Author: Nigel G Mitchell
There’s a new show on FOX called The Orville, about a starship in the future exploring the Galaxy and facing conflict. It’s also a comedy about a captain of a new ship who’s forced to work with his cheating ex-wife as his First Officer. The show is doing well enough to get renewed for a second season by FOX, and some fans have even called Orville a better Star Trek show than Star Trek: Discovery. We here at Geek Twins disagree with all of them. In fact, we don’t just think The Orville is not as good as Star Trek: Discovery. We…
When CBS announced its plans to release Star Trek: Discovery in the United States exclusively on its new premium stream service CBS All Access, Star Trek fans raged that they would never subscribe to get the new show, no matter how good it was. Now that the show is out, some fans apparently changed their minds because Discovery is a huge hit and subscriptions went through the roof. Those of you who haven’t tried it might be wondering, is Star Trek: Discovery worth subscribing? No. Absolutely not. Let’s be clear that this isn’t really a reflection of the show itself (which…
Chick-Fil-Leia by @cheerlubber Who in the geek world has been accused of harassment? Why is Justice League a disappointment? What happened to Watchmen? Find that out and more in this week’s Geek Bits! ITEM! The recent wave of sexual harassment accusations hasn’t left the geek community untouched. John Lasseter, one of the founders and creative forces behind Pixar movies like Wall-E and The Incredibles, has announced a leave of absence after accusations of sexual misconduct. Apparently, Lasseter’s groping was so common that female employees had a move they called “the Lasseter” where they would hunch forward and drape their arms over their legs to…
Earle Hyman, the African-American theater and stage actor who also made numerous appearances on The Cosby Show, has passed away at the age of 91. Before gaining mainstream success, Hyman was a classically trained actor who appeared in various television and film roles including adaptions of Macbeth (1968), Julius Caesar (1979), and Coriolanus (1979). However, he was best known as Russell Huxtable, the grandfather on The Cosby Show, which earned him an Emmy Award nomination in 1986. Fun fact: Even though he was supposed to be Cliff Huxtable’s father, he was only 11 years older than Bill Cosby. Among the…
The following question was asked on Quora: “Why was the CGI for Wolverine’s claws in X-Men Origins: Wolverine so low quality?” My Answer: The CGI claws in X-Men Origin: Wolverine have been mentioned in many places, including CHUD’s list of the Worst CGI in Movie History, so it’s not your imagination. The CGI claws look light and fake and have no substance to them at all. It’s especially clear in the bathroom scene. But the reality is that the CGI claws have always looked bad, but they just weren’t used as much as they were in Origins. If you go…
CBS has announced a partnership with comedian and filmmaker Jordan Peele to create a new Twilight Zone TV series. The new show could bring anthologies back to television while also exploring new realms of science fiction and horror. The show will be on CBS All Access, along with Star Trek: Discovery. Here are 5 things we want from the new show. 1. More Diversity If there’s one thing you can criticize about the original Twilight Zone TV series is that it’s not very diverse. Almost every episode is just a sea of white men and white women. With his breakthrough movie Get…
Star Trek is one of the greatest science fiction franchises in modern history. With a string of seven TV shows, there have been a ton of beloved characters like Spock, Data, and Seven of Nine, but not every character has been a winner. In fact, there have been quite a few characters who have been as fun to watch as drying paint. A handful have gone beyond just boring or uninteresting, but became downright annoying. This isn’t about characters who are the worst or who didn’t contribute to the show, but ones who actually made their given show worse by…
Following up on our review, let’s talk about the biggest complaint people have about the show. The first thing to understand about Star Trek: Discovery is that it’s a sequel, not a prequel. That’s in direct contrast with the description of the show itself. If you ask CBS, the show is set 10 years before the original series and this is where a lot of the criticism of Discovery has been focused. People have been complaining that the Klingons look and act nothing like the Klingons we saw in the Original Series or even later shows like The Next Generation. Fans also…
There’s a new Star Trek series on the air for the first time since 2005 and it’s caused a firestorm of controversy among the fans. Here at Geek Twins, we’re going to weigh in on it, but we’ll be breaking it up to examine it piece-by-piece. First, Nigel reviews the first two episodes of the first season of Star Trek: Discovery. Star Trek: Discovery is a brand-new series set in the Star Trek universe ten years before the original series. In the new series, we see a new ship and a new crew dealing with the problems leading up to…
Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman with a sword/Warner Bros. If you saw Wonder Woman, you probably liked it, but you also might have been puzzled. She was involved in World War I in 1918. But at the end of Batman v Superman, Wonder Woman said she “walked away from Mankind” a hundred years earlier. Since BvS was released and set in 2016, the math doesn’t add up. There’s also the fact that, in the end of her movie, Wonder Woman is far from giving up on Mankind. What gives? In a video from a promotional tour for Justice League, Gal…
It seems like a lifetime ago, but it was less than two years ago (December 18, 2015) that the lives of every Star Wars fan were changed forever when Star Wars: The Force Awakens was released. It was the end of a long road that started for many older fans who saw Return of the Jedi in 1983 and asked, “Will there be more? Is that the end of the series?” The prequels were nice, but we all wanted to know what happened next. With the release of the trailer, we finally saw glimpses of a new world and a new…
The following question was asked on Quora: Q: Who was the best representation of a Vulcan in the entire Star Trek Universe, bearing in mind their qualities as a species?” A: I know it sounds trite but the answer is Spock, not just because he’s the most prominent Vulcan but because the entire species was designed around him. The Vulcan species wasn’t very well-defined before the show aired. The original concept by Gene Roddenberry was completely different with Vulcans intended as red-skinned aliens with a plate in their stomach they would use to absorb energy. He also planned to make…
You’ve seen actors going through physical training to performs stunts in superhero movies before, but not like what you’ll see in this featurette about Wonder Woman. Many women watching the groundbreaking female-led superhero movie Wonder Woman have been thrilled by the sight of legions of Amazonian warriors battling men to a standstill. The fight scenes have literally driven some women to tears, so moved by something they’ve never seen in a movie before: armies of women kicking butt with the camera focused on their power and not their bodies. These scenes didn’t come about by accident. Director Patty Jenkins didn’t…
For decades, Joss Whedon has been held up as a shining example of equality, a man who wrote some of the strongest female characters in television and movies. 1997’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer was the first of his projects to have a prominent female heroine, but he quickly followed up with strong women in 2002’s Firefly, and other projects. That’s why his fall from grace has been so shocking, but there were hints all along that Whedon wasn’t the hero he claimed to be. In a scathing editorial published in August at The Wrap, Whedon’s ex-wife openly called him a…
The new trailer has been released for the eighth movie in the Star Wars series, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, so it’s time to break it down. Here are just a few things to point out about the trailer. [Warning: This post may contain spoilers for Star Wars: The Last Jedi.] First, if you haven’t seen it, here’s the full trailer released earlier during Monday Night Football. 1. The Gorilla Walkers Here we see an attack on a distant planet with Kylo Ren’s shuttle flying over the return of the AT-AT walkers…oh, wait, no we don’t. This time around, the…
Once again, it’s time to stop by Screen Junkies to check out another one of their Honest Trailers. This time, the gang tackles TV with the entire Star Trek: The Next Generation series. Don’t worry, it’s not really that ruthless a skewering, although it does get into how many times Worf got beaten up. And the Picard Maneuver. And that weird move Riker would make where he would swing his leg over the backs of chairs. And seriously, how many concerts can a single spaceship have, anyway? What did you think of Star Trek: The Next Generation? We love your…
2017’s Wonder Woman is a smash hit, both commercially and critically with box receipts surpassing $816 million and a “Certified Fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It took a long time to get Wonder Woman on the air, but it wasn’t the first attempt. Not by a long shot. The TV series of the 1970s was the only successful live-action series, and it took decades to get to the 2017 movie. It’s time Geek Twins reviewed eight of the failed efforts of the past. You may have seen a few of these, but you’ve never seen them all…because no one has.…
Did you ever in your wildest dreams think we’d get a new episode of the 1960s version of Batman, 51 years later? We know we didn’t, but that’s what we got with Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders. It’s a new animated movie based on the classic comedic version of Batman. It even has the voices of the surviving cast of the old show, Julie Newmar, Burt Ward, and Adam West (one of his last performances before he passed away). And as the trailer proves, it’s just as campy and wacky as ever. Yes, Batman is trapped in a giant…
The final day of shooting a movie or TV show is always emotional, because you’re not only leaving a cast and crew that might have become family, but you’re also out of a job. That’s why many actors want to take a souvenir. The problem is that technically, all the props and costumes belong to the studio, and the studio will often sell or put them into storage to reuse for other productions or let them rot away. Despite that, stealing things from the set has become a time-honored tradition on movies and TV shows, and Star Trek: The Next…
Recently, a joke in Reddit’s r/jokes subreddit triggered a thread about Wi-Fi passwords to prank guests with. Some of them are from businesses or places Redditors visited or their own Wi-Fi. And they’re all hilarious. Here’s a sample. All text is “sic,” typos included user/Ninhnguyenz: Set your wifi password to 2444666668888888. So when someone ask tell them it’s 12345678. user/kushenYT: I visited a coffee shop where the password was wedonthavewifi. It was a very frustrating conversation with the cashier. user/Elcatro: Pub I went to had “youhavetobuyabeerfirst” as the password. They got me. Bought beer, asked for password, same answer. Took me…
There’s a movie coming that hasn’t gotten as much attention as it deserves, and that’s the film adaptation of Ready Player One. It’s based on the YA novel about a young boy who stumbles across a hidden treasure in a virtual world. The original novel was a brilliant blend of pop culture, science-fiction, action, coming of age, and adventure (read Nigel’s review here), and we honestly had our doubts about how well it will translate on screen. For one thing, we couldn’t imagine them getting the rights for all the properties mentioned in the book (Ultraman, WarGames, Star Wars, just to…
It seems like comic books are always making changes to superheroes and supervillains, from the costumes to their powers. Most of these changes come from careful and thought-out ideas developed by writers and artists, but some of the biggest changes in comics weren’t intended to be done at all. They were actually started by someone making a joke which someone else took too seriously. Here are five times when a change was actually just goofing around. 5. WOLVERINE LOSES ADAMANTIUM In 1993’s “Fatal Attractions” storyline, the X-Men fought Magneto, who disabled the world’s electrical systems with an electromagnetic pulse. When…
After posting about diversity here at Geek Twins for a number of years, we’ve pretty much become experts at racism, thanks to our comments section. Instead of addressing the racist arguments to individuals one at a time, we’ll start addressing them in a series of articles so we can just post the link when someone uses the argument. Today, we’ll be tackling “make black superheroes white!” THE ARGUMENT This argument is usually thrown out whenever we talk about a typically white character who is changed to a person of color. Someone in the comments says, “How would you like it…
It’s been a while, but we’re bringing it back. It’s Would You Rather, the game where we ask you to make the tough choices. Today, we’ll be asking you to pick your weapon. THE SCENARIO After a long absence, you’ve been called back to Wood University to help them test their latest human experiment. Professor Rather explains that they’ve actually created two weapons that they can give you: Wolverine’s claws or Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber. Which would you choose? THE GROUND RULES If you choose the claws, you’ll have three razor-sharp adamantium claws surgically implanted into each of your forearms. You’ll…
Who owns the movie rights to the superhero team Alpha Flight? That’s the question we’ll be answering today. Since our infographic on Marvel movie rights came out, we’ve become kind of the go-to for people wondering about who owns what. We should point out that we have no inside knowledge on the copyright holdings of the studios, and many of these rights are so complicated that even the studios themselves debate about who owns what. We’re going to give this one a shot because we were specifically asked on Twitter by Pietro Blaximoff (who has an awesome name): who owns the…
The CW has released the first full trailer for its upcoming series, Black Lightning. The series will introduce the first African-American superhero in DC comics to live-action. Mara Brock Akil and Salim Akil created the series, which stars Cress Williams as the titular character and Christine Adams as his ex-wife. The series explores the world of being a superhero mixed with family life. Here’s the official description: Jefferson Pierce is a man wrestling with a secret. Nine years ago, Pierce was gifted with the superhuman power to harness and control electricity, which he used to keep his hometown streets safe…
If you love “Star Wars” and you get TBS on cable and you’re not watching “Star Wars” right now, cancel your plans for the rest of the day. TBS is celebrating Star Wars Day by running a marathon of the entire “Star Wars” original and prequel trilogy all day. No “Force Awakens,” but it’s still a win. Check out the promo now. Are you watching “Star Wars” right now? Please be mindful of our comment policy when making comments. Abusers will have comments deleted and may be banned If you enjoyed this, then please use the buttons below to tell…
Today is Star Wars Day, as in “May the Fourth Be With You.” It’s been an annual celebration for almost a decade, a time to rejoice over all things “Star Wars.” With the third new Star Wars movie coming this year, we have even more to celebrate. Here are 10 things you probably didn’t know about Star Wars Day. 1. The First “May the Fourth” The earliest known reference to the pun was first used on May 4, 1979, the day Margaret Thatcher took office as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The Conservatives placed an advertisement in The London…
High heels are a creation of the sexist patriarchy, intended to demean and degrade women’s value. At least, that’s what you’d believe if you spent time on Tumblr. That’s why some eyebrows were raised when Wonder Woman appeared in “Batman v Superman” and the upcoming “Wonder Woman” movie wearing high heels. We’re not talking about when she was dancing with Bruce Wayne, but fighting against Doomsday. You can’t really tell in these photos, but you could get a good look when the costumes were on display at Comic-Con. Given how Wonder Woman is being positioned as a feminist icon, some…
After almost a decade of teasing and missed starts, we finally (maybe) have a date for when the sequel to the blockbuster “Avatar” will hit theaters. On the official “Avatar” Facebook page, James Cameron announced the release date of “Avatar 2,” but there was also a surprise. That’s right, there will be not just one or even two sequels to “Avatar.” Cameron has mapped out a whopping four sequels, making a total of five “Avatar” movies in total, and that’s before they even started production on the second movie. RELATED: Avatar is Good, Not Great [Review] Regular readers of this…
