Eternals' director Chloé Zhao has confirmed that the take on Superman in Zack Snyder's Man of Steel was a big inspiration for Richard Madden's Ikaris.
As reported by THR, Zhao was speaking to Film Actu when she revealed that Zack Snyder's version of Superman really impacted her as Snyder "approached this myth in an authentic and very real way."
"Of all the modern interpretations of Superman, Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel inspired me the most because he approached this myth in an authentic and very real way… this film left a strong impression on me," Zhao said.
Besides the obvious similarities Ikaris and Zack Snyder's Superman share, including the ability to fly, heat vision, super strength, and near-invulnerability, they also both struggle with what it means to be "human" when they are anything but, the weight of their past, and who they truly are.
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Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.
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No Time to Die, James Bond's 25th film, will be available to rent on all major digital platforms in the U.S. on November 9, 2021, for $19.99 USD.
As reported by Variety, No Time to Die will arrive as an on-demand rental just over a month after its exclusive theatrical premiere on October 8, 2021.
This decision may have stemmed from No Time to Die's domestic box office debut of $55 million, which was a bit under expectations as MGM and EON Productions "had hoped to cross $60 million in its domestic launch based on tracking and advance ticket sales." It also may have to do with the fact that, as Variety notes, "Bond films typically attract older audiences, a demographic that has been hesitant to return to movie theaters during the pandemic."
The latest Bond film was estimated to cost $250 million – $300 million before marketing and, fortunately for those behind the film, No Time to Die's worldwide earnings recently passed $610 million. This early move to on-demand will surely be a way for them to increase that overall number from the U.S.
For comparison, pre-pandemic Bond films like Spectre and Skyfall earned $70.4 million and $88.4 million, respectively, in their opening domestic box office weekends. However, No Time to Die has surpassed Casino Royale's global total of $600 million and Quantum of Solace's $585 million.
In our No Time to Die review, we said that it is "is a great showcase for Daniel Craig’s first-in-class performance, but still an uneven swan song for the best Bond we’ve ever had."
Black Friday creeps ever closer, and with it, an increasing number of deals. Today, we've got a nice little selection of art books on offer, covering the likes of Batman, Star Wars and more. Want to play some Xbox games without paying their hefty price? Xbox Game Pass is also on sale, and grants you access to hundreds of titles on both the console and PC. The highly regarded Sony WH-1000XM4 headphones are also on sale today, and are a treat to your ears if the price is right.
Daily Deals for November 6th, 2021
Xbox Game Pass Members (Including PC) Can Play Forza Horizon 5 and Halo: Infinite at Launch
Forza Horizon 5 is out on Friday and its shaping up to be one of the best games of the year. This game is good enough to be worth paying full price, but fortunately you won't have to. Forza Horizon 5 will be available on Xbox Game Pass at launch, which means you could enjoy this spectacular game come Friday for as little as $1. Halo: Infinite comes out on December 8. Your 3 months of Xbox Game Pass for PC will still be active by then.
Xbox Game Pass Members (Including PC) Can Play Battlefield 2042 Early on November 12 for 10 Hours
Battlefield is out on November 19, but Xbox Game Pass members can play the game one week early on November 12 for up to 10 hours. That will give you a chance to test out the release version of the game and decide if you want to preorder it yourself. Note that Battlefield 2042 will NOT be coming to Game Pass at launch, so if you do want to continue playing the game, you'll have to preorder the standalone game.
3 Months of Xbox Game Pass for PC for $1
Available for New AND Existing Members!
Xbox Game Pass for PC is exactly what it sounds like; access to a library of Xbox games that are also playable on PC. There are plenty of top shelf games including Forza Horizon 4, Microsoft Flight Simulator, Destiny 2, Back for Blood, Scarlet Nexus, Cris Tales, Crusader Kings, and much, much more. You'll also get launch day access to huge upcoming games like Halo: Infinite and Forza Horizon 5. And you'll get to test out Battlefield 2042 one week prior to release. The best thing about this deal? Anyone can sign up, even those of you who already have the subscription.
3 Months of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate
The sheer amount of value you get with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is impressive. This membership gives you both Xbox Live Gold, Xbox Game Pass, and Xbox Game Pass for PC. Xbox Live Gold is required for online gaming. Xbox Game Pass gives you access to a huge library of games that is free as long as you maintain your membership. The list includes AAA games that you can play as early as launch day. These include MLB The Show 21, FIFA 21, The Medium, and every Bethesda game ever. If you've also got a great gaming PC, Xbox Game Pass for PC offers games like Crusader Kings 3, Forza Horizon 4, Nier Automata, and more.
Early Black Friday Video Game Deals
Lowest Price Ever for a PS5-Compatible SSD with Heatsink: XPG GAMMIX S70 Blade 1TB M.2 SSD
This is one of the newest SSDs that's specifically designed for your PS5 storage upgrade. It also happens to be the lowest priced PS5-compatible 1TB SSD with heatsink available. In fact, it's even less expensive than most compatible SSDs without heatsink. The S70 Blade boasts transfer rates up to 7,400 MB/s and a PCIe Gen4 interface. It includes a PS5-compatible low-profile aluminum heatsink, but for whatever reason you'll have to put it on the SSD itself (which isn't hard, it's just adhesive).
Alienware Aurora R12 RTX 3060 Ti Gaming PC
Not only is this the best Alienware gaming PC deal right now, it's probably the least expensive prebuilt gaming PC equipped with an RTX 3060 Ti video card anywhere. With the RTX 3060 Ti video card selling for over $800 on eBay, getting a fully built Alienware system with an 11th generation Intel Core i7 processor, 16GB of memory, and 512GB of SDD storage for $1399 seems like an absolute steal.
More Early Black Friday Deals
If you want a complete list of the best early Black Friday deals that are live right now, check out or definitive Black Friday megapost article. We keep it constantly updated with the best early Black Friday deals we've found from Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, Dell, and more.
While the return to in-person TRPG sessions may be taking longer than many of us would like, there are still plenty of great accessories being produced for both Dungeon/Game Masters and the players at their table. If your group uses miniatures, odds are you’ve at least eyeballed some of the pre-painted figures available, in lieu of spending the considerable time and effort it takes to assemble and paint custom minis.
If your table plays D&D, this would be WizKids’ Icons of the Realms series – a collection inspired by adventures and stories set in the default Forgotten Realms setting. The sets aren’t limited to just FR games, of course, as plenty of monsters appear in other official realms and the only real limit of these creatures and characters is your own imagination.
That said, there’s a lot to consider when weighing the decision to invest in a collection of tabletop miniatures, and while the WizKids series mostly delivers on many fronts, there are also some drawbacks to taking the pre-painted path.
Overall Impressions (so far)
WizKids’ Icons of the Realms pre-painted D&D minis are a great option for players who may not have the time or desire to paint miniatures for themselves but still want to use them at their table. The 2021 sets include some of the most detailed models to date, though there are definitely some that will be more useful to invest in if you’re playing one of the official adventure modules rather than building a general collection of minis.
The 2021 sets include some of the most detailed models to date.
The biggest downside to WizKids’ pre-painted series is the blind-box sales model. While each pack contains a good variety of miniatures, and there’s no small amount of satisfaction in opening a pack to find you’ve added a particularly cool mini to your collection, if you’re looking for one specific pre-painted mini – say, the Displacer Beast Kitten or horrifying Elder Ooblex – the lack of a direct purchase option* can be frustrating (and expensive).
That said, the cost of each booster box, which typically contains four figures (three of them being Small or Medium-sized and then a Large mini, though this is sometimes two Small/Medium and one Huge) averages out to a little more than what you would pay for the same number of Medium-sized minis. And not only would you still have to paint those yourself – the variety of the Icons series is typically broader than the Nolzor's line, if slightly less detailed in their sculpts.
Ultimately it comes down to how you want to delegate your hobby resources.
There are also more general creature minis available in smaller sets, from 2019's Village Raiders (a collection of orcs, goblins and other nasties that might prey upon hapless farmsteaders) and hero starter sets, to the still-releasing Warband series, which include Orcs, Goblins and more. While some of this year's sets are still highly versatile, players looking for a more generalist collection may also want to check out earlier sets, like 2020's Fangs and Talons or the Dungeon of the Mad Mage.
Ultimately it comes down to how you want to delegate your hobby resources. There are some minis in my collection that I'll insist on painting myself, but other times I'm just as happy to open a pack and see what shakes out. I know that while I may not love every mini that drops in each booster and the paint job likely won't be as precise as if I'd done it myself, but for the time it saves me to not have to detail every Kobold or bandit, I'm willing to risk getting a few random creatures in the mix, too – maybe it'll even give me a new idea for our next campaign.
Scroll down to get a look at what’s included in each series, as well as our review impressions of each set we’ve seen so far, and come back later this year for our thoughts on the next set, Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft.
The Wild Beyond the Witchlight (Q4 2021)
The Wild Beyond the Witchlight is a Fey-themed adventure, so it’s not surprising to see this set mostly comprised of more whimsical creatures.
Among the figures you might find in each booster box are Giant Snails, sentient mushrooms, and several variations on classic faerie folk (pixies, sprites, boggles, etc), all of which make for a smartly assembled roster of figures for any GM about to send their players into the Feywild. There are also a handful of Witchlight-specific characters to find in the set, though most of them could feasibly double as any number of creatures or characters – or even player character figures – in another adventure.
As with other entries in this year’s lineup, the Witchlight set shows yet another incremental step forward for the mold quality and paint job on each miniature, particularly on some of its humanoid characters. While every figure is hand-painted, meaning the elven acrobats Gleam & Glister in our sample packs will likely not match yours 100%, there was little discrepancy in the quality of the duplicate figures we collected.
The detail work on the premium figure sets is particularly good – the Witchlight Carnival set (which is admittedly very catered to the titular adventure) especially so, but the Valor’s Call and League of Malevolence starter sets also do justice to the classic D&D characters they’re based on.
Snowbound
The second Icons of the Realms set of 2021 provides a variety of (mostly) ice-themed figures, from polar bears to snow golems or the huge-sized premium mammoth and frost giant set.
There are also several inclusions (like gargoyles, frog-like Bullywugs, or the demonic Cambion) that seem a bit out of sorts from the “Snowbound” theme. Many of the more incongruous creatures in this set might be familiar to players who’ve run last year’s Rime of the Frostmaiden or are intimately familiar with the lore of the norther reaches of the Forgotten Realms, D&D’s default setting – which, considering the “Icons of the Realms” banner, definitely make sense – but if you’re looking to expand a more general collection of snow monsters, it can be disappointing to find a fairly plain Hill Giant in your booster pack.
The quality of the designs themselves – particularly on models like the Verbeeg or the delightfully grotesque Duergar Hammerer (whose hands have been replaced with blacksmith’s tools) are great, and the paint jobs on almost every item we unboxed were, while simple, hardly disappointing.
Boneyard
2021’s first Icons set is far and away my personal favorite of the year so far – but I tend to throw a lot of undead at my players so I may be biased.
It’s not exclusively comprised of undead horrors, though; all manner of aberrations and fiends make appearances as well, but nearly all of them feel like monsters that could feasibly show up in any campaign, either as a random encounter or a set-piece battle. There are a few exceptions, of course, like the memory-stealing Ooblex, the repulsive demonic Sibriex, or the titanic Atropal – the sentient remains of a literal god – although each of those creatures are, admittedly, great inspiration for their own campaigns (and the last two figures are vile but vague enough to really fill any DM’s need for an amorphous evil monstrosity).
Similarly, the two premium dracolich figures – one blue and one green – are excellent additions to any mini collection (and one of the rare instances where I’d consider them for both play or just for display). I think the Green is a bit more fearsome, since the non-removable lightning effect of the Blue is a bit distracting, but both are sure to elicit either an “ooh” or “uh-oh” from your players.
The detail work on these – as well as other larger figures in the boosters like the SIbriex or Zombie T-Rex – is great, both in terms of print quality and the paint job. Some medium and smaller figures are less detailed or had seemingly sloppier paint jobs than others, but this did little to detract from the quality of some, like the creepy uneven teeth poking out above a mummy’s bandage, though on others (like the Gnome skeleton, above) it was a bit distracting.
JR is a Senior Producer at IGN, you can follow him on Twitter for more video games and tabletop RPG shenanigans.
*II’s worth noting that there are individual pre-painted minis for sale, which are premium versions of the Nolzur’s line – but that selection is fairly limited compared to the creatures & characters featured in Icons of the Realms.
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Marvel's Eternals has officially arrived in theaters and marks the 30th Marvel Cinematic Universe movie and TV show to be released. It also marks the first time a Marvel Studios production has received an overall "rotten" score from Rotten Tomatoes. So, how does Eternals' 48% stack up to every other film and series? Let's take a look.
Ever since Iron Man hit theaters back in 2008, Marvel Studios had an impressive 13-year run when it comes to positive reviews from critics, which contributes to a movie's overall aggregate score at Rotten Tomatoes. Eternals is just 2% away from earning a positive score and, while anything can change, it's safe to say it will be the lowest-rated MCU film and will replace Thor: The Dark World's 66% at the bottom spot.
You can check out our Eternals review right here, where we say it "is beautifully shot and terrifically acted, but it bites off more than it can chew in its third act."
To see every Marvel Studios Rotten Tomato score, scroll through the slideshow below.
Of all the 30 films and TV series, Black Panther's 96%, Endgame's 94%, and Iron Man's 94% make up the top three rated MCU properties. On the other side, Eternals' 48%, Thor: The Dark World's 66%, and The Incredible Hulk's 67% account for the bottom three.
According to Rotten Tomatoes, "movies and TV shows are Certified Fresh with a steady Tomatometer of 75% or higher after a set amount of reviews (80 for wide-release movies, 40 for limited-release movies, 20 for TV shows), including 5 reviews from Top Critics."
