Entertainment
Chris Pine's R-Rated Post-Apocalyptic Thriller Proves Friendship Can Be Deadly
By Robert Scucci
| Published
While I’m not necessarily wishing for an upcoming global apocalypse, I think if I had no other choice but to go with the flow, it could be kind of fun. Stealing a couple of road sodas from the gas station, loading the car up with my best friends, and stopping at the driving range to blast out some windows with golf balls sounds like a great time until you remember all the other horrible stuff happening around you.
This exact setup is what you’ll experience with 2009’s Carriers, the Chris Pine-starring post-apocalyptic thriller that was released shortly after the actor’s breakout performance as James T. Kirk in Star Trek.
The Usual Setup And Exchanges
All the familiar post-apocalyptic beats are present in Carriers, and it genuinely feels like the United States is in the early stages of a pandemic-induced extinction event known as “The World Ender Virus.” We’re introduced to our world-weary protagonist, Brian (Chris Pine), who is immune to the infection and driving his girlfriend Bobby (Piper Perabo), brother Danny (Lou Taylor Pucci), and Danny’s friend Kate (Emily VanCamp) toward Turtle Beach. In Brian and Danny’s minds, their family’s old vacation home is the perfect place to lay low while the infection slowly runs its course. The area has been abandoned for years, which hopefully means it will remain untouched.
Along the way, we learn the precautions they take as they barrel down open roads toward their destination. They siphon gas from abandoned vehicles, but only before sanitizing every surface, including themselves, with bleach whenever the opportunity presents itself. The complications they face come in the form of other desperate survivors they encounter, including Frank (Christopher Meloni) and his infected daughter Jodie (Kiernan Shipka). It’s here that we see humanity pushed to its most extreme limits.
Frank is simply trying to get Jodie to a nearby high school after hearing reports of a possible cure, hoping to give his daughter a chance at survival. Against their better judgment, and after experiencing car trouble, the group decides to take the trip together. Brian, who is a dangerous combination of hopelessly nihilistic and living for kicks, warns everyone of the risks. He doesn’t mince words when he tells his friends that if they show any signs of infection, he will leave them on the side of the road without hesitation.
You Need Believable, Relatable Characters For This To Work
Despite its gritty, end-of-days aesthetic, Carriers struggles because none of its characters feel particularly relatable. Brian, who is clearly the leader of the group thanks to his immunity and willingness to get aggressive when necessary, doesn’t come across like a real person. His mood swings are erratic and hard to reconcile. As far as I can tell, the world hasn’t been like this for very long, yet his grip on reality already seems to be barely holding together.
He pivots from nonchalant to violent at the drop of a hat, and even the people closest to him don’t seem to know how to handle it. While I understand they’re living through unprecedented circumstances, your protagonist still needs to be at least somewhat likable. Instead, Brian comes off as disproportionately mean-spirited and self-serving, even during moments where he doesn’t need to be acting like that.
When the group finally finds a place to bunker down and regroup, they’re ambushed by survivalists who were already secretly occupying the same space. This should be the moment where Brian’s aggression and leadership actually matter. Instead, he immediately accepts that he’s outnumbered. He doesn’t mention that he’s immune, doesn’t suggest that he could be key to finding a cure, and doesn’t try to reason with anyone. After the fact, he takes his frustration out on his friends rather than taking control of the situation in any meaningful way, which feels completely at odds with how he was initially presented.
Great Vibe, But Ultimately Falls Flat
Carriers disappointed me because it shows so much promise early on, but its inability to pick a lane makes for a tonally inconsistent journey through the wasteland. There are lighthearted moments that play like an end-of-days comedy, where the group is fully in their element and making the best of a terrible situation. Unfortunately, that levity is almost immediately undercut by tension, violence, and dread.
The tonal whiplash kept pulling me out of the movie. Just as I started having fun, I was reminded that this isn’t supposed to be a fun experience. Then, when things finally get serious, the tension is quickly broken up by more comic relief, which creates the opposite problem. Films like The Dead Don’t Die manage to balance morbid subject matter with humor in a way that feels intentional. I was hoping Carriers would find a similar rhythm, but it never quite gets there.
The threat is real, and there’s potential for these characters to turn what may be their final road trip into something memorable. But if I’m being completely honest, I was relieved when this one ended for all of the reasons above.
Carriers is currently streaming on Paramount+.
Entertainment
Jon Stewart hits back at MAGAs reaction to Bad Bunnys Super Bowl halftime show
Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl LX halftime show may have been brimming with popular music, Easter eggs, and celebrity cameos, but not everyone was a fan.
In The Daily Show clip above, Jon Stewart discusses the right’s reaction to the show, from the Kid Rock-fronted alternative event to right-wing pundits complaining that they could have found someone “more uniting”.
“Why the f*** is it the Super Bowl halftime entertainer’s job to unify the country?” asks Stewart. “In what world is that their job? Oh, isn’t there another person whose job description is much more along those lines?”
Stewart goes on to share Donald Trump’s Truth Social reaction to the performance, in which he called Bad Bunny “absolutely terrible”.
“You know, the right has a lot of balls, complaining that Bad Bunny didn’t do enough to unify this country, when you only found out a few days ago that Puerto Rico’s a part of it,” says Stewart. “And before you get your panties in una torsión, a unifying pro tip might be to tell your guy to stop tweeting out racist slop during, I don’t know, Black History Month.”
Entertainment
New Star Trek Spinoff Is Running Out Of Time
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
The new Star Trek spinoff, Starfleet Academy, has proven to be very controversial, but its fans always offer the same rebuttal to any criticism of the show: “give it time.” The logic goes that this show might need time to find its footing, just like The Next Generation and Voyager did. However, given that the show is limited to 10 episodes per season and a maximum of four seasons, Starfleet Academy is officially running out of time to impress viewers.
This reaction to a new spinoff began with Star Trek: The Next Generation, whose first season was its absolute worst. Season 2 wasn’t much better, but the show (thanks largely to new showrunner Michael Piller) transformed into must-see TV with Season 3. After Deep Space Nine had a similarly rocky Season 1, it became gospel among many Trek fans that you should always give a new series a season or two to really find its footing.
It Gets Ugly When You Run The Numbers
Needless to say, this has become the most common defense Starfleet Academy fans have used against any and all criticisms of the show. Those fans love to make comparisons to TNG and say that critics should give these cadets time to find their space legs, just like we gave Picard and crew time. However, what these Starfleet Academy fanboys don’t realize is that the new show is racing the clock, and it’s all Paramount’s fault.
Back in the Golden Age of Star Trek, shows ran for seven seasons, with (outside of the occasional writer’s strike) 26 episodes per season. This is why shows like Voyager could afford to have a rocky first season: whenever there was a bad episode, fans could reasonably expect that a good one was around the corner. Even if the first two seasons were wildly rocky (looking at you, The Next Generation), there would be 130 episodes left that would be, relatively speaking, very good.
Each Season Is A Bubble, Waiting To Pop
But those were the salad days of network television. In the streaming era, shows are more streamlined, and Starfleet Academy (like Strange New Worlds before it) has only 10 episodes per season. Moreover, executive producer and co-showrunner Alex Kurtzman has confirmed that the show is designed to last only four seasons, mirroring the four years it takes the cadets to complete their academy training.
That means that Starfleet Academy has a much more limited window to find its audience than fans think. Every episode represents ten percent of an entire season, meaning that a few bad episodes can make the entire season feel like a mixed bag. This is why fans began turning against the more whimsical episodes of Strange New Worlds: while the occasional lighthearted story can be fun, it feels weird when 30 percent of your third season is devoted to overly wacky episodes.
Starfleet Academy is facing a similar problem because the writers keep dragging decent stories down with juvenile humor. Tales of parental trauma and racial diaspora exist uneasily alongside jokes about cadets eating comm badges and vomiting glitter (incredibly, these are different cadets). By the time the show ends, fans may well wonder how much more character development we might have gotten if there had been fewer scenes of farting fish, drunken dancing, and other try-hard attempts to make us laugh.
The Show Will Be Over Before You Know It
It’s also important to remember that Starfleet Academy lasting four seasons is actually a best-case scenario. Previously, NuTrek shows like Discovery and Lower Decks were prematurely canceled by Paramount. Strange New Worlds, meanwhile, unexpectedly had its final season (which recently finished filming) cut in half. While Starfleet Academy has already been renewed for a second season, poor reception of Season 1 could very well get the show prematurely canceled.
That may already be happening, as Starfleet Academy recently tumbled out of the Top 10 list on Paramount+. With any luck, the show will continue to smooth out its rough edges and grow more impressive over time, like The Next Generation before it. But considering that Starfleet Academy will have fewer episodes in its total run than TNG had for only two seasons, it’s important for fans and showrunners alike to realize that this new show is rapidly running out of time to win over new audiences.
Entertainment
Marvel's Biggest TV Show Was Doomed From The Beginning
By Jonathan Klotz
| Published
It’s currently the year 2026. For six years, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has been off the air, and every day since, fans of the adventure series have been wondering when their favorite characters will show up in the MCU. They won’t.
From the very beginning, the signs were there that Disney had no interest in fully integrating the television series into the MCU. All you had to do was watch the second episode, “0-8-4,” a bottle episode that could be set in any universe, with any cast of characters, and needed a last-minute 30-second Samuel L. Jackson cameo in order to keep viewers going into Episode 3.
No Show Should Start With A Bottle Episode
“0-8-4” has Agent Coulson’s (Clark Gregg) team in Peru to recover an artifact of “unknown origin.” Bringing back the “hero ducks down and a shockwave comes from their stick” move from Serenity, the team flees back onboard their ship, “the Bus,” with members of the national army. That’s right, the second episode of the brand new big-budget MCU television series is a bottle episode.
Bottle episodes utilize existing sets, typically with only the main cast involved, and are heavier on dialogue. They can be great when used right, like Supernatural’s “Baby,” but “0-8-4” was only the second episode to air. Going right into a bottle episode was meant to let us see how the characters interact with one another and develop relationships, but Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was also a Marvel series, and nothing about this episode took advantage of the setting.
How many lost civilizations exist in the Marvel universe that the artifact could have been tied to? It could have been part of Nova Roma. Instead of the Peruvian army, Coulson’s ex could have been leading a unit of The Wild Pack. Something. Anything small to tie the story into the larger world, instead of being a generic adventure. Then again, bottle episodes are cheaper to produce, so “0-8-4” should have been a clue that the show’s budget was being throttled in order reach 22 episodes a season.
Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. Is Too Good For Modern Marvel
The best of “0-8-4,” besides FitzSimmons, the best part of every episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., is the brief cameo appearance of Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury after the credits. For over a decade, fans have complained that they have never experienced another moment like that. That was the second clue in “0-8-4” that the series was never, ever, going to reach its potential.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. eventually found its groove by, ironically, abandoning all connection to the MCU and saying, “Screw it, we’re doing Ghost Rider,” or “Let’s adapt Secret Empire.” It was a fun, fantastic sci-fi adventure show. 14 years later, the unrealized potential that Disney had right there still hurts. Given the current state of the MCU, though, maybe it’s good that FitzSimmons, May, Quake, Coulson, and Mack can be remembered on their own. But….What If?
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