Ron’s Gone Wrong was reviewed at the BFI London Film Festival, where it made its world premiere. It will hit theaters on Oct. 22.

Ron’s Gone Wrong. That title tells you pretty much all you need to know about this charming yet subversive kids’ film which takes a hilarious swipe at big tech and social media. Thankfully, the laughs come thick and fast in this quirky, offbeat comedy which also asks an important question: do kids today spend too much time online?

Middle school can be a hostile place, especially when you don’t fit in. Barney Pudowski (Jack Dylan Grazer) is the ultimate high school weirdo – a geology-obsessed nerd from a poor Bulgarian-immigrant family, growing up in small-town America. His dad (Ed Helms) is a sad-sack widower, while his granny, Donka (Olivia Colman), is a Borat-esque, goat-tending maniac. Sure, dysfunctional dynamics are nothing new when it comes to family films, but in an era of Snapchat and Instagram, Ron’s Gone Wrong also shows us why growing up can be difficult if you don’t keep up with the latest trends.

Especially if literally everyone else at school is.

Introducing the B-Bots, the new must-have toy that follows you around, plays games, helps you with your homework, and chronicles every moment on social media. Bubble CEO Marc (Justice Smith) says it’s all about helping kids connect with each other – a new way of making friends. But what happens when you can’t afford one? Poor old Barney finds out first-hand as he’s literally benched by his former friends in favor of the hottest new toy. It’s a dilemma that has plagued parents for decades. Do you give in and spend several months’ wages on a toy that will be shoved in the cupboard within weeks? Thankfully, Barney’s dad finds a way to get one of those sought-after B-Bots on the cheap.

But the defective B-Bot is not all it’s cracked up to be.

Ron (Zach Galifianakis) has… well, he’s gone wrong. Astoundingly wrong. Much like Barney himself, Ron isn’t like everyone else. He’s especially unlike all the other B-Bots, programmed to connect and network and mine personal data like it’s going out of fashion. Instead, Ron is a bit wonky, and it turns out that buying a broken bot that’s fallen off the back of a truck wasn’t exactly the best idea. Poor Ron has connection issues, an incomplete database and a goofy smile that channels Baymax from Big Hero 6. Throw in some grossly inappropriate behavior and you have all the makings of a children’s classic.

Although Ron may be a bit rough around the edges, he’s also exactly what Barney needs. Sure, that’s a story we’ve seen in kids’ films many, many times before. But the addition of social media and other thoroughly modern pressures stops Ron’s Gone Wrong from feeling stale. Instead, this contemporary twist tackles growing up in the social media age like nothing we’ve seen before. Barney’s old friends are so obsessed with their B-Bots that they’ve forgotten what it’s like to really live. Recess revolves around bot fights, streaming, and publishing memes to millions of followers. But Ron has a better way.

At its heart, Ron’s Gone Wrong is a brutally cutting examination of the effect big tech has had on childhood innocence. The savage one-liners and hilarious mishaps often have the same message – that kids aren’t kids for long anymore. Throw in some genuinely hilarious gags and a touching relationship between a boy and his bot, and Ron’s Gone Wrong has all the right settings. It helps that Ron is just so strangely adorable.

Zach Galifianakis is excellent as Ron, a weirdly robotic voice role which provides endless opportunities for goofiness. Comedic timing is the name of the game, and with a steady stream of quips and cheerfully brutal asides, Ron provides comedy gold by the terabyte. Olivia Colman as a cleaver-wielding, eastern European pensioner is a stroke of genius, too. It’s not the kind of role you expect to see her in, but after a stint in The Mitchells vs The Machines, it looks as though she’s something of a go-to for kids’ films about crazed robots.

“Are we having fun with me?” asks Ron at one point.

That’s essentially what the whole film is about – are you really having fun with your expensive new toy? Or would you have a whole lot more fun experiencing the world, running and playing and even messing things up a bit along the way? Ron’s Gone Wrong suggests that the best way to network is to get offline and talk to a stranger. It’s a cute message, but there’s a lot more to the film besides. B-Bot creator Bubble provides the opportunity to poke fun at Silicon Valley with a cool, hip tech-bro CEO and his right-hand man, a Steve Jobs-like executive who wants to make billions with everyone’s data.

Ron’s Gone Wrong is much like the quirky B-Bot at its core: a bit wonky with a whole load of charm. What begins as a laser-targeted, precision-engineered family film soon becomes a bit more unhinged – and that’s definitely a good thing. The jokes are as unexpected as they are ingenious, and with a heartfelt story at its core, Ron’s Gone Wrong sets up belly laughs with surprising regularity. You’ll never hear the old dial-up modem tone the same way again.

The identity of the next Scream movie's incarnation of Ghostface was so secret that members of the cast on the upcoming movie were intentionally kept from knowing who was under the mask for some of the shoot.

In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, director Tyler Gillett said that the crew had intentionally kept the identity of Ghostface a secret for as long as possible in order to ensure that as many people as possible were kept in the dark for the film's big 'whodunit' reveal.

"We were really careful to protect the big reveal of the movie," says Gillett. "We went as far as to withhold those moments in the script from the actors. We wanted everybody involved, to the degree that we could, to be a part of the whodunit. Obviously, you get to a point in the shoot where you have to let the cat out of the bag, but we went pretty far into prep and into production with a surprising amount of secrecy maintained."

Part of the attraction to the Scream franchise is its commitment to secrecy. Every movie's Ghostface has been a major reveal, and the fifth movie won't be an exception. Little has been revealed about the film's plot, with many of the cast members keeping it closely under wraps. As part of the interview with EW, however, returning series veteran David Arquette spoke a little about his character's return in the upcoming film. "Dewey's had a rough life of it, and in the fourth Scream, they wanted me to get rid of his limp," he says. "But he's got the limp back; I can give you that much!"

Arquette is set to be joined in the film by returning co-star Neve Campbell who plays the series main protagonist, Sidney Prescott, as well as Courtney Cox who is reprising her role as reporter Gale Weathers. Following the news of her return, Campbell said in a statement that she was confident that Wes Craven's franchise is in good hands.

“After spending time speaking with Radio Silence [Productions], they have shown such love, respect and admiration for Wes Craven and all that he’s created in the Scream franchise," Campbell said. "I am beyond excited to step back into the role of Sidney Prescott and return to Woodsboro.”

Scream (2022) is set to release in theatres on January 14, 2022. To keep up with a range of the latest news and features from across the movie, make sure to check out our dedicated Scream IGN page.

Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

New World features the ability for player factions to declare war on one another to take territory, but one weapon apparently being used to win those wars ought to break Aeturnum's version of the Geneva Convention – the game's banning tools. Swathes of players are reporting having been banned just before a timed war, with Amazon giving mixed messages about why (or even if) that could be the case.

A quick look at the New World subreddit and New World forums reveals multiple topics along this subject, some stretching back days. The topics tend to hew along similar lines – players complain that they've received 24 hour bans just before a war, despite claiming to have broken no rules. In many cases, the groups of players targeted appear to be at the highest levels of their company (the groups that can take part in wars).

The upshot is that companies enter wars without key members of their forces, leading to losses of territory that feel unjust. Many players reporting coincidental bans put this down to mass reporting from enemy companies, who are using what victims allege is an automatic banning system. That appeared to be confirmed by a customer service representative for the game:

That response led many to feel the case was closed, and that Amazon needed to tweak its banning tools to stop unfair use ahead of wars. Confusingly, however, other members of the Amazon team have since stated that there are no automatic bans. As PC Gamer points out, an individual posting on the official New World Twitter account said that every report they'd pulled after claims of unfair moderation did include violations of the Code of Conduct. However, further Amazon customer service interactions have seemingly included mentions of 24 hour bans being automated in some way.

The mixed messaging has led to confusion in the community, not least because bans themselves often include little information as to why they were handed out – something community manager NW_Mugsy has said they have suggested as a fix. We've contacted Amazon Games for an explanation of what's been happening, and if changes are being made.

Whatever the cause or reasoning, it marks another teething problem for Amazon's immensely popular new MMO. After huge server queues and a seeming U-turn on allowing players to transfer what regions they play in, alleged mass banning is just the latest frustration for would-be explorers on Aeturnum.

Joe Skrebels is IGN's Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].

Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is the most adventurous since the whole project began. With the core Avengers team on the side-lines or even retired for the moment, Marvel Studios is all-in on exploring its more unusual stories and characters, from the time-bending TVA to the martial arts showcase of Shang-Chi. But of all the upcoming Phase 4 projects, none feel quite as out there as Eternals.

Knowing very little about what this movie could be, I visited Pinewood Studios, London back in January 2020, just as Marvel was wrapping up the final day of its colossal 82-day Eternals shoot. There I was able to see concept art, costumes, sets, and props from the upcoming film, and finally get a feel for what appears to be the MCU’s most wildly different movie yet. Here’s seven of the most fascinating things I learned while on the set of Marvel’s Eternals.

1 – A story that spans 7,000 years

Eternals will be the largest scale story Marvel Studios has ever told, at least in regards to duration of time. It spans 7,000 years of humanity, something made possible by the eternal life of its alien protagonists. Starting with the earliest days of recorded history, Eternals will explore several different civilizations, with the story bouncing back and forth between the past and present day.

“It's structured in style like The Godfather Part Two; there's a past storyline and the present storyline,” reveals Nate Moore, Producer at Marvel Studios. He estimates that 60% of the film is set in the modern day, with the remaining 40% exploring a multitude of eras.

As Moore describes Eternals’ many eras he namechecks the Gupta Empire in 200 AD, the fall of the Aztec Empire, and the Amazon circa 1500 AD, the latter of which is also revisited in the present day. There’s also Mesopotamia and its famous city of Babylon, a chunk of which was built on a Pinewood soundstage. There, I watched a sequence being filmed in which Sprite (played by Lia McHugh), an Eternal perpetually trapped in the form of a 12-year-old girl, tells stories to an entranced Babylonian crowd.

During its present-day segments London appears to be a key location, as it’s where two Eternals have made their home living among humans; Sprite and Sersi (Gemma Chan). Meanwhile, Kumail Nanjiani’s Kingo has traded in a life of stoic heroism for the world of Bollywood, and the story takes us to the set of one of his movies (presumably in Mumbai, the home of Indian cinema).

2 – Who are the Eternals?

Guiding us through those 7,000 years are the Eternals themselves. Numbering ten, this is the largest core team that the MCU has ever assembled. They are also arguably more important to humanity than the Avengers ever were: the Eternals have been sent to Earth by the Celestial space gods in order to protect the planet from the Deviants, a group of ever-evolving aliens hell-bent on destruction.

This new MCU team is made up of names that many hardcore Marvel comics fans will find familiar, although a few of the characters have been gender-switched from their book counterparts. Leading the team is Salma Hayek’s Ajak, and she’s followed by Sersi (Gemma Chan), Ikaris (Richard Madden), Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani), Makkari (Lauren Ridloff), Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry), Sprite (Lia McHugh), Gilgamesh (Don Lee), Druig (Barry Keoghan), and Thena (Angelina Jolie).

The roster is notably diverse, with actors of varying heritage, genders, and ages. It also features two firsts for the MCU: Phastos is Marvel’s first gay superhero. Makkari is deaf, and appropriately played by deaf actor Lauren Ridloff.

“I think diversity is important,” says Moore. “I think, as filmmakers, we want our audience reflected on the screen. I think the great thing about Eternals is it's just part of the narrative without having to talk about it. They were selected for this mission partially because they could integrate into an Earth that does have a sprawling identity.”

The Eternals also don’t look quite as chiselled and refined as Marvel’s many other heroes. “[Director Chloé Zhao’s] brief was that everybody had to be natural,” explains Frances Hannon, Hair and Makeup Designer on Eternals. “She didn’t want a superhero look. She wants them to be accessible to every age and everybody.”

The team arrives on Earth in a spaceship named the Domo, which some may recognise as having borrowed its name from another Eternals comic character. The ship’s bridge contains a huge avatar of Arishem the Judge, the omnipotent Celestial with which the Eternals communicate. It’s he who commands the team’s mission to rid earth of the Deviants.

3 – What is a Deviant?

Like the Eternals, the Deviants in the MCU are slightly different to their comic counterparts. Rather than being a mutant strain of the Eternals, the Deviants are a parasitic alien species that hunt out and assimilate a world’s apex predators.

“The Deviants in the comics are called the changing people, and no two look the same,” says Moore. “So in our film, no two Deviants will look the same. When they kill off a predator in the film, they take the shape of that predator. So there's a bat-like Deviant, there's a wolf-like Deviant, there's even Deviants that look like all sorts of creatures from myth and legend and history.”

Moore shows off some concept art of the creatures, each of which looks like those animals he namechecks; bats, wolves, and crocodiles. All are rendered in a pearlescent flesh that shimmers like oil. One of them, though, looks like earth’s greatest apex predator: humanity. Its name is Kro.

“He is the leader of the Deviants,” reveals Moore. “He is the most intelligent of the Deviants. He is the only one who can speak, and that evolution will be one of the mysteries the Eternals have to uncover. Why is he able to do this? Why does he look humanoid when all the other Deviants, to some degree, are monstrous?”

4 – It’s an epic romance

“We've made 25 movies now at Marvel, but this is the first movie that's really built around a romance as the central relationship,” reveals Moore. “It is an epic romance. It's never going to be The Notebook, but the goal is for it to be something that is the spine of the movie.”

That romance is between two Eternals: Gemma Chan’s Sersi and Richard Madden’s Ikaris. Luckily for Marvel, Chan and Madden are good friends off-set, and so the chemistry for their pairing was “instantaneous”.

But while that relationship may help bring them together, there’s a third person in the picture: Kit Harrington’s Dane Whitman. Fans of the comics may know of Whitman’s romance with Sersi, and so it looks as if a love triangle may develop over the course of Eternal’s unprecedented timeline. Or, as Moore puts it, Sersi has “options.”

While the romance will form the “spine” of the movie, Eternals has a scope that includes a plethora of other elements. Moore describes it as a “hard sci-fi”, and notes that director Chloé Zhao references Ridley Scott’s Alien prequel Prometheus a lot.

“Even though the movie is about these immortal aliens, thematically it is about humanity and what it means to be human,” Moore says, linking Eternals to Prometheus’ philosophical questions. “And are we stewards of our Earth? Or is that somebody else's problem? Even though these characters are not human, that's what the movie wants to tackle.”

5 – The Black Knight rises

Kit Harrington’s character, Dane Whitman, isn’t just known for being Seri’s boyfriend in the comics. He’s also the Black Knight, a superhero with a lineage that goes back to the days of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Yup, it’s sort of an Assassin’s Creed deal, but with an ebony sword instead of a hidden blade.

“He won't be the Black Knight in our film,” says Moore, not exactly letting us down gently. “But Dane Whitman also has a history with Sersi which we think is really interesting and fun to play with.”

Moore says this, but during a tour of the Eternals prop room I spotted what looks suspiciously like a broken Obsidian Dagger, a key item in the Black Knight’s mythos. So while we may not see that full transformation, it looks like Eternals may be seeding a future Black Knight storyline or even movie. "You won't see the Ebony Blade in this movie," emphasises Moore. "He's not going to be a Black Knight necessarily, but that is something that we get to play with down the road."

In the comics, Dane Whitman is tortured by his lineage, but – as with so many characters in the MCU – his movie counterpart will be a little more jovial. Moore praises Kit Harrington’s charm and comic timing, noting it plays off well against Richard Madden’s “different” form of charming.

"But he can go dark," concludes Moore. “I think there's room for him to play both sides of that character." It seems almost certain that Whitman is present as more than just a romantic interest for Sersi.

6 – It’s not based on the Eternals comics run you (probably) think it is

If you know who the Eternals are, chances are you discovered them through Neil Gaiman’s critically acclaimed seven-issue run from 2006. But while Gaiman’s work is considered a must-read in the Marvel canon, the MCU is going back to where it all began for the movie version: Jack Kirby’s stories from 1976.

The decision behind this is simple. “The Gaiman run was very much about people who didn't realize they were special,” explains Moore. “And then Ikaris coming and saying ‘Hey, guess what, you guys are immortals and your memories have been erased.’ That’s pretty cool, but it’s also the plot of Harry Potter, and I Am Number Four, and The Matrix, and a lot of movies like that.

“We thought it would be more interesting to spend the time with characters who knew exactly who they were,” Moore continues. “And to track those characters through what will be 7,000 years of human history.”

Like every MCU other film, Eternals doesn’t directly adapt a comic story arc. It does, however, draw a huge amount of inspiration from its source, particularly in its visuals. Legendary Marvel writer and artist Jack Kirby put together the original look and lore for Eternals, and so all those elements have formed the foundations of what the MCU team is. Expect lots of Kirby’s signature line and circle work in the Eternals’ costumes, weapons, and superpower effects.

7 – Another director from the Sundance Lab

In January 2016 Marvel announced that it had recruited Ryan Coogler to direct Black Panther. Coogler is a graduate of the prestigious Sundance Institute, having attended its Screenwriters Lab in 2012 while working on his first feature film. Interestingly, another filmmaker attended the Lab that very same year who would also go on to be picked to helm an MUC film: Chloé Zhao.

Like Coogler, Zhao isn’t an obvious MCU pick. Her previous films – Songs My Brothers Taught Me, The Rider, and the recent Academy Award-winner Nomadland – are worlds apart from Marvel’s epic superheroic scope. But Marvel Studios saw something in her talents that seems perfect for Eternals.

“She's pushed us as a filmmaker to make Eternals feel aesthetically different than any other Marvel movie,” explains Moore. “She likes to shoot in a lot of natural locations with natural light. So this film, of any Marvel films, has shot outside exteriors more than anything else. I think it's lent it a look unlike anything we've ever done.”

From the trailers Marvel has released so far, he’s right: Eternals looks shockingly naturalistic compared to the supremely glossy visuals of all the other MCU films. The clips I was shown on set were from early work and will presumably have some post-processing applied, but the sequences shown in the latest trailer have a similar texture. The film grain, lighting, and composition of the shots feel grounded and dramatic, which helps lend it the heft of its intended tale of what humanity means in the vast universe of space and time.

We'll see just exactly what Zhao's unique touch brings to the MCU when Marvel's Eternals opens in theatres on November 5. Tickets are on sale now.

Matt Purslow is IGN's UK News and Entertainment Writer.

For the Eternals, the MCU’s next super team, a SHIELD helicarrier is just a bit… pedestrian. Inelegant. Too mortal. Instead, this group of undying demigods has a spaceship made of stardust for a home base. And, as part of a visit to the Eternals set at Pinewood Studios in January 2020, IGN got to step aboard and explore its haunting, ethereal corridors.

The Domo – named after a character from the original Eternals comics – is a huge, triangular vessel. The routes between its circular rooms are gloomy; the lights have already been stripped away due to us arriving on the final day of filming, but it’s clear that even with illumination this is not a bright, utopian craft akin to the USS Enterprise. The walls are almost obsidian in colour, and rough like rock. It’s practically organic.

“What we really want to do is try not to make the spaceship into anything we've seen before,” says Eve Stewart, Production Designer on Eternals. Noting the unusual texture of the walls, she explains that the design team “decided to do it like the dust that you see in the trails of meteors”.

There’s something more unusual about the walls than their material, though. They’re all engraved with runes, making for an oddly religious feel. That’s apt considering the Eternals are a group with a god-given purpose to defend humanity.

“Because the Celestials are gods and they've created the Eternals, we wanted to look at Sacred Geometry and symbolism from every religion across the world,” Stewart explains. “We found that triangles and circles were particular shapes that come up and reoccur in every single religion around the globe.” That explains the Domo’s triangular shape, its circular rooms, and the designs adorning its surfaces.

“In the walls we've got more and more concentric circles, but we also have our own language,” Stewart adds. “When you look at the Seven Wonders of the world, there's all those lovely stories about how it had to be aliens who built the temples and the pyramids in Egypt. And so we thought we’d make a great deal of the fact that some of the technology could have been introduced by the Eternals. We decided to use a lot of cuneiforms, which we then mixed up with some runes, some Viking stuff.” The result is that the Eternals’ language looks like an ancient precursor to humanity’s own scripts.

Providing relief from the gloom of the dark runed walls are occasional full-length windows, behind which are softly lit terrariums. “Because [Eternals team members] Sersi and Ajak have such a love for nature, they've collected these plant samples as they’ve been around planets,” says Stewart.

Beyond these plant samples, the ship opens up into a circular laboratory room that feels like it was, at one point, a place for the Eternals to quietly reflect on their work. Right now, though, it’s in pieces. Tables are flipped over, and books are scattered across the floor. It seems like there’s been a fight of some description here, or perhaps a crash landing.

Seemingly ignoring the mess, Stewart explains the books: “Makkari [played by The Walking Dead’s Lauren Ridloff] has been hiding out in the ship for ages, and so she's collected loads of old books. She's an avid reader, she can read 500 pages a minute or something.”

This room is lit by unusual glass lamps that feature spheres with extending tendrils. “I worked really hard to find something that hadn't been seen before, and I found an amazing sculptor, he makes lights which are based on viruses,” Stewart reveals.

Hook a left as you exit this room and travel to the end of the corridor and you arrive in the Domo’s final and most imposing chamber. A huge, domed room, it’s surrounded by a panoramic view of outer space (or, more accurately, greenscreen until the VFX team works its magic). But that’s not the room's defining feature. That honour belongs to the towering statue of Arishem the Judge that stands stoically in the centre.

Arishem, sometimes known as the ‘Killer of Planets’ in the comics, is one of the Celestials’ leaders, and acts as the commander of the Eternals’ mission to cleanse Earth of the Deviants. While a static statue on set, Stewart promises that in the final film he’ll be animated through visual effects.

It’s in this room that the Eternals communicate with Arishem and the Celestials, which dictates the course of their centuries-long mission on Earth. The almost spiritual nature of their god-given purpose makes for a unique approach to this chamber of the Domo.

“We call it the Bridge, but it became a slightly spiritual place where the Eternals come together," explains Stewart. The towering Arishem and the Cathedral-like echo generated by the sloping walls certainly generate an ethereal atmosphere unlike anything seen in the MCU before.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has no reverence for Norse mythology; the trips to Thor’s realm paints Asgard as a theatrical, grandiose place that’s more humorous than godly. That’s explained away by the Asgardians being aliens rather than true deities, but this allows for a true sense of the ethereal to be ushered in when the MCU finally puts the spotlight on its genuine star gods. That’s where Eternals comes in, and if the Domo is anything to go by, this universe’s approach to the Celestials and their creations is something very different to the classic whizz-bang of The Avengers. We'll find out exactly how different when Marvel's Eternals releases in theatres on November 5. Tickets are available to buy now.

Matt Purslow is IGN's UK News and Entertainment Writer.