Entertainment
Amazing R-Rated Sci-Fi Comedy Is The Office Meets Close Encounters
By Robert Scucci
| Published
Corporate, white-collar jobs are the worst. One time, I worked with a guy who “didn’t like to sit with his back to the door” in the conference room during our weekly management meetings, as if he was Jason freakin Bourne. He was an accounts receivable manager, an avid watch and stamp collector, and weighed north of 300 pounds. Not a single person thought, “man, what a badass” when he said these things, but we just had to grin and bear it. We just smiled and nodded as if he didn’t just say the dumbest thing on the planet.
The same kind of behavior shows up in 2010’s Drones, except nobody’s pretending to be a highly trained assassin posing as a white-collar client services supervisor who drives a Honda Pilot. No, they’re claiming to be aliens.
A Not-So-Hostile Takeover
Drones centers on a business-casual G man named Brian (Jonathan M. Woodward), who works as a pencil pusher for the Omni Link company. It’s never really established what he or his coworkers do for a living. Think of it like Office Space. The greatest source of stress around the office is the company changing its filing system from chronological to alphabetical, which completely incenses Cooperman (Dave Allen), the most cynical employee in the building.
But if I’m weighing in here and being entirely honest, if you don’t sort by “date modified,” you’re a total psychopath. That way, the things you were working on most recently, and actually need, are at the top of the list. I’m totally Team Cooperman here.
There are two other sources of stress in Drones that slowly reveal themselves. First, Brian’s coworker Clark (Samm Levine) accidentally lets it slip that he’s an alien with plans for Earth that haven’t been fully explained. Second, before confessing any of that, Clark encourages Brian to ask out Amy (Angela Bettis), because it’s obvious to everybody that they’ve got some chemistry.
Then, Brian gets to know Amy and learns that she’s also an alien, reporting back to her home planet through the fax machine in the print room. Here’s the real problem. Amy and Clark aren’t from the same planet, and they both plan to take over Earth against each other’s knowledge. What follows is a series of closed-door conversations, eavesdropping, and awkward office romances tangled up in something much bigger than getting accused of stealing the last doughnut from the break room.
Quirky And Fun, But You Have To Use Your Imagination
Like most low-budget outings, Drones has its fun by never showing you its “monsters.” There are no special effects, and the entire movie takes place inside an office building. Everything is fluorescently lit to the point where your brain practically invents that awful humming noise just to complete the experience. Most of the tension comes from miscommunication and people getting their wires crossed over their motives.
What really sells the premise, though, is Amy’s dynamic with Brian. It’s the perfect interoffice romance because it’s built on paranoia. The kind of paranoia you get when you catch feelings for a coworker and convince yourself that even the smallest amount of happiness will somehow get reported to HR and shut down immediately.
Angela Bettis knocks it out of the park as Amy because she carries a subtle uncanny valley vibe. It’s not that she looks strange. She’s conventionally attractive and not doing anything overtly off-putting aside from occasionally talking to a fax machine. It’s all in her expressions. She studies everyone around her like she’s trying to figure out how humans operate in real time so she can report back to her own species.
Samm Levine’s Clark is similarly, and inexplicably, strange. Having worked in an office myself for years, nothing he’s doing is technically out of the ordinary, but something about his mannerisms still feels off. Both characters ride that line perfectly, where they seem normal on the surface but just weird enough to make you question everything.
Stuck between two potential alien invasions, all centered around his workplace, Brian is either weirdly okay with everything or completely bewildered depending on the moment, which makes for a surprisingly fun watch.
Drones is the kind of movie you throw on after a long day at an office job as a reminder to seek employment elsewhere. Everything from the interpersonal politics to the drab setting feels intentionally uncomfortable.
It makes you wonder if humans were ever meant to sit in cubicles all day (Peter Gibbons was right). An office suite is the perfect place for alien overlords to gather and talk shop if you think about it. It’s the one place where humans show up completely disengaged, which probably gives the aliens the upper hand before lunchtime most days.
As of this writing, Drones is streaming for free on Tubi.
Entertainment
Peter Jackson Is Making A New Lord Of The Rings Movie, It's About Tom Bombadil
By Joshua Tyler
| Updated
New Zealand filmmaker Peter Jackson is working on a new Lord of the Rings movie, and to make it, he’s teaming up with talk show host Stephen Colbert. This is not a joke or a drill; it’s happening, and they’re already writing the script.
Stephen Colbert, long known as one of Hollywood’s most obsessive Tolkien fans, is co-writing the film alongside his son, Peter McGee, and returning franchise writer Philippa Boyens. They’re using the working title The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past to refer to the project. It’s not clear yet if that will be the movie’s final title.
Here’s the announcement recorded by Peter Jackson…
The story they’re developing is based on six specific chapters from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring. Those chapters are numbers three through eight, often referred to as “Three Is Company through Fog on the Barrow Downs.” They involve Frodo first leaving the Shire, encountering his first Black Rider, and, most notably of all, encountering Tom Bombadil.
Tolkien fans will no doubt remember that Tom Bombadil was the biggest omission from the original Lord of the Rings movies. Jackson will now remedy that by making an entire, dedicated Tom Bombadil story.
Tom Bombadil is one of the strangest and most mysterious figures in The Lord of the Rings. Living in the Old Forest with his wife Goldberry, in Tolkien’s book, he appears cheerful and harmless, yet possesses immense, unexplained power. He’s so powerful that he’s totally unaffected by the One Ring.
Bombadil rescues the hobbits from multiple dangers, including the Barrow-downs, but exists completely outside the main conflict of Middle-earth, seemingly untouched by its wars, politics, or even its rules.
Peter Jackson is mostly involved in The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past on the production side, reuniting with key members of the original creative team, signaling that this isn’t a reboot but another attempt to mine unused Tolkien material with the same people who built the franchise the first time. This new project is slated for release after Lord of the Rings: Hunt For Gollum, a feature film in production under the direction of Lord of the Rings alum Andy Serkis.
Entertainment
NYT Connections hints today: Clues, answers for March 25, 2026
The NYT Connections puzzle today is not too difficult if you keep up with the news.
Connections is the one of the most popular New York Times word games that’s captured the public’s attention. The game is all about finding the “common threads between words.” And just like Wordle, Connections resets after midnight and each new set of words gets trickier and trickier—so we’ve served up some hints and tips to get you over the hurdle.
If you just want to be told today’s puzzle, you can jump to the end of this article for today’s Connections solution. But if you’d rather solve it yourself, keep reading for some clues, tips, and strategies to assist you.
What is Connections?
The NYT‘s latest daily word game has become a social media hit. The Times credits associate puzzle editor Wyna Liu with helping to create the new word game and bringing it to the publications’ Games section. Connections can be played on both web browsers and mobile devices and require players to group four words that share something in common.
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Each puzzle features 16 words and each grouping of words is split into four categories. These sets could comprise of anything from book titles, software, country names, etc. Even though multiple words will seem like they fit together, there’s only one correct answer.
If a player gets all four words in a set correct, those words are removed from the board. Guess wrong and it counts as a mistake—players get up to four mistakes until the game ends.
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Players can also rearrange and shuffle the board to make spotting connections easier. Additionally, each group is color-coded with yellow being the easiest, followed by green, blue, and purple. Like Wordle, you can share the results with your friends on social media.
Mashable Top Stories
Here’s a hint for today’s Connections categories
Want a hint about the categories without being told the categories? Then give these a try:
Here are today’s Connections categories
Need a little extra help? Today’s connections fall into the following categories:
Looking for Wordle today? Here’s the answer to today’s Wordle.
Ready for the answers? This is your last chance to turn back and solve today’s puzzle before we reveal the solutions.
Drumroll, please!
The solution to today’s Connections #1018 is…
What is the answer to Connections today
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Obfuscate: BLUR, CLOUD, MUDDY, OBSCURE
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Magazines: FORTUNE, PEOPLE, SPIN, TIME
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Payment methods: CASH, CHARGE, CHECK, WIRE
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Units of volume with last letter changed: CUR, GALLOP, PING, QUARK
Don’t feel down if you didn’t manage to guess it this time. There will be new Connections for you to stretch your brain with tomorrow, and we’ll be back again to guide you with more helpful hints.
Are you also playing NYT Strands? Get all the Strands hints you need for today’s puzzle.
If you’re looking for more puzzles, Mashable’s got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.
Not the day you’re after? Here’s the solution to yesterday’s Connections.
Entertainment
Starfleet Academy Is Dead, Schrödinger’s Fans Blamed
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
My relationship with Starfleet Academy has been, as Facebook would call it, complicated. It’s a show I absolutely despised at first, but I grew to like more as Season 1 progressed. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the show was doomed from the start. That’s because it never cracked the Nielsen Top 10 Streaming list, and it very rarely made it into the top 10 for Paramount +, its own streamer. The network is cagey about releasing any actual viewership numbers, but from the outside looking in, it never seemed like enough people were watching to justify this show’s rumored per-episode price tag.
Schrödinger’s Fans (noun, plural) — A paradoxical audience state in which a fanbase is simultaneously dismissed as too small to matter and blamed as large enough to determine a project’s success or failure, depending on which argument is more convenient.
Now that the show is dead, the fandom has been conducting its inevitable autopsy. Equally inevitable is who they have chosen to blame for the show’s failure. Those mean, older fans who criticized the show from the start. Those haters warned of SFA’s doom from the beginning, but were always told they were simply a vocal, hateful minority. Now, these haters are being blamed for the death of Starfleet Academy, which has revealed these harsh critics to be Schrödinger’s fans; a group so small their opinion don’t matter, but so big that their lack of interest can ruin an entire show.
Cultural Collision
When it comes to Starfleet Academy, the division between Star Trek fans is pretty obvious. Most of the show’s biggest defenders skew younger, and the formative sci-fi of their youth was things like the Star Wars prequels (or, God help us, the Star Wars sequels). Conversely, most of the show’s biggest critics skew older, and they grew up watching shows like Star Trek: The Next Generation. A collision between these groups was inevitable: older Star Trek fans wanted Starfleet Academy to be more like older Star Trek. Newer fans wanted the franchise to do something new.
Paramount obviously chose to tailor Starfleet Academy to younger viewers. It’s an understandable impulse, of course. As the franchise warps to its 60th anniversary, the majority of the fandom isn’t getting any younger. The network decided to address this problem fairly directly by creating a show filled with young people speaking in modern slang and constantly enjoying sophomoric humor. Unfortunately, this decision ultimately drove away the older fans that, as Paramount found out the hard way, were more important than anyone could have guessed.
Understanding Schrödinger’s Fans
In case you need a quick refresher, Schrödinger’s cat is a thought experiment in quantum physics. It refers to the idea that particles exist in every possible state until they are directly observed. This idea (known as “superposition”) works well in theory, but the thought experiment shows how silly this notion is when applied to something as simple as a cat in a sealed box. You see, until you open the box and check, quantum mechanics tells us that the cat is, paradoxically, both alive and dead.
What does this have to do with Star Trek? Fans of Starfleet Academy have been looking for someone to blame for the show’s cancellation, and many of them are blaming the older fans who have hated the show from the beginning. These superfans seemingly believe that if the haters had tuned in or simply stopped saying anything negative about the show, SFA would still be around.
To these fans, I must make a blunt request: pick a lane! Before Starfleet Academy was canceled, critical voices were dismissed as a vocal minority who just didn’t understand the subtle genius of this new Star Trek show (the one with the dick and fart jokes).
Now, haters are being told that their refusal to watch SFA somehow screwed the show. Just like that, older Star Trek lovers became Schrödinger’s fans. There are so few of us that our thoughts and opinions don’t matter, yet there are so many of us that our opinions can either save or doom a show.
An Expensive Lesson, But Will Paramount Learn?
It feels self-serving saying this (since I’m a middle-aged, lifelong lover of the franchise), but the clear lesson here is that Paramount needs to give older Star Trek fans what we want. We are not some tiny minority group to be ignored. We are the group that has kept this franchise alive for 60 years. Ironically, most of us started watching The Next Generation at a young age because, get this, it was a slick update to The Original Series!
Star Trek doesn’t have to radically change direction to gain younger fans. Instead, creators need to work on updating the classic formula for modern audiences. This is why Strange New Worlds has proven popular with younger and older fans alike. Aging Trek fans like its homages to The Original Series, while younger fans enjoy the humor and jokes. Hindsight is always 20/20, but there was no need to make Starfleet Academy so radically different than what came before. As it turns out, if a show is Star Trek in name only, not that many Star Trek fans will tune in.
At the end of the day, this is a numbers game, and Starfleet Academy just didn’t have that many viewers. Paramount tried to do something completely new, and it blew up in their faces. Now is the time to embrace the Golden Age of the franchise: kick Alex Kurtzman to the curb, bring back Terry Matalas for Star Trek: Legacy, and focus on capable, competent adults exploring strange new worlds. Otherwise, Paramount’s attempts to reach younger viewers will ultimately result in no viewers, finally killing the greatest sci-fi franchise ever made.
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