Welcome to the first installment ofThe Pop Culture Review, in which Collider’s weekend editor Vinnie Mancuso wakes up only slightly hungover on a Saturday to rate the week’s biggest stories in film and television on a scale from 1 to 10. (1 is soul-crushingly bad, 10 is mind-blowingly incredible.) This week:Dark Phoenixexplodes on to the scene, we get someGambit"news" (lol), J.K. Rowling is de-fanging her own canon, and a lot more.
New ‘Deadpool’ Movie Coming this December
Rating: 5, or “Surprise! Here’s half a movie”
In the grand tradition of such luminaries as Beyonce or your internal organs after visiting Jack in the Box, Fox has dropped a major surprise out of nowhere: A newDeadpoolmovie is arriving in theaters this December. While the studio somehow secretly filming a completely new Merc with the Mouth entry on the down-low would have been amazing, that’s not exactly what’s happening here. According to sources, The Untitled Deadpool Movie is basically a PG-13 re-cut ofDeadpool 2, as told toFred Savagein the style of Rob Reiner’sThe Princess Bride.
Look, I am all for any and all revisits ofThe Princess Bride,a flawless work of art. For me, Oscars season just means arguing to coworkers and strangers that Andre the Giant deserved a Best Actor win. (In fairness, I think Andre the Giant should win most awards, including, for reasons I can’t really explain, a Grammy.) But while I trust the meta-wackiness ofRyan Reynoldsto a certain degree, a retread of Deadpool movies we’ve already seen with, presumedly, most of the story and dialogue reworked largely seems like a waste of time. It’s almost like Fox just needed something to take the place formerly occupied by the premiere ofAlita: Battle Angel, which the studio pushed back presumedly because the lead character’s CGI face wasn’t giving test audience children quite enough nightmares yet.
Kathleen Kennedy Re-Ups Lucasfilm Contract For Another 3 Years
Rating: 8, or “The Kenn-Pire Strikes Back”
I felt a great disturbance on Reddit, as if a couple dozen voices sweatily vlogged in terror and were suddenly silenced (because mom turned off the Wi-Fi).
Kathleen Kennedy—who was recently on her way out the door, according to the absolute worst people in your Twitter feed @‘ingRian Johnson—actuallyextended her contractas President of Lucasfilm for another three years. Honestly, this is great news. Now thatBob Igercured that disease that would have killed him if he didn’t release aStar Warsmovie every four weeks, the franchise is in a fantastic place.TheForce Awakenswas a shot of adrenaline that woke up the prequel corpse, The Last Jedi was a beautiful experiment that took things to an entirely new plane, and now we’re eagerly awaiting next year’s trilogy-capper without having to worry about, like, a Greedo origin story in the meantime. We’re living in a galaxy far, far away again, and that’s largely down to Kennedy’s leadership.
But also, have you just perused Kathleen Kennedy’sIMDB page?Jurassic Park,Who Framed Roger Rabbit,The Goonies, etc gosh dang etc. Throw a rock at a random dorm room wall and there’s an 85% chance you hit a poster with Kathleen Kennedy’s name on it.
‘Dark Phoenix’ Gets a Trailer, New Release Date
Rating: 6, or “X-Men: Meh-Pacolypse”
How you feel about thefirst trailerforDark Phoenix—which will now be released on July 14, 2025—largely depends on your ingrained devotion to this franchise, which had a pretty good fun offering in 2014’s Day’s of Future’s Past but then inexplicably hadOscar Isaacplay Grimace’s geriatric uncle in the messyX-Men: Apocalypse. A lot of it is well-worn territory. Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) is still sniping the same argument at Magneto (Michael Fassbender), who, as always, is just like “What would you know,Charles, your legs don’t even work?“Jennifer Lawrencestill appears to be filming every Mystique scene after an only half-way restful nap in the makeup chair.
But there’s also, somehow, a lot to love!Sophie Turnerdoes a great conflicted baddie, as evidenced by the time she watched a man get eaten by his own dogs onGame of Thrones. And as someone who has hummed the buh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nah-nah-nah of theX-Menanimated series theme song at least once every day of my cursed life, I’m always thrilled to see a pop of yellow and blue on the big-screen uniforms.
‘Gambit’ Gets a New Release Date
Rating: 2, or “Sure, Jan”
Channing Tatum could personally drive to my house, hook himself up to a polygraph machine, inject Sodium Pentothal into his own goddamn eyeball and then tell me theGambitmovie is actually happening and I still wouldn’t believe him. Fox has, once again,set a premiere datefor the X-Men spinoff: July 12, 2025, a date you should mark in your calendar right this second with permanent-ass marker as “The day I did not see aGambitmovie.”
‘Creed 2’ Gets a New Trailer
Rating: 7, or “Adonis,indeed”
A lot of people are split onCreed 2, seeing as howBlack PanthermastermindRyan Cooglerisn’t directing the sequel. I counter that by saying A) Watch thishype ay-eff trailer,B) Watch it again, then C) Allow me to spell out exactly how beautifully insane the plot ofCreed 2is:
Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren) straight up killed Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers). He punched him in the faceto deathand when an interviewer asked him about it one minute later he basically said “lol, and?” in Russian. It was the 80s, everyone was coked out of their minds, and thereforecompletely fine with this. “That’s just boxing, baby, tune up that hot new Eddie Murphy dance track.” Now, several decades later, Ivan Drago’s equally steroid-filled son challenges Apollo Creed’s son to a fight. The absurdity of this scenario. Imagine in the year of our lord 2018 a boxer going on ESPN and saying, like, “My dad boxed your dad into a corpse and now I’d like to kill you as well live on pay-per-view.”
Insane. I’m going to seeCreed 2fourteen times.
Warner Bros. Finds Its ‘Birds of Prey’
Rating: 7, or “Please Be MoreWonder WomanThanSuicide Squad”
Are we allowed to be excited for a Warner Bros. DC film? It’shard, man. I still remember the genuine delight I felt after seeing the trailer forSuicide Squad, a film that ended up being an extended early-2000’s music video directed by a sentient machine gun that shoots LSD tablets. It wasn’t good, is what I’m saying. ButBirds of Preyis shaping up to be something intriguing, at least. We already knew thatMargot Robbiewould reprise her Harley Quinn role without the added weight ofJared Leto’s Spencer’s Gifts Joker for what she herself described as an “R-rated girl gang film.” Now Warner Bros. has just aboutrounded out the castwith two fantastic actress:Mary Elizabeth-Winsteadwill play Huntress andJurnee Smollett-Bellwill play Black Canary.
“But Black Canary is white!” you may be screaming, I assume shrilly. Before you make that argument is public, please take a moment to reflect the fact you are discussing a story about a mentally ill doctor-turned-clown assembling a crew of superheroes to fight a man witha skull mask melted on to his face. The quality of the film itself remains to be seen, but Elizabeth-Winstead and Smollett-Bell are both going to kill it. I truly, sincerely hope WB castsKelly Marie Tranas Cassandra Cain.
‘Fantastic Beasts’: Nagina Was a Human the Whole Time
Rating: 2, or “JUST KIDDING”
Not sinceMarc WebbdirectedThe Amazing Spider-Manhas a human being had a more appropriate name thanJ.K. Rowling. Just kidding, Dumbledore was gay. Just kidding, Harry and Hermione should have ended up together. Just kidding, Hogwarts was actually filled with diverse students living interesting lives.
In the latest installment of “JK by J.K.”, thelatest trailerforFantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald(written by Rowling) revealed that Nagini—the snake pet/Horocrux of Nazi-wizard Lord Voldemort—used to be a human womanwith cursed blood.
I can’t completely hate the idea itself quite yet, seeing as how the movie isn’t out yet. But it is super weird to watch Rowling continueGeorge Lucas-ing her work and then claiming it was the planthe whole time. It was not. If it was, ya’ didn’t write it. You had loveable hero Neville Longbottom lop off a lady’s head. I get it. Every time I click on my byline at the top of the page I see something Idefinitelyshould edit for my own well-being. But that’s not the way the world—wizarding or otherwise—works.
