Entertainment
Iconic Superhero Movie Being Hidden From Streaming, Disney Doesn't Want You To Watch It
By Robert Scucci
| Published
Listen, I’m not the most reliable source when it comes to comic book movies, but I’ve seen most of them despite my lack of knowledge about the source material that inspires them. I once watched 34 MCU movies in just as many weeks on a dare after I said I loved the Fast and Furious movies but hated Marvel movies, which resulted in a long lecture about how I should love them because they’re basically the same thing. Letting my pride get the best of me, I watched every single movie that had been released up to that point, and it was alright. I wouldn’t do it again, but I think I get the gist by now.
That entire journey eventually led me to 2003’s Hulk, which I put off for years because it’s only available through on demand purchases. While I don’t have definitive proof as to why it’s not available on a streaming service except as a rental, I’m inclined to believe it has something to do with Disney’s stranglehold over all things Marvel related. Or maybe there’s just no demand for it. Either way, the point still stands that you have to throw down money to watch it, which is probably for the better, because this movie made some choices that genuinely baffle me.
Decisions Were Made
If you’re reading this article for a full rundown on all things Hulk related, I’m sorry to disappoint. What I’m here to talk about specifically is how much better the MCU handled the overall story. We all know that Bruce Banner (Eric Bana) turns big and green when he’s angry, and that General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross (Sam Elliott) has a complicated history with Bruce’s father, David Banner (Nick Nolte). That history forces Ross to intervene after a series of unsanctioned experiments lead to Bruce’s transformation.
Collateral damage is inevitable. Bruce falls in love with Betty Ross (Jennifer Connelly), the general’s daughter, and Ross repeatedly threatens to lock him up for “the rest of his natural life.” This is said several times throughout the film, even though there’s nothing remotely natural about any of it, making that recurring line make absolutely no sense.
I’m not a tights and flights guy. I haven’t seen the new DCU’s Superman. I tapped out of the MCU after The Marvels, and I’ll only return if we get more Deadpool and Wolverine action at some point. With that bias firmly established, I’m here to extend an olive branch and explain why 2003’s Hulk pales in comparison to 2008’s The Incredible Hulk.
Hulk’s biggest problem is pacing. We get the David Banner and Thunderbolt backstory. We learn about Bruce Banner’s repressed memories and identity issues. We’re subjected to all the usual junk science explaining how he becomes Hulk, along with explosions and extended emotional yammering about all of it. The movie runs 138 minutes, and we don’t even get to see Hulk doing Hulk stuff until more than 40 minutes in.
The film is trying to function as both an origin story and its subsequent adventures in one sitting, while also attempting to appeal to casual viewers and diehard comic book fans at the same time. That’s a tall order, and it never really works.
The MCU, on the other hand, does a much better job with worldbuilding. There are standalone origin films like Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, and Captain America: The First Avenger. All of these build toward the first Avengers movie, which arrived in 2012. Every Avengers film hits harder because we don’t need drawn-out origin stories anymore. They already happened. In other words, we get Avengers doing Avengers stuff because we’re already in the know. Hulk tries to do too much at once and, in my mind, was doomed from the start to never be a fully satisfying film.
The Comic Book Panels Are Laughable
One thing that completely took me out of Hulk was the gratuitous use of picture overlap. Director Ang Lee was clearly going for a comic book panel look, showing multiple moments at once in a single frame, but it honestly resembles the kind of amateur editing I do when cutting podcast episodes.
There’s a scene that shows Nick Nolte’s face in one frame and his foot in another, just so we know his foot is up to something. I understand what they were trying to do, but I’m still baffled by the execution. It’s an uncomfortable visual experience that feels less like a stylistic choice and more like a PowerPoint presentation that’s been left on autoplay.
While Hulk does have some charm in its own cheesy way, I much prefer the MCU version because it’s part of a larger plan that eventually leads to a more satisfying payoff. As a standalone film, Hulk doesn’t have what it takes to be everything it wants to be. That said, it’s still an interesting watch if you’re trying to check another Marvel movie off your list.
As of this writing, you can purchase Hulk on demand through YouTube, Apple TV+, and Amazon Prime Video.
Entertainment
This Microsoft Office 2021 and Windows 11 Pro bundle drops to under $50
TL;DR: A lifetime license for Microsoft Office Professional 2021 bundled with Windows 11 Pro is on sale for $44.97 (reg. $418.99) through Feb. 22 at 11:59 p.m. PT.
$44.97
$418.99
Save $374.02
Microsoft Office remains a fundamental software for work and school, but subscription fees aren’t for everyone. For those who prefer a one-and-done approach, this bundle pairs a lifetime license for Microsoft Office Professional 2021 with Windows 11 Pro for $44.97 (reg. $418.99) through Feb. 22 at 11:59 p.m. PT.
Office 2021 Professional delivers the core suite that remains central to many daily routines: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Publisher, Access, and Teams. These are full desktop versions, which are ideal for those who want offline access and a traditional layout. The familiar ribbon interface streamlines document creation and analysis, offering customization for layouts, fonts, and formatting. For those who don’t need cloud-first tools, Office 2021’s setup is a practical advantage.
Mashable Deals
The bundle’s other half is Windows 11 Pro, Microsoft’s current professional-grade operating system. Along with a streamlined design, it offers productivity and security features like BitLocker encryption, Windows Sandbox, Hyper-V virtualization, and advanced account controls. Copilot, Microsoft’s AI assistant, is also integrated — ready to summarize web pages, generate drafts, answer questions, or change settings from the taskbar.
This is a one-time purchase, not a Microsoft 365 subscription, so it does not include ongoing feature updates or cloud storage perks. Hardware requirements are modest — 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage — but users should still check compatibility before upgrading.
Mashable Deals
This deal is well-suited for professionals, students, or small-business owners who prefer to own their software and skip subscription extras. If you fall into that group, $44.97 is a stellar price for securing both Office tools and Windows 11 Pro with no recurring fees. For those weighing their options, this bundle offers value and simplicity in one purchase. Get it today at this low price until Feb. 22 at 11:59 p.m. PT.
StackSocial prices subject to change.
Entertainment
The Iconic, R-Rated 90s Video Game That's Screaming For A Film Adaptation
By Robert Scucci
| Published
If you grew up in the 90s playing first-person shooters on MS-DOS, you probably have fond memories of sneaking in sessions of Duke Nukem 3D. While we never had gaming consoles in my household, my parents had no qualms about me playing PC games like Doom, Quake, and Wolfenstein. For reasons I will never fully understand, Super Mario Bros. was forbidden fare, but blasting space demons and zombies with rocket launchers and mowing down Nazis with machine guns was considered a perfectly acceptable way to spend a rainy afternoon.
I think the real reason was that my parents did not want to spend money on a console when we already had a perfectly good computer sitting in the family room. In retrospect, I kind of respect that decision. It meant I had access to adventure puzzle games like The Seventh Guest and Myst, along with the above-mentioned shooters that were absolutely not meant for kids my age.
In 1996, Duke Nukem 3D was everywhere, and I remember watching my dad get hooked on it one weekend in his office. I could hear explosions and laughter through the door, which naturally made me curious. That was my introduction to a game that was wildly inappropriate for a kid, but I was lucky enough to have parents who let me watch R-rated action movies as long as we talked about why certain behaviors on screen were not meant to be copied in real life.
That brings me to the real heart of this article. Why, in the year 2026, do we still not have a Duke Nukem movie? The property feels tailor-made for an R-rated action comedy. It is violent, self-aware, and ridiculous. There are strippers and aliens, pigs dressed as cops, lizard troopers, and catchphrases pulled straight from films like Aliens, Dirty Harry, They Live, Jaws, and Pulp Fiction. Duke Nukem 3D is routinely cited as one of the greatest video games ever made, and the franchise reportedly generated well over a billion dollars by the early 2000s. A faithful adaptation would go absolutely gangbusters.
A Simple Yet Effective Action Hero
A movie based on the Duke Nukem character would not be difficult to pull off because the story is intentionally lean. Duke arrives in Los Angeles aboard his space cruiser, ready for a much-needed vacation. His ship gets shot down by aliens who have invaded and taken over the city, and he is understandably irritated about having to clean up their mess. Armed with his Mighty Foot and an arsenal that includes shotguns, triple-barrelled chain guns, grenade launchers, and pipe bombs, Duke tears through Assault Troopers, Pig Cops, Battlelord Sentries, and Enforcers.
What truly sets Duke Nukem 3D apart from its contemporaries is how interactive the environments are. Duke crawls through air vents, blows apart buildings by hitting detonation switches that are just laying around willy-nilly, kicks fire hydrants and drinks from water fountains to power up, and even tips strippers for a quick show before getting back to work. It is juvenile, excessive, and completely unapologetic. When Duke says he is here to kick ass and chew bubblegum, a quote attributed to Roddy Piper in They Live!, he means it.
The amount of controversy the game attracted from special interest groups over its content is exactly why Duke Nukem would thrive as an R-rated action comedy today. With the right creative team attached, the tone does not need to be reinvented or overhauled at all.
Attempts Have Been Made
There has never been a shortage of interest in bringing Duke Nukem to the big screen. As early as 2001, when the franchise was riding high, Threshold Entertainment attempted to get a feature film off the ground, but it never made it out of development. Another effort surfaced in 2008 from Max Payne producer Scott Faye, though that version stalled just as quickly.
The closest we came to a Duke Nukem movie was in 2018, when Paramount Pictures and Platinum Dunes were having discussions with John Cena to take on the lead role. It was a near-perfect casting choice, but the rights were in transition at the time, and the project was quietly shelved.
The most recent development came in 2022, when Legendary Entertainment announced that it had acquired the rights to produce a Duke Nukem film, with Cobra Kai creators Josh Heald and Jon Hurwitz attached. Since then, updates have been scarce, which unfortunately feels par for the course for this franchise.
If it takes another five years for anything concrete to happen, so be it. I just hope Cena is still able to step into the role. Projects like Ricky Stanicky have already proven that his comedic timing is a perfect match for a character like Duke Nukem. The image of him kicking a fire hydrant for health before tossing a pipe bomb into a movie theater and getting frisky with the ladies deserves to exist outside of my imagination.
What this movie needs is simple. Enemies that respawn endlessly, one-liners delivered without restraint, and waves of identical henchmen getting obliterated as Duke reluctantly fights his way back to vacation. This does not need to be high art. It needs to be an ultra-violent alien invasion, solved by the coolest video game character to ever appear on a computer screen.
Entertainment
Keanu Reeves' Sci-Fi Stoner Comedy Is Secretly The Best Sequel Ever
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure proved to be a breakout smash, appealing to sci-fi fans with its time-traveling plot and appealing to general audiences with its affable stoner comedy. The movie (the first big role for former John Wick icon Keanu Reeves) soon got a sequel, one that broke all the rules and subverted all of our expectations. You can now stream this underrated film for free on Tubi and discover for yourself why Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991) might secretly be the best sequel ever made.
The premise of Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey is that the titular duo are inexplicably responsible for creating a future utopia, but a bad guy who wants to stop the party sends robot duplicates to kill our heroes in the present day. These bad bots actually succeed, throwing Bill and Ted to their doom before these would-be rock stars can win a local Battle of the Bands. But these two meatheads won’t let a little thing like death keep them down, and once they run into a new frenemy in the afterlife, they realize that their bogus journey is just beginning.
Sci-Fi’s Slacker Dream Team Returns
Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey has a tight cast of excellent performers, including George Carlin (best known outside this franchise for Dogma) as a groovy mentor from the day after tomorrow. The Grim Reaper is played to hilarious perfection, by William Sadler (best known for Shawshank Redemption), while Alex Winter (best known Adulthood) plays one half of the titular time-trippers. The other is played by Keanu Reeves, who transformed the notoriety of this franchise into headlining roles in action masterpieces like The Matrix and John Wick.
Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey wasn’t so bogus for audiences: against a budget of $20 million, this film earned $38 million. This was less than the original movie, and Bogus Journey was considered a minor failure until it earned a cult following on home video and streaming. That cult following helped this movie get a sequel, and 2020 (the pandemic? Talk about a bogus journey!) saw the release of the long-awaited Bill and Ted Face the Music.
Declared DOA By The Critics
When Bill& Ted’s Bogus Journey came out, many reviewers decided this sequel was totally heinous. On Rotten Tomatoes, it has a 56 percent rating, with critics acknowledging that this follow-up film had the same sense of humor as the groundbreaking first film and the same cast giving the script everything they had. They just felt like this second trip to the well delivered diminished returns compared to their original romp through time and space.
However, the movie impressed certain reviewers more than others, including legendary film critic Roger Ebert. In his review, Ebert said that Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey is “the kind of movie where you start out snickering in spite of yourself, and end up actually admiring the originality that went into creating this hallucinatory slapstick.” This is a solid take, and the movie is filled with so many deliciously stupid punchlines that it’s easy to forget how smart the setup to these jokes really is.
A Sequel That Raises The Stakes
I’ll actually go one better than the late, great Ebert and say that Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey is secretly the best sequel ever made. It would have been insanely easy to just give us a lame retread of the first film, with our not-so-dynamic duo traveling to more time periods and teaming up with more historical figures. Instead, the sequel zigs wherever you expect it to zag, sending our boys to Heaven and Hell in sequences that further our understanding of these characters in unexpectedly complex ways.
It helps that Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey adds fun new characters, including both the evil robots and the Grim Reaper. William Sadler is always game for genre work, and he turns his Reaper into the best kind of comic figure: a man who takes himself way too seriously. Watching him get his butt kicked in board games is hilarious, and by the end of the movie, he proves himself to be the ultimate third wheel of Wild Stallyns, a band that might just save the world.
A Hauntingly Good Sequel
Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey will appeal to sci-fi fans looking for something more lighthearted to watch, but it also has undeniable mass appeal thanks to its witty writing, rapid-fire jokes, and affable cast. It’s the kind of movie you can put on at a party, and people can vibe out with between conversations. But it’s also the kind of movie you can watch on your own to enjoy its surprising depth, sophistication, and craft.
Will you agree that Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey is the best sequel ever made, or would you like to send this ‘90s classic on a one-way trip to the past? The only way to find out is to stream this quirky comedy for free on Tubi. If nothing else, this is the perfect way to see how future action icon Keanu Reeves got his start!
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