If you know anything about the process of shooting an effects-heavy, big-budget movie like 2025’s live-action How to Train Your Dragon remake, you’d probably think the hardest part of the job would be the performance: trying to have convincing emotional relationships with characters that’ll be added digitally later. Or maybe it’d be all the stunts, which for HTTYD stars Mason Thames (who plays awkward teen Viking Hiccup) and Nico Parker...

“THAT person?!?!?” It’s natural for fans to have strong reactions to casting news when a beloved franchise scores a  big-screen adaptation. People have cheered and booed in equal measure for the casting of Pedro Pascal as Joel in The Last of Us, or Robert Pattinson as Batman. Some performers have won stubborn fans over. When Heath Ledger was cast as The Joker, nobody wanted a “gay cowboy” in the role....

Deadline reported this week that Netflix is working on a live-action adaptation of the ’90s animated series Captain Planet and the Planeteers, a project which has been in development hell for nearly a decade. While that’s great news for ’90s animation fans, I’m hoping it paves the way for the revival of a different ’90s cartoon about fighting climate change and the excesses of capitalism. Unfortunately, I seem to be...

South Park, on the cusp of its 27th season, is caught in behind-the-scenes turmoil that now threatens the show’s future. At the center of the conflict is the $8 billion acquisition of Paramount by David Ellison’s Skydance Media, a deal that has become a major flashpoint for creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker. The troubles really started in 2019, when Stone and Parker’s 50/50 ad-sharing deal with the Viacom-owned Comedy...

The moment that got the single biggest reaction at the packed screening of Superman that I attended was when Superman saves a squirrel. It takes place during the kaiju battle, it’s over in seconds, and it’s composed of two shots. In the first, we see a wall of debris roaring toward the innocent creature, and a streak of blue and red whisking it away. In the second shot, Superman (David...

Each week on Polygon, we round up the most notable new releases to streaming and VOD, highlighting the biggest and best new movies for you to watch at home. Director Dean BeBlois’ live-action remake of his 2010 DreamWorks Animation film How to Train Your Dragon (co-directed with Chris Sanders) proved once again why studios keep doing these remakes as it quickly outpaced the original’s lifetime theatrical earnings. Nostalgic fans and...

James Gunn’s Superman nails a lot of elements — its earnest take on the Man of Steel, a scene-stealing Jimmy Olsen as an unexpected heartthrob, and a fiercely driven Lois Lane. But just as worthy of praise is Nicholas Hoult’s Lex Luthor, who captures the character’s signature pettiness with pitch-perfect precision. Luthor sees himself as the smartest person in the DC universe, and in Superman, he might also be the...

While I spend more time than I’d like to admit watching Dropout’s stable of excellent, improv-heavy comedy shows, last year’s Gastronauts is one of the few Dropout programs I haven’t yet checked out. After the new trailer for Gastronauts season 2 made my gut bust with laughter (and rumble with hunger), I think that’s going to change when it returns next month. Hosted by Jordan Myrick, Gastronauts is a comedic...

When Evil Lurks, the gory, gloriously devastating horror movie from Argentine filmmaker Demián Rugna, sent genre freaks spiraling when it arrived in 2023. Us included.  “Strong performances, huge shocks, and a heavy sense of inevitability make this horror movie terrifying,” we wrote in our review at the time. “Rugna offers up some tremendous foreshadowing designed to get his audience squirming, then crosses lines that few horror filmmakers are willing to...

The 2025 Superman reboot is, by all accounts, a resounding success. Critics like it a lot, moviegoers are loving it, and it made bank during its opening weekend. It also scared the shit outta me during a couple action sequences. I can handle a lot of violence in films. I wouldn’t have seen four John Wick films and the Ballerina spin-off if death-by-library-book bothered me — instead, it makes me...