This story contains slight spoilers for Everything Everywhere All at Once.

The appearance of Raccacoonie in Everything Everywhere All at Once was one of the film’s highlights, and a major talking point… and it turns out, it used a real, very-much-deceased, raccoon.

During an interview with The Ringer, makeup and effects supervisor Jason Hamer revealed how he made the incredible Raccacoonie prop.

“The guys were like, ‘Think cheap. We don't want it to look good. It should look goofy, like a bad taxidermy.’” The idea was the make Raccacoonie look low budget… but Hamer took their direction a bit too literally and used raccoon taxidermy as a basis for his animatronic raccoon.

Raccacoonie is first mentioned in a hilarious gag when Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh) misremembers the title of the Pixar classic, Ratatouille. But later, Everything Everywhere All at Once uses this weird gag to illustrate the breadth of the multiverse.

“The idea that whatever she got wrong was real was a very exciting way to explore the multiverse,” said co-director Daniel Scheinert in an interview with Vulture. “That’s always when we know a joke is going to be worth pursuing—when first the idea is so ridiculous that we can’t stop thinking about it.”

Ultimately, Raccacoonie made it into the movie… but the directors didn’t want it to look perfect. “That was one of the challenges,” said Hamer. “The guys [were] going, ‘Cheap and quick and dirty.’ And I'm going, ‘No. Cool and beautiful and funny!’”

Of course, the logistics were… tricky. “You’ve got to think about the challenges of, you’ve got an actor and we’ve got to mount it to his head,” he said. “Are we going to do puppet arms? Are we going to make it animatronic?”

Ultimately, the taxidermy raccoon was used as a skeleton for a complex system of animatronics… while the outside was kept as lo-fi as possible. Hamer himself is renowned for his impeccable makeup and effects, having been nominated for an Emmy for his work on Westworld. So, how do you hold back the instinct to make it look better?

“It's going not as far as you would like to go, is basically what it is,” he said. “It's taking less time to blend the hair, or painting on the fur.”

The end result is an utterly charming (and hilarious) take on a Pixar classic that became a big subplot in the film as Evelyn helps chef Chad (Harry Shum Jr.) rescue his talking raccoon pal. Quite a step up for a taxidermized raccoon.

Everything Everywhere All At Once stars Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, Jenny Slate, Harry Shum Jr, James Hong, and Jamie Lee Curtis. The film was both written and directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

The deal is back! The Razer Anzu smart glasses retail for a ridiculous $199.99. In our opinion, it's hard to justify any pair of sunglasses for that price, unless you're fully aware that you're paying for the brand name.

Fortunately, Amazon has significantly dropped the price of these glasses down to $59.97, a hefty 70% discount. That's specifically for the rectangular style frame in the "regular/small" size. At that price, you're actually getting a lot of bang for your buck. The Razer Anzu glasses are purposefully engineered for both your outdoor lifestyle activities as well as your indoor PC gaming. We reviewed these glasses ourselves last year, but keep in mind that we treated them like $200 glasses, not $50 glasses.

Razer Anzu Smart Glasses Are On Sale Right Now

The Razer Anzu glasses come with two sets of interchangeable lenses; blue-light filtering lenses for indoor PC use and polarized sunglass lenses for outdoor use. Blue light filtering lenses are designed to reduce eye strain and fatigue caused by high energy blue light emitted from your computer monitor. Blue light is a melatonin suppressor, and the theory is that using your monitor at night suppresses your natural sleep cycle. If that's true, blue light filtering lenses should help you fall asleep better, even after an intense late night gaming session. The tinted polarized lenses work much like any regular pair of sunglasses; the polarized film provides 99% UVA/UVB protection and is designed to reduce glare and eliminate potential eye damage from the sun.

Razer took an extra step and implemented wireless hands-free calling in these glasses. There's a Bluetooth speaker and microphone embedded in the frame. A clever touch interface allows you to manipulate the controls, but it's also voice assistant compatible. You get up to 5 hours of talk time, so you probably won't need to charge it every day.

Current only only the rectangular model in the regular/small size is available at this price. We're not sure how long this deal lasts, but if you plan on getting one, you definitely don't want to lose out on this deal and pay the full $200 over at Razer direct.

This review contains full spoilers for episode four of Ms. Marvel, "Seeing Red", now available to view on Disney+. To remind yourself of where we left off, check out our Ms. Marvel episode 3 review.

Home is where the heart is, or so the popular idiom goes, but Ms. Marvel proves it isn’t as straightforward. In this week’s fourth episode, Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani) and her mother Muneeba (Zenobia Shroff) fly to Pakistan for a long overdue family reunion, which leads to an enlightening experience for the Khans and the audience alike. It is another eventful, entertaining episode that packs in world-building mythology alongside an exploration of historical events that caused a real-life rupture, and Ms. Marvel continues to surprise with its capacity to juggle both story threads.

Academy Award-winning director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy immediately captures the teenager’s overwhelmed yet excited state as she experiences Karachi, the home her parents left decades before. Jersey City is the only home Kamala has ever known, and removing her from the familiar takes the teenager further out of her comfort zone. Even though she isn’t entirely comfortable in her own skin in the United States, her friendships keep her grounded, and Kamala has some semblance of who she is. A fractured identity runs in the family, and moving Kamala away from her support group enables Ms. Marvel to continue digging into the rupture that led to this concept of the divided self.

The family reunion with Sana (Samina Ahmed) is joyous but not without tension. There is more than one elephant in the room as Kamala has questions for her nani about the bracelet, whereas Muneeba still harbors resentment. All three generations have unresolved issues that add to the emotional weight of “Seeing Red.”

Comments about Muneeba’s past rebellious streak prove how much closer she is to her daughter than either of them realizes. Her relationship with Sana is particularly revelatory as years of animosity spill out while Muneeba tidies her mother’s house from all its clutter. Shroff has stood out throughout this first season, and this MVP status is emphasized further during this emotional conversation. Ahmed is equally as powerful in a scene detailing why Muneeba wanted to move to the US — and why she now wants to reconnect.

It is refreshing that Sana isn’t depicted as an all-knowing, wise elder with all the answers. Instead, she paints a portrait (quite literally) of their family’s fractured heritage and how moving to the US further splintered this concept of home and identity. Later, she talks about the events of the Partition concerning her fractured identity and how she is still trying to figure out who she is after all this time. Borders define a country’s boundaries, but it is not as clear for the citizens on either side of the line. It continues to feel rather radical that an MCU series on Disney+ is tackling a traumatic historical event like this. “There is a border marked with blood and pain. People are claiming their identity based on an idea some old Englishman had when they were fleeing the country,” Sana tells Kamala. This description underscores the horror inflicted — and pain it is still causing.

It isn’t simply a history lesson dished out in digestible chunks; there is a link to the threats posed to the MCU version of the world. Parallels are to be expected, and in this case, the Djinn want Kamala’s bracelet so they can break the veil between dimensions. Bollywood multi-hyphenate Farhan Akhtar has the task of delivering all of this exposition in his role as Waleed. With the aid of a rather techy diorama, he sells the impending danger. Waleed is part of the Red Daggers (Kamala is right; they do sound like a Pakastani boy band), and their task is to “protect our people from threats of the unseen.”.

The introduction of another group of warriors adds to the jam-packed story but also offers some levity. Flirtatious sparring between Red Daggers member Kareem (Aramis Knight) and Kamala suggests he is another potential love interest, and this is enhanced by Vellani and Knight’s effortless, crackling chemistry. They both tease each other, and there is an element of a normal teenage hangout before the Djinn breaks up the fun. As fighting partners, they are a strong team, and at this point, I have to say, ‘Kamran, who?’ (Sorry, Kamran!)

An ambush sets in motion the episode's big set-piece, and the fight scenes capture the scale of the market location — and the city rooftops — while depicting the closed-in narrow streets and eventual dead-end in which Kamala and Kareem find themselves. Director Obaid-Chinoy cut her teeth in documentary filmmaking (for which she won two Oscars) and her eye for details during this frenetic confrontation elevates the sequence further.

This fantastic, colorful sequence is in contrast to the nighttime DODC supermax prison breakout, which is a goofy moment primarily because of how terrible the DODC are at their job. This might be the point to show how ineffectual this government agency is, but it is the one scene that doesn’t mesh with the rest of the otherwise wonderfully balanced “Seeing Red.”

Color is also mostly absent in the final sequence, aside from Kamala’s red and blue ensemble (a significant nod to her get-up in the comic). Costume designer Arjun Bhasin successfully weaves references to the source material with how clothing makes Kamala feel out of place in Karachi. The fact she wears jeans means they can’t sit inside at a restaurant and must endure the heat, and her t-shirt gives away that she is American to Kareem. Kamala also has plenty of jokes ready about the red scarf worn by her new fighting partner, and this color links the pair. “History in every thread of this fabric,” Waleed tells Kamala about her new garment that looks exceptional.

Unfortunately for Kamala, she is the only one thrust back to the chaotic scene at the train station in 1947 when families desperately tried to stay together after the British divided the country. When Kamla’s dad first referenced the train story, I had no idea it would become so integral to the overall plot. So far, showrunner Bisha K. Ali has done a terrific job of threading the mythological story with the painful (and very real) past, and Obaid-Chinoy captures the scale of this horrifying moment, which has mostly been ignored by mainstream Western cinema and television.

What Kamala’s role will turn into as she faces her family’s journey head-on is unclear, but there is a chance that she is the one who saved her nani from getting lost on the train platform when she was a toddler. It is quite the cliffhanger and one that packs a powerful image. Russian Doll recently used a train time-traveling device to address generational trauma, and Ms. Marvel is proving there is a lot more steam in this journey.

Alright, let’s do this one more time: you are a hunter, and monsters are threatening your adorable little town. You’re given a quest list full of creatures to track down and turn into funny hats, and you’ll do just that until the townsfolk are safe, your build is optimized, and your outfit is as fly as your wirebugs. If you played Monster Hunter World’s Iceborne expansion, or pretty much any of Monster Hunter’s major re-releases before it, then Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak is going to be a very familiar Palamute ride through the park. It’s a formulaic DLC full of exciting new foes and a couple cool new locales – and even though it doesn’t really have a ton of interesting surprises of its own, the quality of those additions reinforces just how fun that formula can be.

Sunbreak is essentially structured like a brand new game, introducing the functionally identical hub town of Elgado to operate out of and a fresh storyline to follow there. That story is, once again, a largely ignorable and entirely predictable tale about how something is making the local monsters all hot and bothered, this time set in the European-themed Kingdom rather than the Japanese-inspired Kamura. Its characters are at least slightly more interesting this time around, but plot has never been the draw of Monster Hunter and that certainly doesn’t change here.

As has become a time-honored tradition, the expansion immediately makes all of your gear irrelevant by introducing Master Rank: a higher tier of hunts full of more difficult versions of the base game’s monsters, as well as an assortment of new and returning monsters to take on. That’s not a complaint, though, as it is legitimately fun to have the bar reset so drastically, with plenty of powerful armor pieces and weapon upgrades to gleefully chase all over again. And while it’s by no means a new trick in Monster Hunter’s bag, one of Master Rank’s greatest strengths has always been that it gives monsters altered behaviors and fresh moves to make them a renewed challenge without just raising their stats.

Both the brand new monsters and the ones returning from previous Monster Hunter games continue Rise’s trend of being as stellar to look at as they are to fight. A new trio referred to as the “Three Lords” are all particularly great: Garangolm’s rocky ape-like appearance disguises its explosive mobility and surprising elemental effects; Lunagaron puts a fun twist on a traditional werewolf theme; and Malzeno’s vampire-inspired moveset genuinely shocked me the first time I saw it blink around the battlefield. Older returning foes like Astalos and Gore Magala fit right in as well, looking better than ever while providing an excitingly fresh challenge for anyone who hasn’t had a chance to face them before.

As for where you’ll do that, Sunbreak adds two new locales: the Jungle, a tropical island originally introduced in Monster Hunter 2 that has been masterfully reimagined thanks to Rise’s seamless 3D maps, and the Citadel, a delightfully eclectic space that can stretch a single hunt from poisoned swamps to snowy peaks to a huge ruined castle. While I liked the Citadel more thematically, the Jungle’s condensed layout makes it Rise’s most convenient map to hunt on yet. It feels as if it learned the valuable lesson that collecting Spiribirds for a stat boost at the start of each quest shouldn’t be such a hassle, giving you a huge patch of them just a Wirebug-ride away from your starting tent. But both locales are quite entertaining to explore in their own ways, packed with even more little secrets waiting to be found.

Speaking of fixing some of the mistakes of Rise, Rampages have been given the boot to an almost comical degree. The Rampage weapon tree is practically the only one that doesn’t get extended with new upgrade options, Rampage quests don’t seem to have been updated in any way, and new weapons scrap the Rampage Skill system entirely in favor of a decoration slot only fillable with special Rampage decorations (which have no connection beyond the name). It’s a stunning reversal, though not an entirely surprising one given how dull the repetitive nature of Rampage quests eventually became.

While I’m not shedding any tears over the abandonment of Rampages, it also stands out that nothing has been introduced to take their place. I was glad Capcom decided to experiment with a new quest type like that, even if its appeal ultimately didn’t last, and the fact that a central feature of Rise has been gutted rather than improved in Sunbreak leaves this expansion feeling far thinner. That’s especially true compared to Iceborne, which introduced clever new ideas of its own to World, most notably the Guiding Lands as an interesting take on its endgame. In contrast, later on Sunbreak just ramps up monster difficulty with a small but amusing twist I can’t spoil – and while that’s certainly kept me happily playing, it doesn’t inspire the same sort of newfound excitement.

To be clear, there is plenty to do in Sunbreak. After 45+ hours I still have gear I want to chase and optional tasks to complete, but there just aren’t that many fresh ideas to help it stand out as a whole lot more than a bunch of cool new monsters to fight. To that end, nearly every mainline quest sticks to the standard hunt format, with nothing like World’s colossal Zorah Magdaros fights, Iceborne’s Seliana defense against Velkhana, or even Rise’s admittedly one-note Rampages to at least try and shake things up. Again, every single quest I went on was still a ton of fun, but Sunbreak can start feeling pretty familiar by the end.

The one place it does do something truly interesting is in its Follower quests. As you progress up Master Rank, townsfolk in both Elgado and Kamura will ask to accompany you on specific single-player quests as AI-controlled hunters. Doing their quests will unlock those people as options in Support Survey quests (also limited to single-player) where you can pick two as your party members. The hunts themselves aren’t exactly challenging or unique, but the AI is surprisingly sophisticated, using items, mounting monsters, and even placing traps before standing behind them and emoting for you to come and wait with them.

It’s not as robust as a whole single-player campaign or anything, with Follower quests still initially unlocked through multiplayer story progress, but it does make grinding for specific monster parts on your own a lot more fun. The followers you bring along will banter amusingly with each other during a quest, and it was nice to get to know these characters better by actually going out into the field and hunting with them. Followers are so well implemented, in fact, that it’s a bit disappointing you can’t use them to fill empty seats in multiplayer quests as well. It seems like a pointless restriction, especially when a follower can sometimes accompany you into a handful of specific multiplayer Urgent quests.

Apart from the big additions, Sunbreak brings a slew of quality of life improvements. One notably smart tweak to the way you pick your pre-hunt meals lets you alter the effectiveness of each dango ability by changing on the order you select them, adding some neat decision-making to the process. You can now quickly swap between two loadouts of Switch Skills in the middle of a hunt too, massively expanding your potential moveset. Similarly, buddies can be customized more than ever, letting you change out special moves to build the ultimate Palico without having to rely as much on finding your ideal randomized cat. There’s nothing earth-shattering in all these updates, but it’s great that pretty much every system has been touched in some welcome way.

Return to Monkey Island will be the "conclusion" to the entire series, according to the game's charming new website.

The website is presented as its own point 'n' click experience, full of interactivity drawn from the Monkey Island series. Click through to the Overview section, however and (as spotted by Eurogamer) you'll find out that Return to Monkey Island will be "the exciting conclusion to the Monkey Island series."

After a very long wait – the last game in the series was Tales of Monkey Island in 2009 – fans might be dismayed to hear that this could be the final outing for the classic adventure games. It is possible that it may be designed as the end of the story, of course, and that prequels could be a future way for it to continue.

It's also possible that developer Terrible Toybox is referring to this is as the conclusion of a trilogy, rather than ruling out any more Monkey Island games. Return to Monkey Island will be a direct sequel to the first two games, The Secret of Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, from original writer-director Ron Gilbert. It will ignore the events of Monkey Island games created after that point (although does reintroduce Monkey Island 3 fan-favourite, Murray the Talking Skull).

We've contacted the developer for comment.

Return to Monkey Island was announced in April, and Gilbert and the team at Terrible Toybox have been drip-feeding information ahead of its release later this year, most recently revealing that it will come to Nintendo Switch first on consoles.

While he's announced some gameplay details, such as the inclusion of an easy mode and hint system, Gilbert has mostly talked about the long and unexpected timeline that eventually led to the creation of Return to Monkey Island.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.