Fortnite Will Now Let You Block Its Most Toxic Emotes
There are a handful of Fortnite emotes that have become primarily known for their toxicity, and Epic Games is taking the unusual step of adding a toggle to the game settings that will allow you to never have to see other players do them.
The setting in question, which will be implemented in Tuesday’s update that kicks off Fortnite Festival Season 3, is the “See Confrontational Emotes” toggle under Account and Privacy. There are three options: Always see them, never see them, or only see them if your party members are doing them. If you choose to block these emotes, players will appear motionless to you, as if they hadn’t fired off an emote at all, when they use one of them. But regardless of which option you choose, you’ll always be able to see and hear the emotes if you do them.
There are currently four emotes that are affected by this: Laugh It Up (aka the donkey laugh), Take the L, Whipcrack, and Make It Plantain. Laugh It Up and Take The L are included because they’re common and particularly obnoxious taunts that players have complained about for years. Whipcrack and Make It Plantain, meanwhile, are popular among racist trolls.
Take the L was a battle pass emote from six years ago, so nobody’s been able to get that since then. The other three emotes were all sold in the item shop, but it’s been about six months since Whipcrack, which is a DC Comics emote belonging to Catwoman, and Make It Plantain have been available. And Laugh It Up hasn’t been sold in nearly two years, as Epic likely wanted it out of circulation a while ago.
By adding this toggle to the settings, Epic gets to avoid the hassle of removing any of these emotes from the game–usually Epic gives refunds when it does that, and permanently removing an old battle pass item would surely cause an uproar from the community.
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The Mummy (1999) Wasn’t A Universal Monster Movie Remake And That’s Why It Rules
On May 4, 1999, Universal’s The Mummy hit theaters and became one of the biggest movies of the year, even outearning James Bond and Julia Roberts films released in the same window, with over $400 million worldwide. It solidified Brenden Fraser’s star power and put him in the action-hero category for a new generation. That level of success helped spawn two sequels, video games, a spin-off series with The Rock, and an animated television series.
Oh, and of course the ride at Universal Studios theme parks. It’s still an absolute banger and hasn’t been updated in 20 years over at Universal Orlando. Even if the sequels didn’t capture the same sort of magic, 25 years later Stephen Sommers’ The Mummy is still a crowd-pleaser that somehow didn’t get lost in the shuffle in a summer where everything fell under the shadow of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, and the one-two punch of sleeper hits The Matrix and The Sixth Sense.
Almost 100 years ago, Universal Studios’ band of monster movies helped forge a whole new genre and create a new batch of pop culture icons. These Classic Monsters–Dracula, Frankenstein, the Creature of the Black Lagoon, the Invisible Man (and Woman), the Wolf Man, and the Mummy made their own cinematic universe along the way with crossovers and tie-ins.
The latter of those monsters had five movies under Universal’s banner and four with Hammer Films, who had rebooted the series in 1959 with the final sequel coming out in 1971. There wouldn’t be another Mummy movie for 28 years, where it was again rebooted under Universal, who had already missed out on Dracula and Frankenstein’s remakes aimed at being truer adaptations of their source material. The Mummy was just a mummy, though, malleable to any kind of story, but still seen as an undead force of nature.
However, to get there we had to have a few missteps from Hollywood horror heavy hitters like George Romero and Clive Barker who tried their hand at resurrecting the franchise in the late 1980s’. Ultimately things fell apart on both directors’ attempts for one reason or another.
Enter Sommers who had made kids’ movies for Disney in the early ’90s, but wrote and directed a fresh take on The Mummy, loosely based on the original film from 1932. The three connections the movies share are the Mummy’s name, Imhotep, Oded Fehr’s character’s name Ardeth Bay, and the plot revolving around an Egyptian priest resurrecting his ancient love. Everything else was brand-new to the Mummy’s mythos and made the movie all the better for it.
The film switches genres from the upfront focus on horror to action, concentrating more on adventurous sequences, special effects, comedy, and more flavor regarding Egyptian mythology and lore. It feels more of a throwback to adventure serials of the same time the original Mummy was a part of with Fraser’s Rick O’Connell mirroring something out of an Allan Quartermain story. The studio had originally wanted a typical leading man with the likes of Brad Pitt and Ben Affleck in the role. While those guys have proven they can be funny, it’s Fraser’s effortless take on being cool while also being willing to mock himself that makes his portrayal play out so well.
To break more stereotypes, Rachel Weisz’s wise, charming, and beautiful librarian Evelyn Carnahan proved that within every bookish girl stirs an adventurer ready to save the day–and a brilliant one, at that.
“I may not be an explorer, or an adventurer, or a treasure-seeker, or a gunfighter, Mr. O’Connell, but I am proud of what I am,” she tells Rick. When asked what that is, she replies back “I…am a librarian.”
They’re electric on-screen together. The two of them should have won the Nobel Prize in chemistry if we’re being honest.
Balancing the good, we have Arnold Vosloo as Imhotep, the malevolent Mummy himself. What a performance. Apparently, Vosloo got offered the role after one audition and it’s easy to see why. He’s leagues from Karloff’s stoic and slow-moving, calculating undead creature to a man hellbent on finding his love and his unwillingness to let anyone or anything stop him. There’s a dramatic and sinister flair in everything he does.
As previously noted, 1999 was a pivotal year for big-budget action movies as special effects were becoming an art form and more computer-generated effects were becoming more mainstream. About a fifth of the movie’s $80 million budget, roughly $15 million, was set aside exclusively for the special effects, including digital prosthetic make-up, motion capture, and stop-motion.
For The Mummy, Sommers chose to utilize both cutting-edge CGI from Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) and practical effects with the help of Oscar nominee Nick Dudman. Dudman had gotten his start as a puppeteer assistant for Yoda in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back and already had a hand in several blockbusters by the time he was developing the mummies. He would also return for the sequel, The Mummy Returns. This combination helps those effects hold up to this day. It wasn’t all special effects, though. The scene with Evelyn covered in rats and locusts? Those are those actual creatures all over Weisz. Sometimes, you can’t beat the real thing.
Following its massive success at the box office, a sequel was quickly greenlit and almost 70 years later, Universal had another monster movie franchise in its cloth-wrapped hands. The Mummy Returns had more of a mixed critical reaction, but still managed to earn over than $430 at the box office. The subsequent spin-off Scorpion King franchise helped launch the movie career of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson–for better or worse–but added more monsters and magic to this already mysterious world.
Obviously, the Tom Cruise-starring reboot of The Mummy and Universal’s proposed Dark Universe was tombed pretty much on arrival. It’s hard to mess with the cosmic gumbo of what made The Mummy such a hit, but other franchises have sniped the recipe and made their own versions–and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Maybe someday we’ll finally get that Mummy 4 that’s long been rumored, maybe not, and if not–that’s okay! We have Rick and Evelyn riding off into the sands before the credits roll, and sometimes, that’s the best kind of ending.
Halo Infinite Is Getting Its Own Version Of Helldivers 2 Thanks To Forge Creators
Halo Infinite’s Forge mode and the creators who make it sing never cease to amaze, as work has now begun on a Helldivers 2-inspired game mode within 343 Industries’ free-to-play FPS.
Helldivers 2 may have popularized the idea of space marines dropping from orbit in drop pods to do battle with alien threats, but before there were Helldivers, there were Halo’s ODSTs, aka Helljumpers. That certainly makes the Helldivers 2 formula of dropping into a map, battling aliens, and completing objectives before extracting a perfect fit within the Halo universe, but to date there has only been one official ODST spin-off: 2009’s Halo 3: ODST. A former Halo developer stated that a number of ODST games were pitched during his time working at 343, though none were ever greenlit.
Helljumpers | Reveal Trailer
This is your first look at the map for *Helljumpers*. This map is NOT final and is expected to receive new additions, changes, lighting changes and balances throughout the development cycle.
Helljumpers will launch in June, we are aiming for early… pic.twitter.com/RE5hhIykAQ— The Forge Falcons (@TheForgeFalcons) April 30, 2024
Now, a group of around a dozen Forge creators under the banner of the Forge Falcons, have taken it upon themselves to give Halo fans an unofficial ODST spin-off inspired by Arrowhead Studio’s immensely popular Helldivers 2. Appropriately titled Helljumpers, it uses Halo Infinite’s robust custom game and map creator, Forge, along with the recently implemented ability to add AI enemies, to recreate the Helldivers 2 experience. The group has previously released a full-fledged zombies mode inspired by Call of Duty Zombies, as well as a battle royale mode, making them no stranger to big Forge projects.
From what the Forge Falcons have shown so far, Helljumpers looks to already be coming together nicely. The Forge Falcons recently showed off a brief teaser of the urban map the mode will take place on, noting that aspects of it will change over the course of development. A full gameplay trailer for Helljumpers is slated to release in May, with the mode itself aiming for a June release. As with all Forge creations, Helljumpers will be completely free to download and play.
“We’re glad we can finally show this off to you all, it has been a lot of hard work over the last two months to really nail down the layout we want for this experience,” The Forge Falcons stated on X.
In another post, the team welcomed feedback on its map reveal, and said it was looking forward to bringing “the Helldivers 2 experience to Halo Infinite.” Far from a simple game mode, Helljumpers is aiming to be a complete game-within-a-game, featuring a story campaign that will take “approximately 2-3 hours” to complete if players focus on main objectives. The Forge Falcons say it will include “expertly crafted cinematic events” and even its own original soundtrack (albeit one that won’t be heard in-game).
While fans hopefully won’t have to wait long for Helljumpers to release, there is new content in Halo Infinite to keep players occupied. Halo Infinite officially launched its latest Operation, Banished Honor, on May 30. The update introduces Banished-themed cosmetics as well as a new cosmetic store where players can spend points earned through playing to unlock previously available items. The update also restores one iconic Halo weapon to its former glory via a balance change that fans have been asking about ever since the game’s launch.
Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes Director Has Perfect Franchise Ending In Mind
With Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, this beloved, long-running sci-fi franchise has finally hit double digit movies, with the modern iteration of the series running for nearly as many films (4) as the franchise’s original run back in the 1960s and ’70s (5). While the first three movies in the rebooted series focused on the very beginning of the ape takeover of Earth, Kingdom jumps forward in time by “many generations,” taking us closer to the status quo of the original film.
For Kingdom director Wes Ball, who previously handled that same duty on all three Maze Runner films and is also directing the upcoming Legend of Zelda movie, that time skip is a significant move toward the endgame he wants for the series: to close the franchise at the same place it began, with 20th century astronaut Charlton Heston crash landing on future Earth without having a clue what’s been going on.
We’re not there yet, of course–there aren’t any crash-landing spaceships in Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. While this is the fourth movie in the rebooted franchise, it’s really the beginning of a new era for the apes, with the previous three movies serving as the background lore for what’s going on in the present.
“The previous three movies were very much the ending of something,” Kingdom director Wes Ball told me while promoting the film. “They were stories about the end of the human world. They were a story about the end of Caesar. And we very much wanted to be the beginning of something. Getting that distance allowed us to start the movie in a way where the audience itself gets to go back and rediscover what’s happened to Caesars legacy, what’s happened to the human world, what’s happened to apes, how far along have they gotten, how many other different clans are out there, you know, all these different things.”
For Ball, the idea of all these different ape groups separately developing their civilizations made for a fascinating canvas on which to craft this film. In Kingdom, the protagonists are the ones who’ve never heard of Caesar, and the bad guys are the ones who fight in his name. But even with this film, Ball had his eye on the long-term prize.
“All throughout the planet, there are other apes that have their own kind of explosion into intelligence. So that’s a cool idea. We ran with that here with this Noa character and this whole tribe,” Ball said. “And this whole time as we’re leaving behind the Caesar trilogy, carrying forward all the stuff we want to carry forward, we also have in our sights that ’68 original that we’re heading towards…we’ve still a long way to go before it gets there, before Charlton Heston crashes down through the skies, but that’s gonna be really fun I think if we’re fortunate enough to continue on the story.”
For now, this plan is a nebulous one–it’s not a “we’re going to do this two movies from now” kind of situation. It’s more of an aspiration for now, and Ball freely admitted it might not happen.
“Will we ever get there? I couldn’t tell you. There’s plenty of stories to be told before you get to that ’68 movie. If I had my way, you wouldn’t remake the 68 movie, you would just build up to it. And you cut and you go back to the ’68 movie, and you start all over and that’s that’s the whole franchise. That’s my idea, but this isn’t my franchise to do with whatever I want. So take it with a grain of salt,” Ball said, chuckling.
A big development that should happen on the way to that destination is that the apes should eventually wear clothes–in that original film, the apes have normal human posture and wear clothes. In Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, ape society hasn’t reached that point yet, but it’s moving that direction.
“You see in this movie the beginnings of some of that stuff. You see Raka have adornments, and the Eagle tribe. Proximus Caesar starting to dress himself like the things he’s learned about from Roman history. You see an echo throughout all the designs, they’re starting down that path again,” Ball said.
Redfall Passes 1-Year Anniversary, Promised DLC Heroes Still Nowhere In Sight
It’s been one year since the release of Redfall on PC and Xbox Series X|S, and there’s been no sign of a few extra bits or promised DLC for the game.
Users over at ResetEra took notice of this and pointed out how the Bite Back Digital Edition included the Redfall Hero Pass. It promised that players who bought this edition would have access to two future heroes. However, developer Arkane Austin hasn’t provided any updates on when they would come.
Redfall’s biggest update so far was a patch that came six months after launch that added stealth takedowns, bug fixes, and accessibility features. Since then, Redfall hasn’t really gotten many substantial updates.
This is possibly due to Redfall’s lackluster reception and poor reviews. Redfall reportedly had difficulties from the start of production, and roughly 70% of the company’s staff that had worked on Prey (2017) were no longer there by the end of Redfall’s development.
In GameSpot’s Redfall review, we said, “Ultimately, Redfall is a game that should not have been released yet. Its litany of bugs hampers the gameplay loop of exploring its world with friends, and that loop itself feels compromised by elements that are poorly executed and ill-suited to the team implementing them.”
Citizen’s Stunning Star Wars Watch Collection Is Over 50% Off At Amazon
Star Wars Day is May 4–May the Fourth be with you–and while you’ll find plenty of discounts on video games and accessories, one of the coolest deals is actually for Citizen watches. Four models in Citizen’s popular Star Wars lineup are being discounted for the event–though two of them have limited inventory, so you’ll need to check them out soon if you want to cash in on the savings.
The C-3PO and Millenium Falcon models are the ones you’ll want to keep on your radar, as they’ve already climbed above 70% claimed. That means there’s a decent chance they’ll sell out by the end of the day. The R2-D2 and Rebel Pilot probably won’t run out of inventory, but these deals are also unlikely to stick around after May 4. The prices in parentheses are what you’d pay if you bought these Star Wars watches directly from Citizen–each watch’s original list price is $450-$475.
Citizen Star Wars Watch Deals
Whichever you pick, you’ll be treated to a design inspired by the first Citizen analog-digital watch, which features a variety of faceplates alongside a standard digital readout for easy access. They also include a five-year limited warranty and a unique Star Wars engraving on the back. As you’d expect, these are built to the usual high standards of Citizen, making them a great premium gift for any Star Wars fan.
The biggest price cut is for the C-3PO version, as it’s nearly 50% off compared to the May the Fourth sale price on Citizen’s website. That’s also the lowest price we’ve ever seen for the watch. Most other watches are also down to some of their best prices ever, so be sure to peruse the listings while you can.
For another great Star Wars deal, you’ll find the new Lego Star Wars TIE Interceptor Collector Series available with a bit of free swag.
Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes Director Talks Lessons He’s Applying To His Upcoming Zelda Movie
Coming off the success of The Super Mario Bros. Movie early last year, which was both popular with critics and made a huge amount of money, Nintendo felt so good about how they handled that one that they greenlit a Legend of Zelda movie, to be handled by Maze Runner Trilogy and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes director Wes Ball–it’s still very early in that process, though, without even a planned release year at this point.
GameSpot had the chance to speak with Ball as part of his promotional efforts for his new Planet of the Apes movie, which lands in movie theaters on May 10. It didn’t take too long for the Zelda movie to come up after I asked him about how working on his Maze Runner movies, which were heavy on CGI despite having relatively small budgets, helped prepare him for life on this even-more-CGI-heavy Planet of the Apes movie.
Ball immediately gave me some perspective on just how much of an escalation Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes was for him.
“Those three [Maze Runner] movies’ budgets combined are less than this one movie. I’d call them low budget in a way. I mean, the highest budget we had was like $60 million, I think,” Ball said. And one of the most important takeaways for him was just learning to deal with a fandom that actually cares about the property you’re adapting.
“It was good practice. I think when we started Maze Runner, for the first movie, it had sold like 3 million copies, which is nothing compared to the Hunger Games, but we were able to, like, create a franchise, and the movies were really successful for the studio, and I think the fans that they were intended for really got a kick out of them. So I got a little taste of that whole expectations game on those movies,” Ball said.
But even more important than that, Ball went on, was simply learning how to do what he wants to do on a massive film like this.
“I got to really sharpen my skills on the craft and execution front on those movies, I think more than anything. But yeah, you learn something on every one that you do. I learned a ton on this one, too, you know, and we’ll take that into the next one.”
That “next one,” of course, is a whole other escalation for Ball when it comes to fan expectations, because with The Legend of Zelda he’s going to have to deal with a fanbase that’s been waiting a long time for this movie. So I asked him to detail what exactly he’s taking from his experience making Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes into his Zelda film.
“So much. All the stuff that you normally do, of how do you put the money on the screen, you know? And talk about expectations, there’s a tremendous amount of expectations on this one. I’m gonna wrestle with that.” Ball said.
“How to trust all the incredibly talented people around you, you know, to help kind of see the vision forward, you know what I mean? So there’s all those things that kinda carry forward. And then just the continued thing of, every movie you get a little bit of experience about things that you thought you knew or you thought you understood, but didn’t.”
Ball’s Zelda movie doesn’t have a release window yet. But you can see Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes in movie theaters starting May 10.