Entertainment

Bryan Cranston is the voice of Zordon in the upcoming Power Rangers (2017) movie. And with sufficient motion capture and CGI, he’ll also be the face of Zordon, floating on the screen in the command centre and giving orders to the Power Rangers. It may seem strange that actor Bryan Cranston, who’s most widely known for his critically acclaimed performance as Walter White on Breaking Bad, is now apparently doing an adults’ nostalgia movie for children. As though after the incredible success of Breaking Bad it was only going to be downhill, so he may as well play the role of Zordon for laughs and a few dollars in the bank. However, what may not be known, is that the nostalgia factor runs a little deeper for Cranston. Before making it bigger, Cranston was a voice actor for some rather forgettable villains on the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers television ...

“Holy kill count Batman!” It turns out Ben Affleck’s stint as Batman (aka “Batfleck”) in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) killed the most people of any movie Batman yet. Even though the deaths may have been more the by-products of indirect collateral damage, the movie made for one dark depiction of the superheroes Superman and Batman. In the movie, understandably excluding the bad dream sequence, the death toll from Batman tallied up at 21. Beating out Batman’s previous movie maximum kill count of 17 in the Tim Burton film Batman (1989) when Michael Keaton wore the cowl. Thanks to the work of Mr Sunday Movies, proof of the carnage caused by Batman in the BvS movie has been spliced together as a kill count supercut (because a montage sounded too campy). Of course the BvS movie was largely based on Frank Miller’s miniseries The Dark Knight Returns. Where ...

Naming J.J. Abrams’ rebooted Star Trek timeline has been the topic of much discussion amongst starship captains in many a ready room, or at least online and within forums. But now it’s boldly going where no-one has gone before, into official naming territory. Officially called The Kelvin Timeline, it acknowledges the Romulan attack on the USS Kelvin from the Star Trek (2009) movie, and the ensuing events in the franchise. Views of the rebooted movies have ranged to favourable, to them feeling more like (bad) fan fiction, to them just not being Star Trek at all. But three viewpoints are hardly a galaxy, let alone an entire fictional universe. And with that came the need to properly acknowledge the events of the Romulan-altered timeline within Star Trek itself. As Holly Amos, Professional Trekspert at CBS, said via Twitter: “More than that, we needed an in-universe term since we needed some ...

Pokémon GO represents one Nintendo’s early forays into developing games and apps for smartphones, and away from Nintendo video games appearing exclusively on Nintendo consoles. Nintendo, however, have been branching out a little more, including rumours of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technology. It’s this latter area that Pokémon GO and the Pokémon GO Plus accessory are likely laying the foundations for. Nintendo outlined and demonstrated Pokémon Go at E3 2016; the game has also been playable in various beta tests. The Pokémon GO Plus accessory is a wearable piece of technology which communicates via Bluetooth with a smartphone that has the Pokémon GO app installed. Using the accessory will allow for attempting to catch wild Pokémon in AR, at the press of a button in the real world, all without needing to check the smartphone. The device will flash green and vibrate to indicate the presence of ...

“Kong. Kong. Kong.” It’s a big chant, for a big ape. And that particular ape is about to get a whole lot bigger. Speaking at an extended preview, director Jordan Vogt-Roberts said: “Not 10 foot or 30 foot, but a 100-foot ape.” He’s referring to King Kong in his forthcoming movie Kong: Skull Island, set for a March 2017 release. Starring Tom Hiddleston (possibly with a “mewling quim” speech moment or other strong language equivalent), Brie Larson, and Samuel L. Jackson. Plus the titular ape himself, King Kong, complete with his supersizing to 100 feet (30 metres) tall. The massive size increase is likely laying the groundwork to give some semblance of plausibility to King Kong actually being a worthy contender against Godzilla. Who is increasingly utterly gigantic (since skyscrapers keep getting taller), has thermonuclear powers, and isn’t afraid of swimming in the water. Because Warner Bros. intends to merge ...

Players will be able to go straight from the opening sequence to the final boss in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Series producer Eiji Aonuma has confirmed as much. In an interview via Polygon, Aonuma offered up that it’s “not impossible” for players to go straight to the end goal, the final boss, without doing anything else as the developers “created the game like that”. While also suggesting that a player who does this is either a “really good gamer” or a “little crazy”. Aonuma may have also thrown down the proverbial Power Glove (a Nintendo-esque gauntlet) with his comment that in Breath of the Wild it “might be fun for fans to compete in a challenge for who can clear it first.” Nintendo games and gamers are no strangers to speedruns. The Metroid series has long been a field for such speedruns, with players eschewing items ...

There have undoubtedly cases where Nintendo has been a bit old fashioned and overprotective at times. But deriding Nintendo for being parochial and conservative and supposedly not wanting to allow “lesbian love” into The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is to fundamentally miss the point. It’s seemingly to push an agenda which is unlikely to even be there. Are games in The Legend of Zelda series really even about love? Eiji Aonuma’s comments (which could be somewhat lost in translation) about “balance in the Triforce” and choosing the “simpler” option of retaining the traditional gameplay roles of the male Link and the female Zelda does not seem unreasonable, given the size and scope of the new Zelda game, the storyline of series, and the nature of the games themselves. They’re about fun, adventure, exploring dungeons and solving puzzles. They are games to be played and enjoyed. Escapism. Where ...

E3 2016 and Nintendo’s major gambit, the new The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild appears to be paying off. Set to be released in 2017 simultaneously on the Wii U and Nintendo’s next console still-in-codename-phase the NX, Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma indicated The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild would be the “same experience” on both consoles. He didn’t elaborate any further on whether the NX version could see exclusive elements or features. What Nintendo has been conveying since 2014, was that this next big Zelda game would challenge what had become stables, and arguably stale conventions, in the game series. Amongst this has been moving to a more open-world and nonlinear style of RPG for Breath of the Wild, as opposed to the far more on-rails (and often repetitive) Skyward Sword. Aonuma has said that in this new Zelda game, “the world is the main ...

At E3 2016, Todd Howard, head of Bethesda Game Studios officially confirmed that The Elder Scrolls VI (that’s The Elder Scrolls 6 for the non-purists) is being worked on. Gamers can expect that much, but they may not expect the game any time sign. Howard confirmed Bethesda is working on three new projects, and TES VI is likely the last to be completed amongst them. With the head of Bethesda calling it “kind of like the elephant in the room” and that “it’s a very long way off”. Further elaborating: “I could sit here and explain the game to you, and you would say: ‘That sounds like you don’t even have the technology. How long is that going to take?’ So it is something that’s going to take a lot of time, what he have in mind for that game, and we actually have two other large projects we’re also ...

Rumours from leaks sprung last week have turned out to be true, Skyrim is getting a remaster. In Bethesda’s E3 conference, Todd Howard announced that The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition will be headed to PC and both the PS4 and Xbox One consoles come 28 October 2016. It may not be quite the Skyrim II some wishful-thinking fans were hoping for. Nor is it the highly anticipated and still mysterious Akaviri Elder Scrolls VI, which has been rumoured to be set in locations across Tamriel as different as Black Marsh, Hammerfell, and Elsweyr. Take all of those speculations with a grain of moonsugar though. It might even make Khajiiti lore somewhat comprehensible. Bad news out of the way, the good news is it’s more Skyrim and more Skyrim. With the game to feature beefed up graphics based on technical buzzwords such as “new snow shaders” and “volumetric god ...