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5 pieces

Theatrical poster for Predator: Badlands.

Predator: Badlands Bet the Franchise on a PG-13

Everybody wrote about the Predator becoming the protagonist. The genuinely dangerous decision was the rating, and it returned $184.6 million on a $105 million budget.

Marcus Vell·5 Sep·5 min

Typographic cover for an essay on the Apple TV+ series Murderbot.

Murderbot Is a Half-Hour Show About Refusing Eye Contact

Ten episodes, twenty-two to thirty-four minutes each, and a lead performance built almost entirely out of a face that will not look at anybody. The running time is the character.

Priya Nair·2 Sep·6 min

A sterile corporate bunk row lit in sickly fluorescent green, numbered duplicate bodies receding into shadow.

Film

Mickey 17 and the Expensive Satire Bong Joon-ho Made

Bong Joon-ho's first film after Parasite is a $118 million science fiction satire that Warner Bros marketed badly and audiences did not know how to process. A year on, the failure is the studio's, not the director's.

Marcus Vell·28 Oct·7 min

A Manhattan street at dusk, paper drifting on the kerb, a single cat silhouetted on a stoop.

Film

A Quiet Place: Day One, and the Discipline of a Small Apocalypse

Michael Sarnoski's Quiet Place prequel is a studio horror release built to break the franchise's scale rules, and the smaller it stays, the better it works.

Marcus Vell·7 Aug·7 min

A dim stone corridor with two figures in long dark robes walking away from the camera, high windows catching pale daylight.

Dune: Prophecy and the Prequel Series Problem

HBO's six-episode Bene Gesserit prequel arrives with a specific set of inherited problems and a few genuine pleasures. The question is whether the pleasures can sustain a second season.

Priya Nair·11 Mar·7 min