Entertainment
Why Meghan Markle’s Royal Life Was Always Headed For Disaster
Meghan Markle’s royal wedding looked like something out of a fairytale, but according to a new book, the signs that her life inside the monarchy would unravel may have been there all along. In “Divide & Rule,” author Catherine Mayer argues Meghan’s eventual exit from royal life was not entirely shocking in hindsight, but rather the result of a deep cultural mismatch between the Duchess of Sussex and the institution she married into.
The former “Suits” actress entered the Royal Family in 2018 alongside Prince Harry, with many hoping the marriage would modernize the monarchy. As the family’s first biracial member and an outspoken feminist, Meghan appeared to symbolize change.
But Mayer suggests the very traits that initially made Meghan seem like a breath of fresh air may have also made royal life impossible to sustain. “How did the dream crumble?” Mayer asks, arguing that Meghan’s differences ultimately “would count against her.”
Markle Was ‘Too Different’ For Palace Life, Author Suggests
According to Mayer, one of the biggest signs Meghan may have struggled as a royal was simply who she already was before she met Harry. Unlike other women who married into the monarchy, Meghan had spent years building her own career, public image, and platform.
Long before becoming the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan openly shared opinions on lifestyle, fashion, politics, and activism through her now-defunct blog, The Tig. Mayer argues that Meghan’s personality, ambitious, independent, and outspoken, never naturally aligned with the traditional expectations placed on senior royals. The author even points to Meghan’s admiration for “She-Ra, Princess of Power” as an early sign she valued independence and agency.
Before meeting Harry, Meghan once identified with the fictional heroine because she represented strength and self-determination, qualities Mayer suggests were difficult to reconcile with palace expectations. Even after announcing her engagement, Meghan made clear she did not view joining the monarchy as giving up who she was.
“I don’t see it as giving anything up. I just see it as a change. It’s a new chapter, right?” Meghan said during her engagement interview. At the time, the comments sounded hopeful. In hindsight, Mayer suggests they may have foreshadowed the friction to come.
California Culture And Palace Life Were Never A Natural Match
Mayer also argues Meghan’s California upbringing may have made palace culture especially difficult to navigate. The book describes California as a place where emotional openness, ambition, self-expression, and even public vulnerability are embraced, a sharp contrast to the famously reserved traditions of the British monarchy.
That disconnect reportedly surfaced in subtle but revealing moments. Meghan previously recalled feeling surprised by Prince William and Princess Kate’s reaction to her casual nature. “They came over for dinner, I remember I was in ripped jeans, and I was barefoot,” Meghan once shared. “I was a hugger. I’ve always been a hugger. I didn’t realize that is really jarring for a lot of Brits.”
According to Mayer, interactions like these underscored Meghan’s difficulty adapting to what the author describes as “Planet Windsor,” the rigid, highly structured world of royal protocol.
Prince Harry Compared Royal Life To ‘An Unending Truman Show’
Complicating matters further, even Harry has acknowledged how difficult royal life can be for outsiders to understand. In the Sussexes’ Netflix series, the Duke of Sussex described royal life as “this surreal state, this unending Truman Show.”
Harry also highlighted just how unusual palace customs can feel to someone entering the family from the outside. “How do you explain that you bow to your grandmother?” he previously mused.
According to Mayer, no amount of Googling or preparation could have fully prepared Meghan for the reality of royal life, one involving relentless scrutiny, limited privacy, palace aides, and strict traditions.
Why Meghan Markle Could Never Be The ‘Perfect Royal’
The book ultimately argues that Meghan was never likely to succeed by following the same path as Princess Kate. While Catherine, Princess of Wales, is described as someone who perfected the traditional royal role, Mayer suggests Meghan never could have comfortably embraced the same level of restraint, even if she wanted to.
Instead, Meghan continued to value emotional openness and authenticity, something that became increasingly clear during a 2019 royal tour of South Africa. When asked how she was coping, Meghan candidly admitted the experience had taken a toll. “Thank you for asking, because not many people have asked if I’m OK,” she said at the time. “It’s not enough to just survive something, right? Like, that’s not the point of life. You’ve got to thrive, you’ve got to feel happy.”
For Mayer, moments like those revealed the deeper divide at the center of Meghan’s royal story, a California-born public figure trying to navigate an institution built on tradition, restraint, and silence.
In hindsight, the fairytale may have always been heading toward a very different ending.
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Entertainment
Kevin Costner’s Troubled Western Series Is the Quietly Becomes a Streaming Sleeper Hit
The Western is particularly popular right now, and, in recent memory, few faces are as synonymous with the genre as Kevin Costner. As John Dutton in Taylor Sheridan‘s hugely popular Yellowstone, Costner helped revitalize the Western for a new audience, with the years since packed with big streaming hits, often from other Sheridan projects. However, in May 2023, it was announced that Costner would hang up his cowboy hat and leave Paramount’s flagship series, instead opting to apply his entire focus to a long-time passion project.
Not satisfied with directing, co-writing, producing, and starring in his supposed four-part Western epic Horizon: An American Saga, Costner would also largely self-fund the project that reportedly took him 35 years to make. All the hype surrounding the opening chapter, released in theaters in June 2024, quickly dissipated, as the movie became one of the year’s most high-profile box office flops by earning just $38 million against a supposed $50 million production budget. Following this disaster, the wheels quickly came off the Horizon wagon, as the future of the whole saga was put into doubt.
Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 2, which was filmed at the same time as Chapter 1, was then quickly put back on the shelf, despite being screened at the Venice Film Festival in 2024. The public still awaits the next installment of the epic Western saga, although Costner remains adamant it will see the light of day, telling the Savannah Film Festival that they were looking for “the right distribution partner.” Truthfully, the dramatic Western saga we’ve all been glued to has been happening off-screen, as the many twists and turns in the Horizon story look likely to entice a greater audience to the release of the sequel.
‘Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1’ Is a Streaming Hit
The fascinating story of Horizon behind-the-scenes has helped encourage viewers to check out what all the fuss is about. After its arrival on the streamer recently, Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 has officially placed as one of the ten most-streamed movies on Prime Video in the U.S., at the time of writing. This is despite facing some tough competition from other popular movies, including Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, Despicable Me 4, the Oscar-winning One Battle After Another, and the brand-new Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan: Ghost War.
Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 is streaming now on Prime Video. Stay tuned to Collider for more streaming stories.
- Release Date
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June 28, 2024
- Runtime
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182 minutes
- Producers
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Howard Kaplan, Mark Gillard
Entertainment
Prime Video’s 4-Part Spy Thriller Is So Good, It Resurrected an Entire Genre on Streaming
Jack Ryan is a character whose creation felt like a novelty, as he was highly distinct among the other heroes that emerged in the 1980s. Based on the first novel in Tom Clancy’s popular series of “Ryanverse” novels, The Hunt for Red October introduced Ryan as a fiercely intelligent, deeply honorable CIA agent who later became the lead character in several films, portrayed by acclaimed actors such as Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck, and Chris Pine. However, modern interpretations struggled to remain relevant because Clancy’s politics were grounded in the Cold War, and espionage looked much different in a post-9/11 era. Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan is a great adaptation because it retains the spirit of the author’s original stories yet applies Clancy’s approach to modern issues.
‘Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan’ Isn’t a Traditional Origin Story
As was the case with the original films, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan turned the character into an unlikely hero because he was an analyst, not someone with any fieldwork experience. John Krasinski’s version of Ryan is the CIA’s sharpest expert on international relations and initially teams up with station chief James Greer (Wendell Pierce) to track down a series of irregular bank transfers linked to Middle Eastern terrorists. It would have been easy to pick out different international groups and make them each a “villain of the week,” but Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan doesn’t have the same reverence for American exceptionalism as some of its predecessors did. The most interesting update the series made to the source material is its depiction of Ryan as someone deeply conflicted about his work with the CIA; while he knows that institutional corruption clouds all his actions, it also provides him with an opportunity to do some good.
Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan doesn’t need to delve deeply into Ryan’s backstory because he begins to pick up skills and develop his worldview as he gains more experience. Krasinski’s performance works because he embodies the best traits of his predecessors; he has the quiet intelligence of Baldwin, the moral impeccability of Ford, the sense of humor of Affleck, and even the undeniable charisma of Pine. Krasinski’s Ryan ends up getting into a lot more of the action than the character ever did in the original Clancy books, and it’s not just because a fast-paced television series needed a star who would be willing to do their own stunts. In a modern world where decisions are made from behind a desk or in a secret meeting, Ryan is best able to assess a situation by being there personally. Most international conflicts are a lot more complicated than they are framed as being by Western media, and Ryan frequently comes to the defense of marginalized groups who have been scapegoated.
John Krasinski’s Jack Ryan is pulled back into danger for a surprisingly hollow mission.
Although Krasinski’s performance is what helped to bring the show into existence, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan isn’t just a star vehicle, as it does a great job of developing some of the supporting figures in the “Ryanverse.” Pierce’s performance as Greer is interesting because he has a deeper connection to America’s intelligence community and must fight a different battle to ensure that Ryan’s investigations don’t cause international incidents. Michael Kelly is also a great addition to the show as Mike November, a complex character who left the CIA for ethical reasons to become a private contractor. Since Ryan, Greer, and November have distinct perspectives on justice, the show reaches its peak when the characters work as a triumvirate.
‘Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan’ Is a Modern Spy Thriller
Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan feels most indebted to its cinematic predecessors because each season feels like a standalone adventure, even if it isn’t directly based on one of Clancy’s books. Season 1 explored a terrorist threat to the United States, while also showing the efforts by peaceful Muslims to take down the extremists within their culture; Season 2 looked at the combustible situation in Venezuela in an intelligent way that actually preceded developments in the real world. Season 3 was perhaps the show’s most politically outspoken installment because it called out the failure of democratic nations to stop Russia from amassing significant military power and becoming a dictatorship, while Season 4 ventured even further by showing how vulnerable the United States was to internal threats.
Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan managed to develop Ryan into the type of character who would fit into the later installments in the novel series, and the franchise continued with the sequel Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan: Ghost War, which set the stage for further adventures. Beyond helping to reintroduce Clancy’s writing to a new generation of fans, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan was highly influential on the subgenre of military and espionage-themed action shows that Prime Video would begin churning out, including Reacher, Cross, The Terminal List, and Citadel. Although it’s likely that Krasinski will reprise his role as Ryan in some other project in the near future, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan has played a significant role in redefining the franchise’s legacy.
Love Island USA‘s Beatriz Hatz made some revelations about her dating history — including the significant age difference between her and her ex.
During the Monday, June 8, episode of the Peacock series, Beatriz, now 25, spoke with Gabriel Vasconcelos about the relationships she had in the past and mentioned an ex-boyfriend, saying, “I had two adult relationships. I dated this guy for three years but we would break up and get back together. It wasn’t healthy. He was a lot older than me.”
Gabriel asked the exact difference and Beatriz mentioned a 20-year age gap. In response, Gabriel said he had an ex who was 18 years older than him.
Beatriz isn’t the only one to share a surprising story in the villa. Earlier in the week, the Islanders had to read out sex facts and figure out which of them it was about. One of the revelations was that an Islander slept with someone in their 50s.
Love Island USA is all about coupling up — so which Islanders are currently together and which have already called it quits in the villa? Peacock’s popular dating show returned in June 2026 with contestants Aniya Harvey, Beatriz Hatz, Bryce Alakai Dettloff, KC Chandler, Mackenzie “Kenzie” Annis, Melanie Moreno, Sincere Rhea, Sean Reifel, Trinity Tatum […]
“I was out and I was having a good time with my friends. She started talking to me and she was hot as f*** for her age,” Gabriel, who is 26 years old, said about his encounter with the 52-year-old. “We had a good night together. She had a lot of experience.”
Gabriel’s sexual history was then joked about when narrator Iain Stirling compared him to a “reverse Leonardo DiCaprio” due to the actor’s dating history. In addition to Gabriel and Beatriz, season 8 of Love Island USA features Aniya Harvey, Bryce Alakai Dettloff, KC Chandler, Mackenzie “Kenzie” Annis, Melanie Moreno, Sincere Rhea, Sean Reifel, Trinity, Corbin Mims, Kayda Bosse and Zach Georgiou.
The Peacock show was also meant to feature Vasana Montgomery, who was cut from season 8 of Love Island USA after resurfaced social media posts showed her using a slur. Vasana was removed from the show before she got a chance to enter the villa. Both clips were leaked from her private social media, which meant producers weren’t privy to the posts while casting the season.
“I want to address a couple videos from my teen years that have recently resurfaced,” she wrote via her Instagram Story this month. “In those videos, I used a racial slur. I am embarrassed and disappointed by my words.”
Vasana noted that she wanted to take accountability for her actions.
“I take full responsibility for what I said and understand why it has hurt and upset people,” she continued. “Since then, I have grown a lot as a person and taken the time to educate myself, listen, learn, and better understand the impact that language can have.”
She added, “That growth does not erase my mistake, and 1am not asking anyone to excuse it. I believe people should be held accountable for their actions, but I also believe in growth, learning, and becoming better. To anyone I hurt or disappointed, I am truly sorry.”
New episodes of Love Island USA are released six days a week — except for Wednesdays — on Peacock.
Join Us Weekly and Bracketology.tv in our first-ever Love Island USA fantasy league! This is your chance to predict who you think will win Season 8 and rank the Islanders weekly based on how confident you are that they will survive the next elimination. You will be playing against our editors, get access to exclusive content and have the chance to win fun prizes. Sign up for free today!
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Right now, there’s a lot of buzz about Hollywood box office earnings. Some movies thought to be surefire hits are floundering, like The Mandalorian & Grogu: despite being the first Star Wars film in seven years, it had the poorest opening weekend of any live-action film in the franchise. When you factor in the costs of marketing, it’s possible it still won’t make enough (reportedly, at least $500 million) to break even. Meanwhile, the horror genre is cleaning up: with Backrooms, 20-year-old Kane Parsons became the youngest director to reach number one at the box office. Meanwhile, Obsession has earned over $224 million and was made for only $750,000.
With these movies making so many headlines, you might have overlooked another movie making surprising box office history. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie just quietly became the first film of 2026 to make over a billion dollars. This was the sequel to The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which went on to earn a jaw-dropping $1.4 billion. The sequel may yet hit that mark, and it’s already proven to be the most successful film of the year. That’s good news for superfans of this plucky plumber. But it’s bad news for everyone else, because the success of this subpar sequel ensures that cinematic slop is here to stay.
(Good) Mario Is Missing
To get this started, I need to rip the band-aid off with a harsh truth: The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is bad. Like, really, really bad. On Rotten Tomatoes, it currently has a critical score of 42 percent. Generally speaking, critics griped about everything feeling weightless and meaningless in this movie, and that the threadbare story was practically tacked onto the animation as an afterthought. This is significantly lower than The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which had a critical score of 59 percent. Fans were also disappointed: while the first film had a fan rating of 95 percent, the second one had a lower rating of 88 percent.
Why does the success of The Super Mario Galaxy Movie bum me out? For one thing, it always sucks to see crappy movies rake in money left and right because it’s a reminder that genuinely good films usually suffer at the box office. For example, Masters of the Universe was an attempt to revive He-Man (Mario’s fellow traveler from the ‘80s) for modern moviegoers. It’s a movie that critics liked better than either of the Mario films (it has a 67 percent critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes), but it earned less than $30 million in its opening weekend. Considering that its budget was $170 million, chances are high that this fan-favorite film won’t be getting a sequel.
A Failed Cinematic Universe
That’s a shame because, while He-Man isn’t exactly a new property, it’s a revival of a franchise that hasn’t had a film in nearly 40 years. Accordingly, it felt like a fresh-but-faithful labor of love from truly passionate creators. Now that The Super Mario Galaxy Movie has earned over $1 billion worldwide, we’re almost certainly going to get more movies exactly like it: rushed sequels that lack all of the charm and originality of the earlier movie. Obsession and Backrooms may be proving the viability of original, low-budget horror movies, but studios chasing billion-dollar box office are going to crank out their own sequel slop as bad (or worse) than The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.
While the success of this subpar movie is bad enough for other IPs, it’s arguably even worse for its own. While not perfect, The Super Mario Bros. Movie laid the groundwork for an entire cinematic universe with its cool characters, engaging plot, and memeworthy moments (like Jack Black’s demented “Peaches” song). By comparison, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie has tired characters (with the exception of Star Fox), a paint-by-numbers plot, and few memorable moments. Worse, the few memorable moments we do get are tied to forgettable action sequences. Be honest, now: if this is how bad the second Mario movie is, can you imagine how awful the third and fourth ones will be?
Slop In, Slop Out
It’s hard to say without sounding like an old man yelling at clouds (to be fair, one of those clouds was throwing spiky dudes at me), but The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is symbolic of everything wrong with Hollywood. It’s not a terrible movie, but it just never even comes close to its full potential. Nonetheless, it made so much money that the studio (and countless other studios chasing fortune and glory) will put in as little effort as possible into more crappy sequels than anything original. Why should they put in any more effort, though? We vote with our dollars, and when people pay top dollar for low-tier slop, they just get more of the same.
Slop in, slop out. Sorry, movie lovers: thanks to The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, your good films are in another castle!
Entertainment
“The View” cohost questions Laverne Cox on dating pro-Trump police officer: 'Didn't plan to fall in love'
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Cox previously faced blowback after opening up about her past relationship with a “blue-eyed, Republican MAGA voter.”
Before Netflix had Wednesday Addams (Jenna Ortega) going viral for her dark, gothic dance in Wednesday, Archie Comics had already given the world a character with the same vibes, and Netflix’s live-action took her to the next level. Although that series got cancelled on Netflix, the character is now making a fresh return with a new release this year.
The return comes because Archie Comics is celebrating its 85th anniversary, and the publisher is releasing a new line of comics from October through November. The last time fans heard from the character played by Kiernan Shipka was back when Netflix dragged the character into candlelight, covens, blood rituals, infernal politics, and Greendale horror. That version ended on Netflix in 2020 after four seasons, and the cancellation left fans with the usual bitter feeling that the world still had more story to tell.
Now, Sabrina officially returns in Sabrina the Teenage Witch #1, launching from Oni Press and Archie Comics in October 2026 as part of a new line that also includes Archie #1 in September and Archie in Hell #1 in November. Sabrina Spellman has been away from the mainstream spotlight since Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina ended in 2020. The new comic book is written by Corinna Bechko with art by Kano, and early details place Sabrina back in teenage-witch territory, where she’s balancing high school, Halloween, Salem, and her newly discovered magical birthright.
Audiences Have Always Been Exposed to Different Versions of Sabrina
Sabrina Spellman has had one of the strangest second lives in modern teen fantasy. For one generation, she was the sunny sitcom (Sabrina the Teenage Witch) witch, played by Melissa Joan Hart, with a talking black cat, two aunts, school crushes, and spells that usually ended in sitcom cleanup. Then, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina turned the Archie Comics icon into a darker fantasy heroine for viewers who wanted their coming-of-age stories with demons in the walls.
Since then, Sabrina’s place inside the Archie universe has been present, but not as cleanly defined as it was during the Netflix run. The comics side has had its own horror material, scattered specials, and different attempts to keep the character active, but there has not been one obvious “this is Sabrina’s next big era” moment for fans to latch onto. That is why Archie’s 85th-anniversary celebration feels like the cleanest reset point in years.
Sabrina the Teenage Witch from Archie Comics and Oni Press officially returns in October 2026, followed by Archie in September and Archie in Hell in November. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
- Release Date
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2018 – 2020-00-00
- Showrunner
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Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa
- Directors
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Rob Seidenglanz, Alex Pillai, Kevin Rodney Sullivan
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Andrea Kimi Antonelli may have won the Monaco Grand Prix, but we’re ready to give Catherine Zeta-Jones a trophy of her own. The 56-year-old actress arrived at the Formula 1 race dressed to impress, and while her floral Camilla jumpsuit quickly caught our eye, we soon focused our attention on her footwear style. Instead of rocking strappy sandals or stilettos, the Wednesday star wore sleek black sneakers, giving Us the green light to do the same for upcoming outdoor events.
To be honest, summer shoes are one thing we often stress about, especially since the season feels like a rotation of backyard barbecues and outdoor festivals, many of which call for cute, flowy sundresses or jumpsuits. Heels tend to sink into the grass, wedges can be tough to walk in and ballet flats leave behind nasty blisters, but tried and true sneakers rarely fail — except when they lean too casual. Zeta-Jones, however, appears to disagree; her outfit proves that black sneakers with a slight white platform work just as well with elegant outfits as they do with laid-back denim shorts.
Get the Project Cloud Trendy Fashion Sneakers for $50 at Amazon! Please note, prices are accurate as of the publishing date but are subject to change.
Although the exact shoes the star wore remain unknown, Project Cloud’s Trendy Fashion Sneakers nail the same chic look for just $50.
Aside from twinning with its slimmer silhouette and platform design, the pair was also built for comfort, making it perfect for events that require lots of walking or standing. Made of lightweight, breathable canvas and a memory foam insole, the cool-girl shoes feel comfortable and provide ample support. And, while the thick bottom keeps them looking extra stylish, the non-slip rubber sole with a rocker toe adds traction, so you’ll be able to avoid embarrassing tumbles as you go from grass to concrete to sandy boardwalk and back again.
Amazon shoppers describe the Project Cloud pick as “comfort meets fashion,” noting that it’s the ideal “everyday sneaker to go with everything.”
“The detailing is impressively high-end, and they are comfortable the first day,” one person revealed, while another added the shoes “look amazing” and garner “lots of compliments from everyone.”
“I am a teacher, so I am on my feet all day long and need something that is comfortable, but I still want something fashionable as well,” wrote one reviewer. “I found both in these shoes! They fit nicely and have a very lightweight feel to them. They are very sleek-looking, and I have received many compliments on them. I am able to teach for eight hours without my feet hurting.”
No matter what outdoor celebrations you have on your calendar for the months ahead, save yourself some stress — and a few aches and pains — by swapping uncomfortable summer shoes for these popular sneakers that work just as well. If this elevated style is good enough for Zeta-Jones (who was surrounded by an extremely wealthy, stylish crowd at the race), it’s good enough for every fashionista. Grab a pair now and make it your new go-to!
Get the Project Cloud Trendy Fashion Sneakers for $50 at Amazon! Please note, prices are accurate as of the publishing date but are subject to change.
Looking for something else? Explore more black sneakers here and don’t forget to check out all of Amazon’s Daily Deals for more great finds!
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Right now, Starfleet Academy is in a very weird place. The show was canceled almost immediately after Season 1 ended, and the most likely reason is that it just didn’t have enough viewers to justify a renewal. However, Season 2 has already been filmed, meaning that we are (unless the network Batgirls the thing) likely to see more adventures of these controversial cadets. That means that Paramount can’t really say anything definitive about why the show ended for fear of diminishing the audience even further. For that same reason, none of the powers that be at Star Trek can say anything even remotely critical about it.
Or can they? Recently, Strange New Worlds showrunners Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso gave an interview explaining what fans could look forward to with this show’s fourth season. This mostly concerned character development and just how much work went into the dreaded muppet episode. However, they also went out of their way to emphasize how this season wasn’t going to have its own “Big Bad.” Goldsman elaborated that this meant nothing like the Gorn or the Vezda, but these guys were never Big Bads in the traditional sense of the term. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but this sounded like a different reassurance altogether: that SNW would be nothing like Starfleet Academy!
Big Bad Or Just A Big Bite?
In a recent interview with Polygon, Strange New Worlds showrunner Akiva Goldsman said that Strange New Worlds Season 4 is going to have more of an episodic, Original Series style of storytelling. That means no “Big Bad” whose story would take multiple episodes to complete, like the Gorn in the first two seasons and the Vezda in Season 3. However, these guys weren’t Big Bads as we know the term. The Gorn made a couple of scary appearances in Season 1 and were part of a Season 2 cliffhanger, but they weren’t an ongoing concern. Similarly, the Vezda appeared in only two Season 3 episodes, where they showed the ability to possess various bodies.
Both the Gorn and the Vezda are faceless bad guys. Like, the Gorn are presented as Star Trek’s version of the xenomorphs, and they are scary because they are unknowable. The Vezda, meanwhile, are quite literally faceless, having to take over others’ bodies to give themselves a properly corporeal form. The term “Big Bad” was coined by Buffy the Vampire Slayer writers to refer to the dominant villain of each season. Big Bads included demons like Mayor Wilkins, former allies like Angelus and Dark Willow, occasional gods like Glory, and so on. These villains usually had at least half a season of development and served as big personalities for our heroes to consistently bounce off of.
Star Trek’s Latest Big Bad
What does this have to do with Starfleet Academy? Strange New Worlds didn’t have Buffy-style Big Bads: the Gorn and the Vezda were minor parts of their respective seasons, and they aren’t exactly villains for our heroes to bounce off of. The Gorn don’t talk, and the Vezda can only hop into others’ bodies to spout vaguely threatening comments about evil. But there was a recent Star Trek show with a larger-than-life villain whose oversized personality dominated the entire season. In Starfleet Academy, Paul Giamatti’s Nus Braka appears in half of Season 1, including an explosive entrance in the first episode and an extremely memorable bow in the last episode.
Nus Braka cast a long shadow over Starfleet Academy’s entire first season. He’s part of Caleb’s dark origin story and has an outsized effect on the cadet’s development. He outwits the cadets and their mentors, managing to blow up a Starfleet vessel and steal classified research with which he used to threaten the entire Federation. While I personally thought Giamatti gave a great performance, the fact remains that if you don’t like his character, you’re probably not going to like the show because he’s just in it so much.
Big Bads? Zero. Muppets? One
That brings us back to Akiva Goldsman’s comments to Polygon about Strange New Worlds Season 4 having no Big Bads. Because the show never really had proper, Buffy-style Big Bads, my theory is that the showrunner was quietly distancing his own show from Starfleet Academy. His comment is a way of saying that SNW didn’t go all-in on a single villain, so you don’t have to worry about an overused enemy driving you away. That is, of course, part of the show’s episodic charm: as with earlier shows like The Original Series and The Next Generation, the sheer variety of stories means that even if you hate one episode, you may love the next.
So, call me a conspiracy theorist if you must (just don’t make me wear one of those neck bugs from “Conspiracy”), but Akiva Goldsman’s comments about no Big Bads in Strange New Worlds Season 4 seem like a coded way of saying “don’t worry, it won’t be like Starfleet Academy.” That might upset some fans who would prefer more solidarity between shows and showrunners. But to anyone who hated SFA (especially if they hated it because of Nus Braka), this might be just enough reassurance for them to tune into Strange New Worlds when it premieres July 23rd on Paramount+.
Since a good many crime movies have a “crime doesn’t pay” thing going on (especially those made some time ago), it’s not exactly the happiest of genres. Even crime movies that focus on good people can showcase bad things happening to them, and then the really effective ones can also make you feel bad for people who themselves are doing bad things.
There’s a real variety here, and so even if all these movies stand out for being particularly bleak, they are downbeat for a wide range of reasons. They’re all among the heaviest crime movies ever made, and there will be an attempt not to go into too much detail, as far as spoilers are concerned. Knowing something is heavier than might be expected could be a spoiler, sure, but there will be an avoidance of too many details, especially regarding stuff that happens toward the end of these movies.
10
‘No Country for Old Men’ (2007)
The plot of No Country for Old Men concerns the aftermath of a drug deal gone wrong, with a man discovering the site and a large quantity of cash left abandoned there. Things get complicated because there’s also a ruthless assassin out to collect the money, and then an older sheriff is also following – and trying to solve – the whole messy case, but is continually at least one or two steps behind the assassin.
Technically, No Country for Old Men is a Western, or more specifically, a neo-Western. Either way, it ranks among the most distressing and anxiety-inducing Westerns of all time, and since it involves criminal characters and then has at least one prominent character on the right side of the law, it also fits quite neatly into the crime genre. However you want to classify it, the whole film is kind of a nightmare, albeit a very compelling one that’s nightmarish without technically belonging to the horror genre (but hey, there’s never been any rule that says a movie has to be a work of horror to feel frightening).
9
‘Se7en’ (1995)
Se7en is one of the best crime/thriller movies of the 1990s, and also a top-tier one as far as films that focus on a hunt for a serial killer are concerned. That’s almost another sub-genre in itself, with Se7en sticking out from the pack because its central killer is someone who’s basing all their murders on the seven deadly sins, and then also standing out further because of how grim it’s willing to get.
The entire film is thematically dark while also being visually dark and despondent, with a good deal of dread early on that increases in severity and intensity – infamously so – right near the film’s end. Se7en gets a lot of things right, and even if you don’t really like feel-bad movies, it’s still one worth checking out at some point, since it’s incredibly well-made on top of being, at times, incredibly morbid.
8
‘Uncut Gems’ (2019)
“Fun” might not be a very good word to use to describe Uncut Gems, yet it is probably the most traditionally entertaining movie here. Granted, you have to be okay with feeling on edge for most of its runtime, since Uncut Gems is notoriously stressful, albeit willing to balance all the anxiety with some very dark comedy (in that sense, Adam Sandler is well-utilized, since he gets some opportunities to be funny in a somewhat unusual manner here).
Basically, the whole film is about a man who gets himself in continually worsening trouble with various shady individuals, but he brings it on himself, since he’s chasing an unattainable high, and doing so involves gambling, hustling, and borrowing risky amounts of money. Uncut Gems is as much of an ordeal as its reputation suggests, yet it is darkly entertaining at times, and impressively breathless, too.
7
‘You Were Never Really Here’ (2017)
You could possibly call You Were Never Really Here a thriller of sorts if you really wanted to, though it’s certainly on the slow side of things, as far as that genre goes. Maybe it’s more of a psychological thriller/drama film, and then there’s also a noticeable crime element here, since it’s about a mercenary unraveling mentally while taking on a network of human traffickers, all in pursuit of rescuing a young girl.
The comparisons to Taxi Driver were fairly made, which is another crime movie of sorts about a troubled man who is something of a vigilante, and an exceptionally troubled one at that. You Were Never Really Here is also notable for clocking in at just an hour-and-a-half in length, but it’s fair to assume it’s the kind of thing that’ll stick with you long after it (rather quickly) comes to a close.
6
‘The Godfather Part II’ (1974)
Trying to find a problem with The Godfather (1972) is difficult, since it’s a pretty much perfect gangster movie and all. Maybe there’s a romanticization of the mafia, to some extent, which could very slightly/gently rub people a way that’s, if not quite wrong, then isn’t exactly right, but it’s a stretch. If that was a flaw, though, or if you feel it was a flaw, then The Godfather Part II goes a fair way in “correcting” it.
There were tragic scenes in The Godfather for sure, but The Godfather Part II is where the whole saga becomes an outright – and unapologetic – tragedy.
This is a much darker film, since there were a few more characters with redeeming qualities in the first movie, and they’re either dead by the time The Godfather Part II starts, or they’re in the process of shedding the redeeming qualities they might once have had (oh hi, Michael). There were tragic scenes in The Godfather for sure, but The Godfather Part II is where the whole saga becomes an outright – and unapologetic – tragedy in the classical sense.
5
‘Once Upon a Time in America’ (1984)
Another epic-length crime movie, Once Upon a Time in America condenses what could well have been a trilogy into one massive film. The sense of it being a little like a trilogy comes from the fact that it’s about three distinctive time periods, with the characters being explored as children, then as relatively young adults, and then some of them (those who survive) in old age. If told chronologically, it would make sense for three films – or three acts – to focus on each respective stage.
With Once Upon a Time in America, though, things aren’t told in a strictly chronological manner, which makes things extra interesting in ways that become more apparent as the film goes on. Also, all three stages of life depicted here are heavy in their own ways, with childhood tragedies, young adult depravities, and then old age regret making most of the movie difficult to watch and deeply troubling, just for varied reasons. It is still an incredible film, but you have to be in the right mood, and also prepared to sit with challenging stuff for almost four hours (or even a little longer, if you’re watching the longest cut of Once Upon a Time in America).
4
‘The Irishman’ (2019)
Martin Scorsese’s gangster movies made prior to 2019 certainly had their heavy moments (Casino demonstrates this particularly well), but none were quite as despair-filled as The Irishman. This one does something similar to Once Upon a Time in America, and also stars Robert De Niro (Joe Pesci is in both, too), but there’s an emphasis on old age in The Irishman, befitting the fact that its director and many of its stars were in their 70s while making the film.
The film spans many years, but drives home death as something that hangs over everyone to a particularly great extent, given the violent lifestyles they’re wrapped up in. The Irishman is one of the most effective movies about mortality of the century so far, and is uniquely heavy-going in large part thanks to the age of many important people involved in its production. If you’re not quite as old, then you can at least imagine the film hitting even harder once you are.
3
‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ (2023)
Yet for as somber as The Irishman was, Killers of the Flower Moon – which was Scorsese’s first film post-The Irishman – might’ve had it beat, in terms of sheer sadness and despair. This epic movie’s centered on a series of crimes committed against the Osage people during the 1920s, all done because the land they were on turned out to be rich in oil, and various other people wanted to do whatever they could to obtain the wealth that comes with, you know, having a lot of oil.
There Will Be Blood is more of a drama than a crime film, but deals with a somewhat similar thing, though Killers of the Flower Moon has it happening on an even greater scale, and with more death and (arguably) harder-to-watch devastation, too. Like The Irishman, it makes you feel down for a lengthy amount of time, too, since both epics clock in at just under three-and-a-half hours each.
2
‘Dancer in the Dark’ (2000)
Dancer in the Dark is a movie about a crime, and the ensuing trial, but it’s also a musical at the same time… one of the bleakest of all time, too. The main character is a woman named Selma (played by Björk), and she’s going blind while trying to earn enough money to get her son an operation that’ll prevent him from also going blind as he gets older. The musical elements come about because she’s a fan of musicals, and she daydreams her way through fantastical musical numbers to cope with the hardships of her life.
Those hardships are initially bleak, and then everything gets a lot bleaker once Dancer in the Dark eventually reveals itself as a crime movie, on top of being a musical. It’s a uniquely devastating film, and perhaps one of the rawest of the past few decades, not to mention one of those movies that’s easy to recommend people watch once, but much harder to recommend anyone revisit… the one time is probably enough.
1
‘Angst’ (1983)
Like Se7en, Angst is about a serial killer, but unlike Se7en – and a bunch of movies concerning serial killers – Angst is not about detectives trying to hunt down and stop a serial killer. The man who does the killing here is the central character, and Angst follows him as he targets a family, invades their home, and then carries out a series of crimes against them in horrific detail.
It runs the risk of feeling like exploitation, but there’s too much by way of genuinely great filmmaking craft to make Angst feel exploitative in a detrimental way. The film’s just brutal and uncompromising, succeeding in depicting the absolute terror that would be felt, if one were targeted by a violent home invader. It’s also all in the presentation and sheer effort toward feeling grounded and believable that makes Angst uniquely mortifying, and perhaps even the heaviest crime-related movie ever made.
Angst
- Release Date
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January 1, 1983
- Runtime
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75 Minutes
- Director
-
Gerald Kargl
- Writers
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Gerald Kargl, Zbigniew Rybczyński
-
-
Robert Hunger-Bühler
Psychopath (voice)
Entertainment
Forget ‘Mindhunter,’ HBO’s 10-Part Stephen King Miniseries Is the Perfect Weekend Binge
When Mindhunter debuted on Netflix in 2017, it became an immediate hit. For two seasons, David Fincher‘s psychological thriller followed two FBI agents tracking down the worst killers. Mindhunter ended much too soon in 2019, but if you’re searching for something similar and missed out on it the first time around, check out HBO‘s The Outsider. The 2020 miniseries is an adaptation of Stephen King‘s novel of the same name. It follows two detective-types as well, played to perfection by Ben Mendelsohn and Cynthia Erivo, as they come face to face with a different, even more terrifying kind of killer. Produced, co-directed, and co-starring Jason Bateman, The Outsider only needed one season to tell its shocking story.
‘The Outsider’ Is Stephen King’s Take on a Police Procedural
Stephen King’s novel, The Outsider, was published in 2018. On the surface, both the book and the 10-episode miniseries begin like so many other mysteries. A young boy is found murdered, and irrefutable physical evidence leads the police to a coach in town named Terrence Maitland (Bateman). There’s only one problem. Maitland has an airtight alibi which puts him several towns away when the murder occurred. He can’t be the killer, even though fingerprints and DNA samples say otherwise. How can this possibly be?
Enter Stephen King’s mind to take it in a direction that only he can. Investigating the murder are by-the-book detective Ralph Anderson (Mendelsohn) and an unusual private investigator named Holly Gibney (Erivo). The Holly character has appeared in several King books and their adaptations, including Mr. Mercedes. Here, she and Detective Anderson will follow the trail in a search for truth, but what they find will shock them to the bone.
Ben Mendehlson and Cynthia Erivo Encounter an Impossible Monster in ‘The Outsider’
Holly Gibney is not your traditional crime solver. She’s quiet and socially awkward, and carries an air of sadness. What Holly does have is an incredible amount of intelligence. She can figure out things others can’t. This contrast immediately makes her someone to pay attention to. Ralph Anderson is her exact opposite in many ways. He’s the older, grizzled veteran who does things a different way, but like Holly, Ralph carries a heavy weight of sadness. The HBO series goes much bleaker than the novel by making Ralph the father of a child who died of cancer. To add to the layers, his son was also once coached by Terry Maitland.
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HBO Max’s 10-Part Supernatural Crime Series Is Taking Over Streaming Worldwide
The series stars Jason Bateman, Ben Mendelsohn, and Cynthia Erivo.
The Outsider moves from a typical murder mystery to supernatural horror due to its real villain. It’s not giving anything away to reveal that Terry isn’t the real killer, a fact which should be impossible because it’s not only characters who see Terry in the wrong, but the audience as well. The camera doesn’t lie with scenes such as Maitland covered in blood in one place while somehow being miles away in the next scene. Without getting into spoiler territory, The Outsider takes its time unraveling its mystery. Rather than a horror story filled with jump scares, gore, and shocks at every turn, the miniseries is a bleak, slow burn that is more interested in getting to know its characters first before showing the monster. The audience feels for these people, including Terry. Only then can the true terror have any impact, becoming Mindhunter with the restraints of real life ripped away.
‘The Outsider’ Premiered to Phenomenal Reviews
Like Mindhunter, The Outsider is expertly written, with most of the episodes penned by series creator Richard Price. He’s not only one of the writing masterminds behind The Wire, but he is an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, having worked on Martin Scorsese‘s The Color of Money. Price captures the darkness, fear, and paranoia overtaking the residents of Cherokee City, Georgia. He’s not the only one. Bateman is given the tall task of introducing the audience to The Outsider by directing the first two episodes. It’s a job he is more than capable of. The actor has been directing off and on for decades, including movies such as Bad Words, and winning an Emmy for his talents helming Ozark. Like with his popular Netflix series, Bateman showcases the grittiness of a small town and how an invading force gets under the skin of its protagonists. His acting chops are no joke either. The Hollywood A-lister puts the audience on the fence with Terry. Because it’s Bateman and Terry has been shown to have an alibi, the viewer wants to trust him, but there’s also something dark about him that’s impossible to shake. Bateman earned an Outstanding Guest Actor Emmy nomination for his efforts.
Stephen King TV adaptations have been hit-and-miss over the decades. For every IT: Welcome to Derry, there’s an Under the Dome or The Tommyknockers, which miss the mark. There are no worries with The Outsider, which debuted to a stellar 91% Tomatometer on Rotten Tomatoes. Although not perfect, as it arguably lasts a few episodes too long, the characters, especially Ralph and Holly, keep the attention focused even as the plot starts to wane at points. It’s worth it to stick through the meandering middle to reach the frightening end, when the thing responsible for all of this hell shows what it can do.
Even the master of horror himself was a fan, posting on Twitter, “THE OUTSIDER is one of the best adaptations of my work. Hope you’ll watch it.” Collider agreed, putting it as the number one Stephen King TV show ahead of titles such as The Stand and Castle Rock. Six years later, it still hits as hard and is required viewing for fans of Mindhunter, Seven, Zodiac, The Killing, and True Detective. If you haven’t seen it, check out what all the hype is about. The Outsider will hook you and not let go.
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