After less than a year on the market, the Nintendo Switch 2 is going up in price.

The company announced in a press release on its website that the device is getting a price increase in every major region, including the United States. Customers in the U.S. will pay $50 more for the console, as its price is going from $449 to $499. Nintendo did not delve into specifics in the press release, citing only “changes in market conditions,” but this is almost certainly a response to the global memory shortage driven by high demand for AI data center construction.

That same memory shortage was the culprit behind recent price hikes on PlayStation 5 consoles and Motorola phones, among other tech products. Even if the reasoning is understandable, it must be stated that video game consoles rarely rise in price over time in a normal economic environment. The opposite usually occurs, typically after at least a few years on the market. Nintendo having to hike the Switch 2’s price less than a year after its June 2025 launch is fairly unprecedented, at least in recent memory.

Nintendo said the changes go into effect on Sept. 1 of this year, so if you want a Switch 2, that’s your deadline to get one for $450.

By Jennifer Asencio
| Published 26 seconds ago

The latest trailer for Christopher Nolan’s controversial The Odyssey was released on May 5, 2026, and revealed more of the director’s take on Homer’s epic. Like the other trailers and casting announcements, it drew equal parts controversy, criticism, and avid defenders.

This time, most of the action is focused on Ithaca, where Penelope (Anne Hathaway) and Telemachus (Tom Holland) deal with the numerous suitors trying to assume the throne by marrying the queen. Robert Pattinson lurks and smarms as Antinous, trying to woo Penelope, while cutaway footage shows the tribulations of Odysseus (Matt Damon) against Calypso (Charlize Theron), the whirlpool Charybdis, armored giants, and the Trojan War.

Ancient Accuracy Versus Anachronistic Angst

There are a lot of new problems with this trailer that echo issues people already have with Nolan’s vision. Previous complaints include ahistorical armor from a later Grecian period, boats that look more Viking longboat than bireme, and a plethora of miscast characters, such as Jon Bernthal as Menelaus and Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy.

One of the two main problems with the new trailer is Tom Holland. The actor who has been bringing Peter Parker to spectacular life in some of the rare good content from the Marvel Cinematic Universe looks like a lost child as Telemachus, and has been apparently directed to play the Greek hero that way. The parts of the trailer that aren’t Anne Hathaway angsting as Penelope feature Holland having plenty of angst of his own. Sure, Telemachus had some daddy issues, but Holland looks more like a kid looking for his mommy than a prince defending his father’s kingdom against overwhelming odds.

A large part of Holland’s failure in the new trailer is that the dialogue is extremely cringeworthy. At one point, Antonius actually says, “You’re pining for your daddy,” as though this is a CW teen drama and not a serious Homeric epic. “That world is gone!” Penelope cries with the appropriate amount of suffering and phony British accent.

The translation allegedly being used for the movie is based on the work of Emily Wilson, a feminist translator who felt that Homer’s epic didn’t have enough modern sensibilities. She simplified the poet’s gorgeous turns of phrase and literalized his abstract concepts, trying to take the focus away from the male point of view and focus on the women. Her translation has caused controversy among scholars. It is not confirmed that Nolan used this version to base his script on, but the quality of the dialogue is a poor rendition of modern Gen Z slang.

Follies In Formation

Another thing that stands out from this trailer is the battle scenes we are shown.

For one, Odysseus leads the Greeks in a very un-Grecian formation as he charges down a beach. The Greeks were known for their discipline and their deadly phalanx formation, not for charging into battle like a horde of barbarians. The scene looks more like a sword-and-board version of the opening of Saving Private Ryan than anything the Greeks would have actually done. That may sound like a nitpick, but the discipline of the Greek troops and their loyalty to their kings and to Greece is a huge theme of Homer’s duology.

The other is a ridiculous charge by a troupe of giants who are dressed in armor that looks like they salvaged it from the leftovers of a King Arthur movie than a Homerian epic. These silver-clad warriors look out of place and anachronistic in The Odyssey, another example of Nolan using spectacle and visual shorthand rather than something that actually reflects the source material.

Sure, the special effects look cool, with Charybdis a wide, gaping hole in the sea and the battle in Troy looking explosive. But so far, that’s the only thing The Odyssey has shown it has going for it. Between its snarky, modernized dialogue and its attempt to be a visual spectacle, the trailer looks more like Not Another Marvel Movie than it does a tribute to an important ancient epic.

While, I admit that I may be more sensitive to this vandalism of Homer because my family emigrated to America from Sparta, I can’t help but feeling affronted that my heritage as a Greek is being used by Nolan as a cynical Hollywood cash grab. This telling of Homer’s Trojan War sequel is looking more like a pageant of modernized filmmaking meant more to show that it, to paraphrase Ian Malcolm, could be done, regardless of if it should. Plus, the removal of the values Homer wrote about means that it is more like a presentist fanfiction than anything the Greeks may have written.

We will all find out when The Odyssey premiers in theaters on July 17, 2026.

By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 18 seconds ago

Star Wars is a franchise full of quotable lines, which is why the Prequel Trilogy became the center of so many hilarious memes. One of my favorites comes from the Original Trilogy, when Darth Vader disses his old master, Obi-Wan Kenobi, with the hard line, “Now, his failure is complete.”

Even as a kid, I was fascinated by the idea that failure was not necessarily a fixed state. Just as the Dark Lord of the Sith could slip further and further into the Dark Side, it’s possible for a smaller failure to get increasingly worse over time.

Ironically enough, this line perfectly sums up the Disney era of Star Wars. The House of Mouse made some major mistakes with this franchise early on with a Sequel Trilogy so bad that it drove Star Wars out of theaters for the better part of a decade. They had to pivot to making TV shows, and the only real unqualified success was The Mandalorian. Now unable to get any new ideas to the big screen, Disney is about to premiere The Mandalorian and Grogu, and the fact that their last hope is to make a movie based on a past-its-prime series proves one thing: Disney’s failure is now complete.

The Beginning of the End

In retrospect, it’s clear that the beginning of the end for Star Wars was 2017’s The Last Jedi. While I personally enjoyed the film (it was beautifully shot and took big, creative swings), the majority of fans didn’t agree. The film subverted expectations in several hated ways, including killing Snoke and transforming Luke Skywalker into a cranky curmudgeon.

The second Sequel Trilogy film yielded solid box-office returns ($1.3 billion), but it generated enough negative word of mouth that the next movie suffered. Solo: A Star Wars Story made only $393 million against a $366 million budget, meaning it actually lost money once you factor in marketing and distribution costs.

This failure caused Disney to pivot, transforming several intended film projects (including movies featuring Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi) into TV shows. On paper, this was supposed to help drive subscribers to Disney+, letting the studio have it both ways: audiences would get their Star Wars fix at home through these series and in theaters through movies like 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker. However, that final sequel film was a critical and commercial failure (it made “only” a billion and has a 51 percent critical score on Rotten Tomatoes), which is why we haven’t seen a new Star Wars film in theaters since 2019.

See You, Space Cowboy

The Star Wars shows on Disney+ have proven to be a decidedly mixed bag. Some series that seemed like they’d be surefire hits failed to energize the fandom, including Obi-Wan Kenobi and The Book of Boba Fett. Some shows were hard to appreciate if you didn’t know the deep lore.

For example, you might be lost watching Ahsoka if you didn’t previously watch the entirety of Rebels. Meanwhile, The Acolyte was a complete and mind-bogglingly expensive failure. Ultimately, the only breakout success was The Mandalorian, which focused (at least, at first) on episodic adventures in the vein of a Firefly-esque space western. 

Now, Disney is bringing that show’s two main characters to the big screen later this month with The Mandalorian and Grogu. It’s the kind of film that fans would have eaten up a few years ago, back when The Mandalorian was the hottest show in a galaxy far, far away.

The show fell off in a big way over time. On Rotten Tomatoes, the first two seasons had both fan and critical ratings above 90 percent. But critics gave Season 3 an 84 percent, while fans gave it a much lower, much harsher 51 percent.

In other words, Disney waited until half the fandom hated The Mandalorian before deciding to bring its heroes to the big screen. Furthermore, even most fans looking forward to The Mandalorian and Grogu are worried it will feel more like an extended TV episode than a blockbuster feature film.

These factors at least partially explain why the film is projected to earn only $80 million in its opening weekend. That’s $4 million less than Solo: A Star Wars Story earned, meaning The Mandalorian and Grogu is on track to earn less money than any live-action Star Wars movie in cinematic history. 

Disney’s Failure Is Complete

Now, it’s clear that Disney’s failure is complete when it comes to Star Wars. The failure of the Sequel Trilogy created a ripple effect that turned Solo into a box-office bomb, ultimately canceling a series of intended films. After the failure of The Rise of Skywalker, execs kept canceling exciting movie projects, including Patty Jenkins’ Rogue Squadron. Disney was forced to focus entirely on Star Wars TV shows, which generated mostly disappointment and failures after the initial success of The Mandalorian.

Disney is now forced to put The Mandalorian on the big screen as a Hail Mary attempt to make Star Wars relevant to moviegoing audiences again. But after over a decade of mishandling the franchise, they have ensured that The Mandalorian and Grogu will have the worst opening of any live-action Star Wars film. Sure, more projects are in development (like Starfighter, starring Ryan Gosling), but Disney is in a precarious place. Should The Mandalorian and Grogu bomb as Solo did, it may poison future box office returns just like The Last Jedi did. 

That would make this more than just another cinematic failure for this galaxy far, far away. After nearly half a century of entertaining fans, we may actually be witnessing the end of the Star Wars franchise as we know it.