The second Pokemon Go Fest event of the summer kicks off soon in Dortmund, Germany, but even if you can’t attend in-person, you’ll have a chance to catch a special Pokemon. To celebrate the event, Niantic is increasing spawns of male Nidoran around the world beginning tomorrow, July 4, at 1 AM PT / 4 AM ET / 9 AM BST, and if you’re lucky enough, you’ll be able to find its Shiny version for the first time.
That isn’t all that’s happening during the event. As was the case during last month’s Pokemon Go Fest in Chicago, Niantic will offer a variety of Global Challenges throughout Germany’s Go Fest. Players around the world can chip in toward their completion, and if enough challenges are completed, Niantic will make a variety of bonuses available in the game, including another chance to capture the Legendary Pokemon Entei.
This week marks the third anniversary of Pokemon Go’s release, and Niantic is celebrating the occasion with a variety of events and bonuses. Shiny Alolan forms of Rattata, Sandshrew, Vulpix, Diglett, Meowth, Geodude, Grimer, and Exeggutor can be found in the wild, and Pikachu wearing a party hat is available once again. There are also new Special Research quests and new avatar items inspired by the game’s three team leaders in the Style Shop.
Beyond the third anniversary festivities, the Gen 3 Legendary Groudon has returned to Raid Battles for a limited time. The Pokemon will appear at Gyms until July 10, and you’ll have a chance of encountering its Shiny version. Groudon and Kyogre are also two of the possible Legendaries you can encounter through July’s new Field Research tasks. Another Gen 3 Legendary, Speed Forme Deoxys, has also begun appearing in EX Raids.
Pokemon Go’s next Community Day is scheduled for July 21. The featured Pokemon this time will be Mudkip, the Gen 3 Water-type starter. Throughout the event, Mudkip will appear in the wild more frequently than normal, and if you can evolve it into its final form, Swampert, by the end of the event, it’ll learn a special move. You’ll also earn triple the usual amount of XP for capturing Pokemon during this month’s Community Day.
Officially, Marvel only has two ongoing Star Wars comics at the moment – the core Star Wars series and Star Wars: Darth Vader. But unofficially, Darth Vader remains the constant third pillar of the Star Wars line. Between Charles Soule and Giuseppe Camuncoli’s Darth Vader comic to the recent Vader: Dark Visions miniseries and now Target Vader, the Dark Lord of the Sith has been a constant presence on the stands these past few years. And at some point, this iconic villain begins to wear out his welcome.
It’s probably just as well that Target Vader is less about Vader himself than the plot to kill him. This new series is set during the height of Vader’s reign, as Emperor Palpatine dispatches his enforcer to ferret out an underground cell known as the Hidden Hand. The Hidden Hand, for their part, have a vested interest in ridding the galaxy of Darth Vader once and for all. And so this series develops into a game of cat and mouse in the opening chapter, with Vader hunting his prey even as a team of bounty hunters is assembled to assassinate the most dangerous man in the galaxy.
One of publisher Electronic Arts’ bosses has spoken up to talk about how, after 25 years with the company, he continues to struggle with how EA is often perceived as “a bunch of bad guys.”
A publicly traded company with thousands of employees around the world, EA is among the world’s largest, oldest, and most established gaming publishers. EA’s EVP of strategic growth, Matt Bilbey, explained to GI.biz that when EA makes mistakes, these issues are blown out due in part to the company’s size and scale.
“25 years at EA and I still struggle with the external perception that we’re just a bunch of bad guys,” Bilbey said. “We love making and playing games. Unfortunately, when we make mistakes on games, the world knows about it because it’s of a size and scale.”
Indeed. When EA’s Star Wars: Battlefront II ignited a controversy in 2017 over its implementation loot boxes and microtransactions–which were removed before the game’s public release–the discussion kicked off a global examination of loot boxes in video games that continues today. The title might have been embroiled in controversy, but it shipped a gargantuan 9 million-plus copies in its first months alone, making it one of the most successful Star Wars games in history.
Also in the interview, Bilbey spoke about how EA, as the company grows larger and larger, faces the perception that it becomes “disconnected” from new, original ideas. That’s where the EA Originals program comes in. The label is behind titles like A Way Out, Fe, and Sea of Solitude, along with more games coming up in the future.
“EA Originals is our opportunity to connect with that talent and those smaller ideas. When you are part of a big company, it’s too easy to fall into the trap where when you see a game concept… it has to be big,” he said. “The notion of actually coming up with small, unique game ideas… We know from the work that we’ve been doing on our subscription business that gamers will play a FIFA or a Fortnite–they have one main franchise–but then they want breaks from those games to play something that’s maybe five or ten hours long.”
At E3 this y ear, EA announced the latest partners for the EA Original label, including Hazelight, Glowmade, and Zoink.
Actor Rami Malek plays the villain in the upcoming 25th and untitled James Bond movie. Now, the Oscar winner has revealed that he needed a guarantee about the character before signing on. He told The Daily Mail that he discussed his intentions with director Cary Fukunaga, telling him that he wouldn’t play the part if the character was a religious fundamentalist.
“It’s a great character and I’m very excited,” Malek said. “But that was one thing that I discussed with Cary. I said, ‘We cannot identify him with any act of terrorism reflecting an ideology or a religion. That’s not something I would entertain, so if that is why I am your choice then you can count me out.'”
That kind of character was “clearly not” what Fukunaga had in mind, Malek said, so he agreed to do the movie. The character Malek plays is a “very different kind of terrorist,” he said.
Malek went on to say the script is “extremely clever,” and it should be “exactly what people want” from a James Bond movie. Malek also said he feels “substantial pressure” to deliver in his performance given the weight of the history of the James Bond series.
Bond 25–which is not the final name–stars Daniel Craig as James Bond for the final time. Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris, and Lea Seydoux will all reprise their roles for the film Jeffrey Wright and Ben Whishaw also return.
This year’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker will address one of the most-discussed elements of the new trilogy: who the heck are Rey’s parents? Actress Daisy Ridley, who plays Rey, told The USA Today that director JJ Abrams is planning to reveal more details about her parentage in the upcoming film.
“(Director J.J. Abrams) did say the question is answered. So at the end of the film, you do know what the dealio is,” she said.
In The Last Jedi, Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) told Rey that her parents were no one of significance; they were only “filthy junk traders,” according to Kylo Ren. Ren, who is the movie’s villain, told this to Rey in the middle of a tense, emotional scene where he was directly trying to manipulate her, so many have theorized that he was indeed lying.
Abrams said earlier this year that The Rise of Skywalker aims to offer a satisfying conclusion not only to the new trilogy that began with 2015’s The Force Awakens, but also for the entire “Skywalker Saga” that began in 1977. Part of this is revealing who Rey’s parents are, it seems.
Abrams said he doesn’t want to retcon what director Rian Johnson did in The Last Jedi with Ren telling Rey her parents were nobody, but there is more to the story. “I don’t want to say that what happens in Episode 8 [didn’t happen],” Abrams said. “We have honored that. But I will say that there’s more to the story than you’ve seen.”
Some of the theories about Rey’s parentage include that she is the daughter of Luke Skywalker, a Kenobi, or a descendant of Palpatine, among others.
The Rise of Skywalker releases in theatres in December. In addition to Ridley and Driver, the movie stars John Boyega as Finn, Oscar Isaac as Poe Dameron, Kelly Marie Tran as Rose Tico, Lupita Nyong’o as Maz Kanata, Domhnall Gleeson as General Hux, Mark Hamill as Luke, and Billy Dee Williams as Lando. For more, check out the movie’s first trailer and everything we know about Star Wars Episode IX.
The post-credits stinger for Far From Home contained, arguably, one of the biggest bombshells of the MCU. The Nick Fury and Maria Hill who spent the movie working with Peter were, in fact, Talos and his wife Soren–Skrulls we met back in Captain Marvel. This is hugely significant for a few reasons, not the least of which is the fact that it tells us the Skrulls have been active in the Marvel Universe since the ’90s–and they’re working hand-in-hand with Fury.
This means that at any point in the MCU’s timeline after Captain Marvel, any character could have been replaced by a Skrull for any reason. Of course, the threat of Skrull-replacement in the MCU isn’t that dire–the Skrulls are friendly in this universe, not evil–but still. It does provide a nice “get out of jail free” card for any and all inconvenient moments writers and directors may want to address from movies past somewhere down the line.
Also, moving forward, this means we can expect to see Fury and the Skrulls–who, by the looks of things, have a very well outfitted space station–working together to monitor for threats.
Every film loses moments here and there to the cutting room floor, as demonstrated by the deleted scenes ubiquitous on DVD and Blu-ray releases. Sometimes, those scenes are especially difficult to cut, as was the case for a particular moment in writer and director Ari Aster’s latest horror movie, Midsommar, which has now arrived in theaters amid very positive reviews.
Warning: There are Midsommar spoilers below. If you haven’t watched the movie, come back after you have.
Midsommar follows a group of friends that includes Dani (Florence Pugh) and Christian (Jack Reynor), a couple who would have broken up long before the group’s trip to a remote village in Sweden, if not for the tragedy that struck Dani’s family. Christian winds up feeling obligated to stay with Dani, despite being pretty well fed up with her–and although he may be trying to do the right thing by not ending it, he’s not actually doing her any favors. Their relationship spirals throughout the Midsommar festival, although it never really comes to a head until the end of the movie, when Dani chooses a new family in a spectacularly f***ed up, but very satisfying, way.
Except, at one point, their relationship was supposed to come to a head–in a scene that Aster said was incredible difficult for him to ultimately cut.
“There [was] a very big argument between Dani and Christian in the middle. That was the only time that we see Dani fight back and argue with Christian, and that was a big debate in the edit room, about whether we keep that or lose that,” Aster told GameSpot. “If you told me that I would have cut that scene before we went into production, I would have told you that you were crazy.”
In Aster’s previous film, the acclaimed Hereditary, mother and son Peter (Alex Wolff) and Annie (Toni Collette) have a screaming match across the dinner table that fully demolishes their already fraught relationship. Aster said he once considered the cut scene between Dani and Christian to be just as important.
“I really love the scene that we cut,” he said. “It’s some of my favorite dialogue in the whole film, and in some ways it was as big of a decision to cut that as it would have been to cut the dinner table scene in Hereditary between Toni and Alex. It was that big of a cut. It was a very, very big day when we lost that from the film.”
Aster told us his original version of Midsommar was three hours and 45 minutes long, so naturally, cuts had to happen to get the movie to its final runtime of two hours and 27 minutes. As it is, the film spends a long time languishing in the Swedish village’s strange, unsettling rituals, but Aster said there were “two other giant rituals” that got removed entirely. And they dropped a scene that was glimpsed in the movie’s trailer, in which someone appears to be levitating (although Midsommar doesn’t actually feature anything supernatural, Aster confirmed with us, and that scene had more to do with the film’s mushroom-infused psychedelic elements).
“There’s a lot that’s been cut out of the film, and [distributor] A24 used a lot of images from the cutting room floor in the trailer,” Aster said. “I don’t mind that, because you’re sad to see these things go, and so if they are being put to use in one way or another, you’re happy.”
Ultimately, losing the big argument scene between Dani and Christian benefitted the movie, in Aster’s opinion.
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“We did find that by cutting that, we were able to maintain the tension between them even more successfully,” he said. “I was in love with that scene, because it felt like an argument that I’d had with partners before, and I think it felt like the kind of argument that people would relate to. But it also felt like the movie could survive it being cut, which was a shock to me, and I didn’t make peace with that until very recently.”
Aster shared one other thing about the movie’s initial, much longer cut: The timeline of the Midsommar festival itself was much clearer in the original version. As it is, there’s plenty of ambiguity, but the writer and director clarified a few things. For one, although the Midsommar festival happens every year, the part that happens at the film’s end–the fiery human sacrifice–occurs only every 90 years. In addition to that, said sacrifice occurs on only the fourth day of the nine-day festival, leaving us to wonder how the festival could possibly continue to escalate for five more days after that.
“[That’s] something that we always understood would be potentially confusing to people, but I’m really allergic to exposition that’s not absolutely needed, or that’s not, like, woven invisibly into the fabric, and there was just no way of explaining that in a way that didn’t feel like spoon feeding information,” Aster said. “In the three hour and 45 minute version of it, it’s a little bit clearer, but it was just one of the casualties of cutting the movie down.”
“I think there might be a director’s cut for this one,” Aster emphasized.
