Podcast appearances and mentions of James Cameron

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Villain-Venice-Steampunk-Adventure-Expanded/dp/B0GYVW1ZM3?source=ps-sl-shoppingads-lpcontext&ref_=fplfs&psc=1&smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE notes from wiki This article is about the novel. For the 1997 film, see Starship Troopers (film). For other uses, see Starship Troopers (disambiguation). Starship Troopers First edition hardcover Author Robert A. Heinlein Cover artist Jerry Robinson Language English Genre Military science fiction Philosophical fiction[1][2][3] Publisher G. P. Putnam's Sons Publication date November 5, 1959[4] Publication place United States Media type Print (hardcover and paperback) Pages 263 (paperback edition) Award Hugo Award for Best Novel (1960) ISBN 978-0450044496 Online Computer Library Center number"}]]}"> OCLC 2797649 Library of Congress Classification"}]]}"> LC Class PZ7.H368 Su Starship Troopers is a military science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein. Written in a few weeks in reaction to the US suspending nuclear tests,[5] the story was first published as a two-part serial in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction as Starship Soldier, and published as a book by G. P. Putnam's Sons on November 5, 1959.[4] The story is set in a future society ruled by a human interstellar government called the Terran Federation, dominated by a military elite. Under the Terran Federation, only veterans of a primarily military Federal Service enjoy full citizenship, including the right to vote.[6] The first-person narrative follows Juan "Johnny" Rico, a young man of Filipino descent, through his military service in the Mobile Infantry. He progresses from recruit to officer against the backdrop of an interstellar war between humans and an alien species known as "Arachnids" or "Bugs". Interspersed with the primary plot are classroom scenes in which Rico and others discuss philosophical and moral issues, including aspects of suffrage, civic virtue, juvenile delinquency, and war; these discussions have been described as expounding Heinlein's own political views.[7] Identified with a tradition of militarism in US science fiction,[8] the novel draws parallels between the conflict between humans and the Bugs, and the Cold War.[9] It is also a coming-of-age novel, which criticizes the US society of the 1950s, arguing that a lack of discipline had led to a moral decline, and advocating corporal and capital punishment.[7][10] Starship Troopers brought to an end Heinlein's series of juvenile novels. It won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1960,[3] and was praised by reviewers for its scenes of training and combat and its visualization of a future military.[11][12] It also became enormously controversial because of the political views it seemed to support. Reviewers were strongly critical of the book's intentional glorification of the military,[13][14] an aspect described as propaganda and likened to recruitment.[15] The novel's militarism, and the fact that government service – most often military service – was a prerequisite to the right to vote, led to it being frequently described as fascist.[14][16][17] Others disagree, arguing that Heinlein was only exploring the idea of limiting the right to vote to a certain group of people.[18] Heinlein's depiction of gender has also been questioned, while reviewers have said that the terms used to describe the aliens were akin to racial epithets.[19] Starship Troopers had wide influence both within and outside science fiction. Ken MacLeod stated that "the political strand in [science fiction] can be described as a dialogue with Heinlein".[2] Science fiction critic Darko Suvin wrote that it is the "ancestral text of US science fiction militarism" and that it shaped the debate about the role of the military in society for many years.[20] The novel is credited with popularizing the idea of powered armor, which became a recurring feature in science fiction books and films, as well as an object of scientific research.[21] Heinlein's depiction of a futuristic military was also influential.[22] Later science fiction books, such as Joe Haldeman's 1974 anti-war novel The Forever War, have been described as reactions to Starship Troopers.[23] The story was adapted several times, including in a 1997 film version directed by Paul Verhoeven that satirized what the director saw as the fascist aspects of the novel.[24] Writing and publication The cover of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (November 1959), illustrating Starship Soldier Robert Heinlein was among the best-selling science fiction authors of the 1940s and 1950s, along with Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke; they were known as the "big three" that dominated US science fiction. In contrast to the others, Heinlein firmly endorsed the anti-communist sentiment of the Cold War era in his writing.[25] Heinlein served in the US Navy for five years after graduating from the United States Naval Academy in 1929. His experience in the military profoundly influenced his fiction.[26] At some point between 1958 and 1959, Heinlein put aside the novel that would become Stranger in a Strange Land and wrote Starship Troopers. His motivation arose partially from his anger at US President Dwight Eisenhower's decision to suspend US nuclear tests, and the Soviet tests that occurred soon afterward.[5] Writing in his 1980 volume Expanded Universe, Heinlein would say that the publication of a newspaper advertisement placed by the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy on April 5, 1958, calling for a unilateral suspension of nuclear weapons testing by the United States sparked his desire to write Starship Troopers.[27] Heinlein and his wife Virginia created the "Patrick Henry League" in an attempt to create support for the US nuclear testing program. Heinlein stated that he used the novel to clarify his military and political views.[28] Like many of Heinlein's books, Starship Troopers was completed in a few weeks. It was originally written as a juvenile novel for New York publishing house Scribner; Heinlein had previously had success with this format, having written several such novels published by that publisher. The manuscript was rejected, prompting Heinlein to end his association with that publisher completely, and to resume writing books with adult themes.[5][19][29] Scholars have suggested that Scribner's rejection was based on ideological objections to the content of the novel, particularly in its treatment of military conflict.[19][30] The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction first published Starship Troopers in October and November 1959 as a two-part serial titled Starship Soldier.[29] A senior editor at Putnam's, Peter Israel, purchased the manuscript and approved revisions that made it more marketable to adults. Asked whether it was aimed at children or adults, he said at a sales conference "Let's let the readers decide who likes it."[31] The novel was eventually published by G. P. Putnam's Sons.[29] Setting Set approximately 700 years in the future,[19] the book depicts an Earth ruled by a world government run by military veterans.[6] The society is depicted as affluent, and futuristic technology shown as coexisting with educational methods from the 20th century.[19] The rights of a full citizen, to vote and hold public office, are not universally guaranteed, and rather must be earned through Federal Service.[18] Those who do not perform this service (of which only military service has been described) retain the rights of free speech and assembly, but can neither vote nor hold public office. People of either sex above the age of 18 are permitted to enlist; only those who complete their service receive the right to vote.[19][32] Important government jobs are reserved for federal service veterans.[6] This structure arose ad hoc after the collapse of the "20th century Western democracies", driven in part by an inability to control crime and juvenile delinquency, particularly in North America, and a war between an alliance of the United States, the United Kingdom and Russia, against the "Chinese Hegemony".[33] Two extraterrestrial civilizations are depicted, respectively, as the "Pseudo-Arachnids" (or "Bugs"), and the "Skinnies". The "Bugs" are described as communal beings originating from the planet of Klendathu, and consist of multiple castes; workers, warriors, brains, and queens, similar to those of ants and termites on Earth. The warriors are the only ones who fight, and are unable to surrender in battle.[34] It also is implied that the Bugs are technologically advanced, possessing such technologies as spaceships.[35] The "Skinnies" are depicted as less communal than the Arachnids, yet more so than humans.[36] The events of the novel take place during an interstellar war between the Terran Federation and the Arachnids.[37] At the opening of the story, Earth is not at war, yet such a declaration has come when Rico has completed his training.[5] The "Skinnies" are initially allies of the Pseudo-Arachnids, but switch to alliance with humans, midway through the novel.[36] Faster-than-light travel exists in this future: spacecraft use the "Cherenkov drive", and can travel "Sol to Capella, forty-six lightyears, in under six weeks".[38] Starship Troopers is narrated by the main protagonist Juan "Johnny" Rico, a member of the "Mobile Infantry". It is one of the few Heinlein novels which intersperses his typical linear narrative structure with a series of flashbacks.[5][37] These flashbacks are frequently to Rico's "History and Moral Philosophy" course in school, in which the teacher discusses the history of the structure of their society.[5][18] Rico is depicted as a man of Filipino ancestry. He is from a wealthy family, whose members had never served in the military.[5][19][32] Rico's ancestry is depicted as inconsequential, society having finally abandoned racial and gender-based prejudice.[19] Plot The novel opens with Rico aboard the corvette transport Rodger Young (named after real life Medal of Honor recipient Rodger Young),[39] serving with the platoon known as "Rasczak's Roughnecks". The platoon carries out a raid against a planetary colony held by Skinnies.[19] The raid is relatively brief: the platoon lands on the planet, destroys its targets, and retreats, suffering two casualties in the process. One of them, Dizzy Flores, is rescued by Rico but dies while returning to orbit.[40] The narrative then flashes back to Rico's graduation from high school. Rico and his best friend Carl are considering joining the Federal Service after graduation; Rico is hesitant, partly due to his father's attitude towards the military.[5] Rico makes his decision after discovering that his classmate Carmen Ibañez also intends to enlist.[41] Rico's choice is taken poorly by his parents, and he leaves with a sense of estrangement. He is assigned to the Mobile Infantry, and moves to Camp Arthur Currie (named for Sir Arthur Currie who rose through the ranks to command the Canadian Corps in World War I) on the Canadian prairie for his training under Sergeant Charles Zim.[42] The training is extremely demanding.[43] Rico receives combat training of all types, including simulated fights in armored suits.[44][45] A fellow recruit is court-martialed, flogged, and dismissed for striking a drill instructor who was also his company commander. Rico himself is given five lashes for firing a rocket during a drill with armored suits and simulated nuclear weapons without ensuring that no friendlies were within the blast zone, which in combat would have resulted in the death of a fellow soldier.[46] Another recruit, who murdered a baby girl after deserting the army, is hanged by his battalion after his arrest by civilian police.[46] Disheartened, Rico thinks of resigning when he receives a letter from Jean Dubois, who taught Rico History and Moral Philosophy.[47] Dubois reveals that he was once a lieutenant colonel in the Mobile Infantry, which gives Rico the motivation not to resign.[48] After further training at another camp near Vancouver, Rico graduates with 187 others, of the 2,009 who had begun training in that regiment.[49] The "Bug War" has changed from minor incidents to a full-scale war during Rico's training. An Arachnid attack that annihilates the city of Buenos Aires alerts civilians to the situation; Rico's mother is killed in the attack.[50] Rico participates in the Battle of Klendathu, an attack on the Arachnid's home world, which turns into a disastrous defeat for the Terran Federation.[51] Rico's ship, the Valley Forge, is destroyed, and his unit is decimated; he is reassigned to the Roughnecks on board the Rodger Young, led by Lieutenant Rasczak and Sergeant Jelal.[52] The unit carries out several raids, and Rico is promoted to corporal by Jelal after Rasczak dies in combat.[53] One of his comrades in the Roughnecks suggests that Rico go to officer training school and try to become an officer. Rico ends up going to see Jelal, and finds that Jelal already had the paperwork ready. Rico enters Officer Candidate School for a second course of training, including further courses in "History and Moral Philosophy".[54][55] En route from the Roughnecks to the school Rico encounters his father who has also enlisted and is now a corporal, and the two reconcile. He is also visited in school by Carmen, now an ensign and ship's pilot officer in the Navy, and the two discuss their friend Carl, who had been killed earlier in the war.[56] Rico is commissioned a temporary third lieutenant for his final test: a posting to a combat unit. Under the tutelage of his company commander, Captain Blackstone, and with the aid of his platoon sergeant, his boot camp drill instructor Fleet Sergeant Zim, Rico commands a platoon during "Operation Royalty", a raid to capture members of the Arachnid brain caste and queens.[57] Rico then returns to the officer school to graduate. The novel ends with him holding the rank of second lieutenant, in command of his old platoon in the Rodger Young, with his father as his platoon sergeant. The platoon has been renamed "Rico's Roughnecks", and is about to participate in an attack on Klendathu.[58] Themes Robert Heinlein in 1976 Commentators have written that Starship Troopers is not driven by its plot, though it contains scenes of military combat. Instead, much of the novel is given over to a discussion of ideas.[59] In particular, the discussion of political views is a recurring feature of what scholar Jeffrey Cass described as an "ideologically intense" book.[16] A 1997 review in Salon categorized it as a "philosophical novel".[1] Critics have debated to what extent the novel promotes Heinlein's own political views. Some contend that the novel maintains a sense of irony that allows readers to draw their own conclusions; others argue that Heinlein is sermonizing throughout the book, and that its purpose is to expound Heinlein's militaristic philosophy.[16][18] Militarism Starship Troopers has been identified as being a part of a tradition in American science fiction that assumes that violent conflict and the militarization of society are inevitable and necessary.[8] Although the Mobile Infantry, the force to which Rico is assigned, is seen as a lowly post by the characters in the story, the novel itself suggests that it is the heart of the army and the most honorable unit in it.[43] In a commentary written in 1980, Heinlein agreed that Starship Troopers "glorifies the military ... Specifically the P.B.I., the Poor Bloody Infantry, the mudfoot who places his frail body between his loved home and the war's desolation – but is rarely appreciated ... he has the toughest job of all and should be honored."[13] The story is based on the social Darwinist idea of society as a struggle for survival based on military strength. It suggests that some conflicts must be resolved by force: one of the lessons Rico is repeatedly taught is that violence can be an effective method of settling conflict.[19] These suggestions derive in part from Heinlein's view that in the 1950s the US government was being too conciliatory in its dealings with communist China and the Soviet Union.[17][59][60][61] Heinlein draws an analogy between the human society in the novel, which is well-to-do but needs to be vigilant against the imperialist threat of the Arachnids, and US society of the 1950s. Reviewers have suggested that the Arachnids are Heinlein's analogue for communists. Traits used to support this include the communal nature of the Arachnids, which makes them capable of a much higher degree of coordination than the humans. Bug society is once explicitly described as communist, and is moreover depicted as communist by nature; this has been read as implying that those with a different political ideology are analogous to alien beings.[9][19][62] The related motifs of alien invasion, patriotism, and personal sacrifice during war, are present, as are other aspects of US popular culture of the 1950s.[17] Commentators have argued that Heinlein's portrayal of aliens, as well as being a reference to 1950s communist countries, aims to "reinscribe the ideologies of America's mythic frontier history". The concept of the frontier includes a social-Darwinist argument of constantly fighting for survival, even at the expense of indigenous people or, in the case of Starship Troopers, of aliens. Heinlein suggests that without territorial expansion involving violent conquest of other races, humans would be destroyed.[63] Scholar Jamie King has stated that Heinlein does not address the question of what the military government and Federal Service would do in peacetime, and argues that Heinlein has set up a society designed to be continuously at war, and to keep expanding its territory.[64] Coming of age Starship Troopers has been referred to as a bildungsroman or "coming-of-age" story for Rico, as he matures through his tenure in the infantry. His training, both at boot camp and at officer candidate school, involves learning the value of militarism, thus inviting the reader to learn it as well.[43] This is especially true of the parts of his training that involve indoctrination, such as the claim by one of his instructors that rule by military veterans is the ideal form of government, because only they understand how to put collective well-being above the individual.[43] The story traces Rico's transformation from a boy into a soldier, while exploring issues of identity and motivation,[18] and traces his overall moral and social development, in a manner identified by commentators as similar to many stories about German soldiers in World War I.[65] Rico's transformation has been likened to the common narrative within stories with military themes by scholar H. Bruce Franklin. This typical narrative is that of a sloppy and unfit civilian being knocked into shape by tough officers, whose training is "calculated sadism" but is depicted as fundamentally being on the right side.[32] The letter Rico receives from Dubois, partly responsible for Rico "crossing the hump" with his training, is shown as a turning point in his development.[19] The classroom scenes embedded in the story serve to explain Rico's adventures, and highlight his reactions to events around. A notable example is the execution Rico is forced to witness after a deserter from his unit murders a young girl; Rico is uncertain of his own reaction until he remembers a lecture by Dubois in which the latter argues that "moral sense" derives entirely from the will to survive.[19][66] The concept of the American frontier is also related to the coming-of-age theme. Young protagonists across Heinlein's novels attain manhood by confronting a hostile "wilderness" in space; coming-of-age in a military, alien context is a common theme in Heinlein's earlier works as well.[67] Rico's coming-of-age has also been described as being related to his relationship with his father; the journey "outward" through the novel also contains a search for Rico's childhood and a reunion with his estranged parent.[68] Moral decline Starship Troopers also critiques US society of the 1950s, suggesting that it led young people to be spoiled and undisciplined. These beliefs are expressed through the classroom lectures of Dubois, Rico's teacher for History and Moral Philosophy. Dubois praises flogging and other types of corporal punishment as a means of addressing juvenile crimes. It has been suggested that Heinlein endorsed this view, although the fact that Dubois also compares raising children to training a puppy has been used to argue that Heinlein was making use of irony.[10] The story is strongly in favor of corporal punishment and capital punishment, as a means of correcting juvenile delinquents, part of a trend in science fiction which examines technology and outer space in an innovative manner, but is reactionary with respect to human relationships.[7][23] As with other books by Heinlein, traditional schools are denigrated, while learning "on the spot" is extolled: Rico is able to master the things required of him in military training without undue difficulty.[19] Dubois also ridicules the idea of inalienable rights, such as "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness", arguing that people have only the rights that they are willing to fight and die for to protect.[33][66][69] The novel appeals to scientific authority to justify this position; Dubois repeatedly states that his argument is mathematically demonstrable, statements which have led scholars to label the novel "hard science fiction", despite its social and political themes.[70] The "moral decline" caused by this situation is depicted as having caused a global war between an alliance of the US, Britain, and Russia against the "Chinese Hegemony" in the year 1987. Despite the alliance between the US and Russia, this war has been described as demonstrating Heinlein's anti-communist beliefs, which saw "swarming hordes" of Chinese as a bigger threat. The novel draws some comparisons between the Chinese and the Arachnids, and suggests that the lessons of one war could be applied to the other.[69] Reception To Heinlein's surprise,[71] Starship Troopers won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1960.[72] It has been acknowledged as one of the best-known and most influential works of science fiction.[2][21] The novel is considered a landmark for the genre, having been described by a 1960 review as one of the ten best genre books of 1959,[73] in a 2009 review as a key science fiction novel of the 1950s,[14] and as the best-known example of military science fiction.[74] The novel has been described as marking Heinlein's transition from writing juvenile fiction to a "more mature phase" as an author.[3] Reviewing the book with others written for children, Floyd C. Gale of Galaxy Science Fiction wrote in 1960 that "Heinlein has penned a juvenile that really is not. This is a new and bitter and disillusioned Heinlein". Rating it 2.5 stars out of five for children, 4.5 stars for adults, and "?" for civilians, he believed that the novel would be "of exceptional interest to veterans with battle experience ... but youngsters will find it melancholy and verbose".[75] Conversely, Michael Moorcock described it as Heinlein's last "straight" science fiction, before he turned to more serious writing such as Stranger in a Strange Land.[76] By 1980, twenty years after its release, Starship Troopers had been translated into eleven languages and was still selling strongly. Heinlein nevertheless complained that, despite this success, almost all the mail he received about it was negative and he only heard about it "when someone wants to chew me out".[71] The novel is highly contentious.[3] Controversy surrounded its praise of the military and approval of violence, to the extent that it has frequently been described as fascist, and its implication that militarism is superior to traditional democracy.[3][77] Heinlein's peers were among those who argued over the book; a comparison between a quote in Starship Troopers that "the noblest fate that a man can endure is to place his own mortal body between his loved home and war's desolation"[78] and the anti-war poem "Dulce et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen began a two-year discussion in the Proceedings of the Institute for Twenty-First Century Studies from 1959 to 1961, with James Blish, Poul Anderson, Philip José Farmer, Anthony Boucher, John Brunner, Brian Aldiss, among those debating Starship Troopers's quality of writing, philosophy, and morality.[79] The writing in Starship Troopers has received varied responses, with the scenes of military training and combat receiving praise. In a 2009 retrospective, science-fiction writer Jo Walton wrote that Starship Troopers was "military SF done extremely well".[18] She went on to argue that "Heinlein was absolutely at his peak when he wrote this in 1959. He had so much technical stylistic mastery of the craft of writing science fiction that he could [tell the story] 'backwards and in high heels' and get away with it."[18] Others referred to it as very readable, and found the military scenes compelling.[3][11][12] Heinlein's descriptions of training and boot camp in the novel, based on his own experiences in the military, have been described as being rendered with remarkable skill.[17] A 1960 review in the New York Herald Tribune praised the "brilliantly written" passages describing infantry combat, and also called attention to the discussion of weapons and armor,[80] which, according to other reviewers, demonstrated Heinlein's "undiminished talent for invention".[19] Scholar George Slusser described the book in 1986 as the "ultimately convincing space-war epic", praising in particular the "precisely imagined" weapons and tactics,[68] while a 1979 science fiction encyclopedia referred to it as the "slickest" of Heinlein's juvenile books.[19] Criticism of the style of the book has centered on its political aspects. Heinlein's discussions of his political beliefs were criticized as "didactic",[11][80][81] and the novel was derided for "exposition [that was] inserted in large indigestible chunks".[80] Author Ken MacLeod's 2003 analysis of the political nature of Starship Troopers stated that it was "a book where civics infodumps and accounts of brutal boot-camp training far outweigh the thin and tensionless combat scenes".[12] Scientist and author Brunner compared it to a "Victorian children's book",[82] while the Science Fiction Handbook published in 2009 said that the novel provided "compelling images of a futuristic military" and that it raised important questions, even for those who disagree with its political ideology. However, it stated that the story was weak as a tale of an alien encounter, as it did not explore alien society in any detail, but presented the Arachnids as nameless and faceless creatures that wished to destroy humanity.[22] Boucher, founder of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, remarked in 1960 that Heinlein had "forgotten to insert a story".[80] A 1979 summary said that though Heinlein's vision might verge on fascism, his tightly controlled narrative made his ideology seem "vibrantly appealing".[19] Criticism of militarism Starship Troopers is generally considered to promote militarism, the glorification of war and of the military.[14] Scholar Bruce Franklin referred to it in 1980 as a "bugle-blowing, drum-beating glorification" of military service, and wrote that militarism and imperialism were the explicit message of the book.[15][83] Science fiction writer Dean McLaughlin called it "a book-length recruiting poster".[84] In 1968 science fiction critic Alexei Panshin called Starship Troopers a militaristic polemic and compared it to a recruiting film, stating that it "purports to show the life of a typical soldier, with a soundtrack commentary by earnest sincere Private Jones who interprets what we see for us." Panshin stated that there was no "sustained human conflict" in the book: instead, "All the soldiers we see are tough, smart, competent, cleancut, clean-shaven, and noble."[85] Panshin, a veteran of the peacetime military, argued that Heinlein glossed over the reality of military life, and that the Terran Federation-Arachnid conflict existed simply because, "Starship troopers are not half so glorious sitting on their butts polishing their weapons for the tenth time for lack of anything else to do."[85] Literature scholar George Slusser, in describing the novel as "wrong-headed and retrogressive", argued that calling its ideology militarism or imperialism was inadequate, as these descriptions suggested an economic motive. Slusser instead says that Heinlein advocates for a complete "technological subjugation of nature", of which the Arachnids are a symbol, and that this subjugation itself is depicted as a sign of human advancement.[83] A 1997 review of the film in Salon stated that the novel could almost be described as propaganda, and was terrifying as a result, particularly in its belief that the boot camp had to be an ingredient of any civilization. This was described as a highly unusual utopian vision.[1] Moorcock stated that the lessons Rico learns in boot camp: "wars are inevitable, [and] that the army is always right".[76] In discussing the book's utility in classroom discussions of the form of government, Alan Myers stated that its depiction of the military was of an "unashamedly Earth-chauvinist nature".[11] In the words of science fiction scholar Darko Suvin, Starship Troopers was an "unsubtle but powerful black-and-white paean to combat life", and an example of agitprop in favor of military values.[81] Other writers defended Heinlein. George Price argued that "[Heinlein] implies, first, that war is something endured, not enjoyed, and second, that war is so unpleasant, so desolate, that it must at all costs be kept away from one's home."[86] Poul Anderson also defended some of the novel's positions, arguing "Heinlein has recognized the problem of selective versus nonselective franchise, and his proposed solution does merit discussion."[87] Complaints were made against Heinlein for the lack of conscription in Starship Troopers. When he wrote the novel, the military draft was still in effect in the US.[88] Allegations of fascism The society within the book has frequently been described as fascist.[14][16][17] According to the 2009 Science Fiction Handbook, it had the effect of giving Heinlein a reputation as a "fanatical warmongering fascist".[6] Scholar Jeffrey Cass has referred to the setting of the book as "unremittingly grim fascism". He has stated that the novel made an analogy between its military conflict and those of the US after World War II, and that it justified American imperialism in the name of fighting another form of imperialism.[89] Jasper Goss has referred to it as "crypto-fascist".[17] Suvin compares Heinlein's suggestion that "all wars arise from population pressure" to the Nazi concept of Lebensraum or "living space" for a superior society that was used to justify territorial expansion.[90] Some reviewers have suggested that Heinlein was simply discussing the merits of a selective versus a nonselective franchise.[18] Heinlein made a similar claim, over two decades after Starship Troopers's publication, in his Expanded Universe and further claimed that 95 percent of "veterans" were not military personnel but members of the civil service.[91] Heinlein's own description has been disputed, even among the book's defenders. Heinlein scholar James Gifford has argued that a number of quotes within the novel suggest that the characters within the book assume that the Federal Service is largely military. For instance, when Rico tells his father that he is interested in Federal Service, his father immediately explains his belief that Federal Service is a bad idea because there is no war in progress, indicating that he sees Federal Service as military in nature. Gifford states that although Heinlein's intentions may have been that Federal Service be 95 percent non-military, in relation to the actual contents of the book, Heinlein "is wrong on this point. Flatly so."[5] Dennis Showalter, writing in 1975, defended Starship Troopers, stating that the society depicted in it did not contain many elements of fascism. He argues that the novel does not include outright opposition to Bolshevism and liberalism that would be expected in a fascist society.[89] Others have responded by saying Showalter's argument is based on a literal reading of the novel, and that the story glorifies militarism to a large extent.[89] Ken Macleod argues that the book does not actually advocate fascism because anybody capable of understanding the oath of Federal Service is able to enlist and thereby obtain political power.[12] Macleod states that Heinlein's books are consistently liberal, but cover a spectrum from democratic to elitist forms of liberalism, Starship Troopers being on the latter end of the spectrum.[2] It has been argued that Heinlein's militarism is more libertarian than fascist, and that this trend is also present in Heinlein's other popular books of the period, such as Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966). This period of Heinlein's writing has received more critical attention than any other, although he continued to write into the 1980s.[14] Apparent utopianism The setting of the book is presented by Heinlein as utopian; its leaders are shown as good and wise, and the population as free and prosperous.[6][19] Slusser wrote in 1987 that Starship Troopers depicts a world that is "hell for human beings", but nonetheless celebrates the ideology of its fictional society.[83] The rulers are claimed to be the best in history, because they understand that human nature is to fight for power through the use of force.[43] The suggestion of utopia is not explored in depth, as the lives of those outside the military are not shown in any detail.[19][22] The novel suggests that the militarist philosophy espoused by many of the characters has a mathematical backing, though reviewers have commented that Heinlein does not present any basis for this.[18][43] Writers such as Farmer, Robert A. W. Lowndes, and Michael Moorcock have criticized the novel for being a hypothetical utopia, in the sense that while Heinlein's ideas sound plausible, they have never been put to the test. Moorcock wrote an essay entitled "Starship Stormtroopers" in which he attacked Heinlein and other writers over similar "Utopian fiction".[76] Lowndes accused Heinlein of using straw man arguments, "countering ingenuous half-truths with brilliant half-truths".[92] Lowndes further argued that the Terran Federation could never be as idealistic as Heinlein portrays it to be because he never properly addressed "whether or not [non-citizens] have at least as full a measure of civil redress against official injustice as we have today".[92] Farmer agreed, arguing that a "world ruled by veterans would be as mismanaged, graft-ridden, and insane as one ruled by men who had never gotten near the odor of blood and guts".[93] Race and gender Authors and commentators have stated that the manner in which the extraterrestrial beings are portrayed in Starship Troopers has racist aspects, arguing that the nicknames "Bugs" and "Skinnies" carry racial overtones. John Brunner compared them to calling Koreans "gooks".[82] Slusser argued that the term "Bugs" was an "abusive and biologically inaccurate" word that justified the violence against alien beings, a tendency which, according to Slusser, the book shared with other commercially successful science fiction.[62] Some of Heinlein's other works have also been described as racist, though Franklin argues that this was not unique to Heinlein, and that he was less racist than the US government of the time.[94] Heinlein's early novel Sixth Column was called a "racist paean" to a white resistance movement against an Asian horde derived from the Yellow Peril.[95] In 1978, Moorcock wrote that Starship Troopers "set the pattern for Heinlein's more ambitious paternalistic, xenophobic" stories.[76] Robert Lowndes argues that the war between the Terrans and the Arachnids is not about a quest for racial purity, but rather an extension of Heinlein's belief that man is a wild animal. According to this theory, if man lacks a moral compass beyond the will to survive, and he was confronted by another species with a similar lack of morality, then the only possible moral result would be warfare.[92] The fact that all pilots in the novel are women (in contrast to the infantry, which is entirely male) has been cited as evidence of progressive gender politics within the story, although the idea expressed by Rico that women are the motivation for men to fight in the military is a counter-example to this.[18][22] A 1996 science fiction encyclopedia said that like much of Heinlein's fiction, Starship Troopers exemplified "macho male culture".[96] The prosthetically enhanced soldiers in the novel, all of whom are men, have been described as an example of the "hyper-masculinity" brought on by the proximity of these men to technology.[97] The story portrays the Arachnids as so alien that the only response to them can be war. Feminist scholars have described this reaction as a "conventionally masculinist" one.[98] Steffen Hantke has described the mechanized suits in the novel, which make the wearer resemble a "steel gorilla," as defining masculinity as "something intensely physical, based on animal power, instinct, and aggression". He calls this form of masculinity "all body, so to speak, and no brain".[99] Thus, in Hantke's reading, Starship Troopers expresses fears of how masculinity may be preserved in an environment of high technology.[100] This fear is exacerbated by the motifs of pregnancy and birth that Heinlein uses when describing how the soldiers in suits are dropped from spaceships piloted by women.[101] Though Rico says he finds women "marvelous", he shows no desire for sexual activity; the war seems to have subsumed sex in this respect.[19] A 1979 summary argued that despite the gestures towards women's equality, women in the story were still objects, to be protected, and to fight wars over.[19] Influence A real-life concept of powered armor, an idea popularized by Starship Troopers[102] Heinlein's books, and Starship Troopers in particular, had an enormous impact on political science fiction, to the extent that author Ken MacLeod has stated that "the political strand in [science fiction] can be described as a dialogue with Heinlein," although many participants in this dialogue disagree with Heinlein.[2] Science fiction critic Darko Suvin states that Starship Troopers is the "ancestral text of US science fiction militarism" and that it shaped the debate about the role of the military in society for many years.[20] In addition to his political views, Heinlein's ideas about a futuristic military as depicted in the novel were deeply influential among films, books, and television shows in later years.[22] Roger Beaumont has suggested that Starship Troopers may some day be considered a manual for extraterrestrial warfare.[103] Suvin refers to Juan Rico as the "archetypal Space Soldier".[104] Starship Troopers included concepts in military engineering which have since been widely used in other fiction, and which have occasionally been paralleled by scientific research. The novel has been cited as the source of the idea of powered armor exoskeletons, which Heinlein describes in great detail.[83][105][106][107] Such suits became a staple of military science fiction. Franchises that have employed this technology include Iron Man, Exo Squad, Halo, District 9, Elysium, and Edge of Tomorrow.[21] During the shooting of the science fiction film Aliens, director James Cameron required the actors playing space marines to read Starship Troopers to understand their parts, and also cited it as an influence for the space drop, terms like "bug hunt", and the cargo-loader exoskeleton.[108] Starship Troopers had a direct influence on many later science fiction stories. John Steakley's 1984 novel Armor was, according to the author, born out of frustration with the small amount of actual combat in Starship Troopers and because he wanted this aspect developed further.[109] The "Mobile Suits" from the 1979 Nippon Sunrise anime series Mobile Suit Gundam were inspired by the powered armor from Starship Troopers.[110] The 1988 Gainax OVA series Gunbuster has plot elements similar to Starship Troopers, depicting humanity arrayed against an alien military.[107] Scholars have identified elements of Heinlein's influence in Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card, as well. Hantke, in particular, compares the battle room in Ender's Game to Heinlein's prosthetic suits, stating that they both regulate but also enhance human agency.[111] Suvin suggests parallels between the plots of the two novels, with human society in both stories at war against insect-like aliens, but states that the story of Ender Wiggin takes a very different direction, as Ender regrets his genocidal actions and dedicates his efforts to protecting his erstwhile targets.[104] Conversely, Joe Haldeman's 1974 anti-war, Hugo- and Nebula-winning science fiction novel The Forever War is popularly thought to be a direct reply to Starship Troopers, and though Haldeman has stated that it is actually a result of his personal experiences in the Vietnam War, he has admitted to being influenced by Starship Troopers.[112][113][114] Haldeman said that he disagreed with Starship Troopers because it "glorifies war", but added that "it's a very well-crafted novel, and I believe Heinlein was honest with it".[112] The Forever War contains several parallels to Starship Troopers, including its setting. Commentators have described it as a reaction to Heinlein's novel, a suggestion Haldeman denies; the two novels are very different in terms of their attitude towards the military. The Forever War does not depict war as a noble pursuit, with the sides clearly defined as good and evil; instead, the novel explores the dehumanizing effect of war, influenced by the real world context of the Vietnam War.[23] Haldeman received a letter from Heinlein, congratulating him on his Nebula Award, which "meant more than the award itself".[115] According to author Spider Robinson, Heinlein approached Haldeman at the awards banquet and said the book "may be the best future war story I've ever read!"[116] Harry Harrison's 1965 novel Bill, the Galactic Hero has also been described as a reaction to Starship Troopers,[6] while Gordon R. Dickson's 1961 novel Naked to the Stars has been called "an obvious rejoinder" to Starship Troopers.[117] Ring of Swords, written by Eleanor Arnason in 1993, also depicts a war between two highly aggressive species, of which humans are one. The story deliberately inverts several aspects of Starship Troopers: the story is told from the point of view of diplomats seeking to prevent war, rather than soldiers fighting it, and the conflict is the result of the two species being extremely similar, rather than different.[118] Adaptations 1997 film Main article: Starship Troopers (film) Further information: Starship Troopers (franchise) The film rights to the novel were licensed in the 1990s, several years after Heinlein's death. The project was originally entitled Bug Hunt at Outpost Nine, and had been in production before the producers bought the rights to Starship Troopers.[119][120][121] The film was directed by Paul Verhoeven (who found the book too boring to finish), and released in 1997.[122] The screenplay, by Ed Neumeier, shared character names and some plot details with the novel.[123] The film contained several elements that differed from the book, including a military that is completely integrated with respect to sex. It had the stated intention of treating its material in an ironic or sarcastic manner, to undermine the political ideology of the novel.[17][124] The mechanized suits that featured prominently in the novel were absent from the film, due to budget constraints.[99] The film used fascist imagery throughout, including portraying the Terran Federation's personnel wearing uniforms strongly reminiscent of those worn by the SS, the Nazi paramilitary.[125] Verhoeven stated in 1997 that the first scene of the film – an advertisement for the Mobile Infantry – was adapted shot-for-shot from a scene in Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will (1935), specifically an outdoor rally for the Reichsarbeitsdienst. Other references to Nazism include the Albert Speer-style architecture and the propagandistic dialogue ("Violence is the supreme authority!").[126] According to Verhoeven, the references to Nazism reflected his own experience in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands during World War II.[24][127] The film reignited the debate over the nature of the Terran society in Heinlein's world, and several critics accused Verhoeven of creating a fascist universe. Others, and Verhoeven himself, have stated that the film was intended to be ironic, and to critique fascism.[77][128] The film has also been described as criticizing the jingoism of US foreign policy, the military industrial complex, and the society in the film, which elevates violence over sensitivity.[129] It received several negative critical reviews, reviewers suggesting that it was unsophisticated and targeted a juvenile audience, although some scholars and critics have also supported its description as satirical.[21][24][124][129] The absence of the powered armor technology drew criticism from fans.[21][99] The success of the film's endeavor to critique the ideology of the novel has been disputed.[24] Four sequels, Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation (2004),[130] Starship Troopers 3: Marauder (2008),[131] Starship Troopers: Invasion (2012)[132] and Starship Troopers: Traitor of Mars (2017) were released as straight-to-DVD films. In December 2011, Neal H. Moritz, producer of films such as the Fast & Furious series and I Am Legend, announced plans for a remake of the film that he claims will be more faithful to the source material.[133] In 2016 Mark Swift and Damian Shannon were reported to be writing the film.[134][needs update] Animated series Main article: Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles An animated TV series was also released based both on the novel and 1997 film called Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles, it follows the exploits of the Mobile Infantry squad, "Razak's Roughnecks", during the SICON–Bugs War between a newly united humanity and an extraterrestrial race, known as the "Bugs," also sometimes referred to as Arachnids. The show focuses mainly on the Roughnecks' missions, rather than addressing the larger war. Paul Verhoeven served as an executive producer.[135] The show ran for one season from August 1999 to April 2000. Other media From October to December 1988, Sunrise and Bandai Visual produced a six-episode Japanese original video animation locally titled Uchū no Senshi with mobile infantry power armor designs by Kazutaka Miyatake, based on Starship Troopers.[136] Dark Horse Comics, Mongoose Publishing and Markosia hold the license to produce comic books based on Starship Troopers, written by authors including Warren Ellis, Gordon Rennie and Tony Lee.[137][138] Avalon Hill published Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers in 1976, a map-and-counter board wargame featuring a number of scenarios as written in the novel.[139] In 1998, Mythic Entertainment released Starship Troopers: Battlespace. The web-based interactive game, in which players battled each other in overhead space combat, allowed players to assume either Klendathu or Federation roles, was developed alongside the film adaptation.[24][140] Starship Troopers: The Miniatures Game was released by Mongoose Publishing in 2005, a miniature wargame which used material from the novel, film, and animated TV series.[141] Spectre Media released Starship Troopers: Invasion Mobile Infantry, a game for PCs, in 2012.[142] Offworld Industries developed and published the 2023 game Starship Troopers: Extermination, a cooperative multiplayer first-person shooter available for PC.[143]

This week, we're taking on two sci-fi classics with Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986). We start with Ridley Scott's original, which follows the crew of the Nostromo as they discover a mysterious and iconic enemy. Then we discuss James Cameron's sequel Aliens, which takes the ideas of the original in a much more action-heavy direction. Join us as we discuss what makes both films work, how differently Scott and Cameron approach the material, and which parts of these movies still hold up decades later. Timestamps: Alien (1979) — 46:15 Aliens (1986) — 1:29:09 Cinema Spectator is a movie podcast hosted by Isaac Ransom, Juzo Greenwood, and Cameron Tuttle. The show is executive-produced by Darrin O'Neill and recorded and produced in the San Francisco Bay Area, CA. You can support the show at patreon.com/ecfsproductions. Follow us on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @cinemaspectatorpodcast. Isaac and Cameron began recording podcasts with their first project, Everything Comes from Something (2018), and are now focusing on new weekly content for Cinema Spectator. Cameron Tuttle is a full-time professional cinematographer who majored in film at SFSU and collaborates on corporate, private, and creative productions. Cameron is the expert. Isaac Ransom works full-time as a marketing leader with creative experience in brand, advertising, product, music, and film. Isaac is the casual. Juzo is a producer, director, and avid film enthusiast who knows everything about cinema. The podcast is a passion project by three longtime friends; we hope you enjoy it! Thank you for your time, generosity, and support.

The first episode of our season on the awesome movie year of 1991 features the box-office champion, James Cameron's Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Directed and co-written by James Cameron and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Edward Furlong, Robert Patrick and Joe Morton, Terminator 2: Judgment Day is the second film in the long-running Terminator sci-fi action franchise.The contemporary reviews quoted in this episode come from Roger Ebert (https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/terminator-2-judgment-day-1991), Janet Maslin in The New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/1991/07/03/movies/review-film-in-new-terminator-the-forces-of-good-seek-peace-violently.html), and Owen Gleiberman in Entertainment Weekly (https://ew.com/movies/1991/07/12/terminator-2-judgment-day/).Check out more info and the entire archive of past episodes at https://www.awesomemoviepod.com and visit us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/awesomemovieyearYou can find Jason on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/JHarrisComedy/, on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/jasonharriscomedy/ and on Letterboxd at https://letterboxd.com/goforjason/You can find Josh online at http://joshbellhateseverything.com/, on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/joshbellhateseverything/, on Bluesky at signalbleed.bsky.social and on Letterboxd at https://letterboxd.com/signalbleed/If you're a Letterboxd user and you watch any of the movies we talk about on the show, tag your review “Awesome Movie Year” to share your thoughts.You can find our producer David Rosen and his Piecing It Together Podcast at https://www.piecingpod.com, on Instagram at @piecingpod, on Bluesky at piecingpod.bsky.social and on Letterboxd at https://letterboxd.com/bydavidrosen/ Join the Popcorn & Puzzle Pieces Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/piecingpod for more movie discussion and our Awesome Movie Year audience choice polls.All of the music in the episode is by David Rosen. Find more of his music at https://www.bydavidrosen.comSubscribe on Patreon to support the show and get access to exclusive content from Awesome Movie Year and Piecing It Together, plus music by David Rosen: https://www.patreon.com/bydavidrosenPlease like, share, rate and comment on the show and this episode, and tune in for the next 1991 episode, with our pick for a notable debut feature, John Singleton's Boyz n the Hood.

Season 5 of 5 Minute Film Finder On this episode Daren Traci and Ben talk about one of the most lauded sequels of all time "Terminator 2: Judgement Day" (R) dir. James Cameron. They talk about it's impact on the genre of action films going forward, as well as its' incredible use of practical visual effects. The movie covered in this episode can be found on Hoopla and Kanopy Thanks for joining us!This podcast is brought to you by Pioneer Library System in Oklahoma Attend a Spark a Change EventIf you would like to reach out to us with any questions or comments please email us atpodcast@pioneerlibrarysystem.orgFor more information about Pioneer Library System visit https://pioneerlibrarysystem.org/

Nouveaux pilotes, un brin déjantés, à bord de la Libre Antenne sur RMC ! Jean-Christophe Drouet et Julien Cazarre prennent le relais. Après les grands matchs, quand la lumière reste allumée pour les vrais passionnés, place à la Libre Antenne : un espace à part, entre passion, humour et dérision, débats enflammés, franc-parler et second degré. Un rendez-vous nocturne à la Cazarre, où l'on parle foot bien sûr, mais aussi mauvaise foi, vannes, imitations et grands moments de radio imprévisibles !

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For their 245th episode, two steely film critics, two liquid metal dads, and two fate-believing school teachers, Will Johnson and Don Shanahan, welcome back guest Mark Krawczyk of Special Mark Productions and The Spoiler Room Podcast for his second appearance of a two-episode arc. The three go from video game fatalities last week to some of the best OG ones with a talk on "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," celebrating its 35th anniversary this year. All of them remember where they were and glow in the blue-tinted James Cameron memories. Come learn more and stay for the mutual love and respect that fun movies encapsulate. Enjoy our podcast!Speakpipe - send us a voicemailhttps://discord.gg/N6MKWXU2https://www.teepublic.com/user/ruminationsradionetworkhttps://www.instagram.com/cinephilehissyfit/https://www.instagram.com/casablancadon/www.RuminationsRadioNetwork.comwww.instagram.com/RuminationsRadioNetworkProduction by Mitch Proctor for Area 42 Studios and SoundEpisode Artwork by Charles Langley for Area 42 Studios and Soundhttps://www.patreon.com/RuminationsRadiohttps://everymoviehasalesson.com/https://ruminationsradio.transistor.fm/ ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Welcome back to Hollywood Hangout! Grab a seat and hang out with your host, Boxman, as we dive into the cyberpunk, CGI-heavy world of Alita: Battle Angel (2019). In this episode, Boxman breaks down the epic visual spectacle brought to life by producer James Cameron and director Robert Rodriguez. We're taking a close look at the cast, walking through a quick scene-by-scene breakdown of Iron City, and dropping some lesser-known trivia you might have missed!In this episode, we talk about:The Star-Studded Cast: Rosa Salazar's incredible performance behind the motion-capture, Christoph Waltz as the compassionate Dr. Dyson Ido, plus Oscar-winner Mahershala Ali, Jennifer Connelly, Ed Skrein, and Jackie Earle Haley. Scene-by-Scene Breakdown: From Alita waking up in the scrapyard to discovering her URM Berserker body, that wild Kansas Bar brawl, the high-octane Motorball tryout sequence, and the ultimate showdown with Nova's forces.Don't forget to Like, Subscribe, and hit the notification bell to hang out with us every week! Drop your thoughts in the comments: Are you still waiting on an Alita sequel?Check it out every Friday at 9:30 PM Eastern. Live on YouTube.YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@hollywoodhangoutpodcastSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1ymX0HRkWB45ja11B2I6fmApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/hollywood-hangout/id1132940251Castbox: https://castbox.fm/channel/4647345?country=usFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/HollywoodHangout/  

Earlier this month, world model company Runway introduced GWM Worlds 2, a research preview that “turns high-fidelity video and audio generation into real-time interactive simulation.” Runway calls this an “autoregressive diffusion” model; with autoregressive describing how it generates over time.One new feature in particular caught our eye: WorldPrompt, a proposed input format for specifying a generated world and the actions within it. It allows you to fix some aspects of a simulated environment — including the first frame — and then create a series of timestamped events. The events, or actions, can even be prompted in real-time.To understand the implications of WorldPrompt, we spoke to Kamil Sindi, Runway's CTO, and Robin Kahlow, its Principal Research Scientist for generative video and multimodal AI. We also have exclusive comments from Anastasis Germanidis, co-founder & co-CEO of Runway, courtesy of a podcast swyx and Vibhu did with him.Who's building real-time interactive world models?First, some context about world models that can generate interactive video and audio in real-time.Runway is reportedly valued at $5.3 billion, based on its most recent fund raise of $315 million in February. Its first release, GWM Worlds, was launched last December.Alongside Runway, there are several other notable projects in this domain: Google DeepMind's Genie 3 (which also generates at 720p and 24 fps), Odyssey-2 Pro, and World Labs' RTFM (Real-Time Frame Model). We've summarized their differences in the following table:Given the complexity and massive latency demands of real-time video and audio generation (which we'll get into below), all of the projects listed above have limitations. For instance, Google notes that Genie 3 “can currently support a few minutes of continuous interaction, rather than extended hours.”But as our interviews with Runway show, real progress is being made.The central idea of WorldPromptWorldPrompt, a new feature in GWM Worlds 2, helps differentiate Runway from its competition. You can think of it as a control layer for characters, cameras and the environment. As Kahlow put it, it's a way to “control all the different subjects in the world” — similar to a computer game.“Like, if there's an NPC [Non-Player Character] somewhere, the NPC might walk up to you and say something. So you could achieve the same thing with this kind of model, where you can have very detailed control over everything in the scene.”As the name suggests, WorldPrompt is a prompting mechanism — not a programming language. So, unlike virtual world games like Minecraft or Roblox, GWM Worlds 2 doesn't offer scripting capabilities or the ability to control state. But there's a power to that, as Sindi pointed out.“You can create promptable worlds on-demand with video and audio in sync, across all these different domains and environments. That's not a distant-future hypothetical thing,” he said.But there are also limitations to prompting a world model. We asked how reliably the model would follow an instruction to create, for example, a law of gravity or a certain ability in a character?“Yeah, so it's a research preview,” Kahlow replied. “So it's not perfect, of course, and there are still flaws. It really depends on how difficult the action is. I would say movement works quite reliably.”Sindi added that more training plus scaling the data and models is resulting in “better following.”How a video model becomes a real-time runtimeDespite the current limitations of GWM Worlds 2 — especially if you compare it to pre-designed and scriptable worlds like Minecraft or Roblox — the true promise of world models like Runway is that they'll eventually lead to fully self-generated, real-time games and experiences. Which is an extremely hard engineering problem, as Kahlow reminded us.“There are two challenges. One is making the model not generate a whole clip at once. So instead, you want it to generate frame by frame while you're looking at it. And the other challenge is actually making the generation fast, so you can play it in real time.”GWM Worlds 2 offers real-time interactive worlds streamed in continuous 720p video at 24 frames per second (fps) and audio at 48,000 Hz.Runway achieved this firstly by taking its foundational audio-video generation model and fine-tuning it to the new WorldPrompt format, so the model can follow that. It then post-trains the model to generate autoregressively.“And after that, we work on making it real-time through distillation methods,” Kahlow added.Co-CEO Anastasis Germanidis offered more technical details in our podcast with him. He told us that the process starts from “bidirectional diffusion that basically generates an entire video at once and [makes] it autoregressive.” This allows the model to “generate one frame or a few frames at a time.”Germanidis described two possible forms of distillation in order to make it real-time: distilling a larger model into a smaller one or reducing its diffusion steps. As a general example, he said a model might go from around 50 denoising steps to four, with some quality loss but potentially comparable results.The challenges of real-time generationGermanidis admitted that there were issues with how it generates real-time interactive video.“The biggest challenge with autoregressive models is error accumulation,” he said. “You're feeding generated frames back into the model to generate the next frames, and if there are any small errors, they accumulate over time.”Sindi told us there are also challenges dealing with “infinite generations” of content.“There's all these challenges around what context to keep, what to discard that's not important. And so there's all these optimizations we have to think about, so we're not blowing up our GPU memory.”Another current limitation is long-term memory. “The model does not have perfect memory,” Kahlow said. “That's still an open research problem.”Causality and correctnessWhile performance is the primary challenge for Runway at this time, its world model also has to produce plausible consequences when a user takes different actions.Germanidis used the example of simulating football; he pointed out that online video training data contains more successful goals than failed goal attempts, so a video model might render the first more convincingly.“If I take this action versus this action, you want it to generate equally realistic outcomes,” he told us. “That's, I think, the big gap between video models and world models: that idea of counterfactual generation.”Sindi told us that evaluation gets harder the more complex interactions get.“If you have this multi-prompt, multi-character, multi-scene [environment], how do you really understand what was causal and what was not?”To try and solve that, Runway has some automated verifiable tests. But since GWM Worlds 2 is a research preview, Kahlow noted that doing tests yourself is also advisable — “trying out your model to see what doesn't work is really important.”More than gaming — there are agent use cases tooGaming is the obvious use case for what Runway is building, but there are others. Kahlow mentioned robotics — for example using a simulated environment to test how a robot works.Another, more intriguing, use case is to use it to test agents at scale.“Having thousands of simulated environments is much less challenging if you have a suitable model like GWM Worlds,” Kahlow said.But how does an agent know what's changed in the world — is there a structured state that it can read, or is it just the generated video and audio that it's consuming and understanding?“So there's no structured state here,” Kahlow replied. “It's just observing the same thing you might observe in real life, just [in this case] from cameras.”Sindi noted that GWM Worlds can also be used for “synthetic data generation for agents.”Finally, Germanidis suggested there's potential to use these world models alongside reasoning models.“You're maybe using some reasoning [for] planning of the scene, and then you're passing it into the diffusion head that's actually generating the pixels.”Anastasis Germanidis* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/agermanidis/* X: https://x.com/agermanidisTimestamps00:00:00 Introduction00:05:17 Runway's Origins and the Bet on Generative Video00:12:23 The Stable Diffusion Story00:18:44 Gen-2, Controllability, and the Weekend Hack00:23:02 From Video Generation to World Models00:28:03 Learning From the World, Not Just Language00:35:04 Sora, Runway's Existential Crisis, and Gen-300:39:39 Why Real-Time Video Is Inevitable00:43:06 Interface World Models: Software Without Code00:50:25 The Fully Neural Operating System00:55:11 World Models for Robotics01:02:32 Robot Policies and World Action Models01:07:47 The Lucid Dream Test01:11:41 Video Agents and Omni Models01:23:12 Artists, AI, and Creative Workflows01:27:14 Physical AI and the Future of World ModelsTranscriptIntroduction: Runway, Creative AI, and the Early ThesisSwyx [00:00:00]: Okay, we're here with, Anastassios from Runway, with, me and Vibhu in the studio. Welcome.Anastasis [00:00:08]: Good to be here.Swyx [00:00:09]: Congrats on all your success and progress with Runway. You're opening offices all over the world. Did you envision this when you first started out?Anastasis [00:00:16]: Not quite. I think even when we started, we had this idea that, It was more a matter of when, not if, we were seeing the early generative models of 2016, 2017, and just extrapolating, assuming, we resolution, quality increases predictably over time. There's gonna be a point where most of content will be generated, and that was maybe the initial thesis of Runway was we will need, as a result of those generative models, rethink how creative tools are made. and as we built out the research behind, our generative models, it then became clear that they were useful far beyond that as well.Anastasis' Background: Art, Simulation, and Machine LearningSwyx [00:00:57]: And it is more obvious now with, like, the real-world stuff and the world models that we'll talk about later. I'm just kinda curious how you go from a background in, like, Zocdoc and, computer vision into Runway. Like, take us back to that early conversations with Chris and, whoever else is on your founding team.Anastasis [00:01:14]: I was always splitting through those two worlds. One was the I had my own art practice. I was making a lot of interactive art, I think for a long time. and then on the other side, I was working in startups, and I was working as a ML engineer, as a backend engineer at different companies. I've always been interested in, coding and computation, and especially interested in simulation and brought it back into my early artwork as well. And at the same time, I was interested inSwyx [00:01:43]: The personal site has a few, right?Anastasis [00:01:44]: Yeah.Swyx [00:01:45]: Is there one that we should pull up? Just in case there's something that's like. I just like to go down memory lane.Anastasis [00:01:50]: Yeah.Swyx [00:01:50]: Okay, what is this?Anastasis [00:01:51]: So this was, a project that I made, I think back in 2015, where I built this software that would give, voice instructions to people in a gallery space. So it would coordinate interactions between people. And so it will first give you an identity, like you're an, architect, you're 30 years old, and, you like sports. and then it would match you with another person, and you have this completely generated interaction. language models were not quite there at the time, and so it was it was a mix of some templates and some, like, some Markov chain-generated text, and it would just completely simulate these small talk conversations between, everyone in the gallery space. so was always very fascinated on the one hand with, generative models and, like, the early machine learning work that was being at that time. But at the same time, there was this separate thread of simulation and what it means. Like, what can we learn about humans by creating those very simple models of their interactions and their behavior?Early Generative Art: pix2pix, GANs, and Uncanny ValleyVibhu [00:02:56]: Did you generate the prompts or, the 30-year-old, whatever? Was it you generating them? How'd you, how'd youAnastasis [00:03:03]: Exactly. So the program would just generate- those, from. Yeah, a lot of it would be Mad Libs style of justVibhu [00:03:10]: YesAnastasis [00:03:10]: You have lists of different professions, lists of different,Vibhu [00:03:14]: HobbiesAnastasis [00:03:15]: Personality types, lists of different, ages, things like that. And then it would just combine those things together. And then maybe the next project we go is, Uncanny Valley, Uncanny Road, which wasSwyx [00:03:27]: GansAnastasis [00:03:27]: One of the first projects that, we built with, one of my two co-founders, Chris. This was taking, pix2pixHD, which was one of the early image-to-image models that NVIDIA released back in 2016 or 2017. and it was a model that would take a semantic map of a scene and then generate a photorealistic, let's call it, output. very early days, so it was not very high-fidelity outputs, but it w I think was the first image-generation model that could generate at 1K resolution. And it was all trained on self-driving datasets. So the semantic categories it would support were only, things you would encounter on the road. So it would be pedestrians, traffic signs,Vibhu [00:04:16]: StoplightsAnastasis [00:04:17]: Bikes, stoplights. And so that was one of our first indications that we built this and people were making all this, like, very surreal imagery of, yeah, a million plus a million pedestrians or a million traffic signs or, like, gigantic humans. And it was a indication that you could take a model that was trained on this very boring dataset, essentially, of, like, not that many interesting things happen when you're on the road, and then you can repurpose it and go very out of distribution and make something that was artistically compelling. And that was It's a summary of the thesis of Runway in some ways, that you can take the same generative models, and if you look at them from another direction, if you build interesting tools around them and you give them to artists, they're gonna do things that you don't expect.Vibhu [00:05:02]: Very cool. I like the, UX of it. You're just given an empty canvas, try whatever, do whatever. And then the other one, like, you see everyone with wired headphones? Like, that's, that's a sign that it's, it's veryAnastasis [00:05:16]: The AppleVibhu [00:05:17]: YeahAnastasis [00:05:17]: Apple, your version.Vibhu [00:05:17]: Original ads. Yeah. Take us to today. You've been doing this for seven years at Runway. How have we got to this? Like, how do we go from driving simulator data to all this? And you cover the whole stack of generative media?From Creative Tools to a Research LabAnastasis [00:05:33]: Interestingly, we're almost back in, we're, we're full circle. We're, we're now applying our models and beyond creative tools into real-world scenarios. But it was a, it was a long journey. It was very early on we realized the first version of Runway was a way to easily use the, all the open source model of the day, things like pix2pix to. and give them to artists. That was the initial idea, is those models are too difficult to use if you're not a machine learning engineer. Like, what happens when you give them to artists? Very quickly, we realized we needed to build a research org, inside of Runway, and that happened maybe on year one. And, a lot of the mandate there was. The image-generation models of the time, the video generation models of the time, or there were barely any video generations all the time, but they were not quite there where they could be productionized and brought into tools that would be part of creative workflows. so we need to push the frontier of the research. And so maybe the first four years of Runway, research was almost happening on the background until there was a moment in 2022, with latent diffusion, with, DALL-E 2, where, there was that step function change, and you guys maybe remember around the time.Swyx [00:06:49]: I started in this space because of latent diffusion and Stable Diffusion.Anastasis [00:06:54]: Yeah.Swyx [00:06:54]: Because I was like, “Wow, this is not only, like, feasible, it is doable on consumer hardware.”Anastasis [00:07:01]: Exactly, yeah.Vibhu [00:07:01]: I think the delta is also huge. Like, I learned pix2pix. Like, this was intro to ML, the TensorFlow, like, Jupyter, Google Colab notebooks were like this, and then you have a sudden step function change, with diffusion and whatnot. Any other ones since that. Like, there were clear examples of what early diffusion were to get to here. Any other changes in key technology research?Green Screen, Rotoscoping, and Early RunwayAnastasis [00:07:26]: Between, 2018 when we started and 2022?Vibhu [00:07:29]: Yeah.Anastasis [00:07:29]: So one of the early work that we did in Runway was solving segmentation, image and video segmentation. It was a very important problem because most VFX involves essentially separatingSwyx [00:07:42]: RotoscopeAnastasis [00:07:42]: Subjects. Yeah, rotoscoping. Extremely manual process. Nobody enjoys doing that. and so a lot of the early days of Runway was building this tool. It was called Green Screen, and it was for a long time the main thing that people were using Runway for. It ended up being used in, Everything Everywhere All at Once and a bunch of other high-visibility films and series. But that was essentially, Runway for a long time was a post-production tool until latent diffusion and generat- Gen-1, Gen-2, happened.Swyx [00:08:12]: Cool. let's, let's go past that moment. You've come a long way. Then you started releasing your own models. Maybe describe that journey as well.Scaling Video Models and the Bet on 1,000 A100sAnastasis [00:08:20]: Yeah, so we go to the other point, yeah, in mid-2022 when it became clear that we're doing research at a fairly small scale of compute, and it became clear that, like, scaling laws would apply to, image and video gen in the same way that we're applying to language generation. So we made a big bet, and I think at so at the time, we signed this deal to build a cluster of a thousand A100s, which at the time we were a Series B startup. That was a almost, slightly irrational decision maybe, but we really believed that if we trained a video model at a large scale, we would get, like, a great model at the end. And at the time, the goal or we set the goal around fall of 2022 of what is, what does the latent diffusion, Stable Diffusion moment look like for video? And at the time, the best model of the time was called CogVideo. it was one of the early video models. It was very 256 by 256 resolution, very not very high quality. and so we decided we're gonna build out this cluster, and we're gonna just invest in, like, in building out our own video model. it became clear as we're training Gen-1 that it was difficult to get to fully. we wanted to build text-to-video, but it became clear to us that an easier starting point would be to start from video to video. Because when you have a stronger conditioning, it's, it's an easier problem to restylize an existing video versus generate the video from scratch. And so we released Gen-1 first back in, it was January of, 2023. Yeah.Vibhu [00:10:04]: It's just a fun visual podcast, honestly. Like, if we can see February 2023, what was the state of stuff?Gen-1: Video-to-Video and Depth ConditioningAnastasis [00:10:10]: It's so interesting ‘cause at the time when you see those results, you think this is so incredible, and this is like, it's almost like image generation or video generation is solved. And then you look back a few years after, and it's like, it's It's just like you get used to the results very quickly, with those models. But at the time when we started seeing those results, it was, it felt quite incredible, and the level of, like, quality that you could get. And, so the Gen-1 was a depth-conditioned video model, so it would turn. it would take a input video, it would predict. it would it would first convert it into the depth map, and then we would generate, pixels with a latent diffusion model.Swyx [00:11:01]: Yeah, very effective.Vibhu [00:11:02]: Yeah. I didn't realize how distracting the blog post would be. Sorry.Anastasis [00:11:05]: Yeah, but, one of my favorite examples of on those, on Gen-1 was both, if you go up to mode three or mode two, there was this storyboard use case where people would makeVibhu [00:11:18]: OohAnastasis [00:11:18]: WouldVibhu [00:11:20]: You can mess around with theAnastasis [00:11:20]: Make a city out of books or out of boxes, and then they would shoot a video with their phone and then translate it into a photo-photorealistic output. There was all these ways in which those models were starting to be used for storyboarding and also for really. and then if you go to mode four, like, of taking untextured 3D scenes and then turning them into photorealistic output. So we saw a lot of use cases early on where people that were familiar, were power VFX editors would just take a blender, render, and then they would get translated in with Gen-1 or create a scene in Unity and then take a capture a video of it and then translate into, restylize it. So I still think video to video is powerful. I think we had a recent video-to-video model as well, and it's one of my favorite ways of using those models is essentially using them to use ground truth video as, like, the initial inspiration and then translate into different styles or different outputs.Stable Diffusion, Stability AI, and Open SourceSwyx [00:12:23]: But I think we're gonna go into, like, the rest of Runway and catch people up to speed today. I did wanna cover the, let's call it the Stable Diffusion controversy, or, what happened with Stability AI, whatever. I think there was a two sides of the story. I think there's part of that is a normal thing of, like, people, join and leave companies, but what is the, retrospective now that, there's been some years behind it?Anastasis [00:12:49]: Yeah, it's a very, it's a very long story to go into. I think it wouldSwyx [00:12:53]: Which I remember you wrote a really long post about.Anastasis [00:12:56]: We would probably cover the whole hour to go into it in more detail. But, essentially, there was the latent diffusion paper that came in, I think that was at the end of, 2021. And then Patrick Esser, who was one of the researchers behind, latent diffusion, and he worked at Runway at the time, he built latent diffusion in collaboration with Robin Rumbach and a few other folks back, in the in, CompVis, which was, a labSwyx [00:13:26]: Like a research group, yeah.Anastasis [00:13:27]: And, after releasing the early latent diffusion model, they, essentially they were. the goal was to keep working on versions of the model, scale it up, incorporate new data, incorporate new tasks. And Stable Diffusion was the same model, but trained on more compute, and then with a few more tricks, like a classifier-free guidance paper came at some point, I think in the early 2022. And thatSwyx [00:13:52]: Which, like, was a big prompting improvement.Anastasis [00:13:55]: Yeah.Swyx [00:13:55]:?Anastasis [00:13:56]: That improved results. it was trained on better data, so like, the esthetic subset of LAION, but it was effectively, the same underlying architecture. And there was that big training run, that, happened on Stability's cluster. Stability financed that run. And looking back at that story, I think it was the work to build and train that model was done. It was a, it was a research project. It was done as part of, like, continuation of the latent diffusion work. It then, I think it the model became very successful, and it, I think there were the. And I think as a result of its success, other companies tried to, figure out the commercialization path for it. But for us, it was very important that we try to, we make sure that we. It was meant to be an open source research project, and so the we decided that we should continue releasing versions of it, since that was the original goal of Stable Diffusion, and that led to releasing Stable Diffusion 1.5. There was maybe a day of, a bit of, miscommunication there, but ultimately that was resolved very quickly within hours. so yeah, there wasSwyx [00:15:12]: OkayAnastasis [00:15:12]: Not a niceSwyx [00:15:13]: I just wanted to. you have toAnastasis [00:15:15]: Yeah.Swyx [00:15:15]: You're one of the main players in that journey, and so it's nice to hear from the source of, like, what happened. Yeah.Anastasis [00:15:22]: Yeah. I think it's all, it's all in the past nowSwyx [00:15:26]: YeahAnastasis [00:15:26]: I would say. and, like, both companies, Stability took its own path, Runway took its own path.Swyx [00:15:32]: Yeah. There's still. James Cameron is backing the new Stability, whatever they're doing with the Hollywood studios.Anastasis [00:15:38]: Right.Swyx [00:15:38]: I don't know what they are doing. I think one thing that impresses me, and I'm happy to move on, is that back in the that time, let's say, like 2021, 2022, there was this community of people that you were involved in that was researching all this stuff, right? And, like, from everyone I talked to who was active then, it seemed like it was fairly obvious that somebody would do the hero training run that would produce Stable Diffusion. So, like, I guess the question is, like, you had the you were you had made investments. You were you had the foresight. Is it accurate to say, like, that is reflective of, like, what people were thinking at the time? Or was it still very much like, “Well, we'll use it as, like, a post-production tool or something. I don't know.”? Like, where in the sentiment were we that maybe you can think back to, like, what the community was like back then?The Early Creative AI CommunityAnastasis [00:16:28]: I reminisce and I think very fondly those early years, from like 2018 to 2022, because it was a very small community that, as you said, were very convinced that this was gonna be a big thing. And at the time, anyone who. Because it was such a small circle and, everyone who would, like, be part of that circle and, like, make projects with it would, immediately get, go viral. so likeSwyx [00:16:55]: And you didn't know who they are, right? They're just some name on a, GitHub or Hugging Face somewhere.Anastasis [00:16:59]: Exactly, yeah. So I remember one of the first big viral moments of creative AI was, there was the neural style transfer paperSwyx [00:17:09]: HuhAnastasis [00:17:09]: ThatSwyx [00:17:10]: Something dreaming?Anastasis [00:17:11]: I think it was called neural style transfer.Swyx [00:17:14]: Okay.Anastasis [00:17:14]: There was also Deep Dream, the puppy sliceSwyx [00:17:16]: YesAnastasis [00:17:16]: Which was, also really cool. but, yeah, there was this project that, Jim Kogan, who was an early advisor of Runway and one of those,Swyx [00:17:25]: Marketing guysAnastasis [00:17:26]: Big, creative AI, folks, he literally just, like, showed a video of himself taking the New York Subway and going over the Williamsburg Bridge and then stylized it with, I think in the style of Van Gogh or, like, one, painter. And that was. Like, at the time, that was, like, so cool and it went viral and it was completely revelation to people that you could do this with generative models. And that was only, it was less than. It was maybe 10 years ago. So just, like, as an indication of, like, how quickly things have gone.Vibhu [00:18:02]: It's pretty crazy. Like, even since then, you've got people at every level of the stack. You've got devs, creatives, artists, hobbyists. You've got everyone using it. And for people that tried stuff early, they'll remember how hard it was to use regular diffusion, right? Like, nowadays, you can use your favorite ChatGPT image gen or whatever, give a sentence, get a beautiful output. But diffusion was like, the whole ultra HD, 4K, high resolution. Like, prompting these things was very different. anything you learned on the tooling side, like from the offerings you guys have now, so like creatives, devs, you really took the. Research and brought it to everyone to use. anything interesting there to share?From Gen-2 to Controllable Video GenerationAnastasis [00:18:44]: We had to build the entire model serving infrastructure for video diffusion models. There was nothing else, already, like, because we had Gen-2 was the first text-to-video model, I think, out in the market. So many things that we learn over time. I think the I think the biggest one was, like, we. it was very clear early on that text-to-video was not gonna be the answer. Like, you. Like, people wanted a lot more control than that, and so we invested in, like, control building on top of those models very quickly. how do you use the camera trajectory as control? How do you use an initial input frame as control? So that was a very early learning for us. With text-to-video was, like Gen-2 was an amazing, step function improvement in the quality of video models, but it was used much more in an exploratory way because there was nothing to ground it to. There was no reference that you could bring into it. There was no. You couldn't really control the camera motion. You couldn't control the object motion. And so the first year, in 2023, was really all about what are all the interesting ways in which we can condition those models? And it was a lot of just post-training rounds on top of the base model to figure out, like, what, -- how do people wanna control them? And so there was, like, this quick succession of the we it was called Motion Brush, which was you could, like, you could draw arrows and dictate where things should move in the scene.Vibhu [00:20:09]: That's so cool.Anastasis [00:20:09]: There was camera control that was you could just describe, like, how you want the camera to move in the scene. And because we work with filmmakers from the most of the history of Runway, we immediately got this feedback and got this, decided that this was worth investing in. And so control ability became a big theme, I think, very early on as we were building, as we were building those models. Something fun that I haven't really talked about too much was just how Gen-2 came to be out of Gen-1. So it was a bit strange because we announced Gen-2 two months after Gen-1 andHow Gen-2 Came From a Weekend HackVibhu [00:20:43]: We're accelerating.Anastasis [00:20:44]: It was before Gen-1 was even generally available. But Gen-1 was a depth-to-video model, so it would take a depth map and it would convert it into RGB. and we couldn't get, text or image-to-video to work directly, and that's why we started from depth to video. but, and we had discussions of like, okay, we need to spend the next six months investing in text-to-video, maybe increasing the compute scale or the model scale, like train a larger model. And I had this weekend project idea, which was, what if I take a model that, starts from text input and converts to depth maps and then use Gen-1 to convert the depth maps Into RGB?Vibhu [00:21:29]: It would probably work.Anastasis [00:21:30]: And so Gen-2 was that.Vibhu [00:21:32]: Oh. The hackathon pipeline.Swyx [00:21:35]: The weekend hackathon pipeline.Anastasis [00:21:36]: Yeah.Vibhu [00:21:37]: But it looks good.Anastasis [00:21:38]: And it worked pretty well. there were if you, with the knowledge that it has this, like, two-stage pipeline, you can tell in some cases that the structure of the video looks a bit off because you had to generate the depth first before you go into the output video. But it worked and it allowed us to bring this to our, to users very quickly. But it's now it's interesting because, like, people are coming back to this almost two-stage approach. Like, if you look at the Reve text-to-image model that came a few months ago, it had this planner model that would generate bounding boxes before it fed that into the diffusion transformer.Swyx [00:22:19]: Yeah, Ideogram also the same day.Anastasis [00:22:22]: Yeah.Swyx [00:22:22]: I remember that was very strange that both of them came out the same day with the same exact innovation.Anastasis [00:22:26]: It's a small community, I think.Swyx [00:22:28]: I'm like, this is like, this is completely coincidental, right?Anastasis [00:22:32]: People talk. So yeah, there's, there's definitely something into this approach. And, now, like every single like, video generation model in production uses a complex prompt completion pipeline under the hood. I think that's no secret that there is. ThatSwyx [00:22:48]: Humans are terrible at prompting.Prompt Rewriting, Camera Control, and the Seed of World ModelsVibhu [00:22:51]: I think across the board.Anastasis [00:22:51]: Yes.Vibhu [00:22:52]: But yeah, I think like the original Sora one blog post even told you that what happens after your input is rewriting your prompt. It's much more descriptive about what you would want.Anastasis [00:23:02]: Exactly. I, And there was the DALL-E 3 paper beforehand that, was the first public, description of the fact that synthetic captions and really detailed captions work really well. And then Sora built on that. Yeah, so it was 2023. We were releasing all these updates to Gen-2, like the camera control, Motion Brush. And there was something very interesting about camera control because it was the first time that you felt that instead of, like, you were creating video, you were creating a short video, you were navigating inside the world. And I think camera control was maybe the seed of some of the ideas that we had around world models and really opening up that research direction. We realized, it was this era and this series of, Gen-1 and Gen-2 models really proved to ourselves, yeah, this is theSwyx [00:23:56]: Cool.Anastasis [00:23:57]: So this is not the original camera control. This was the updated camera control on top of Gen-3. But yeah, I think it made those models usable to filmmakers, I would say. The so camera control was very popular. And so we realized, there is one way of seeing those models, which is, you're just as content creation machines, and there is the other way, which is you're. As you're predicting video in order to predict video well, you need to simulate the world in an increasing and increasing capacity. And if scaling laws apply on video, just like they apply on language models, then as we scale the compute that we put into those models, then they're gonna be able to simulate physics, they're gonna be able to simulate human actions and dynamics increasingly well and predictably well. That was the thesis about around our efforts on world models, and we spin up this research group to just focus on the world models and how do we turn the video generation models that we're building into something broader and something that would be useful beyond, also content creation as well.Swyx [00:25:04]: And that was roughly when?Anastasis [00:25:06]: Yeah, so that was inSwyx [00:25:06]: OhAnastasis [00:25:07]: In late 2023.Vibhu [00:25:08]: Interesting. like, I think, a lot of people have been saying a lot of video gen model companies have all pivoted to world models these days, but like, 2023, you're posting it. oneWorld Models: From Video Generation to SimulationSwyx [00:25:21]: It's, it's debatable whether it's a pivot.Vibhu [00:25:23]: Yeah.Swyx [00:25:23]: Like, arguablyVibhu [00:25:24]: YeahSwyx [00:25:24]: That's what you always had to do anyway, right?Anastasis [00:25:26]: It's in a way an expansionVibhu [00:25:28]: YeahAnastasis [00:25:28]: Of the applicationsVibhu [00:25:29]: YeahAnastasis [00:25:29]: Of the models as they become more capable.Vibhu [00:25:31]: The early signs, it seems like the original models you guy had, guys had, people would say it's very not bitter lesson pilled, right? You're adding, rewriting prompts, you're having all these one-off things, but that's just the state of the tech as it was versus the future of as you said, you can scale it up as, we can scale up to world models.Anastasis [00:25:50]: Yeah. So it just became. And if you looked at the outputs of Gen-2Vibhu [00:25:56]: YeahAnastasis [00:25:56]: It was not. I think it was not obvious to people that this would scale to become a general simulator of the world. Like, you had very limited movement, you had, very low fidelity or low resolution, like obvious mistakes in human anatomy, like all kinds of limitations. But it was just, the idea was that's just GPT-two, and GPT-two, it can barely generate, like, coherent sentences. Similar, Gen-2 can barely create coherent video, but if you scale it up, you're gonna. There is no reason why it shouldn't work in a way. It's, And I think that was. That's, that's always the mindset of Runway is like this extrapolation of, like, if, like, even when we started in 2018 and you looked at the results of the day, you need to look more at the trend of, like, where we were in 2018 versus when we were at the, when the first GAN came out in twenty, four 2014 or twenty, fifteen. And, you started from, like, thirty-two by thirty-two images of faces, and then by the time in 2018, you could generate, street images at the 1K resolution. And it was the same with world models, very early signs of something much bigger.Swyx [00:27:08]: Yeah. I was gonna say, like, it's diffusing into focus. Like, if you look at our visible output from year to year, it looks like a diffusion process itself.Anastasis [00:27:17]: Yeah.Vibhu [00:27:17]: Especially watching the early, like, old blog posts, you can really see the choppiness, the details.Anastasis [00:27:24]: Yeah. Like human civilization starting from random noise and thenVibhu [00:27:27]: YeahAnastasis [00:27:27]: Denoising intoSwyx [00:27:28]: Yeah. Just run it a hundred years.Anastasis [00:27:30]: Civilization.Swyx [00:27:30]: Yeah.Vibhu [00:27:31]: That's how you're on track, you're still noising, right?Swyx [00:27:34]: Yeah. I like the way that you guys phrased it when you, announced it in June, which is, oh, that you had a video essay. “The human mind is no longer the center of AI. Our world is.” Right? Which is, let's, let's call it the past five years of LLM-based AI is very much like trying to emulate human preferences and human speech. But now that's, like, mostly solved. I think that's, like, some of the context of your essay, which you also wrote around the time. And now it's like the focus is on modeling the world accurately.Scaling Laws for Video and Why Predicting Pixels MattersAnastasis [00:28:03]: Exactly, yeah. So the way we see it is, there is that, initial mission statement of DeepMind, which is, solve intelligence and then use it to solve everything else. But I think it's starting from everything else, could be valuable of, like, starting from. there is just so much complexity, and detail in the world that in order to. That it's, it's hard to learn directly from just human descriptions of the world. Like, we're assuming that, like, language models learn from everything that humans have written about the world, like our own understanding as of, the twenty twenties. And there is just so much that we don't know and so much that's not captured by existing text, about both the low level dynamics of the world, like we're not describing in detail. if I tell you to describe, like, how do you tie your shoes, that's a very difficult thing to describe in words, but it's very obvious thing to demonstrate. And so I think there's been. And there's, more of X paradox, like we're constantly underestimating all the complexity that goes into very, like, things that we do subconsciously as humans, and we don't even necessarily always have the words to describe them. And so in my mind, the simulating the world and simulating, physics, simulating the dynamics of the world has always been underestimated, compared to, we place too much emphasis on the things that are easy to talk about. but there is just all this complexity and richness of the world that if we just try and train directly on that observational data instead of training on how people describe the world, we would learn something new that we wouldn't otherwise know.Swyx [00:29:54]: You think that the present architectural paradigm is fine? You don't need, like, another layer, like JEPA, like another famous, New York AI leader would say?Anastasis [00:30:05]: We're a very pragmatic research lab. If, we have evidence that an approach works better than the approach that we're taking, then we have no qualms to taking it. We just have seen no indication that video prediction itself doesn't scale. And even if you look now, not just our work, but the work of others, you're seeing in robotics some of the most promising work, starts from video prediction models, and then you adapt them to also the action models, for example. so there is very little evidence that you need something else and that your time is better spent on a novel architectural change compared to improving data and improving the, and scaling the current approach. And so, We don't have any indication that. the, there is that counterargument that I think there was a tweet by Yann LeCun a few days ago that, understanding the dynamics of the world is very different than, generating, cute videos.Swyx [00:31:05]: And your answer is no, they're the same thing.Anastasis [00:31:07]: Yeah, they're the same thing.Swyx [00:31:08]: My cat videos are the same as understanding physics.Anastasis [00:31:11]: Right, because if you wanna generate. video models can cheat and, like, they could you could give, like, successive dif shots of the scene in a way that doesn't require you to simulate difficult physics. There is like, all these different ways in which you can hide the deficiencies of the model, and it's important not to be too tricked by the performance of the current video models. It's easy to, cherry-pick examples and think that video models are further advanced than they are. So there is a lot more work that we need to do to improve those models. But in my mind, very similar to language, and, like, we've. you go from barely coherent sentences to something that, could hold a conversation with a human to something that could can operate autonomously for a day and, like, create entire code bases. And the main difference, there is some architecture improvements along the way, but the main thing is scale. And so it's the same bet for video, and we have no indications that this is saturating. Like, we have benchmarks that we use for measuring the physics of those models, and we see those predictably improve as we scale those models. So there is. If you want to Google up, Physics-IQ, is one of those benchmarks that measures how well does the model perform at solid mechanics or fluid dynamics or optics.Vibhu [00:32:32]: I'm curious if you've seen any emergence, any scaling law around this.Swyx [00:32:37]: Yeah, he's saying there is a scaling law, right?Anastasis [00:32:39]: Exactly.Vibhu [00:32:40]: Yeah,Anastasis [00:32:40]: So the way those models, those benchmarks work is you. the researchers have gone and, like, captured, a few videos that are representative of different physical phenomena, and then you can take the first frame and then pass it through an image-to-video model and then generate a rollout that shows what should happen next. So you have, a ball hanging from the ceiling, and then you use that as input, and then you the model predicts how the ball should fall on the ground. and this measures. we have an intuitive understanding of physics. I know, you can imagine what will happen next if I drop this bottle. So it's measuring that same intuitive physics understanding of those models, and we've measured that at different model scales, and we see, and compute scales, and we see that the score on physics IQ predictably improves. There's other, tricks and techniques that you can make to improve the score even further, but even scale alone helps, in the model learning better physics.Swyx [00:33:40]: My main sympathy with Yann LeCun is the, Plato's cave allegory, right? Like, you're, you're, like, learning on the output of a thing, not the internal process of a thing, and it's very noisy. And, if only you could observe the internals of a thing. It's hard to observe the internals of a human mind, but you can very much observe, or at least we have a whole branch of science and physics that we're ignoring on how to model Physics and movement and, gravity and, other interactions. and we're just, like, throwing away all of that and just saying just scale data, which is very much the lesson of unsupervised learning, but it feels wrong. that's the main idea.Anastasis [00:34:21]: I think the history of machine learning is, at large, it feels wrong.Swyx [00:34:25]: Yeah. It's a bitter lesson, right? Yeah. It's, it's, it's the simple answer to that.Vibhu [00:34:29]: I guess, how much can you scale? So, like, even on, let's say, the video generation side, like, there's one side of video understanding. Video generation, are we still gonna have tools where it's like, I wanna generate two hours, twenty hours? there's a infra way to do it in batches and stitch it together, but, like, do we just keep scaling? Do we just continue long generation consistency, all that at scale? And, like, tying it into where we're at now from we looked at Runway two to four point fiveGen-3, Sora, and Runway's Scaling InflectionAnastasis [00:34:58]: Yeah.Vibhu [00:34:58]: Like, technically, what advancements have we made to today, and then where do you see things still going?Anastasis [00:35:04]: So part of the answer is definitely scale. and that was. We learned that lesson in a big way for with Gen-3. So Gen-3 was the model we released the year after, like in 2024. That was a few months after Sora was released. so yeah, there's an interesting story of that came to be as well. Gen-3 for us was, the first time that we really needed to build. we had to learn all the lessons that the language model world learned in two in three years in the span of a few months. one of the biggest changes of Sora was using diffusion transformers instead of convnets. So a lot of the early, latent diffusion models were all, convnets for the diffusion model part. And the diffusion transformer paper came at some point in 2023, and it showed scaling laws for image, diffusion transformers. And we realized at that point that we needed to invest in infrastructure for model parallelism, for really scaling training to larger than, a few billion parameter models. And we spent maybe the, most of the fall of 2023 building out our infrastructure for distributed training. And we had a lot of false starts and a lot of failure in trying to scale, image and video diffusion transformers. And at that point, February 2024, Sora comes out, and the results areAnastasis [00:36:35]: Very much superior to what Gen-2 could produce. There were a lot of, a lot of chatter on Twitter about Runway. Runway's done. like, there is no way Runway will catch up. And if you remember, also OpenAI in the early twenty-It felt very, like it's aSwyx [00:36:56]: To the moonAnastasis [00:36:57]: It's a formidable opponent now, but at that point, it, they were on the top of their game. nobody could even get close to them. There was maybe Gemini was just the first version of Gemini had just released. So when OpenAI came with Sora and it was such a big jump of like quality, it gave me, there was like an existential crisis for a few hours. But that, I think the amazing thing about Runway and like I think the, we've been around eight years now, which is almost we're dinosaur in AI, and we had to like, we had there was a lot of those moments we had to learn, adapt very quickly and build out skill set in the team that we didn't have. And so, if you ask anyone what is their favorite time at Runway that was there during that time, it was that push in like three months to get to a model better than Sora. and it, we scaled 10x the model scale, the model size and the, compute that we were training on. we figured out model parallelism. We had zero expertise in that. And then we came out with Gen-3 during that summer. So that was a big turning point, I think, for the company where the research org grew very quickly, and we really started pursuing this vision of the general world model, in earnest, I think after Gen-3 was out.Swyx [00:38:12]: Yeah. that's the amazing thing about building when you're building. There's no stack to. You have to invent everything yourself. You have to be completely full stack. Now I think like there are inference specialists like Fal or whatever that can help with like, model serving, and I think you guys work with them as well. but yeah, like it's, it. But at the time, it was just. It's very interesting to think about what you do when Sora comes out and people are questioning whether your company should still exist.Distillation, Turbo Models, and Real-Time VideoAnastasis [00:38:41]: Yeah. And yeah, there was no, there was no VLM of diffusion models. Like, we had to build the whole model serving infrastructure and make things efficient. And a few months after we released Gen-3, we released the Turbo version, which I think was the first step-distilled model in production.Swyx [00:38:56]: That was a whole trend that we covered as well. Yeah.Anastasis [00:38:59]: So that allowed us, to serve those models at the larger scale, ‘cause I think the first version of Gen-3 was quite, expensive to serve.Swyx [00:39:09]: I think the whole like trend in like consistency models, Lightning and, Turbo and all these things somehow didn't really stick around. I don't know if you have any reflections on this. Because at the time, I was like, “Well, everything should start with a distilled model first, and then you can upscale,” right? It. your bigger models just turn into fancy upscalers, but like you should always draft with a smaller model and faster model, right? Because you can get it so quickly, like near real-time.Anastasis [00:39:39]: Yeah. I would not be so sure to say that didn't stick around. I think that, it's, it's likely to. that there is a lot of step-distilled models that are actively used in production. there is still a gap in quality compared to the, non-distilled model. but in my mind, we're still. there is a two to three year offset from language models. So the things that, So it's just a matter of time before there is better distillation techniques. we use. Right now we have a real-time model core character that I think is the largest deployment of real-time video models, that's a step-distilled model, and it's actively being used. It's a very specific use case compared to a general video model. So this is aSwyx [00:40:27]: Very cool, by the way.Anastasis [00:40:27]: This is avatars stuff, right?Swyx [00:40:28]: Consistency, character.Anastasis [00:40:30]: Yeah. So this is a talking avatar, model. we were able to. we optimized the hell out of it, and it generates at 24 FPS, and it's a, it's a step-distilled autoregressive video model. So if we look at our world model direction, a big component of it is starting from the bidirectional diffusion that generates entire video at once and making autoregressive shows. So you generate one frame or a few frames at a time. so there's a lot that goes into that pipeline of getting to a real-time model. It's first you need to make it into a causal autoregressive model, and then you just turn it into. You need to do some additional step distillation to get it to be real-time. and I think that part is just starting. I'll be very surprised if we're, two years from now, we don't primarily use real-time models. To me, real-time video generation is just inevitable that, it has much better user experience, it's much cheaper to serve, and, the quality gap between the base model and the real-time model is only gonna close as we figure out better, distillation techniques. And we made a lot of progress there internally on maintaining the quality of the base model when we distill them.Swyx [00:41:49]: How much of this is transferable? So is it the same base model? Like if you're doing diffusion across the whole sequence and you're converting it to step autoregressive distillation, is this like distillation where you still need to train both, you can use the same base and converter? What's that process like to go from regular model to something that's real-time on a technical level?Anastasis [00:42:11]: So the nice thing about diffusion models is you have, two axes of distillation. So there is the. You can distill to a smaller model, which resembles what you do in LLMs, or you can distill in terms of taking less steps, less diffusion steps. So you could take a model that generates in fifty steps and generate in four steps and get to, You have some performance, degradation, but very often you get comparable outputs. So you can even take the large frontier model and distill it with step distillation and get to a real-time performance, and that's what we've seen. So, depending on the use case, in some cases we might also serve with a smaller model, but in a lot of use cases, we just use theSwyx [00:42:56]: Step distillationAnastasis [00:42:56]: The frontier model, and we're able to make it work in real-time.Swyx [00:42:59]: I think this might be a good time to cut over to his laptop to show off some of the real-time stuff that you're doing.Interface World Models and Neural SoftwareAnastasis [00:43:06]: This is one of the research updates that we did recently. so we've been working and f in getting our general world models to, different applications. one of them that we think is very compelling is using general world models as essentially, an interface, a universal interface to software. This is a version of our world model that's called an interface world model. and the idea is that it essentially, replaces, the, front end of a software application. It renders the pixels directly of an interface and is trained to predict what happens next as a result of, a click or another interaction you have with the interface. So this is all pixels. it's there is no HTML, CSS, React that's powering this interface. This is directly at the output of our real-time, video generation model, and it takes clicks directly as input.Swyx [00:44:09]: And drags, click and drag.Anastasis [00:44:12]: Right. So it supportsSwyx [00:44:13]: Ooh.Anastasis [00:44:14]: Yeah, clicks. It supports drags. it also supports scrolling. and the amazing thing about this is that you can effectively describe in the prompt how you want different elements, like what do you want the behavior of different elements to be. So it's almost you're you can turn, an interface from, markup language description of, like, an HTML interface, and instead you can just describe the interface. if I press this button, I expect this to happen. If I press this button, this should happen. And it's useful, we believe, both for prototyping, for, like, just testing, like, what different interactions would feel like. you can also add audio to it. So it's a video audio generation model. So you get you essentially can describe both what the visual outcome should be of your click and also what the if there is a sound effect that comes out of it. So we believe that's gonna be a much more flexible way of building software. Just render. It just, in why generate the code that generates the pixels? Just generate the pixels directly.Anastasis [00:45:18]: It's the end-to-end philosophy applying applied to front ends.Anastasis [00:45:25]: So we think there is a few interesting use case. So you can build creative tools on top of it.Anastasis [00:45:32]: We think that, for any use case that involves a lot of exploration or, like, educational use case where you wanna learn about a new concept and you want some visualization and like, and open-ended exploration, we think those this is a very powerful, approach. you can imagine new forms of, design, industrial design software that could emerge as a result of those models. And this is all, generated in real-time as well. So, you can build a lot of interesting camera transitions and forms of interaction that are very difficult to build otherwise. And one way in which we evaluate this is what if you try to generate the same interface with Claude by just, prompting Claude, “Here's an image reference of my interface that I made in Figma or that I created somewhere else. create this particular interaction,” which in this case it's, drag that object, upwards. and beyond it being slower, it's also very difficult to capture some interactions by just fully, with just LLMs. So we think that this is likely to be the way that a lot of the future, like, software in the future will be created. and one of the additional benefits is personalization might be a lot easier done with those models. Like, you can essentially try out different prompts based on who is visiting the interface. You can, more easily, prompt engineer the interface to have larger size, text for more accessibility reasons, or you can make this or, like, if you have a particular aesthetic preferences. So we're very excited about this approach. It's early days, and I think we'll need to, make it more cost-effective as well to serve those models ‘cause, running a real-time video model versus just purely rendering HTML, there's -- the computational needs are much higher. but we do see a lot of potential in this approach to building front-end interfaces.Swyx [00:47:47]: So we covered this similar thing with Flipbook before with our, Ethan Hara episode with Groq, video. And yeah, I think it's very engaging visually. I think it's maybe very good for education, but it's it does sound expensive. I think there's an upper bound to how expensive it will be, though, right? Like, the inference cost will go down over time. You'll figure out ways to optimize it. Effectively, when it pauses, you don't you're not receiving human input. You don't have to generate anything, right? So.Anastasis [00:48:14]: Yeah, you could also. Like, in this case, you have ambient motion, so there is parts of the screen that might. if you're let's say you wanna, visit Paris and then you get this interface that allows you to explore.Swyx [00:48:29]: People walking. Yeah.Anastasis [00:48:29]: You have people walking or, like, things happening. But, it's, it's a no Yeah, it makes it more expensive because you need to run the model all the time. Maybe you have some looping mechanism so you don't need to do that. But all those things, I think, is stuff we'll need to figure out.Toward a Fully Neural Operating SystemSwyx [00:48:44]: Yeah.Anastasis [00:48:44]: I think our first consideration is let's make this clearly find some use cases where it's clearly a much more compelling interaction compared to traditional interfaces. And then it's a matter of time before it becomes more cost-effective to serve.Swyx [00:48:58]: Yeah. When it comes to the people walking, I think the approach that makes the most sense to me is Nick.Anastasis [00:49:04]: Nick.Swyx [00:49:04]: Oh, God. I keep messing up their name. With Chris Manning and Fanny Yan. I don't know if you've come across them, where they. Mapped to some game engine. I think it's Unity or something, or Godot. And they you can script some NPC behavior behind that and train on that. Whereas here, you can really imagine whatever you want. Like, that is a UI, right? Like, and it feels, like, more tractable, I guess, to, create a world model of software that is interactable because we have many of examples of that, and you can, do your fancy RL environment stuff on that than it is scaling up to embodied and real-world physical use cases. But this is a nice first step.Vibhu [00:49:43]: Or, there's the opposite of you have, like, one B models, three 50 million parameter language models. It just gets so small that they're just predicting, like, fishes moving.Swyx [00:49:53]: Small models are now 120 B, so.Vibhu [00:49:57]: Ultra mini on device.Vibhu [00:49:58]: But, no, I think it, like, it puts it into perspective, at least the car one for me, like, the applications, right? The amount of work to do that, sure, you only make one model year car per year, but applying this, it's also a cost-saving to have to manually make all this, right? So it opens up a lot of possibilities, too. I'm curious if you extend this out two, three years, so where do you see things going even further?Anastasis [00:50:25]: Effectively, the end game of something like interface world models is you have, a fully neural operating system. So I think, Andrej Karpathy has written about that quite a while back. But it's, You, I think to me it's, it's a bit, it's a bit odd that, we have, for example, with an interaction with an LLM of today, you have this LLM that can talk to you about anything. It can You can take the conversation in any direction. You can It's very general, so it can solve all those different tasks, but you interact with it through a very rigid interface. And so to me, it's just a matter of time before the interface itself becomes learnable and becomes, part of the whole loop of, like, you're not just delivering. You're delivering an application end-to-end, and that means you're delivering the language model, but you're also delivering the render and the pixels and that's also a learnable component. And the concept of applications might not necessarily. I think we'll need to figure out new abstractions for software. the concept of application comes from this idea that you need, separate code bases to describe, to, for, to power each individual, tool and each individual application. But you might think of something a lot more unified if you're. if you have, a video model that's generating the interface as you go. so it can take context from an LLM and allow you to combine different functionalities that traditionally would live in different applications. So it's a, it's a way to solve, software end-to-end, effectively. We also see this as a powerful way to train computer use agents as well. so this is, one way to see this as. And in general, with world models, there is those two directions. One is world models for humans and world models forSwyx [00:52:24]: AgentsAnastasis [00:52:24]: To train agents.Swyx [00:52:25]: Yeah.Anastasis [00:52:25]: And so for every new work of, world models that we do, we have this both uses become possible. So this is a powerful synthetic data generator for training computer use models. It could become, a live, RL environment that you could use to do online RL with a computer use agent, and you can get wide diversity of different interactions, kinds of interfaces, just generated on the fly that, to improve the how robust the, your agent, becomes. So that's the same also with the world models that we're working on for a robotics use case as well.Long Context, Error Accumulation, and Autoregressive VideoSwyx [00:53:02]: Is there a research breakthrough that you're Waiting for that would unlock the next set of use cases that you really wanna pursue?Anastasis [00:53:10]: Long context is a very important one, so being able to maintain consistency for long periods of time, and that depends on the use case. So for our characters model, for example, or for the interface world model, it's easier to maintain long sessions of interaction. If you go into more open-ended worlds that you navigate and you take arbitrary actions in, we, like, there is more the context at which you can and duration which you can generate becomes limited much more quickly.Swyx [00:53:40]: Yeah.Anastasis [00:53:40]: So we see more degradation and error accumulation happening. so the biggest challenge with autoregressive models is error accumulation, is you're feeding generative frames back into the model to generate the next The next frames. And if there is any small errors, they accumulate over time. That's not a new problem. It's a problem that LLMs also have, and we've seen the ability to generate now really long outputs. So it's a solved problem, but it's definitely still a challenge.Swyx [00:54:08]: Yeah. And what is the state of the art? so for Grok, it would be like 10 to 20 seconds of context going in there for video.Anastasis [00:54:16]: With our characters models, we're able to generate up to 30 minutes of video autoregressively.Swyx [00:54:21]: Yeah. But that's just for the avatars.Anastasis [00:54:24]: Yeah. So if we look at, GWM Worlds, which is more our open-ended world exploration model, it's, it's on the order of a few minutes, which is Yeah, soSwyx [00:54:35]: Probably enough for people because you have to cut to the next scene anyway, right?Anastasis [00:54:40]: Yeah, it's not, it's not the ideal game experience if you have to restart every few minutes. So I think. But, I think it's. Yeah, for certain kinds of game experiences, you can work around it.

You'd think the joint forces of James Cameron and Robert Rodriguez would produce an unstoppable box office juggernaut - a franchise that would capture the world's imagination for decades… but that didn't turn out to be the case with ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL. Its devoted audience is still holding out hope for a sequel, and who knows, we may get one someday, when Cameron tires of Pandora. But until then, all we can do is try to figure out what went wrong. Let's do that in this Real Talk segment!TIMELINE00:01:26 Berserker00:02:26 Real Talk00:45:23 The Future & Patreon Stuff- Interested in more Contrarians goodness? Join THE CONTRARIANS SUPPLEMENTS on our Patreon Page! Deleted clips, extended plugs, bonus episodes free from the Tomatometer shackles… It's everything a Contrarians devotee would want!- Our YouTube page is live! Get some visual Contrarians delight with our Contrarians Warm-Ups and other fun videos!- Contrarians Merch is finally here! Check out our RED BUBBLE MERCH PAGE and buy yourself something nice that's emblazoned with one of our four different designs!- THE FESTIVE YEARS have been letting us use their music for years now and they are amazing. You can check out their work on Spotify, on Facebook or on their very own website.- THE LATE NIGHT GRIN isn't just a show about wrestling: it's a brand, a lifestyle. And they're very supportive of our Contrarian endeavors, so we'd like to return the favor. Check out their YouTube Channel! You might even spot Alex there from time to time.- Hans Rothgiesser, the man behind our logo, can be reached at @mildemoniospe on Instagram or you can email him at mildemonios@hotmail.com in case you ever need a logo (or comics) produced. And you can listen to him talk about economy on his new TV show, VALOR AGREGADO. Aaaaand you can also check out all the stuff he's written on his own website. He has a new book: a sort of Economics For Dummies called MARGINAL. Ask him about it!Up next, we go back to The 80s, both through the magic of movies AND through the magic of time travel in the sci-fi cult classic TRANCERS! In the meantime, let us know what you thought of Alita Battle Angel: Is it an accurate representation of the manga that inspired it? Would you watch a sequel or would you rather they rebooted the whole thing? Is there a better aesthetic approach they could take? E-mail us at wearethecontrarians@gmail.com or share your thoughts with us on Threads or BlueSky!

James Cameron's 1984 tech noir action thriller, THE TERMINATOR, is our feature presentation this week! We discuss Cameron's dream that inspired the film, Composer Brad Fiedel's score, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Stan Winston's work, Harlan Ellison's lawsuit, and much more! We also pick our Top 7 James Cameron Projects in this week's Silver Screen 7!  Join our Patreon ($2.99/month) here linktr.ee/brokenvcr to watch the episodes LIVE in video form day/weeks early. Find us on Instagram @thebrokenvcr and follow us on LetterBoxd! Become a regular here at THE BROKEN VCR!

Welcome to another episode of Death Don't Do Fiction, the AIPT Movies podcast! The podcast about the enduring legacy of our favorite movies! It's September, so that means it's time for our “Mechtember” series, where we cover movies involving all things robotic!! In this week's episode, Alex, Tim, and Bill Mueller discuss the somewhat divisive action sci-fi sequel to 2022's surprise hit, 2025's M3GAN 2.0! Impressive fight scenes! Multiple Steven Seagal references! Fake muscles! Robotic apologies! Dangerous luggage! Chekhov's exoskeleton! Clear monitor propaganda! Robo-dancing! A rocket fist! A kill-kabob! Smartphones being compared to cocaine! Internet privacy violations! Reckless and unnecessary wheelchair use! Dramatic ice dispensing! A cool underground bunker! Great costume/production design! Possible references to Spaceballs and Upgrade! Excellent use of practical and digital effects! Fascinating, complicated characters! The primary cast from the first movie plus new additions Ivanna Sakhno, Jemaine Clement, Aristotle Athari, and Timm Sharp! All this and more in this gutsy, Terminator 2-inspired followup that further explores ethical use of Artificial Intelligence and humanity's role in its creation, while still managing to provide heartfelt moments, laughs, and thrills! In addition, the gang shares their spoiler-free thoughts on Na Hong-jin's creature feature-chase movie Hope, Adam Wingard's Onslaught, The Mandalorian and Grogu, and Bill finally saw 2026's Mortal Kombat II! You can find Death Don't Do Fiction on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. As always, if you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave us a positive rating, subscribe to the show, and tell your friends! The Death Don't Do Fiction podcast brings you the latest in movie news, reviews, and more! Hosted by supposed “industry vets,” Alex Harris and Tim Gardiner, the show gives you a peek behind the scenes from two filmmakers with oddly nonexistent filmographies. You can find Alex on Twitter, Bluesky, or Letterboxd @actionharris. This episode's guest, Bill Mueller, can be found on Bluesky. Tim can't be found on social media because he doesn't exist. If you have any questions or suggestions for the Death Don't Do Fiction crew, they can be reached at aiptmoviespod@gmail.com, or you can find them on Twitter or Instagram @aiptmoviespod. Theme song is “We Got it Goin On” by Cobra Man.

Send us a text or a voicemailA group of friends take aim at a cutthroat evil podcaster by stealing his action figures and returning them to the store in the wrong boxes. In retaliation, the evil one enacts a frame job to send the innocent men to podcast purgatory. On Episode 735 of Trick or Treat Radio we are joined by Evil Corny for our September Patreon Takeover! Corny has selected the films Motor City from director Potsy Ponciroli and I Love Boosters from director Boots Riley for us to discuss. We also talk about the delicate balance between absurdity and reality in cinema, the pros and cons of dialogue-light films, and the benefits of wearing a $100,000 suit! So grab your high tech teleporter device, set it to situational accelerator mode, and strap on for the world's most dangerous podcast!Stuff we talk about: Puppets, Meet the Feebles, Mason Newton DeRushie, Kylgor in the Grisly Abyss, By Any Means, Onslaught, Hope, “fucking Maine”, Transformers: The Movie 40th anniversary, Akira, Jerry Springer, triple-changers, Kup, Howard Stern on HBO, Lord of the Anal Ring Toss, Al Sharpton, Virginia Hill, Lanterns, Aaron Pierre, Kyle Chandler, Game Night, Cassandra Caine, Road Rash, BMX Bandits, From the Canopy Podcast, Rad, Gleaming the Cube, Edie McClurg, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Before I Hang, Revenge of the Zombies, Val Lewton, Godzilla vs. The Thing, House by the Lake, Vampire's Kiss, The Messengers, Devil, Stakeland, Death by VHS, Self Storage, Abandoned Dead, Extremity, Spiral, District 9, Neil Blomkamp, Smallville, Bryan Singer, Kyle Chandler, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Cassandra Peterson, Elvira, Dark City, Revenge of the Sith, Paul Benedict, The Adams Family, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, Anne Bancroft, The Graduate, Queen of Blood, Near Dark, Logan's Run, The Twilight Zone, Roddy McDowall, The Planet of the Vampires, The Mole People, Daughter of Dr. Jekyll, Resident Evil, Ad Nauseum, Zach Cregger, Ghoulies, Mariska Hargitay, Law Order, Jayne Mansfield, Bad Lieutenant, The Last Boys, Corey Feldman, Corey Haim, Batman #14, Mina Rose, Captain Marvel, Golden Age Comics, Motor City, The Death of Robin Hood, Alan Ritchson, Ben Foster, Shailene Woodley, Ben McKenzie, Willy's Wonderland, Nicolas Cage, near dialogue-less films, Jack White, Reacher, David Bowie, John Woo, Silent Night, A Quiet Place, montage, Terminator, James Cameron, Willow, Disney+ pulling shows for tax purposes, Guy Ritchie, Henry Cavill, Taylour Paige, Will Poulter, Keke Palmer, Boots Riley, I Love Boosters, Sorry to Bother You, situational accelerator, Everything Everywhere All At Once, workers rights, fuck capitalism, LaKeith Stanfield, Get Out, The Substance, Flying Lotus, Zach Cherry, Severance, Two Girls One Kup, Corny and The Gang, and no one expects the floating cunnilingus.Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/trickortreatradioJoin our Discord Community: discord.trickortreatradio.comSend Email/Voicemail: mailto:podcast@trickortreatradio.comVisit our website: http://trickortreatradio.comStart your own podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=386Use our Amazon link: http://amzn.to/2CTdZzKFB Group: http://www.facebook.com/groups/trickortreatradioTwitter: http://twitter.com/TrickTreatRadioFacebook: http://facebook.com/TrickOrTreatRadioYouTube: http://youtube.com/TrickOrTreatRadioInstagram: http://instagram.com/TrickorTreatRadioSupport the show

What happens to the movie after the movie couple breaks up? Wes and Iris revisit Hollywood romances that outlived their films, from Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman to James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow, plus the curious case of FERRIS BUELLER's parents. Contains spoilers! 818-835-0473 orwhatevermovies@gmail.com orwhatevermovies.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this epilogue to our season on the awesome movie year of 1946, we talk about alternate movies we considered including in all of our different categories this season, and read suggestions from some listeners about their favorite 1946 movies.Check out more info and the entire archive of past episodes at https://www.awesomemoviepod.com and visit us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/awesomemovieyearYou can find Jason on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/JHarrisComedy/, on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/jasonharriscomedy/ and on Letterboxd at https://letterboxd.com/goforjason/You can find Josh online at http://joshbellhateseverything.com/, on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/joshbellhateseverything/, on Bluesky at signalbleed.bsky.social and on Letterboxd at https://letterboxd.com/signalbleed/If you're a Letterboxd user and you watch any of the movies we talk about on the show, tag your review “Awesome Movie Year” to share your thoughts.You can find our producer David Rosen and his Piecing It Together Podcast at https://www.piecingpod.com, on Instagram at @piecingpod, on Bluesky at piecingpod.bsky.social and on Letterboxd at https://letterboxd.com/bydavidrosen/ Join the Popcorn & Puzzle Pieces Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/piecingpod for more movie discussion and our Awesome Movie Year audience choice polls.All of the music in the episode is by David Rosen. Find more of his music at https://www.bydavidrosen.comSubscribe on Patreon to support the show and get access to exclusive content from Awesome Movie Year and Piecing It Together, plus music by David Rosen: https://www.patreon.com/bydavidrosenPlease like, share, rate and comment on the show and this episode, and tune in next time for the premiere of our season on the awesome movie year of 1991, featuring the box office champion, James Cameron's Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

Action director (and co-host of the podcast ACTION FOR EVERYONE) Liam O'Donnell is a great admirer of James Cameron's directing and editing prowess. But long before Liam had even an inkling of his future as a filmmaker, he knew there was something about THE TERMINATOR that really spoke to him. He and Jordan get into all of that -- plus the present and future of action cinema -- in this episode.Then Jordan has one quick thing about Louise Weard's CASTRATION MOVIE, coming soon to Alamo Drafthouses.Read about Liam's upcoming film, ALPHAS. Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinfeelingseen Feeling Seen is hosted by Jordan Crucchiola and is a production of Maximum Fun. You can watch video editions of our new episodes on our YouTube Channel!Need more Feeling Seen? Keep up with the show on Instagram and Bluesky.

Aliens follows Ellen Ripley, the sole survivor of the original Alien encounter, as she returns with a team of Colonial Marines to investigate a human colony on the planet LV-426, only to discover that the colonists have been attacked by deadly alien creatures.Aliens was released on July 18, 1986, and stars Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Carrie Henn, and Paul Reiser. It was written and directed by James Cameron.Follow:SSC on InstagramTim on LetterboxdTay on Letterboxd

More than 80% of the world's advanced AI compute is concentrated in the US and China. For Europe and other middle powers, the question may no longer be how to win the AI race, but how to avoid becoming dangerously dependent on those that do.This week on Cleaning Up, James Cameron, Chair of Cleaning Up's Editorial Council, takes over as guest host. He speaks with Sam Winter-Levy, Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Afonso Salema, CEO of Exus Digital and founder of TerraByte Data Centers, about how compute is becoming a strategic resource.They explore how access to power and the grid is shaping where billions of dollars of AI infrastructure gets built, and how data centres could become a source of geopolitical leverage. They also discuss the security and public backlash facing this critical infrastructure, and whether AI's enormous appetite for electricity could ultimately accelerate the clean energy transition.Topics covered in this episode:Compute as a strategic resourceThe US-China race for AIWhy Europe is falling behindAI's rapidly growing electricity demandWhere the world builds data centresProtecting data centres from attackWeaponising chips and AI accessThe political backlash against data centresCan AI accelerate clean energy?Leadership Circle:Cleaning Up is proud to be supported by its Leadership Circle. The members are Actis, Alcazar Energy, Arup, Climate Imperative Foundation, Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, Cygnum Capital, Davidson Kempner, EcoPragma Capital, EDP, Eurelectric, KKR, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, National Grid, Octopus Energy, Quadrature Climate Foundation, Schneider Electric, SDCL and Wärtsilä. For more information on the Leadership Circle, please visit cleaningup.live.Links:Afonso Salema's bio: https://www.linkedin.com/in/afonso-salema-336320/Sam Winter-Levy's bio: https://carnegieendowment.org/people/sam-winter-levyJames Cameron's bio: https://www.james-cameron.co.uk/bioCleaning Up 235. Inside Start Campus, Europe's largest data centre: https://youtu.be/juAyLAUmU3wJames Cameron on Cleaning Up in 2020: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qn7GKiW5E4kJames Cameron on Cleaning Up in 2025: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPPjAbSxl5cSubscribe to our newsletter: https://cleaninguppod.substack.com/The Stanford 2026 AI index: https://hai.stanford.edu/ai-index/2026-ai-index-reportEdelman Trust in AI poll: https://www.edelman.com/trust/2025/trust-barometer/report-tech-sectorAcronyms:AWS: Amazon Web ServicesNIMBY: "Not In My Back Yard"Chapters:00:00 Introduction02:02 AI, security, geopolitics05:01 Compute as power11:34 The global AI race14:07 Building data centres18:02 Defending critical infrastructure23:53 Who pays for security?29:24 Designing for resilience32:48 Weaponising AI access40:02 Data centre backlash49:56 The balance of power54:09 Can Europe catch up?59:43 AI and clean energy01:04:01 Outro

Talking about 1984's James Cameron classic "The Terminator"...or just mentioning it as I talk about the "existential threat" of artificial intelligence.My least favorite subject?  Nah.  But I do have a healthy hatred of artificial intelligence and the techbros behind it.-T

A presentation of 'The PAPER STREET Podcast', 'LATE TO THE PARTY' is a new recurring program that brings filmmakers, friends, and entertainment industry pros on to discuss one of their major movie blind spots.  The guest chats with hosts Shawn Talley and Cameron Burns before watching the film, then reconvenes with them after having seen it to all share their thoughts on the movie and much more!​ This go-round, actor, producer, and writer Chase Williamson — who you may have seen in shows including 'Blindspotting' and 'Video Game High School', and films including 'THE GUEST', 'JOHN DIES AT THE END', and Paper Street's own 'SCARE PACKAGE' — was late to the party on 'THE TERMINATOR', but we're glad he made it!  The gents get into James Cameron's sci-fi/action classic, talking its relatively shoestring budget, prescient subject matter, Arnold's career, and more!  If you've seen the 1984 film 'THE TERMINATOR', check out this tangent-filled conversation.  And if you haven't, you're late to the party, but that's okay; we'll still be here when you get to it!

Damn you, 2026! RIP Sam, this one's for you!Welp, we lost another legend in the great Sam Neill this year...and somehow, amazingly, Paul W. S. Anderson's Event Horizon (1997) was already next in our lineup. Almost as if it were written...in the stars? (Get it? Cuz space?)All jokes aside, we sat down for a fun discussion on a very underrated sci-fi horror flick in this one. Maybe not the best graphics in certain spots, maybe it had its fair share of shortcomings due to studio meddling, and sure, it also fought a hell of an uphill battle going up against the JUGGERNAUT that is James Cameron's Titanic (1997), but damn it, this is a good movie that deserved better!With a stellar lineup (including Laurence Fishburne, Jason Isaacs, and Joely Richardson), and some pretty disturbing imagery making great use of practical gore, atmospherically, we think this movie knocks it out of the park, and it goes places you might not expect! I mean, how can you go wrong with Hellraiser in space?...well...unless it's actually the Hellraiser movie that WAS in space...nevermind, anyway...Grab some Tang and some freeze dried rations and come hang out in Zero G's with us for this one! You won't regret it!Hell is just a word...Send us Fan MailSupport the showPodcast art by Jayson Cessna: https://jaysoncessna.crevado.comMusic by Dusty Lane, created in LMMS.Movie clips provided by https://movie-sounds.org/horror-movie-samples/

James Cameron knew as he pitched Titanic to 20th Century Fox that it wasn't likely to be as commercial a film as the one he'd just done, True Lies. The budget was set to be lower, the release date was initially set for just a year after the start of filming, and there was to be no song. What happened changed his career and many others. From the unhappy crew member drugging the food table, to press reports of a production out of control, Simon Brew digs into the extraordinary story behind one of the biggest movies of all time... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're back after a few weeks off and jumping right into the THICK of Virgo season. We're talking about brides and grooms who DANCE, James Cameron's hit and hits, supporting the mean teacher, Arnold Schwarzenegger's positive podcast and VERMIN. Enjoy!!!!!!!!!

As the development of AI continues to accelerate, this week's episode attempts to identify the deeper roots of humanity's proclivity for self-endangerment via automation by reference to James Cameron's iconic sci-fi action film, Terminator 2: Judgment Day.We also briefly discuss:Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die (2026) d. Gore VerbinskiBugonia (2025) d. Yorgos Lanthimos Contact us via email at contact@jimmybernasconi.com

Arrancamos con la saga dedicada al Aliens de James Cameron. En este episodio encontrarás detalles de cómo se pergeño el proyecto: sus primeros pasos, los diferentes guiones, la entrada de Cameron, la importancia de Terminator en el proceso, la elección de Sigourney Weaver y muchas cosas más. Voz invitada: Juan Carlos Albarracín (https://www.ivoox.com/podcast-cuentos-de-la-casa-de-la-bruja_sq_f1421745_1.html)

The September 8, 2026 episode of IPS DEPROGRAM (hosted by Tim / Real Tim Ozman and sponsored by TEP) explores media manipulation, psychological operations ("psyops"), and "concurrent programming" across mainstream news and popular entertainment. The broadcast critiques both official news narratives and popular conspiracy culture ("Trutherville"). Key discussions include analyzing Donald Trump as a historical 9/11 crisis actor reading scripted lines, recurring motifs of duality and witchcraft in cinema and high-profile news stories, debunks of atmospheric chemtrail panics, and Hollywood predictive programming in films by directors such as James Cameron. Ultimately, the broadcast advocates for an "off-world stage" perspective, encouraging listeners to step outside of manufactured binary debates ("pro vs. anti") and cultivate active, critical skepticismDate: Tuesday, September 8, 2026Show Title: IPS DEPROGRAMTopics Discussed* Donald Trump as a 9/11 Crisis Actor: Framing Trump's historic Ground Zero statements as scripted lines given to a crisis actor to help sell a psyop, rather than spontaneous personal lies.* Media Duality, Twins, and Witchcraft Themes: Analyzing recurring “twin” motifs across parallel child-drowning news cases, film releases (Practical Magic, Other Mommy), and historical witch-trial narratives [75–78, 87, 189].* Chemtrail Panics vs. Stratospheric Physics: Debunking online outrage surrounding normal jet condensation trails, clouds, and atmospheric iridescence [38–42, 47].* Hollywood Predictive Programming: Demonstrating how films like Titanic, Avatar, True Lies, and Terminator 2 embedded themes, visuals, and messaging pre-programming societal events like 9/11 [94, 96–99].* The “Off-World Stage” Philosophy: Calling for complete detachment from engineered media narratives and conspiracy rabbit holes (”Trutherville”), advancing a mindset of informed disbelief.* Controlled Opposition & Artificial Dialectics: Explaining how “pro vs. anti” binary positions (such as vaccine or climate debates) serve as government-orchestrated dialectics to keep the public trapped in hyperreality [53–56, 129, 137, 230].5 Key Quotes* “He wasn't lying. He was reading his lines. And the lines that he read were handed to him because they were meant to help sell the PSYOP.”* “The pro versus anti is controlled opposition on both sides in every case... You're serving the dark side, whether you're pro or anti.”* “'I don't know' are the magic words that will break you out of the Truman Show.”* “And the space age was never about vacations to distant exoplanets. It was always about the colonization of your inner space.”* “Every conspiracy theory is a subplot on a script.”

Laura Hudson, former editor at WIRED, the Verge, and more, got tired of telling people in power about the dangers of the tech they were building. Now, she's stopped warning them through journalism, and has pivoted to warning them through art -- like her comic book EXPLOIT, co-authored by Tim Leong. This week, she's telling Jordan about how her experiences writing about tech (and games and comics) has only strengthened her affinity with Ellen Ripley, especially as she appears in 1986's ALIENS.Then Jordan has one quick thing about two very different movies to check out in theaters: Onslaught and Practical Magic 2.Order the paperback of EXPLOIT Vol. 1 Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinfeelingseen Feeling Seen is hosted by Jordan Crucchiola and is a production of Maximum Fun. You can watch video editions of our new episodes on our YouTube Channel!Need more Feeling Seen? Keep up with the show on Instagram and Bluesky.

Welcome all you slack jawing sons of bitches to the Men of Action Podcast, the monthly action movie throw down show. On this month's episode we will be examining the mission of the Colonial Marine's from James Cameron's sci-fi action flick "Aliens" To see if it was a success, an epic failure or a complete waste of time. So buckle up buckeroos, cuz shit's about to get explosive.The Men of Action:Please be sure to LIKE, SUBSCRIBE and leave us a REVIEW.Follow the Show on our Socials:Facebook, Instagram & Threads: @menofactionpodcastBlue Sky: @CheekyBasterdsEmail: thecheekybasterdspodcast@gmail.comDropping A Bruce:Follow the show on our Socials:Facebook & Instagram: @DroppingABruceEmail: DroppingABrucePod@gmail.com

Adam Wingard & Simon Barrett reunite for a Terminator-meets-Carpenter slasher. Spoiler-free verdict inside.Cupcake (Jose) and Mike (WillDaBeast) dive spoiler-free into Onslaught, the long-awaited reunion of director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett whose previous films - The Guest, You're Next, Netflix's Death Note, and Blair Witch - are both beloved and polarizing. Shot on a $20 million budget back in New Mexico (same stomping grounds as The Guest), Onslaught follows a trio of unstoppable, Terminator-style killers unleashed on a small town, with Adria Arjona, Dan Stevens, Reginald VelJohnson, and Rebecca Hall caught in the crossfire.A return to Wingard's indie roots after directing Godzilla vs. Kong and Godzilla x Kong, pic homages the heck out of the seminal films by John Carpenter (Halloween, The Fog, and especially Assault on Precinct 13) as well a healthy dose of James Cameron (circa Terminator and Terminator: Judgment Day; even Hicks....Michael Biehn...makes an appearance). But will Cupcake (who is dying to marry Adam Wingard) and diehard Wingard fans be satisfied by this "spiritual" sequel that lives in the universe of The Guest? Or is this "seen it/done that", mid-Wingard (if that is even such a thing)?Come back for our SPOILER'D episode where we dig into the ending, the kills, and the universal connection that links this film with nearly all other "Barrett-Wingard" movies. - - - - - - - - - -WE ARE WATCH SKIP PLUS!***Original Theme music: Linus Fitness-Center (click the link in our bio for more information on LFC)FOLLOW/LIKE/SUBSCRIBE/REVIEW/LOVEEmail us: WatchSkipPlus@gmail.comBe kind. Be open. Be vulnerable. That's where the art is.───────────────────────────────SOCIAL MEDIA: FB: https://www.facebook.com/watchskippluspodIG: https://www.instagram.com/watchskipplus/X: https://twitter.com/watchskipplusCHECK OUT THESE PODCASTS! 

Zum 35. Jubiläum des Judgement Days

Matt is joined by Puck's box office expert Scott Mendelson to judge their early summer box office predictions by looking at the biggest hits, misses, and questions from the 2026 summer slate. 'The Devil Wears Prada 2' (02:53) 'Mortal Kombat II' (05:41) 'Mandalorian & Grogu' (06:51) 'Masters of the Universe' (09:09) 'Scary Movie 6' (11:55) 'Disclosure Day' (13:46) 'Toy Story 5' (15:55) 'Supergirl' (17:53) 'Minions & Monsters' (22:15) 'Moana' (27:09) 'The Odyssey' (33:31) 'Spider-Man: Brand New Day' (37:11) 'The End of Oak Street' (42:35) Host: Matt Belloni Guests: Scott Mendelson Producers: Craig Horlbeck, Jessie Lopez, and Stefano Sanchez Theme Song: Devon Renaldo Bob Iger, James Cameron, Kevin Feige, Jon Favreau and More Featured in New Disney+ Documentary ‘Disney Worldbuilders.' Now Streaming on Disney+. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Genuine Chit-Chat is back with a new quarterly show that will be airing in 2027 – a book club featuring Mike, Tony (A.R.) Farina and “Superdummy” Paul McGuigan! Initially recorded in 2025, this episode is the “pilot” where our trio review a book originally written in 1841 by Hugh Harkin, but was found in the 90s and printed by the Ballinascreen Historical Society as The Life & Adventures Of Hudy McGuigan! Paul is related to the titular character, hence their discovery of the book. The book is written in a unique way, with plenty of phonetic language and tall-tales, many of are considered truth from the time, about the mythical Hudy McGuigan and his life in Ireland, including the unusual situations he found himself in due to his mischievous ways  - this is not a conventional book, so it makes the perfect pilot book to review! Paul & Mike discussed this book before reading on episode 266 of GCC, listen here: https://pod.fo/e/2c7535 The next book our trio will be reviewing is Tony's pick; J. D. Salinger's Catcher In The Rye from 1951, so make sure you subscribe to hear that in 2027, then either Paul or Mike will choose the next book. The fourth book will be chosen by you – the audience! So have a think and later in 2027, we'll put the call out to ask what to read and review! Join Mike's Patreon at the free tier for monthly bonus episodes, or support for £1 a month for weekly episodes! Head there now for access to the massive catalogue; www.patreon.com/GenuineChitChat You can also support with a one-off payment at Ko-Fi and Mike will be sure to send you bonus content as a thank you: https://ko-fi.com/GenuineChitChat If in the UK, find the book for purchase here: https://ballinascreenhistoricalsociety.com/store/index.php?route=product/product&path=59&product_id=83&limit=15 To read the contents of the book for free, go here: https://www.kintree.net/hudy/index.php Find information on Tony's books, podcasts and other information here: https://www.arfarina.com Find all of Mike's social media & other links at https://linktr.ee/GenuineChitChat Paul has been narrating Virgil Henry's Divine Comedy audiobooks, starting with Academic Inferno: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0F2585CT6?notRedirectToSDP=1&ref_=dbs_m_mng_rwt_calw_taud_thcv&storeType=ebooks Guest Spots: Look out for Mike & Tony on Tonya Todd's Banned Books Conversations 2026, found on the feeds of Femme On and Comics In Motion! Tony was recently on Three Song Stories, found here: https://pod.fo/e/584eb8 Mike appeared on Back To The Filmography twice in 2026 to talk Matthew McConaughey! The first was about Interstellar, including behind-the-scenes details, and more: https://pod.fo/e/3b9a62 The second was about the lesser-known Beach Bum here: https://pod.fo/e/4c41a0 Mike was also on Spider-Dan's pod, talking about the Special Edition of James Cameron's The Abyss, detailing the making-of, behind-the-scenes drama and more: https://pod.fo/e/401e58 Earlier in the year, Mike & Spider-Dan reviewed 13 movies, and carried out 6 interviews, at Forbidden Worlds Film Festival 2026, find on the feeds of GCC & SD, first episode was Ladyhawke here: https://pod.fo/e/40954b Don't forget to review & share this episode wherever you can!

John Carpenter's 1981 dystopian sci-fi action thriller, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, is our feature presentation this week! We discuss Kurt Russell's iconic "Snake Plissken", the miniatures and matte paintings, the fantastic supporting cast, James Cameron's involvement, and much more! We also pick our Top 7 John Carpenter Scores in this week's Silver Screen 7!  Join our Patreon ($2.99/month) here linktr.ee/brokenvcr to watch the episodes LIVE in video form day/weeks early. Find us on Instagram @thebrokenvcr and follow us on LetterBoxd! Become a regular here at THE BROKEN VCR!

Bill, Chris, and Sean wake up from a 57-year sleep to revisit James Cameron's 1986 action thriller, ‘Aliens,' starring Sigourney Weaver, Bill Paxton, and Michael Biehn. Producers: Craig Horlbeck, Chia Hao Tat, Eduardo Ocampo, and Matt Pevic Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Send us Fan MailA secret agent can stop terrorists, jump rooftops, and steal a Harrier jet, but he still can't figure out how to talk to his wife. We get into True Lies with the right amount of love and side-eye, because this movie is peak 90s action comedy: huge stunts, sharp character beats, and jokes that land harder than they probably should. We walk through the plot, call out the scenes that define it, and ask the obvious question: how did anyone believe Arnold Schwarzenegger was a “computer hardware salesman”?We also spend time on what makes the cast click. Jamie Lee Curtis gets a real arc and some iconic moments, Tom Arnold delivers chaos like it's a sport, and Bill Paxton plays the smarmiest fake spy with total commitment. From the staged mission and interrogation gags to the bridge chase and missile payoff, we talk about why James Cameron's direction makes the whole thing feel expensive, practical, and oddly sincere even when the logic goes off the rails.Then we pivot into everything else we can't stop thinking about: HBO's Monsters of God and the wild world of reptile smuggling, plus the GTA 6 leak and the bigger argument over digital games, physical discs, and what it means to actually own what you buy. If you like movie reviews, pop culture detours, and honest debates about games and media, you'll have a lot to chew on.Subscribe, share the show with a friend, and leave us a review with your #1 action movie pick.Support the show

Episode 232 is here, and the Movie Pals are taking on Coyote vs. Acme! After a long and unusual journey to theaters, Wile E. Coyote is finally fighting back against the company responsible for decades of defective products, explosions, crashes, and catastrophes. We break down Coyote vs. Acme (2026), starring Will Forte, John Cena, and Lana Condor. Did it capture the classic Looney Tunes spirit? How well did the animation and live action blend together? We get into the comedy, characters, effects, cameos, favorite moments, spoilers, and whether the movie was ultimately worth the wait. Then the doors open to…

Episode Date: August 29, 2026This episode of Infinite Plane Saturn Day, broadcasted on August 29, 2026, serves as an intellectual critique of the “Metascript”—the simulated, highly controlled reality that governs both mainstream and alternative news cycles. The host opens with a temporal alignment: August 29th is the exact date Skynet becomes self-aware in Terminator 2, which timed perfectly with the film's theatrical re-release starting yesterday. He explains that directors like James Cameron and Christopher Nolan are “meta-scripters” who use highly realistic cinematic propaganda to prepare the public mind for faked historical events, notably impending nuclear psychological operations.The host connects these scripts to current events, pointing to Russia's “Poseidon” nuclear-powered submarine and its mirroring in the television show The Diplomat. To the host, this concurrent programming is designed to educate the public on how to respond to an eventual faked sea-based attack. He expands this critique to “MKUltra,” arguing that mainstream and alternative media are actually modern branches of the same trauma-induced mind control system.A significant portion of the broadcast is dedicated to exposing alternative media gatekeepers, or what the host calls “Trutherville”. By confronting alt-media influencer Amazing Polly over her assertions that the Trump shooting in Butler was real, the host demonstrates how the “main and alt” duopoly functions. He argues that both sides reinforce false premises, solidifying fake events in the public consensus. He states that figures like Charlie Kirk are constructed characters, and faked deaths like those in Butler or the J6 riots are heavily choreographed performances designed to manufacture a false worldview.The host also dissects common conspiracy narratives, dismissing chemtrails as a simple weather-dependent phenomenon where hot jet exhaust condenses in the freezing stratosphere. He explains that politicians merely pander to these beliefs to capture the “chud vote”. Similarly, the Mandela Effect is analyzed as retroactive interference—a gaslighting tactic that implants false memories in a highly suggestible, “auto-disbelieving” truther audience. Interwoven with personal reflections about his own DoorDash shifts, temporary Starlink outages, and the upcoming second edition of his handbook, the host delivers a sharp wake-up call. He warns his audience that they have until September 11th to sever ties with alternative media “shepherds” and make the transition into “Realville”.Key Takeaways (5 Bullet Points)* The Metascript and Predictive Programming: The host argues that elite “meta-scripters” like James Cameron and Christopher Nolan use cinema to prime the mass consciousness for future faked events, such as nuclear catastrophes, by aligning movie plots with real-world timelines.* The Poseidon Threat and Geopolitical Integration: The broadcast highlights the concurrent release of The Diplomat Season 4 and Russia's “Poseidon” nuclear torpedo as a structured effort to “educate” the public ahead of a simulated sea-based crisis.* The Mainstream-Alternative Duopoly: Using his confrontation with Amazing Polly as an example, the host asserts that both mainstream and alternative media share the same false starting premises to solidify simulated events (like J6 or the Butler shooting) into accepted history.* Deconstructing Conspiracy Tropes: The host refutes popular alternative theories, characterizing chemtrails as basic water condensation from hot jet exhaust and the Mandela Effect as retroactively implanted false memories designed to gaslight vulnerable followers.* The Transition to “Realville”: Listeners are urged to fully abandon the “anti” and “pro” dialectics of “Trutherville” before the 25th anniversary of 9/11 and migrate to “Realville,” where critical thinkers process media through systematic pattern recognition rather than emotional reactions.Key Episode Quotes (5 Quotes)* “James Cameron loaded Terminator 2 and Titanic from 97 With 9-11 predictive programming, and on 9-11, he was at the scene of the sunken Titanic.”* “And that's what predictive programming does. It is there to educate the public about what's going to be faked so they know what it's going to be.”* “We are a fake news wood chipper at this point.”* “...my essential premise here is that main and alt are in fact a duopoly. They both start with the exact same premise, which is always false.”* “Yeah, mainstream media is MKUltra. Alt-media, MKUltra. I've stepped out of both.”

Matt is joined by the hosts of the Acquired podcast, Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal, to discuss their two-part series on the history of The Walt Disney Company; what surprised them the most during their deep research; Disney's most precarious investments, biggest missteps, and best acquisitions; where Disney is today; and how it's positioned for the future (02:08). Matt finishes the show with an opening weekend box office prediction for 'Coyote vs. Acme' (34:57). Host: Matt Belloni Guests: Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal Producers: Craig Horlbeck, Jessie Lopez, and Stefano Sanchez Theme Song: Devon Renaldo Nominated for 26 Emmy Awards, including OUTSTANDING DRAMA SERIES. Bob Iger, James Cameron, Kevin Feige, Jon Favreau and More Featured in New Disney+ Documentary ‘Disney Worldbuilders.' Now Streaming on Disney+. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week we watch James Cameron's blockbuster, award winning hit, TitanicDirected by James CameronWritten by James CameronProduced by James Cameron, Jon LandauStarring Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Billy Zane, Kathy Bates, Frances Fisher, Bernard HillJonathan Hyde, Danny Nucci, David Warner, Bill PaxtonCinematography Russell CarpenterEdited by Conrad Buff, James Cameron, Richard A. HarrisMusic by James HornerProduction companies Paramount Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Lightstorm EntertainmentDistributed by Paramount Pictures (United States and Canada) 20th Century Fox (International)Release datesNovember 1, 1997 (Tokyo)December 19, 1997 (United States)Running time195 minutesBudget$200,000,000 (estimated)Gross US & Canada$674,354,882Opening weekend US & Canada$28,638,131Dec 21, 1997Gross worldwide$2,264,812,968

Live from the Edinburgh International Television Festival, Matt is joined by veteran TV execs Patrick Holland, Jane Root, and Dimitri Doganis to discuss why the U.K. is so good at making hit TV shows, how producers can own more of their shows, YouTube's influence, and, of course, Harry and Meghan (02:01). Host: Matt Belloni Guests: Patrick Holland, Jane Root, and Dimitri Doganis Producers: Craig Horlbeck, Jessie Lopez, and Stefano Sanchez Theme Song: Devon Renaldo Nominated for 26 Emmy Awards, including OUTSTANDING DRAMA SERIES. Bob Iger, James Cameron, Kevin Feige, Jon Favreau and More Featured in New Disney+ Documentary ‘Disney Worldbuilders.' Now Streaming on Disney+. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Released in August 1989, The Abyss is a science-fiction adventure, survival thriller, Cold War drama, and bruised love story all at once. James Cameron wrote and directed it, with Gale Anne Hurd producing, Mikael Salomon handling cinematography, and Alan Silvestri composing the score.The story begins when the U.S. nuclear submarine Montana mysteriously sinks near the Cayman Trough. With a hurricane closing in and Soviet ships moving toward the wreck, the Navy sends a SEAL team to Deep Core, an experimental underwater oil-drilling platform. The civilian crew is led by Virgil “Bud” Brigman, played by Ed Harris. The platform's designer—and Bud's estranged wife—Dr. Lindsey Brigman, played by Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, arrives with the military team.The mission appears to be a dangerous salvage operation. Then Lindsey sees a strange light moving beneath the water. As the storm cuts Deep Core off from the surface and SEAL commander Hiram Coffey begins to unravel under pressure, the crew realizes the ocean may contain an intelligence that has been watching humanity very closely.If you are new to the podcast then please consider following us on the platform that you love, we can be found most anywhere that you listen to your favorite podcasts. Please leave us a rating and review if you listen on iTunes and a 5 star rating if you listen on Spotify. If you like what you hear then please share the show with your friends and family. If you would like to help support the podcast by donating a small amount or any custom amount you choose then please visit the following link:https://retrolife4u.com/supportThis is not a membership or anything just a way for you to help support us without paying a reoccurring monthly fee when you feel like you are able to help.If you have any questions, comments, suggestions for shows or you have a question you would like us to read on air then email us at retrolife4you@gmail.comYou can find us on social media at the following places:FacebookInstagramTik TokYouTubeRetro Life 4 You Website

Zo somehow finds himself deep, deep under the surface of the ocean: near the Cayman Trough while America and the Soviet Union have their Cold War. He's aboard the most advanced underwater facility ever constructed. The Navy commandeered the facility to investigate a sunken submarine, but, to Zo, the Navy SEAL officer sent to oversee operations don't appear wrapped to tight. The SEAL's presence only cranks up the tension for the hard working crew as the engineer and designer of this underwater office space is also here. By herself she's messy enough, but she's in the middle of a contentious divorce with this cramp space's commander. There's almost too much drama for comfort, but then designer/engineer starts seeing . . . things. She claims that their are underwater crafts that don't belong to either the U.S. or U.S.S.R. She even suggests that humans may no longer be the most advanced species on Earth. Episode Chapters 00:10:28 Opening Credits for The Abyss starring Ed Harris, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, and Michael Biehn 00:21:03 Favorite Parts of the 1989 film The Abyss  01:28:34 Trivia from the Underwater Sci-Fi Adventure - The Abyss  01:39:45 Critics' Thoughts on James Cameron's The Abyss Please leave a comment, suggestion or question on our social media: Back Look Cinema: The Podcast Links:Website: www.backlookcinema.comEmail: friends@backlookcinema.comYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@backlookcinemaTwitter: https://twitter.com/backlookcinemaFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/BackLookCinemaInstagram: https://instagram.com/backlookcinemaThreads: https://www.threads.net/@backlookcinemaTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@backlookcinemaTwitch https://www.twitch.tv/backlookcinemaBlue Sky: https://bsky.app/profile/backlookcinema.bsky.socialMastodon: https://mstdn.party/@backlookcinemaBack Look Cinema Merch at Teespring.comBack Look Cinema Merch at Teepublic.com Again, thanks for listening.

Welcome to PTBN Pop's Movie Review of The Day! Every weekday we will be reviewing a movie whether it be currently in theaters, featured on streaming or just a film that we hold near and dear to us. On today's episode, Chad Campbell is reviewing “Disney Worldbuilders” from 2026 featuring Bob Iger, Pete Docter, James Cameron, Jared Bush, Jennifer Lee, Jon Favreau, Dave Filoni, Kevin Feige & Josh D'Amaro.

This week on the marquee is 1986's Aliens. 40 years ago, James Cameron, Gale Anne Hurd, Sigourney Weaver, and a mixture of veterans and fresh young talent came together to prove that 1979's Alien didn't have to be a one-off, and that there was a lot more life left in its brutal universe. Join us and special guest Mark Garkusha as we celebrate one of the greatest sci-fi/horror/action films ever made. We talk about the film's rocky production history, its landmark scenes and their impact, and have a little heated debate as well. After all, this time, it's war! (stay to the end for an extra laugh)Join us on Patreon for early, add free episodes, and some extra scary fun!patreon.com/BillandAshTerrorTheater@BATTpod on twitterBillBria@billbriahttps://crookedmarquee.com/author/bill-bria/https://www.slashfilm.com/author/billbria/https://billbria.contently.com/billandashterrortheater@gmail.combillandashterrortheater@instagram.com Ashley@AshleyannCoffin https://www.instagram.com/electrical_ash/You can find more from us and our other shows at https://www.strandedpanda.com/

This episode Brian and Nez go up against the ultimate killing machine in the 1984 James Cameron sci-fi/action classic THE TERMINATOR. Disguised as a human, a cyborg assassin known as a Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) travels from 2029 to 1984 to kill Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton). Sent to protect Sarah is Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), who divulges the coming of Skynet, an artificial intelligence system that will spark a nuclear holocaust. Sarah is targeted because Skynet knows that her unborn son will lead the fight against them. With the virtually unstoppable Terminator in hot pursuit, she and Kyle attempt to escape.   Join The Action Returns Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/841619946357776 Follow The Action Returns on IG and X: Instagram: @theactionreturns X: @action_returns Check out everything Horror Returns at: https://thehorrorreturns.com Join The Horror Returns Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1056143707851246 THR Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thehorrorreturns Join the THR Presents: Stream Fiends Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/3860579827402429 Follow THR Stream Fiends on IG: @thrstreamfiends Hit up E Society on Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/ESocietyPodcast/ ESP Podbean feed: https://macnezpodcast.podbean.com ESP Spotify feed: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/esoc Mac Nez Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7jot3LglMA0EuGTUikXejq?si=21b39da4784e4528 E Society YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCliC6x_a7p3kTV_0LC4S10A E Society and Mac-Nez t-shirts Tee Public: http://tee.pub/lic/9ko9r4p5uvE X: E Society Podcast: https://x.com/esocietypod The Zissiou: https://x.com/TheoZissou Instagram: E Society: https://www.instagram.com/esocietypod/ Mac Nez Podcast: https://www.instagram.com/macnez/ The Zissiou: https://www.instagram.com/thezissou/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@esocietypod  

Doug is taking a little break this week after getting sick on vacation, but we couldn't leave you hanging! So we're re-releasing one of our favorite aquatic disasters—and with summer winding down, consider this your official warning:WATCH OUT FOR FLYING PIRANHAS!

In an unprecedented move, something we almost never do we're returning to a topic we covered just over a month ago! Best and worst comic adaptations. Plus we talk the huge success of both Spider-Man: Brand New Day and The Odyssey, the fallout from the failure of Supergirl, The Mandalorian VS Groglet and Moana live action, casting and recasting for the God of War TV series and Cyclops in the X-Men reboot, no more SPUMM, Jurassic World 5 loses its director and the death of America Squid Game, James Cameron's next move and how it might not be Avatar 4 and more! Thanks for listening!New bonus let's play video out now for Resident Evil 2! Available to watch today for all 'Big Sandwich' members on bigsandwich.co, patreon.com/mrsundaymovies or via YouTube Memberships on youtube.com/mrsundaymoviesPLEASE be aware timecodes may shift due to inserted ads.00:00 The Start03:58 Spider-Man:Brand New Day & The Odyssey Success06:56 Supergirl & The Mandalorian vs Groglet Fail09:23 Kit Connor is Cyclops in X-Men Movie11:59 Batista as Kratos in God of War Recast15:01 Squid Game David Fincher Series Cancelled17:24 Gareth Edwards Exits Jurassic World Franchise21:39 The End of SPUMM?27:00 James Cameron Post-Avatar Future29:19 Best/Worst Comic Adaptations (Brand New Day spoilers throughout segment)01:09:58 What We Reading, What We Gonna Read01:20:58 Letters, It's Time For Letters01:28:20 Brand New Day Spoiler (skip one min when mentioned)SUBSCRIBE HERE ►► http://goo.gl/pQ39jNJames' Twitter ► http://twitter.com/mrsundaymoviesMaso's Twitter ► http://twitter.com/wikipediabrownPatreon ► https://patreon.com/mrsundaymoviesT-Shirts/Merch ► https://www.teepublic.com/stores/mr-sunday-moviesThe Weekly Planet iTunes ► https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-weekly-planet/id718158767?mt=2&ign-mpt=uo%3D4The Weekly Planet Direct Download ► https://play.acast.com/s/theweeklyplanetAmazon Affiliate Link ► https://amzn.to/2nc12P4 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

877 · Disney Worldbuilders Interview with Leslie IwerksDisney Worldbuilders asks a question most of us have never thought to ask... where does a Disney world actually begin?Not the land. Not the ride. The moment before any of it existed, when it was still just a feeling inside one person's head.This week I sit down with Leslie Iwerks, director of The Imagineering Story and Disneyland Handcrafted, to talk about her ambitious new documentary. Disney Worldbuilders brings together Bob Iger, Josh D'Amaro, James Cameron, Kevin Feige, Jon Favreau, Dave Filoni, Pete Docter, Jennifer Lee, and Jared Bush for a series of remarkably candid conversations about how deeply personal ideas become stories, characters, and physical worlds that millions of people can walk into.I had the privilege of screening the film before its release, and it is even better than I hoped.In our conversation, Leslie shares:Why so many of today's most influential creators were Disney fans first, and what that says about the parksHow personal struggles and childhood memories shaped stories like Frozen, Inside Out, and ZootopiaThe brutal note Jared Bush received on an early version of Zootopia, and what pulled it back from the edgeWhy Kevin Feige's favorite detail in any Disney land is a construction wallWhy story and technology have always worked together at Disney, going back to Walt and UbWhat creative failure, uncertainty, and rejection can teach the rest of usHow great leadership protects storytellers and creative riskWhy honoring Disney's history cannot mean being afraid to evolve itThe moment Leslie filmed that became the emotional heart of the filmLeslie also reflects on her grandfather, Disney Legend Ub Iwerks, and her father, Disney Legend Don Iwerks, and how their legacy of combining storytelling and technology continues through Disney's worldbuilders today. She does not just study world builders. She comes from them.Disney Worldbuilders premieres at D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event on August 16 and begins streaming on Disney+ on August 20.Subscribe to WDW Radio so you never miss an episode. Then tell me this: What Disney story, character, attraction, or world first made you believe that something impossible could become real? Share your answer in the WDW Radio Clubhouse at WDWRadio.com/Clubhouse, or leave me a voicemail at 407-900-9391.

On this week's episode of previously on… Jason and Rosie are talking casting rumors, Kit Connor as Scott Summers and Dave Bautista as Kratos, following the less spectacular Avatar: Fire and Ash box office; James Cameron says he might be out! And finally, they discuss David Ellison's op ed about why you shouldn’t worry about his politics. Follow Jason: IG & Bluesky Follow Rosie: IG & Letterboxd Follow X-Ray Vision on Instagram Join the X-Ray Vision DiscordSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kristian Harloff breaks down the biggest movie and entertainment news stories of the day, including Disney CEO Bob Iger's candid comments on the disappointing performances of **The Mandalorian and Grogu** and the live-action **Moana**. What went wrong with two of Disney's biggest franchises, and what lessons is the studio taking away? Kristian dives into the future of Star Wars, Disney's live-action strategy, and what these comments could mean for upcoming releases. Plus, **Spider-Man: Brand New Day** director **Destin Daniel Cretton** reveals why he turned down the chance to direct an **Avengers** movie, **James Cameron** lays out his ambitious roadmap for future films beyond **Avatar**, and a new report suggests the proposed **Warner Bros. Discovery/Paramount** merger could explain why **DC Studios** has remained quiet about projects beyond 2027. Stories For Today: * Disney Chief On The Mandalorian & Moana Fails * Spider-Man's Destin Daniel Cretton On Turning Down Avengers * James Cameron Maps Out His Future Films * Warner Bros. Discovery/Paramount Merger Could Explain Why DC Studios Has Announced Nothing Beyond 2027 Today's show examines some of Hollywood's biggest strategic questions. Kristian discusses Disney's response to recent franchise setbacks, why Destin Daniel Cretton chose **Spider-Man** over **Avengers**, James Cameron's long-term filmmaking plans, and how the proposed Warner Bros. Discovery/Paramount merger could shape the future of **DC Studios**. If you're a fan of **Spider-Man**, **Marvel Studios**, **Star Wars**, **The Mandalorian**, **James Cameron**, **Avatar**, **DC Studios**, or the latest movie news, this episode is for you. #SpiderMan #SpiderManBrandNewDay #Marvel #MarvelStudios #StarWars #TheMandalorian #Moana #Disney #JamesCameron #Avatar #DCStudios #WarnerBros #Paramount #MovieNews #KristianHarloffShow #EntertainmentNews FACTOR: Let's eat real. Head to https://www.FACTORMEALS.com/kristian50 and use code kristian50off to get 50 percent off and 1 free breakfast item per box for 1 year, while supplies last until 10/31/2026. RUGIET: Head to https://www.Rugiet.com/KRISTIAN and get 15% off your ED treatment. Performance medicine for men.