflix don’t reveal them, but some analytics suggest that Daredevil’s US audience fell by 57% between the last two season openers. Finally, churn just seems to be part of the streaming giant’s modus operandi, a preference for…

You spend a lot of time swigging from bourbon bottles. What are you actually drinking? I’m just drinking bourbon. Really?! Yeah. Every time… Noooo, I obviously don’t drink at work. I still work for Disney! We were just wondering if you’re sick of drinking iced tea, or something like that… No, it’s peppermint tea, and it’s lovely! I mean, it’s better than watered-down Coca-Cola or something. That’s a little inside scoop for you!…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 12A | 181 minutes ▶ Directors Anthony Russo, Joe Russo ▶ Cast Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo, Jeremy Renner, Josh Brolin After 21 films of absolutely unprecedented big-screen world building and heroics, the Marvel Cinematic Universe brings its Infinity Saga to a rousing conclusion with Avengers: Endgame. Not a conclusion in the truest sense of the word – the Marvel machine will run as long as Kevin Feige and co continue to produce the most popular films on the planet. But there’s a sense of finality that makes it feel like a true event in this era of never-ending franchise fare. And while this is a very different beast from Infinity War – less a series of showdowns with giant…

EXTRAS ▶ RELEASED 27 May 2018 | 15 | Download A feminist high-concept chiller from Canadian director Danishka Esterhazy, Level 16 sees a group of girls hothoused in a mysterious school which teaches them how to be feminine, compliant and agreeable. A mystery with an on-the-nose message, this is a clever low-budget curio with lofty ambitions. Chilly set design and a great reveal are rewarding, but a focus on concept over character keeps the audience at arm’s length. Intellectually impressive but emotionally lacking. + Extras None.…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 2019 | 15 | Blu-ray/DVD No one could accuse this sequel to the 2012 tale of invading Moon Nazis of not delivering on its lunatic premise. A reptilian Hitler riding a dinosaur? You got it. That doesn’t, of course, mean that it’s any good… 20 years on, Obi (Lara Rossi) leads a group to the centre of the Earth and encounters a race of reptilian shapeshifters. The production values are pretty good, but its attempts at satire fall flat, and many characters are irritating. + Extras None.…

EXTRAS ▶ RELEASED 27 MAY 1965 | U | Blu-ray/DVD ▶ Director Robert Hartford-Davis ▶ Cast Kenneth Connor, Terry Scott, Frank Thornton, Arthur Mullard The title sounds like pure ’60s whimsy – so right for a kitsch curio once damned as “the worst British film ever made” – but that’s actually a laser-sighted marketing exercise in just three words. Directed by cash-in king Robert Hartford-Davis, Gonks Go Beat chases two fads with equal cynicism: the gormless ragdoll toys that swept the world long before Furbies and Beanie Babies, and the kind of finger-snapping, bikini-shaking pop musical that kept Cliff Richard on the big screen. Sounds like a deeply unlikely mix, doesn’t it? Hold on, let’s pour some low-budget science fiction over that… Carry On manchild Kenneth Connor is bumbling galactic…

EXTRAS ▶ RELEASED 3 JUNE (download out now) 2019| 12 | Blu-ray/DVD/download ▶ Director Jake Castorena ▶ Cast Troy Baker, Eric Bauza, Darren Criss, Baron Vaughn “Gotham is bonkers,” says Michelangelo. He’s right. So bonkers that shoving the Ninja Turtles and their enemies into Gotham City isn’t as odd as you might think. Sure, the Turtles have a bunch of bad guys who look like giant human animals, but Batman has Man-Bat, and a million more weirdos. As Alfred dryly observes, “Monsters, certainly Gotham is in more need of those.” Actually, it is – this is DC’s best animated movie for years. It’s packed with fan service, including deep cut references. “We’re not aliens, we’re Turtles,” Donatello says, referring to a 2012 rumour that Michael Bay was rebooting the Turtles…

▶ RELEASED 30 MAY (ebook out now) 406 pages | Paperback/ebook ▶ Author John Marrs ▶ Publisher Del Rey Crammed with pageturning hooks, The Passengers is literary heroin, an irresistible combination of high-concept scenario, technofear, conspiracy thriller, social satire and lurid personal tales. None of it particularly subtle, but all of it hugely entertaining. In the near future, the UK has become the first country in the world to operate a completely driverless car road network, with the government ignoring fears about how the vehicles’ AIs have been programmed to react in the event of potential collisions. That is until a terrorist called the Hacker hacks into eight of the allegedly unhackable cars, sealing in their passengers and setting them on a collision course. He then demands that the members…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 416 pages | Paperback/ebook ▶ Author Tim Major ▶ Publisher Titan Books Within the first few pages of Snakeskins a man rejuvenates by shedding his old body, which lives independently and self-aware for a few moments before disintegrating. It’s a horrific image, and a thoughtprovoking concept. You assume the book is going to explore the morality of a race that survives by creating beings with an in-built death sentence. Sadly not. Snakeskins is 95% plot plot plot. In an alternate, ultra-isolationist, almost contemporary Great Britain, a group of ever-healthy übermensch “Charmers” are feared and loathed by the hoi polloi, but have somehow managed to take over the government. Of course there’s a conspiracy going on, and of course a group of disparate people (a journalist, a…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 480 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Maya Motayne ▶ Publisher Hodder & Stoughton First-time author Maya Motayne, who has Dominican heritage, says she wrote this Latinx-inspired novel “after years of reading stories where the princes and princesses were always British, blond and blue-eyed”. An excellent decision, in response to a valid concern. Except that despite its brown-skinned characters, post-colonial setting and a few Spanish terms, Nocturna still feels like a thousand other magical fantasies. Motayne’s welcome cultural explorations could have been pushed much further… although, depressingly, perhaps that wasn’t seen as “commercial” enough? We can but wonder. What we do have is a decent adventure starring that ages-old combo of a prince and a thief who end up on a quest together. Prince Alfehr is looking…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Publisher Marvel Comics ▶ Writer Rob Liefeld ▶ Artists Rob Liefeld, Brent Peeples, Whilce Portacio, Scott Hanna ISSUES 1-3 While Major X is Rob Liefeld’s first new Marvel character for three decades, the motorcycle-helmeted mutant is little more than a variation on one of his previous, more memorable contributions, namely the X-Men’s timetravelling cyborg Cable. Three issues in, this six-parter is essentially a flashback to Liefeld’s heyday at the House of Ideas, as Major X fetches up in 1991 alongside an even shaggier Beast, M’Koy, where they face off against not only the original X-Force but also a sinister alternate Merc With a Mouth, Dreadpool. Liefeld pencilled the first issue himself, and its opening scene of our hero with his boot on the face of…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Publisher Image Comics ▶ Writer Mark Millar ▶ Artist Simone Bianchi ISSUES 1-3 With a seemingly endless stream of new comics being announced, keeping up with the prolific output of Mark Millar can be exhausting – but if his latest title is any indication, maybe he needs to slow down his rapid-fire pace. Sharkey The Bounty Hunter sees Millar back in sci-fi mode, with an abrasive comedic tone that’s closest to his early 2000 AD work, and a plot that feels more like a lost, below-par Vin Diesel vehicle from the early 2000s, in which a bad-ass has to look after an annoying kid. It’s the story of Sharkey, a purple-skinned alien bounty hunter who gets unwillingly saddled with a youngster called Extra-Billy while hunting…

SCI-FACT! To prepare for Annabelle Comes Home, Mckenna Grace kept a journal as Judy Warren. She’s back. Everyone’s favourite creepy doll is returning for the third instalment in the Annabelle legend, and the seventh movie in the expanded universe that began with James Wan’s 2013 chiller The Conjuring. After prequels Annabelle and Annabelle: Creation, the story shifts to after The Conjuring, as demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) place the possessed Annabelle doll ‘safely’ behind glass in their artefacts room. Needless to say, the doll has other ideas, awakening malevolent spirits to target the Warrens’ 10 year-old daughter Judy (Mckenna Grace) and her babysitters (Madison Iseman, Katie Sarife). “I wanted it to take place over the course of one night,” says Gary Dauberman, the writer of…

TECHNICALLY, WE’VE KNOWN HOW THE CLONE WARS ends for years – y’know, the Republic turns into the Empire, Anakin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader, and Order 66 wipes out the Jedi. But the end of The Clone Wars – the animated series set during the long-running skirmish between Republic and Separatist forces – remains something of a mystery, seeing as the show was cancelled in 2013 following Disney’s Lucasfilm buyout. We’ll soon be getting closure, however, as the much-loved series is getting an unlikely reprieve via 12 new episodes on soon-to-launch streaming service Disney+. Longstanding showrunner Dave Filoni (also a veteran of Star Wars: Rebels) is back at the helm to pick up stories that have been gestating for years – including the Siege of Mandalore, a critical skirmish that takes…

EVEN IN A CINEMATIC LANDSCAPE WHERE superhero movies regularly retell the same origin stories over and over (here’s looking at you, Spidey) audiences may have an uncanny sense of déjà vu with Dark Phoenix. Hang on, hasn’t this franchise done this story already? Well, yeah, back in X-Men: The Last Stand (2006). But there are two good reasons why this all makes sense. First, the X-Men cinematic universe was rebooted into a parallel time in Days Of Future Past (2014). Secondly, and far more importantly to Dark Phoenix director Simon Kinberg, “I don’t think we actually did the Dark Phoenix story in The Last Stand.” In this regard he’s in tune with fans. The Dark Phoenix saga in the comics chronicled Jean Grey/Marvel Girl’s transformation into the mind-bogglingly powerful and…

IT’S A BIG YEAR FOR JOE HILL ADAPTATIONS. He’s already hot property thanks to his library of fantasy and horror novels, comics and short stories (not to mention a movie version of his 2010 novel Horns, starring Daniel Radcliffe), but Stephen King’s lad is about to go mainstream. Not only is In The Tall Grass coming to the big screen and Locke & Key to Netflix (after several aborted attempts), his vampire novel NOS4A2 is coming to TV. Inspired by Hill’s third novel, NOS4A2 (NOS4R2 in the UK, because Brits pronounce Nosferatu differently) the series spins the vampire metaphor away from blood-sucking to soul-sucking. Charlie Manx (Zachary Quinto) is a 135-year-old creature who steals children so he can siphon their souls into his being to turn back the hands of…

KRYPTON IS STILL HOLDING OUT FOR A HERO. Set two generations before Superman’s home planet explodes, the TV series follows Seg-El (Cameron Cuffe) the Man of Steel’s grandfather. When time traveller Adam Strange (Shaun Sipos) arrives from the future with a warning, Seg must make the toughest decision of all: prevent his world’s impending doom or allow its destruction in order to ensure baby Kal-El rockets to Earth and grows into the universe’s greatest champion. The problem is, season one finale “The Phantom Zone” left the good guys out for the count. Seg managed to beat the Collector of Worlds, Brainiac (Blake Ritson), but both were whisked away to the interdimensional prison known as the Phantom Zone. Adam found himself bottled in one of Brainiac’s shrunken cities. In addition, Superman’s…

FOR TWO SEASONS, BRUCE Miller’s television adaptation (and expansion) of Margaret Atwood’s seminal novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, has earned its status as pinnacle dystopia. While zombie plagues, unsustainable planets and technological subversion are all chilling, there’s nothing quite like the horror of Gilead made real. The exceptional cast, led by Elisabeth Moss as Offred/June, and Miller’s harrowing contemporary riffs on Atwood’s three-decade-sold narrative have made the series a global must-watch. It’s become watercooler television so bleak and absorbing that most viewers find themselves emotionally spent by the end of a typical hour, which is why season three’s new tagline of “Blessed be the fight” feels like it’s coming at a time when the women of Gilead, and the rest of real humanity, need it most. The season two finale sets…

BLOODY TECHNO LOGY, EH? Black Mirror, satirist Charlie Brooker’s darkly twisted science fiction anthology show about life in a world saturated with smartphones, ever-more-efficient gadgets and the often dehumanising effects of social media, returns to Netflix for its fifth season soon. SFX is trying to chat to Brooker and executive producer Annabel Jones over the phone, but our line keeps hissing and crackling ominously. Is this the work of some malevolent algorithm trying to stop us from getting to the truth about the new episodes? Unlikely. When we finally get a clear signal, Brooker offers an alternative, typically self-deprecating explanation: “I was so boring your phone exploded.” That’s not true, of course. Both Brooker and Jones are a delight – witty, thoughtful and clearly excited about sharing the fruits of…

UK/US Amazon Prime, 31 May Showrunner Neil Gaiman Cast David Tennant, Michael Sheen, Miranda Richardson, Adria Arjona, Michael McKean, Jack Whitehall episodes 1.01-1.06 Anyone who’s been waiting nearly 40 years for a TV sequel to The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, your prayers (or, perhaps, demonic incantations) have finally been answered. Good Omens opens with a witty monologue from God and some frenetic animated graphics that are straight out of The Book. But these words are lifted directly from Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s much-loved 1990 novel about an angel and a demon joining forces to prevent the apocalypse, which Gaiman himself has adapted. Deciding to recast God (voiced by Coen Brothers favourite Frances McDormand) as, basically, The Book turns out to be a stroke of genius. The novel itself…

UK/US: Netflix, streaming now ▶ Showrunner Alex Kurtzman ▶ Cast Sonequa Martin-Green, Doug ▶ Jones, Anson Mount, Anthony Rapp, Mary Wiseman EPISODES 2.01-2.14 Two things were promised for Discovery’s second season. One was a move away from the war footing of the show’s first year in favour of more actual, y’know, star trekking. The other was that by the season’s end we’d understand how it linked up with the rest of the franchise. While this run of episodes isn’t free of bumps in the mycelial road, it does honour both these pledges. We pick up immediately after season one’s cliffhanger ending. Discovery is face-to-face with the USS Enterprise under the command of Christopher Pike (Anson Mount). A series of seven “red bursts” have been detected around the galaxy, and Pike’s…

EXTRAS ▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 1988 | 12 | Blu-ray ▶ Director Carl Colpaert ▶ Cast Tony Markes, Rainbow Dolan, Kenneth McCabe, Kurtiss J Tews Ten years before Ghost InThe Shell, director Mamoru Oshii made a peculiar animated film called Angel’s Egg. Bought by a US company who clocked its surreal charms, a lunatic decision was made to film extra live-action sequences in an attempt to make it more appealing to a wider audience. The result is this fascinatingly strange hybrid. In the animated strand, Angel (a young, er, angel) travels to a post-apocalyptic Earth carrying a giant egg. In the filmed sections, Frank (Tony Markes) stumbles through a post-nuclear wasteland searching for water. The animation is stylish and evocative and, although clearly filmed on the cheap, the live action…

EXTRAS ▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 1971 | 18 | Blu-ray BLU-RAY DEBUT In this wildly camp slice of Belgian-Italian gothic/sexploitation, a bus-load of lost tourists spend the night at a spooky castle (on their arrival a gargoyle falls off a tower, the doors open and close on their own, and a butler declares, “Do not be alarmed, the castle is full of traps.”) Soon they’re being offed one-by-one by Erika Blanc’s succubus in a manner vaguely related to the seven deadly sins. It’s nonsense, but fairly entertaining. + Extras None.…

EXTRAS ▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2018 | 18 | Blu-ray/DVD ▶ Director Tim van Dammen ▶ Cast Anton Tennet, Jonny Brugh, Morgan Albrecht, Milo Cawthorne Sharing the loose, slackerish vibe of What We Do In The Shadows – along with star Jonny Brugh – this lo-fi Kiwi comedy mixes crime movie, Chinese mythology and the paradoxes of time travel. Anton Tennet is John, one of a gang of dimbulb crims bringing something less than terror to suburban New Zealand. Staging a heist at a local Chinese antiques shop, he steals an ancient bracelet that grants the power to pop back in time – and accumulates cross-temporal duplicates of himself in the process. How much multiple gormlessness can reality take? Watch and see. Tennet is winning as the clueless but eternally…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2013 | 15 | SVOD ▶ Director Bong Joon-ho ▶ Cast Chris Evans, Jamie Bell, Tilda Swinton, Song Kang Ho NETFLIX We don’t usually review six-year-old movies when they hit Netflix, but we’ll make an exception for this overlooked gem, which never made UK cinemas, still has no British DVD, and was barely noticed when it debuted on Amazon last Autumn. Adapted from a French graphic novel, it’s set 17 years after a scheme to fix global warming instead created a new ice age, and follows the few survivors as they circle on a preposterously elaborate train – luxurious for the elite front-enders, miserable for the oppressed tail-enders. When Curtis (Chris Evans) leads an uprising, an odyssey towards the engine begins. Evans – think Cap, but…

Based on a documentary about a man who dealt with trauma by building a miniature World War II village, WELCOME TO MARWEN (out now, Blu-ray/DVD) sees Steve Carell’s character projecting friends and neighbours onto dolls, imagining they’re his protectors from Nazi soldiers. We said: “Robert Zemeckis finds moments of inspiration, and Carell is affecting in places, but the feeling generated is mostly of a missed effort.” A government scientist wakes up in a cell in WHITE CHAMBER (out now, VOD), where she’s interrogated using heat and cold, an electrified floor, and acid. Featuring one set and an anarchist political angle, it’s a decent low-budget British sci-fi; think Cube meets V For Vendetta. THE DEADLY BEES (out now, Blu-ray) is an obscure effort from horror anthology specialists Amicus. Despite the talent…

▶ RELEASED 6 JUNE 480 pages | Hardback/ebook ▶ Author SK Vaughn ▶ Publisher Sphere Across The Void has been written under a pseudonym by an established author who also has movie writer-director credits – a sneaky touch, as now you’re wondering who it is, too – and it’s being touted as a cross-between The Martian and Gone Girl. Naturally, you’ll end up comparing it to both… but alas, it’s not fit to lick their book covers. It’s actually a crunching collision of two writing styles: one good, one bad. The good comes from the book’s The Martian-style techie side, as a lone astronaut, May, battles to survive after a mysterious calamity afflicts her ship. Accompanied only by its AI, she bounces from one desperate life-threatening problem to another, and…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 432 pages | Paperback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Anna Kashina ▶ Publisher Angry Robot As a romance, Shadowbladeisn’t particularly romantic, and as a fantasy it isn’t fantastic either. The setting, all deserts and schools of scholars and assassins and vicious emperors and queens, is vaguely Arabian Nights, which does at least set it apart from the Eurocentric majority of Western fantasy, but nothing that happens in the plot is unexpected, and you’ll spot the villain of the piece early on. It’s tempting to blame that on the romance aspect of the novel, as romance seems to be a genre where certain things are expected (not least that two people can meet, instantly experience a lust so powerful it translates into an understanding of the other person’s personality, then…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 496 pages | Paperback/ebook ▶ Author James Brogden ▶ Publisher Titan Books Starting your supernatural horror novel with the dedication “To Grenfell” is a pretty bold move, and one that could, in less dexterous hands, have felt cheap. Fortunately James Brogden’s social folk horror, which mixes issues of modern bureaucracy and corruption with a mirroring tale of 14th century plague victims, treads that line just carefully enough to work. Trish, Peter and their son Toby are a family living in a dodgy estate when a mysterious opportunity arises for them to move to the beautiful village of Haleswell. The catch? Trish must act as custodian of a sacred stone that wards off an ancient evil. With shades of Shirley Jackson and a black vein of humour,…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Publisher DC Comics ▶ Writers Brian Michael Bendis, David F Walker ▶ Artist Jamal Campbell ISSUES 1-4 Since arriving at DC, acclaimed writer Brian Michael Bendis has been tackling established characters and reviving old favourites at a rate of knots, but his latest release marks his first new ongoing series for the company, as well as being a distinctive new take on superhero storytelling. Co-written with David F Walker, Naomi follows the titular character, an African-American teenager whose quiet smalltown life is up-ended when a brief visit from Superman leads to her discovering that this wasn’t the first superherorelated occurrence in her town. The tale of how this mysterious long-ago event connects with the adopted Naomi’s origins is what drives these first four issues. Bendis…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Reviewed on PlayStation 4 Pro ▶ Also on PlayStation 4 ▶ Publisher Sony VIDEOGAME There’s a moment when, unarmed and out of fuel, we feel genuinely vulnerable in this vast open world. It’s not because of the bandits roaming the woods – we’ve taken down our share – it’s the shriek from the dark and the knowledge that somewhere close by 300 “Freaks” (28 Days Later-like zombies) can smell our blood. Sony’s latest juggernaut release comes hot on the heels of Horizon Zero Dawn and Spider-Man, and in many ways it poaches ideas and controls from both of them (as well as old Sony staples such as Uncharted and The Last Of Us). There’s a comfortable feel to the game that could be interpreted as…