Universal Pictures debuted the first trailer for Skyscraper during Super Bowl 52 Sunday, and social media users are accusing the Dwayne Johnson blockbuster of ripping off 1988 action classic Die Hard.
The action thriller sees the Fast & Furious and Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle star as former FBI Hostage Rescue Team leader and U.S. war veteran Will Ford, who sports a prosthetic leg and now assesses security for skyscrapers.
While on assignment in China, Ford finds the tallest, safest building in the world suddenly ablaze — and he's been framed for it. Wanted and on the run, Ford must find those responsible, clear his name, and somehow rescue his trapped family from gun-wielding bad guys.
“My family is trapped 244 floors in the air,” Ford says, as he's seen beaten and bloody, using duct tape to fashion makeshift gloves before using rope to tether himself to the stories-high building.
The trailer sees Ford engaging in a one-man war against foreign bad guys with guns, pulling off daredevil feats and impossible escapes, as he attempts to rescue his wife and two young daughters.
Potential moviegoers immediately compared Skyscraper to the original Die Hard, where Bruce Willis' police detective John McClane is forced to single-handedly infiltrate a towering office building to rescue his wife and mother of his two young children.
“So they're remaking Die Hard with the Rock and calling it Skyscraper?” asks Will Kennedy on Twitter.
“Love the trailer for the Rock's new movie Not Die Hard,” jokes Brett Erlich.
Social media users pointed out the obvious similarities, but did point out the minor difference of Will Ford being differently abled with a prosthetic foot:
“Yippy kai-yay IF YOU SMELL WHAT THE ROCK. IS. COOKING,” joked Ken Yeung, while Drew Olanoff dubs the movie “Die Hard: As a Rock.”
Others still compared Skyscraper to 1974 action disaster flick The Towering Inferno, which saw a disastrous fire break out in the world's tallest building.
“I dunno how The Rock has all this time to do terrible good movies, charm his way through [HBO series] Ballers, embarrass [Fast & Furious co-star] Tyrese publicly and still love his family, but somehow he does,” writes Rae Sanni.
“If The Rock wants to keep making the same movie over and over again,” writes Jamal Thalji, “I'm here for that.”
Skyscraper is the latest from Johnson's Seven Bucks Productions, under producers Beau Flynn (San Andreas, Baywatch), Hiram Garcia (San Andreas, Central Intelligence), and director Rawson Marshall Thurber (director of We're the Millers and Central Intelligence).
Yu-Gi-Oh! fans have a lot to look forward to in 2018 because not only will the first movie be screened in U.S. theaters in a new resolution, but it will also premiere the English dub of the newest series in the franchise, VRAINS.
Fathom Events and 4K media are having a special event where the movie will have an extremely limited run in theaters March 11 and 12.
Here's the description of the event:
“Fathom Events and 4K Media are excited to bring the 2004 anime hit, Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie, to cinemas nationwide for two days only on March 11 & 12!
Heroic Yugi squares off against archrival Kaiba in an adventure even more dangerous when the imaginary monsters in their playing cards become ferociously real… and when an old evil enters the fray. Who will win this ultimate smackdown? Whether you’re a novice Duelist or a professional, you’ll want to watch and find out! Recently digitally remastered, this special two-day event also features an exclusive first look of the sixth Yu-Gi-Oh! anime series,Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS!”
Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS has only been available as a simulcast on Crunchyroll in its native Japanese with English subtitles, but Fathom Events has confirmed that the VRAINS preview they will be showing fans in attendance is indeed the first look at the English dub.
Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINSis the fifth version of the series following Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc-Vand started airing in 2017. It takes place ten years into the future, where Duel Monsters is played through virtual reality tech. It follows a young boy named Yusaku who is dueling to defeat a mysterious hacker group that has run rampant throughout the virtual world.
For those unfamiliar with Yu-Gi-Oh!, the series was originally created by Kazuki Takahashi. It ran in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump from September 1996 to March 2004. The series follows Yugi Mutou, a young boy who solves an ancient puzzle and is possessed by the spirit of the Egyptian pharoah. Being skilled at deadly games, the Pharoah goes on to create and solve problems for Yugi based on deadly games of chance.
Two anime series were created for the series, but the one most fans will recognize is Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters. Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsterswas the first arc in the story to focus on the “Duel Monsters” card game and was the first season licensed for an English language release by 4Kids Entertainment. The first season of the series, which fans often dub as “Season 0,” was more focuses on deadly games of chance with horrible consequences. It's a darker season of the series featuring many changes from the series' identity later on.
Fans have spoken, and it seems Dragon Ball FighterZ is the game to beat this year. The much-anticipated title is out now, and its all-out action has got gamers feeling good. Of course, anime fans are also loving the title thanks to its clever anime throwbacks.
So, if you haven’t gotten Yamcha to unleash THAT easter egg yet, then you need to load up your game. You have a treasure to dig up.
If you have played Dragon Ball FighterZ, you know it has a massive roster of characters. Everyone from Goku to Majin Buu are up for grabs, but the game’s top easter egg can only be unlocked with Yamcha and Nappa.
If you set up a match between the two characters, they come into the arena ready to go. Yamcha calls out the Saiyan and tells Nappa is strategy of using Saibamen will not work on him this time. Nappa isn’t phased in the least as he says he will just kill Yamcha himself this time around.
However, the Saiyan eats his words if you manage to beat Nappa with Yamcha.
If you unlock a dramatic finish in this match, Yamcha will get his sweet revenge on Nappa. The baddie will send a Saibaman flying at Yamcha in another attempt to kill him, but the martial artist hurls the creature back at Nappa. The Saiyan freaks out before the Saibaman explodes, leaving Nappa KO’d in a crater just like the one Yamcha died in years ago.
As you will remember, Yamcha did fall for that Saibaman trick back in Dragon Ball Z. The fighter was taken out when he stepped up to Nappa, but he didn’t even get a chance to fight the Saiyan. One of the villain’s Saibaman took him out instead, and Yamcha was killed by the fake out. The sudden death ruined Yamcha's reputation since he was taken out by such a weak adversary, and his death pose has become on the Internet's most enduring memes. So, it is time to see how Nappa handles that kind of humiliation…
DragonBall Super airs on Crunchyroll Saturday evenings at 7:15 p.m. CST. Adult Swim airs the English dub during its Toonami block Saturday evenings at 9:30 p.m, and is now available to stream on FunimationNOW and Amazon Video.
Are you glad Yamcha got revenge on Nappa even if it was just in a game? Hit me up on Twitter @MeganPetersCB to let me know and talk all things comics, k-pop, and anime!
The Xbox One S might not get the same kind of recognition that its other 4K-wielding older sibling might, but the system is still a great addition to Microsoft's line of consoles, especially for new gamers. With that in mind, there's a new sale over on Amazon that makes this console a little more enticing, by knocking a huge chunk off of the price and bundling it with the game that turned into a cultural phenomenon: Minecraft.
The 500 gigabyte Xbox One X (with the game) is currently $239.95 on Amazon, down from its usual $299. Games are playable in 4K, and can be played on both the console and PC through Microsoft.
For those of you who may have somehow missed the outbreak of Minecraft when it basically because the most talked-about game on YouTube, here's a briefer on the legendary sandbox game:
Explore randomly generated worlds and build amazing things from the simplest of homes to the grandest of castles. Play in creative mode with unlimited resources or mine deep into the world in survival mode, crafting weapons and armor to fend off the dangerous mobs. Create, explore and survive alone or with friends on mobile devices or Windows 10.
FEATURES:
– Skins, texture, and mash-up packs! We have biome settlers, city folk, town folk, and more!
– ADD-ONS! Learn more at minecraft.net/addons, where you can try some examples for free or learn to create your own.
– Realms! Play with up to 10 friends cross-platform in worlds that exist anytime, anywhere. Try a free 30-day trial in-app and learn more at http://minecraft.net/realms.
– Xbox Live support, including achievements
– The Nether and all its inhabitants. Fight Ghasts and make friends with Pigmen
– Cross platform play for up to five players between Pocket Edition and Windows 10
– Redstone! Pistons, comparators, repeaters, dispensers, droppers, and more!
– Spooky witches and their huts, complete with cauldrons filled with random potions and the ability to dye armor
– Ocelots! And bunnies!
– Slash commands to let you tweak how the game plays
– you can give items away, summon mobs, change the time of day, and more.
Minecraft is available on PC, Xbox One, Xbox One S, and more.
Minecraft is pretty important to Microsoft. Not only did the company spend $2.5 billion in 2014 to own the world's most popular building-block game, but just last week it promoted Matt Booty, the head of Minecraft, to corporate VP of Microsoft Studios. As far as Microsoft sees it, there's a direct line from Minecraft to Gears of War, Halo and all of the company's major first-party games. And now, with Booty's ascent, there's a new Minecraft boss.
Helen Chiang has been with Microsoft for 13 years, and the past 11 of those were spent in the Xbox division, managing the Live team and working with developers in the Xbox Live Arcade program. She helped Minecraft get settled on Xbox long before Microsoft's acquisition, and now she's in charge of the entire game.
“It's really important for the overall gaming strategy,” she told Engadget. “What I like to think is that we're out in front thinking about a lot of different things.”
Chiang says Microsoft can use Minecraft as a proving ground for new ideas and features that might make their way to other Xbox projects. For example, Microsoft recently partnered with NetEase to release a version of Minecraft in China, and Chiang says the game is doing well in the region. This opens the door for other Xbox games to make the international leap. In the coming years, players might also see more Microsoft games coming to a range of devices, just like Minecraft.
“We're one of the games that's on all of the platforms outside of just Microsoft platforms,” Chiang says. “When I started at the company, and it's really evolved over time — that is something that's changed in our strategy. I'm really excited to work on a game that, really, it doesn't matter where the players are playing. Part of what's important to Minecraft is that we make it available to anybody, anywhere they want to play, on any device that they want to play. And that's something I think we'll see Microsoft do more of.”
With more games on more platforms, an obvious question looms: What about cross-console play? Currently, Microsoft allows PC and Xbox players to join select games together, including Gears of War 4, but the list is limited. The company is even willing to enable cross-play between Xbox One and the Nintendo Switch — here's looking at you, Rocket League — and it wants to work out similar deals with Sony's PlayStation 4. Cross-platform play is possible from a technical standpoint, and both Microsoft and Nintendo have expressed interest in connecting their consoles. However, Sony has historically rebuked these efforts.
Minecraft is an ideal test case here. The Better Together update unifies all versions of Minecraft, from consoles and PC to mobile, allowing players to interact with people on different devices and receive updates at the same time. Better Together is live for Xbox One, Windows 10, mobile and virtual reality versions of Minecraft, and Chiang's team is working on the Switch version right now. It should be available “shortly,” though there's no concrete launch date.
Sony, meanwhile, is still playing coy.
“In my role as the new studio head for Minecraft, I'm looking forward to continuing the discussions with Sony about bringing the Bedrock engine over to players on PlayStation,” Chiang says. “I think that is something that is very important to us and I'm looking forward to continuing to have those conversations with Sony.”
If everyone decides to play along, Minecraft‘s future will be more connected, communicative and open than ever, and Microsoft's broader game strategy could follow suit.
“I think games are such a dynamic industry, one that really builds on everything that's happening in technology,” Chiang says. “So I'm really excited about what we've done in games and how much farther we still have to go.”
Released last November, it includes the Minecraft base game, along with the Explorer's Pack DLC which contains extras like a Chinese Mythology Mashup, Natural Texture Pack, Biome Settlers Skin Pack and more. New features were added to the game too, like infinite worlds, the recipe book and marketplace.
Minecraft is super expansive. It has cross-platform play so you can connect with players on Windows 10, mobile devices, and even the Nintendo Switch soon enough.
