Entertainment
The Star Wars Actor Quietly Trying Save Marvel
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Whenever people talk about the best Marvel series on Disney+, they never mention Moon Knight. That’s a shame, though, because this show was like nothing else in this sprawling cinematic universe. It kept fans on their toes from beginning to end, and the entire thing was anchored by an amazing performance from lead actor Oscar Isaac. When the credits rolled on Season 1, everyone wanted to know if he was going to come back and portray this unstable hero ever again. Almost half a decade later, though, and most of the fandom has concluded that Isaac is never coming back to this show despite it racking up an impressive nine Emmy nominations.
However, in a recent interview, Moon Knight creator Jeremy Slater revealed that Isaac signed a very special contract with Marvel in which he would only come back to the show if Marvel could develop “stories that he is creatively excited to tell.” Some might think the Star Wars actor is just being a prima donna and refusing to return to genre storytelling. Taken at face value, though, Isaac is primarily interested in the creative integrity of his character. Meanwhile, the contract he signed is a great example of how other actors can collectively do the impossible: fix the MCU.
In The Name Of The Moon, He Will Punish Disney
In an interview with ComicBook.com, Jeremy Slater revealed that Oscar Isaac made a very unconventional deal with Disney when he agreed to do Moon Knight. “The contract Oscar Isaac signed was very much like, we will do more stories when we find stories that he is creatively excited to tell,” he said. “They can’t just sort of snap their fingers and summon him back for another adventure.” The reason for this is simple: according to Slater, Isaac is “really creatively involved in the future of that character.”
Of course, this puts additional pressure on Slater and other Marvel gurus to up their storytelling game. Slater claims that “part of the challenge, and part of the joy over there, is finding what stories does Oscar want to explore, and how does he want that character to be used? What’s something that would entice him to get back and play in that sandbox one more time?” Unfortunately, since we haven’t gotten any new Moon Knight episodes in over four years, it’s clear that Slater and the rest of his team have failed (so far, at least) to come up with a story that Isaac found creatively compelling.
The Marvel Slop-o-Matic Universe
Still, hope springs eternal, and Slater spilling the tea about Isaac’s contrast may provide Marvel fans with hope for the actor’s eventual return. However, this surprising news has me asking a more fundamental question: why aren’t more Marvel stars negotiating these kinds of contracts? Historically, the biggest MCU stars have been tied down to decade-long contracts that require they appear in a certain number of films and shows regardless of quality. That’s how Chris Hemsworth ended up doing the hated sequel Thor: The Dark World, and how Brie Larson came back from the blockbuster success of Captain Marvel to do The Marvels, the biggest cinematic failure of the entire franchise.
Whenever fans complain about the declining quality of the MCU, what they’re really complaining about is the declining quality of the writing. Bad writers can turn even the most beloved heroes into walking (or flying) punchlines, and even good writers get ground down by the requirements of major executives like Kevin Feige. In fact, studio pressure is the primary reason why so many Marvel movies follow the same, bland formula: execs look at what worked before in movies like The Avengers (armies of generic goons, endless quips, an inexplicable blue light in the sky), and try to apply it to as many films as possible in an attempt to recapture lightning in a bottle.
Our Favorite Lunar Psycho
It never really works, which is why we have so many awful, phoned-in sequels like The Marvels, Thor: Love and Thunder, and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Previously, the actors have always been relatively helpless when it comes to fixing the movies they are attached to. But Osar Isaac is quietly demonstrating an option most of these stars have never considered: negotiating a contract where he doesn’t have to come back if he’s not happy with the project. It’s the right call for Moon Knight, of course. Personally, I’d rather have only one excellent season of this Emmy-nominated show than watch it descend into pure slop.
But it’s the right call for Marvel shows and movies across the board. We all know that the real cure for superhero fatigue is good writing, just as we all know that the studio and especially its parent company will cut corners whenever possible to meet deadlines and maximize profits. Oscar Isaac’s Moon Knight contract is more than a sweetheart deal; it’s a way for future MCU actors to break the cycle of sloppy storytelling and only appear in works they are passionate about. For this to happen, though, these actors will have to emulate their onscreen characters and become real-life heroes ready to fight the biggest supervillain of them all: The Walt Disney Company.
Entertainment
The best Hulu deals and bundles in May 2026
The best Hulu deals and bundles in May 2026:
There’s a wide range of excellent shows and films to watch on Hulu, including The Testaments, season two of Paradise, and a surprise new episode of The Bear. It’s a library that’s full of options to keep you entertained throughout the summer and beyond.
If these shows have caught your eye and have you itching to sign up for Hulu, we’re here to help you get the best deal. Outside of the standard ad-supported and ad free plans, there are quite a few bundle deals available with Hulu that are worth exploring if you’re looking to save some cash. This includes the Disney+, Hulu, and HBO Max package.
Disney has also dropped a new six-month offer on the Disney+ and Hulu bundle, though this is only accessible from their site at the moment. This drops its ad-supported plan to $11.99 per month when locking in for six months (before going back up to $12.99 per month). The ad-free plan is down to $17.99 per month (which will return to $19.99 per month after six months). Disney notes that this is an “ongoing offer for people who want to subscribe for a longer period to save on the average monthly cost.” It’s also available for new and eligible returning subscribers.
Below you can find details on Hulu’s best bundles at the moment — alongside information on both its ad-supported and ad free plans, if you just want the basics — offering you a way to save on the service right now.
Best Disney+ bundle deal
$12.99 per month with ads
Why we like it
For those interested in the ad-supported Disney+ and Hulu Bundle, which sets you up with Disney+ alongside Hulu, it starts at $12.99 per month. If you’d prefer the Premium ad-free version of this plan, this jumps to $19.99 per month.
If you’re curious about Disney’s new six-month offer, this is accessible on Disney’s site. Again, it offers the ad-supported Disney+ and Hulu bundle plan for $11.99 per month when locking in for six months, before returning to $12.99 per month. The Premium ad-free plan is $17.99 per month for six months, before returning to $19.99 per month.
Best HBO Max bundle deal
$19.99/month with ads, $32.99/month ad-free
Why we like it
This is one of the best Hulu bundles available at the moment. Starting at $19.99 per month, this bundle grants you access to Hulu, Disney+, and HBO Max’s streaming services for a much lower price than what you’d pay for the three of them separately. It’s an incredible deal to take advantage of, especially if you’ve already got Disney+ and HBO Max subscriptions. There are two plans to choose from with this bundle, and they are:
Best student deal
Hulu with ads for $1.99/month
Why we like it
If you’re a student enrolled at a university, you can score a Hulu (with ads) plan for even lower than the above bundles. Hulu’s Student Deal gives eligible college students the ability to buy a Hulu (with ads) plan for just $1.99 per month. Hulu notes that the deal lasts “so long as student enrollment status remains verified,” then it goes back up to the standard monthly price.
Best ESPN bundle deal
Why we like it
Alongside the big Hulu, Disney+, and HBO Max bundle, Hulu also has plans for sports fans that throw in ESPN Select or ESPN Unlimited. According to ESPN, “ESPN Select includes ESPN+ content only. Fans who want ESPN+ exclusively may subscribe to the ESPN Select plan. ESPN Unlimited includes all of the ESPN networks and services, including ESPN+.”
The Disney+, Hulu, ESPN Unlimited Bundle, which has ads, is available for $35.99 per month. The Disney+, Hulu, ESPN Unlimited premium bundle without ads is available for $44.99 per month.
Mashable Deals
Hulu’s monthly plans
If you’re just looking to jump straight into Hulu’s library without any fancy bundles, there are a couple of subscription options to consider. The ad-supported tier comes in at $11.99 per month, but you’ll get your first month free, which is a great way to test the waters and see if it’s the right fit for you. If you want to go ad free, that’ll cost you $18.99 per month. Unfortunately, this plan does not offer a free trial like its ad-supported sibling.
If you really want to go big on a streaming investment, there’s the Hulu + Live TV plan. This costs a whopping $89.99 per month for its ad-supported plan, but comes with plenty to keep you busy. Hulu + Live TV (with ads) gets you access to 95+ channels, unlimited DVR, Disney+ (with ads), ESPN Select (with ads), and Hulu (with ads). If you want to go even bigger with the ad-free plan — which offers Hulu (no ads), Disney+ (no ads), and ESPN Select (with ads) alongside Live TV — it’ll cost you $99.99 per month. The ad-supported plan also offers a free trial, but for just three days instead.
Wondering what to watch once you get set up with a Hulu plan or bundle? We’re here to help with that as well. Have a look at our roundups of the 30 best comedies on Hulu, the 25 best sci-fi movies on Hulu, and the 26 best horror movies on Hulu to start building your watchlist. And if you’re in the mood to binge-watch a show, check out our breakdown of the 25 best shows on Hulu.
Entertainment
The Worst Director’s Cut Ever Made Is Now Streaming For Free
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
As a movie lover, there’s one phrase that always gets my blood pumping: “director’s cut.” We all know that studios often make changes that can absolutely ruin a movie, like when they added those awful voiceover narrations to Blade Runner. As soon as he could, Ridley Scott released a version without those voice-overs that is infinitely better.
While Scott might have gone a bit overboard in releasing so many different edits over the years, the point stands: a director’s cut is usually a way of improving a movie. Every now and then, though, a director comes along and does his best to ruin a classic.
One such man is Richard Kelly, best known as the director of Donnie Darko. The original film stalled out at the box office, but it’s now considered a cult hit due to its heady mixture of violence, time travel, and coming-of-age teen hijinks, complete with the creepiest bunny ever put on film.
The most compelling thing about the movie is that it refuses to explain most of its craziest events, forcing you to think about what the heck you just watched long after the credits roll. Unfortunately, Donnie Darko: The Director’s Cut ruins everything cool and mysterious about the original by painfully explaining everything in excruciating detail.
Not All Director’s Cuts Are Created Equal
If you loved Donnie Darko in 2001, then the arrival of the Director’s Cut in 2004 probably seemed like a big deal. This new cut promised over 20 minutes of new footage, new special effects, and improved sound quality. Sounds great, right?
Unfortunately, the new footage mostly comes from deleted scenes awkwardly shoehorned back into the movie, without any concern for pacing or characterization. The result is an overly lengthy film; while the original Donnie Darko was a comparatively svelte 113 minutes, the Director’s Cut’s 134 minutes makes it feel like a bloated, plodding mess.
There are some other unnecessary changes here, including tweaks to the soundtrack. For another film, such changes might not be a big deal. However, Donnie Darko had an absolutely perfect soundtrack, one which used a series of quirky bangers to set the scene for the surreal events of the film.
The original needle drops made everything feel hazy and dreamlike, so any changes to them (even minor changes, like replacing “The Killing Moon” with “Never Tear Us Apart”) feel like cinematic blasphemy that is as offensive as it is completely unnecessary.
A Frank Examination
The main reason the Donnie Darko director’s cut sucks, though, is that director Richard Kelly forgot the quintessential rule of sci-fi storytelling: less is more. The original movie presented plenty of time-tripping mysteries, including how (spoilers, sweetie!) the title character traveled into his own past, ensuring that he’d die when a jet engine inexplicably fell into his bedroom.
Donnie laughs right before he dies, secure in the knowledge that he is fixing a doomed timeline and saving someone he loves. As the credits roll, first-time viewers are always struck by the same question: “What the heck just happened?”
Unfortunately, the Director’s Cut answers that question in the most literal and boring way. You see, in the original cut, Donnie (Jake Gyllenhaal) takes an interest in time travel and receives a book, The Philosophy of Time Travel, written by a now-retired science teacher. But we don’t get much actual wisdom from the book and must figure out the timey-wimey narrative on our own.
In the Director’s Cut, we get pages from this book literally superimposed on the screen. Thanks to all this dreadfully boring exposition, we finally know what happened in the movie, and it’s pretty wild!
Ruining The Greatest Trip In Cinema
Apparently, the moment the jet engine landed in Donnie’s bedroom, it created a Tangent Universe. The young man is a Living Receiver who gains bizarre superpowers, including telekinesis and premonition, and has a seemingly impossible job: to return the jet engine to the Primary Universe, the only way to prevent the destruction of the entire universe.
By the end of the film, a traumatized Donnie creates a time portal and rips a jet engine off the plane that his mother and younger sister are in. He sends that engine and himself into the past, killing himself and closing the tangent universe while he laughs, knowing his sacrifice will save those he loved.
Is it a neat explanation? Maybe. But the one that you came up with in your head was probably way, way cooler. Unfortunately, this is the nature of science fiction: being handed the truth (like what the Smoke Monster is in Lost and what the Upside Down is in Stranger Things) is never as satisfying as trying to figure everything out on your own.
Donnie Darko: The Director’s Cut hands you every boring explanation on a plate, sapping the mystery from a movie it already ruined with new scenes and a botched soundtrack. If you want to watch the worst director’s cut ever made, though, it’s now streaming for free on Tubi.
Trust me, though: after seeing it, you’ll want to escape your new Tangent Universe and return to the timeline where you never watched this cinematic abomination!
Entertainment
The Unfairly Hated Sci-Fi Flop That's Suddenly Dominating On Streaming
Edit a lot of idiotic and stolen together into two hours of film, and you end up with a big, silly summer blockbuster in which legless men can be heroes, and the elderly can be useful.
By Joshua Tyler
| Updated
In theory, director Peter Berg’s Battleship is supposed to be based on the popular guessing game of the same name. In reality, there’s almost no connection between Battleship the movie and its Milton Bradley namesake at all, outside of a single thrilling ten-minute sequence involving buoys, missiles, and a big board. The rest of the movie is a puzzle made up of pieces cribbed from some of history’s most infamously ridiculous summer blockbusters.
Sometimes you want big, silly, and stupid on a random Friday night when you’re not going out.
Battleship is an alien invasion movie, I guess, but it’s also one of many Hollywood movies that only really uses aliens because killing them won’t offend anyone. Like any alien species imagined under such creatively corrupted circumstances, these extraterrestrials aren’t very good at their job.
They land in the middle of a naval exercise, which might not be tactically ridiculous if their ships had some sort of technological superiority that would enable them to crush their human opponents without a thought, but they don’t. Their ships can’t even fly.
Edit a lot of idiotic and stolen together into two hours of film, and you end up with a big, silly summer blockbuster in which legless men can be heroes, and the elderly can be useful.
Instead, they sort of flop about in the water and shoot at the Navy with weapons that, while weirder, aren’t all that much more effective than those used on the deck of a World War II-era battleship. Actually, they’re exactly that effective, as the movie later goes on to demonstrate.
Eventually, we find out they’ve arrived as some sort of pre-invasion force, we learn this via an out-of-place scene stolen from every alien invasion movie you’ve ever seen in which an ET mind-melds with one of the crew. So they’re here to wipe out humanity and take the planet for themselves, thus it makes sense when they set about blowing up our ships and attacking the Hawaii mainland. What doesn’t make sense is the alien attackers’ hesitance to shoot at anything that isn’t already shooting at them (later abandoned) or their refusal to kill little kids playing baseball (though they’re happy to murder the ones who use our highway system).
Taylor Kitsch is heroic, Rihanna steals scenes running around shooting guns, and Brooklyn Decker’s moves are so hypnotic it doesn’t matter what sort of dreck comes out of her mouth as dialogue.
So the aliens are ineffectual, ill-equipped, and their tactics don’t make a lot of sense. This leaves the film’s human component to carry the day and, well, they sort of do.
Taylor Kitsch is heroic, Rihanna steals scenes running around shooting guns, and Brooklyn Decker’s moves are so hypnotic it doesn’t matter what sort of dreck comes out of her mouth as dialogue. You won’t even mind that half the script seems like it was written as a PSA for the families of wounded soldiers.
Does it matter if you’re being manipulated if you know you’re being manipulated all along? I say it doesn’t.
Every moment of Battleship is either idiotic or stolen. Edit a lot of idiotic and stolen together into two hours of film, and you end up with a big, silly summer blockbuster in which legless men can be heroes, and the elderly can be useful.
Sometimes you want big, silly, and stupid on a random Friday night when you’re not going out. It’s unlikely anyone will make anything sillier or stupider than Battleship any time soon. Go ahead and watch it; just don’t tell anyone.
Battleship is now widely available on most streaming platforms, including Amazon Prime Video, YouTube, Apple TV+, and Google Play.
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Royals playing for more than Missouri bragging rights vs. Cardinals
