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Invasion S3 trailer hints the series is finally finding its stride

Apple TV Plus, culture, Entertainment, Invasion, streaming television, Trailers / /

Chances are you haven’t been watching Invasion, an Apple TV+ sci-fi drama overshadowed to some extent by two of the streamer’s other sci-fi shows, Silo and Foundation. Yes, Invasion has received mixed reviews for its ponderous pacing (especially in the first season). Even its fans may admit to having something of a love/hate relationship with the show. But the cinematography is gorgeous, and the writers are clearly trying to explore some ambitious themes, with variable success. Apple TV+ just released a trailer for the upcoming third season that suggests this series with so much promise might finally be hitting its stride.

(Some spoilers for first two seasons below.)

Invasion was created by David Weil (Hunters) and Simon Kinberg (best known for writing and/or producing several X-Men films, as well as The Martian, which was nominated for several Oscars). The first season focused on the initial stages of the titular alien invasion, portraying the events through the eyes of ordinary people around the world—the series is in English, Japanese, and Pashto—as they come to terms with the existential threat Earth is facing. In fact, the aliens take a back seat to the human interactions, which irritated some viewers eager to see actual aliens in a show about an extraterrestrial invasion.

The full-on invasion closed out the first season. A much stronger, action-oriented S2 essentially re-invented itself to explore how our surviving main characters adjusted to their brave new world, as well as the occasionally terrible decisions that had to be made in order to survive. The aliens rapidly took over, with humans relegated to small safe zones. It was still a bit of a slow burn, but it set up several intriguing elements for S3, which takes place two years later. And the aliens are evolving. Per the official premise:

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These are the best streaming services you aren’t watching

culture, Features, streaming, Tech / /

Discover movies and shows you’ve never seen before.

Michael Scott next to a TV on a cart in The Office.

If you’ve seen The Office enough to know which episode this is, it may be time to stream something new. Credit: NBCUniversal

If you’ve seen The Office enough to know which episode this is, it may be time to stream something new. Credit: NBCUniversal

We all know how to find our favorite shows and blockbuster films on mainstream streaming services like Netflix, HBO Max, and Disney+. But even as streaming has opened the door to millions of hours of on-demand entertainment, it can still feel like there’s nothing fresh or exciting to watch anymore.

If you agree, it’s time to check out some of the more niche streaming services available, where you can find remarkable content unlikely to be available elsewhere.

This article breaks down the best streaming services you likely aren’t watching. From cinematic masterpieces to guilty pleasures, these services offer refreshing takes on streaming that make online content bingeing feel new again.

Curiosity Stream

Host James Burke pointing to puffs of smoke rising from the ground in the distance

James Burke points to puffs of smoke rising from the ground in Curiosity Stream’s Connections reboot.

Credit: Curiosity Stream

James Burke points to puffs of smoke rising from the ground in Curiosity Stream’s Connections reboot. Credit: Curiosity Stream

These days, it feels like facts are getting harder to come by. Curiosity Stream‘s focus on science, history, research, and learning is the perfect antidote to this problem. The streaming service offers documentaries to people who love learning and are looking for a reliable source of educational media with no sensationalism or political agendas.

Curiosity Stream is $5 per month or $40 per year for an ad-free, curated approach to documentary content. Launched in 2015 by Discovery Channel founder John Hendricks, the service offers “more new films and shows every week” and has pledged to produce even more original content.

It has been a while since cable channels like Discovery or The History Channel have been regarded as reputable documentary distributors. You can find swaths of so-called documentaries on other streaming services, especially Amazon Prime Video, but finding a quality documentary on mainstream streaming services often requires sifting through conspiracy theories, myths, and dubious arguments.

Curiosity Stream boasts content from respected names like James Burke, Brian Greene, and Neil deGrasse Tyson. Among Curiosity Stream’s most well-known programs are Stephen Hawking’s Favorite Places, a News and Documentary Emmy Award winner; David Attenborough’s Light on Earth, a Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival award winner; Secrets of the Solar System, a News & Documentary Emmy Award nominee; and the currently trending Ancient Engineering: Middle East. 

Curiosity Stream doesn’t regularly report subscriber numbers, but it said in March 2023 that it had 23 million subscribers. In May, parent company CuriosityStream, which also owns Curiosity University, the Curiosity Channel linear TV channel, and an original programming business, reported its first positive net income ($0.3 million) in its fiscal Q1 2025 earnings.

That positive outcome followed a massive price hike that saw subscription fees double in March 2023. So if you decide to subscribe to Curiosity Stream, keep an eye on pricing.

Mubi

Demi Moore looking into a mirror and wearing a red dress and red lipstick in The Substance.

The Substance was a breakout hit for Mubi in 2024. Credit: Mubi/YouTube

Mubi earned street cred in 2024 as the distributor behind the Demi Moore-starring film The Substance. But like Moore’s Elisabeth Sparkle, there’s more than meets the eye with this movie-focused streaming service, which has plenty of art-house films.

Mubi costs $15 per month or $120 per year for ad-free films. For $20 per month or $168 per year, subscriptions include a “hand-picked cinema ticket every single week,” according to Mubi, in select cities. Previous tickets have included May December, The Boy and the Heron, and The Taste of Things.

Don’t expect a bounty of box office blockbusters or superhero films on Mubi. Instead, the spotlight is on critically acclaimed award-winning films that are frequently even more obscure than what you’d find on The Criterion Channel streaming service. Save for the occasional breakout hits (like The Substance, Twin Peaks, and Frances Ha), you can expect to find many titles you’ve never heard of before. That makes the service a potential windfall for movie aficionados who feel like they’ve seen it all.

Browsing Mubi’s library is like uncovering a hidden trove of cinema. The service’s UI eases the discovery process by cleanly displaying movies’ critic and user reviews, among other information. Mubi also produces Notebook, a daily publication of thoughtful, passionate editorials about film.

Further differentiating Mubi from other streaming services is its community; people can make lists of content that other users can follow (like “Hysterical in a Floral Dress,” a list of movies featuring females showcasing “intense creative outbursts/hysteria/debauchery”), which helps viewers find content, including shows and films outside of Mubi, that will speak to them.

Mubi claims to have 20 million registered users and was recently valued at $1 billion. The considerable numbers suggest that Mubi may be on its way to being the next A24.

Hoopla

A screenshot of the Hoopla streaming service.

Hoopla brings your local library to your streaming device.

Hoopla brings your local library to your streaming device. Credit: Hoopla

The online and on-demand convenience of streaming services often overshadows libraries as a source of movies and TV shows. Not to be left behind, thousands of branches of the ever-scrappy public library system currently offer on-demand video streaming and online access to eBooks, audiobooks, comic books, and music via Hoopla, which launched in 2013. Streaming from Hoopla is free if you have a library card from a library that supports the service, and it brings simplicity and affordability back to streaming.

You don’t pay for the digital content you borrow via Hoopla, but your library does. Each library that signs a deal with Hoopla (the company says there are about 11,500 branches worldwide) individually sets the number of monthly “borrows” library card holders are entitled to, which can be in the single digits or greater. Additionally, each borrow is limited to a certain number of days, which varies by title and library.

Libraries choose which titles they’d like to offer patrons, and Hoopla is able to distribute content through partnerships with content distributors, such as Paramount. Cat Zappa, VP of digital acquisition at Hoopla Digital, told Ars Technica that Hoopla has “over 2.5 million pieces of content” and “about 75,000 to 80,000 pieces of video” content. The service currently has “over” 10 million users, she said.

Hoopla has a larger library with more types of content available than Kanopy, a free streaming service for libraries that offers classic, independent, and documentary movies. For a free service, Hoopla’s content selection isn’t bad, but it isn’t modern. It’s strongest when it comes to book-related content; its e-book and audiobook catalogue, for example, includes popular titles like Sunrise on the Reaping, Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games prequel, and Rebecca Yarros’ Onyx Storm 2, plus everything from American classics to 21st-century manga titles.

There’s a decent selection of movies based on books, like Jack Reacher, The Godfather series, The Spiderwick Chronicles, The Crucible, Clueless, and The Rainmaker, to name a few out of the 759 offered to partnering libraries. Perusing Hoopla’s older titles recalls some of the fun of visiting a physical library, giving you access to free media that you might never have tried otherwise.

Many libraries don’t offer Hoopla, though. The service is a notable cost for libraries, which have to pay Hoopla a fee every time something is borrowed. Hoopla gives some of that money to the content distributor and keeps the rest. Due to budget constraints, some libraries are unable to support streaming via Hoopla’s pay-per-use model.

Hoopla acknowledges the budget challenges that libraries face and offers various budgeting tools, Zappa told Ars, adding, “Not every library patron has the ability to… go into the library as frequently as they’d like to engage with content. Digital streaming allows another easy and efficient opportunity to still get patrons engaged with the library but… from where it’s most convenient for them in certain cases.”

Dropout

Brennan Lee Mulligan is Game Master on Dropout's Dimension 20.

Brennan Lee Mulligan is a game master on Dropout’s Dimension 20.

Brennan Lee Mulligan is a game master on Dropout’s Dimension 20. Credit: Dropout/YouTube

The Internet brings the world to our fingertips, but I’ve repeatedly used it to rewatch episodes of The Office. If that sounds like you, Dropout could be just what you need to (drop)kick you out of your comedic funk.

Dropout costs $7 per month or $70 per year. It’s what remains of the website CollegeHumor, which launched in 1999. It was acquired by US holding company IAC in 2006 and was shuttered by IAC in 2020. Dropout mostly has long-form, unscripted comedy series. Today, it features 11 currently running shows, plus nine others. Dropout’s biggest successes are a wacky game show called Game Changer and Dimension 20, a Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game show that also has live events.

Dropout is for viewers seeking a novel and more communal approach to comedy that doesn’t rely on ads, big corporate sponsorships, or celebrities to make you smile.

IAC first launched Dropout under the CollegeHumor umbrella in 2018 before selling CollegeHumor to then-chief creative officer Sam Reich in 2020. In 2023, Reich abandoned the CollegeHumor name. He said that by then, Dropout’s brand recognition had surpassed that of CollegeHumor.

Dropout has survived with a limited budget and staff by relying on “less expensive, more personality-based stuff,” Reich told Vulture in late 2023. The service is an unlikely success story in a streaming industry dominated by large corporations. IAC reportedly bought CollegeHumor for $26 million and sold it to Reich for no money. In late 2023, Reich told Variety that Dropout was “between seven and 10 times the size that we were when IAC dropped us, from an audience perspective.” At the time, Dropout’s subscriber count was in the “mid-hundreds of thousands,” according to Reich.

Focusing on improvisational laughs, Dropout’s energetic content forgoes the comedic comfort zones of predictable network sitcoms—and even some offbeat scripted originals. A biweekly (or better) release schedule keeps the fun flowing.

In 2023, Reich pointed to the potential for $1 price hikes “every couple of years.” But Dropout also appears to limit revenue goals, further differentiating it from other streaming services. In 2023, Reich told Vulture, “When we talk about growth, I really think there’s such a thing as being unhealthily ambitious. I don’t believe in unfettered capitalism. The question is, ‘How can we do this in such a way that we honor the work of everyone involved, we create work that we’re really proud of, and we continue to appeal to our audience first?'”

Midnight Pulp

Bruce Li doing a leaping kick in Fist of Fury.

Bruce Li in Fist of Fury.

Bruce Li in Fist of Fury. Credit: Fighting Cinema/YouTube

Mark this one under “guilty pleasures.”

Midnight Pulp isn’t for the faint of heart or people who consider movie watching a serious endeavor. It has a broad selection of outrageous content that often leans on exploitation films with cult followings, low budgets, and excessive, unrealistic, or grotesque imagery.

I first found Midnight Pulp as a free ad-supported streaming (FAST) channel built into my smart TV’s operating system. But it’s also available as a subscription-based on-demand service for $6 per month or $60 per year. I much prefer the random selection that Midnight Pulp’s FAST channel delivers. Unlike on Mubi, where you can peruse a bounty of little-known yet well-regarded titles, there’s a good reason you haven’t heard of much of the stuff on Midnight Pulp.

But as the service’s slogan (Stream Something Strange) and name suggest, Midnight Pulp has an unexpected, surreal way of livening up a quiet evening or dull afternoon. Its bold content often depicts a melodramatic snapshot of a certain aspect of culture from a specific time. Midnight Pulp introduced me to Class of 1984, for example, a movie featuring a young Michael J. Fox enrolled in a wild depiction of the ’80s public school system.

There’s also a robust selection of martial arts movies, including Bruce Li’s Fist of Fury (listed under the US release title Chinese Connection). It’s also where I saw Kung Fu Traveler, a delightful Terminator ripoff that introduced me to one of Keanu Reeves’ real-life pals, Tiger Chen. Midnight Pulp’s FAST channel is where I discovered one of the most striking horror series I’ve seen in years, Bloody Bites, an anthology series with an eerie, intimate, and disturbing tone that evolves with each episode. (Bloody Bites is an original series from horror streaming service ScreamBox.)

Los Angeles-based entertainment company Cineverse (formerly Cinedigm and Access IT Digital Media Inc.) owns Midnight Pulp and claims to have “over 150 million unique monthly users” and over 71,000 movies, shows, and podcasts across its various streaming services, including Midnight Pulp, ScreamBox, RetroCrush, and Fandor.

Many might stick their noses up at Midnight Pulp’s selection, and in many cases, they’d be right to do so. It isn’t always tasteful, but it’s never boring. If you’re feeling daring and open to shocking content worthy of conversation, give Midnight Pulp a try.

Photo of Scharon Harding

Scharon is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica writing news, reviews, and analysis on consumer gadgets and services. She’s been reporting on technology for over 10 years, with bylines at Tom’s Hardware, Channelnomics, and CRN UK.

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The case for memes as a new form of comics

culture, Internet memes, memes, Science, sequential art / /

Both comics and memes rely on the same interplay of visual and verbal elements for their humor.

Credit: Jennifer Ouellette via imgflip

It’s undeniable that the rise of the Internet had a profound impact on cartooning as a profession, giving cartoonists both new tools and a new publishing and/or distribution medium. Online culture also spawned the emergence of viral memes in the late 1990s. Michelle Ann Abate, an English professor at The Ohio State University, argues in a paper published in INKS: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society, that memes—specifically, image macros—represent a new type of digital comic, right down to the cognitive and creative ways in which they operate.

“One of my areas of specialty has been graphic novels and comics,” Abate told Ars. “I’ve published multiple books on various aspects of comics history and various titles: everything from Charles Schulz’s Peanuts to The Far Side, to Little Lulu to Ziggy to The Family Circus. So I’ve been working on comics as part of the genres and texts and time periods that I look at for many years now.”

Her most recent book is 2024’s Singular Sensations: A Cultural History of One-Panel Comics in the United States, which Abate was researching when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020. “I was reading a lot of single panel comics and sharing them with friends during the pandemic, and memes were something we were always sharing, too,” Abate said. “It occurred to me one day that there isn’t a whole lot of difference between the single panel comics I’m sharing and the memes. In terms of how they function, how they operate, the connection of the verbal and the visual, there’s more continuity than there is difference.”

So Abate decided to approach the question more systematically. Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins coined the word “meme” in his 1976 popular science book, The Selfish Gene, well before the advent of the Internet age. For Dawkins, it described a “unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of information”: ideas, catchphrases, catchy tunes, fashions, even arch building.

distraught woman pointing a finger and yelling, facing an image of a confused cat in front of a salad

Credit: Jennifer Ouellette via imgflp

In a 21st century context, “meme” refers to a piece of online content that spikes in popularity and gets passed from user to user, i.e., going viral. These can be single images remixed with tailored text, such as “Distracted Boyfriend,” “This Is Fine,” or “Batman Slapping Robin.” Or they can feature multiple panels, like “American Chopper.” Furthermore, “Memes can also be a gesture, they can be an activity, they can be a video like the Wednesday dance or the ice bucket challenge,” said Abate. “It’s become such a part of our lexicon that it’s hard to imagine a world without memes at this point.”

For Abate, Internet memes are clearly related to sequential art like comics, representing a new stage of evolution in the genre. In both cases, the visual and verbal elements work in tandem to produce the humor.

Granted, comic artists usually create both the image and the text, whereas memes adapt preexisting visuals with new text. Some might consider this poaching, but Abate points out that cartoonists like Charles Schulz have long used stencil templates (a static prefabricated element) to replicate images, a practice that is also used effectively in, say, Dinosaur Comics. And meme humor depends on people connecting the image to its origin rather than obscuring it. She compares the practice to sampling in music; the end result is still an original piece of art.

In fact, The New Yorker’s hugely popular cartoon caption contest—in which the magazine prints a single-panel drawing with no speech balloons or dialogue boxes and asks readers to supply their own verbal jokes—is basically a meme generator. “It’s seen more as a highbrow thing, crowdsourcing everybody’s wit,” said Abate. “But [the magazine supplies] the template image and then everybody puts in their own text or captions. They’re making memes. If they only published the winner, folks would be disappointed because the fun is seeing all the clever, funny things that people come up with.”

Memes both mirror and modify the comic genre. For instance, the online nature of memes can affect formatting. If there are multiple panels, those panels are usually arranged vertically rather than horizontally since memes are typically read by scrolling down one’s phone—like the “American Chopper” meme:

American Chopper meme with each frame representing a stage in the debate

Credit: Jennifer Ouellette via imgflip

Per Abate, this has the added advantage of forcing the reader to pause briefly to consider the argument and counter-argument, emphasizing that it’s an actual debate rather than two men simply yelling at one another. “If the panels were arranged horizontally and the guys were side by side in each other’s face, installments of ‘American Chopper’ would come across very differently,” she said.

A pad with infinite sheets

Scott McCloud is widely considered the leading theorist when it comes to the art of comics, and his hugely influential 2000 book, Reinventing Comics: The Evolution of an Art Form, explores the boundless potential for digital comics, freed from the constraints of a printed page. He calls this aspect the “infinite canvas,” because cartoonists can now create works of any size or shape, even as tall as a mountain. Memes have endless possibilities of a different kind, per Abate.

“[McCloud] thinks of it very expansively: a single panel could be the size of a city block,” said Abate. “You could never do that with a book because how could you print the book? How could you hold the book? How could you read the book? How could you download the book on your Kindle? But when you’ve got a digital world, it could be a city block and you can explore it with your mouse and your cursor and your track pad and, oh, all the possibilities for storytelling and for the medium that will open up with this infinite canvas. There have been many places and titles where this has played out with digital comics.

“Obviously with a meme, they’re not the size of a city block,” she continued. “So it occurred to me that they are infinite, but almost like you’re peeling sheets off a pad and the pad just has an endless number of sheets. You can just keep redoing it, redo, redo, redo. That’s memes. They get revised and repurposed and re-imagined and redone and recirculated over and over and over again. The template gets used inexhaustibly, which is what makes them fun, what makes them go viral.”

comic frame showing batman slapping robin

Credit: Jennifer Ouellette via imgflp

Just what makes a good meme image? Abate has some thoughts about that, too. “It has to be not just the image, but the ability for the image to be paired with a caption, a text,” she said. “It has to lend itself to some kind of verbal element as well. And it also has to have some elasticity of being specific enough that it’s recognizable, but also being malleable enough that it can be adapted to different forms.”

In other words, a really good meme must be generalizable if it is to last longer than a few weeks. The recent kiss-cam incident at a Coldplay concert is a case in point. When a married tech CEO was caught embracing his company’s “chief people officer,” they quickly realized they were on the Jumbotron, panicked, and hid their faces—which only made it worse. The moment went viral and spawned myriad memes. Even the Phillies mascots got into the spirit, re-enacting the moment at a recent baseball game. But that particular meme might not have long-term staying power.

“It became a meme very quickly and went viral very fast,” said Abate. “I may be proved wrong, but I don’t think the Coldplay moment will be a meme that will be around a year from now. It’s commenting on a particular incident in the culture, and then the clock will tick, and folks will move on. Whereas something like ‘Distracted Boyfriend’ or ‘This is Fine’ has more staying power because it’s not tied to a particular incident or a particular scandal but can be applied to all kinds of political topics, pop culture events, and cultural experiences.”

black man stroking his chin, mouth partly open in surprise

Credit: Sean Carroll via imgflp

Photo of Jennifer Ouellette

Jennifer is a senior writer at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban.

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Review: Fantastic Four: First Steps is the best film version so far

culture, film reviews, marvel studios, mcu, MCU Phase Six, The Fantastic Four: First Steps / /

Shakman wanted a very 1960s aesthetic for his reboot, citing Kubrick films from that era as inspiration, right down to his choice of camera lenses. And the film definitely delivers on that score. The Four’s penthouse headquarters is pure midcentury modern, with Reed’s lab divided into three rooms differentiated by bright primary colors. Then there’s all that retrofuture technology: Johnny Storm records mysterious signals from space onto golden record platters and plays them on an old-school turntable, for example, and the team’s Fantasticar is straight out of sci-fi’s Golden Age.

And you couldn’t ask for a better main cast: Pascal, Kirby, Moss-Bachrach, and Quinn all have great chemistry and effectively convey the affectionate family dynamic that comprises the central theme of the film. That’s essential, particularly since we’ve mostly skipped the origin story; the characters are familiar, but this incarnation is not. They banter, they bicker, they have heart-to-hearts, and the inevitable tensions in Reed and Sue’s marriage that a new baby brings—occurring just as the Earth faces annihilation—feel entirely believable.

And then there are the cons, which boil down to a weak, predictable plot that jerks from one scene to the next with tenuous coherence and, shall we say, less than stellar dialogue. The actors deserved better, particularly Kirby, whose Sue Storm gives an inane rallying “speech” to the people of New York as Galactus approaches that makes no sense whatsoever. (The St. Crispin’s Day speech it is not.)

Kirby also has the unenviable task of portraying Sue giving birth in space, a scene that is just plain laughable. One doesn’t expect strict verisimilitude concerning the messier parts of birth, although Reed does briefly mention the challenges posed by zero gravity/warp speed. But it’s far too sanitized here. And spare a thought for poor Sue having to kick off the lower part of her space suit to deliver Franklin in front of her brother and her husband’s best friend.

In the end, though, the film’s shortcomings don’t matter because it’s still a fun, entertaining superhero saga. I give it a solid B—a decent start to the MCU’s Phase Six. Just try not to think too hard about the plot, sit back, and enjoy the ride.

Fantastic Four: First Steps is now playing in theaters.

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Peacemaker S2 trailer finds our anti-hero in a parallel world

culture, Entertainment, HBO Max, Peacemaker, san diego comic con, streaming television, Trailers / /

HBO Max dropped the hotly anticipated full trailer for S2 of Peacemaker—James Gunn’s Emmy-nominated series spun off from his 2021 film, The Suicide Squad—at San Diego Comic-Con this weekend.

(Spoilers for S1 below.)

As previously reported, the eight-episode first season was set five months after the events of The Suicide Squad. Having survived a near-fatal shooting, Peacemaker—aka Christopher Smith—is recruited by the US government for a new mission: the mysterious Project Butterfly, led by a mercenary named Clemson Murn (Chukwudi Iwuji). The team also includes A.R.G.U.S. agent John Economos (Steve Agee) of the Belle Reve Penitentiary, National Security Agency agent and former Waller aide Emilia Harcourt (Jennifer Holland), and new team member Leota Adebayo (Danielle Brooks).

Project Butterfly turned out to be a mission to save Earth from an alien species of parasitic butterfly-like creatures who took over human bodies. The misfit members of the project eventually succeeded in defeating the butterflies in a showdown at a ranch, and even survived the carnage despite some severe injuries.

Cena, Brooks, Holland, Agee, and Stroma are all back for S2, along with Nhut Lee as Judomaster and Eagly, of course. Robert Patrick is also listed in the S2 cast, reprising his role as Chris’ father, Auggie. New cast members include Frank Grillo as Rick Flagg Sr. (Grillo voiced the role in the animated Creature Commandos), now head of A.R.G.U.S. and out to avenge his son’s death; Tim Meadows as A.R.G.U.S. agent Langston Fleury; Sol Rodriguez as Sasha Bordeaux; and Michael Rooker as Red St. Wild, described as Eagly’s “nemesis.”

The events of S1 played out within the old DCEU, while S2 takes place in the new DCU, but Gunn has said that those earlier events are nonetheless considered “canon,” apart from the cameos by DCEU Justice League members. S2 is part of Gunn’s “Gods and Monsters” slate; Cena’s Peacemaker even made a brief cameo in Superman. This time around, Chris will be struggling “to reconcile his past with his newfound sense of purpose while continuing to kick righteous evil-doer butt in his misguided quest for peace at any cost,” per the official synopsis.

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20 years after Katrina, New Orleans remembers

Climate science, culture, Disney Plus, documentaries, Hurricane Katrina, National Geographic, Natural disasters, Science / /

20 years ago, Ivor Van Heerden warned of impending disaster in New Orleans. Are his warnings still going unheeded?

A man is stranded on a rooftop in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Credit: Wickes Helmboldt

Next month marks the 20th anniversary of one of the most devastating natural disasters in US history: Hurricane Katrina, a Category 3 storm that made landfall on August 29, 2005. The storm itself was bad enough, but the resulting surge of water caused havoc for New Orleans in particular when the city’s protective levees failed, flooding much of New Orleans and killing 1,392 people. National Geographic is marking the occasion with a new documentary series: Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time.

The five-part documentary is directed by Oscar nominee Traci A. Curry (Attica) and co-produced by Ryan Coogler’s Proximity Media, in conjunction with Lightbox. The intent was to go beyond the headlines of yesteryear and re-examine the many systemic failures that occurred while also revealing “stories of survival, heroism, and resilience,” Proximity’s executive producers said in a statement. “It’s a vital historical record and a call to witness, remember and recon with the truth of Hurricane Katrina’s legacy.”

Race Against Time doesn’t just rehash the well-worn narrative of the disaster; it centers the voices of the people who were there on the ground: residents, first responders, officials, and so forth. Among those interviewed for the documentary is geologist/marine scientist Ivor Van Heerden, author of The Storm: What Went Wrong and Why During Hurricane Katrina: the Inside Story from One Louisiana Scientist (2006).

Around 1998, Van Heerden set up Louisiana State University’s (LSU) fledgling Hurricane Center with his colleague Marc Levitan, developing the first computer modeling efforts for local storm surges. They had a supercomputer for the modeling and LiDAR data for accurate digital elevation models, and since there was no way to share data among the five major parishes, they created a networked geographical information system GIS) to link them. Part of Van Heerden’s job involved driving all over New Orleans to inspect the levees, and he didn’t like what he saw: levees with big bows, sinking under their own weight, for example, and others with large cracks.

Van Heerden also participated in the 2004 Hurricane Pam mock scenario, designed as a test run for hurricane planning for the 13 parishes of southeastern Louisiana, including New Orleans. It was essentially a worst-case scenario for the conditions of Hurricane Betsy, assuming that the whole city would be flooded. “We really had hoped that the exercise would wake everybody up, but quite honesty we were laughed at a few times during the exercise,” Van Heerden told Ars. He recalled telling one woman from FEMA that they should be thinking about using tents to house evacuees: “She said, ‘Americans don’t live in tents.'”

Stormy weather

Mayor Ray Nagin orders a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans. ABC News Videosource

The tens of thousands of stranded New Orleans residents in the devastating aftermath of Katrina could have used those tents. Van Heerden still vividly recalls his frustration over the catastrophic failures that occurred on so many levels. “We knew the levees had failed, we knew that there had been catastrophic structural failure, but nobody wanted to hear it initially,” he said. He and his team were out in the field in the immediate aftermath, measuring water levels and sampling the water for pathogens and toxic chemicals. Naturally they came across people in need of rescue and were able to radio locations to the Louisiana State University police.

“An FBI agent told me, ‘If you find any bodies, tie them with a piece of string to something so they don’t float away and give us the lats and logs,'” Van Heerden recalled. The memories haunt him still. Some of the bodies were drowned children, which he found particularly devastating since he had a young daughter of his own at the time.

How did it all go so wrong? After 1965’s Hurricane Betsy flooded most of New Orleans, the federal government started a levee building program with the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) in charge. “Right at the beginning, the Corps used very old science in terms of determining how high to make the levees,” said Van Heerden. “They had access to other very good data, but they chose not to use it for some reason. So they made the levees way too low.”

“They also ignored some of their own geotechnical science when designing the levees,” he continued. “Some were built in sand with very shallow footings, so the water just went underneath and blew out the levee. Some were built on piles of earth, again with very shallow footings, and they just fell over. The 17th Street Canal, the whole levee structure actually slid 200 feet.”

There had also been significant alterations to the local landscape since Hurricane Betsy. In the past, the wetlands, especially the cypress tree swamps, provided some protection from storm surges. In 1992, for example, the Category 5 Hurricane Andrew made landfall on Atchafalaya Delta, where healthy wetlands reduced its energy by 50 percent between the coast and Morgan City, per Van Heerden. But other wetlands in the region changed drastically with the dredging of a canal called the Mississippi Gulf Outlet, running from Baton Rouge to the Gulf of Mexico.

“It was an open conduit for surge to get into New Orleans,” said Van Heerden. “The saltwater got into the wetlands and destroyed it, especially the cypress trees. This canal had opened up, in some places, to five times its width, allowing waves to build on the surface. The earthen levees weren’t armored in any way, so they just collapsed. They blew apart. That’s why parts of St. Bernard saw a wave of water 10 feet high.”

Just trying to survive

Stranded New Orleans residents gather in a shelter during Hurricane Katrina. KTVT-TV

Add in drastic cuts to FEMA under then-President George W. Bush—who inherited “a very functional, very well-organized” version of the department from his predecessor, Bill Clinton, per Van Heerden—and the stage was set for just such a disaster like Katrina’s harrowing aftermath. It didn’t help that New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin delayed issuing a mandatory evacuation order until some 24 hours before the storm hit, making it much more difficult for residents to follow those orders in a timely fashion.

There were also delays in conveying the vital information that the levees had failed. “We now know that the USACE had a guy in a Coast Guard helicopter who actually witnessed the London Avenue Canal failure, at 9: 06 AM on Day One,” said Van Heerden. “That guy went to Baton Rouge and he didn’t tell a soul other than the Corps. So the Corps knew very early what was gong on and they did nothing about it. They had a big megaphone and millions of dollars in public relations and kept saying it was an act of God. It took until the third week of September for us to finally get the media to realize that this was a catastrophic failure of the levees.”

The USACE has never officially apologized for what happened, per Van Heerden. “Not one of them lost their job after Katrina,” he said. But LSU fired Van Heerden in 2009, sparking protest from faculty and students. The university gave no reason for his termination, but it was widely speculated at the time that Van Heerden’s outspoken criticism of the USACE was a factor, with LSU fearing it might jeopardize funding. Van Heerden, sued and the university settled. But he hasn’t worked in academia since and now consults with various nonprofit organizations on flooding and storm surge impacts.

The widespread reports of looting and civil war further exacerbated the situation as survivors swarmed the Superdome and the nearby convention center. The city had planned for food and water for 12,000 people housed at Superdome for 48 hours. The failure of the levees swelled that number to 30,000 people stranded for several days, waiting in vain for the promised cavalry to arrive.

Van Heerden acknowledges the looting but insists most of that was simply due to people trying to survive in the absence of any other aid. “How did they get water on the interstate?” said Van Heerden. “They went to a water company, broke in and hot-wired a truck, then went around and gave water to everyone.”

As for the widespread belief outside the city that there was unchecked violence and a brewing civil war, “That doesn’t happen in a catastrophe,” he said. The rumors were driven by reports of shots being fired but, “there are a lot of hunters in Louisiana, and the hunter’s SOS is to fire three shots in rapid succession,” he said. “One way to say ‘I’m here!’ is to fire a gun. But everybody bought into that civil war nonsense.”

“Another ticking time bomb”

LSU Hurricane Center co-founder Ivor Van Heerden working at his desk in 2005. Australian Broadcasting Corporation

The levees have since been rebuilt, and Van Heerden acknowledges that some of the repairs are robust. “They used more concrete, they put in protection pads and deeper footings,” he said. “But they didn’t take into account—and they admitted this a few years ago—subsidence in Louisiana, which is two to two-and-a-half feet every century. And they didn’t take into account global climate change and the associated rising sea levels. Within the next 70 years, sea level in Louisiana is going to rise four feet over millions of square miles. If you’ve got a levee with a [protective] marsh in front of it, before too long that marsh is no longer going to exist, so the water is going to move further and further in-shore.”

Then there’s the fact that hurricanes these days are now bigger in diameter than they were 30 years ago, thanks to the extra heat. “They get up to a Category 5 a lot quicker,” said Van Heerden. “The frequency also seems to be creeping up. It’s now four times as likely you will experience hurricane-force winds.” Van Heerden has run storm surge models assuming a 3-foot rise in sea level. “What we saw was the levees wouldn’t be high enough in New Orleans,” he said. “I hate to say it, but it looks like another ticking time bomb. Science is a quest for the truth. You ignore the science at your folly.”

Assuming there was sufficient public and political will, how should the US be preparing for future tropical storms? “In many areas we need to retreat,” said Van Heerden. “We need to get the houses and buildings out and rebuild the natural vegetation, rebuild the wetlands. On the Gulf Coast, sea level is really going to rise, and we need to rethink our infrastructure. This belief that, ‘Oh, we’re going to put up a big wall’—in the long run it’s not going to work. The devastation from tropical storms is going to spread further inland through very rapid downpours, and that’s something we’re going to have to plan mitigations for. But I just don’t see any movement in that direction.”

Perhaps documentaries like Race Against Time can help turn the tide; Van Heerden certainly hopes so. He also hopes the documentary can correct several public misconceptions of what happened—particularly the tendency to blame the New Orleans residents trying to survive in appalling conditions, rather than the government that failed them.

“I think this is a very good documentary in showing the plight of the people and what they suffered, which was absolutely horrendous,” said Van Heerden. “I hope people watching will realize that yes, this is a piece of our history, but sometimes the past is the key to the present. And ask themselves, ‘Is this a foretaste of what’s to come?'”

Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time premieres on July 27, 2025, on National Geographic. It will be available for streaming starting July 28, 2025, on Disney+ and Hulu.

Photo of Jennifer Ouellette

Jennifer is a senior writer at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban.

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Conspiracy theorists don’t realize they’re on the fringe

cognitive bias, conspiracy theories, culture, false consensus, misinformation, psychology, Science / /

Gordon Pennycook: “It might be one of the biggest false consensus effects that’s been observed.”

Credit: Aurich Lawson / Thinkstock

Belief in conspiracy theories is often attributed to some form of motivated reasoning: People want to believe a conspiracy because it reinforces their worldview, for example, or doing so meets some deep psychological need, like wanting to feel unique. However, it might also be driven by overconfidence in their own cognitive abilities, according to a paper published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. The authors were surprised to discover that not only are conspiracy theorists overconfident, they also don’t realize their beliefs are on the fringe, massively overestimating by as much as a factor of four how much other people agree with them.

“I was expecting the overconfidence finding,” co-author Gordon Pennycook, a psychologist at Cornell University, told Ars. “If you’ve talked to someone who believes conspiracies, it’s self-evident. I did not expect them to be so ready to state that people agree with them. I thought that they would overestimate, but I didn’t think that there’d be such a strong sense that they are in the majority. It might be one of the biggest false consensus effects that’s been observed.”

In 2015, Pennycook made headlines when he co-authored a paper demonstrating how certain people interpret “pseudo-profound bullshit” as deep observations. Pennycook et al. were interested in identifying individual differences between those who are susceptible to pseudo-profound BS and those who are not and thus looked at conspiracy beliefs, their degree of analytical thinking, religious beliefs, and so forth.

They presented several randomly generated statements, containing “profound” buzzwords, that were grammatically correct but made no sense logically, along with a 2014 tweet by Deepak Chopra that met the same criteria. They found that the less skeptical participants were less logical and analytical in their thinking and hence much more likely to consider these nonsensical statements as being deeply profound. That study was a bit controversial, in part for what was perceived to be its condescending tone, along with questions about its methodology. But it did snag Pennycook et al. a 2016 Ig Nobel Prize.

Last year we reported on another Pennycook study, presenting results from experiments in which an AI chatbot engaged in conversations with people who believed at least one conspiracy theory. That study showed that the AI interaction significantly reduced the strength of those beliefs, even two months later. The secret to its success: the chatbot, with its access to vast amounts of information across an enormous range of topics, could precisely tailor its counterarguments to each individual. “The work overturns a lot of how we thought about conspiracies, that they’re the result of various psychological motives and needs,” Pennycook said at the time.

Miscalibrated from reality

Pennycook has been working on this new overconfidence study since 2018, perplexed by observations indicating that people who believe in conspiracies also seem to have a lot of faith in their cognitive abilities—contradicting prior research finding that conspiracists are generally more intuitive. To investigate, he and his co-authors conducted eight separate studies that involved over 4,000 US adults.

The assigned tasks were designed in such a way that participants’ actual performance and how they perceived their performance were unrelated. For example, in one experiment, they were asked to guess the subject of an image that was largely obscured. The subjects were then asked direct questions about their belief (or lack thereof) concerning several key conspiracy claims: the Apollo Moon landings were faked, for example, or that Princess Diana’s death wasn’t an accident. Four of the studies focused on testing how subjects perceived others’ beliefs.

The results showed a marked association between subjects’ tendency to be overconfident and belief in conspiracy theories. And while a majority of participants believed a conspiracy’s claims just 12 percent of the time, believers thought they were in the majority 93 percent of the time. This suggests that overconfidence is a primary driver of belief in conspiracies.

It’s not that believers in conspiracy theories are massively overconfident; there is no data on that, because the studies didn’t set out to quantify the degree of overconfidence, per Pennycook. Rather, “They’re overconfident, and they massively overestimate how much people agree with them,” he said.

Ars spoke with Pennycook to learn more.

Ars Technica: Why did you decide to investigate overconfidence as a contributing factor to believing conspiracies?

Gordon Pennycook: There’s a popular sense that people believe conspiracies because they’re dumb and don’t understand anything, they don’t care about the truth, and they’re motivated by believing things that make them feel good. Then there’s the academic side, where that idea molds into a set of theories about how needs and motivations drive belief in conspiracies. It’s not someone falling down the rabbit hole and getting exposed to misinformation or conspiratorial narratives. They’re strolling down: “I like it over here. This appeals to me and makes me feel good.”

Believing things that no one else agrees with makes you feel unique. Then there’s various things I think that are a little more legitimate: People join communities and there’s this sense of belongingness. How that drives core beliefs is different. Someone may stop believing but hang around in the community because they don’t want to lose their friends. Even with religion, people will go to church when they don’t really believe. So we distinguish beliefs from practice.

What we observed is that they do tend to strongly believe these conspiracies despite the fact that there’s counter evidence or a lot of people disagree. What would lead that to happen? It could be their needs and motivations, but it could also be that there’s something about the way that they think where it just doesn’t occur to them that they could be wrong about it. And that’s where overconfidence comes in.

Ars Technica: What makes this particular trait such a powerful driving force?

Gordon Pennycook: Overconfidence is one of the most important core underlying components, because if you’re overconfident, it stops you from really questioning whether the thing that you’re seeing is right or wrong, and whether you might be wrong about it. You have an almost moral purity of complete confidence that the thing you believe is true. You cannot even imagine what it’s like from somebody else’s perspective. You couldn’t imagine a world in which the things that you think are true could be false. Having overconfidence is that buffer that stops you from learning from other people. You end up not just going down the rabbit hole, you’re doing laps down there.

Overconfidence doesn’t have to be learned, parts of it could be genetic. It also doesn’t have to be maladaptive. It’s maladaptive when it comes to beliefs. But you want people to think that they will be successful when starting new businesses. A lot of them will fail, but you need some people in the population to take risks that they wouldn’t take if they were thinking about it in a more rational way. So it can be optimal at a population level, but maybe not at an individual level.

Ars Technica: Is this overconfidence related to the well-known Dunning-Kruger effect?

Gordon Pennycook: It’s because of Dunning-Kruger that we had to develop a new methodology to measure overconfidence, because the people who are the worst at a task are the worst at knowing that they’re the worst at the task. But that’s because the same things that you use to do the task are the things you use to assess how good you are at the task. So if you were to give someone a math test and they’re bad at math, they’ll appear overconfident. But if you give them a test of assessing humor and they’re good at that, they won’t appear overconfident. That’s about the task, not the person.

So we have tasks where people essentially have to guess, and it’s transparent. There’s no reason to think that you’re good at the task. In fact, people who think they’re better at the task are not better at it, they just think they are. They just have this underlying kind of sense that they can do things, they know things, and that’s the kind of thing that we’re trying to capture. It’s not specific to a domain. There are lots of reasons why you could be overconfident in a particular domain. But this is something that’s an actual trait that you carry into situations. So when you’re scrolling online and come up with these ideas about how the world works that don’t make any sense, it must be everybody else that’s wrong, not you.

Ars Technica: Overestimating how many people agree with them seems to be at odds with conspiracy theorists’ desire to be unique.  

Gordon Pennycook: In general, people who believe conspiracies often have contrary beliefs. We’re working with a population where coherence is not to be expected. They say that they’re in the majority, but it’s never a strong majority. They just don’t think that they’re in a minority when it comes to the belief. Take the case of the Sandy Hook conspiracy, where adherents believe it was a false flag operation. In one sample, 8 percent of people thought that this was true. That 8 percent thought 61 percent of people agreed with them.

So they’re way off. They really, really miscalibrated. But they don’t say 90 percent. It’s 60 percent, enough to be special, but not enough to be on the fringe where they actually are. I could have asked them to rank how smart they are relative to others, or how unique they thought their beliefs were, and they would’ve answered high on that. But those are kind of mushy self-concepts. When you ask a specific question that has an objectively correct answer in terms of the percent of people in the sample that agree with you, it’s not close.

Ars Technica: How does one even begin to combat this? Could last year’s AI study point the way?

Gordon Pennycook: The AI debunking effect works better for people who are less overconfident. In those experiments, very detailed, specific debunks had a much bigger effect than people expected. After eight minutes of conversation, a quarter of the people who believed the thing didn’t believe it anymore, but 75 percent still did. That’s a lot. And some of them, not only did they still believe it, they still believed it to the same degree. So no one’s cracked that. Getting any movement at all in the aggregate was a big win.

Here’s the problem. You can’t have a conversation with somebody who doesn’t want to have the conversation. In those studies, we’re paying people, but they still get out what they put into the conversation. If you don’t really respond or engage, then our AI is not going to give you good responses because it doesn’t know what you’re thinking. And if the person is not willing to think. … This is why overconfidence is such an overarching issue. The only alternative is some sort of propagandistic sit-them-downs with their eyes open and try to de-convert them. But you can’t really convert someone who doesn’t want to be converted. So I’m not sure that there is an answer. I think that’s just the way that humans are.

Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2025. DOI: 10.1177/01461672251338358  (About DOIs).

Photo of Jennifer Ouellette

Jennifer is a senior writer at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban.

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LA’s Museum of Jurassic Technology damaged by fire

culture, Lawrence Weschler, museum of jurassic technology, museums, Science, wunderkammers / /

Not all of the artifacts housed within the MJT’s labyrinthine space are, shall we say, truly historical; Wilson has a sense of humor, a vivid imagination, and a cheeky fondness for the absurd. Lawrence Weschler tracked down the provenance (where relevant) of the exhibits in his 1996 book, Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology. (It’s a delightful read.)

Weschler’s blog provides the most detailed account of what happened when the fire broke out on the night of July 8. Wilson, who lives out back, saw what was happening, grabbed a couple of fire extinguishers, and ran to the gift shop entry hall, where he emptied the canisters into what Wilson describes as “a ferocious column of flame lapping up the far street-facing corner wall.”

That wasn’t enough to douse the fire, but fortunately, Wilson’s daughter and son-in-law soon arrived with a much bigger extinguisher and doused the flames. Firefighters showed up shortly thereafter to stamp out any lingering embers and told Wilson, “Just one more minute and you’d likely have lost the whole building.” Wilson described the smoke damage “as if a thin creamy brown liquid had been evenly poured over all the surfaces—the walls, the vitrines, the ceiling, the carpets, and eyepieces, everything.”

Staff and volunteers have been working to repair the damage ever since, with smoke damage repairs being particularly labor-intensive. Weschler closed his blog post with a call for donations to the MJT’s general fund to help the cash-strapped museum weather this particular storm, praising the MJT as “one of the most truly sublime institutions in the country.”

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X-Men at 25 is more relevant than ever

20th Century Studios, Bryan Singer, culture, film anniversaries, X-Men / /

“Mankind has always feared what it doesn’t understand.” Plus: our seven favorite scenes.

Credit: 20th Century Studios

Twenty-five years ago, X-Men became a summer blockbuster and effectively re-energized a then-flagging market for superhero movies, which have dominated the industry (for better and worse) ever since. It’s still a vastly entertaining film, with great characters, a zippy pace, and plenty of action. And its broader themes still strongly resonate with viewers today.

(Many spoilers below.)

In the mid-1990s, the popularity of the animated X-Men TV series caught the attention of 20th Century Fox (now 20th Century Studios), which purchased the rights from a cash-strapped Marvel Comics and hired Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects) to direct. At the time, the project was perceived by some as a bit risky, given waning Hollywood interest in the genre after 1997’s disastrously campy Batman and Robin. But the gamble paid off: X-Men was a major hit, spawning its own franchise and ultimately the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The film’s central conflict rests on two former friends. Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and Magneto (Ian McKellan), aka Erik Lehnsherr, are fellow mutants who find themselves at odds over how best to respond to the growing anti-mutant bigotry among humans. Charles, who runs a private school for mutant children, sees the good in humans and believes they can peacefully coexist; Magneto believes mutants are the future and humans should go extinct—preferably with his help. He has organized the Brotherhood of Mutants to further that aim: Mystique (Rebecca Romijn), Sabretooth (Tyler Mane), and Toad (Ray Park).

Charles in turn has his X-Men: Storm (Halle Berry), Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), and Cyclops (James Marsden), eventually adding a reluctant Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) to their ranks. Teenage mutant Rogue (Anna Paquin) joins the school and becomes a target for Magneto, since her mutation enables her to absorb other people’s life force and memories—and powers, in the case of the mutants. Together they must foil Magneto’s plan to forcibly mutate humans via radiation (even if it kills them) and convince a hostile US government that most mutants do not pose a threat.

Credit: 20th Century Studios

There’s much to love about this film, including plenty of memorable standout scenes; seven of our favorites are featured below. It’s got stellar casting, snappy dialogue, and breaks up the action with quieter character moments that advance the story without slowing the pace. X-Men also takes pains to establish key relationships: Charles and Magneto, Rogue and Wolverine, and the romantic triangle of Jean, Cyclops, and Wolverine. We care about these characters: their isolation, their pain at being feared and rejected because they’re different, and the different ways they process those feelings.

Despite humanity’s poor treatment of them, our mutant heroes are still willing to risk their lives to save an ungrateful humanity. That’s what makes them heroes, even if it might be easier to believe that Magneto and the Brotherhood’s open hostility to humans is justified. (“Mankind has always feared what it doesn’t understand.”) X-Men is hardly subtle about delivering its core message. The film pits bigotry and fear towards a targeted “other” vs. striving for acceptance and peaceful coexistence, unapologetically championing the latter. If any of that sounds suspiciously “woke”—well, as with Superman, it’s not the film that’s changed.

Without further ado, here are our seven favorite scenes in X-Men:

Young Eric at Auschwitz

Credit: 20th Century Studios

X-Men wastes no time setting up its primary theme. The very first scene takes place in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1944, where a young Erik Lehnsherr and his parents are being herded into a concentration camp by soldiers in the rain. Erik is separated from his parents, and the sight of his wailing mother being dragged away causes a distressed Erik to try to rejoin them. He’s restrained by soldiers, and his intensifying emotions unleash his mutant ability. He can manipulate magnetic fields, bending the metal gates keeping him from his parents into an “X” before the soldiers knock him unconscious.

Erik becomes Magneto, and those early experiences in the concentration camp indelibly shaped his character and world view, fueling his nefarious plans for mutants to displace humans as the dominant species on Earth. Lest we miss the point, the very next scene is Charles Xavier and Magneto listening to anti-mutant members of Congress calling for a Mutant Registration Act. Magneto insists that he knows firsthand where all this will inevitably lead; Charles counters that humans have changed for the better, perfectly encapsulating how these former friends turn into reluctant adversaries.

Wolverine’s cage fight

dark haired man with sideburns and claws coming out of his hands holds one against the throat of an attacked and points the other at a second attacker

Credit: 20th Century Studios

We first meet Wolverine at a dive bar in a remote wintry outpost, where a runaway Rogue also finds herself after getting a lift from a truck driver. He’s earning a few extra bucks by taking on all-comers in a series of no-holds-barred cage matches—and easily emerging victorious each time. Rogue arrives just in time to see the latest challenger stride into the cage with all the unearned confidence of a man who has been drinking heavily for hours. “Whatever you do don’t hit him in the balls,” the ref warns. Sure, the match is anything goes, “but he’ll take it personal.”

And Wolverine does, knocking the man out cold. Alas, the defeated opponent is also a sore loser, showing up after closing to confront Wolverine. “No man takes a beating like that and walks away,” he says, adding, “I know what you are.” He pulls a knife and gets Wolverine’s adamantium claws at his throat in response. Now that’s how you introduce a central character.

Mystique kidnaps a senator

Senator Robert Kelly (Bruce Davison) is the main political antagonist in X-Men, hell-bent on passing that draconian mutant registration bill. He does not see mutants as people deserving of basic civil rights, but as “weapons in our schools…. If it were up to me I’d lock them all away.” (Naturally he’s also an isolationist, concerned only with the “mutant problem” in America.)

Little does he know that he’s not actually talking to his loyal assistant, but to Mystique in disguise—with Toad piloting the helicopter he’s just boarded. He’s shocked when she transforms into her beautiful blue-skinned self: “You know people like you are the reason I was afraid to go to school as a child?” Then she kicks him unconscious and she and Toad transport him to Magneto’s secret hideout. Honestly, Kelly had it coming. And things only get worse for him from here.

Wolverine accidentally stabs Rogue

Wolverine and Rogue’s relationship is the beating heart of X-Men. He feels protective of her, as an older brother or an uncle might, but soon learns that she’s not as defenseless as she seems. Hearing a distressed Wolverine talking in his sleep during a nightmare, Rogue goes to his bed to wake him—and he skewers her with his claws before he realizes what he’s doing.

As he calls for help, Rogue puts her ungloved hand to his face, “borrowing” his mutant ability to heal herself. But it sends Wolverine into a seizure, just like the first boy who kissed her back in her hometown. It’s a compelling scene that not only tells us more about Rogue’s extreme mutant gift, but also strengthens her bond with Wolverine; she shared his power, however briefly, and admits at one point she can still feel him inside her head. Plus it serves as a handy catalyst for the next phase of Magneto’s master plan.

Charles vs. Magneto at the train station

Storm and Cyclops catch up with a runaway Rogue at the local train station, only to be attacked by Sabretooth and Toad. They are there to retrieve Rogue for Magneto (who has already taken Wolverine out of the equation on the train). Coming out of the station with Magneto, they are met with a whole lot of law enforcement. Magneto makes short shrift of them—”You homo sapiens and your guns”—turning the firearms onto the assembled officers.

Charles attempts to intervene by telepathically communicating through Toad and Sabretooth, but Magneto fires just one gun and slows down the bullet as it starts to drive into an officer’s forehead. Charles realizes he has lost this standoff and lets Magneto escape, with the latter issuing a parting shot: “Still unwilling to make sacrifices. That’s what makes you weak.” We know, of course, that the moment demonstrates Charles’ admirable strength of character and the goal toward which all true heroes should aspire.

Senator Kelly dissolves

Senator Kelly (Bruce Davison) is turned into a mutant by Magneto. 20th Century Studios

Poor Senator Kelly. After Magneto blasts him with radiation to turn him into a mutant, he manages to escape, turning up at a local beach stark naked with translucent skin—just like the jelly fish a little boy has been tormenting seconds before. (Stan Lee makes a cameo as one of the shocked beachgoers.) Kelly can’t go to a hospital, so he finds his way to Charles’ academy to get help. But there’s nothing Charles can do; the senator’s body is rejecting the radiation-induced mutation at an accelerating rate.

When Storm comes in to check on him, he’s started leaking water all over the table, and begs her not to leave him alone. Kelly asks if she hates normal people, and when Storm admits that sometimes she does, he asks why. “I suppose I’m afraid of them,” she says. “I think you’ve got one less person to be afraid of,” Kelly responds, right before his body rapidly bloats and then dissolves into a watery slurry. It’s a great scene not just for his revelatory moment with Storm—seeing a mutant, finally, as a person rather than a weapon—but also for the special effects achievement at a time when the technology for rendering fluids like water was still very much in its infancy.

Wolverine saves Rogue

The big climactic battle is waged inside the Statue of Liberty, as the X-Men face off against the Brotherhood while Magneto straps Rogue into his radiation machine housed inside the torch (of course). The objective: targeting the World Summit leaders assembled on nearby Ellis Island and turning them into mutants. “Your sacrifice will mean our survival,” Magneto assures her—although Wolverine rightly points out that if he were truly committed to the cause, he’d have sacrificed himself instead of temporarily transferring his power to Rogue.

Eventually the X-Men prevail, and Wolverine destroys the machine, cutting Rogue free. But it might be too late: when he puts his hand to her skin, nothing happens. A grief-stricken Wolverine cradles her body in his arms with his face against hers—only for her power to suddenly kick in. As Rogue revives by draining his healing ability, every injury Wolverine sustained in the preceding battle becomes visible and he collapses, sacrificing himself to save her.

Okay, he eventually recovers, too, because we need our happy ending. But it’s a powerfully intimate moment that builds on everything that came before—and helps fuel what comes after.

Photo of Jennifer Ouellette

Jennifer is a senior writer at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban.

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After 5 years in development, the Assassin’s Creed TV series is happening

assassin's creed, culture, gaming, netflix, ubisoft / /

The long-running video game series Assassin’s Creed will get a live-action TV series adaptation. Variety and The Hollywood Reporter report that Netflix has greenlit the series after years of development hell; the intention to produce the series was announced in 2020.

The series had been through multiple creative teams even before it was greenlit, but Netflix settled on two co-showrunners. Roberto Patino, a writer on FX’s Sons of Anarchy and HBO’s Westworld, will join David Wiener, who led Paramount+’s Halo TV series as well as Fear the Walking Dead.

The two released a joint statement with the news that the show is moving forward:

We’ve been fans of Assassin’s Creed since its release in 2007. Every day we work on this show, we come away excited and humbled by the possibilities that Assassin’s Creed opens to us. Beneath the scope, the spectacle, the parkour and the thrills is a baseline for the most essential kind of human story—about people searching for purpose, struggling with questions of identity and destiny and faith. It is about power and violence and sex and greed and vengeance. But more than anything, this is a show about the value of human connection, across cultures, across time. And it’s about what we stand to lose as a species, when those connections break. We’ve got an amazing team behind us with the folks at Ubisoft and our champions at Netflix, and we’re committed to creating something undeniable for fans all over the planet.

Not many details are known about the series, beyond the obvious: like the games, it will follow a shadow war between the rival Templars and Assassins factions fought across centuries and cultures, with characters diving into genetic memory to experience the lives of ancestors who played pivotal roles in the war. There are no public details about characters or casting.

After 5 years in development, the Assassin’s Creed TV series is happening Read More »

jared-leto-is-the-ultimate-soldier-in-new-tron:-ares-trailer

Jared Leto is the ultimate soldier in new TRON: Ares trailer

culture, Disney, Trailers, Tron: Ares / /

San Diego Comic-Con is coming up next week, and Disney is getting ready for its big presentation by releasing a new trailer for TRON: Ares, directed by Joachim Rønning.

(Spoilers for TRON: Legacy below.)

As previously reported, TRON: Legacy ended with Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund), son of Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) from the original film, preventing the digital world from bleeding into the real world, as planned by the Grid’s malevolent ruling program, Clu. He brought with him Quorra (Olivia Wilde), a naturally occurring isomorphic algorithm targeted for extinction by Clu.

Disney greenlit a third film in the franchise in October 2010, intended to pick up where Legacy left off and follow the adventures of Sam and Quorra as Sam took full control of his father’s company, ENCOM. However, by 2015, the studio had canceled the project, reportedly due to the dismal box office performance of Tomorrowland. By 2020, the project had been revived and reimagined as a standalone reboot rather than a Legacy sequel, although the main AI, Ares, appeared in earlier (pre-reboot) versions of the script. One pandemic and a couple of Hollywood strikes later, the finished film is finally set to hit theaters this fall.

The official premise is succinct: “TRON: Ares follows a highly sophisticated Program, Ares, who is sent from the digital world into the real world on a dangerous mission, marking humankind’s first encounter with A.I. beings.” Jared Leto stars as Ares, with Evan Peters and Greta Lee playing Julian Dillinger and Eve Kim, respectively. The cast also includes Jodie Turner-Smith, Cameron Monaghan, Sarah Desjardins, Hasan Minhaj, Arturo Castro, and Gillian Anderson. Bridges is returning as Kevin Flynn. Nine Inch Nails composed the soundtrack.

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fanfic-study-challenges-leading-cultural-evolution-theory

Fanfic study challenges leading cultural evolution theory

balance theory, cultural evolution, culture, digital humanities, fan fiction, psychology, Science, social sciences / /

Fanfic community craves familiarity much more than novelty—but reports greater enjoyment from novelty.

Credit: Aurich Lawson | Marvel

It’s widely accepted conventional wisdom that when it comes to creative works—TV shows, films, music, books—consumers crave an optimal balance between novelty and familiarity. What we choose to consume and share with others, in turn, drives cultural evolution.

But what if that conventional wisdom is wrong? An analysis based on data from a massive online fan fiction (fanfic) archive contradicts this so-called “balance theory,” according to a paper published in the journal Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. The fanfic community seems to overwhelmingly prefer more of the same, consistently choosing familiarity over novelty; however, they reported greater overall enjoyment when they took a chance and read something more novel. In short: “Sameness entices, but novelty enchants.”

Strictly speaking, authors have always copied characters and plots from other works (cf. many of William Shakespeare’s plays), although the advent of copyright law complicated matters. Modern fan fiction as we currently think of it arguably emerged with the 1967 publication of the first Star Trek fanzine (Spockanalia), which included spinoff fiction based on the series. Star Trek also spawned the subgenre of slash fiction, when writers began creating stories featuring Kirk and Spock (Kirk/Spock, or K/S) in a romantic (often sexual) relationship.

The advent of the World Wide Web brought fan fiction to the masses, starting with Usenet newsgroups and mailing lists and eventually the development of massive online archives where creators could upload their work to be read and commented upon by readers. The subculture has since exploded; there’s fanfic based on everything from Sherlock Holmes to The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Game of Thrones, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and Harry Potter. You name it, there’s probably fanfic about it.

There are also many subgenres within fanfic beyond slash, some of them rather weird, like a magical pregnancy (Mpreg) story in which Sherlock Holmes and Watson fall so much in love with each other that one of them becomes magically pregnant. (One suspects Sherlock would not handle morning sickness very well.) Sometimes fanfic even breaks into the cultural mainstream: E.L. James’ bestselling Fifty Shades of Grey started out as fan fiction set in the world of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series.

So fanfic is a genuine cultural phenomenon—hence its fascination for Simon DeDeo, a complexity scientist at Carnegie Mellon University and the Santa Fe Institute who studies cultural evolution and the emergence of social hierarchies. (I reported on DeDeo’s work analyzing the archives of London’s Old Bailey in 2014.) While opinion remains split—even among the authors of the original works—as to whether fanfic is a welcome homage to the original works that just might help drive book sales or whether it constitutes a form of copyright infringement, DeDeo enthusiastically embraces the format.

“It’s the dark matter of creativity,” DeDeo told Ars. “I love that it exists. It’s a very non-elitist form. There’s no New York Times bestseller list. It would be hard to name the most famous fan fiction writers. The world building has been done. The characters exist. The plot elements have already been put together. So the bar to entry is lower. Maybe sometime in the 19th century we get a notion of genius and the individual creator, but that’s not really what storytelling has been about for the majority of human history. In that one sense, fan fiction is closer to what we were doing around the campfire.”

spock lying down in sick bay while kirk holds his hand tenderly at his bedside

Star Trek arguably spawned contemporary fan fiction—including stories imagining Kirk and Spock as romantic partners. Credit: Paramount Pictures

That’s a boon for fanfic writers, most of whom have non-creative day jobs; fanfic provides them with a creative outlet. Every year, when DeDeo asks students in his classes whether they read and/or write fanfic, a significant percentage always raise their hands. (He once asked a woman about why she wrote slash. Her response: “Because no one was writing porn that I wanted to read.”) In fact, that’s how this current study came about. Co-author Elise Jing is one of DeDeo’s former students with a background in both science and the humanities—and she’s also a fanfic connoisseur.

Give them more of the same

Jing thought (and DeDeo concurred) that the fanfic subculture provided an excellent laboratory for studying cultural evolution. “It’s tough to get students to read a book. They write fan fiction voluntarily. This is stuff they care about writing and care about reading. Nobody gets prestige or power in the larger society from writing fan fiction,” said DeDeo. “This is not a top-down model where Hollywood is producing something and then the fans are consuming it. The fans are producing and consuming so it’s a truly self-contained culture that’s constantly evolving. It’s a pure product consumption cycle. People read it, they bookmark it, they write comments on it, and all that gives us insight into how it’s being received. If you’re a psychologist, you couldn’t pay to get this kind of data.”

Fanfic is a tightly controlled ecosystem, so it lacks many of the confounding factors that make it so difficult to study mainstream cultural works. Also, the fan fiction community is enormous, so the potential datasets are huge. For this study, the authors relied on data from the online Archive of Our Own (AO3), which boasts nearly 9 million users covering more than 70,000 different fandoms and some 15 million individual works. (Sadly, the site has since shut down access to its data over concerns of that data being used to train AI.)

According to DeDeo, the idea was to examine the question of cultural evolution on a population level, rather than on the individual level: “How do these individual things agglomerate to produce the culture? “

Strong positive correlation is found between the response variables except for the Kudos-to-hits ratio. Topic novelty is weakly positively correlated with Kudos-to-hits ratio, but negatively correlated with the other response variables.

Strong positive correlation is found between the response variables except for the Kudos-to-hits ratio. Topic novelty is weakly positively correlated with Kudos-to-hits ratio but negatively correlated with the other response variables. Credit: E. Jing et al., 2025

The results were striking. AO3 members overwhelmingly preferred familiarity in their fan fiction, i.e., more of the same. One notable exception was a short story that was both hugely popular and highly novel. Simply titled “I Am Groot,” the story featured the character from Guardians of the Galaxy. The text is just “I am Groot” repeated 40,000 times—a stroke of genius in that this is entirely consistent with the canonical MCU character, whose entire dialogue consists of those words, with meaning conveyed by shifts of tone and context. But such exceptions proved to be very rare.

“We were so stunned that balance theory wasn’t working,” said DeDeo, who credits Jing with the realization that they were dealing with two distinct pieces of the puzzle: how much is being consumed, and how much people like what they consume, i.e., enjoyment. Their analysis revealed, first, that people really don’t want an optimized mix of familiar and new; they want the same thing over and over again, even within the fanfic community. But when people do make the effort to try something new, they tend to enjoy it more than just consuming more of the same.

In short, “We are anti-balance theory,” said DeDeo. “In biology, for example, you make a small variation in the species and you get micro-evolution. In culture, a minor variation is just less likely to be consumed. So it really is a mystery how we evolve at all culturally; it’s not happening by gradual movement. We can see that there’s novelty. We can see that when people encounter novelty, they enjoy it. But we can’t quite make sense of how these two competing effects work out.”

“This is the great paradox,” said DeDeo. “Culture has to be stable. Without long-term stability, there’s no coherent body of work that can even constitute of culture if every year fan fiction totally changes. That inherent cultural conservatism is in some sense a precondition for culture to exist at all.” Yet culture does evolve, even within the fanfic community.

One possible alternative is some kind of punctuated equilibrium model for cultural evolution, in which things remain stable but undergo occasional leaps forward. “One story about how culture evolves is that eventually, the stuff that’s more enjoyable than what people keep re-consuming somehow becomes accessible to the majority of the community,” said DeDeo. “Novelty might act as a gravitational pull on the center and [over time] some new material gets incorporated into the culture.” He draws an analogy to established tech companies like IBM versus startups, most of which die out; but those few that succeed often push the culture substantially forward.

Perhaps there are two distinct groups of people: those who actively seek out new things and those who routinely click on familiar subject matter because even though their enjoyment might be less, it’s not worth overcoming their inertia to try out something new. Perhaps it is those who seek novelty that sow the seeds of eventual shifts in trends.

“Is it that we’re tired? Is it that we’re lazy? Is this a conflict within a human or within a culture?” said DeDeo. “We don’t know because we only get the raw numbers. If we could track an individual reader to see how they moved between these two spaces, that would be really interesting.”

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 2025. DOI: 10.1057/s41599-025-05166-3  (About DOIs).

Photo of Jennifer Ouellette

Jennifer is a senior writer at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban.

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