culture

there’s-never-been-a-better-time-to-get-into-fallout-76

There’s never been a better time to get into Fallout 76

Bethesda Game Studios, culture, Fallout, fallout 76, Features, gaming / /
More players have been emerging from this vault lately than have in years.

Enlarge / More players have been emerging from this vault lately than have in years.

Samuel Axon

War never changes, but Fallout 76 sure has. The online game that launched to a negative reception with no NPCs but plenty of bugs has mutated in new directions since its 2018 debut. Now it’s finding new life thanks to the wildly popular Fallout TV series that debuted a couple of weeks ago.

In truth, it never died, though it has stayed in decidedly niche territory for the past six years. Developer Bethesda Game Studios has released regular updates fixing (many of) the bugs, adding new ways to play, softening the game’s rough edges, and yes, introducing Fallout 3- or Fallout 4-like, character-driven quest lines with fully voiced NPCs—something many players felt was missing in the early days.

It’s still not for everybody, but for a select few of us who’ve stuck with it, there’s nothing else quite like it.

Like many older online games, it eventually settled into a situation where most of the players were high-level veterans on the PC and PlayStation platforms. (Microsoft’s Game Pass kept a steady trickle of new players coming in on the Xbox.) That’s all changed now, though; thanks to the TV series, the low-level newbies now outnumber the vets. There’s a wide range of players on every server, and the community’s reputation for being unusually welcoming has held strong amid the influx.

If you’re looking to give it a shot, here’s what you need to know.

A weirdly welcoming wasteland

I generally find the communities in most online games off-putting and toxic. I enjoy the gameplay in Overwatch, for example, but a whole buffet of bad actors makes it a poor experience for me a lot of the time.

That’s not the case with Fallout 76. It’s a phenomenon I also observed with No Man’s Sky’s online community: Games that had disastrous launches that drove away the enthusiastic core gamer crowd early on end up having the best communities.

With Fallout 76, the first few weeks were a storm of negativity like no other. But once the folks who were unimpressed calmed down and moved on, the smaller cadre of people who actually liked the game formed a strong bond. The community was small enough that bad behavior could have social consequences, and it turned out that the kinds of people who stick with a game like Fallout 76 tend to be patient and gracious. Who knew?

These donation boxes give experienced players a chance to give back.

Enlarge / These donation boxes give experienced players a chance to give back.

Samuel Axon

For example, there has long been a tradition of experienced players dropping valuable healing items and ammunition by the game’s starting area for newbies to grab. Fallout 76 has strong survival elements, especially at the start, so those gifts make a big difference. This gifting became so common that Bethesda formalized it with a donation box in that starter area. In fact, there are donation boxes scattered all around the game’s map now, and they almost always have stuff in them.

Players will generally be happy to jump on voice chat and talk through the game’s concepts with you or help you defeat difficult enemies. That extends to some communities that talk about the game outside the game, too. (Be sure to look up the subreddit r/fo76FilthyCasuals and its associated Discord; they’re great places to make friends and get advice.)

Time will tell how all that holds as a huge influx of new players shifts the makeup of the community, but so far so good.

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The Fall Guy spotlights its amazing stuntmen in meta marketing video

culture, Entertainment, ryan gosling, The Fall Guy, Trailers, Universal Pictures / /

Anyway you want it —

Ryan Gosling and his stunt buddies spoof Carpool Karaoke and sing along to Journey.

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Ryan Gosling hosts a round of carpool karaoke with his stuntmen for the forthcoming action comedy The Fall Guy.

Universal Studios has been going meta with its marketing for its forthcoming action comedy The Fall Guy. Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt are the marquee stars; Gosling plays a Hollywood stuntman trying to make a movie with his estranged ex-girlfriend (Blunt). But it’s the actual stuntmen standing in for Gosling during action sequences who get the spotlight in a new promotional video for the film.

As previously reported, The Fall Guy is directed by David Leitch, who also brought us the glorious John Wick (his uncredited directorial debut with Chad Stahelski). It’s a loose adaptation of the popular 1980s TV series of the same name starring Lee Majors. Per the official synopsis:

Oscar nominee Ryan Gosling stars as Colt Seavers, a battle-scarred stuntman who, having left the business a year earlier to focus on both his physical and mental health, is drafted back into service when the star of a mega-budget studio movie—being directed by his ex, Jody Moreno, played by Golden Globe winner Emily Blunt—goes missing. While the film’s ruthless producer (Hannah Waddingham), maneuvers to keep the disappearance of star Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) a secret from the studio and the media, Colt performs the film’s most outrageous stunts while trying (with limited success) to charm his way back into Jody’s good graces. But as the mystery around the missing star deepens, Colt will find himself ensnared in a sinister, criminal plot that will push him to the edge of a fall more dangerous than any stunt.

In this incarnation, Gosling’s Colt Seavers isn’t a bounty hunter on the side; he’s just a stuntman—a bit past his prime—who stumbles into solving a mystery. Blunt costars as Jody Moreno, Colt’s ex-girlfriend and a former camera operator who finally gets the chance to direct her first film. Aaron Taylor-Johnson plays movie star Tom Ryder, who goes missing mid-shoot. Stephanie Hsu plays Ryder’s personal assistant, and Winston Duke plays Colt’s stunt coordinator and BFF. Ted Lasso‘s Hannah Waddingham appears as Gail, the producer of Jody’s film. And OG Fall Guy Lee Majors (now in his 80s) is expected to have a cameo; perhaps he’ll perform the theme song, “Unknown Stuntman,” that he wrote and recorded for the original series.

Last week, the studio released three short promotional videos in which Gosling, Blunt, Leitch, and Waddingham try to come up with creative marketing ploys for the film. But today’s release, “Car Pool,” is the best of the lot, precisely because it pays clever homage to the actual stuntmen.

The video opens with Gosling getting a call from Leitch, instructing him to pick up his three stunt doubles in a flashy lime green Nissan GT-R. (Per Ars Automotive Editor Jonathan Gitlin, it’s the R35 generation, on sale since 2007.) The concept is meant to evoke a carpool karaoke vibe, only without the actual music (no, not even Journey).

Of course, Gosling can’t resist blasting Journey’s “Any Way You Want It” en route to the various pickup points. And, of course, the stuntmen—Logan Holladay, Ben Jenkin, and Troy Brown—can’t resist showcasing their stuntman skills. Halladay takes over driving duties, Jenkin stages getting hit by the car and rolling onto the hood, and Troy falls off a roof onto an inflatable stunt bag. They all have a grand time singing along to Journey, and Jenkin actually has a decent voice. If only they can make sure they get the song rights….

The Fall Guy hits theaters on May 3, 2024.

Listing image by Universal Pictures

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war-never-changes:-a-fallout-fan’s-spoiler-laden-review-of-the-new-tv-series

War never changes: A Fallout fan’s spoiler-laden review of the new TV series

Amazon, amazon prime video, Bethesda Game Studios, culture, Fallout, fallout 4, Fallout: New Vegas, gaming, Todd Howard, TV / /
The nukes went off in 2077 in Fallout's universe. The show tells us more about this event than we've learned from the games before.

Enlarge / The nukes went off in 2077 in Fallout’s universe. The show tells us more about this event than we’ve learned from the games before.

Amazon

It’s been just over a week since the Fallout TV series premiered on Amazon Prime, and one thing’s for sure: It’s a huge hit. You can hardly open a social media app without seeing content about it, the reviews are positive, and the active players for the Fallout games have doubled over the past week.

A few days ago, I shared some spoiler-free impressions of the first three episodes. I loved what I’d seen up to that point—the show seemed faithful to the games, but it was also a great TV show. A specific cocktail of tongue-in-cheek humor, sci-fi campiness, strong themes, great characters, and visceral violence really came together into a fantastic show.

Still, I had some questions at that point: Would the franchise’s penchant for satire and its distinct political and social viewpoint come through? Where was all this headed?

Like a lot of us, I’ve now finished the series. So if you have, too (or if you haven’t but just don’t care about spoilers), it’s time to dive into all eight episodes of season one together.

I’m a long-time Fallout fan, so I’ll focus on how the show ties in with the games, but like the show itself, I aim to make this interesting even for the newbies.

Heavy spoilers for Fallout season one start here, as well as a few spoilers about Fallout New Vegas and Fallout 4.

Something for everybody

So was the show as good after eight episodes as it was after three? Absolutely. If anything, the show only got better as it progressed. The more inducted into the world, lore, and characters new viewers became, the more effective the show could be.

There was a lot to set up, after all. Some of us have been playing the games for years, so we knew all about Vault-Tec, the Brotherhood of Steel, the Enclave, the New California Republic, Pip-Boys, gulpers, and ghouls. But if you’re coming into the world fresh, that’s a lot to take on.

I was worried while watching that despite the show’s efforts to introduce new viewers, it might not be good enough, but I’ve been told by multiple people who haven’t played the games that they didn’t have trouble keeping up.

Once the various elements were established, the show was able to hit its stride and start bringing in the aspects of Fallout that weren’t prominent in the opening stretch.

Further, it expertly walked the line to give established fans something to chew on at the same time. The timeline of Fallout lore and stories spans hundreds of years, but the TV show is actually set after all of the games.

Event Year
Bombs Drop 2077
Fallout 76 (2018)

 2102
Fallout (1997)

 2161
Fallout 2 (1998) 2241
Fallout 3 (2008)

 2277
Fallout New Vegas (2010) 2281
Fallout 4 (2015)

 2287
Fallout Season 1 (2024)

 2296

That meant the show revealed some things about what happened to certain factions and places that previously appeared in the games. Most notably, Shady Sands is a crater, and the New California Republic—one of the most important factions and one of the strongest governments from the games—no longer exists as we knew it.

That led some fans to speculate that TV series executive producer and game creative director Todd Howard was trying to make the popular New Vegas game (which was not made by his team) non-canon, but in a recent interview, he clarified that both the show and New Vegas are very much canon, noting that the bomb fell on Shady Shands very shortly after the events of that game. The timeline on the show is cutting it close, but a generous interpretation allows it all to line up.

Of course, the show expanded on some elements from the games in ways that could be seen as breaching canon. You could write most of them away as things the games never addressed—like the vials ghouls must consume to avoid going feral or the origin story of gulpers. The games at times implied different things about both of those aspects, but they didn’t necessarily contradict them.

The series also canonized some specific choices that players could make in some prior games. For example, it’s confirmed that the Brotherhood of Steel airship seen in the show is the same one seen in Fallout 4, meaning that the canon outcome for Fallout 4 is obviously not one where that airship was destroyed. (Players of that game had the option of pursuing paths that led to its destruction or not.)

  • Shady Sands as it’s seen in the show.

    Amazon

  • New Vegas is teased as the next destination.

    Amazon

  • The last moments had a brief tease with what appears to be a Deathclaw skull, too.

    Amazon

With minimal exceptions, previous games in the series avoided canonizing outcomes like that by being set decades or even centuries (as well as hundreds or even thousands of miles) apart—such that it wasn’t necessary to reveal what happened in those cases. Since this show is set in a region that is well-documented in prior Fallout titles, that’s not the case here.

The tease that we’re going to New Vegas next season probably means that several multiple-choice outcomes from that game will have to be canonized, too. Is Mr. House still running the show? What happened to Caesar’s Legion? Why does New Vegas look so bombed out compared to how it appeared in the game? We’ll probably find out.

All told, new fans got to explore the world of Fallout for the first time, even as longtime fans got to see where the story has gone since they last played the games. The story hadn’t been moved forward in nine years, since 2018’s Fallout 76 was actually a prequel that took place long before any of the other games in the series.

It took some skillful work to serve both of those audiences without compromising the experience of the other, so kudos to the show’s writers.

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Password crackdown leads to more income for Netflix

culture, netflix, streaming, syndicaiton, syndication / /

Sharing is caring —

Netflix to stop reporting subscriber numbers, prioritizing viewer engagement instead.

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screen with netflix login

Bloomberg

Netflix’s crackdown on password sharing helped the streaming service blow past Wall Street’s earnings forecasts, but its shares fell after it said it planned to stop regularly disclosing its subscriber numbers.

The company’s operating income surged 54 percent in the first quarter as it added 9.3 million subscribers worldwide, proving that the efforts to reduce password sharing it launched last year have had more lasting benefits than some investors expected.

However, Netflix said on Thursday that from next year it would stop revealing its total number of subscribers, a metric that has been a crucial benchmark for investors in the streaming era.

In its letter to shareholders, Netflix said it was shifting its focus to engagement—the amount of time its subscribers spend on the service—while also developing new price points and sources of revenue, including advertising.

“Each incremental member has a different business impact” with the new subscription plans, Greg Peters, co-chief executive, said in a call with investors. “And that means the historical simple math that we all did—the number of members times the monthly price—is increasingly less accurate in capturing the state of the business.”

He added that Netflix would “periodically update” on subscriber figures when it hits “major milestones.”

Paolo Pescatore, an analyst at PP Foresight, said Netflix’s decision to no longer disclose quarterly subscriptions starting in 2025 “will not go down well.”

“No matter the company’s attempt to switch focus from subscribers to financials, net [subscriber] adds is the key metric everyone wants to see,” he said.

The latest results showed there was still room for growth as a result of its password crackdown and push into advertising, Pescatore added. Netflix said memberships to its advertising-supported tier rose 65 percent from the previous quarter.

Before Thursday’s report the streaming pioneer’s shares had risen 30 percent this year, significantly outperforming the broader market. The shares fell 4.7 percent in after-hours trading following the earnings report.

Netflix executives said among their primary goals was improving the variety and quality of their entertainment, including television shows, movies, and games. It recently appointed Dan Lin as the new head of its film division.

“Even though we have made and we are making great films, we want to make them better,” said Ted Sarandos, co-chief executive. He added that he saw no need to spend more money on content.

Netflix has been pushing further into sports-related content, including a $5 billion deal to livestream World Wrestling Entertainment’s flagship Raw program in the US over the next decade.

It is also offering a livestream of a fight between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul in July, leading analysts to question whether the company plans to move further into live sport. “We’re not anti-sports, but pro-profitable growth,” Sarandos said.

Netflix reported earnings of $5.28 a share, well ahead of Wall Street forecasts of $4.51, while its number of subscribers rose 16 percent to 269 million from a year earlier.

Its revenue forecast for the current quarter of $9.49 billion was slightly below Wall Street forecasts of about $9.5 billion. But Netflix said it expected revenue to grow between 13 and 15 percent for the full year.

The company said it generated strong engagement in the first quarter from subscribers in the UK with Fool Me Once, which had 98 million views. Other standouts included the drama series Griselda with 66.4 million views and 3 Body Problem with about 40 million.

© 2024 The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved. Not to be redistributed, copied, or modified in any way.

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Long-lost model of the USS Enterprise returned to Roddenberry family

culture, eBay, Gene Roddenberry, Rod Roddenberry, science fiction, Star Trek, The Original Series, TOS / /

To Boldly Return —

It showed up in an eBay listing; now Roddenberry’s son wants to show it to fans.

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This mysterious model appeared on eBay with little fanfare.

Enlarge / This mysterious model appeared on eBay with little fanfare.

eBay

The first-ever model of Star Trek’s USS Enterprise NCC-1701 has been returned to the Roddenberry family, according to an ABC News report.

The three-foot model was used to shoot the pilot and credits scene for Star Trek’s original series in the 1960s and was used occasionally for shots throughout the series. (Typically, a larger, 11-foot model was used for shots after the pilot.) The model also sat on series creator Gene Roddenberry’s desk for several years.

It went missing in the late 1970s; historians and collectors believe it belonged to Roddenberry himself, that he lent it to a production house working on Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and that it was never returned. Its whereabouts were unknown until last fall, when a listing for a mysterious model of the Enterprise appeared on eBay.

Enthusiasts analyzed the pictures in the listing and came to believe it was the long-lost three-foot production model. They contacted the seller, who quickly took down the listing.

The eBay account that posted the item specialized in selling artifacts found in storage lockers that end up without an owner, either because of failure to pay or death.

The model appeared in this promotional image with Roddenberry.

The model appeared in this promotional image with Roddenberry.

CBS

The model was turned over by the eBay seller to Texas-based Heritage Auctions. News spread that it had been discovered, and Gene Roddenberry’s son, Eugene “Rod” Roddenberry, made public statements that he would like to see it returned to his family.

After that, there were months of silence, and its fate was unknown—until now. Heritage Auctions announced that it had given the model to Rod Roddenberry. Details of the exchange have not been shared, but Roddenberry said he did compensate Heritage in some way.

Heritage reached out directly to Roddenberry upon acquiring the object and reportedly decided to return it because it was “the right thing to do.” Roddenberry said that he “felt it important to reward that and show appreciation for that” but didn’t disclose a sum.

Promotional images of the model with William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy.

Promotional images of the model with William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy.

Roddenberry also revealed what he has planned for the model:

This is not going home to adorn my shelves. This is going to get restored and we’re working on ways to get it out so the public can see it, and my hope is that it will land in a museum somewhere.

He runs a group called the Roddenberry Foundation that has scanned and digitized many relics from Star Trek’s ideation and production over the years, so it’s likely the Foundation will get a crack at the model, too.

Listing image by eBay

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Review: Pitch-perfect Renegade Nell is a gem of a series you won’t want to miss

culture, Disney Plus, Entertainment, Renegade Nell, Reviews, streaming television, TV reviews / /

Don’t call her “Nelly” —

It’s a good old-fashioned swashbuckling adventure that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

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A young prodigal tomboy returns home from war and finds herself framed for murder in <em>Renegade Nell</em>.” src=”https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/nellTOP-800×536.jpg”></img><figcaption> <p><a data-height=Enlarge / A young prodigal tomboy returns home from war and finds herself framed for murder in Renegade Nell.

Disney+

Award-winning British TV writer Sally Wainwright is best known for the dramatic series Happy Valley (2014–2023) and Gentleman Jack (2019–2022), the latter produced jointly by BBC and HBO. Wainwright partnered with Disney+ for her latest series, the resolutely PG-13 Renegade Nell, which is a different beast altogether: a good old-fashioned, swashbuckling comic adventure with a supernatural twist, featuring a sassy cross-dressing heroine forced to turn to highway robbery to survive.

(Some spoilers below, but no major reveals.)

Set in 1705 during the reign of Queen Anne (Jodi May, Gentleman Jack), the series stars Louisa Harland (Derry Girls) as Nell Jackson. Nell is a headstrong young woman with tomboy flair and a taste for adventure who returns home to her village of Tottenham after running off five years before to marry one Captain Jackson against her father’s wishes. She’s now widowed and possessed of occasional supernatural skills whenever someone threatens her, courtesy of a fairy sprite named Billy Blind (Nick Mohammed, aka Nathan from Ted Lasso), who has been tasked to protect Nell. Nell’s family thought she’d been killed on the battlefield alongside her husband, so her homecoming is a bit of a shock.

Alas, Nell soon runs afoul of one Thomas Blancheford (Jake Dunn), the louche, drunken offspring of the town’s landlord, Lord Blancheford (Pip Torrens, Preacher). Let’s just say things escalate, and Nell soon finds herself on the run and framed for murder, along with her two sisters, Roxy (Bo Bragason) and George (Florence Keen), and the Blanchefords’ former groomsman, Rasselas (Enyi Okoronkwo, The Lazarus Project). The group gets further assistance from a charming aristocratic dandy/secret highwayman named Charles Devereaux (Frank Dillane, The Essex Serpent).

Nell just wants to evade capture long enough to find an honest magistrate to clear her name. In the process, she finds herself battling the formidable black magic of the Earl of Poynton (Adrian Lester, Euphoria) and his acolyte, Thomas’ sister, Lady Sofia (Alice Kremelberg, The Sinner), and stumbles upon a sinister plot to dethrone the queen.

  • Louisa Harland stars as Nelly Jackson, who finds herself framed for murder.

    Disney+

  • Nick Mohammed plays a sprite named Billy Blind, charged with protecting Nell.

    Disney+

  • Charles Devereaux (Frank Dillane) is an impoverished aristocrat who does highway robberies on the side.

    Disney+

  • Nell returns home to her family: father Sam Trotter and sisters George and Roxy.

    Disney+

  • Thomas Blancheford (Jake Dunn) is a drunken louche who torments the villagers.

    Disney+

  • The Earl of Poynton (Adrian Lester) dabbles in black magic and has sinister plans afoot.

    Disney+

  • Lady Sofia Wilmot (Alice Kremelberg) chafes at the limitations imposed upon her by society.

    Disney+

  • Nell and her sisters end up on the run.

    Disney+

  • The Blanchefords’ former groom, Rasselas (Enyi Okoronkwo), helps the sisters.

    Disney+

  • Rebellious young socialite Polly Honeycombe (Ashna Rabheru) is rather thrilled to be robbed by a dashing highwayman.

    Disney+

The writing, pacing, and production values are top-notch, and the cast is terrific across the board. Lester brings a ruthless authority to Poynton’s spooky supernatural machinations, while Kremelberg is all seething bitter resentment and steely resolve as Lady Sofia, a brilliant, ambitious noblewoman (also widowed) who is far more qualified to run the family estate than her worthless brother, yet prohibited from inheriting by the laws of the time. Dillane’s Devereaux provides much of the witty repartee and comic relief, as does Joely Richardson’s (The Sandman) newspaper magnate, Lady Eularia Moggerhanger. And Ashna Rabheru (Red Rose) is delightful as a spoiled young aristocrat, Polly Honeycombe, with a lively romantic imagination who longs for something more in life than an arranged marriage.

But it’s Harland’s sensational portrayal of Nell that anchors it all. This is a role that requires her to be a tough rebellious tomboy in one scene and sport a posh accent and fancy dress in another; to balance action comedy with moments of genuine fear and heartbreaking tragedy. It’s also a highly physical role: Harland underwent several months of stunt training prior to filming. She does it all with refreshingly unpretentious aplomb.

Renegade Nell keeps the action flowing and wisely never takes itself too seriously. Sure, there is injustice, class warfare, and strong intelligent women chafing within the strict confines of traditional binary gender roles—and Polly Honeycombe definitely qualifies as bicurious. But Wainwright never lets the story get bogged down in heavy-handed symbolism or didacticism. Even Nell’s cross-dressing is handled with the lightest touch. Asked to comment on her character’s gender politics, Harland told the Guardian that there was no ulterior motive or agenda: “Why does she dress as a man? To pass as a man.” Simple as that.

Will we see more of feisty Nell and her delightfully eccentric compatriots? That’s up to Disney. There are plenty of questions left unanswered and definitely more stories to tell, both past and present. Series director Ben Taylor told Radio Times just after the premiere that a second season was currently being written and that it would likely involve some kind of time jump (given that some of the younger actors will visibly age), picking up with the various surviving characters from where they left off in the first season. But Disney has yet to confirm this. Here’s hoping this series finds the broader audience it so richly deserves. We’re rooting for you, Nelly… err, Nell.

Renegade Nell is now streaming on Disney+.

Trailer for Renegade Nell.

Review: Pitch-perfect Renegade Nell is a gem of a series you won’t want to miss Read More »

three-episodes-in,-the-fallout-tv-series-absolutely-nails-it

Three episodes in, the Fallout TV series absolutely nails it

amazon prime video, Bethesda Game Studios, culture, Fallout, gaming, Todd Howard, TV / /

I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire —

Hyperviolence, strong characters, cool visuals, and some humor make a good show.

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  • Like the games, the show depicts a Vault Dweller making her way out into the Wasteland.

    Amazon

  • This Brotherhood of Steel Initiate is another central character.

    Amazon

  • And there’s The Ghoul, one of the show’s standout characters.

    Amazon

  • Lost‘s Michael Emerson plays a compelling supporting character.

    Amazon

  • Some scenes take place inside the games’ famous Vaults.

    Amazon

  • And, of course, there’s power armor.

    Amazon

Amazon has had a rocky history with big, geeky properties making their way onto Prime Video. The Wheel of Time wasn’t for everyone, and I have almost nothing good to say about The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.

Fallout, the first season of which premiered this week, seems to break that bad streak. All the episodes are online now, but I’ve watched three episodes so far. I love it.

I’ve spent hundreds of hours playing the games that inspired it, so I can only speak to that experience; I don’t know how well it will work for people who never played the games. But as a video game adaptation, it’s up there with The Last of Us.

In my view, Fallout is about three things: action, comedy, and satire. In this spoiler-free review of the first three episodes, I’ll go over each of these touchstones and discuss how the show hit them or didn’t.

I hope to find the time to revisit the show with another, much more spoiler-y article sometime next week after I’ve seen the rest of the episodes, and we’ll save discussions about the story for then.

Fallout as an action spectacle

To say Fallout is about high-octane action might be a controversial statement, given the divide between fans of the first two games (turn-based tactical RPGs) and most of the newer games (open-world action RPGs).

Hyperviolence was being depicted and simulated in those original titles even if they weren’t part of the action genre, so I hope you’ll agree that one would expect some action and gore in a TV adaptation regardless of which Fallout games you liked.

Boy, does this show deliver. While there is some dispute over which genre the Fallout games are supposed to be, there’s no such confusion about Fallout the TV series. If it were at Blockbuster in the ’80s or ’90s, its box would be in the “Action” section.

All three episodes have at least one big-screen-worthy action set piece. They’re not expertly choreographed like a John Wick movie, but they’re thrilling regardless—mostly because of how extreme and darkly funny the violence can be.

The first big action sequence in the first episode reminded me that this show is coming to us by way of Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, producers of HBO’s Westworld series. As in that show, Fallout‘s violence can be sudden, brutal, and casual. Heads explode from shotgun blasts like popped bubbles in Cronenbergian splatters. Someone’s face gets ripped right off, and another person gets a fork plunged into their eyeball.

Fallout‘s gore goes beyond Westworld’s shock factor into the territory of humor, and that’s clearly intentional. Homages to the Bethesda games’ slow-motion VATS kills are aplenty, with gratuitous shots of bullets tearing through bodies and painting the walls red.

It’s so over the top it that doesn’t bother me; it’s cartoon violence, ultimately. Most of the time, I enjoy it, though a couple of instances of dog-related violence didn’t feel too great. But if you’re squeamish, you’re going to want to steer clear. Of course, the games were like this, too. It just hits a little differently when it’s live action.

Fallout as a comedy

There are numerous executive producers attached to this show, including Nolan, Joy, and Bethesda Game Studios’ Todd Howard, among others. But the two people most creatively responsible for what we’re seeing here are the writers Geneva Robertson-Dworet (Tomb Raider, Captain Marvel) and Graham Wagner (Portlandia, Silicon Valley, The Office).

That makes sense—you have one showrunner with action and video game adaptation chops and another known for comedy.

The Fallout games are hilarious—goofy, even, and that tracks right into the show. It’s not always as laugh-out-loud funny as I expected (though it sometimes is), but it’s definitely fun, and there are some strong jokes.

It’s hard to discuss them without spoiling some punchlines, but a lot of the humor comes from the fact that one of the show’s three central characters grew up deeply sheltered, both literally and figuratively. “Okey-dokey,” she says in the face of the most horrific situations imaginable. The contrast really works.

There’s humor in other places in the show, too, especially if you like dark humor. As I said a moment ago, the violence is hilarious if you have the stomach for it. Like the games, the show has many winks and nods.

I’d like to see a little more of this in the future than there is now, but it’s enough for it to feel like, well, Fallout.

Three episodes in, the Fallout TV series absolutely nails it Read More »

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Will there be a Dune: Part Three? Yes… with caveats on timing

culture, denis villeneuve, Dune, Dune: Messiah, Entertainment, Frank Herbert, Legendary Pictures / /

Prepare for the Messiah —

Timing of a big-screen return to Arrakis mostly depends on director Denis Villeneuve.

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Legendary Pictures has confirmed that it plans to make <em>Dune: Part Three</em> with director Denis Villeneuve.” src=”https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/dune2-800×537.jpg”></img><figcaption> <p><a data-height=Enlarge / Legendary Pictures has confirmed that it plans to make Dune: Part Three with director Denis Villeneuve.

YouTube/Warner Bros.

Dune: Part Two is still raking in the moolah at the box office, and deservedly so. But judging by my various feeds, fans are already swooning over the prospect of director Denis Villeneuve extending his vision into a trilogy by adapting Frank Herbert’s 1969 sequel, Dune Messiah, for the next installment. Will there be a Dune: Part Three? Most signs currently point to yes, with a couple of caveats. Exactly how soon we’ll be seeing a return to Arrakis depends a lot on Villeneuve.

Variety confirmed that Legendary Pictures is working with the director on developing Dune: Part Three, although it remains unclear from the wording of the plethora of news items whether the project has officially been greenlit. (“Development” can mean a lot of things.) Naturally, the studio is eager, as are we: the film is the biggest hit of 2024 thus far, with global earnings of $630 million (although the hotly anticipated Deadpool and Wolverine this summer might give it a run for its money).

That confirmation sent fresh frissons of excitement across the Internet, although Villeneuve had been talking about the prospect as far back as September 2021. Those plans always depended on the success of Part Two, and that hurdle has obviously been cleared. By August 2023, the director was on record saying there were “words on paper” for a third film. And we learned just last month that composer Hans Zimmer was already working on the score for Dune: Part Three.

That said, Villeneuve has yet to commit to an actual release date publicly, emphasizing his desire to take a little break from the Dune franchise to work on something else. (Per Variety, Legendary has already tapped him to adapt Anne Jacobsen’s nonfiction book, Nuclear War: A Scenario, but that project will likely come after Dune: Part Three.) He even hinted at one point that it might be a good idea to let star Timothée Chalamet age a bit, given the 12-year gap in the novels.

And in February, Villeneuve told The Times UK that while he had nearly finished a draft script (“barely an embryo”), he was not inclined to rush things: “I want to make sure that if we go back there a third time that it’ll be worth it, and that it would be make something even better than Part Two.” That’s a tall order, given the critical raves that have accompanied the film’s box office success. But we’re betting Villeneuve can pull it off… in his own good time.

Will there be a Dune: Part Three? Yes… with caveats on timing Read More »

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Billie Eilish, Pearl Jam, 200 artists say AI poses existential threat to their livelihoods

AI, AI art, AI ethics, AI music, ara, Arists Rights Alliance, Billie Eilish, Biz & IT, chatgpt, chatgtp, culture, Google, machine learning, music, music industry, music synthesis, MusicLM, openai, Pearl Jam, Riffusion, Stable Audio / /

artificial music —

Artists say AI will “set in motion a race to the bottom that will degrade the value of our work.”

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Billie Eilish attends the 2024 Vanity Fair Oscar Party hosted by Radhika Jones at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on March 10, 2024 in Beverly Hills, California.

Enlarge / Billie Eilish attends the 2024 Vanity Fair Oscar Party hosted by Radhika Jones at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on March 10, 2024, in Beverly Hills, California.

On Tuesday, the Artist Rights Alliance (ARA) announced an open letter critical of AI signed by over 200 musical artists, including Pearl Jam, Nicki Minaj, Billie Eilish, Stevie Wonder, Elvis Costello, and the estate of Frank Sinatra. In the letter, the artists call on AI developers, technology companies, platforms, and digital music services to stop using AI to “infringe upon and devalue the rights of human artists.” A tweet from the ARA added that AI poses an “existential threat” to their art.

Visual artists began protesting the advent of generative AI after the rise of the first mainstream AI image generators in 2022, and considering that generative AI research has since been undertaken for other forms of creative media, we have seen that protest extend to professionals in other creative domains, such as writers, actors, filmmakers—and now musicians.

“When used irresponsibly, AI poses enormous threats to our ability to protect our privacy, our identities, our music and our livelihoods,” the open letter states. It alleges that some of the “biggest and most powerful” companies (unnamed in the letter) are using the work of artists without permission to train AI models, with the aim of replacing human artists with AI-created content.

  • A list of musical artists that signed the ARA open letter against generative AI.

  • A list of musical artists that signed the ARA open letter against generative AI.

  • A list of musical artists that signed the ARA open letter against generative AI.

  • A list of musical artists that signed the ARA open letter against generative AI.

In January, Billboard reported that AI research taking place at Google DeepMind had trained an unnamed music-generating AI on a large dataset of copyrighted music without seeking artist permission. That report may have been referring to Google’s Lyria, an AI-generation model announced in November that the company positioned as a tool for enhancing human creativity. The tech has since powered musical experiments from YouTube.

We’ve previously covered AI music generators that seemed fairly primitive throughout 2022 and 2023, such as Riffusion, Google’s MusicLM, and Stability AI’s Stable Audio. We’ve also covered open source musical voice-cloning technology that is frequently used to make musical parodies online. While we have yet to see an AI model that can generate perfect, fully composed high-quality music on demand, the quality of outputs from music synthesis models has been steadily improving over time.

In considering AI’s potential impact on music, it’s instructive to remember historical instances where tech innovations initially sparked concern among artists. For instance, the introduction of synthesizers in the 1960s and 1970s and the advent of digital sampling in the 1980s both faced scrutiny and fear from parts of the music community, but the music industry eventually adjusted.

While we’ve seen fear of the unknown related to AI going around quite a bit for the past year, it’s possible that AI tools will be integrated into the music production process like any other music production tool or technique that came before. It’s also possible that even if that kind of integration comes to pass, some artists will still get hurt along the way—and the ARA wants to speak out about it before the technology progresses further.

“Race to the bottom”

The Artists Rights Alliance is a nonprofit advocacy group that describes itself as an “alliance of working musicians, performers, and songwriters fighting for a healthy creative economy and fair treatment for all creators in the digital world.”

The signers of the ARA’s open letter say they acknowledge the potential of AI to advance human creativity when used responsibly, but they also claim that replacing artists with generative AI would “substantially dilute the royalty pool” paid out to artists, which could be “catastrophic” for many working musicians, artists, and songwriters who are trying to make ends meet.

In the letter, the artists say that unchecked AI will set in motion a race to the bottom that will degrade the value of their work and prevent them from being fairly compensated. “This assault on human creativity must be stopped,” they write. “We must protect against the predatory use of AI to steal professional artist’ voices and likenesses, violate creators’ rights, and destroy the music ecosystem.”

The emphasis on the word “human” in the letter is notable (“human artist” was used twice and “human creativity” and “human artistry” are used once, each) because it suggests the clear distinction they are drawing between the work of human artists and the output of AI systems. It implies recognition that we’ve entered a new era where not all creative output is made by people.

The letter concludes with a call to action, urging all AI developers, technology companies, platforms, and digital music services to pledge not to develop or deploy AI music-generation technology, content, or tools that undermine or replace the human artistry of songwriters and artists or deny them fair compensation for their work.

While it’s unclear whether companies will meet those demands, so far, protests from visual artists have not stopped development of ever-more advanced image-synthesis models. On Threads, frequent AI industry commentator Dare Obasanjo wrote, “Unfortunately this will be as effective as writing an open letter to stop the sun from rising tomorrow.”

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Apple wouldn’t let Jon Stewart interview FTC Chair Lina Khan, TV host claims

AI, Apple, Apple TV, culture, ftc, jon stewart, lina khan, paramount, Policy, Tech, The Daily Show / /

The Problem with Jon Stewart —

Tech company also didn’t want a segment on Stewart’s show criticizing AI.

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The Daily Show host Jon Stewart’s interview with FTC Chair Lina Khan. The conversation about Apple begins around 16: 30 in the video.

Before the cancellation of The Problem with Jon Stewart on Apple TV+, Apple forbade the inclusion of Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan as a guest and steered the show away from confronting issues related to artificial intelligence, according to Jon Stewart.

This isn’t the first we’ve heard of this rift between Apple and Stewart. When the Apple TV+ show was canceled last October, reports circulated that he told his staff that creative differences over guests and topics were a factor in the decision.

The New York Times reported that both China and AI were sticking points between Apple and Stewart. Stewart confirmed the broad strokes of that narrative in a CBS Morning Show interview after it was announced that he would return to The Daily Show.

“They decided that they felt that they didn’t want me to say things that might get me into trouble,” he explained.

Stewart’s comments during his interview with Khan yesterday were the first time he’s gotten more specific publicly.

“I’ve got to tell you, I wanted to have you on a podcast, and Apple asked us not to do it—to have you. They literally said, ‘Please don’t talk to her,'” Stewart said while interviewing Khan on the April 1, 2024, episode of The Daily Show.

Khan appeared on the show to explain and evangelize the FTC’s efforts to battle corporate monopolies both in and outside the tech industry in the US and to explain the challenges the organization faces.

She became the FTC chair in 2021 and has since garnered a reputation for an aggressive and critical stance against monopolistic tendencies or practices among Big Tech companies like Amazon and Meta.

Stewart also confirmed previous reports that AI was a sensitive topic for Apple. “They wouldn’t let us do that dumb thing we did in the first act on AI,” he said, referring to the desk monologue segment that preceded the Khan interview in the episode.

The segment on AI in the first act of the episode mocked various tech executives for their utopian framing of AI and interspersed those claims with acknowledgments from many of the same leaders that AI would replace many people’s jobs. (It did not mention Apple or its leadership, though.)

Stewart and The Daily Show‘s staff also included clips of current tech leaders suggesting that workers be retrained to work with or on AI when their current roles are disrupted by it. That was followed by a montage of US political leaders promising to retrain workers after various technological and economic disruptions over the years, with the implication that those retraining efforts were rarely as successful as promised.

The segment effectively lampooned some of the doublespeak about AI, though Stewart stopped short of venturing any solutions or alternatives to the current path, so it mostly just prompted outrage and laughs.

The Daily Show host Jon Stewart’s segment criticizing tech and political leaders on the topic of AI.

Apple currently uses AI-related technologies in its software, services, and devices, but so far it has not launched anything tapping into generative AI, which is the new frontier in AI that has attracted worry, optimism, and criticism from various parties.

However, the company is expected to roll out its first generative AI features as part of iOS 18, a new operating system update for iPhones. iOS 18 will likely be detailed during Apple’s annual developer conference in June and will reach users’ devices sometime in the fall.

Listing image by Paramount

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Ncuti Gatwa’s Fifteenth Doctor rocks the fashion in new Doctor Who trailer

culture, Doctor Who, Entertainment, Fifteenth Doctor, Ncuti Gatwa, Russell T. Davies, streaming tele, Trailers, TV trailers / /

The Fifteenth Doctor is in —

The return of Russell T. Davies as show runner has been a welcome one.

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Ncuti Gatwa officially begins his tenure as the Fifteenth Doctor in May, when the new Doctor Who season premieres.

Heads up, Whovians! We’ve got a newly regenerated Fifteenth Doctor in Ncuti Gatwa and a new season of the long-running British sci-fi series Doctor Who on the way. Judging by the latest trailer, we’re in for another wild ride of time-traveling hijinks, punctuated by an irresistibly charismatic Gatwa sporting some very colorful outfits with confident aplomb.

(Spoilers for most recent seasons and specials below.)

Look, I loved Jodie Whittaker’s incarnation of the Doctor, but her tenure was hampered by the unavoidable fact that showrunner Chris Chibnall just didn’t give her a lot of great material to work with. Among other issues, there was an unfortunate tendency toward didacticism and preachiness in the writing at the expense of genuine emotional resonance. While there were a number of notable episodes, and Chibnall gamely trotted out all the fan-favorite monsters and tropes, nothing ever fully captured the imagination in quite the same way as the show has always done at its best. Whittaker deserved better.

But then the BBC announced the return of Russell T. Davies—who revived the series in 2005 with Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor—as showrunner, setting up another reset of this beloved series. When Gatwa’s casting was announced, everyone assumed Whittaker’s Thirteenth Doctor would regenerate accordingly at the end of “The Power of the Doctor.” Instead, the newly regenerated Fourteenth Doctor was played by none other than David Tennant, everyone’s favorite Tenth Doctor—a little older with a few tweaks to his trademark look.

It was great casting for the 60th anniversary specials, in which Tennant’s Fourteenth Doctor reunited with Donna Noble (Catherine Tate)—one of my favorite companions. Donna had her memories of the Doctor wiped by the Tenth Doctor to save her life since she had taken on some Time Lord knowledge that human beings just aren’t designed to carry. Donna now had a teenage daughter named Rose, and of course, a major crisis forced the Doctor to restore the erased knowledge to save London yet again. Donna should have died, but her Time Lord knowledge ended up being safely split between her and Rose instead.

The Doctor and Donna next encountered an abandoned spaceship filled with doppelgängers (Not-Things) in “Wild Blue Yonder.” In “The Giggle,” they faced off against the Toymaker (Neil Patrick Harris), and during the climactic battle, the Fourteenth Doctor was shot. Fans expecting the usual regeneration were in for a surprise. The Fourteenth Doctor “bigenerated” instead, resulting in both a Fourteenth Doctor and Gatwa’s Fifteenth Doctor, a separate physical entity.

  • Ncuti Gatwa is ready for his first full season as the Fifteenth Doctor.

    YouTube/BBC

  • His new companion is Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson).

    YouTube/BBC

  • “Space babies!”

    YouTube/BC

  • The Doctor and the dinosaurs.

    YouTube/BBC

  • Going full-on Bridgerton.

    YouTube/BBC

  • “We are going to rock through time…”

    YouTube/BBC

  • Sporting a snazzy tangerine-colored knit.

    YouTube/BBC

  • Looking very Mod Squad, Doctor!

    YouTube/BBC

  • Recreating a famous album cover because why not?

    YouTube/BBC

The two Doctors teamed up to defeat the Toymaker and then figured out how to duplicate the TARDIS by drawing on the power of the remnants of the villain’s reality-warping domain. And Gatwa’s Doctor embarked on a fresh adventure with the 2023 Christmas special “The Church on Ruby Road,” which also introduced us to his new companion, Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson).

All of that brings us to season 14. All we really know about this new season is that it will have eight episodes, beginning with the Davies-penned “Space Babies” and “The Devil’s Chord.” Davies wrote six out of the eight episodes, in fact, closing out with “The Legend of Ruby Sunday” and the finale, “Empire of Death.”  The latest trailer doesn’t give us much more than some exciting visual teases of what’s in store, including the aforementioned space babies, dinosaurs, a mysterious spacecraft—and all those outfits.

The Fifteenth Doctor is apparently something of a clothes horse. Each incarnation of the Doctor has always had a trademark “look,” but costume designer Pam Downe decided to broaden the scope for Gatwa, incorporating design elements from previous Doctors all the way back to Jon Pertwee’s Third Doctor, whose style Gatwa particularly admired. That Regency-era burgundy velvet jacket is definitely a nod to the Third Doctor. There’s even a 1960s suit and Afro reminiscent of the Mod Squad or Austin Powers (with a sly allusion to The Beatles’ Abbey Road). Gatwa is clearly having a blast, which bodes well for the upcoming new season.

Season 14 of Doctor Who premieres on BBC and Disney+ on May 10, 2024, in the US and May 11 in the UK.

Listing image by YouTube/BBC

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The restored Star Trek Enterprise-D bridge goes on display in May

culture, Enterprise-D, Star Trek, star trek the next generation / /

engage! —

The bridge is going on display at Sci-Fi World Musem in Santa Monica, California.

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A recreation of the Star Trek The Next Generation Enterprise-D bridge

Enlarge / The Enterprise-D bridge recreation, seen in London in 2002.

Peter Bischoff/Getty Images

More than a decade has gone by since three Star Trek: The Next Generation fans first decided to restore the bridge from the Enterprise-D. Plans for the restored bridge morphed from opening it up to non-commercial uses like weddings or educational events into a fully fledged museum, and now that museum is almost ready to open. Backers of the project on Kickstarter have been notified that Sci-Fi World Museum will open to them in Santa Monica, California, on May 27, with general admission beginning in June.

It’s not actually the original set from TNG, as that was destroyed while filming Star Trek: Generations, when the saucer section crash-lands on Veridian III. But three replicas were made, overseen by Michael Okuda and Herman Zimmerman, the show’s set designers. Two of those welcomed Trekkies at Star Trek: The Experience, an attraction in Las Vegas until it closed in 2008.

The third spent time in Hollywood, then traveled to Europe and Asia for Star Trek: World Tour before it ended up languishing in a warehouse in Long Beach. It’s this third globe-trotting Enterprise-D bridge that—like the grit that gets an oyster to create a pearl—now finds a science-fiction museum accreted around it. Well, mostly—the chairs used by Riker, Troi, Data, and some other bits were salvaged from the Las Vegas exhibit.

Unlike the actual set, which was made from wood, the replica is made of metal and fiberglass. The restoration was originally supposed to take up to two years, but the project ended up being a far bigger challenge.

When Ars checked in with the Enterprise-D bridge restoration in 2014, the science-fiction museum plan had taken shape. But that change of plans did not sit well with some of the project’s original supporters, particularly after an imperfect re-creation of the captain’s chair—which remained lost until recently—was sold on eBay.

Things got even uglier in 2018 when Huston Huddleston, who led the project, was arrested and then convicted for possessing child pornography. Although Huddleston still appears listed as the project’s CEO on its Kickstarter page, that appears to be an artifact of its creation, and John Purdy is listed as the CEO of the Sci-Fi World Museum on its About Us page.

The Enterprise-D isn’t the only bridge you’ll be able to find at the museum—there’s also a replica of the bridge from Star Trek: The Original Series, which previously lived in a wax museum in Buena Park, California. Other exhibits include a hall of robots, as well as the “Bubbleship” and a drone from the movie Oblivion.

It’s also not the only recent re-creation of the Enterprise-D’s bridge. Okuda and his wife Denise both helped Paramount re-create the iconic set for the third season of Picard. The new Enterprise-D set can even be explored on Google Maps.

And earlier this month, it looked like Jean-Luc Picard’s long-lost chair might be sold at auction. However, the day saw an agreement between CBS Studios and the auctioneer Propstore, which will return the chair to CBS’s Star Trek Archive, which plans to restore and display it in the coming year.

The restored Star Trek Enterprise-D bridge goes on display in May Read More »