Shirley Li

Every major movie franchise has boxes to check. In Jurassic Park, dinosaurs must run amok; in Planet of the Apes, apes have to meditate on intelligence; in The Fast and the Furious, Vin Diesel absolutely has to evangelize the benefits of family, Corona beers, and tricked-out cars. But Mission: Impossible took four films to fully establish its franchise must-have: the ever more blurred lines between its death-defying, stunt-loving star, Tom Cruise, and the superspy he plays.

This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the present. Sign up here.

This article includes spoilers for the film Warfare.
Since 2012, Ray Mendoza has been building a hefty Hollywood résumé: performing stunts, choreographing gunfights, and teaching movie stars how to act like soldiers in films such as Act of Valor and Lone Survivor. He also helped design the battle sequences in last year’s Civil War, the writer-director Alex Garland’s speculative thriller imagining America as an endless combat zone.
These projects have been a particularly good fit for him.

Predicting how an episode of the HBO show The Rehearsal will end is nearly impossible. The pseudo-docuseries, in which the comedian Nathan Fielder stages elaborate exercises to help—or rather, “help”—ordinary people prepare for challenging interactions, tends to go down rabbit holes dictated by Fielder’s fixations. A Season 1 installment found him supporting a man who wanted practice having a difficult conversation only for the focus to shift to Fielder rehearsing his own confessions.

This article contains spoilers through the second episode of The Last of Us Season 2.
Players of the game on which HBO’s postapocalyptic drama The Last of Us is based knew it was coming—“it” being the death of the show’s protagonist, Joel (played by Pedro Pascal).

At the end of the Season 4 premiere of Hacks, Deborah (played by Jean Smart) and Ava (Hannah Einbinder) pose for the cover of a prestigious magazine. Glamorously dressed and impeccably lit, they look ecstatic, beaming in every shot.

This article contains spoilers through Episode 6 of Daredevil: Born Again.
For a character whose flagship show ended seven years ago, the blind lawyer Matt Murdock—better known as the vigilante Daredevil—has maintained a steady presence on Marvel’s roster. In the film Spider-Man: No Way Home, he impressed Peter Parker (Tom Holland) with his reflexes. In the TV series She-Hulk, he flirted with the titular heroine.

Judging by some of the online comments aimed at Rachel Zegler, the star of Disney’s live-action version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, you’d think that she had done something unforgivable—set Cinderella Castle on fire, perhaps, or told Mickey Mouse he couldn’t wish upon a star. But Zegler had merely stated her opinion of the original 1937 film: that she finds it “extremely dated” and that, to her, the prince “literally stalks” Snow White.

Joe and Anthony Russo, better known as the Russo brothers, have enjoyed two of the most lucrative careers in Hollywood. The bulk of their success comes from the features they’ve co-directed for Marvel: Three of those projects, in which they helped turn comic-book characters into icons and “cinematic universes” into a standard practice, are among the 50 highest-grossing movies of all time.

Poor, poor Mickey Barnes. The protagonist of the film Mickey 17 lives a grim existence as an “expendable,” a worker aboard a spaceship whose only job is to die repeatedly for the sake of human progress. Mickey, played by Robert Pattinson, is subjected to lethal viruses, exposed to radiation, and asked to sit in a chamber of nerve gas, just so he can report on his own deterioration until he loses consciousness.

As soon as Conan O’Brien strode onto the Oscars stage Sunday night, he looked like he belonged there. He was self-deprecating, telling the crowd to sit down before he continued, even though no one was standing. He found Demi Moore in the audience and greeted her with a grin; he had just played a pre-recorded clip of himself emerging out of her back as a nod to her work in the Best Picture-nominated body horror film The Substance.

For months, the actor Karla Sofía Gascón had been reaping the rewards of leading a prestigious film. She plays the title character in Emilia Pérez, about a Mexican cartel boss who transitions into a woman and seeks to build a more virtuous life. The Spanish-language musical has faced waves of backlash since its release last year—but it has also found a devoted fan base among awards bodies.

This article contains spoilers through the end of Yellowjackets Season 2.
A funny thing can happen to a hit show when it’s no longer the hot new thing on television. If such a series manages to produce more seasons, it often becomes weirder, stranger, and more specific, narrowing its appeal rather than attempting to maintain its wider following. Twin Peaks moved beyond probing its central mystery and into exploring the dream logic of its titular town.

In the film September 5, the ABC Sports studio at the 1972 Munich Olympics seems like an uncomfortable space in which to work, let alone think. The control room is smoky, the air conditioner barely functions, and every piece of machinery generates a frustrating amount of background noise. Yet the producers and reporters inside are more than capable of focusing on their jobs as they put together engaging, daily live broadcasts of the Games.

In an interview she gave prior to hosting last night’s Golden Globes ceremony, the comedian Nikki Glaser explained how she prepared for the job. She put together two writers’ rooms and did more than 90 test runs. She debated the meanness of punchlines. She fought with her boyfriend (who is also her producer) over whether the actor Jesse Eisenberg or the podcast “Call Her Daddy” would be better recognized by the stars in the room.
Her efforts paid off.

When the South Korean drama Squid Game hit Netflix in 2021, the show became a bona fide cultural phenomenon. The story of people in debt competing to the death for a massive cash prize looked like nothing else on television, juxtaposing candy-colored children’s games with horrifying hyper-violence. Squid Game soon turned forest-green tracksuits into a trendy Halloween costume. It helped enter the word dalgona—the sugary treat used in one of the contests—into the pop-culture lexicon.

During his fourth time hosting Saturday Night Live, Chris Rock brought a particularly magnetic and mischievous energy—one that showed his mastery of being a good-natured troll. In the show’s best moments, it followed suit: The episode was packed with sketches that feinted toward seemingly familiar premises before upending them, and many of Rock’s characters tapped into his punchy stand-up persona and button-pushing sense of humor.

This article contains spoilers for the film The Seed of the Sacred Fig.
When the film The Seed of the Sacred Fig begins, an Iranian lawyer named Iman (played by Missagh Zareh) has just been promoted to “investigating judge.” The position gets him a higher salary, promises him a luxurious three-bedroom home—and arms him with a gun.

When Mean Girls, the musical remake of the 2004 film, hit theaters in January, the film appeared to shock audiences for, well, being a musical. Theatergoers recorded the moment that their fellow viewers realized what kind of movie it was; in one video, the crowd groans loudly as soon as a character starts singing, before laughing at their own reactions. But the studio behind the remake wasn’t surprised by these responses.

Long before “thinking about the Roman empire” became shorthand for having a hyper-fixation, Ridley Scott turned the actual Roman empire into a mainstream obsession. In 2000, the director’s sword-and-sandal blockbuster Gladiator muscled its way into becoming that year’s second-highest-grossing film, before winning the Academy Award for Best Picture and cementing its status as—I’m just guessing here—your dad’s favorite movie of all time.

When Donald Trump seemed poised to win the presidential election in 2016, Trevor Noah, then the host of The Daily Show, began the program’s live night-of special on a somber note. “It feels like the end of the world,” he said to a silent audience. “I’m not going to lie. I don’t know if you’ve come to the right place for jokes tonight, because this is the first time throughout this entire race where I’m officially shitting my pants.

While working on his latest film, Megalopolis, Francis Ford Coppola had an idea: What if viewers interacted with the movie itself? He’d have microphones placed throughout audiences at every screening, so that at a predetermined moment, everyone who wanted to could ask the characters a question—and someone on-screen would respond. It would bridge the gap between fact and fiction. It would prove that cinema-going could truly be a unique experience.

As he accepted the Emmy for Outstanding Limited Series last night, Richard Gadd, the creator and star of Netflix’s Baby Reindeer, made a plea to the audience. “If Baby Reindeer has proved anything, it’s that there’s no set formula to this, that you don’t need big stars, proven IP, long-running series… to have a hit,” he said. “The only constant across any success in television is good storytelling, good storytelling that speaks to our times.

The journey to bring The Crow back to life has been as tortured as its immortal antihero. The original 1994 adaptation of the comic-book series, about a man who returns from the dead to hunt down his and his lover’s killers, became a cult classic for its moody tone and grungy noir look. The film also bore the weight of an on-set tragedy: Its star, Brandon Lee, died after being shot by a malfunctioning prop gun. (He’d completed enough work for the movie to be finished in postproduction.

Near the end of The Truman Show, Truman Burbank (played by Jim Carrey) flees his home in the middle of the night. He’s come to believe that his surroundings are fake, that the people around him are actors, and that everything he does is being broadcast as “authentic” entertainment to an audience. He’s right, of course: Watching over him is the godlike Christof (Ed Harris), the program’s mastermind. “Cue the sun,” orders Christof.

This story includes spoilers through Season 2, Episode 4, of HBO’s House of the Dragon.
If only Princess Rhaenys had unleashed her dragon, Meleys, in the Season 1 finale of House of the Dragon. Back then, the Targaryen royal (played with a quiet gravitas by Eve Best) had the perfect opportunity to end a war before it began. But she left the throne’s usurpers unharmed, later explaining that such a conflict was not hers to start.
As it turns out, it was hers to lose.

In one of the hardest scenes to watch in Game of Thrones, a young girl is murdered by her own father. Late in Season 5, Stannis Baratheon (played by Stephen Dillane) burns alive his only child, Shireen (Kerry Ingram), in a misguided attempt to help his army advance. She screams for mercy over and over, while he watches in stony silence.
Long before the HBO drama’s disappointing final season, Shireen’s death tested my resolve to continue the show—but only for a moment.

This story contains spoilers for the entirety of Bridgerton Season 3.
The resident bully of Bridgerton, Cressida Cowper, has changed—really. After several humbling seasons on the marriage market, the character played by Jessica Madsen has stopped trying to insult-sling her way to the top of the eligible-bachelorette pile. Instead, in the show’s third season, she makes a bold claim that could cast her out of Regency London’s high society altogether.

Fast & Furious 6. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. Top Gun: Maverick. For decades, Memorial Day weekend has been a reliable time for unveiling a new installment in a popular film franchise, sometimes to the tune of more than $100 million at the box office over the holiday break.
But this year’s Memorial Day weekend returns were meager, delivering a blow to Hollywood. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, earned just $32 million; the other new release, The Garfield Movie, cracked only $31 million.

Even as a little girl, Furiosa understood the value of staying hidden in the wasteland of postapocalyptic Earth, where resources are scarce, war is everlasting, and strangers are immediately treated as threats. But keeping out of sight is not the easiest task in the Mad Max films.