Every Resident Evil game is only as good as its setting, and the Raccoon City Police Station is one of the best. The centerpiece of Resident Evil 2, the Police Station is an austere, neo-Victorian government building. It's also, improbably, a labyrinth—one that belies its appearance as a sanctuary from a city full of zombies and turns out to be as full of zombies and danger as anywhere else in the infested town. Half the doors are locked with arcane traps; the others are just locked. A secret passageway leads to the parking garage, if you can solve the puzzle hiding it. It might be the only way out.

The new remake of Resident Evil 2, out this week for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, is dedicated to the feeling of that place and to capturing the tension that players felt upon entering it in the 1998 original. In it, as in the original, you play as either rookie cop Leon Kennedy or Claire Redfield, an adventurous woman looking for her policeman brother. Both flee to the police station after realizing the town is overrun with the undead, and both realize their mistake quickly. The rest of the game is consumed with one overriding concern: escape.

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Resident Evil 2 is not a remaster, as such. I call it a remake, because the developers took the basic structure and narrative of the original game and wedded it to an entirely new game engine, with new design principles and gameplay structures. It's a reinterpretation of the same story, but an entirely new game, albeit one adhering to the same general aesthetic interests.

Those interests, more specifically, are tension and scarcity. The original Resident Evil games are called survival horror, but they're more like exploration-based thrillers. Not scary, exactly, with the exception of some intense gore and a few goofy jump scares. Instead, the fear comes from scarcity of resources and the constant need to move forward to gather more resources, solve puzzles, and hopefully find safe harbor from which to plan your next steps.

To put it another way, Resident Evil 2 is a zombie-fighting game that refuses to give you enough bullets. Even on the most generous difficulty settings, multiple shots are needed to take down zombies, and the undead have a troubling habit of getting up when they really, really shouldn't. The feeling of playing Resident Evil 2 is that of desperate, continuous calculation, considering whether to fight or flee, weighing your ammo and health reserves against what you know about the areas you need to visit. I need to backtrack through this creepy hallway, but I left several zombies alive in it. Do I try to find another route? Do I fight? Or just run for it and hope I don't get mauled to death?

The original game emphasized this tension with fixed camera angles, which gave the game a distanced, stiff mood that toyed with player ignorance as a means of sustaining tension. In this game, the camera is an over-the-shoulder, freely movable third-person view, which erases that particular brand of unease. In its place, Resident Evil 2 successfully substitutes moody aesthetics and increasingly dangerous enemies. The zombies here are both aggressive and resilient in ways that are distinct from the original, and corridors are dark, threatening, and unnerving to navigate. The Raccoon City Police Station is a frightening place, and it has a habit of only getting more dangerous the more time you spend in it—like when the hulking, almost comically imposing Mr. X shows up. The zombie fixer isn't just super smart and impossible to kill; he also stalks you, his thundering feet echoing through the walls.

But, like many Resident Evil games before it, both versions of Resident Evil 2 make the same mistake: They abandon their best setting. Eventually the police station is left behind in favor of sewers, city streets, and subterranean labs, and in the process some of that precious tension is lost. The power of this brand of Resident Evil is in the interplay between anxiety and a slowly expanding environment that you increasingly understand, with threats ramping up to match your growing level of power. When the game moves into other, more derivative environments, its entire structure suffers.

And yet Resident Evil 2 shines as a full reimagining of a brilliant game. It doesn't erase that game's flaws—in many cases, it reproduces them—but it manages to bring that sense of unease into a game made with the design sensibilities of gaming's present moment. It's not necessary, exactly; you could play the old game and still have a terribly threatening time. But so few games evoke this particular brand of unease nowadays. Even if it's just studying the work of the masters, it's nice to have another.

Among the scant books in my tiny rented room in San Francisco, I’ve kept a spine-worn copy of Romeo and Juliet. It’s the one I read in my high school English class, the pages yellowed, the margins filled with scribbled notes. Since the play was written in the 1590s, Shakespeare’s portrayal of the nature of love—irrational, all-consuming—has been told and retold in countless movie adaptations. I hold onto the book to revisit those insights, and also because I’m prone to nostalgic literary tendencies like keeping old books.

I am also a personal tech writer in 2018. It’s my job to keep tabs on how our rapidly shifting technology is shaping not only how we communicate, but how we empathize, trust, show affection. We now have questions about love that Romeo and Juliet can’t answer. How does 24/7 connection bring us together and drive us apart? How will AI change the definition of humanity? What will love look like 20 years from now? How about 100?

There's no doubt that some of what Shakespeare crystallized in his plays will endure, in some form. But when I speculate on the nature of love and tech, I look to a younger form of drama: the sci-fi romance movie.

Granted, the sci-fi romance is not a new genre. It is, however, an underappreciated one, in part because the incongruity of romance and science fiction makes it incredibly challenging to pull off. Consider the 2013 film Her: How do you even begin to tell the story of a man who falls in love with his virtual assistant?

But it’s precisely this seeming incompatibility of genres that makes them so powerful when they operate in harmony. One comes from a tradition as old as stories themselves. The other fixes its gaze to the future. When the two genres converge successfully, it produces a novel narrative by which to reimagine and reassess the ways we love.

The tech at the center of Her is artificial intelligence. The movie is set in a near future, where people are at once hyperconnected and profoundly lonely. Lovelorn Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) forms an unexpected relationship with his artificially intelligent virtual assistant Samantha, voiced by Scarlett Johansson. The film is fearless about its exploration of the irrationality of love. In one scene, Theodore asks his best friend Amy (Amy Adams) if loving an OS makes him a freak. Amy, who is suffering her own heartache, says “I think anybody that falls in love is a freak.” The line’s a bit trite, sure, but the observation is startling in that it would resound as well and true in a traditional romance as it does in this speculative context.

In other words: Love is strange. Sci-fi simply turns the dial and embraces the weirdness.

In that way, love and sci-fi are perhaps not so diametrically opposed. They’re both fueled by the optimistic allure of the what-if. What if we fell in love, against all odds? Or, as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) poses: What if we fell in love, but it ended so bitterly that we decided to forget we were ever in love at all? Unlike Her, Eternal Sunshine is set in a world we recognize, with the minor addition of a medical venture that promises jilted lovers a procedure that erases all memories of their ex. For anyone who has experienced heartbreak, it’s an enticing prospect. Who wouldn’t want to forget that one ex? Eternal Sunshine explores the hypothetical by way of a radical, nonchronological romp through memory.

Still, while some plot points and presentations are innovative, many of these films suffer a glaring problem that feels anachronistic for a genre that claims to represent the future. The sci-fi romance has tended to depict women in outdated ways, inheriting the sexist traps that afflict both parent genres. Her dwells so utterly in Theodore’s loneliness that the primary role of its female characters, human and AI, is to develop the male protagonist. Ex Machina reduces its robot Ava to a sexy pile of wires, reflective of (and unwilling to challenge) the real-life gender problems with AI. And while Kate Winslet as Eternal Sunshine’s Clementine asserts her character beyond sexist tropes, the protagonist is still Jim Carrey starring as a Lonely Dude.

Still the fusion of two genres holds tremendous potential. I don’t doubt that we’ll see more sci-fi romances in our queues before long; the resurgence of genre content we saw this summer, coupled with Netflix’s relentless investment in sci-fi, will not likely be abating into the fall.

For now, the most promising sign from the genre comes not from film, but from TV. The “San Junipero” episode of Black Mirror begins with a meet-cute, in the technicolor 1980s: Yorkie (Mackenzie Davis) timidly wanders into a nightclub. She’s drawn onto the dance floor by a carefree Kelly (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), and the budding chemistry between them is unmistakable. We relax into the familiar warmth of a rom-com. That is, until we slowly realize that the beach town is not what, or when, it seems.

“San Junipero” begins and ends as a love story, but one with a twist that deftly draws together conflicts concerning mortality and second chances, easily ranking it as one of the strongest episodes of the series. It represents my highest hopes for what the sci-fi romance can achieve: a reflection on how forms of love and desire have been restricted, and how tech could be an avenue to explore more just realities.

Thus far, creators in the genre have had no difficulty expanding our conceptions of science and technology; filmmakers easily dream up fictional gadgets and gizmos aplenty. Nevertheless, the genre suffers when its understanding of human relationships, particularly in its depictions of women, continues to be woefully unimaginative. The future of the sci-fi romance is less dependent on the ingenuity of the tech than it is on filmmakers’ insights on questions about love that have endured the test of time. If a sci-fi romance wants to present a meaningful projection of love in the future, it would do well to portray more kinds of relationships and more nuanced shades of love.

Maybe then we’d get a story worth keeping, a story set in a moment in time but impervious to time’s passage. One that, centuries from now, someone can cherish on her bookshelf in a shiny, futuristic San Francisco as dearly as a well-loved copy of Romeo and Juliet—be it a book, or hologram, or whatever the hell we’ll be reading on by that point.

How We Love: Read More

Who knows what the kids are doing online, right? They’ve got their TikToks and their Snapchats and their flop Instagram accounts, while parents are still posting on Facebook and Twitter. The disconnect between how the olds and their children use the internet leads to parental anxiety, and in the case of this week’s resurfacing of the viral fake Momo challenge, panic and misinformation.

The Momo challenge, according to breathless news reports and posts from worried parents and law enforcement, is a game circulating on social media that encourages kids to engage in increasingly harmful behavior until, eventually, they’re supposed to commit suicide and upload the video to the internet.

Momo is basically every parent’s nightmare. But as multiple outlets have pointed out, there’s no evidence that it's a real viral challenge. The admittedly freaky image of “Momo” is based on a sculpture by a Japanese artist. While claims of suicides connected to the challenge started surfacing last year, according to Snopes, authorities have never definitively tied any cases to participation in an online game. YouTube—which had been reported as hosting Momo videos—released a statement Wednesday saying it hasn’t encountered Momo videos on the site, and the “extremely online” teens reading warnings about Momo from their parents have responded with, well, eye rolls.

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Hey Know-It-Alls! How much screen time should my kids get?

Momo appears to be another example not of dangerous behavior going viral, but of a hoax going viral. It’s what youth advocate Anne Collier calls a “viral media scare.” These are the “razor blades in the Halloween candy” myths of today. And just as that pernicious worry spread in the offline era, Momo and its ilk are boosted along the way not only by concerned parents trying to warn others, but also by the news media, which picks up those warnings and amplifies them.

The result, experts say, is that while the Momo scare didn’t start out real, the attention it’s receiving can actually have the opposite effect of what’s intended: All these warnings can raise the risk that teens or young children would learn about the challenge and take it seriously—or at least be freaked out by the scary image of Momo itself.

When Trying to Help Hurts

If you see a warning on social media about a dangerous viral challenge, like the tweet that seems to have reignited the interest in Momo this week, take a breath. Pause. Before you hit retweet or share, ask yourself two things. “‘Do I know who this behavior will benefit? And what information am I lacking?’ If you can’t answer what you don’t know, and if you can’t answer who is going to benefit from your action, then pause,” says Whitney Phillips, a professor of media literacy at Syracuse University.

Hoaxes like this are created by people with an agenda. And that agenda is virality and panic. The moment you share, you are playing right into their hands.

Playing into their hands isn’t just bad because it gives bad people what they want. It also risks actually hurting the children you’re hoping to help by sharing the information in the first place. “The immediate risk is that more people will be exposed to the hoax, with some of those, possibly, attempting to enact the behaviors,” says Phillips. Virality itself can be a vector for harm. Additionally, some bad actors out there might try to capitalize on the virality of Momo and use it as a weapon to target vulnerable kids; essentially, to copycat on what the hoax claims to be and then attempt to push kids to actually harm themselves.

It’s not just parents who are vulnerable to accidentally spreading hoaxes in an effort to help children. One WIRED staffer said their child’s school sent around a warning about Momo this week, and Taylor Lorenz at The Atlantic notes that even law enforcement can be taken in, choosing to err on the side of sending a warning rather than ignoring it. Speaking as a parent myself, I understand it’s hard to ignore an alert about something that could potentially hurt your kids.

Hoaxes Play on Our Reptilian Brains

As parents, it’s our job to keep our children safe. And the internet, with all its nooks and crannies and fast-moving parts, presents a particularly fraught minefield for kids. Chantal Pontvin, a parent I interviewed earlier this month about social media and kids, put it this way: “My friends have a lot of fear about social media and their children and what they might be doing. They have no interaction with their kids online. They have no idea,” she told me.

Couple that opacity with stories like the one this week about cartoons on YouTube being spliced with instructions on how to kill yourself—videos that have been confirmed to exist—and it’s enough to make some parents want to raise their kids in the woods without internet access. It certainly creates a feeling that something like the Momo challenge, or the Tide Pod Challenge or the Blue Whale game, or any of the other viral hoaxes could very well be reality. The world is a crazy place!

Monica Bulger

“All compelling hoaxes have a kernel of truth,” says Monica Bulger, senior fellow at the Future of Privacy Forum, who studies children's rights and media literacy. “And they play into our reptilian minds.” By that she means not only that they play into our biggest fears, but that they sound similar enough to other stories we’ve heard that our brains, which largely run on autopilot, interpret them as being true. This is the illusory truth effect—a glitch in human reasoning that makes things that are familiar feel true. It’s why sometimes even fact-checking a lie can ultimately lead to more people believing it, because it increases the lie’s exposure.

Viral hoax creators know this. “Many meme creators are highly skilled at playing to fears and biases. There are the general things that parents fear, and the top one is child safety,” says Bulger. “Parents need to remember that just because something feels right doesn’t mean it is. You actually can’t trust your gut.” The best way to guard against this cognitive glitch is just to be aware of it.

So what should you do next time you come across some dire warning on the internet, especially if it’s something that hasn’t been debunked? Dramatic reports about kids’ behavior online can be a bit like other kinds of high-profile incidents prone to misinformation, and experts have some suggestions for how to treat them.

Pause, but Then What?

Bulger says that after you pause, wait. Wait a few days. Wait before talking to your kids. Wait and see if you get an actual warning from your school or law enforcement. And if you do get one, like my colleague did, consider whether it includes corroboration. School districts and police departments are authorities, sure, but enough of them have proved to be just as vulnerable to these panics. Are people reporting that any children have actually encountered this or hurt themselves? If the answer is yes, then talk to your child about it. If they bring it up, react with understanding, not panic.

There’s a good reason not to just immediately bring up with your child every viral meme or challenge that you hear about. You could traumatize them, says Bulger. She notes that constant panicked warnings from parents to kids about what they are seeing online are a little like active shooting drills in schools, in that they themselves can do damage. “What causes more harm, the initial meme or the panicked response to it?” she asks.

What’s clear, though, is that like shooter drills, warnings about the Momos of the internet are responses to a real problem. The internet is, in fact, a dangerous and hard-to-understand place. It’s full of creeps, bullies, conspiracy theorists, and extremists. And though hoaxes and memes are most often harmless, they aren’t always. Take Pizzagate, which resulted in someone shooting into a restaurant, and SlenderMan, which inspired two tweens to try to kill their classmate. “Part of what makes our contemporary moment so anxiety inducing is that nothing makes sense,” says Phillips. It’s hard to tell truth from fiction, meme from contagious suicide pact.

What you can do to help your kids navigate this crazy world is encourage an open dialogue about social media and the internet. This will make them resilient, and more able to see something like Momo and not fall victim to it. Don’t, says Bulger, respond by trying to control everything your kids see online. After a certain age, at least, they will come into contact with the internet whether you like it or not.

“So be a safe space for your child to talk to you. It shouldn’t be this constant bombardment of questions about these hoaxes—did you see this Momo thing? Embed internet and media literacy in the daily rhythms of the family,” says Bulger. She wants you to let your kids know: “We’re all online, we’re all figuring this out, and we are a safe space for you to talk about anything you see.”

And most importantly, don’t panic.

Updated on 2-28-2019 at 9:41pm EST to correct details about the Pizzagate-related shooting.

A year ago today, MoviePass introduced a radical new business model: Go see a movie a day, every day, for just $10 per month. At the time, it seemed too good to be true. As it turns out, it was.

The company has since burned through cash at an unsustainable rate, aggravating customers with limited screenings, punishing anti-fraud measures, and general uncertainty about the future. Today, in a bid to stay afloat, MoviePass officially abandoned its unlimited buffet. It still costs $10 a month, but that now gets you three tickets instead of 30, and often not to the showtimes you'd prefer.

Plenty has been written already about what went wrong, and what could still go right. But the most important lesson of MoviePass' wild first year? Movie ticket subscriptions are here to stay. Even if MoviePass eventually goes under—or if you're just ready to bail—enough similar services have cropped up over the last year that one likely has a combination of cost and convenience that suits you just fine. Here's what each one offers, and who it might work best for.

MoviePass

You're sick of hearing about it by now, aren't you? But wait! You might not know everything! MoviePass has gone through so many incarnations since it first introduced the unlimited plan—remember when it briefly switched to an iHeartRadio bundle?—it's worth taking stock of what exactly it has on offer. Starting today, MoviePass will transition from its $10 unlimited plan to one that offers three movies per month for the same price, plus up to a $5 discount on tickets over that limit.

Yes, that's less than it offered before, by a lot. But realistically, the majority of MoviePass customers likely won't notice the difference; the company says that only 15 percent of its three million subscribers see four or more movies in a given month. And because MoviePass is more tightly restricting the number of movies it allows, it'll hopefully loosen some of its draconian antifraud measures, including the one where it made some heavy users upload photos of their ticket stubs. It’s also doing away with the surge pricing it had previously introduced to help stanch the bleeding.

If the story ended there, MoviePass would remain a solid budget choice, a less permissive but more realistic—and sustainable—version of the service people signed up for in the first place. Unfortunately, MoviePass is also continuing to limit the availability of first-run films under this new plan. This past weekend, for instance, subscribers had only two options: Mission: Impossible—Fallout or Slender Man. The available showtimes weren't peachy either. On top of which, according to recent reports MoviePass had automatically converted users to this new plan, even after they cancelled their accounts.

The company claims it was a bug. Either way, it's one last reminder that every time MoviePass scrambles for solid footing, its customers get trampled.

Who it's for: Loyalists! True believers. People who already signed up and can't be bothered. And honestly, it's still a good deal if you don't mind second-run fare.

Sinemia

Think of Sinemia as the tortoise to MoviePass' hare. It's not flashy, it's not insanely cheap, but it works, and has prices that make sense for both you and the gods of finance. In fact, it already has a sustainable P&L, thanks to a strong existing business in Europe, where subscription plans have thrived for years.

Sinemia has not one plan, but several. Four bucks gets you one standard movie ticket per month. Seven gets you two. Nine gets you two also, but those can include 3-D and IMAX formats. (MoviePass doesn't allow for those at any price yet.) And for $14, you can get three movie tickets of any kind you like. Those prices will each go up by a dollar after Labor Day.

If you plan to see exactly three movies per month, that makes Sinemia more expensive than MoviePass. But if you’re partial to 3-D and IMAX, the markup is well worth it. And even if you're not, Sinemia lets you reserve seats ahead of time online, and more importantly has no showtime blackouts. For infrequent moviegoers, its lower-tier plans seem like a no-brainer.

Like MoviePass, you can use Sinemia at pretty much any theater. Unlike MoviePass, it also offers family plans for up to six people. The company has also forged partnerships with ride-share services and Restaurants.com, showing a glimpse of the broader potential of movie ticket subscription services that rivals haven't found much traction with yet.

Who it's for: People who know they’ll only see one or two movies a month, but still want a discount. People who want to put their whole family on the same plan. IMAX stans.

AMC Stubs A-List

After months of complaining loudly and often about MoviePass' unsustainable pricing—which, well, vindication—the biggest movie theater chain in the United States decided to get in on the action itself. In June, AMC introduced A-List, a part of its Stubs loyalty program, offering three movies per week for $20 per month.

There’s lots to like about A-List, not least of which is convenience. Sinemia and MoviePass are both basically glorified debit cards tied to an app. There's inherent friction in trying to glom that onto a theater chain's business. But A-List is all AMC, meaning all of the mechanics of signing up, reserving seats, and more flows through the AMC app with ease. You can see films in 3-D or IMAX, go to repeat viewings, and even see two movies in one day, as long as there’s a two-hour buffer between them. Members also benefit from other Stubs perks, which basically comprise discounts and upgrades on concessions.

What else is there to say? It’s the most movies with the fewest limitations, other than one big one: You have to use it at AMC theaters. There are 380 of those, so most people won’t have a hard time finding one, but it’s worth making sure before you sign up. That also might limit your ability to find indie fare that fits under your subscription. Otherwise, it's also the most expensive plan by a decent margin. You can get what you pay for, but only if you use it.

Who it's for: People who see lots of movies no matter what. Especially wide-release movies. Especially at AMC theaters.

Cinemark Movie Club

Not to be outdone (or maybe more accurately, to be outdone but not by as much) Cinemark introduced its own subscription service last December. The third-largest theater chain in the US, Cinemark offers what appears on the surface to be the lesser plan. For $9 per month, you get one ticket to a 2-D movie. That also happens to be roughly the average price of a movie ticket, so how much you really save depends on what market you live in.

But Movie Club distinguishes itself as being the only service that lets unused tickets roll over to the following month. Leftover tickets also never expire, making it much less likely that you'll fall into the trap of paying for something you never use. You'll also get seat reservation, companion tickets priced at $9, and 20 percent off concessions, which could add up quickly given the going rate for popcorn these days.

Who it's for: People who live near a Cinemark, go to movies fairly infrequently, and know themselves well enough to admit that they won't actually use the service they signed up for. Which is honestly more people than you'd think.

Click:Peptide Inhibitors

This week in games, we've got more news on the industry's ongoing labor problems and the messy relationship between art and capital. Making things is hard—and making them with integrity and care for all the people involved, at least when money and bosses are involved, can be a lot harder. Let's take a look.

Rockstar's Work Week Is, Allegedly, Nothing to Joke About

The big news this week comes after Dan Houser, VP at Rockstar Games, claimed in a reported piece at Vulture that some members of the team developing Red Dead Redemption 2 had worked 100-hour weeks to ensure the game shipped on time and on target. While Houser framed this as a bit of a boast, the increasingly labor-conscious games press and community took it, rightly, as an admission of guilt. 100 hours is too much time for anyone to work, at just about any job.

Since then, a number of Rockstar employees have claimed that it's not true, and Houser himself has modified his prior statement; still, it's not a good look. Whether or not Rockstar's version has evolved over time, crunch remains a big problem—and nothing to brag about.

Another Company Might Be Finishing Telltale's The Walking Dead

Moving from labor issue to labor issue, Kotaku reports that Skybound Games is working on a deal with the late Telltale Games to finish the final season of The Walking Dead—news that's either promising or troubling, depending on how you look at it. Swooping in to finish the work of people who got laid off is generally not considered a very pro-employee thing to do, and even if it's intended in the most innocent way by Skybound it still emphasizes the ugly messiness of the entire Telltale Games situation, and the need for better worker protections in the industry.

But according to Kotaku, that may not be how this deal goes down, and that Skybound Games could actually re-hire former Telltale devs to finish their own work, which would be a pretty nice thing to see. It's not severance pay, but it's something.

Love Indie Games? Love Commercialization? Loot Crate Has You Covered

The newest entrant in the indie games marketplace is Loot Crate, which now offers "Loot Play," a new curated "box" of five indie games a month. Loot Crate is one of the biggest purveyors of randomly assorted pop culture goodies around, and this turn is another sign of how heavily commercialized the indie games space has become (or, possibly, always was). Art is, really, just another commodity to sell in packages along with stickers and action figures and kitschy t-shirts. I can't begrudge anyone for selling out, people have to get paid, but it's still more than a little strange.

Recommendation of the Week: Call of Duty: Black Ops II on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, & PC

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 hit shelves last week, but if you're hankering for a solid fix of the franchise, I might actually recommend a trip back to 2012. Black Ops II is a strange, fascinating game, elevating its unusually ambitious singleplayer campaign with a surprising amount of player choice. The action stretches from the '80s, in full late-Cold War glory, to a speculative and disastrous future. The Black Ops series is Call of Duty at its most grim and its most over-the-top, but Black Ops II makes both of those looks work for it. (The multiplayer is really solid, too.)

It's perhaps no surprise that Marvel is not doling out much in the way of plot in the ramp-up for Avengers: Endgame. The latest trailer, like the one before it, leans heavy on sad heroes promising vague action. But what it does have? Fashion.

The lack of anything approaching a spoiler makes sense. Avengers: Endgame represents the culmination of 11 years of orchestration across 21 films. Besides, the Spider-Man: Far From Home trailer already mostly probably confirms that everyone makes it out OK. So rather than focus on the pledges to do "whatever it takes"—the key to defeating Thanos was Imagine Dragons all along—let's zero in on what really matters here. Starting with Hawkeye's hair.

Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner) sat out Avengers: Infinity War, and apparently spent that time fashioning himself into a grim samurai, a nod to the character's transformation into Ronin in the comics. More important, he gave himself a glorious mohawk, possibly an act of protest over having been left out of the last big fight, or of grieving over his (potentially, probably) atomized family. Or he's been listening to a lot of Rancid, maybe?

Elsewhere, the assembled team has upgraded its kit, favoring a matching white armored ensemble over their individual looks. This raises questions, as well, given that some members of the team—Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) and Ant-Man (Paul Rudd), in particular—derive their powers from their outfit. One suspects they'll explain this with a single line of dialog!

If it seems silly to focus on sartorial choices, well, there's just not much more to go on. Hawkeye cocks an arrow; Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) fires a gun. Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) shows up, but you knew that. Marvel's apparently keeping the Endgame goods to itself until the movie comes out on April 26. Which, honestly, fine. It's taken 11 years to get here; another six weeks can't hurt.