Did Captain Marvel Save Stan Lee's Best Cameo for Last?
Long before he did one of his now-famous cameos in a Marvel movie, Stan Lee appeared as himself in a film about a bunch of slackers killing time in suburbia. Mallrats was Kevin Smith's second movie after the breakout success of Clerks, and for his follow-up Smith swapped out deep nerdery about Star Wars for…
The Best Albums of the Summer Were Exercises in Reinvention
Summer is a time of intense polarities, of feverish abandon and earned languor. There’s heat and purpose waiting to be seized in those unexpected, life-altering summer nights: on the dancefloor, at the bar, among friends. There’s equal chill, though, in the loss and grief that surface: historically, fatalities spike during hotter months. Yet summer, at…
How to Get a Robot to (One Day) Do Your Chores
Perhaps the greatest outrage in modern robotics is the continued non-existence of the robot housekeeper. Is it really so much to ask for a robot that sweeps and mops and brings you pills on platters, like Rosie from The Jetsons? Actually, it kind of is a lot to ask: A robot that can do even…
What Ryan Murphy's Netflix Show Should Say About Hollywood
There is a moment midway through the first reason of FX's Pose that, more than any before or after it, sums up the show's purpose in the pop landscape. It's the late 1980s and New Jersey everyman Stan Bowes (Evan Peters) is sitting on the couch with his transgender girlfriend, Angel (Indya Moore), and asking…
The Las Vegas Resort Using Microwaves to Keep Guns Out of its Casino
Activate satellite view in Google Maps and head to the Las Vegas strip, and you'll see it: a strange smattering of Y-shaped buildings. Mandalay Bay. Monte Carlo. Treasure Island. The Mirage. Their blueprints put gambling at the center of everything, funneling visitors past slot machines and card tables whether they're en route to a show,…
The 20-Year Journey of The Meg, the Movie the Internet Wouldn't Let Die
The shark wasn't working. It was the mid-'00s, and Jan de Bont—director of such big-screen velocities as Speed and Twister—was showing off a small sculpture of carcharodon megalodon, the ancient shark that was to be the star of his next film, Meg. Based on Steve Alten's 1997 book, about a deep-sea diver who encounters a…
Who's Going to Buy the International Space Station?
For sale: orbiting space station. Room for eight. Fantastic views of Earth. Commercial opportunities for zero-g manufacturing, research lab, or floating hotel. Cost: $3 to 4 billion a year. Any takers? President Trump’s new budget request, released Monday, directs NASA to leave behind the International Space Station and explore the moon as a first step…
There's Going to Be a Breaking Bad Movie (and Other Culture News)
Welcome back to The Monitor, Wired’s round-up of the latest in the world of culture: big casting announcements, can’t-miss trailer-launches, and other film and TV news you might have missed. Think of it as your twice-a-week catch-up on what’s happening now. (Just don’t expect any updates on the actual What’s Happening Now!!–at least until that…
Can a New Kind of Consumerism Help Fight Climate Change?
Boy, it’s hard to stay optimistic these days, what with the impending doom of our species at the hands of … our species. Namely, human-caused climate change. Climbing temperatures are ripping apart ecosystems, and rising seas are already forcing people from their homes. If an asteroid was going to destroy our planet, now would be…
With Black Ops 4, Call of Duty Takes Aim at a Fortnite World
Blackout, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4's new game mode, begins the same way all battle-royale sequences do. You fly over a remote warscape—this time, in a series-appropriate attack helicopter—and drop in, bristling with fear and aggression. What follows is by now a familiar sequence, popularized by battle-royale phenomena like PlayerUnknown's Battleground and Fortnite: scramble…