"If you don't make it, everybody dies!" Paramount has revealed a new full-length trailer for Terminator: Dark Fate, the sixth Terminator movie that brings us all the way back to the first two James Cameron movies. This one throws away those other sequels and gives us an actual direct sequel to Terminator 2: Judgement Day, starting up the day after Judgement Day. Badass actress Linda Hamilton returns as the first Sarah Connor, and Arnold Schwarzenegger is also back again, along with Edward Furlong as the original John Connor. Cameron is producing and is credited on the story. The cast includes Mackenzie Davis, Brett Azar as the new T-800, along with Natalia Reyes, Gabriel Luna, Diego Boneta, Alicia Borrachero, Steven Cree, Tábata Cerezo, and Björn Freiberg. This definitely looks like it has some awesome action, but I'm not sure if the rest of it will hold up. Almost too much going on in here. Fire it up.
Here's the full-length trailer (+ official poster) for Tim Miller's Terminator: Dark Fate, from YouTube:
"Welcome to the day after Judgment Day." This sixth installment in the Terminator franchise is a direct sequel to The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, disregarding all other Terminator stories as occurring in alternate timelines.Terminator: Dark Fate is directed by American filmmaker Tim Miller, co-founder of Blur Studios, who went from VFX work to the director of the first Deadpool movie previously. The screenplay is written by Billy Ray, and Justin Rhodes. Based on a story by James Cameron, and David S. Goyer & Justin Rhodes. Produced by James Cameron and David Ellison of Skydance. Paramount will release Miller's Terminator: Dark Fate in theaters everywhere starting on November 1st this fall. Your thoughts?
What is out there? What is waiting for us in the stars? James Gray's long-awaited sci-fi adventure Ad Astra has finally arrived. This time Gray takes us out into deep space on a journey with an astronaut named Roy McBride, set in the near future when we've colonized the Moon and Mars but have only just started to reach the edges of our own solar system. McBride is sent on a mission to find his missing father, hoping to figure out what's causing electrical storms wreaking havoc on Earth. This lonely, slow burn space movie is an awe-inspiring, magnificent journey into the stars. As a big time space geek, it ticks every last box. It's sensational to watch, meticulously realized and meditative, more melancholic than exciting but still a stellar experience.
Gray's Ad Astra stars Brad Pitt as an astronaut whose greatest skill is never letting his heart-rate go over 80. He's calm, collected, always capable and insusceptible to panic. Much of the movie features voiceover of Pitt narrating his own experience. He's recruited for a top secret mission to travel all the way to Neptune to rendezvous with a research vessel sent that far out in hopes of clearly our sun's magnetic field and searching for life in the universe. The movie moves smoothly from one moment to the next, letting the dramatic space travel moments play out while surrounding us with that loneliness of space. It doesn't reinvent the genre, but it doesn't need to anyway. And it doesn't take us "further than we've ever been before", but it's still sci-fi at its best. The attention-to-detail in all aspects of space travel are perfect, not much to even nitpick with it.
After my first experience with this movie, I will say it was well worth the wait. And I am very much looking forward to diving into repeat viewings – especially on the big screen because there's so much grandeur in the visuals. That's expected, of course, following up after modern sci-fi like Gravity and Interstellar, but Gray still gives us some truly stunning space travel visuals that he has taken years to hone to perfection. It's a stunning, meditative, contemplative voyage into deep space. I love how it moves so smoothly - wasting no time taking us from planet to planet, plunging us further into the great void of space. It is ultimately about loneliness, and learning about what matters most. Many space movies deal with this, but Gray puts a strong emphasis on that heavy loneliness and lets Pitt carry all the weight. In fact, it's not even really about space.
The more I think about it in the hours after first watching, the more I realize that James Gray has made a sci-fi movie to address the human condition on Earth. On this planet. By taking us on a journey through our solar system. Ad Astra deals with themes of love and loss, and reminds me of The Fifth Element or Her or Interstellar in that sense. It doesn't end up the way I wanted, but I still admire what Gray is trying to say with this movie - that love matters most and we have to solve our own problems. I'm sure there will be more to say, more to discuss, more to analyze after I see it a few more times, and I am looking forward to getting back into it again. It's packed with plenty of sci-fi references, and beautiful scenes to watch over and over. And as a big space geek, this is the kind of film I relish seeing in the cinema. It's glorious big screen cinema.
The journey wouldn't be complete without the breathtaking score by Max Richter, which compliments all the gorgeous shots from cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema. It's not just about camera placement, it's about making everything look and feel authentic, like Pitt is actually out there on this voyage. With the sun lighting up the stars, glaring at us, and reflecting on every surface. There's some subtle aspects of the near future setting that also add just a bit of extra depth. Gray is known for the exactness of his frames, and while the voiceover is steady and dependable, the rest of it is an unforgettable experience. I hope others love it as much as I do, especially space geeks, and I hope others are moved by the ending. The true potential of sci-fi.
Alex's Venice 2019 Rating: 9.5 out of 10 Follow Alex on Twitter - @firstshowing
Amazon’s Carnival Row was over a decade in the making. Originally a film titled A Killing On Carnival Row, the Travis Beacham-penned script made the 2005 Hollywood Black List, with Guillermo del Toro even on board to helm the feature-length at one point. Like most planned del Toro projects, however, it seemed destined to remain in development hell forever. That said, in a post-Game of Thrones climate, the fantasy genre is booming again. And realizing that there was an appetite for a similar kind of violent, gritty genre show, Amazon Studios acquired the property in 2017 and turned it into a likeminded series about creatures, sex, violence, and political upheaval.
Those are where the Game of Thrones comparisons end, though. If Carnival Row is reminiscent of anything, it’s the Victorian fantasy of Penny Dreadful and countless supernatural detective mysteries riffing on Sherlock Holmes that can be found in steampunk literature. It’s just more self-serious than most of them.
The show stars Orlando Bloom as Rycroft Philostrate, a detective out to hunt down a serial killer in a neo-Victorian city filled with mythical creatures (known as the Fae). During his investigation, he also rekindles his relationship with a refugee faerie, Vignette (Cara Delevingne), who has ended up in the land of the humans, after a war pillaged her homeland. In this world, the magical beings are subjected to prejudice and xenophobia. The humans are responsible for the plight of their world, but that doesn’t mean they’ve welcomed the Fae with open arms. As such, the mythical population has been forced into servitude, working as prostitutes and in other professions that prevent them from having freedom and equal rights.
Politicians are divided over what to do with the Fae. On one side of the fence, the more tolerant figures acknowledge that their savagery caused the crisis. On the other side — the one that represents general society — the opposition echoes similar views to Donald Trump and Nigel Farage in regards to migrants. But even the most sympathetic people to the Fae’s cause still refer to them with racial slurs, which says a lot about how backwards this society is.
There’s a purpose behind the gross attitudes towards non-humans, though. Carnival Row wants to make observations and statements about contemporary real-world social and political issues — nationalism, imperialism, racism, classism, etc — and it does so with middling effect. The show features almost every form of oppression there is, and while the commentary doesn’t have anything false to say about the state of our world per se, the series fails to incorporate these themes into a compelling narrative.
More than anything, the story is too dense and serious for its own good. Patience might serve viewers well in the long run as the story picks up steam toward the end of the eight-episode series. At the same time, making it through the series is a slog, which makes the satisfying moments towards the end feel like a case of too little, too late. The cusp of the series revolves around our two protagonists’ journeys amid a dull crime storyline, but it’s bloated with some interconnected subplots — forbidden love, political scheming, etc — which vary in quality. The creators want to immerse us in this world, but the various branches make for an experience that’s convoluted and fails to bring anything new and interesting to the table.
Credit must be given to the creators for trying to establish a world with a rich mythology and fully-fleshed ideas, but the entertainment factor is severely lacking and the fantastical window dressing doesn’t amount to much without an engaging story to support it. Penny Dreadful and Ripper Street have a similar period aesthetic but provide viewers with more satisfying Victorian debauchery and compelling tales worthy of investing in from the off.
The most intriguing element of Carnival Row is the fantastical world that’s just begging to be explored in more detail, which I hope they do in Season 2. The world-building is a highlight, and the potential for excellent stories to be told within this universe makes me hopeful that the show can find its way still. If you make it to the end, you might be willing to give Carnival Row a second chance.
There are some fun moments to be found, however. The action — when it happens — is mostly solid, with one particular highlight appearing in the first episode, featuring a foot chase through cobbled streets and across rooftops that’s wonderfully staged and makes great use of its setting. There’s also some shocking violence on display that will satiate your desire for fictional bloodletting.
As to be expected, the cast is also fine and does the best with the material they have to work with. Our two leads are standouts, but Jared Harris as the leader of Parliament plays a quintessentially British politician with aplomb. David Gyasi is also impressive as a wealthy faun who finds himself at the center of Draconian class and race politics.
Here’s hoping that the best is yet to come. For all its faults, there’s enough interesting ideas on display in Carnival Row to warrant a second season. A deeper investigation into this world, coupled with more narrative focus and urgency could make this an intriguing slice of fantasy pulp with a worthwhile message at its heart. Right now, it’s a boring, occasionally fascinating mess.
"I'm going to make sure you never forget what he told you." The Match Factory unveiled the first official promo trailer for Ema, the latest film from acclaimed, award-winning Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larraín (of Post Mortem, No!, The Club, Neruda, Jackie). This is premiering at the Venice Film Festival this week, and then will hit the Toronto Film Festival next. Mariana Di Girolamo stars as Ema, a reggaeton dancer who "sets out on an odyssey of personal liberation" in the aftermath of an adoption that goes awry as their household falls apart. Also starring Gael García Bernal, Paola Giannini, and Santiago Cabrera. The first poster for this is also stunning - such attention-grabbing imagery! And this trailer is splendid, setting the tone and introducing this colorful story. I'm a big fan of Larrain and can't wait to see this in Venice soon.
Here's the first festival promo trailer (+ poster) for Pablo Larrain's Ema, direct from TMF's YouTube:
After a shocking incident involving an adopted child upends her family life and marriage to a tempestuous choreographer, Ema (Mariana Di Girolamo), a reggaeton dancer, sets out on an odyssey of personal liberation, in this incendiary drama about art, desire, and the modern family.Ema is directed by award-winning Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larraín, director of all the acclaimed films Fuga, Tony Manero, Post Mortem, No, The Club, Neruda, and Jackie (with Natalie Portman) previously. The screenplay is written by Guillermo Calderón and Alejandro Moreno. This is premiering at the Venice Film Festival this week, and will also play at the Toronto Film Festival coming up. It's still searching for international distribution - no other release dates are setup yet. Stay tuned for updates + early reviews. First impression? Who's intrigued?
"Three words are important to me: inspiration, creation, sharing." Janus Films has debuted a new official US trailer for the wonderful, inspiring cinema documentary Varda by Agnès - the final film made by the iconic / the legendary Agnès Varda before she passed away earlier this year. This premiered at the Berlin Film Festival this year to rave reviews (here's my own), and is being released as a feature doc along with a retrospective of all her films. An "unpredictable" doc from a fascinating storyteller, Varda by Agnès sheds light on her experience as a director, bringing a personal insight to what she calls "cine-writing," traveling from Rue Daguerre in Paris to Los Angeles and Beijing. It's a lovely journey through her entire life/career, examining many of her films with conversations discussing her life as a storyteller. I said in my review: "it's utterly delightful and endlessly inspiring to listen to her talk about cinema and to tell stories about her life."
Here's the official US trailer (+ poster) for Agnès Varda's documentary Varda by Agnès, from Vimeo:
You can also watch the other full UK trailer for Varda by Agnèshere, to see a bit more footage from this.
Agnès Varda – photographer, installation artist, and pioneer of the Nouvelle Vague, is an institution of French cinema. Whether in front of the camera or behind it, Agnès Varda was a one-of-a-kind visual storyteller who eschewed convention and prescribed approaches to drama. In Varda by Agnès — Varda's final film — she offers a personal insight into her oeuvre, using excerpts from her work to illustrate her unique artistic visions and ideas.Varda by Agnès was directed by the legendary Belgium-born filmmaker extraordinaire Agnes Varda; with additional work by Didier Rouget. Varda directed numerous doc films previously including Far from Vietnam, Daguerréotypes, Mur murs, The Young Girls Turn 25, The World of Jacques Demy, The Gleaners and I, The Beaches of Agnès, and Faces Places with JR. This premiered at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year, and played at CPH:DOX and the Hong Kong Film Festival. Janus Films will release Varda by Agnès starting November 22nd at NYC's Lincoln Center, plus a retrospective.
"The kids have no confidence in me. I know nothing about soccer." Cohen Media Group has released the official US trailer for a Swedish drama called Britt-Marie Was Here, an adaptation of the bestselling novel by Fredrik Backman ("A Man Called Ove"). This premiered at the Göteborg Film Festival earlier this year. Directed by Swedish actress / filmmaker Tuva Novotny, the film tells the story of a woman who leaves her husband after 40 years to find some new meaning in life. Backman's "particular brand of witty humor and inspiring themes of self-discovery have effectively been captured," with a stand-out lead performance by Pernilla August in the main role. It also stars Peter Haber, Malin Levanon, Vera Vitali, Olle Sarri, Mahmut Suvakci, Lancelot Ncube, and Anders Mossling. This looks fun! Even if you're not someone who is leaving their marriage after 40 years, there's still some charming entertainment to be found in here.
Here's the official trailer (+ poster) for Tuva Novotny's Britt-Marie Was Here, direct from YouTube:
This warmhearted comedy finds Britt-Marie, age 63, suddenly re-considering her purpose & habits after leaving her husband of 40 years. Accepting a supremely unglamorous job at a ramshackle rec center in the backwater town of Borg, she finds herself taking an interest in the daily routines of the town’s oddball denizens—who all seem perfectly content to be stuck in their ways. Determined not to do the same, she takes on the impossible task of coaching the children’s soccer team and draws the attention—and possible affections of—a handsome police officer. Perhaps there is an opportunity for a second chance after all…Britt-Marie Was Here is directed by Swedish actress / filmmaker Tuva Novotny, director of the film Blind Spot previously. The screenplay is written by Anders Frithiof August, Øystein Karlsen, Tuva Novotny; based on the novel by Fredrik Backman. This premiered at the Göteborg Film Festival, and first opened in Sweden in January. Cohen Media Group opens Britt-Marie Was Here in select theaters starting September 20th.
Are you looking for something new to watch on Netflix? Have you been intentionally avoiding the Dark because of its hour-long episodes, subtitles, and nebulous downer-ness?
Well, cut it out.
If you, like me, have been keeping Dark on the back burner because you’ve heard it’s a horror series, you’ll be happy to hear that it’s not. While the atmosphere definitely tends toward spooky, the series is more in line with science fiction … specifically time travel.
However much time travel you think you know is in Dark, triple it.
Time travel isDark‘s genre, or at the very least it’s the vehicle for its philosophical, mythological treatises on the human condition and eternal recurrence. But even if you’re not up on your Nietzsche or Greek myths, there’s a wealth of enjoyment to be had in trying to untangle the web of crisscrossed and loop-de-looping timelines in over a century’s worth of interconnected instances in the little German town of Winden.
Of course “enjoyment” is a relative term. The very first scene sees a man hanging himself in an attic, and the mood never really gets lighter. Make no mistake, Dark lives up to its name, both in tone and palette. Lead character Jonas’s telltale lemon yellow raincoat is so striking because of its bizarre vibrancy. It’s often the only hint of color even on the bright summer days of this show, which are washed out and bleak.
But if you can get past that bleakness (and I beg you to try) you’ll be rewarded with what’s bringing these poor people down so much : a strange, ineffable, and possibly inescapable labyrinth of time travel and predestination, the facts of which are still shrouded in mystery two seasons into its planned three-season arc.
Are you put off by the prospect of such a long wait for a payoff? Please don’t be. Because along the way you’ll tease out clues and make connections and feel very deeply for the characters as they do the same. Once you get a feel for what’s going on, you might even solve the initial mystery well ahead of the characters, but don’t get too cocky — it’s only the first in a litany of revelations, a practice run for understanding the kind of ride you’re in for. It’s a warm-up mystery that, while itself is essential to the story, opens up the gate to a huge expanse of possibilities.
Not too big on the idea of time travel? Give it a shot anyway. While it does go headlong into the genre, Dark is more palatable than a lot of time travel stories simply because it embraces its own ineffable nature. This isn’t the wild timeline-altering of Looper, nor is it the hand-waving timey-wimeyness of Doctor Who. There’s something much bigger at play here … even if the characters haven’t a clue what it is.
That means the show can go through all the thematically necessary motions of explanation without having to rely on those explanations making perfect sense. Jonas, our focal point of a normal teenager, has what’s really going on explained to him a few times over. And that’s all well and good until those very people are in turn told that they’ve been lied to and are let in on what’s really, reallygoing on.
And so, as we move through the show, the hierarchy of who knows what’s happening moves ever upward. As we (as well as Jonas) demand answers, we get a progression of new half-explanations and revelations that prove (or possibly don’t prove) to be themselves confused and misinformed. As we little by little gain more information about the unattainable truth, our pool of focal characters grows from one teenager to an entire cast of characters who are just trying to figure out what the hell is going on.
(As a bonus, with the show’s intersecting and curlicuing timelines, often information has no original source, bootstrapped into existence as it’s passed from characters to younger versions of themselves).
Does this sound overwhelming and frustrating? Against all odds, it isn’t. I swear.
In fact, it’s refreshing. It makes for a surprisingly satisfying look at time travel, one that assures you if you’re hung up on paradoxes, you can bet the people they affect are, too.
Several times throughout the show, an older character assures their younger self that they could never imagine saying or doing the things they knew they would grow up to do. And yet here they were, at long last, saying and doing them. All it took was time.
Maybe that’s all we need, too. It’s hard to imagine everything shaking out at the end of Dark‘s next and final season. But the promise of meaning is out there, and I’m confident that if we just wait, we’ll understand what the future holds for us. Even if we don’t, it will have been an incredible ride.
So, hurry up and get hooked on the first two seasons that are already on Netflix. Don’t let time pass you by.
One does not need to be a horror aficionado to know that when a creepy clown beckons from a darkened sewer, it’s probably best to run in the opposite direction. So, what could such a clown possibly say to successfully lure someone in?
This very scenario became the basis for one of 2017’s most iconic memes, in which Pennywise the Dancing Clown from IT lurks in the sewers, offering something irresistible. Now is the perfect time to revisit and celebrate this meme about clowns and bad decisions with IT: Chapter 2 looming on the horizon.
The “Pennywise Sewer” meme rose to prominence well before the release of the 2017 film adaptation, in which Bill Skarsgård plays the eponymous “IT,” an evil shape-shifting entity that takes on the appearance of a clown, among other forms, and terrorizes the children of Derry, Maine, every 27 years.
Pennywise has been around and kicking (or dancing) since Stephen King’s 1986 novel, as well as its initial adaptation in the form of a television miniseries in 1990. According to Know Your Meme, it was this incarnation, in which Tim Curry dons the clown suit and makeup, that spawned the first known Pennywise the Clown meme back in 2010.
Despite Pennywise’s early presence in the world of memes, it was only when users on Twitter began to ruminate on what he could offer to make someone eagerly slide into a sewer that he became the iconic meme we all know today. The template immediately took off, especially following the new film’s release.
Examples depict Pennywise offering access to a Netflix account or resolved student loan debt, followed by screenshots of someone eagerly crawling into a sewer, images taken out of context from a video of a woman rescuing kittens. The meme even spawned a spinoff, in which Pennywise offers something so awful that the reaction image is a construction crew filling the sewer with cement.
So why did this meme have such a broad appeal? Part of it must be the common childhood fear of clowns. Another aspect of the meme’s popularity is inevitably due to IT‘s box office success as a horror novel adaptation that hadn’t previously taken a theatrical form. Yet, another element at play here is ultimately the message of the meme itself: deliberately and consciously making a bad decision for a very specific price.
LorrisKitzel / twitter.com via: @LorrisKitzel
Pennywise’s temptations are messages that compel an entire group or even a generation to hypothetically crawl into a clown-infested sewer. The individual memes created in this format were simultaneously specific and widely relatable, which explains the relative longevity of the Pennywise Sewer meme. This meme unifies a community of people who are all willing to risk it all for some ultra-specific goal. If you can laugh, you are part of that group.
This blend of accessible content and hyper-specificity is what makes Pennywise an example of the quintessential meme. The combination of a hypothetical situation that everyone would fear, the humor of deliberately making a bad choice, and the dynamics of all being doomed together because of a common goal make this meme the perfect formula for an internet-wide inside joke. And isn’t that all a meme can aspire to be, at the end of the day?
The Pennywise Sewer meme is a meme of the people, and the wealth of clown-related meme content in recent years is at least partially due to his influence since 2010. Consider 2015’s McFreakin Lose It prank Vines or the current renaissance of clown memes that include TikTok videos and the ever-relatable clown emoji.
Let us not forget the lasting impact a sewer-lurking clown has had on the real world: leading up to and following the release of 2017’s IT, multiple cities had red balloons tied to sewer grates. With IT: Chapter 2 just around the corner, this is a time to celebrate all the ways terrifying clowns (and bad decisions) bring us together. Here’s to the future of Pennywise memes following this next installment!
The most chilling movie of 2019 won’t be fabricated from fiction. Bombshell, which is based on the real-life sexual harassment case that rocked Fox News in 2016, will be the movie that exposes humanity at its most corrupt.
Starring Charlize Theron, Margot Robbie, Nicole Kidman, and John Lithgow, the film follows the women who ousted a powerful male abuser from the media company. In the end, though, his removal didn’t really come at a great price for him at all. But we’ll get into that shortly.
Before you read on about the true story that inspired this movie, you can check out the tension-filled teaser trailer below.
Roger Ailes used to be one of the most powerful men in America. As the chairman and CEO for Fox News, for 20 years he helped shape elections, promote wars, and push a conservative agenda into millions of households nationwide. He must have felt untouchable, but it only took a couple of weeks for his world to come crashing down.
Behind the scenes, Ailes (portrayed by Lithgow in Bombshell) was a creep. In 2016, more than two dozen women came forward and accused him of sexual harassment. In doing so, they exposed a misogynistic and corrupt culture at the network that extended beyond Ailes.
The first woman to step forward was Gretchen Carlson (Kidman’s role), a former Fox and Friends anchor who was subjected to demeaning comments about her figure and looks. For example, Ailes used to tell her to wear tighter outfits on the air. When she complained to supervisors about a male colleague who spoke down to her, the chairman dismissed her claims and accused her of being a man-hater. She wasn’t the only woman at the company to experience this kind of awful treatment, either.
At staff meetings, Ailes had been known to ask women to pose for him while he examined their figures. He also propositioned female employees for sexual favors. As noted by Intelligencer, he spent millions of network dollars quietly settling these harassment claims while also conducting surveillance and smear campaigns against those who risked exposing him as a monster.
These campaigns allegedly involved Ailes’ operatives following political and personal enemies around. Blogs were also set up to discredit and tarnish the reputations of those who opposed him. According to the Intelligencer report, Ailes handled his nefarious business in a 14th-floor office known as “The Black Room,” which was set up in 2011. He was also known to monitor his employees’ emails.
Carlson knew that in order to defeat Ailes, she had to gather concrete evidence against him. In 2014, she began recording his harassment incidents via a hidden iPhone she took to meetings. After a year of taping his inappropriate behavior, she had enough evidence to expose him — but it wasn’t that simple.
Carlson hired Casey Smith to handle her case. Smith had already won sexual harassment settlements for women against powerful figures, most notably in 2008 in a lawsuit involving former New Jersey Governor Donald DiFrancesco. She accepted Carlson’s case, but first they had to get around a clause in her Fox contract which mandated that employee disputes be handled internally.
There was a way around the clause, however. Instead of suing Fox, Carlson and Smith decided to sue Ailes personally, hoping that the element of surprise would prevent Fox from launching a preemptive lawsuit of their own. This led to Carlson being fired by the network in July 2016 on the day her contract expired. Afterward, they pushed their case forward and even went as far as installing special software on their devices to prevent Ailes and Fox from hacking into their IT systems.
While Smith and Carlson were wary of going up against such a powerful adversary, they received some unexpected support from within the company. After they filed their claim, six more women stepped forward accusing Ailes of sexual harassment. Furthermore, the Murdoch family, who were apparently looking for an excuse to get rid of Ailes for a long time, conducted their own private investigation into the matter.
Naturally, Ailes responded to the accusations by having Fox anchors defend him and smear his enemies on-air. He and his wife, Elizabeth (played by Connie Britton in the movie), claimed that the Murdoch sons and the liberal media were trying to persecute him. As the events coincided with the 2016 election, they said it was all part of a master plan to help Hilary Clinton become president.
During the internal investigations by the Murdoch family, more female Fox employees — including Megyn Kelly (Theron), who was being touted as the future face of the network at the time — opened up about Ailes and his awful exploits. On top of that, Rupert Murdoch (Malcolm McDowell in Bombshell) was unhappy with Ailes and the network’s strong support of Donald Trump. With the chairman proving to be a liability in more ways than one, Murdoch no longer felt that he was essential to the Fox machine.
Of course, that didn’t stop Ailes and his allies from fighting back. Elizabeth tried to have the company’s media department release racy photoshoot images of Kelly to shame her. They refused. Elsewhere, Ailes’ team leaked information to the right-wing outlet Breitbart claiming that there would be a massive employee exodus from the company if he was removed, and they would form a rival network — the proposed Trump TV — together. This didn’t happen either.
With Ailes’ departure all but confirmed, he was barred from Fox’s headquarters and locked out of his company accounts. Then, on July 21, 2016, Rupert Murdoch summoned Ailes to a meeting in which they agreed to a $40 million severance package. The agreement also prevented Ailes from joining a rival network, though he would remain an advisor to Murdoch.
Over the following days, more women spoke out about Ailes and Fox. Anchor Andrea Tantaros said that she was taken off the air after reporting her former boss, while her lawsuit compared the company to a “sex-fueled, Playboy Mansion–like cult, steeped in intimidation, indecency, and misogyny.”
In the end, Carlson agreed to an eight-figure settlement. Some of the other women who spoke out, however, received no compensation. Ailes, meanwhile, became an adviser to President Trump until his death on May 17, 2017 — just three days after his 77th birthday.
At the end of the day, Ailes got off more than lightly. He left the company with a hefty financial package and became an influential figure in the Trump campaign. Furthermore, his allies at the network (Sean Hannity, mainly) have continued to defend him, meaning that there will always be people out there who don’t take the allegations against him seriously.
The Ailes situation also prompted more women to expose the problematic culture at Fox. In 2017, Bill O’Reilly was also accused of several incidences of sexual misconduct, which led to his removal from the company and him having to pay $45 million in settlements.
Earlier this year, Fox Nation host Tyrus was also accused of sexual harassment after reportedly sending lewd texts to his colleague Britt McHenry. This one appears to have slipped under the radar, but it’s yet another incident which reveals a rotten epidemic that Fox News.
With the release ofReturn of the Jediin 1983 came the end of the original Star Wars trilogy and the beginning of a belovedStar Warsicon: Admiral Ackbar, who is celebrated primarily for the line “It’s a trap!”The Rebel fleet commander and his signature cry have circulated throughout pop culture, referenced and remixed time and time again to exist as a point of reference for homages, fanbase obsessions, and, of course, memes.
The scene in Return of the Jedi involving Ackbar and the trap is during the Rebel Alliance’s attempted destruction of the second Death Star. After discovering the plans for the weapon, the fleet aims to secretly infiltrate and strike from within. But those plans were leaked by the Emperor to lure the Rebel Alliance into a counterattack. “It’s a trap!” yells Ackbar as the fleet is ambushed by TIE fighters.
Just like with the origins of most memes, fans found a way to latch onto the short-lived moment and sprawl its longevity through repurposing and remixing.“It’s a Trap!” was one of the first major internet memes to catch on — the white text on image as we know it today has origins in the early 2000s.
The onset of memes focused on common situations of deception, many with masculine undertones of conversational “traps” set by women, but also including other humorous day-to-day dupes — for example, having to use the bathroom in a dream.
In general, the early memes tended to fixate on trap-like situations, using Ackbar purely as a springboard for their jests. After a bit of circulation on its own, the meme became regularly used at the news forum site Fark.com, partly as a categorization label for linked stories. Elsewhere, on 4chan, users repurposed the meme for transphobic jokes, because the internet itself is a trap where no nice things stay pure for long.
But it really took off after severalYTMND remixes, which allowed the original soundbite to be paired with the famed image tiled across the screen, paired with animation and other graphics. This was almost an entirely new form of the meme — instead of using Ackbar to reference moments of trickery, the popular YTMND graphics just replayed the sound over the image over and over again. This spoke to Ackbar’s status — outside of normal memes, he and his phrase were now an icon in meme culture.
Other Ackbar memes began to use this status to parody the meme itself. One meme reads, “Don’t spell part backwards — It’s a Trap!” Then, for a bit of time, the word “tarp” replaced “trap.” According to Knowyourmeme.com, “It’s a Tarp!” became popular in 2008 originally as a misspelling of the meme and later opened up as a subsection of memes dedicated to the Obama administration’s Troubled Assistance Relief Program, or TARP.
After picking up plenty of steam in the meme world, the image was manipulated to recreate other popular memes of the time — Ackbar’s head was photoshopped onto various meme legends, with a remixed version of “It’s a trap!” to fit the original content of the meme. As an example of this, the History Channel’s Ancient Aliens still of alien expert Giorgio A. Tsoukalos gained popularity in around 2010 — one of the most popular memes read, “I’m not saying it was aliens… but it was aliens.” Fans of both memes created a crossover, a double-reference reaction image.
Ackbar’s iconography and phrase, through this lens, have disassociated the moment in Return of the Jedi from Ackbar’s place in the Star Wars fanbase. In fact, for a while, the “It’s a Trap!” meme seemed to be stripped of its association with anythingStar Warsrelated altogether, rewriting Ackbar’s legacy to be a shorthand reaction to any sort of deception.
Eventually, television shows similarly borrowed the phrase, playing on its memorable assertiveness and status also without any connection toStar Wars.Political talk showsThe Colbert ReportandThe Daily Showfrequented the line — Jon Stewart’sconnection to Republicans’ reactions to Obamacareis perhaps most notable.
But Ackbar’s newfound status as an internet icon brought him prominently enough into pop culture that he was suddenly a favorite character within Star Wars fandom. In a 2009 episode ofThe Big Bang Theory,Sheldon mentions he enjoys mimicry and uses “It’s a trap!” in his Ackbar impersonation, stating that it would be better with a giant fish head. This example begins to lean into Ackbar’sStar Warslegacy as something more than just the quote and meme.
In 2010, FamilyGuydedicated its ninth season finale to Return of the Jedi with a special double-episode entitled “It’s a Trap!” in homage to Ackbar. The episode only features one actual “It’s a trap!” moment, and Ackbar is played by the family’s pet fish, Klaus Heissler, but it’s a melding of the animated series’ continued homage to Star Wars and recognition of that character and his famous quote’s rising popularity.
Stop-motion animation seriesRobot Chicken,famous for parodying aspects of pop culture, has also used Ackbar in many of their sketches. They have a more holistic view of the admiral — not only do they reference the quote but also Ackbar’s character and his species, Mon Calamari.
In 2010, students at the University of Mississippi attempted to hail Admiral Ackbar as their school mascot. Previously just known as “the Rebels,” they argued Ackbar’s status in the Rebel Alliance would fit perfectly as a school symbol. He was defeated in the vote by a black bear, but the situation demonstrates a continual cult-like following for the character.
Instances like these seem to stray from the original widespread text-on-image Ackbar.Every use is still Ackbar and/or his quote but slightly altered to meet a format that fits the main content. While the online meme helped as a starting point for Ackbar’s consistent renowned status, the homages and spoofs seen on television are an entirely different subcategory of “It’s a Trap.” Ackbar, as a whole, is an icon in many ways — the internet meme is just one large facet of his status.
And yet somehow, even after all of this, Ackbar’s demise in Star Wars:The Last Jediwas nowhere near the end he deserved given his evolved popularity — his final moments involve him being taken down in lackluster fashion by an explosion along with several other members of the Resistance (including General Leia, who survives in her Force-using Mary Poppins fashion). The lack of closure is tragic, but if anything, it perpetuates the fleeting nature of Ackbar, the “It’s a trap!” quote, and of memed content in general.
