It is a classic action-movie scenario. At the climax of the story, our hero must infiltrate the villain’s lair, which is guarded by a small army of gun-wielding henchmen. But despite being gifted with the obligatory perfect aim and bottomless magazines, for one reason or another our hero can’t simply charge in guns blazing. Perhaps this is a stealth mission, […]

“Well, I’m back.” Not including the six appendices, these are the last words of the final chapter of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. They’re spoken by Sam Gamgee to his wife Rosie as he returns from seeing Frodo and the rest of the Ring-bearers depart from the Grey Havens into the True West. Implied, but not overtly stated, […]

According to an anecdote told by Stan Lee in virtually every interview he’s ever given about Spider-Man, the genesis of the hero began when he saw an insect crawling up a wall while brainstorming ideas and figured that a hero who could stick to walls would be kind of cool. In reality though, the origins of everyone’s favourite friendly neighbourhood […]

In Hollywood, miscasting is a fact of life. The reasons why an actor might be cast in a role for which they are ill-suited are many and varied. Sometimes the actor just happens to be incompatible with the director or their co-stars, or a rushed schedule or personal problems interfere with the delivery of an effective performance. In other cases […]

“Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound!” Well, of course Superman could hurdle skyscrapers. He can fly after all. Compared to the kind of aerial self-propulsion that Daedalus couldn’t have conceived of, jumping over even the Burj Khalifa seems hardly worth mentioning. Super-vaulting seems more along the lines […]

If you’ve ever thought George Clooney comes off as a extremely likable kind of guy in many of the roles he plays in films, well, it turns out that part at least isn’t really an act. Beyond things like helping to organize and spearhead several pledge drive events that have generated tens of millions of dollars for charities and donating […]

Debuting in 1997, South Park has gone from being regarded as a crudely animated show filled with fart jokes to an Emmy award winning, cultural touchstone that has been lauded by critics for its apparent fearlessness in tackling or addressing even the most taboo subjects with unrivaled intelligent satire… and fart jokes and crude animations. The result has been Trey […]

Mae Scott asks: How did they get the CGI in the original Jurassic Park to look so much better than even some movies today? Regardless of your feelings about the overall quality of the film itself, you have to admit that for a movie released in 1993, Jurassic Park contains some mighty fine lookin’ dinosaurs. In fact, the dinosaurs in […]

DOOM isn’t so much a video game as it is a pop-culture phenomenon, a media touchstone that is consistently ranked as one of the most influential games of all time. A game so popular it spawned a host of copycat releases, kick started the FPS (First person shooter) genre and was at one point in history, installed on more PCs […]

Kassy17 asks: Why are Nintendo consoles so much much more durable than any other system? Nintendo has a surprisingly long history that extends all the way back to the the late 19th century. Originally named “Nintendo Koppai”, the small business based in Kyoto was started by Fusajiro Yamauchi and originally produced Hanafuda Cards. For those unfamiliar, these are simple playing […]

The 17th century wasn’t exactly the most progressive time in history, as evidenced by the fact people with dwarfism were literally traded about by the upper echelons of society like Pokemon cards. Amongst the pantheon of known “court dwarfs” as they were called, one stood above them all thanks to the frankly astonishing life he led in his rise from […]

When looking at a list of most watched videos on youtube, you’ll find the vast majority in the “hundreds of millions of views” club are various music videos. In the top 10, you’ll see a variety of household names like Ed Sheeran with 4.6 billion views on his Shape of You music video, Justin Bieber’s Sorry with 3.2 billion, and […]

Long before they were in the business of making movies themselves, Marvel infamously sold off the film rights to some of their most beloved characters for pennies on the dollar compared to their current worth today. Most pertinent to the topic at hand is their sale of the superhero team that helped Marvel redefine the superhero comic genre- the Fantastic […]

Godzilla’s roar has long been considered one of cinema’s most iconic and recognisable sounds. Oft-copied or otherwise homaged, the original and rather unique roar terrified audience goers in the 1950s and has been built upon to dramatic effect in the numerous sequels and remakes since. So how did they actually make the original sound and where did the idea for […]

We’ve talked before about the bizarre Hollywood phenomenon of Twin Films – essentially films with near identical premises inexplicably released around the same time – and all of the machinations that can lead to them existing. Today, rather than focusing on an industry wide trend, we’re going to discuss a specific example of something similar- the bizarre tale of the […]