Sure, other things happened last week—ABC decided to keep making Roseanne but without Roseanne Barr; some nerds came up with a plan to remake Star Wars: The Last Jedi; that guy from Saturday Night Live got engaged to Ariana Grande—but, honestly, there’s only been one story that people were really talking about, and it’s not a light one. From jackets to missing girls (told you it wasn’t light) and back again, via failures of democracy and terrible press briefings, here’s what has been happening on the internet over the last seven days.

Reactions to Trump's Border Policy Get Much Worse

What Happened: The Trump administration created a problem, then claimed it couldn’t fix it until the bad PR got out of hand.

What Really Happened: It can't have escaped your notice—not least of all because we mentioned it last week that the United States has been separating parents and children at the southern border recently, as part of a new policy from the Trump administration. Last week, things came to a head.

The week started with the revelation that it was a familiar figure who claimed responsibility for the policy—

But, according to some inside the administration, it wasn’t actually a policy at all. Obviously. (This is a lie, by the way.)

That’s from a press briefing that, apparently, even Sarah Huckabee Sanders didn’t want to handle.

Instead, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen took charge, and let’s just say that Nielsen's performance was generally viewed as being pretty awkward, to be polite.

Here’s the audio referred to in the above tweet, which understandably caused a stir when released.

As protest against the policy grew, an unusual thing happened: All the living former First Ladies came out to publicly condemn it.

…We’ll get to what the current First Lady was up to soon enough. In the face of this response, however, President Trump turned his back on his own arguments and attempted to roll back the worst of the policy … on the face of it, at least.

It didn’t actually deal with the problem, though.

As of this writing, it seems as though families may no longer be referred for prosecution even as military bases are being prepped to hold 20,000 migrants, the Department of Justice has officially asked to modify the Flores settlement limiting child incarceration to 20 days and officials are now claiming that 500 families have been reunited since May. What is actually happening? No one seems to know. Clearly, only Congress could fix things now. But keep reading to find out if they do or not.

The Takeaway: Really, this says it all.

[Sad Trombone Noise]

What Happened: It turns out that some people still get upset when you make fun of kids being separated from their parents at the border.

What Really Happened: Hey, remember former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski? Last week he went on TV and this happened.

Immediately, many people noticed, because of course they did. How can you mock the story of a girl with Down syndrome being forcibly separated from her mother and not provoke widespread outrage? It was so bad that even conservatives turned on him.

Some wondered if this was a career-ending mistake (or, at least, hoped that it would be).

As it turned out, at least one organization cut ties with him as a result of his comments. Still, Lewandowski had a plan to get out of it all: Refuse to apologize and pretend it hadn’t actually happened the way everyone happened to see it because it was on live television.

On the, uh, "plus side"…? Lewandowski has now been even more embraced by the far right as a result of his comments, so there's that.

The Takeaway: Of course, why should we be surprised about any of this?

Just Sitting Here on Capitol Hill

What Happened: For many, the one hope as the news from the border continued to spread was that Congress could somehow magically sort things out. It wasn’t a good week for people with that hope.

What Really Happened: As the heat continued to come about the Trump administration’s immigration policies, U-turn or no—really, who can actually tell at this point?—President Trump continued to try and shift blame ahead of a Congressional vote on potential immigration reform.

The whole, "Listen, I can’t believe those Democrats are totally responsible for everything" excuse turned out to be a plan of attack for other Republicans, as well.

The Democrats weren’t buying it.

And neither were experts.

For what it’s worth, the media was equally unconvinced, opting to go with the more real version of events: Separating parents and children is a Trump administration policy, and Republicans control all branches of government right now so it’s actually pretty hard for the Democrats to really be that obstructionist on anything. You might be wondering: How did the vote go, after that ramp-up?

Damn those Democra—wait, there’s more:

As a vote on the so-called "compromise" bill got delayed until the following week, the president took to Twitter to once again.

Ah, yes. "Wasting time on immigration." That sounds about right, right now.

The Takeaway: If only there was some way to link this particular thread of the immigration story up with an earlier thread…

Oh, right. That’ll do it.

Who Where Why

What Happened: With so little transparency into what’s going on, it’s no surprise that there’s one question hanging over events as they slowly unfold. It’s a very simple question with disturbing implications.

What Really Happened: As if everything about the current border crisis wasn’t disturbing enough, the little access the media has had to the detention centers children are being kept in—US Border Patrol doesn’t want to call them cages, we found out this week, even though they are cages—has been … lacking something.

Remember the Kirstjen Nielsen briefing referenced earlier? It turns out, someone asked her about this very question, and the answer wasn’t particularly reassuring.

At some point this week, it looked as if an answer might be forthcoming.

Unfortunately, this turned out to be, at best, an optimistic estimate.

The Takeaway: As media interest grows, observers are no closer, it seems, to actually seeing where the girls are being held, even as allegations of abuse in detention centers start to surface. Still, does everyone agree that this is bad? Oh, maybe not.

When Jackets Turn Into Subtweets

What Happened: You know what would make matters worse? A passive aggressive photo opportunity in the middle of this whole thing. But passive aggressive towards who?

What Really Happened: As all of this was unfolding, the Melania Trump jetted off to Texas for a visit to the border to see what was happening for herself. However, many people were more concerned by what the First Lady chose to wear while boarding the plane than the trip itself.

To be precise, she didn’t wear the jacket in Texas; just boarding the plane in DC. Oh, and then getting off the plane on the return flight, after everyone had gotten upset about the whole thing. (And, oh boy, did people get upset about this.)

But it was all part of a plan, apparently. Well, according to everyone’s favorite 4-D chess player, at least.

That was certainly some plan; presumably the entire point was to make Melania seem like an amazingly uncaring and unlikable person?

And certainly the First Lady’s team agreed that’s what it was…

So, clearly, the thing she doesn’t care about is … her principles? No, wait. Help us out here.

The Takeaway: Yes, everything is going really well here, thanks for asking.

Unless a moviegoing-miracle occurs, you have just a few days left to become FilmStruck: On November 29, the movie-streaming service—which hosts everything from hard-to-find foreign films to vintage Warner Bros. musicals—will be shut down by Warner Media overlords AT&T. Though the provider’s subscriber base reportedly consisted of about 100,000 cinephiles, FilmStruck’s demise prompted an online petition that’s so far accrued more than 50,000 signatures, and earned tweets of support (as well as a few passionate letters from such filmmakers as Guillermo del Toro and Barbra Streisand. Some FilmStruck lovers are no doubt concerned about the startling number of classic films missing from streaming services; others probably want to ensure they had 7-day-a-week access to 8 ½. But because 2018 is the year in which literally nothing good has happened, their pleas are likely to be ignored.

For those hoping to cram one last movie-blitz before the site departs, here are 10 invaluable classics that illustrate FilmStruck’s breadth, depth, and sheer art-house-in-your-house joy.

Alice in the Cities (1974)

The first entry in writer-director Wim Wenders’ famed mid-’70s “Road Movie” trilogy casts Rüdiger Vogler as an aimless, irritable writer who’s tasked with accompanying a rebellious young teenager (played by Yella Rottländer) from America to Germany. An unassuming, happily chatty travelogue that’s at once unsparingly funny and deeply empathetic.

The Candidate (1972)

Robert Redford, at his peak early-’70s power, stars as a reluctant U.S. Senate candidate who’s plunged into the national spotlight—and finds that all he can do is stare back blankly. A cynical and absorbing American-politics tale, one as relevant now as it was more than 45 years ago.

Cat People (1942)

Not to be confused with the 1982 remake, this genuinely creepy big-city horror tale finds Simone Simon as a young woman afflicted with a long-running feline curse. Worth it alone for the film’s infamous pool scene, a remarkable feat of shadows and sound effects.

Chungking Express (1994)

Wong Kar-Wai’s mid-’90s hit—a propulsive tale of love, heartache and “California Dreamin’” in Hong Kong—has become inexplicably elusive in recent years: The Criterion Collection DVD is now a high-priced rarity, and FilmStruck appears to be the only streaming service hosting this gorgeous and essential romantic drama.

Fear of a Black Hat (1993)

A low-budget time-capsule mockumentary from writer-director Rusty Cundieff, Fear spoofs early-’90s hip-hop culture via the antics of N.W.H., a fictitious bad-boy rap outfit trying to be taken seriously. Fear’s jabs come off as more affectionate than acidic, and some jokes have aged better than others. But try watching it and not having [“My Peanuts”[(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sH9lYCMf1w) in your head for a days afterward.

Key Largo (1948)

Noir has been a staple of FilmStruck’s line-up, in no small part because of its access to the Warner Bros. archives. And rainy-day viewing doesn’t get much better than John Huston’s classic slow-burning tale of a virtuous World War II vet (Humphrey Bogart) who stares down a cackling kingpin (Edward G. Robinson) while stranded at a hurricane-hampered hotel. Contains perhaps the greatest mid-shave rants ever filmed.

King Kong (1933)

Granted, pretty much everyone has seen this towering monster-movie classic, but the FilmStruck edition features the informative (and hard-to-find) commentary track by historian Ronald Haver–widely considered the first of its kind.

Mikey and Nicky (1976)

Director Elaine May’s filmography includes one irrefutably perfect film (The Heartbreak Kid), one unfairly beat-up semi-diversion (Ishtar), and one recently reclaimed lost ‘70s pearl: Mikey and Nicky, a tale of two scheming, skeevy L.A. mob-mooks (played by Peter Falk and John Cassavetes) who get in way over their heads … and get deeper in conversation along the way.

The Passage (2018)

This genial, rollicking 22-minute short—which premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival—stars Philip Burgers as a mute, an on-the-run mystery man who stumbles into one unexpected set-up after the next. Produced by SuperDeluxe, the comedy outlet whose own existence was cut down by Warner Media this fall, The Passage is the sort of sweet-natured, experimental tale that fits right in among FilmStruck’s offerings.

Salesman (1969)

It’s not the most riveting documentary by the legendary Maysles Brothers (that would be Gimme Shelter, also on FilmStruck). Nor is it the most immediately quotable (that honor goes to Grey Gardens, which you can watch on—wait for it!—FilmStruck). But Salesman, which follows a crew of Boston-area bible-stumpers on their door-to-door sales calls, is an unforgettable (and sometimes uncomfortable) depiction of bright-eyed, go-get-’em mid-20th-century capitalism—and the quiet strain it imposes on its disciples.

When J.J. Abrams was wrapping up Star Wars: The Force Awakens, he showed a rough cut to Ava DuVernay, the Selma director he'd recently befriended. It needed something, she told him. Daisy Ridley’s Rey needed to have one more powerful moment, one more show of strength in her final battle with Kylo Ren. Abrams took her advice, shot some new footage, and added a close-up of Rey’s face as she strikes a massive lightsaber blow. If you watch it now, it's very clear which one it is. Just ask any 15-year-old female Star Wars fan—even now, she can probably recall it from memory. When you don't expect to see yourself as the hero, you don't easily forget what it looks like.

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Wonder Woman has more than 20 hero moments like this. It even ends on one. They’re not all close-ups like the one Abrams added to Force Awakens, but they do show a hero in action. Filmed in slow motion, almost always in battle, they feature Diana Prince (Gal Gadot), as well as other women. It's trite to say, but I'll say it anyway: This is revolutionary.

The hero shot is a staple of superhero movies, and action movies in general. If you had to think of one right now, though, your mind would probably light on Thor hoisting a hammer or Superman floating above Metropolis with his cape billowing in the wind, not of a woman saving the world. Katniss Everdeen got some of them in the Hunger Games films, the female mutants have had their share in the X-Men movies, Joss Whedon gave a couple to Black Widow and Scarlet Witch in the Avengers flicks—but rarely, if ever, has one film been dedicated to them in the way Patty Jenkins' Wonder Woman is. Viewers not thinking to look for it might not even notice it (looking at you, gents), but the impact of those shots is hard to ignore.

As more and more women saw Jenkins' movie this weekend, their reactions tended to fall into two categories. First, they liked it. Second, they felt empowered by it. Sure, many were just excited that after 75+ years there was finally a movie dedicated to their favorite hero, but the sentiments went deeper than “yay movie!” MakeLoveNotPorn founder Cindy Gallop tweeted a note to Silicon Valley VCs pointing out that Gadot shot Wonder Woman while pregnant, adding “Don't ever doubt a pregnant female founder [is] not up to it.” Actresses like Lupita Nyong'o and Jessica Chastain took to social media to express their excitement over the film. Some praised Antiope’s (Robin Wright) battle face; others joked about the ability to ask guys in the theater whether they just came because their girlfriends brought them, not because they like comic book movies. DuVernay herself retweeted this:

Much gets said (and often by us) about the lack of female heroes and heroes who are people of color, but Hollywood is only just now starting to see the results of efforts to diversify. This weekend, Wonder Woman gave audiences something they'd been waiting for for a long time. And, in return, they gave the filmmakers an expectation-shattering $103 million opening weekend in the US, and proof that women could rule the box office and save Warner Bros. and the DC Universe in the process. In Wonder Woman, Diana’s mother Hipplyta (Connie Nielsen) tells her daughter that the world of men does not "deserve" her. That may be true for the Allied powers in World War I, but for everyone who has been championing a proper female-led superhero movie since the dawn of time, they definitely do.

Back to all those hero shots, though. If this had been a Batman movie, their sheer number might have been too much. But for the first female-led, female-directed superhero movie, showing off is necessary. It's Dottie Hinson doing the splits to catch a pop foul in A League of Their Own—a little performative, sure, but also a way of saying "yeah, I did that." When Wonder Woman has her first big hero moment crossing No Man's Land (see what they did there?) to save a village, it's tear-jerking; when she gets her umpteenth slow-mo shot in the finale, it's just awesome. Female superheroes haven’t gotten a lot of big heroic movie moments over the years, so to make up for it Wonder Woman got all of them.

Now that Wonder Woman is a massive success, that kind of badassery just got carte blanche. It means Diana Prince can now thank Bruce Wayne for that sweet note he sent her at the beginning of her movie and tell him, “Thanks. I’ll be leading the Justice League now.” It means Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel—already slated to be the most powerful superhero in the Marvel Cinematic Universe—gets to have a movie that could leave the Iron Mans and Captain Americas in the dust. It means that Whedon’s Batgirl movie has a real shot, and if Marvel was ever wavering on whether or not to give Black Widow a standalone film, now might be the time to green-light it. And it means Rian Johnson should take a good, long look at his latest cut of Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Because this time around, Rey gets all the hero shots she deserves.

Thirty-three years. It's been thirty-three years since a female superhero has anchored her own movie—1984's Supergirl being the most recent example¹. (Catwoman and Elektra? Both antiheroes. Don't @ me.) And as comic books' first female hero, Wonder Woman was long overdue for her full-length feature adaptation, which dominated theaters this weekend. But despite Diana of Themyscira's legacy of empowerment and independence, it wasn't either of those things that gave us she of the golden lasso and the invisible jet—it was a crush gone wild. In fact, her entire comic-book career has been a frustrating slow march to heroism, beset throughout by a series of story constraints that conspired to make both her power and her character the product of other people's decisions.

Wonder Woman's first appearance, 1941's All-Star Comics #8, recounts why she came to America in the first place. To save the world, right? you guess. Nope! Wonder Woman came to America as a lovestruck teenager. Captivated by dreamy American soldier Steve Trevor, who crash-landed on her home island, Diana enters a contest to demonstrate that she is "the strongest and wisest of the Amazons." If she wins, she gets to accompany Trevor back to his home country in "Man's World." Her mother, Queen Hippolyta, is not so into this whole contest thing, but Diana is so busy being a heart-eyed emoji that she doesn't care. "I must see him!" she exclaims to her mother, arms outstretched. "I must know who he is, how he got here! And why he must leave? I—I love him!"

And win she does, which leads to Diana's adoption of her heroic moniker. Again, though, outside forces dictate her path; it's not Diana who chooses the title, but her mother. "In America you'll indeed be a 'Wonder Woman,' for I have taught you well," Hippolyta explains. Diana gets no credit: Not only is she doing everything because of a man she literally has just met, but she's using an identity given to her by her mother.

It gets weirder, though. According to 1959's Wonder Woman #105, baby Diana was visited—and gifted—by a pantheon of mythological beings. Aphrodite gave her "all the beauty of goodness," Athena, "all the wisdom of the planets," and Mercury and Hercules granted her speed and strength (respectively) greater than even their own. In other words, she's smarter, faster and stronger than everyone else; looking back at her first appearance, her ruse to win a contest reads more and more like a lovesick girl abusing her abilities to spend more time with her first crush.

The bedrock of Wonder Woman's character didn't change, in fact, until George Perez rebooted her mythos in 1986. The first issue of Perez's Wonder Woman Vol. 2 #1 (written with Greg Potter) rewrites the hero's origin significantly: Instead of leaving the island of the Amazons to follow Steve Trevor, Diana emerges as a champion to battle Ares, a god whose philosophy of brute force has corrupted the outside world. So much for Diana's lovestruck ambitions—here, she simply wants to do good, for its own sake.

Still, even this rewritten version of events doesn't let Diana stand on her own two boots. Not only are her powers literally god-given, but even her rebellion against her mother (who forbade her to compete) is approved and encouraged by Athena. Diana's destiny is a matter not of decision, but of fate. True agency was still another 30 years away.

That's when the "Year One" storyline began in the current Wonder Woman comic book. Writers Greg Rucka and Nicola Scott, both longtime fans of the character, managed to synthesize the Wonder Woman's various origins into a complete whole—one that grants Diana the power to make her own decisions and standing up for herself. Steve Trevor is back in the "Year One" origin, once again showing up on the shores of Themyscira. He's still dreamy, but this time it's not a crush that motivates Diana to become champion of the Amazons—it's a competitive streak. She wants to be the best she could be in her own right. Compare 1941's "I love him!" to the exchange to the left below.

Does she win the contest? She's Wonder Woman; of course she does. However, this time around, the gods don't grant her powers until she's already left the island—she excelled purely because of her own efforts. And while there is divine intervention in his version of Wonder Woman's past, it's of the distant prophecy kind rather than the gods-put-their-finger-on-the-scale variety.

The current version of Wonder Woman's origin, then, recognizes what makes her an inspirational figure and reshapes her to be an aspirational figure as well: a hero whose struggles are central to her identity. (Tellingly, perhaps, "Wonder Woman" is a name given to her by the media after she arrives in America.) It's been a long time coming, but finally, comic-book Wonder Woman is an icon of strength and self-determination—and is truly worthy of her name.

¹ Correction 7:46 PM EST 6/5/17 Due to being dragged through a wormhole by Lex Luthor, WIRED erroneously stated that Supergirl had come out in 1994, rather than 1984—which, of course, makes it thirty-three years since a female superhero has anchored her own movie. The sentence has been corrected, as has the historical record. Luthor, unfortunately, remains at large.

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Star Wars Fans Wait for Days to See This Bonkers SXSW Poster Exhibit

Star Wars fans waited for days to get into the Mondo Gallery in Austin, for an exhibition of limited edition prints from a galaxy far, far away by artist Michael Mitchell.

More than a decade later, the thing I most remember about Okami is how color follows you wherever you go. Released in 2006, by the now-defunct Clover Studios, the game starred a wolf-god named Amaterasu in a vibrant world inspired by Japanese ink wash painting. The folkoric Japanese landscape Ameratsu finds herself in, though, is dying—empty and colorless. The eight-headed demon Orochi has been unsealed to wreak havoc, and in doing so he has turned everything literally black and white; the world is effectively a painting with its hues all gone.

That color comes flooding back when you help the people of Japan fight Orochi. It bursts forth from Amaterasu—an incarnation of the Shinto goddess of the sun, an avatar of life and light—and fills the landscape outward. Flowers erupt from the ground. Okami's pastoral landscape sings and becomes new with each victory, each step made against the malingering darkness. It's as potent an image of renewal and redemption as I've ever seen, one of the only moments in any game to stir the religious parts of me.

Now, after a lengthy absence, Okami itself has been renewed, updated to run on modern consoles and the PC. For a game that only sold around 200,000 copies at launch, released only months before the studio that made it collapsed, it's a well-deserved resurrection. Okami deserves a place in the modern landscape; however, its return is more than a commercial boon. Meditative and warm, dedicated to an uncomplicated belief in the beauty of the natural world and the power of people to make the world better, the game is a balm—an emotional corrective in a time of upheaval.

In keeping with the sumi-e art style, Amaterasu herself is an artist, wielding a magic paintbrush with the help of a tiny helper named Issun. Her magic ink gives her direct authorial sway over the world itself—a sweeping brush stroke might create a mighty wind, while a wide circle might be a means of pushing life back into the dead world. Playing Okami is a surprisingly creative endeavor, using Amaterasu's powers to not only redeem but transform the world, opening up passages, slaying demons, and calling the powers of nature itself to your aid.

The creators at Clover placed this ideas within the familiar structure of a 3D The Legend of Zelda-style game. Okami has a narrow open world to navigate and various constrained encounters and dungeons gating off parts of that world, creating, like in a Zelda game, a slow sense of progress and a broad sense of adventure. Amaterasu plays the role of a vagabond god, setting right what once went wrong, occasionally pausing along the way to indulge her inner wolf and howl at the moon or dig for a buried treat.

Okami's biggest weakness is that it's, perhaps, too long, hedging its bets too far toward a traditional single-player game experience and pushing past the point where its distinct mechanics start to lose their mystic luster. But at the same time, every moment in this world feels special. The creators at Clover Studio, which included Shinji Mikami of Resident Evil fame, Hideki Kamiya, and a bevy of other minds who would go on to create Platinum Games, put everything they had into Okami. They built an underrated masterpiece, the kind of beautiful work that's critically acclaimed but forgotten all too quickly.

Now, good fortune and the good sense of its publishers at Capcom have made Okami more widely available than it's ever been. Amaterasu will be there waiting, her white tail bushy and wild in the wind, eager to lead the way into a world worth saving.

If you asked me to list the ways I thought Elton John might one day announce his retirement from touring, "a splashy, CGI-filled VR retrospective" would have been nowhere near the top. Maybe in the low teens. Maybe. Yet, that's exactly what he did earlier today—and a few a weeks before that, it's exactly what I'm experiencing in a small, dark room outside LA.

That's where I am in corporeal form, at least. Inside the VR headset I'm wearing, I'm in a different small, dark room in southern California: West Hollywood's iconic Troubadour nightclub in 1970, peering into the bespectacled, CGI-ed face of a 23-year-old Elton John while he sings “Your Song.” It’s a recreation of his first US concert, the one that catapulted him to global fame, and as I glide weightlessly around his piano, thousands of golden specks—metaphorical stardust, presumably—fall from the ceiling, swirling around the demure young man at the piano.

Then the scene changes, and so does Elton John. Now I’m onstage in front of a packed Dodgers Stadium during one of the musician's two 1975 shows, and a very sequiny John is pinballing around the stage screaming out “Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting.” It is, I admit, a little overwhelming. At one point his face swings so close, and has such believable dimension, that I take a big step backward—right into a bundle of what I assume are some very important cords.

“Let me get you a chair for this part,” says Ben Casey, founder and CEO of Spinifex Group, the creative studio/digital agency/production company behind this extravaganza. I take a seat, and just in time—the ground falls away and I zoom into outer space, float around in Elton John’s cocaine party of a private jet and some lava-lamp looking nebulas, and traverse a whirling yellow brick road back down to Earth. All the while, images from The Lion King and Gnomeo and Juliet flash by, along with other visions of John throughout his career.

When the intergalactic acid trip ends and I emerge from my headset—a little dizzy, completely overstimulated, with “Rocket Man” firmly stuck in my head—that little corner of Spinifex’s offices seems even darker and smaller and grayer. Clearly, I was wrong: Turns out a VR experience like Farewell Yellow Brick Road: The Legacy is the most Elton John announcement anybody could have hoped for.

The Elton Factor

And of course it is. The very existence of this event—the VR experience that was just simul-blasted to headset-wearing audiences at events in New York, Los Angeles, and London, followed by a concert and Q&A livestreamed by YouTube to fans around the world, all to announce his upcoming final tour—is a testament to the creative clout and staggering influence wielded by John and his team. “Working with these guys felt very much like rocking up to palaces and talking to rulers of the Emirates or officials in China,” Casey says. (Both are things he's actually done.) “There’s this assumption that they’re going to do the next big thing.”

Once Spinifex sold John's team on their vision (a nearly six minute VR piece that encapsulated John's career followed by a live performance and Q&A, all with global reach, all somehow accomplished without overheating any of the large audience's headsets) that vision became the watchword—naysayers be damned. Imagine being told by Google, as Team Elton was, that what you were asking for was, if not technically impossible, unbelievably challenging. Then imagine convincing Google they were wrong about the limitations of their own technology, pretty much just because you say so. This is the world Elton John lives in.

And once the collaborators determined how audiences would be watching, there was the whole question of what, exactly, they’d be looking at. And how, exactly, they could make it look good. “We have all these darlings of the VFX world in, people who’ve done Deadpool and other big, cutting-edge visual effects productions,” Casey says. “And they genuinely reached a point in this process where all they could say is ‘That hasn’t been thought about yet.’”

The novel challenges were these: In order to chart the arc of his career, they had to create believable versions of Elton John at various different ages and recreate scenes from the 1970s with extremely limited (and lo-res) reference materials. Both of which require a good bit of help from a very busy and somewhat cantankerous musical icon.

Capturing John’s present-day incarnation is easy, because that guy exists. But the Elton John who played at the Troubadour? Five grainy images are seemingly the only document left. So Spinifex had to sculpt their recreations of young Elton based on the scant resources they had—as well as a CGI-youthified face they modeled off scans of the 70-year-old star. Fortunately, John’s signature oversized glasses make that task a bit easier.

But there's more to a classic Elton John experience than a digitally de-aged face. Spinifex couldn't just create a generic CGI doppleganger: the character had to perform and play like Elton John. Asking the singer to reprise his 1970s antics—running around stages, kicking his foot up on top of a piano and strumming his thigh like a guitar—seemed a bit much. “When we realized we were going to need a body double, Elton just said ‘Well obviously you’d use Justin Timberlake,’” says Casey, laughing. They ended up hiring Russ Anderson, a professional Elton John impersonator, for the high-energy sequences, and replacing his face after the fact with a de-aged version of John’s actual face.

But when it came to recreating John’s signature style of piano playing, they were determined to capture the genuine article. Spinifex brought in motion-capture pros from nearby animation studio House of Moves, and John squeezed into a mo-cap suit and took a seat behind the electric keyboard amidst a forest of cameras. There was even a specialist “Dot Doctor” charged with positioning (and repositioning) motion-capture tracking markers on John’s fingers. The day went smoothly—mostly. “He’d been playing ‘Tiny Dancer’ and kept hitting this note and stopping," Casey says. "And he’d be like ‘Can you fucking hear that? It’s ghosting! Look at all this technology around us, and it's a keyboard that isn't working.’ No one else could even hear it.” Things got a lot better when they rolled out a real piano.

Hack City

Getting fans immersed in the magical-realist world of Elton John also takes a whole lot of bleeding-edge tech. For the last six months, Spinifex has had to cobble together wildly disparate pieces of technology—much of it uncomfortably new—to have even a prayer of pulling it off. Making things look seamless in VR is hard enough. Doing it while also creating live-action sequences … that need to look like they're set in the past … in stereoscopic 360 format? That's almost ridiculously complex.

To keep the experience stable and comfortable for viewers, and to make sure the Elton stand-in's replaced face didn't go all Exorcist, Spinifex commissioned a bespoke head for a motion-control rig—itself a fancy piece of tech used in the filming of Thor: Ragnarok. And to make sure VR Elton stays in focus, the studio used Facebook’s “cube map” format to concentrate what spare pixels they have on a single hot spot—in this case, Elton. It’s a similar idea to Google’s recently-announced VR180 cameras, which captured the just-completed live event that followed Spinifex’s VR experience.

“We breathed a sigh of relief when we realized would have them ready. Otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to broadcast this,” says Matt Apfel, Google’s VR video programming head. “Pixels aren’t wasted being wrapped all the way around, and 180 eliminates audience confusion about where they should be looking. We didn’t want that feeling of FOMO.”

In fact, despite all the technical and VR hurdles—face replacement, mo-cap wonkiness, resolution hurdles—the biggest technical challenge turned out to be the logistics of the live event. To be effective, Spinifex's VR piece had to begin simultaneously for the hundreds of people actually attending Elton's event (and, to a lesser extent, the onlookers at home), with all those VR headsets somehow triggering within a hundredth of a millisecond without crashing the WiFi network. "Gladly, and nervously, no one has ever done this at this scale," says Shea Clayton, Spinifex's head of interactive. Since off-the-shelf triggers were out of the question, they borrowed a technique for equalizing traffic across a network of phones from the gaming world, and in case of emergency, send what Clayton calls a "last will and testament:" If my connection drops out, trigger this content at this specific time. And, bizarrely, the scrap of code they're using to make sure those messages get sent and received was invented for an oil pipeline. "Borrowing bits and bobs from other things is really what makes it work," Clayton says.

Results

Did it all come together? At the moment I write this, I have no idea. It worked in Spinifex's offices, where I watched about 100 phones pulse in unison and start blasting Elton John. But a better question for a piece that's meant to sum up an icon's career is, is it effective? And for those closest to John, the answer seems to be yes. "When I saw everything finally, fully finished, I couldn’t stop crying," says David Furnish, Elton John's husband and CEO of Rocket Entertainment. "I know I’m a sample of one. But while my closeness to the subject means I'm easily moved, it also mean that the bar is super high."

And while its conceit—incomparably influential artist goes out with a futuristic bang—could have come off as contrived, the idea that Elton John is an artist capable of moving at the speed of culture doesn't seem as far-fetched as it might for other musicians of his era. He's built a career on invention and reinvention. And now that his likeness, his performances, and his music have been captured in various high-fidelity formats, there's no reason that the music has to stop just because the touring does. "He wouldn’t want a computer to write a song, but anything that respectfully keeps his songs and catalogue alive, to new audiences and different audiences, that surprises and delights and entertains them?" says Furnish. "Elton is one hundred percent in favor of that."

Today, it's a VR experience. Tomorrow, you might be rubbing elbows at the piano with a holographic Elton John.

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For a while there, It floats along nicely. Adapted from Stephen King's famously elephantine blockbuster, which pits a group of awkward Maine teens against a shape-shifting monster, the first stretch of this town-and-clown horror thriller makes for appropriately goony fun. That's partly because, for viewers of a certain age (ahem), It functions as an effective big-screen time machine: Unlike King's book—which was adapted in the early 1990s as a hokey, if sincere, TV miniseries—this big-screen version takes place in the summer of 1989, a period of ample pop pleasures (Lethal Weapon 2, New Kids on the Block) and zero bike-helmet laws. It captures the low-key latchkey existence of the Reagan-Bush summers so accurately you can almost smell the Big League Chew in the air.

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But the kiddos in It don't have much time to enjoy their adolescent freedom, as they're facing a very grown-up terror in Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård), a balloon-toting clown with a malleable maw featuring rows of quill-like sharp teeth and a wild (and wildly receding) hairline that even Nicolas Cage would deem a bit much. Pennywise's introduction is one of the most nightmare-fostering moments of King's career, and director Andy Muschietti (Mama) retains its heartbreaking brutality: One rain-soaked afternoon, a young boy named Georgie watches as his paper boat is sent down a drain. He's subsequently charmed, chomped, and abducted by Pennywise, in a literally cold open that, by modern-horror measures, is remarkably restrained while still psyche-scarring.

Georgie's disappearance consumes his older brother, Bill (Midnight Special's Jaeden Lieberher), who turns to his friends for help—only to learn they've all been experiencing their own private terrors, whether it be in the form of a skin-littering leper, a high-speed headless corpse, or a twisted painting come to life. Muschietti stages these scenes with a patient, take-it-all-in visual sense, as well as a keen grasp of nightmare logic (in one of the kid’s visions, Pennywise twists on a meathook in the dark distance, his eyes glowing menacingly). They could run to their folks, but, rather conveniently, the adults of It are mostly total creeps, none of whom seem to care much about the alarming number of children vanishing from their town. Maybe that's just sloppy storytelling. Or maybe that bard named Will was right: Parents just don't understand.

The thrills of It lie in these early, almost flirting terrors, which unite both the kids (who dub themselves the Losers' Club) and the audience in the terrifying possibility of what greater horrors await. It helps, of course, that we root for these Losers, a collection of spazzes, nerds, and outcasts who are subjected to every teen trauma imaginable, from knife-wielding bullies to signature-free yearbook pages. The film's most touching moment is also its nastiest: After the group's lone teen girl, Beverly (Sophia Lillis), is doused with gallons upon gallons of sink-borne blood—a Carrie-echoing gross-out moment with little metaphorical wiggle room—the rest of the kids show up to help her mop up the mess. It makes for an admirably on-the-nose '80s-movie montage, complete with a Cure song in the background.

Yet once the Losers decide to challenge Pennywise on his own turf—confronting him in a haunted house and, later, a debris-strewn underground lair—It begins to deflate. As soon as the kids begin to scatter, you realize there's simply too many of them to keep track of, much less care about—so much so, you almost wish the filmmakers had been heartless enough to thin out their ranks a bit (the cowriting credits for It include True Detective and Beasts of No Nation director Cary Fukunaga, who left the production during development). And the breezy-ish kids-on-the-loose vibe, while fun at first, soon becomes an excuse for repetitive dick jokes and way too many "holy shit!" punchlines. Was such behavior typical for teen boys in the late '80s? Yep. Is it a letdown when a character like Richie (played by Stranger Things' Finn Wolfhard) begins It as "kid who curses" and ends as "kid who curses a lot"? Holy crap, yes.

It's biggest unsolved problem, though, may be its lone marquee name—Pennywise the Clown, who, save for one fun midfilm sequence, just barely retains the creepiness of that initial rain-soaked intro. Instead, Muschietti relies on now-tiring shock-schlock tropes (lullaby-like kids' music; swift, zig-zagging runs straight toward the camera) that turn Pennywise into just another movie monster, one who's ultimately unknowable. There's plenty of theorizing in It about the nature of Pennywise—and the nature of evil—but no definitive answers. That's highlighted by the film's final 15 minutes, which consist of a rapidly edited (yet still utterly rhythmless) CGI showdown in which Pennywise shifts from monster to monster, sometimes for just seconds at a time. It's a shell-game distraction, one that mistakes evasiveness for ambiguity. And it once again unites the kids and the audience, albeit this time in confusion: Just who is this clown, exactly? Maybe we're supposed to wait for the sequel to find out, but I prefer my '80s monsters to have some greater sense of purpose. Then again, as kids used to say back in those days, maybe that's just my prerogative.

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Ana Lily Amirpour became a celebrated filmmaker her first time out. Her debut feature, 2014's black-and-white Iranian vampire flick A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, got her more than Sundance buzz—it got her a deal to make a second feature with Megan Ellison’s Annapurna Pictures and Vice. That film, The Bad Batch, hits theaters this weekend. It’s … weird. Keanu Reeves plays a new-age messiah who gives monologues about poop; an unrecognizable Jim Carrey shows up as a hermit who says nothing; Jason Momoa, future Aquaman, features prominently as a cannibal. The dystopian romance ain't, as the saying goes, for everybody.

Not too surprisingly, the movie's critical response has borne that out. Whereas A Girl Walks scored an impressive 95 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, Amirpour’s follow-up is only currently pulling 45 percent. Some praise its idiosyncratic vision, others decry its lack of coherence or substance. But Jessica Kiang, writing for The Playlist, nailed what might be The Bad Batch’s biggest shortcoming. “The perils,” she writes, “of the broader-canvas follow-up to the sleek and economical indie debut are writ large: This is Difficult Second Album: The Movie.”

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The sophomore slump has always been the worst kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. Any artist who achieves first-timer success invariably finds themselves hamstrung by a creative paradox: Their second effort gets more resources, sure, but also more scrutiny and expectation—and a lot less anonymity. (That added weight is often compounded for women and artists of color, who are much less likely to get a third or fourth chance.) Some filmmakers use their newfound capital to direct a big blockbuster, though that endeavor can pay off (Gareth Edwards' Godzilla) or flop (Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four) in equal measure. Others, like Amirpour, take the opportunity to indulge their weirdest impulses, like a movie about a young woman wandering the Texas wasteland who falls in with a group of cannibals.

Whatever the outcome, it’s essential that directors like her get to indulge their weirdest cinematic fantasies—even if they’re not for everyone. Indulging strange impulses every so often can prove highly beneficial. After Steven Soderbergh won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for sex, lies, and videotape, he made the literally Kafka-esque film Kafka. It was black-and-white and batty, but a few years later Soderbergh was lining up smart crowd-pleasers like Out of Sight and Ocean’s Eleven. Shane Carruth followed up Primer with Upstream Color. Spike Jonze cranked the meta-volume of Being John Malkovich past 11 with Adaptation; Diablo Cody, who became a critical darling after writing Juno, followed it up with Jennifer’s Body, which turned Megan Fox into a blog-speaking succubus. Not all of these efforts were praised, but they all proved to be turning points that helped their creators figure out where they would ultimately go—visionary or visualist, populist or pop-art. (Amirpour won’t divulge what her next movie is about, at least not concretely: “for as much as Bad Batch let me explore some of the shittiest things about us people, the next one lets me look at some of the better things, some of the things that really inspire me about how good we can be. Sometimes.”)

Amirpour isn't the only director dealing with this phenomenon right now. Just ask Colin Trevorrow, whose Sundance-hit debut Safety Not Guaranteed snared him the director's chair on Jurassic World—and subsequently Star Wars: Episode IX. Last week, his film The Book of Henry hit theaters, and thudded its way to a 23 percent on Rotten Tomatoes; even usually-forgiving Rolling Stone scribe Peter Travers called it a “mess of conflicting ideas.” The fallout was immediate and alarmist, with Vulture even questioning if Henry would put Trevorrow’s Star Wars job in jeopardy.

It wouldn't, obviously, but it still led to some soul-searching for Trevorrow. As the critical takes started rolling in, he did an interview with the Empire Podcast wherein he called the bad reviews “heartbreaking,” but also acknowledged he’s under a microscope now as the guy with his hands on both the Jurassic Park and Star Wars movie franchises. "What I may have underestimated is how my visibility as somebody who is responsible for two things that we all care about deeply, and are massive parts of our public consciousness and shared mythology—how that level of visibility would shine a spotlight that I hadn't considered," he said.

The sophomore slump, then—well, in this case, the junior jag—can be valuable not only for creative catharsis, but for learning how to handle the public’s perception of your work. Richard Kelly still seems haunted by the reaction Southland Tales, his post-apocalyptic follow-up to Donnie Darko received. Neill Blomkamp has said he was put in “a very strange place” by Chappie's poor reception, even though the movie “crystallized or congealed ideas in my head in a good way.”

Amirpour, too, is experiencing that feedback loop—and for her, it goes deeper than audiences not just understanding her movie. During a Q&A at a recent Chicago screening of The Bad Batch, an audience member asked Amirpour what message she was trying to convey by having black characters die gruesome deaths in the film. The director responded, “I don’t make a film to tell you a message.” The exchange, and a series of subsequent Twitter threads, showed Amirpour is still learning how to contend with criticism. “I could have a conversation with people, but if someone’s hurling insults at you, let me just say, at the end of the day, I have feelings. You’re going to call me a racist or something, you think I’m not going to have feelings?” she says when asked about the exchange. “I don’t know what to say other than maybe Twitter is not a good place for me.”

For all of the internet's power to rehabilitate the image of once-overlooked pop culture, it's not so kind to esoteric new releases. Social media acts as an instant funhouse mirror for movies like The Bad Batch or Book of Henry, reflecting multiple versions back to their creators—some kind, some grotesque. Which of those depictions people will remember is based entirely on what their creators do next; to treat early experimentation as failure, though, dooms a movie's legacy before its influence has a chance to manifest.

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Beginning to think that, post-D23 and San Diego Comic-Con, we wouldn't get any new information about Star Wars: The Last Jedi until it hits theaters this December? Then you hadn't considered the importance of publishing realities, with Entertainment Weekly dropping all kinds of fact bombs about the next installment of the saga from a galaxy far, far away. Meanwhile, Lando Calrissian is causing trouble, and the backstory of Rogue One turns out to raise an ethical conundrum that few people had really thought about before. Thank you for tuning into the latest update on the HoloNet, and please remember to tip your Bothan.

Never Meet Your Heroes

The Source: Entertainment Weekly's massive Last Jedi preview

Probability of Accuracy: Consider this one more of an intentionally vague teaser than an accurate piece of information. But what a tease…!

The Real Deal: For those expecting the Rey/Luke meeting in Star Wars: The Last Jedi to be a reprise of Luke's meeting with Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back, then prepare to be disappointed. An Entertainment Weekly story—one of many this time around, considering they had a lot of spoiler-filled previews for the new movie—revealed that Rey finds Luke when his faith in the Force is at the lowest anyone has ever seen. Daisy Ridley described her character's response as, "Oh my God, this other man that I lost within a couple days was somewhat of a father figure. Now he’s gone, and instead I’m with this grumpy guy on an island who doesn’t want me here."

As for Mark Hamill, he seems as if he's trying to come to terms with what's happened himself. "The fact that Luke says, 'I only know one truth. It’s time for the Jedi to end…'" he said. "I mean, that’s a pretty amazing statement for someone who was the symbol of hope and optimism in the original films. When I first read it, my jaw dropped. What would make someone that alienated from his original convictions?"

The Perks of Being A Wallflower

The Source: Again, Entertainment Weekly's preview of the next movie

Probability of Accuracy: Pretty accurate, because who knows better how uncool a character is than the actor that plays them?

The Real Deal: Wondering what role newcomer Rose (Kelly Marie Tran) will play in the next Star Wars installment? If Tran's interview with EW is anything to go by, she might just be enough of a fan to help remind the good guys what they're supposed to be doing in the first place. "Poe Dameron is super cool. Finn’s super cool. Even though [Rose] is good at what she does, she’s not known… She’s not cool. She’s this nobody, this background player, which is what makes her interesting. She’s not the best. She’s not royalty. She’s someone who is just like everyone else," Tran said.

Rose she comes into Finn's life at a point where he's questioning whether or not he wants to stay with the Resistance—and according to John Boyega, her influence helps him come to a decision. "It’s now an opportunity for him to be the best he can be. He has to make a decision, and Rose is there to help him make that choice," he teased. Is this some kind of meta-clue to tell us that it's okay to be fans as long as we keep inspiring our heroes to do the right thing? If so, I am here for this.

Take Care Not To Hurt Yourself

The Source: Making it a hat trick, Entertainment Weekly's Last Jedi preview

Probability of Accuracy: The information comes from director Ryan Johnson, so we should all hope it's accurate.

The Real Deal: Turns out that the Porgs aren't going to be the only aliens that Luke Skywalker is sharing the island of Ahch-To with; Star Wars: The Last Jedi writer/director Rian Johnson told EW that he's also going to be dealing with another race called the Caretakers. "They’re kind of these sort of fish-bird type aliens who live on the island," he said. "They’ve been there for thousands of years, and they essentially keep up the structures on the island… They’re all female, and I wanted them to feel like a remote sort of little nunnery." What do they take care of, you might ask? Well, they just might have something to do with the structures on the island, which—if speculation is to be believed—might mean that they have some connection with the Force that we haven't quite seen yet.

Snoke Gets In Your Eyes

The Source: For the fourth and final time, the Last Jedi preview from Entertainment Weekly

Probability of Accuracy: As with almost all things Snoke, this one is entirely open to interpretation…

The Real Deal: With all kinds of speculation abounding about the leader of the First Order, EW added some fuel to the fire by asking The Last Jedi director to talk about what role he does—and doesn't—play in the new movie. "Similar to Rey’s parentage, Snoke is here to serve a function in the story. And a story is not a Wikipedia page," Rian Johnson told the magazine. "For example, in the original trilogy, we didn’t know anything about the Emperor except what Luke knew about him, that he’s the evil guy behind Vader. Then in the prequels, you knew everything about Palpatine because his rise to power was the story."

So, how much of Snoke's story will be revealed in the new movie? Johnson is playing coy, saying only that audiences will "learn exactly as much about Snoke as we need to." (One thing that he would reveal, is that while Andy Serkis' character will indeed be CGI, the actor's motion-capture performance was astonishing: "It’s one of those performances where after every line, I’d look over at whoever’s standing next to me with an expression on my face like, 'Oh, my God, we just got that.'")

Everything's Perfectly All Right Now On The Han Solo Movie. It's Fine.

The Source: Future Lando Mark 2 himself, Donald Glover

Probability of Accuracy: On the one hand, he's only talking about his personal feelings, so it's hard to say whether he's being accurate or not, or even if what he's saying translates to others in the cast. But on the other, this certainly contradicts the official line about how the production is faring…

The Real Deal: Turns out, the changeover between directors on the still-untitled Han Solo movie wasn't quite as smooth as the official party line would have it. In a Hollywood Reporter profile, Donald Glover, who plays Lando Calrissian in the movie, said that Ron Howard replacing original directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller has shaken his confidence. "Ron is such a legend, and he knows exactly what the vision for what he is doing is … [but Phil and Chris] hired us, so you sort of feel like, 'I know I'm not your first choice …' And you worry about that," Glover says. "I feel like I was the baby in the divorce, or the youngest child. The oldest child is like, 'We know what's happening, but we are keeping you out of it.' And I'm just like, [Glover's voice rises several octaves] 'Was that scene good? How did you feel?'" The question is, will anyone be able to tell the difference between performances in the finished movie, which is still targeted at a May 2018 release?

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Cassian Andor: Not a Big Fan of Consent, Apparently

The Source: Marvel's Rogue One spin-off comic

Probability of Accuracy: It was part of a canonical comic book story, so it's 100% accurate.

The Real Deal: The secret origins of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story's K-2SO were revealed in a Marvel comic book this past week, and the tale might have raised some unexpected issues. According to the Star Wars: Rogue One—Cassian & K-2SO Special, Cassian Andor reprogrammed the Imperial droid against its will in an attempt to avoid arrest during a mission, prompting at least one website to question whether or not there's an unpleasant rape analogy hiding just under the surface and waiting to be discovered. Well, Rogue One was always intended to be the morally murky installment in the series….

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