There is no lack of zombie movie fare in the world, but if the trailer for the Norwegian film Handling the Undead is any indication, the movie brings an arthouse feel to the genre and has a strong possibility of quietly wrecking you as you watch.
The film is based on an eponymous novel by Swedish author John Ajvide Lindqvist, who also penned the script in collaboration with director Thea Hvistendahl. The trailer introduces three people who have inexplicably come back from the dead in the capital of Norway, and the ramifications that has for those who love and grieve them.
Here’s the more detailed, official synopsis for Handling the Undead:
On a hot summer day in Oslo, the dead mysteriously awaken, and three families are thrown into chaos when their deceased loved ones come back to them. Who are they, and what do they want? A family is faced with the mother’s reawakening before they have even mourned her death after a car accident; an elderly woman gets the love of her life back the same day she has buried her; a grandfather rescues his grandchild from the gravesite in a desperate attempt to get his daughter out of her depression. Handling the Undead is a drama with elements of horror about three families, a story about grief and loss, but also about hope and understanding of what we can’t comprehend or control.
Handling the Undead stars Renate Reinsve, Anders Danielsen Lie, Bjørn Sundquis, Bente Børsum, Bahar Pars, and Inesa Dauksta. It premiered at the Sundance Festival this January, after which Neon picked up the U.S. distribution rights. It will premiere here at the IFC Center in New York City on May 31, 2024 and at select theaters after that on June 7, 2024.
Once upon a time, in the 1990s, there was a movie called Twister that was patently absurd, but also weirdly charming. Now, nearing 30 years later, there is a movie called Twisters that is not a sequel, nor a remake, but just another movie about people who really like to chase tornadoes. The film's tagline seems to be, "You don't face your fears. You ride 'em." This tagline makes me tired.
We now have our second trailer for Twisters, which is much like the first one, except with more buildup to the tornado that traumatizes Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and more chaotic tornado drama as the trailer (and presumably the film) progresses. Now there's a fire tornado! I would like to be into this, but every time a character opens their mouth, the film gets less appealing. She's a smarty-pants city girl! He (Glen Powell as Tyler Owens) is a good ol' boy with a lot of social media followers and his face on a T-shirt, and he does things the old way, no PhDs required!
The most intriguing part is that Kate might have figured out how to "disrupt" a tornado, but she done messed up last time.
Who but the good ol' boy to give her another chance?
Twisters is directed by Lee Isaac Chung (Minari) from a screenplay by Mark L. Smith (The Midnight Sky), with a nod to Michael Crichton, who co-wrote the first Twister. It also stars Brandon Perea (Nope), Sasha Lane (American Honey), Daryl McCormack (Peaky Blinders), Kiernan Shipka (Chilling Adventures of Sabrina), Nik Dodani (Atypical) and Maura Tierney (Beautiful Boy). You can ride your fears right into the theater on July 19th.[end-mark]
First sasquatches, then space invaders. David and Nathan Zellner recently released Sasquatch Sunset, a very weird movie in which Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keogh starred as, yes, sasquatches; now, they're planning to follow it up with an alien invasion comedy starring Cate Blanchett as... well, I'm going to let Variety explain:
Alpha Gang follows alien invaders sent on a mission to conquer Earth. “Disguised in human form as an armed and dangerous 1950’s leather-clad biker gang, they show no mercy… until they catch the most toxic, contagious human disease of all: emotion,” reads the synopsis.
Blanchett, apparently, will be playing the leader of said gang. So yes: leather-clad, armed and dangerous Cate Blanchett should be coming to a screen near you.
It's a fun turn for the former Queen Elizabeth, no? And her outfits for this might be almost as good as everything she got to wear in Ocean's 8. Blanchett has, of course, been nominated for a whole pile of Oscars, and won two: Best Supporting Actress for The Aviator, and Best Actress for Blue Jasmine. She has played too many excellent roles to list here, but it would be silly not to mention her turns as Hela (Thor: Ragnarok, pictured above) and Galadriel (several Lord of the Rings movies, including, alas, those dreadfully long Hobbits).
Alpha Gang is expected to begin filming later this year. Further casting announcements will be watched with great curiosity.[end-mark]
It is almost time for the annual Cannes Film Festival, which means that a lot of uncertain movie news is in the air: Movies that may or may not get picked up, after festival screenings, for distribution; movies that may or may not be coming together for future productions. A lot of possibility is floating about, some of it more enticing than other bits. But this one is quite intriguing: Deadline reports that Greta Lee (Past Lives; Russian Doll, pictured above) and Kingsley Ben-Adir (Barbie; Secret Invasion) are in talks to star in 11817, a sci-fi horror film from director Louis Leterrier.
Leterrier is, depending on your personal predilections, either an interesting director of large-scale action films, or the guy who made the Ed Norton Hulk movie. His resume includes episodes of Lupin; the delightfully silly The Transporter; Fast X, which really ought to have been called Fast10 Your Seatbelts; and also the 2010 Clash of the Titans.
11817, which sounds more like a zip code than a film title, is written by Matthew Robinson (Love and Monsters). According to Deadline, "The film watches as inexplicable forces trap a family of four inside their house indefinitely. As both modern luxuries and life or death essentials begin to run out, the family must learn how to be resourceful to survive and outsmart who — or what — is keeping them trapped…"
Actor Omar Sy (Lupin) is among the film's producers, along with Leterrier and Thomas Benski (a producer on The Northman, Pig, and Midsommar, among others); the three have a production company called Carousel Studios, and this film looks to be their first project.
No production timeline has been announced.[end-mark]
We're thrilled to share an excerpt from The Ornithologist's Field Guide to Love, a historical fantasy rom-com by India Holton, out from Berkley on July 23rd.
Beth Pickering is on the verge of finally capturing the rare deathwhistler bird when Professor Devon Lockley swoops in, capturing both her bird and her imagination like a villain. Albeit a handsome and charming villain, but that’s beside the point. As someone highly educated in the ruthless discipline of ornithology, Beth knows trouble when she sees it, and she is determined to keep her distance from Devon.
For his part, Devon has never been more smitten than when he first set eyes on Professor Beth Pickering. She’s so pretty, so polite, so capable of bringing down a fiery, deadly bird using only her wits. In other words, an angel. Devon understands he must not get close to her, however, since they’re professional rivals.
When a competition to become Birder of the Year by capturing an endangered caladrius bird is announced, Beth and Devon are forced to team up to have any chance of winning. Now keeping their distance becomes a question of one bed or two. But they must take the risk, because fowl play is afoot, and they can’t trust anyone else—for all may be fair in love and war, but this is ornithology.
An ornithologist must be proficient in the three fundamentals of fieldwork: finding a bird, identifying a bird, and getting the hell away from that bird before it eats you.
Birds Through a Sherry Glass, H.A. Quirm
All along the streets to the museum, Beth met no trouble. Her plain brown coat, accompanied by a small hat, gloves, and air of cultivated intelligence, triggered fear in any man who glanced her way: one catcall, and she might educate them.
Slipping past museum staff to enter the archives with the speed and stealthiness of a well-trained ornithologist, she also met no trouble.
Wending a narrow path through shelves and cabinets to the back of the chamber, she met no—
“Hello.”
Beth stopped so abruptly her hat shuddered, and only because of her stiffened posture did it retain its place upon her head. “You!”
Devon Lockley gave her a lithe smile. “You,” he replied, his tone more friendly and thus far more dangerous than hers. Worse, he’d removed his dinner jacket and unknotted his tie. The bare, olive-toned skin visible where he’d unfastened his shirt collar took “trouble” and dunked it in a glass of hot, rum-infused devilry. Light from the small, dusty windows slid across his mouth languorously, stroking the smile.
Beth looked away, clearing her throat.
Shelves of boxes stood to the right of them, and to the left a row of specimen cabinets. A wide, shallow drawer lay open in the cabinet directly beside Devon, revealing assorted birdcalls, bird lures, and bird thingamajigs whose purpose had long since been forgotten.
His expression tilted with sardonic humor. “I suspect you’re not in the basement of the Museum of Magical Birds for the purpose of an afternoon stroll, Miss Pickering. You’ve come for the caladrius call.”
Beth applied to her sense of decorum for a suitable response, but it took one look at the man and turned away, busying itself with dusting its precious antique collection of curtsies. Left to her own devices, she gave him a second, considering look.
He was implausibly handsome for a university professor, who in Beth’s experience were a pallid lot, rather musty, with a constant yearning in their eyes for dinner, wine, and their latest lecture to magically write itself. But if there was any yearning done in regard to Devon Lockley, it was almost certainly not by him but toward him. Not that Beth felt any such yearning. Heavens no! She was far too sensible for that. The riotous sensations in her stomach were merely due to French tea. She also suspected him of possessing masculine wiles. He probably kept them up his sleeve or in a trouser pocket—upon which thought, Beth glanced at said pocket, and managed to prevent herself from blushing only by dint of general aggravation. She hauled her vision up by the scruff of its neck and discovered Devon watching her smugly, as if he could guess her thoughts and was considering whether to reach his naked hand into that pocket and bring out something truly scandalous indeed. Her aggravation increased by several notches.
“I am here to do some research,” she said, silently reassuring herself that it was the whitest of lies; beige at most. “However, this seems a convenient opportunity to apologize to you for our fracas in Spain.”
“No need,” Devon answered easily. In response, Beth’s aggravation forgot about climbing notches and took flight instead.
“Absolutely there is a need! I was an ill-mannered scoundrel of the worst kind to assault you with a parasol!”
“You ought to be stern and judgmental.” She thrust out a gloved hand. “I insist upon apologizing. Kindly frown at me and then shake hands, so we may reestablish a civil rivalry between us.”
“All right,” he agreed—then ruined it by adding, “My pleasure.” He gave her a frown that was clearly wearing nothing more than a wicked grin beneath its coat. But before Beth could summon offense, he took her hand.
Immediately, she knew she’d made a tactical error. His bare fingers were warm even through the kid leather of her glove. His grip was firm in a way that made the description “firm” seem altogether salacious. An electric sensation rushed through her body, setting off alarms hither and yon. All that saved her was remembering the job she’d come to do.
“How do you know about the caladrius call?” she asked. Devon shrugged. “You told me.” “I beg your pardon—?—!”
“Well, to be precise, you told my spy, Lady Trimble, who then told me.”
“Egad!” Beth gasped. “That’s cheating!”
“Come now, Miss Pickering,” he said, laughing. “All may be fair in love and war, but this is ornithology. Cheating is practically one of our scientific principles. Or did they not teach you that at—let me guess, Liverpool University?”
He wanted to aggravate her. “Oxford,” she answered in her politest tone. After all, she could climb trees without showing her petticoats and wrangle birds into cages without swearing. No man was going to disturb her equanimity.
He smiled.
“Villain!” she remonstrated at once, before she even knew what she was doing. And once she’d got going, alas, there seemed no stopping her. “Don’t try that charm on me, if you please. I will not succumb like some—some—liberal arts undergraduate.”
“If you say so, Miss Pickering,” he answered, still smiling. “I do beg your pardon. And while I can’t apologize for using Lady Trimble to spy on you, I will point out that at least I chose to run here and find the call before you might, rather than steal it from you outright. Not that such virtue did me any good.” He frowned askance at the open drawer. “This collection looks like a pack of first-year students have held a keg party among it.”
The apology, such as it was, mollified her. “Perhaps we aren’t the first to come searching,” she suggested in a calmer tone. “Hippolyta cannot be the only one to know about the call.”
“Which also means others might appear at any moment.” Devon glanced over her shoulder as if expecting a sudden influx of ornithologists bearing lockpicks, pistols, and emergency marriage certificates for use upon discovering a bachelor and spinster alone together. Beth’s nerves ruffled all over again. Really, this encounter was going to drive her to drink, and she did not think there was enough tea in all of Paris for the purpose.
“I suggest a compromise,” she said. “I will search for the call, and you will stand guard, and once I’ve found it we will leave quietly so as to not draw attention to ourselves. What say you?”
“I say you need a better dictionary,” Devon replied, grinning. He looked over her shoulder again; glancing back, Beth thought she saw a darkness move between shelves, but she blinked and it was gone.
“I’m being paranoid,” Devon murmured, shaking his head. “How about I look for the call, you do the same, and may the best birder win?” “And when I win?” she asked cautiously.
“When I win, we’ll agree to disagree, and depart without further argument.”
“Very well.” She turned toward the cabinet—only to discover she and Devon were still holding hands. He realized at the same moment and released her just as she was pulling away. She rubbed her hand against her waist. Devon shoved his through his hair. Stepping apart, they set to opening cabinet drawers.
“I admit I’m a little daunted, competing with Britain’s youngest-ever professor,” Devon said as they worked.
Beth glanced at him sidelong. Was he mocking her? Or had that been a note of sincerity in his voice? If he’d whistled a birdsong, she’d have been able to interpret it at once, but her ability with human conversation was mediocre at best, and this one certainly had her floundering. She decided to retreat, as usual, behind niceness.
“I’m daunted myself,” she said, “competing with an academic wunderkind.”
“That’s merely a rumor started by my thesis examination panel because they wanted to get away early for a fishing trip.”
Beth stared at him with astonishment. “Really?”
He just grinned in reply, his dark eyes glimmering. Instantly, Beth’s aggravation discarded niceness and leaped once more into the breach, swinging its fists wildly and suggesting she close the wall up with a dead professor. Turning away, she rummaged through the birdcalls, not even seeing them.
For a while, Devon searched quietly alongside. But all too soon they were elbowing each other… leaning past each other to grab at something that looked like a possibility… humphing and tsking and smacking at hands… completely missing the caladrius call lying among several other antique whistles… then seeing it finally and both snatching at it with such urgency they knocked it clear off the tray. It flew past them, fell to the floor, and rolled through a gap between two shelving units.
“Now look what you’ve done!” they said simultaneously. “It wasn’t my fault!” they replied in chorus.
And shoving at each other, they squeezed their way through the gap to crouch in the dark narrow space behind, groping around the floor for the little wooden call. Thighs pressed against each other; shoulders rubbed; etiquette rules exploded left, right, and center. Finally, Beth’s fingers stumbled upon the call, and she clutched it in triumph.
Unfortunately, Devon did the same. “Let go!” she hissed at him.
“You first!” he hissed back. “How dare—”
“Shut up.”
Beth gasped in genuine shock. “I beg your pardon!”
He relinquished the call, but only so as to slap his hand over her mouth. Beth’s heart leaped with what was almost certainly alarm and not delighted excitement.
“Shh!” he whispered. “I heard something.”
Beth nodded. Devon moved his hand away, and together they shifted apart two boxes on the shelf at eye level so they could peer through to the passageway beyond.
Tap-tap.
Beth slapped her own hand over her mouth. A bird was tiptoeing delicately over the dusty floor—a dull brown bird, not much bigger than a magpie, with dainty legs and a small black beak. Vanellus carnivorus, her brain automatically recited.
Rabid flesh-eating lapwing.
It was the most vicious, deadly little bird this side of the Mediterranean. With scant effort it could bring down a grown man and the horse beneath him, and the servants attending him, and their horses too. Almost its entire population had been exterminated, leaving only two specimens in the highest-security aviaries.
And one in this basement.
Suddenly, Beth could not breathe. This was not due to her hand over her mouth; rather, she simply could not remember the process of inhaling air. The lapwing’s claws tapped gently against the floorboards, providing an eerily calm counterpoint to her crashing heartbeat. She and Devon were sitting ducks, with no easy way of escape. As it passed where they crouched behind the shelf, there came a tiny click of fang against beak, and the warm vanilla scent the bird used to attract prey. Instinct urged Beth to follow that scent, to tuck herself into coziness beneath the lapwing’s soft wing. Intelligence managed to restrain her, however, and the lapwing continued farther down the passageway, its lure diminishing as it went. Beth and Devon glanced at each other, exhaling with relief—
The lapwing froze. It cocked its head.
“Damn!” Devon swore. Grabbing Beth’s arm, he hauled her up with him and pushed her toward the gap in the shelving. “Run!”
The television series Snowpiercer has had a rocky journey. The show’s first three seasons ran on TNT, but the network chose to not air the already-shot fourth and final season as part of the large number of tax write-offs that came with the Warner Bros. Discovery merger.
Luckily for us, the show found a new home at AMC, with that network saying they would release the final episodes sometime in early 2025. The network announced today, however, that we would be able to see the fourth season—as well as the three seasons that came before it—in mere months.
For those who need a refresher, the Snowpiercer series takes place seven years after the world has become an arctic wasteland and focuses on a 1001-car train of survivors that continually run on tracks laid across the globe. It’s based on the graphic novel series by Jacques Lob and Jean-Marc Rochette, and the film from Oscar-winner Bong Joon Ho.
Season three saw the train cars split into two factions, with one led by Melanie Cavill (Jennifer Connelly), who wants to maintain the status quo, and the other by Andre Layton (Daveed Diggs), who wants to explore new territory.
Credit: AMC
“We can’t wait to share the final season of this thrill ride of a series with this vibrant fan community and new viewers starting July 21 on AMC and AMC+, with plenty of time built in to catch up on previous seasons on a variety of on demand platforms and AMC+ before then,” Courtney Thomasma, Executive Vice President of Streaming for AMC Networks, said in a statement shared with Deadline. “Snowpiercer is an entertaining drama with a great cast and seeing how the ride ends will be a highlight of summer viewing worthy of a 1001-car train.”
The first two seasons of Snowpiercer will start streaming on AMC+ beginning June 1, 2024, with the third season premiering on the platform on June 8, 2024.
The fourth and final season will premiere on July 21, 2024 at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT on AMC and AMC+.
The network also released first-look photos of the final season, which you can see above and below. [end-mark]
It's a smaller story, so it gets a smaller series: The Hollywood Reporter has the news that the next Game of Thrones spinoff, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, will have a mere six episodes in its first season. The series is based on a trio of novellas, so presumably that makes a certain kind of sense.
The show was previously going by the slightly more ponderous title A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight, but apparently has dropped those last three words, at least for the time being.
What's more, Owen Harris has joined the adaptation as an executive producer and director; he will tackle the first three episodes. Harris famously directed Black Mirror’s "San Junipero," several episodes of Brave New World, and—most importantly, in my book—four episodes of the criminally under-watched and entirely wonderful Mrs. Davis.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms recently cast its two leads, enlisting Peter Claffey as Ser Duncan the Tall and Dexter Sol Ansell as his young squire Egg. (Anyone familiar with the regularly recurring names of the world of Game of Thrones can probably guess what "Egg" is a nickname for. Here's a hint: There are a lot of Targaryens.)
Here's the official synopsis:
A century before the events of Game of Thrones, two unlikely heroes wandered Westeros… a young, naïve but courageous knight, Ser Duncan the Tall (Claffey), and his diminutive squire, Egg (Ansell). Set in an age when the Targaryen line still holds the Iron Throne, and the memory of the last dragon has not yet passed from living memory, great destinies, powerful foes, and dangerous exploits all await these improbable and incomparable friends.
George R.R. Martin is writer and executive producer for the series, which also has Ira Parker, Ryan Condal, Vince Gerardis, Owen Harris, and Sarah Bradshaw as executive producers
No premiere date has been announced, but the show is expected to arrive next year.[end-mark]
Let me begin with a brief thought experiment—a fitting beginning for an essay that is, in part, about theoretical physics. Imagine three possible futures for yourself. Imagine broadly, freely. Let your future selves be bold. Ask yourself where those selves might be in five, ten, fifteen years. How might you change? Who could you become?
There is something strange at the heart of quantum mechanics, the field of physics that focuses on the tiniest parts of the world. The most common distillation of this strangeness is Schrödinger’s cat—a thought experiment once meant to prove that quantum theory must be incomplete or incorrect. Put a cat in a container with a Geiger counter that measures radiation. Inside the Geiger counter is a tiny bit of radioactive material, so tiny that over the course of an hour there’s an equal chance that it decays or doesn’t. If the radioactive material decays, the Geiger counter is triggered and releases a miniature hammer poised above a glass vial of hydrocyanic acid, killing the cat. If the material doesn’t decay, the vial stays intact and the cat stays alive. According to the mathematics of quantum mechanics, until we take a measurement of the radioactive material it exists in a superposition of states. It is both decayed and un-decayed at the same time. Which means that our vial is both shattered and unshattered. Our cat both alive and dead. But upon measurement, this superposition collapses—opening the box, we find that the cat is entirely dead or entirely alive.
To consider an alternate self is to free your imagination from the consequences that weigh on any real decision. It is a way to free your imagination from the vise of plausibility, from the part of the brain that says don’t dream big, don’t get ahead of yourself, don’t, don’t, don’t.
In the hundred or so years since quantum theory was first developed, myriad physicists have attempted to make sense of both what it means for particles to exist simultaneously in mutually exclusive states and why it is that measurement causes these superpositions to collapse. In the 1950s, a PhD student at Princeton, Hugh Everett III, came up with one potential answer in his (somewhat uninspiringly titled) dissertation, Wave Mechanics Without Probability. According to Everett’s formulation, the concept of “collapse” is both unnecessary and misleading. Instead of considering the observer as separate from the quantum system, we ought to consider them as a part of the superposition—which is to say, when we open the box to see whether the cat is alive or dead, we are simultaneously in the state of seeing-alive-cat and seeing-dead-cat. Put another way: we are split into two, mutually exclusive selves. Put yet another way: each time a quantum measurement occurs, the universe branches such that each outcome occurs in a different branch.
In the decades that followed, this interpretation would become what is known as the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics. It is an interpretation that suggests an infinite proliferation of universes. (Not a very economical use of universes, a professor of mine once said.) Is it a viable interpretation? The answer to that question has been debated for decades without resolution. But regardless: who among us has never dreamt of an alternate world? A choice made differently? Who hasn’t stayed up at night, contemplating some difficult decision, wishing it were possible to see both scenarios played out, to know definitively which option to choose. “We can never know what to want,” the Czech writer Milan Kundera wrote, “because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come.” The unbearable lightness : “if we have only one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all.” The many worlds interpretation saves us from this lightness, gives our lives the weight of infinite repetition and variation. True, the rescue is more theoretical than practical, given that nothing about the interpretation suggests access to the alternate universes. Which brings us back to our thought experiment.
This time, instead of imagining future selves, imagine three alternate selves. Versions of you who made different choices or were born into different circumstances or who had better luck. Like the last time, follow these selves into the future, see who they might become.
Here is what I want to know: how much distance is there between your imagined futures selves versus your alternate selves? Between what is possible and what is impossible?
When I first began writing my novel, In Universes, I was living in Montana with my boyfriend K, working as a snowboard instructor. I’d tried to become a physicist—I wanted so badly to understand quantum mechanics, the multiverse. I wanted to create thought experiments that changed our understanding of how the world worked on the most fundamental level. But I’d bumped up against the limits of my brain—or maybe against sexism and terrible teaching and depression. Without alternate lives to compare, who can say which? Regardless, I’d left academia and fled to the mountains. For the first time in my life, I stopped trying so hard, built a life that didn’t feel crushing. My relationship with my family had always been fraught, but with K, for the first time, I felt secure in the knowledge that I was loved. I was happy, but not entirely content. I imagined different futures for myself: I could work my way up through the snowboard instructor certification program, spend my days teaching in the snow and sun, come home to write and paint in the evenings. I could work with horses, like I did in the summers. Surround myself with non-human animals, rescue horses from abusive situations and rehab them until they could find new homes. I could go to grad school—for writing or art or the philosophy of physics. (Was the dream dead, or merely deferred?) I never imagined leaving K. Why would I? He was my first and truest home.
Still, none of these imagined futures fully satisfied me. In the evenings, after getting home from the mountain, I switched from writing non-fiction to fiction. I was tired of mining my personal history, I told K. I wanted to look outwards rather than inwards for a while. I read Kelly Link, Abbey Mei Otis, Helen Oyeyemi, Carmen Maria Machado. In their stories, the line between internal and external world became blurred, porous enough that a character’s desires or fears might shape the world—but never in the ways one might expect. Puppets came to life and manipulated their owners, children had to sacrifice parents to protect their homes, a handbag or a tent might offer a doorway to another world. Much like in Everett’s thesis, person and environment became intimately and confusingly entangled. Looking outwards could, in other words, also be a way of looking inwards. I let the worlds of my writing warp and transform: Aliens in the form of golden water turned animals murderous. Girls metamorphosed into insects on their sixteenth birthdays, a mermaid sliced her own tail apart to be with the woman she loved. This, I found, was the constant: my narrators sought—or were sought by—transformation. That and the fact that none of them were in relationships with men. But that was fine. They weren’t me. We might share biographical details, age, gender, overall personality. Innermost hopes and fears. Birthdays, families. But they were in other universes. My life was safe.
What is it that shifts when we move from considering different future selves to alternate selves? Some of it is facts: things become possible that, in our current reality, no longer are. But some of it goes beyond objective difference. To consider an alternate self is to free your imagination from the consequences that weigh on any real decision. It is to avoid the question, yes but at what cost? It is a way to free your imagination from the vise of plausibility, from the part of the brain that says don’t dream big, don’t get ahead of yourself, don’t, don’t, don’t.
Maybe you can guess the ending of this small story of mine. Those fictional selves stayed on the page, in their own universes. But gradually, they expanded my imagination, which is to say, my idea of what might be possible. Queerness opened like a door before me. But I was afraid to walk through. Afraid, above all, of losing K, my family in the truest sense of the word. I couldn’t imagine a way to leave the relationship without losing it. I had no models. So I wrote a universe where the narrator and their partner break up and the breaking isn’t a rupture, only a transformation. I wrote the two of them into a platonic love, one that other people might not understand, but that they understood.
I said goodbye to the mountain, to the lesson line-up and my bright red instructor’s jacket. I devoted myself to writing with my full heart, my full self. I talked to K about my fledgling queerness and he cupped his hands around it, made space for it to grow. We built a new sort of relationship together, no less significant for its changes.
One final piece of the thought experiment, this one particularly for my queer and trans community. Imagine an alternate version of yourself, one that has received all the acceptance and support the world so often denies us. An alternate self whose parents greeted their queerness or transness with joy rather than anger or fear or disgust. A self that didn’t have to hide, who never held the doors to the closet shut for simple self-preservation. A self whose government hasn’t tried to take away their rights, their access to care. Who hasn’t had their body politicized and made a talking point for self-righteous politicians. Here’s what I want to know now: How would that version of you move through the world? What possibilities are open to them?
And finally, can you queer the universe a little? Reach through and borrow whatever it is you need—confidence, safety, love? Those alternate selves, they won’t mind sharing. They have enough to go around.[end-mark]
Prime Video's Blade Runner 2099 series was announced over two years ago—long enough that a person could be forgiven for thinking maybe it just faded away, as so many potential series do. But no: It's trucking along, and what's more, it has a pretty incredible star. Variety reports that Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh (Star Trek: Discovery, pictured above) has signed on to the series, and while all the plot details are secret, "sources say Yeoh will play a character named Olwen, described as a replicant near the end of her life."
Blade Runner 2099 is a slightly odd duck. As suggested by the title, it takes place 50 years after Denis Villeneuve's film Blade Runner 2049, but Villeneuve is not involved; instead, it's a project from original Blade Runner director Ridley Scott, and is also a sequel to that film. Scott is an executive producer, and Silka Luisa is the series' showrunner.
Luisa was the showrunner for Apple TV+’s The Shining Girls, a very good adaptation of the Lauren Beukes novel of the same name. She was also a writer and supervising producer on the first season of Halo.
And one more interesting person is attached to this Blade Runner: Jonathan van Tulleken is set to direct the first two episodes. Van Tulleken recently directed two episodes of Shogun, as well as four episodes of The Changeling.
Disney CEO Bob Iger, who earned $31.6 million last year, has gotten specific about the number of projects Marvel will release in the future, reportedly as part of Disney's "overall strategy to reduce output and focus on quality." Variety says:
“We’re slowly going to decrease volume and go to probably about two TV series a year instead of what had become four and reduce our film output from maybe four a year to two, or a maximum of three,” the Disney CEO said during the company’s quarterly earnings call Tuesday. “And we’re working hard on what that path is.”
It would be nice to be optimistic about this—Marvel has seemed a bit overextended of late—but Iger has a way of tamping down any excitement a person might feel. He said, in this same call, that some of the upcoming series are “a vestige of basically a desire in the past to increase volume.” Variety notes that he is including Agatha, the Kathryn Hahn-starring WandaVision spinoff, in that.
In the broader Disney scope of things, Iger also disappointed those of us who are always hoping for more original films, saying, "We’re gonna balance sequels with originals. Specifically in animation, we had gone through a period where our original films and animation, both Disney and Pixar, were dominating. We’re now swinging back a bit to lean on sequels.”
Were not Pixar original films some of the best animated movies of the last few decades? Can you have sequels without having great original films? These questions do not arise.[end-mark]
The second season of Wednesday is now in production—officially, and finally, given that the show was renewed in January of last year. Wednesday's immediate family—Catherine Zeta-Jones as Morticia, Luis Guzmán as Gomez, and Isaac Ordonez as Pugsley—have all been upgraded to series regulars, as has Luyanda Unati Lewis-Nyawo, who plays Deputy Ritchie Santiago.
Also returning: Emma Myers as the irrepressibly chipper Enid; Hunter Doohan as Tyler Galpin; Joy Sunday as Bianca Barclay; Victor Dorobantu as Thing; Moosa Mostafa as Eugene Ottinger; Georgie Farmer as Ajax Petropolus; Fred Armisen as Uncle Fester; and Jamie McShane as Sheriff Donovan Galpin.
But wait, there's more! New series regulars, whose roles have not been all disclosed, include Evie Templeton (Disney's Pinocchio), Owen Painter (The Handmaid's Tale), incredible character actor Noah Taylor (Preacher), and none other than Rose Tyler herself, Billie Piper (Doctor Who, I Hate Suzie). Pipe is playing a character named Capri.
As was previously announced, Steve Buscemi will also be a regular. He is playing Barry Dort, principal of Nevermore Academy.
But wait, there's still more! You can also expect a pile of guest stars, including Joanna Lumley (Absolutely Fabulous) as Grandmama; Thandiwe Newton (Westworld) as Dr. Fairburn; Christopher Lloyd (The Addams Family), Frances O’Connor (The End), Haley Joel Osment (What We Do in the Shadows), Heather Matarazzo (Welcome to the Dollhouse), and Joonas Suotamo (best known as Chewbacca). That is quite a mix: a pair of grown-up child stars, a star of the beloved Addams films, and Chewie? Okay, then.
According to Netflix, the first episode of season two is called “Here We Woe Again,” and is directed by Tim Burton from a script by series creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar. This time around, Jenna Ortega isn't just starring as Wednesday; she's also a producer.
Netflix released a cute little video with the cast announcement, which you can watch below. No premiere date has been announced.[end-mark]
This week in Reading The Wheel of Time, we are covering chapter 25 of Winter’s Heart. In this chapter, simply titled Bonds, Rand and Alanna confront each other over the difficulties of their shared tether, the Warder bond Alanna thrust onto Rand without his consent. At the same time, Min struggles with possessiveness over Rand and fear over a vision about Alivia. And Verin ascertains Cadsuane’s true intentions, leaving the reader to continue to puzzle over Verin’s.
Rand and Min have moved to a room in a different inn, where Rand sits playing the flute. They’re waiting for Alanna, who Rand can feel coming closer. The bond with Alanna feels wrong compared to the comfortable, natural presence in Rand’s head of the bond with Elayne, Min, and Aviendha.
Min is also upset because she had a viewing that Alivia is going to help Rand die. Rand points out that helping him die is not the same as killing him, but Min doesn’t see a difference.
“Sooner or later, I have to die, Min,” he said patiently. He had been told by those he had to believe. To live, you must die. That still made no sense to him, but it left one cold hard fact. Just as the Prophecies of the Dragon seemed to say, he had to die. “Not soon, I “hope. I plan not soon. I’m sorry, Min. I never should have let you bond me.” But he had not been strong enough to refuse, any more than he had been strong enough to push her away. He was too weak for what had to be done. He needed to drink in winter, till he made winter’s heart seem Sunday noon.
Min tells Rand firmly that she will not let him die, and if he manages it anyway she will follow him and bring him back. They are interrupted by a knock at the door, and Min takes some time to arrange herself, draped over Rand on the bed. But when Cadsuane enters before Alanna, Min jumps up again in embarrassed alarm.
Rand greets Cadsuane insolently, prompting her to observe that his manners haven’t improved. She tells him that his presence in Far Madding has saddled her with many inconvenient companions—not just Alanna but Nesune, Sarene, Erian, Beldeine and Elza, as well as Harine, her swordmaster, and Shalon. When she mentions sending the Sea Folk to Rand, he forces himself to ask her, politely, to keep his presence a secret from them.
But when Cadsuane reveals that Narishma, Damer, and Hopwil have been bonded, Rand curses, prompting Cadsuane to slap him. Cadsuane orders Min to leave the room with her, so that Alanna can have a moment alone with Rand.
Rand asks Alanna why Cadsuane didn’t ask what he was doing in Far Madding, and Alanna says that she doesn’t think Cadsuane cares about Rand at all. She demands to know what he did to cause her to be unconscious for three days, and Rand explains simply that he let himself be bonded by someone he actually gave permission to. Alanna is outraged, demanding to know who it is and insisting that she’ll drag the woman before a court and see her birched. She insists that Rand is hers.
“Because you took me, Alanna,” he said coldly. “If more sisters knew, you would be the one birched.” Min had told him once that he could trust Alanna, that she had seen the Green and four other sisters “in his hand.” He did trust her, in an odd fashion, yet he was in Alanna’s hand, too, and he did not want to be. “Release me, and I’ll deny it ever happened.” He had not even known that was possible until Lan told him about himself and Myrelle. “Release me, and I’ll set you free of your oath.”
Alanna admits that she has dreamed of being free of him, and even asked Cadsuane to accept Rand’s bond from her. But Alanna declares that, however Rand was bonded, he is her responsibility now.
"That is as strong in me as the oath I swore to obey you. Every bit as strong. So I will not release you to anyone unless I know she can handle you properly. Who bonded you? If she is capable, I will let her have you.”
Rather than tell her, Rand asks how she is so certain Cadsuane has no interest in him—after all, she had Alanna bring her to him. But Alanna counters that she didn’t know Rand was in Far Madding, only that he was far to the south. She had to beg Cadsuane to bring her, expecting to have to Travel halfway to Tear to find him. She adds, warningly, that now that Cadsuane has taught Alanna to Travel, Rand won’t be able to elude her so easily.
Rand asks if the other sisters took the Asha’man the way Alanna took him, but she insists there was no pressuring that she knows of. She also tells him about Damer discovering a way to Heal stilling, and that all the sisters being held by the Aiel, even the Reds, have now sworn fealty to him. She urges Rand to accept the fact that he needs the Aes Sedai, that they can help end the rebellions against him and unite the lands for him. She reminds him that the treaty Rafela and Merana negotiated with Harine got him everything he asked for, and almost begs him to let them help him.
Rand realizes that his fear of being manipulated by the Aes Sedai has blinded him to any of these possibilities, and that he has been a fool. In his head, Lews Therin remarks that both a man who trusts everyone and a man who trusts no one is a fool.
Rand tells Alanna to go back to Cairhien, and to send Rafela and Merana, along with Bera and Faeldrin, to Haddon Mirk to negotiate with the rebels. These are the four who, along with Alanna, Min told him he could trust. Alanna is disappointed to be sent away from him so soon, but Rand tells her that if he is still in Far Madding by the time she finishes in Cairhien, she may return to him.
Alanna realizes that Rand isn’t going to tell her who bonded him, and asks Rand why he’s here. She promises to keep the secret, and he knows she would, but also knows that as a Green she would feel compelled to stay and help him, so he refuses.
She leaves, and Rand sits and ponders how to make Cadsuane interested in him, so that he can learn whatever it is she is supposed to teach him, according to Min’s vision.
Verin arrives at Aleis’s Palace after having been out. She is using the name Eadwin because she still has a warrant out for her exile, and although the people of Far Madding are respectful to Aes Sedai, they also have little reason to fear them, and the Tower usually keeps quiet if Aes Sedai are arrested and punished for some offense.
She finds Cadsuane in a sitting room, working on her embroidery while Elza upbraids her for letting Alanna go to Rand without them.
Elza was always very conscious of where she stood with respect to other sisters, perhaps too much so. For her to ignore Verin, much less confront Cadsuane, she must have been in a fine swivet. “How could you let her go?” she demanded of Cadsuane. “How are we to find him without her?” Ah, so that was it.
Cadsuane replies calmly that Elza can wait for Alanna to return, and cuts off more arguments with a raised finger. Elza leaves, and Cadsuane asks Verin to make her a cup of tea. Verin asks, carefully, if it was wise to let Alanna go, and Cadsuane replies that she couldn’t stop Alanna from going without “letting the boy know more than he should.” When Verin suggests confusion and worry over whatever Rand might be doing in Far Madding, Cadsuane replies that he can do whatever he likes, as long as he lives to see Tarmon Gai’don, and as long as Cadsuane can stay by his side long enough to teach him laughter and tears again.
“He is turning into a stone, Verin, and if he doesn’t relearn that he’s human, winning the Last Battle may not be much better than losing. Young Min told him he needs me; I got that much out of her without rousing her suspicions. But I must wait for him to come to me. You see the way he runs roughshod over Alanna and the others. It will be hard enough teaching him, if he does ask. He fights guidance, he thinks he must do everything, learn everything, on his own, and if I do not make him work for it, he won’t learn at all.”
She adds that she seems to be in a confiding mood tonight, and might confide more if Verin even finishes making the tea. She slips a vial back into her sleeve.
Was Verin going to poison Cadsuane? My first thought was that she was going to use forkroot on her, but would that even matter since they’re in Far Madding? I guess it would still put her to sleep, just as it would any non-channeler, but I can’t see how that would actually serve any ends for Verin; she doesn’t know how long Rand intends to be in Far Madding or what he’s doing there, and there are other sisters to worry about besides Cadsuane.
Not that I know what Verin’s ends are, of course, but she does seem to be trying to protect Rand in some fashion. She’s relieved and puts the poison away once she learns that Cadsuane’s intention is to make sure Rand makes it to the Last Battle and to teach him to be human again, which seems to support the idea that Verin’s goal is also to protect Rand. In the same way that she used her cobbled-together compulsion to make all the captive Aes Sedai decide to swear fealty to him, Verin seems determined to serve Rand in secret and through morally dubious means.
My best guess for Verin at this point is that at some time in her life she discovered something about the Dragon Reborn—some ancient text, or interpretation of the Karaethon Cycle, or even an interpretation of her own—that made her believe that the Dragon Reborn needed to be kept free from too much control by the White Tower. If Verin was also able to deduce that the Oath Rod could be used to lift the Three Oaths, perhaps she used it upon herself in secret, in order that she might have as many means as possible to do the work she deemed necessary.
There are some holes in this theory, of course, including the fact that I don’t think you can use the Oath Rod on yourself, but it’s the best one I can come up with, and if true, it wouldn’t make Verin that different from Moiraine and Siuan, who also spent the last 18ish years working in secret towards the goal of finding and guiding the Dragon Reborn, and who also employed dubious method and lied in every sense except the literal one to the sisters around them, so much so that Elaida was able to incite a good number of the Hall against Siuan when her duplicity was at last discovered. And Elaida herself has also been acting alone on secret knowledge around the Dragon Reborn, following what she believes her own Foretelling indicated about his coming.
The question of who should be directing the Dragon Reborn’s actions is a difficult one for everybody in this world. Most people feel frightened and helpless in the face of what the Karatheon Cycle says will come to pass at his hands, and despite the fact that he is very young, his power and the prestige that comes with his identity is not easy for anyone to face, even powerful, intelligent rulers. People seem to believe they must either stand against him because he is a danger to themselves and their nations, or that they must be bowled over by the very power of his identity.
And then there are the Aes Sedai. Many, perhaps even most, believe that Rand should be controlled and directed by the White Tower. And in truth, it’s easy to understand their perspective on the matter. As Alanna points out to Rand in this chapter, the Aes Sedai have thousands of years of experience leading the world, in fighting against the Dark and (at least in theory) in preparing for the coming of Tarmon Gai’don. Until very recently, Rand was a teenage shepherd with little knowledge of the world and no knowledge whatsoever of channeling, warfare, or the Shadow.
Though Rand has learned much in the short time since he discovered the truth of his identity, and has become in his own right a great swordsman and a good general, he owes so much of what he has done and accomplished to the fact that channeling and weaves seem to come naturally to him, without much need for study. Of course there is also the guidance he receives from Lews Therin and the teaching from Asmodean, but no one else knows anything about this, or would trust these teachers if they did. As a result, Rand appears to everyone to be—and in some ways kind of is—a young man with no experience doing any of the things he is trying to do, who accepts little help and only has a finite amount of time to accomplish his goals before the Last Battle arrives. And before he loses himself to taint-induced madness.
As a reader, of course, I’m going to see Rand differently than the outside world does, and it’s easy to get frustrated when people misjudge him or his intentions. But it is also important to remember that everyone else has important stakes in this fight as well, and I think Rand’s encounter with Alanna, and his realization that he has been letting his fear drive his choices, is a very important reminder of this fact.
Because Rand is the Dragon Reborn, the chosen one, he has been feeling and acting as though he is the only person in the world carrying the burden of the future. But that is not, in fact, the case. The Prophecies state that he must do certain things and be certain places in order for the Light to defeat the Dark, but that doesn’t mean that no one else needs to do anything, be anywhere, or make any choices. Rand feels understandably burdened by his identity and the fate that he believes is waiting for him, and as a result he is somewhat blinded by that sense of fate and duty.
The balance, one assumes, lies somewhere in between Rand having all the control and Rand being controlled by the Aes Sedai, and I doubt it will be an easy balance for either side to find. But perhaps Verin believes—either from something she’s read, her interpretation of the Prophecies, or for some other reason—that the Aes Sedai represent a threat to Rand and his success. I doubt she’d go so far as to think that the Aes Sedai have no place in Rand’s future or that he must be allowed to proceed with no checks or restraint from others, but she is certainly acting as though he must be protected from the Aes Sedai, and that it is important that the Aes Sedai serve him. She worked her cobbled-together compulsion on all the prisoners who were being held by the Wise Ones, after all, compelling all of them to pledge their service to him. It’s a fairly intense action for her to take, on women who weren’t even currently a threat to Rand, so I think it speaks to Verin believing that having Aes Sedai serve Rand is important.
That compulsion is no doubt at least partly responsible for the level of upset Elza feels over Cadsuane’s handling of Alanna. And it is interesting to consider how compulsion is a violation not unlike non-consensual bonding. In Rand’s case the bond has less effect on him than on other men, possibly because he is ta’veren, but for ordinary Warders, the bond can be used by their Aes Sedai to compel them to certain actions. Verin’s version of compulsion also makes a person believe that the actions she compels them to are their own desire, which adds in a little extra moral complexity.
Min’s viewing that the other Aes Sedai will serve Rand “each after her own fashion” probably refers to the compulsion as well. Verin’s weave required that the victim supply her own reasons for choosing to swear fealty, which might not align with Rand’s needs or desires at all, as indeed we saw when these sisters swore to Rand and he questioned them about their motives.
Alanna is not one of these, however, and since Min saw her as one of the Aes Sedai that Rand can fully trust, I suppose we must believe it. She certainly seems sincere, and seemed to be speaking plainly, when she reminded Rand that the Aes Sedai can be assets to him, if only he’d use them for more than a display of his power. Given how she phrases it and how adamant she is, not to mention Min’s vision, I’m inclined to believe what she says, as Rand seems to be.
What Alanna did to Rand is heinous, and her continued insistence on holding onto him in the face of that act even more so, but I don’t think she actually wants to hurt Rand, or that she intends to act maliciously. I think she really believes that Rand is her responsibility now; despite mentioning that she wants to be free of him and even asking Cadsuane to take his bond, she also refused to dissolve it, even with the very tantalizing promise that Rand will lift her oath of obedience from her. Unless Alanna turns out to be in the Black Ajah, which at the moment seems unlikely, this refusal to even entertain the prospect shows that she believes in what she says. And the fact that she holds Rand’s bond while Rand holds the binding oath over her does, in a way, make them more equal than otherwise. Perhaps this is even the reason why Rand offered to lift her oath in turn.
All that being said, however, the fact remains that Alanna did violate Rand. Despite the disapproval and disgust shown by her fellow Aes Sedai over her action, and despite his very measured and reasonable request for her to lift the bond, she continues to hold it. I believe it was Verin who thought that Alanna’s seemingly-impulsive decision to bond Rand might have been brought on by the effects of losing Owein. If true, this doesn’t excuse Alanna’s decision but does mitigate it, morally speaking. However, even if Owein’s death was a factor in her decision, Alanna has shown, both right after the bonding and here in this chapter, that she also believes that Rand should and must be bonded and controlled by an Aes Sedai. She does offer to release him to the other woman who bonded him if she deems that woman capable of controlling him, but that is as far as she will go.
Alanna believes, as many Aes Sedai do, that Rand must be controlled. She is willing to violate him if she must, just as nearly everyone is willing to use him if they must, and he is willing to use people in turn. Rand is wrong about the need to turn himself into a stone, and it is too bad that he can’t learn differently from the three women who love him, but you can see why he believes he must become cold and hard. To many he is more of an object than a person, or more of a symbol, or more of a threat. And that shows in how most people interact with him, even those who care about him. It’s not just about steeling himself to be a commander in wartime.
It makes me wonder how Cadsuane will teach him the lesson he so desperately needs to learn. Perhaps she will offer her own long experience, her own trials as someone whose primary task in life is to fight the war the Shadow—Cadsuane is a Green, after all—to show him that he can dedicate his life to this cause without sacrificing his humanity. If Rand can approach Cadsuane in the way she wants, perhaps she will meet him as an equal, allowing him to see her as one in turn, and to learn from her example, rather than from her discipline.
I was interested, too, in Alanna’s assertion the Asha’man were not coerced into accepting the Warder bond. She is careful to say only that she never saw Merise pressure Jahar and then to bring up the point that the men had little choice; they couldn’t go back to the Black Tower because they feared being taken for Rand’s attackers, and they couldn’t leave Cairhien because then they would be taken for deserters, so, Alanna points out, choosing the Aes Sedai was really their only option. She frames this as Rand’s fault, which in a way it is, and then suggests that Flinn’s discovery of how to Heal stilling made the whole thing worth it. But without seeing it that way, Alanna has actually pointed out that there can’t really be any true consent within the Warder bond, no matter if the potential Warder agrees at the time of bonding, and especially not if he has any reason to choose it besides a genuine desire to be a Warder.
In the case of Flinn, Narishma, and Hopwil, even if they weren’t verbally pressured by the Aes Sedai—and I imagine they were, at least a little—Alanna’s point here shows that they had little choice. Left behind by Rand in Cairhien, they had nowhere else to go but to the Aes Sedai. They may get protection from the exchange, but they were also trapped, and now that they have agreed, they cannot change their minds even if they want to.
Even if a potential Warder agrees to be bonded solely because he desires the life of a Warder, even if he goes to the White Tower specifically to seek out that calling, there can’t be any true consent unless both parties have the ability to withdraw that consent at any time. Once a man is bonded he cannot be released except if his Aes Sedai chooses to do so. He can be compelled to obey her through the bond, he can even be given to another sister. Such an act is frowned upon, of course, even taboo, and would result in punishment for the offender, but it is still possible.
Look at what happened Lan, after all. One of the conditions of his bonding by Moiraine was that she would never use the bond to compel him, and she did exactly that, going so far as to transfer his bond without his permission to force him to live and continue to serve in the fight against the Dark One. Her reasoning was that he was too valuable to waste in an empty death, and while I’m sure she also hoped to make him happy by ensuring that he ended up with Nynaeve, but I am just as sure that her primary desire was to make sure he survived to fight on once she was dead.
And then Lan was raped literally as well as metaphorically by Myrelle, once the bond transferred to her and he was compelled by it to go find her. There is deeply rooted sexism in the idea that men in Lan’s position can be given the will to live through sex—any sex, apparently—and it clearly did Lan no good. But one thing that is good about his time with Myrelle is that Lan and Nynaeve were able to get married and establish their relationship before Nynaeve held Lan’s bond. This puts them on a much more even playing field as they figure out the parameters of their marriage, and makes the issue of consent much more palatable than it would be if Lan was already Nynaeve’s Warder before he was her husband.
I find that the more time goes on, the less I believe that Rand is actually fated to die in the Last Battle. The fact that he has been so sure of it has always felt like a narrative clue, but it also feels very significant that it is never actually said that Rand will die at Shayol Ghul. The prophecies only said that his blood would be on the rocks, which could mean anything, really: a non-fatal wound; the non-healing wounds opening up anew, the way they tend to whenever he’s in a difficult fight; and even some kind of blood ritual (not really a thing with channelers, but the cour'souvra is made using blood and spit, so anything is possible, especially if Rand is facing off with the Dark One himself). And as Rand points out, Min’s vision was not that Alivia would kill Rand but that he would “help him die” which could be literal but also might come from a more poetic reading. Maybe Rand will fake his death at some point, to fool the Forsaken or to get away from his allies; he’s practically done that already. Alivia seems to be very devoted to him, and you definitely need an insider or two if you’re going to fake your own death.
It would be nice if Rand survived the Last Battle, not least because it would show him that he was wrong to want to push away the people who love him, and that they were right to take a risk with him. Not that it would be wrong to choose the bond even if he did die—some joys are worth the pain—but it would be even better if he survived and they could all tell him they told him so.
And finally, I found it very clever of Cadsuane to act in a way that convinced Alanna that she wasn’t really interested in Rand, so that Alanna could in turn convince Rand of it. She’s a clever one, that Cadsuane, and I really like her even if she is mean. Honestly, I want her and Verin to be friends—I half expected Verin to figure out Cadsuane’s little mirror trick—and maybe now that Verin is certain of Cadsuane, they will be.
I also really want to know what it is that Verin did the last time she was in Far Madding that had her exiled! She’s such a tantalizing mystery, and I respect Jordan so much that he has kept it going all this time. It’s frustrating and it’s great.
Next week we’re catching up with Egwene and Elayne, who has some very interesting news of her own, in chapters 26 and 27. In the meantime, I am pleased to report that I have learned a new word today—swivet. Swivet sounds like it means a bird, or maybe a kind of chair, but it actually means “a state of nervous excitement, haste, or anxiety.” Love a good vocabulary lesson. Thanks Jordan!
Oh, and also, shout out to the book’s title in the quote from Rand about his need to become even harder. Love that.[end-mark]
World on a Wire (German: Welt am Draht)(1973) Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Starring Klaus Löwitsch, Barbara Valentin, Mascha Rabben, and Karl-Heinz Vosgerau. Screenplay by Fritz Müller-Scherz and Rainer Werner Fassbinder based on the novel Simulacron-3 by Daniel F. Galouye.
One of the things I like to do when I’m researching movies for this film club is to read about how they were received and interpreted at the time of their release. In cinema, an art form that is always self-consciously contemplating itself, and in science fiction, a genre that constantly uses similar premises to talk about very different themes and ideas, I like getting a glimpse at how audiences responded to a movie when it first appeared.
I haven’t been able to do that with World on a Wire. There is quite a lot of writing out there about the life and works of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, the provocative, controversial German filmmaker who made forty-some movies over a span of less than fifteen years before dying of a drug overdose at age thirty-seven. But everybody seems to agree that World on a Wire, his only work of science fiction, was always one of his more obscure films. It was first broadcast in two parts on West German television in 1973 and screened theatrically a few times before just sort of fading away, until the Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation digitally restored the film in 2010 with the help of its original cinematographer, Michael Ballhaus.
These days, critics and audiences are extremely familiar with the ideas and tropes of virtual reality in movies. Everybody watching World on a Wire since the restoration was released in 2010 is doing so in a world that has already seen Tron (1982), The Matrix (1999), and that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where Professor Moriarty tries to escape the holodeck to live in the real world. Not to mention The Thirteenth Floor, Josef Rusnak’s 1999 film that is somewhere between a remake of Fassbinder’s film and an adaptation of the same novel. But that wasn’t the case in 1973. Of course, the science fictional concept of virtual reality in general, and the particular version of it that encompasses people unknowingly living in virtual worlds, had been around for some time; World on a Wire is based on the American novel Simulacron-3 by Daniel F. Galouye (also published under the title Counterfeit World). And it was one of the first movies about virtual reality—maybe even the very first, although that’s hard to prove or even define. But the fact that the film languished in obscurity for a few decades makes it difficult to assess whether it was influential on what followed.
So we’ll just take the movie as it is—which is completely fine, because it’s great. It’s very long and a bit slow at times, but overall it’s unsettling, tense, oddly touching in parts, and absolutely gorgeous to look at.
The film is centered around a man named Fred Stiller (Klaus Löwitsch) who works at the Institute for Cybernetics and Future Sciences (Institut für Kybernetik und Zukunftsforschung, or IKZ for short). Along with Professor Vollmer (Adrian Hoven), Stiller has developed a highly advanced simulation for a supercomputer; they have created an entire simulation world and peopled it with some 9,000 simulated individuals for the purpose of modeling societal changes over time. At the beginning of the film, Vollmer dies under mysterious circumstances, right after confiding to the head of security, Günther Lause (Ivan Desny), that he has discovered something terrible about their project.
Lause conveys this to Stiller at a party hosted by their boss, Siskins (Karl-Heinz Vosgerau). The bizarre, uncomfortable party is the film’s first look at what happens when you combine stylized filmmaking with surreal philosophical science fiction with—let’s be honest—basically just what I assume rich people social gatherings were like in the ’70s. After Lause tells Stiller there was something strange about Vollmer’s last days and death, Lause disappears. He doesn’t walk away; he just vanishes. This is, naturally, very alarming to Stiller. He tells Siskins; he calls the police; it’s reported in the press.
Then, just as abruptly, everybody begins telling Stiller they have never heard of Lause. Nobody else remembers him. The police have no idea what he’s talking about.
As sci fi fans in the 21st century, our minds immediately land on the explanation that Stiller is likely also in a simulation or is being manipulated in some similar way. But even before cinema and television provided an entire canon of virtual reality stories to lead us to that conclusion, I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what Fassbinder intended. The screechy electronic musical cue whenever something is changing around Stiller is not subtle, nor are the many philosophical conversations about perception and reality and wondering if the virtual people know they are just programming. We can easily spot evidence for it, once we start to look. Some of the evidence is subtle and unsettling, such as the way bystanders in many scenes will stare blankly at the characters, creating sensations of both unnatural inaction and constant surveillance. Some of it is very much not subtle, such as the scene in which a woman on the street is crushed by a falling load of concrete and nobody reacts appropriately.
But even if we are meant to know, Stiller does not, so the film follows his increasingly paranoid and desperate attempts to find out what’s going on. One of his friends is dead, another is missing, and he knows it has something to do with the simulation he has helped create. He pops into the simulation world himself and meets up with a simulated person called Einstein (Gottfried John), who serves as the research team’s “contact” in the virtual reality. Einstein is the only one of the virtual people who knows they’re virtual, and he tries to escape by taking over another man’s body. When he does so, he tells Stiller that Stiller isn’t in the real world either, but in another layer of a simulated world.
Stiller sets out to find out if this is true, his suspicions growing and his sanity unraveling all the while. He wants to find his world’s version of the “contact” person, but his efforts make all the other characters extremely wary of him. There is also a subplot about how Siskins is secretly colluding with a steel company to use the computer for corporate, commercial purposes, rather than the non-commercial social purposes for which it was designed, which is the sort of detail that feels like a glitch in this reality. Gosh, what would the world be like if corporations could use powerful computer simulations for commercial purposes? (Imagine me staring directly into the camera as I type that.)
Because it’s been obvious all along, the confirmation that Stiller’s world is a simulation isn’t a surprise—but it also doesn’t help him much. It only puts him in greater danger. Eva Vollmer (Mascha Rabben) reveals to Stiller that he was created as a simulation of the real-world programmer controlling this virtual world; that man, she says, has gone mad with power and delights in tormenting his virtual counterpart.
There are hardly any special effects to speak of in World on a Wire; the technology on-screen rarely has a science fictional appearance. But the movie still manages to convey a powerful sense of paranoid unreality by using its actors, setting, and truly brilliant cinematography.
I’ve already mentioned the eerie, blank way bystanders act—or fail to react—in several scenes. It’s noticeable when they are in a crowd, such as in a party or at a club, but it’s also very unsettling in scenes with only a few characters. When Einstein escapes his virtual world in the body of Stiller’s friend Fritz (Günter Lamprecht) and Stiller physically attacks him, the cafeteria worker witnessing this stands there the entire time with a bemused expression on her face, barely reacting even when they smash a table. Waiters tend to appear and disappear without warning—which might be how we perceive service staff in real life, but is heightened here to a jarring degree. Furthermore, there is often something just slightly off about how many of the characters are behaving. The nonstop drinking and smoking might just be a relic of the ’70s, sure, but there is also something pointedly self-conscious about the habits, such as when Stiller is messily rolling cigarettes on a conference table at a meeting with his boss and the secretary of state. We know it’s absurd, he knows it’s absurd, but the other characters seem to think they’re having a perfectly normal meeting about the institute fulfilling its governmental obligations. It works because the cast is all very good at coming across as just a bit off.
The movie was filmed in Paris, but for the most part the setting is completely interior: inside the offices at IKZ, inside the computer room, inside various homes and bars and clubs. One thing I absolutely love is how dense and rich the décor is. The rooms are filled with art pieces, the furniture is draped with furs, and even the telephones are stylishly shaped and brightly colored. There are several scenes that are a feast for the eyes, and this is highlighted by the way some characters are dressed. The (white) men mostly have suits and sideburns and mile-wide ties, but the women have a glorious array of fashion and hairstyles that add to the ornateness of every scene. The effect is not always a good one—the way women and men of color are literally objectified as part of the scenery might be intentional, but it’s also deeply off-putting—but the impact is still there. There is something designed about this world and these people, and we see it even without the science fictional or technological special effects.
But my favorite tactic the film has of keeping us off-balance in this unreal world is in its camerawork. The cinematography by Michael Ballhaus and Ulrich Prinz is stunning. There isn’t much information out there about Prinz; he doesn’t have many credits to his name. Ballhaus, on the other hand, is widely regarded as one of the best cinematographers to have worked in the movie business. He collaborated with Fassbinder on several films before making a move to Hollywood, where he worked with the likes of Martin Scorsese, Robert Redford, and Francis Ford Coppola. You’ve almost certainly seen Ballhaus’ work before, and that includes a particular quirk for which he is especially famous: the long 360-degree tracking shot. Ballhaus and Fassbinder established that technique while working on the film Martha (1974); they filmed World on a Wire at more or less exactly the same time, during the summer of 1973, and it too makes extensive use of different types of dizzying 360-degree shots.
My favorite example is in the second part of the film, when Siskins and Holm (Kurt Raab) are in the computer room discussing what to do about Stiller. The room is washed with cool, metallic blue light and completely wrapped in reflective surfaces. Holm is wearing a black suit and seated, while Siskins is wearing a bright plaid jacket and is pacing around constantly. In every single shot, there are multiple versions of both men, reflected from the countless mirrors. And as the camera moves and rotates, including turning in a complete circle, it becomes impossible to tell the men from their reflections. It’s disorienting, discomfiting, and really incredibly cool. It echoes the use of mirrors throughout the film: characters are often shot in reflection, so that they never seem to be looking in quite the right direction. The disruption of visual lines is hugely effective in weaving that sense of wrongness into scenes throughout the film.
It’s Eva who finds a way to bring Stiller out of the virtual world at the end, by transferring his consciousness into the body of his creator. We suspect this is possible, because Einstein has done it before. But right up until it happened, I didn’t know if that’s where the film would go. I had absolutely no idea. It is certainly not a movie that carries an obvious promise of a happy ending; it works too hard throughout its running time to keep us unsettled and unsteady. Other characters are callously deleted; there is no reason for us to trust that Stiller won’t be as well. His knowledge that he’s a virtual person in a virtual world does not imbue him with any special powers or advantage. He doesn’t automatically know things he didn’t know before; he doesn’t have any new skills or tricks. He can’t change the rules of his world, nor is he really trying to.
The changeable perspective, the untrustworthy perception, the sense of being both a part of the world but also separate from it, all of this works together to create this unreal reality. Because of the other virtual reality stories I’ve read and watched over the years, I went in expecting another story in which the entire point of awareness within the virtual world is to obtain some control over it. But Stiller’s goal is never to wrench power away from the unseen sadist playing god with his virtual world; he doesn’t even know about that man for the vast majority of the film. He only ever wants to know. He’s basically hosting a one-man epistemology seminar that features a lot of whisky, way too many cigarettes, and people constantly trying to shoot him. He wants to know how to define his world. He wants to know he isn’t crazy. He wants to know that the friend he remembers was real, that the things he saw really happened, that his paranoia does not come from nothing.
In the end, I’m glad that the film does have a happy ending, more or less, because I found that I very much wanted Stiller’s knowledge of his world to lead to some change. At the same time, I also really like the way the film doesn’t quite embrace what is often the central fantasy of virtual reality stories: the idea that having secret knowledge of your world gives you a superior power to alter it. Stiller has the knowledge, but he doesn’t have the power; that still comes from outside the simulation, from people not subject to the same rules. It’s a fascinatingly bleak examination of the perception of free will, and exactly the sort of story I love to see explored when sci fi plays with virtual reality.
What do you think about World on a Wire? Which of the lengthy rotating tracking shots was your favorite? How do you think it fits into the genre of virtual reality sci fi, which is often weird and almost always a bit philosophical?
Next week: Let’s get lost in the intersection between illusion and reality with Alejandro Amenábar’s Open Your Eyes. Watch it on Amazon and BFI (UK only).[end-mark]
May the Fourth was this weekend, and to celebrate the occasion, Disney released another trailer for Star Wars: The Acolyte, the upcoming series set in the time of the High Republic, which was hundreds of years before the events of the first Star Wars prequel, The Phantom Menace.
The almost-two-minute clip is the same length as the first Star Wars: The Acolyte trailer we got, and it gives us more of Jedi Master Sol (Squid Game’s Lee Jung-jae) as he looks to bring in a former student (Amandla Stenberg) who now thinks the Jedi’s proposed claim to maintain peace is a lie.
Here’s the official logline for the show:
In The Acolyte, an investigation into a shocking crime spree pits a respected Jedi Master (Lee Jung-jae) against a dangerous warrior from his past (Amandla Stenberg). As more clues emerge, they travel down a dark path where sinister forces reveal all is not what it seems….
Leslye Headland (Russian Doll) created the series and is an executive producer along with Kathleen Kennedy, Simon Emanuel, Jeff F. King, and Jason Micalle. In addition to Lee and Stenberg, the series stars Carrie-Anne Moss, Manny Jacinto, Dafne Keen, Charlie Barnett, and Jodie Turner-Smith.
Star Wars: The Acolyte premieres on Disney+ on June 4, 2024 with two episodes, which Headland directed. Subsequent episodes will release weekly.
Gunn went to Threads today and shared a first-look image of Corenswet as the Man of Steel, which you can take a gander of above. In it, we see Clark Kent’s alter ego casually pulling up his red, calf-high boots. Superman’s chill demeanor here is curious because behind him, a giant pink eyeball-looking thing appears to be wreaking havoc on Metropolis. Why is he so mellow? And why does his suit have a baggy, pajama-like look to it?
Those questions are intriguing, but perhaps the most burning question evoked by this image revolves around that giant orb floating above the city. What the hell is that thing?
One possible answer is that, even though it’s mostly giving off a pink hue, it’s the Emerald Eye of Ekron. In DC comics, the Eye used to be part of a gigantic mystical entity unsurprisingly called Ekron. The being lost one of their eyeballs at some point in time, however, and since then it’s been used as a weapon of vast power by villains up to no good.
This, of course, is just a guess—there’s only a wee bit of green in that image, and the Eye is part of the Green Lantern lore rather than Superman’s. One big reason why it might be the Eye, however, is that it is vulnerable to Kryptonite, the one substance that also hinders the Man of Steel. That fact tees up a situation where Clark could have to take on great personal risk and sacrifice to save humanity, which is something that Gunn likes to do to characters in his movies.
We likely won’t have the full answer until Superman: Legacy comes out, of course. Gunn isn’t sharing more details at this point—his only comment on the photo beyond the release date of the film was to credit Jess Miglio for taking the photo on set “entirely in-camera,” which means this is likely using the LED Volume technology that The Mandalorian made popular.
We’ll get to see more of Corenswet’s Man of Steel when Superman: Legacy flies its way into theaters on July 11, 2025. [end-mark]
