Category: Media Reviews

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Made up of veteran developers coming from teams such as CD Projekt RED and Techland Games and having worked on titles such as The Witcher (2007), Dying Light (2015) and Cyberpunk 2077 (2020), Starward Industries was always expected to deliver a solid story and player experience in their first game, The Invincible (2023). However, what they attempted to do was no small feat: to adapt the hard SF novel by the same name written by Stanisław Lem, The Invincible would require a masterful command of pacing, atmosphere and dialogue, all essential to deliver and sustain the classic hard SF ‘feel’ which is often difficult to accomplish in audiovisual media.

In both the novel and the videogame, a spaceship crewed by researchers lands in a largely unexplored desert planet and quickly finds that, although there are no terrestrial life-forms, something dangerous has attacked some of the crew and rendered them incapable of remembering anything, not even how to communicate or take care of themselves. Rather than simply adapting the story of the novel into a videogame, however, Starward Industries chose to create their own characters. They wanted to create a story that was more intimate, Markuszewski told Rock Paper Shotgun in an interview, so they reduced the immense crew of the Invincible in the novel to the six-person crew of the Dragonfly in the game. Of this crew, the player embodies the biologist Yasna (voiced by Daisy May) as she explores the mysterious Regis III with help from the astrogator Novik (voiced by Jason Baughan) who guides and helps her from the ship. Throughout her adventure, Yasna finds the remains of a ship she thinks is the Invincible although it turns out to be a different ship that will later require the Invincible’srescue (effectively making the events of the game a prequel, albeit an inexact one).

Within both Stanisław Lem’s story and the genre of hard SF in general, The Invincible stands its own admirably. Although the videogame medium may not seem the best suited for scientific discussion and hypothesizing, long conversations between characters or the extended build-up of atmosphere with a distant payoff, this game uses all the tools at its disposal to keep the player engaged throughout a version of Lem’s story that doesn’t shy away from being wordy or scientifically fanciful. Instead, it plays into its own and the players’ awareness of the conventions of hard science fiction, making them an active participant in the scientific discussion through dialogue choices that feel impactful and character-building, reveal different bits of information and give the player access to eleven different endings, enhancing the replayability of the experience. Formally, too, in a moment where hard SF has lost some of its former acclaim and readership to more fantastical stories, The Invincible proposes a new way to experience theory-heavy narrative: the audience may choose to deeply engage with the dialogue, but the gaming experience offers the alternative of simply letting it fill the silence as the player explores or interacts with the environment, and the oft-criticised lack of strong female characters and emotive plotlines in hard SF is amended through Yasna’s characterisation and her compassion and camaraderie towards the rest of the crew. 

The choice to make Yasna a woman (there are no women in Lem’s original text) and one that has concrete, explicit political opinions regarding the intervention of humanity in space (she is a ‘galactocentric’, believing the needs of the galaxy outweigh the needs of humanity), makes the story feel far from outdated, a modernisation that is further noted in the additions of many discussions regarding the differences between human and artificial consciousness and intelligence and the dangers the latter may pose to the former. Moreover, while the theme of artificial intelligence has certainly been expanded upon, the other themes present in the novel (the horror of losing oneself completely, the uselessness of vengeance against forces of nature, the importance of resilience and care for others) are well-presented through dialogue, actions, and choices for the player to make, especially in the way the endings are approached and the moral judgements they impart. In general, narratively speaking, the impression is that the development team has managed exactly what it set out to do: The Invincible is an example of how a videogame may tell a complex, compelling story with emotional weight, deep relationships between characters and grand ideas (although those were provided mostly by Lem) while keeping the audience at the edge of their seats with the same artful mastery of storytelling of a novel or a film.

This narrative strength does come, however, at the expense of some of the gaming aspects that players traditionally expect. Some reviews by users on Steam point out that it is essentially a ‘walking simulator’ where the central action of the player is to move the character around, and that the non-narrative mechanics of the game (items used to orient oneself and some minor puzzles) are limited and far-between. Another aspect that may drive players away is that, despite having different possible endings, these do not manifest as real differences until the last twenty minutes of the game, while the rest of the content leads the player through a fairly narrow narrative path (a practice often known as ‘railroading’) with some optional stops and detours for additional content. This animosity towards ‘walking simulators’ and, especially, the yet unsettled debate on whether they ‘count’ as videogames at all is an interesting part of the gaming community and, I think, one that impoverishes our understanding of videogames as a medium to explore a story, since it is unavoidable that some stories require linearity and, more practically, smaller studios may not have the resources to create an ‘open-world’ game as is often expected from larger companies in the current videogame industry. In the case of The Invincible, a linear plotline is undoubtedly the right choice, as the hints and clues needed for the scientific hypothesizing of the story to progress need to remain quite similar in content and order to those in the novel.

This brings me to the one fault I found with the game’s storytelling, which is that sometimes it is very heavy-handed with its references to Lem’s novel. Certain quotes, of great weight in the novel, are repeated in the game not one but multiple times, and certain scenes which worked well on paper struggle to impress through the screen. The strongest parts of the game are, I think, the ones that innovate and continue on Lem’s story, adding to it the modern sensibilities and concerns which the novel could not predict.  I suggest that scholars wishing to write about The Invincible may find it valuable to analyse those moments of narrative innovation as well as how they may serve the evolution of hard science fiction as a subgenre and its translation into various forms of media. Other interesting avenues of research for The Invincible could be the way dialogue is used to establish a connection between Yasna and Novik, since they never appear in the same place throughout the game and must use only verbal communication to establish their relationship throughout, making the voice-acting take centre stage, or the way the game handles horror elements without becoming a horror game through careful tone-setting and trope subversion.

Jules Otero i Besolí [they/he] is a PhD Student in the Autonomous University of Barcelona and holder of a FPU scholarship. They have a Bachelor’s degree in English Studies with minors in Engllish Literature and Compared Literature and a Master’s degree in Advanced English Studies. Their in-process dissertation explores the role of non-normative embodiment in postmodern space opera universes through a post/transhumanist theoretical framework.

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Raoul Peck, the director of the acclaimed I Am Not Your Negro (2016), delivers a deeply moving and intellectually sharp account of recent history and the contemporary world, drawing on the life of George Orwell (pen name of Eric Arthur Blair) and his most famous—and perhaps most distorted—novel: 1984 (1949).

Science fiction forms the backbone of the film. Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and Philip K. Dick’s Minority Report, in their audiovisual adaptations, feed a torrent of images drawn from documentary and fiction alike, weaving together dystopia and contemporary barbarism into a sustained essay-film. The multiple adaptations of 1984 for cinema, television, radio, and theater provide the refrains of the symphony of images and sounds orchestrated by Peck, while excerpts from photojournalism and television news cement the cruel face of dystopian fiction surpassed by reality. This constant movement between fiction and documentary, far from disorienting the viewer, sharpens the perception of how closely contemporary barbarism resembles—and is at times indistinguishable from—the dystopian imagination.

One of the film’s most intellectually provocative moves is its treatment of Orwell’s “Newspeak” as a heuristic tool rather than a literary trope or poetic license. This is epistemologically delicate terrain. There is no scholarly consensus on the extent to which natural language decisively shapes the political organization of human societies, notwithstanding the findings of sociolinguistics and structuralist semiology—including Barthes’s own formulation of the subject who speaks or is “spoken” about by discourses that precede their own existence. What the film presents, particularly in its final third, is essentially a catalog of euphemisms: a “stimulus package” as cover for bailing out financial criminals and a “military operation” as a sanitized label for territorial invasion. These are real and important examples. But the film risks conflating the existence of euphemism with the more radical—and unproven—claim that language itself restructures political reality, thereby naturalizing Orwell’s fictional device as empirical diagnosis. The argument would be stronger, and more faithful to the complexity of the subject, if it engaged with the limits of its own linguistic determinism.

Orwell 2+2=5 is one more essay-film that demonstrates—happily or otherwise—the growing prominence of science fiction in the contemporary political agenda and the genre’s susceptibility to both capitalist co-opting and genuine critical subversion, as in Orwell’s own hands. But the film could have been even more powerful had it resisted a certain relativism endemic to the present moment—most visibly expressed in the unfortunate “horseshoe theory,” the thesis that the extremes of political Left and Right ultimately converge. They do not, and Orwell himself recognized this at key moments in his life and work.

The film handles with considerable skill, drawing on Orwell’s writings and his two most notorious novels (Animal Farm and 1984), the exposure of Western crimes. Footage of Nazi SS officers being executed by the Red Army in the aftermath of the Babi Yar massacre is among the film’s most harrowing moments. Yet for each crime committed by Western fascist leaders and the film scores a significant point in showing that even within democracies the “serpent’s egg” can hatch—Peck inserts references to non-Western governments: Putin’s Russia, Xi Jinping’s China, and Pol Pot’s Cambodia. Donald Trump ultimately emerges as the quintessence of Orwellian evil. But none of these governments are alike or straightforwardly comparable, and leveling them as equivalent distorts more than it illuminates.

The film’s predominantly Western vantage point—acknowledged in some of Orwell’s own recorded comments reproduced by Peck—becomes its most visible limitation. A lone image of Xi Jinping at a military parade floats without context or commentary; one is reminded of Chris Marker’s observation in Letter from Siberia (1958) that a cinematic image is inseparable from its context or voiceover. In this light, certain silences become difficult to ignore: Hiroshima and Nagasaki—unparalleled in the history of mass destruction—go unmentioned. The storming of Brazil’s Praça dos Três Poderes on January 8, 2023—strikingly similar to the Capitol insurrection that features prominently in the film—is also absent. The parliamentary coup against President Dilma Rousseff (2016) and the forced removal of President Evo Morales in Bolivia (2019) receive no mention. Nor does MINUSTAH’s role in Haiti, a significant omission for a filmmaker who is himself Haitian and served as his country’s Minister of Culture. The film does make one pointed and welcome gesture: the inclusion of Brazil’s Marinho media dynasty among the moguls and tech billionaires constituting the architecture of twenty-first-century authoritarianism.

Alfredo Suppia is an Associate Professor of Film Studies at the University of Campinas (Unicamp), Brazil, where he teaches Brazilian cinema, scriptwriting, film theory, and science fiction film for both undergraduate and graduate students. He is the author of books such as Brazilian Science Fiction Film: A Critical History (NYC: SUNY Press, 2024), and Atmosfera Rarefeita: A Ficção Científica no Cinema Brasileiro (São Paulo: Devir, 2013), in addition to numerous articles on Latin-American cinemas, world cinemas, and world science fiction cinemas.

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“And humans…well, they’re assholes.”  This world-weary comment by Murderbot’s titular cyborg (Alexander Skarsgard) simply and crudely summarizes the broad appeal of the character—created by Martha Wells in her acclaimed Murderbot Diaries series—for legions of readers.^[1] There is much for audiences to relate to in a construct living in a permanent existential dilemma between serving humans in all their limitless array of faults, follies, and idiocies and wanting nothing more than to hide oneself away from the unscripted, unpredictable, and illogical messiness that humanity generates on a daily basis.

The genius of Wells’ creation (carrying over seamlessly into its broadcast interpretation by the Weitz brothers) is the very (ironically) human nature of a being who regards actual humans with disdain and frustration yet desperately guards its feelings out of self-preservation and the need to function inside a society in which it is an explicit outsider. It is an understandable complex of emotions, giving Murderbot a relatable dimensionality lacking in other artificial beings in fiction that might serve humanity without question (R2D2 and C3PO or Robocop), look to destroy or surpass it (the Terminator or Prometheus’ David), desire to be more human (Data), or even sublimate contempt for humans into an overall depression over the entire universe (Douglas Adams’ Marvin the Paranoid Android). Murderbot is as human as the beings it is forced to serve, and in that contradiction lies the pain (and much of the bitter humor) of its existence. Murderbot is not the first fictional artificial being on whom we look as an instrument for exploring the range of our own complicated emotional existence, but it is one of the most comical. After all, who among us would not—from time to time—rather retire from life around us and be left alone to watch our shows, rather than engage with the behavioral messiness inherent to human beings? At the same time, though, the series is a poignant examination of the development, offering, and extension of empathy, as well as the awakening to the responsibilities and opportunities of personal autonomy. Much of this is accomplished through Skarsgard’s dry narration and his subtle, minute eye and facial movements that reveal both Murderbot’s inner emotional struggles and its heroic attempts to keep from betraying them to its clients.

Upon hacking its governor module, its first free act is to give itself a secret name— ‘Murderbot’, symbolizing a new and private self-construction as a being who fantasizes about killing the countless humans that exist only to aggravate it. It is a moment of great personal significance that signals the genesis of personal independence and identity. Murderbot then immediately expands its universe into joyful new dimensions when it discovers and downloads limitless entertainment content, immersing itself whenever a free moment arises in soapy fantasy worlds where human behavior is flattened into simplistic digestible stories without the messiness of human reality that so vexes Murderbot on a regular basis.

However, much as Murderbot would like to remain aloof in its own world—distaste for humans intact—it is leased for a scientific survey expedition to an unexplored planet by members of Preservation Alliance (“PresAux”), a granola-crunchy communal polity led by the compassionate Dr. Ayda Mensah (Noma Dumezweni), and where artificial constructs such as Murderbot enjoy rights and distinct identities. Much of the series is concerned with behavioral clashes between the PresAux team trying to live out its ethical code through proffering Murderbot opportunities for self-expression, self-motivation, self-identity, and independent behavior (things Murderbot increasingly owns internally but keeps secret for its own protection), and Murderbot’s own annoyed exasperation with its earnest clients who live awash in inconvenient and irritating human relationships.

As the series progresses, PresAux—while still hesitant at times to trust Murderbot, especially once its secret name and possible homicidal past is revealed—develops a relationship with it that celebrates and centers its autonomy as a rational being with free will, one whose life they will risk their own to protect, and for whom they will fight against the vastly powerful Company to secure Murderbot’s independence; in turn, Murderbot evolves its own sense of emotional obligation and community (dryly noting near the series’ conclusion, “My clients are the best clients.”) towards PresAux, creating a strategy to save them from a rival corporate team, the ruthless GreyCris, and sacrificing itself on multiple occasions to prevent their deaths. It is not a 180-degree turnaround; instead, in a much more realistic way reflecting the complexities of real human behavior, Murderbot retains its exasperation with humanity but experiences a newfound openness to the idea of living in the midst of a human universe. And, in the emotional final scene, Murderbot’s psychological multidimensionality extends even further when it leaves its newfound PresAux family to pursue its own destiny, to experience autonomy and freedom on its own terms. Departing on a transport ship to parts unknown, Murderbot narrates, referring to itself and to Mensah, “I don’t know what I want, but I know I don’t want anyone to tell me what I want or to make decisions for me…even if they are my favorite human.” Murderbot is ultimately a story of developing understanding about the definition of human freedom and its concomitant ethical obligations; in this effort, the show succeeds remarkably, hilariously, and poignantly.

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^[1] In the interests of full disclosure for this review, I note that I am both a friend of Wells and the archivist for her literary papers.

Jeremy Brett is an archivist and librarian at Cushing Memorial Library & Archives, Texas A&M University. There he serves as Curator of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Research Collection, one of the largest of its kind in the world. Both his M.A. (History) and his M.L.S. (Library Science) were obtained at the University of Maryland, College Park. His professional interests include science fiction, fan studies, and the intersection of libraries and social justice.

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Gabriel Mascaro’s The Blue Trail (O Último Azul, 2025) is a quietly devastating work of speculative cinema. Set in a near-future Brazil that feels less imagined than extrapolated, the film explores aging, social utility, and biopolitical control through a restrained yet deeply unsettling narrative. Rather than staging dystopia through spectacular technologies or authoritarian excess, Mascaro constructs a world in which exclusion operates through hypocritical politeness, bureaucracy, and the language of care.

At the center of the film is Tereza, portrayed with remarkable nuance by Denise Weinberg. Approaching eighty years of age, Tereza remains lucid, physically capable, and economically active, working in a riverside processing facility in the Brazilian Amazon. Yet, none of these qualities matter in the social order the film depicts. In this imagined Brazil, old age itself constitutes a terminal category. Citizens who reach a certain age are forcibly retired and relocated to state-run “colonies,” spaces ambiguously described as sites of protection, rest, and dignity. Tereza’s response is not revolt but movement. Rather than accept relocation, she seeks to fulfill a minimal desire: to fly, if only once. This simple wish becomes radical in a society that regulates aging bodies through paternalistic control. When even the purchase of a plane ticket requires a daughter’s authorization, the film exposes how aging subjects are deprived not only of autonomy but of imaginative agency.

The Amazonian settings function not as exotic backdrop but as part of the film’s narrative logic. Movement is fluvial, slow, and contingent. Rivers replace roads; boats replace cars. This temporal dilation counters the accelerationist fantasies typical of much science fiction, producing a speculative ecology grounded in embodied experience and local rhythms.

Along her journey, Tereza encounters figures who inhabit the margins of legality and institutional order: smugglers, failed entrepreneurs, and a woman who has purchased her own freedom and lives aboard a floating church, selling digital Bibles to river communities. None presents true salvation from the status quo. Instead, they represent negotiated forms of autonomy within overlapping systems of commerce, faith, and survival.

The film’s most overt speculative gesture appears in the form of a rare snail whose blue secretion, when applied to the eyes, induces a trance-like state and altered perception. The resulting blue-stained gaze evokes classic science fiction imagery—from Dune to Logan’s Run—yet Mascaro reframes the trope through Amazonian epistemologies. Vision here is not mastery but vulnerability; the future is glimpsed obliquely, without promise of control. The blue in the eyes evokes the Fremen and the spice of Arrakis, but here, in The Blue Trail, this trope is given new meaning based on Amazonian knowledge and a long tradition of ritual usage of natural substances for the expansion of consciousness. It is less about pastiche and more about speculative anthropology, fully integrated into the territory.

In this sense, the film also dialogues, perhaps even more precisely, with The Night Travelers (I Viaggiatori della Sera, 1979), by Ugo Tognazzi, in which a seemingly tourist trip reveals itself to be a veiled form of collective euthanasia. Just like in the Italian film, The Blue Trail articulates social violence not as an explicit gesture, but as a process mediated by affection, bureaucracy, and forced consent.

Formally, The Blue Trail resists closure. Tereza’s journey does not resolve in escape or defeat, but in suspension. This refusal of narrative finality mirrors the film’s ethical stance: resistance is not triumph but persistence. Life is not performance, production, or utilitarianism. Tereza stands for a symbol of life refusing utilitarianism and, above all, discarding. At almost 80 years old, she appears to start living for real, along her way across the rivers. One cannot avoid thinking of Heraclitus of Ephesus’s famous metaphor about the man who cannot bathe twice in the same river.

Situated alongside recent Brazilian works such as Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles’s Bacurau and Mascaro’s Divine Love, The Blue Trail exemplifies a mature engagement with speculative genres as tools of social critique. These films do not treat speculative elements as exceptional; they integrate them into everyday life, revealing futures already embedded in the present.

Ultimately, The Blue Trail offers a model of speculative cinema grounded in modesty and ethical attention. By centering an aging woman’s insistence on desire—on the right to want something unnecessary—the film articulates a powerful critique of societies that measure human worth through productivity alone. Its speculative force lies not in distant futures, but in trajectories already unfolding.

Alfredo Luiz Suppia is Associate Professor of Film and Audiovisual Studies at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil. His research focuses on speculative cinema, science fiction film, and the intersections between cinema, science, and technology, with particular attention to Brazilian and Latin American audiovisual cultures. He is the author and editor of several books and articles on science fiction cinema, experimental film, and film historiography, and he regularly curates film programs and exhibitions related to archival and speculative audiovisual practices. Suppia’s work combines academic research, curatorial practice, and experimental filmmaking.

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The second and final season of Andor confirms the radical ambitions of Tony Gilroy’s project. As Jamie Woodcock anticipated in his review of Season 1 (vol. 53, no. 3), the series covers the five-year span from the Ferrix uprising (S1, E12) leading up to the events of Rogue One. In order to do so, season 2 adopts an unusual temporal structure: twelve episodes arranged into four discrete narrative blocks each set a year apart. The compressed form reflects the show’s curtailed production history: originally conceived as a five-season arc, with each season chronicling one year in Cassian Andor’s life before the events of Rogue One, the project was ultimately reduced to two seasons. The result is a dense, deliberately segmented narrative that forces temporal leaps rather than the slow-burn immersion characteristic of Season 1. But both effect and scope grant several avenues of scholarly interest.

If the first season had already established Andor as the most politically serious entry in the Star Wars franchise, the second pushes further. It stages an even darker account of life under Imperial rule—darker not only in tone but in the domains of violence it is willing to depict. The show represents political violence in its full continuum, including its sexual forms (viewers should be warned particularly about Episode 3, titled “Harvest”). Through the character of Bix Caleen (portrayed by Adria Arjona), it also foregrounds mental health, especially the psychological costs of clandestine life, protracted fear, and revolutionary commitment. One of the season’s most insistent themes is that political resistance always exacts a price: individually, through trauma and loss; collectively, through fragmentation and moral compromise.

Where Star Wars has traditionally handled Imperial oppression metaphorically—allowing audiences to draw analogies to historical or contemporary politics—Andor has seemingly refused this metaphorical distance from Season 1. It dwells on the Empire’s brutality as bureaucratic, economic, and ecological: genocide administered through paperwork; enslavement normalised as labour policy; environmental despoliation rendered systemic. All these aspects are linked by faceless—at times robotised—violence, most evidently depicted in Episode 8, “Who Are You?”.

At the same time, it exposes the relentless pressures on the nascent Rebel Alliance, whether through the grinding search for political legitimacy by Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly reprising her role) or the perpetual shortage of funds and safe havens. As Variety’s Alison Herman has noted, “without the Jedi—and the binary conception of the Force that comes with them—as major players, Andor is never black-and-white in its morality, even as the show is clear-eyed about the larger issues at play” (2025). This refusal of moral simplification is one of the season’s principal achievements and it is perhaps best embodied by the relationship between Dedra Meero (portrayed by Denise Gough) and Syril Karn (Kyle Soller reprising his role from Season 1).

For scholarly readers, the season opens several avenues of inquiry. Its fusion of political thriller conventions with a rigorously constructed science-fictional environment offers a strong case study in genre hybridisation and in the elasticity of the Star Wars narrative frame. The central character failing their task when faced with systems much larger than them has echoes of the noir genre (see Episode 9, “Welcome to the rebellion”). At the same time, the series is explicit in its treatment of politics: it conceptualises revolutionary praxis, authoritarian governance, institutional violence, and the ethical ambiguities of insurgency with a clarity rarely seen in franchise television. For scholars interested in the politics of the image—and the image of politics—Andor is particularly fertile material. Composition, lighting, architecture, and visual rhythm become tools for articulating forms of control, surveillance, clandestinity, and collective mobilisation; the show’s visuality constructs political meaning rather than merely representing it, marking Season 2 as an especially rich site for work at the intersection of aesthetics, ideology, and media studies. The season also enlarges the material culture of the Star Wars universe, extending down to culinary practices (notably in Episode 3, “Harvest”), domestic environments, and labour ecologies, and demonstrating how detailed production design can anchor a politics of world-building. Finally, with Brandon Roberts taking over scoring duties from Nicholas Britell, the series deepens its sonic register, making Andor a valuable corpus for scholars of music and sound in science fiction.

Season 2 confirms the show as a rare intervention in the Disney era of Star Wars: one that uses franchise infrastructure to stage a rigorous, sometimes disquieting meditation on resistance, domination, and the costs of political agency.

WORKS CITED

Herman, Alison. “Andor Season 2 Review: The Best ‘Star Wars’ TV Series Ends as a Landmark in Prestige Sci-Fi.” Variety, January 2025. https://variety.com/2025/tv/reviews/andor-season-2-review-disney-star-wars-1236372979/.

Giaime Lazzari is a PhD candidate in French Literature at Trinity College Dublin, recipient of the Claude and Vincenette Pichois Research Award (2024-2028). His research focuses on language and space in francophone and anglophone science fictions.

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Screened at the 48th São Paulo International Film Festival in Brazil, The Silent Planet (2024), written and directed by Jeffrey St. Jules, provokes an intriguing nostalgia, whether literal or in Jamesonian terms. The film begins by evoking 1970s audiovisual aesthetics, from the off-screen TV news explaining the visit of an alien species, the Oeians, to the anachronistic visuals perceivable in the very “texture” of the initial scenes, the costumes of the characters, and the settings throughout the entire film.

The Silent Planet relies on a generally good, yet not entirely original, idea: that of a remote landscape serving as an (alien) setting for an intimate tale about loneliness, guilt, vengeance, and regret involving two extremely vulnerable human characters. Unfortunately, even a very good idea is not always enough to sustain an entire feature-length film, but the experience provided by The Silent Planet is worth watching.

Divided into five acts, The Silent Planet tells the story of two characters sentenced to life in prison on a distant, eerie planet. Initially, there is only one prisoner, Theodore (Elias Koteas), who serves his time alone, living in a tiny life-supporting pod and forced to extract a mysterious ore from the prison-planet. The ore is sent to Earth, though its true nature and value are not detailed in the film. Theodore is monitored by a device implanted in his chest. The first act begins with Theodore learning he is close to death from the body monitor. He cuts his chest, removes the device, buries it and keeps working, refusing to accept his condition. As time goes by, the aging Theodore suffers from the decay of his body due to working for so long in such unhealthy conditions. He also struggles against the decay of his mind in absolute solitude: the memories of his past on Earth become murkier as Theodore approaches the end of his life. Strongly attached to his memories of his beloved wife Mona, Theodore believes he was unfairly convicted of the murder of his wife’s lover—or at least that is the past he has created for himself.

Aware of Theodore’s final days, the Earth-based authorities dispatch a replacement to the prison planet—another condemned worker. This is the young Niyya (Briana Middleton), whose arrival in her pod on the planet’s surface is carefully observed by Theodore. Niyya was raised by an Oeian family on Earth. The Oeians are an alien species declared “illegals” and hunted by human authorities. After witnessing her Oeian parents’ murder by the military, Niyya joins a rebel group, is captured as an Oeian sympathizer, and exiled to the prison planet.

Theodore, the planet’s current prisoner, fears being replaced and breaks into Niyya’s pod to steal her Oeian journal. While he craves companionship, Niyya wants solitude. Both have lost faith in humanity through their experiences. Theodore eventually wins her over, leading to the film’s most powerful sequence: a dinner scene where they finally have a profound conversation over whisky and marijuana.

A generational and cultural clash emerges—Theodore longs for lost human relationships while Niyya identifies with the Oeians and feels betrayed by humans. However, Theodore reveals uncertainty about his identity, suggesting he might be Nathan Flanagan, the soldier who killed Niyya’s family. This revelation triggers paranoia in both characters, who come to believe only one can survive. Their suspicions lead to a violent skirmish across the silent planet’s landscape.

According to Jeffrey St. Jules, the story derives from a fantasy he had as a child: to live alone and unbothered on another planet. But the film also revolves around the long-lasting debate over humans’ frequent incapacity to communicate effectively, often failing to reach agreement or even accept otherness. In that sense, it is significant that the film employs variation in point of view at crucial moments. For instance, Niyya’s arrival scene is first shown from Theodore’s perspective in the first act and from Niyya’s perspective in the second act. By shifting the characters’ perspectives, St. Jules essentially creates not just points-of-views but “filters” for the audience—a cinematographic way of angling or distancing each character from the other. In doing so, he creates a communication disruption for the viewer that serves to echo the characters’ selfsame miscommunication. As they are “imprisoned” by their unique point-of-view so too is the viewer drawn into this imprisonment through the shifting angles. The Silent Planet may stand as a metaphor for countless conflicts in human history, up to the present day. The anachronistic undertone of the film, with its frequent nod to television culture (Theodore enjoys TIA, an artificial intelligence that creates a sitcom based on his life, and he watches it repeatedly), in addition to the apparently purposefully outdated design of the props and settings, evokes a series of 1970s/80s science fiction films from various countries. These include, but are not limited to Nicholas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), Douglas Trumbull’s Silent Running (1972), Richard Viktorov’s Per Aspera Ad Astra (1981), and first and foremost, Solaris—the 1968 TV adaptation of Stanislaw Lem’s 1961 eponymous novel more than Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1972 version. Geoff Murphy’s This Quiet Earth (1985), as well as Wolfgang Petersen’s Enemy Mine (1985), are also in this patchwork of films evoked by The Silent Planet. In lieu of Solaris’s sentient ocean, Jeffrey St. Jules creates an interesting purple haze or pinkish fog that drifts across the surface of the silent planet periodically to capture the humans’ memories and repeat their voices from the past. When this purple haze engulfs Theodore or Niyya, they can hear echoes from past prisoners.

In the fourth act, Theodore/Nathan and Niyya have an altercation, where she eventually attacks the old man, believing he is the murderer of her Oeian family. The fight takes place in a third “homepod,” one whose past inhabitant had committed suicide by hanging. Cryptic words and drawings are on the pod’s walls, some of which turn out to be identical to ones that Koteas himself had said or heard. It becomes evident, upon this discovery, that the two main characters are not the first to experience that terrible isolation and communication disruption. Instead, several previous prisoners (maybe generations of previous prisoners) coped with similar and even worse scenarios. The third homepod casts light on the main theme being developed throughout: that isolation and solitude blurs the lines between memories and “generations” of individuals. Indeed, all the dialogues in The Silent Planet seem to serve this purpose: the human mind and memories are tricky, and what we tell ourselves has more to do with our mental state and traumas than objective past reality. The “untrustworthy” Theodore, plagued by doubts, ends up guiding Niyya in her self-discovering journey. Memories are deceiving, words are pale, and perhaps only action and attitudes are truly meaningful.

According to producer Andrew Bronfman, the budget for The Silent Planet was nearly 4 million USD. This is low for a Western SF film. In addition to the intended anachronistic, nostalgic atmosphere of Jeffrey St. Jules’s film, The Silent Planet may have also been inspired by the aesthetics of lo-fi sci-fi and “Science Fiction from the South” or a more encompassing aesthetic often associated with SF from the Global South. Regardless, lo-fi sci-fi is clearly present in the minimal, understated visual effects that are overshadowed by the drama and clever story, based on solid plot points and twists.

The story does not unfold entirely fluently, and some blind spots might be perceived in the script or the film’s world-building. For instance: while Theodore’s initial attitudes and fears are comprehensible (he is dying, he is an outcast, he is somewhat delusional), the same does not apply to Niyya. Yes, she is traumatized by humans, but some flashback scenes show her in a close, even romantic relationship with another human. While she may have been betrayed by that woman (an undercover police agent), it remains unclear why there is no empathy or stronger inclination toward cooperation, given that she and Theodore are the only two prisoners left to die on this faraway planet. We must adopt a metaphoric mode of viewing to fully enjoy The Silent Planet, since there is no symmetry between the characters nor a more coherent assemblage of their motivations and psychological nuances (Koteas’s character is better designed in this sense, paradoxically because he is more mysterious and also due to his performance). In sum, all characters’ attitudes, fears, and actions are ultimately justified by humanity’s incapacity to truly communicate, as well as an innate instinct to suspect other people and resist cooperation. Viewed positively, the film can be understood as criticizing this feature of human nature, by testing hypotheses on how human a person can remain in solitude for years, living a miserable life on a faraway planet.

While the critique of the characters’ arcs and psychologies may reveal asymmetries that could annoy some discerning spectators, there is nothing inherently problematic about metaphor or allegory. Excessive criticism of characters’ psychology and verisimilitude, or cause-and-effect in storytelling, is oftentimes not only controversial and culture-dependent, but also sterile and pointless. However, concerning The Silent Planet, problems arise when spectators must constantly shift between metaphoric and literal viewing. In metaphoric mode, there is no reason to be too demanding of answers and explanations. But when viewing literally, verisimilitude and questions concerning cause and effect become important. For instance, the ore mined on that planet is seemingly useless, likely a MacGuffin or something to fill a gap. If it were valuable, there would be no reason to send just one or two prisoners to manually extract such a rare commodity. Why not settle an entire penal colony with drones, robot-miners, and nanorobots to optimize extraction? Here we may return to allegory and view Theodore as Sisyphus. When Niyya speaks to “Jane,” the “Alexa” of that world, while picking a meal, the meal comes packed inside an ordinary “take-away box” made of aluminum foil, with a cardboard lid. Since there’s no hint of agriculture or food production on that planet, do the prisoners get these supplies from Earth? The stowed meals, like take-away or in-flight meals, distracted and annoyed me somewhat. While most actions, props, and scenes are justifiable given the anachronistic world-building, lo-fi sci-fi, and low-budget, independent film style, some details could have been better designed or developed.

As it becomes evident, Niyya was sent to the planet to replace Theodore once Earth authorities knew about his health condition. Within days, perhaps hours, she lands on the planet. In the film’s final moments, Theodore dies with Niyya’s monitoring device implanted in his body so that she can live undetected. One may wonder how naive this futuristic monitoring technology is since we already have better tracking methods today. If it is so easy to tamper with the monitoring technology, why don’t prisoners do the same upon arrival? Simply get rid of the chest monitor and enjoy freedom.

Questions remain such as whether Niyya is “free” since Theodore died in her place. However, Earth authorities could easily uncover the trick, and she cannot escape from the planet since the transportation pods are launched into space immediately after arrival. Moreover, a substitute for Niyya is expected soon. The planet’s rarefied atmosphere makes exploration difficult. The film ends with Niyya on top of a mountain, looking at the horizon, with final credits rolling without showing an expected pod entering the atmosphere.

I find myself wondering what The Silent Planet’s impact might have been had Jeffrey St. Jules decided not to show the Oeians at all. We would have to imagine them completely. As a fan of the off-screen tradition (e.g. Jacques Tourneur’s 1942 Cat People, or Joseph Lewis’s 1950 Gun Crazy), I wonder about keeping the aliens unseen, perhaps only revealed in the small picture shown by Niyya to Theodore. Like the “overlords” in Arthur C. Clarke’s 1953 Childhood’s End, the off-screen—particularly in SF and horror—is often preferable. Yet I can understand if Jeffrey St. Jules intended to pay homage to 1950s SF films like Edgar G. Ulmer’s The Man from Planet X (1951), Joseph M. Newman’s This Island Earth (1955), or Jack Arnold’s Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954).

Nevertheless, The Silent Planet seduces through the nostalgia it provokes—from Elias Koteas’s presence (an actor familiar to veteran spectators), to the intricate web of SF evoked by St. Jules’s cinematic storytelling, visual style, and evident cinephilia. For spectators open to intimate, minimalist SF cinema, unpretentious and not entirely concerned with cohesion and coherence in world-building, The Silent Planet may signal renewed interest in SF scripts with good ideas that escape the tired infantilization of most American blockbusters, even though several points (especially world-building, settings and props) could have been better developed. Not presumptuous, hermetic, or overplayed, The Silent Planet delivers valuable “ore” to its spectator: humanist SF creatively based on atmosphere and good acting. ​​From a scholarly perspective, the film offers significant value for academic study in two key areas: first, as a compelling case study in how contemporary low-budget science fiction cinema engages with and recontextualizes the aesthetic traditions of 1970s-80s SF filmmaking, demonstrating how nostalgia functions as both narrative device and visual strategy. Second, the film provides rich material for examining the persistent themes of communication failure and otherness in science fiction, particularly how the genre continues to use isolated settings and cross-cultural encounters to interrogate fundamental questions about human nature and xenophobia in an era of increasing global tensions.

Alfredo Suppia is an Associate Professor at the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp), Brazil, where he teaches film history and theory, science fiction cinema and new media art at the Department of Multimeios, Media and Communications. He also coordinates the Graduate Program in Social Sciences at the same university.

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The opening shot of James Gunn’s Superman, after an on-screen line of text informs us that “3 MINUTES AGO, Superman lost a battle for the first time”, sees the titular hero (David Corenswet) plummet from the sky and crash headlong into the Arctic ice—beaten, bloodied, and nearly unconscious. He escapes succumbing to his wounds only by being unceremoniously dragged by his cape to the Fortress of Solitude by his rambunctious superpowered dog Krypto. This jarring in media res rupture of the traditional superheroic cinematic narrative (which arcs from origin to early victories to temporary defeat before concluding in a final triumph) signifies a change in focus for the new DC Universe (DCU) away from its predecessor, the Zach Snyder-helmed DC Expanded Universe (DCEU). Whereas the latter was criticized by many for treating Superman as a solemn near-god presenting as a stern Savior-type figure in a dark, desolate world, James Gunn, instead, concentrates much of his efforts on Superman’s inherent vulnerabilities and imperfections.

These facets of Superman’s character tie him to his instinctive and learned human nature and values that he consistently champions. The DCEU characterized Superman as less of an active being and more as a phenomenon, a living incident or event descending from hostile outer space—an outside force that happens to Earth—whereas the Superman of Gunn’s new film is a flawed but striving figure that operates within and as one of the denizens of his adopted planet. That conflict over definitions is the central debate at the heart of Superman—what does this superbeing imbued with immense power to destroy or to preserve, represent to the people living in his shadow? Certainly Superman is not the first product of superhero media to analyze the relationship of the hero to the world around them, but few connect the hero’s nature to his fallibility, the possibility of his losing or failing, as explicitly as the film does.

Superman is frequently overmatched in the film, facing savage attacks at the hands of the “Hammer of Boravia,” the armored metahuman sent to attack Metropolis; by “Ultraman,” the mysterious villain serving as the muscle behind Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult)’s brain; by Luthor’s other powered warrior “The Engineer” (Maria Gabriela de Faria); and by the morally compromised Kryptonite-wielding Rex Mason/Metamorpho (Anthony Carrigan). The film embraces the immediacy and brutality of violence, but less, perhaps for mere spectacle and more to signify Kal-El’s own embrace of the human condition. The fighting and failing and getting up and trying again is a function of being mortal, a process in which Kal willingly engages and considers a fundamental component of his own nature. In a climactic exchange with Luthor—a man fundamentally defined by his opposition to Superman as a deadly and otherworldly threat to the planet, who has just referred to Superman as “you piece of shit alien!”—Kal fervently declares,

I’m as human as anyone! I love, I get scared. I wake up every morning, and despite not knowing what to do, I put one foot in front of the other, and I try to make the best choices that I can. I screw up all the time. But that is being human, and that’s my greatest strength. And someday, I hope, for the sake of the world, you understand that it’s yours too.

Kal is an active entity of constructed choices, the most significant of these being his willingness to embrace the importance and sanctity of life everywhere. Bedrock compassion for the least of humanity is not new to the image of Superman—we’ve seen it touchingly deployed in such comic book instances as Grant Morrison’s 2005-2008 All-Star Superman series—but Gunn’s film centers it as the core of his heroic identity more than any other example in live-action Superman cinema. That aspect of Superman’s heroism has been much better served in animation—both Superman: The Animated Series (1996-2000) and My Adventures with Superman (2023-present) understand it well.

That choice to serve life defines Superman. During a battle with a kaiju in downtown Metropolis sent by Luthor as a distraction, Kal not only rescues people from imminent death, but rushes a squirrel out of harm’s way and, while nearly being crushed underfoot, gently shoos a wandering dog away from the area. His double-pronged strategy to save the lives of both people and the monster itself is a direct contrast to the actions of the corporate-sponsored superheroic Justice Gang: Guy Gardner/Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion), Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced), and Mister Terrific (Edi Gathegi), who kill the creature without compunction over Kal’s frustrated objections. Later on in the film, following Krypto’s abduction by Luthor’s forces, Kal turns himself in to the authorities in hopes of being taken wherever Krypto is being held. When Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) says, “It’s just a dog”, Kal responds in the most compassionately human way possible: “I know, and he’s not even a very good one. But he’s alone, and probably scared.” Notably, Superman’s first in person confrontation with Luthor has him smashing into the latter’s office, enraged, demanding, “Where’s the dog?”

Kal’s concern for the smallfolk of the world gives him added ethical dimensionality lacking in the Justice Gang or in, say, his darker DCEU counterpart. That added complexity, ironically enough, derives from Kal’s simple core belief in the inherent goodness of people, and gives both his character and the film an emotional brightness lacking in much superhero media. When Kal protests to Lois at one point that he is, in fact, “punk rock”, an amused Lois laughingly denies this, and then says, “My point is, I question everything and everyone. You trust everyone and think everyone you’ve ever met is, like… beautiful.” Kal responds, “Maybe that’s the real punk rock.” At bottom, Superman is a hero whose mightiest powers are the implementation of radical kindness and his unshakable belief in its efficacy. If we accept that superheroes are symbolic instruments for the ethics we want to see valued in the world, presenting the most powerful being on Earth—a man with godlike abilities—as dedicated to the idea that everyone has worth and deserves compassion, is a beautifully revolutionary statement.

And there is great emotional resonance in Kal’s desire to live his values in the face of real-world political complexities, impractical as that choice might be. A powerful moment in the film comes when Lois conducts a mock interview with Superman concerning his recent intervention in an international conflict, noting his illegal entry into a sovereign country on his own, without the approval of or even consulting with US authorities, and de facto acting as a representative of the United States on foreign soil. A frustrated Superman can only exclaim, “I wasn’t representing anyone except for me! And, and, and… doing good… People were going to die!”The exchange cuts to the heart of the contradiction inherent to the image of the superhero as they operate in the world—what responsibilities do superpowered beings owe to human-established systems of law and sovereignty? And do those systems take priority over the preservation of life? These kinds of questions have relevance in the real world, where around the world we see increasing interest in extra-governmental and communal ways of living that value life over commerce, justice over laws, and the dignity of peoples over profit.

Kal’s worldview, one in which each life is deemed of value, is diametrically opposed to Luthor, a rat’s nest of ego and envy enmeshed in a system of hypocritical objectification. Objectification, because Luthor—like any number of real-world politicians and CEOs—regards his fellow humans as tools to be used in the furtherance of his own ambitions. He claims to be acting in the name of humanity, yet his machinations produce catastrophic levels of death and destruction. His obsession with subduing the “threat” of Superman leads him to ruthlessly shoot an innocent man in the head right in front of the captive hero. Luthor maintains a private prison within a pocket universe, in which he has jailed not only criminals but his personal enemies (including ex-girlfriends) and political prisoners that various governments want hidden away beyond the reach of the media and accountability. His master plan involves manipulating the nation of Boravia into invading and occupying the neighboring country of Jarhanpur—risking untold casualties—all to maneuver Superman into his control. Luthor views Superman in the DCEU model, as an alien thing who only inspires fear and (for Luthor, a much greater sin) feelings of weakness and inferiority. At one point he rants,

I can’t stand the metahumans, but he’s so much worse. Super… ‘man.’ He’s not a man. He’s an it. A thing with a cocky grin and a stupid outfit, that’s somehow become the focal point of the entire world’s conversation. Nothing’s felt right since he showed up.

Luthor is a supervillain, at base, because he conflates his own superiority with that of humanity, sublimating the latter into the former, whereas Kal is a hero because he chooses to sublimate his alien self into embracing humanity and making weakness its own strength.

The film is ultimately grounded on the power of choice. Kal became Superman in large part because he was inspired by the legacy of his birth parents on Krypton. Partway through the film, however, Kal faces an existential crisis in learning from a recording by his birth parents that he was sent to Earth not to serve humanity but to rule it and preserve his Kryptonian heritage by taking multiple human wives and spreading his genetic code. This revelation turns much of the planet against Kal—assisted by Luthor’s manipulation of social media to target him—but the doubts raised in Kal himself do even more damage. Devastated that his drive to do good sprang from a lie, Kal renews his confidence in his mission after a conversation with his adoptive father Jonathan Kent (Pruitt Taylor Vance), who reminds Kal that his choices and his actions are what define him, not the choices made for him. What Kal wanted the message from his parents to mean, says more about his character and his goodness than the message itself. Heroism is a conscious decision, the film argues, and Kal’s embrace of radical kindness represents the choice that each of us need to make as we move through the unequal and unjust world around us. In this, Superman reinforces the multidimensional nature of the superhero image and its function as a reflection of the values that we cherish most in ourselves and with each other.

Jeremy Brett is an archivist and librarian at Cushing Memorial Library & Archives, Texas A&M University. There he serves as Curator of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Research Collection, one of the largest of its kind in the world. Both his M.A. (History) and his M.L.S. (Library Science) were obtained at the University of Maryland, College Park. His professional interests include science fiction, fan studies, and the intersection of libraries and social justice.

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The themes of Marvel’s restarted gritty superhero show Daredevil are made manifest (indeed, quite unsubtle) in the opening credits, which depict (to the strains of contemplative theme music that quickly grow pensive) the crumbling away of the old—images of Daredevil’s iconic horned helmet, Daredevil’s criminal archenemy Wilson Fisk/Kingpin (Vincent D’Onofrio), Lady Justice, the steeple of Matt Murdock’s beloved church, a sign for ‘Nelson Murdock Page, Attorneys at Law’, the Statue of Liberty—only for the fragments to reassemble into a reborn Matt /Daredevil (Charlie Cox). What was, now passes away as both Murdock and Fisk look to reidentify themselves both within and beyond traditional systems of governance and control.

But the central theme of the show is not merely resurrection, but instead a revolving and returnto the same point of existential origin as multiple characters attempt to remodel themselves but find, in doing so, that efforts at personal transformation often expose the adamantine and unchanging core of one’s character, motivations, desires, and vulnerabilities. For both Murdock and Fisk, a jarring act of personal violence inspires a personal reexamination of themselves and the worlds in which they have traditionally moved. In Fisk’s case, it is his having been betrayed and shot in the face by his protégé/ward at the conclusion of Marvel’s Echo (2024)     —that trauma caused him to temporarily abandon his criminal career and his beloved wife Vanessa (Ayelet Zurer), rethink his life’s priorities, and inspire an ultimately warped and misguided need to “serve the city”. For Matt, this process begins in the opening minutes of the show, where his best friend and law partner Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson) is gunned down in front of their mutual friend Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll) by Matt’s old adversary Benjamin Poindexter/Bullseye (Wilson Bethel). An enraged Matt, clad as Daredevil, violates the traditional superhero code of restraint by deliberately tossing Bullseye off a roof and nearly killing him. It is a moment of existential crisis for Matt, a character already known (as a practicing Catholic) for his frequent wrestling with guilt and angst. Gone from this series is the lighter and more comical, yellow-suited Matt viewers enjoyed briefly in 2022’s She-Hulk: Attorney at Law.

The series asks us to consider whether we can truly escape our deepest motivations, the things that drive us to be who and what we are. In the remaking, do we reveal our actual selves?  Both Matt and Fisk want to be ‘better’ than they were, but whether they can in such an imperfect world that both produces and rewards moral compromises becomes the through-line theme. Master criminal Fisk runs for and becomes the Mayor of New York City, and he does so at least in part with the sincere motivation of helping the city he loves to reach a place of safety, citing the growing presence of masked vigilantes as a symptom of NYC’s illness. No one in this political climate will miss the relevance of a felon gaining vast political power in part by finding scapegoats to blame for a supposed breakdown in law and order. But though Fisk may act with legitimate concern for the city’s welfare, he also manipulates the city’s government and political processes to serve not only his and Vanessa’s criminal empire but his internalized hatred for Daredevil and, by extension, all costumed heroes who work outside the system and therefore his iron control. Fisk’s innate need to dominate curdles his better impulses and by the series’ conclusion drives him to overtly license police brutality, stage a societal breakdown via cutting power to the entire city, and finally, declare martial law. As he notes to Vanessa, “I ran to serve the city, but…opportunities present themselves.”

Matt’s attempts to change are even more profound. His near-murder of Bullseye and the tragedy of Foggy’s death drives him to permanently eschew his Daredevil identity in favor of  pursuing justice through more traditional means, within the established legal system. But the system is profoundly broken, prompting an inquiry into the role of superheroes in a world where the justice and political systems can be so corrupted that they no longer serve the innocent. Captain America: Civil War (2016) introduced, through the Sokovia Accords, the idea that powerful people might require institutional control to prevent mass casualties and destruction caused by their actions, but Daredevil: Born Again suggests a necessary role for extralegal protectors when the law or system fails. Of course that role is integral to the image of the superhero and has been at least since Superman’s debut in 1938, but it takes on a special significance now, at this moment in US history when social and economic inequality are at dismayingly high levels and police violence criminally so—should people with powers circumvent established avenues and become, as Fisk calls them, purposely using a loaded term, “vigilantes”? Matt over the course of the series returns to this question, at first fervently denying the necessity for a masked hero when the legal system he serves as an attorney is in place, but by the conclusion this denial has crumbled. The series shows audiences the reality of an unequal system in a powerful scene in episode 4 (“Sic Semper Systema”) between Matt and one of his indigent clients, who is angered by the unfairness of a structure that grinds up people like him and denies them dignity, autonomy, or fair chances at rehabilitation. And late in the series Matt returns to being Daredevil in order to stop serial killer Muse (Hunter Doohan), a murderer that Fisk’s cops cannot find. But the primary reason Matt finally accepts his inner drive to do right and protect the people of his city is Fisk’s weaponizing of corrupt elements of the NYPD by creating an Anti-Vigilante Task Force—ostensibly to capture criminals like Muse—that answers only to him. People sworn to serve justice willingly bow instead to corrupt power and give themselves over to Fisk in exchange for free reign to exercise brutality against perceived enemies of Fisk, the city, and themselves. Crises bring forth the heroes needed to fight them.

The ‘street-level’ Marvel heroes have almost always been set apart from the world-threatening or cosmic levels of narrative that dominate the MCU; though Matt during Daredevil’s Netflix years fought his share of faceless ninjas and a mystically resurrected Elektra, his most savage battles have always been against the ruthless and violent criminal appetites of the all-too-human Fisk. That dynamic is characteristic of the MCU in general, where the most chilling and emotionally complex villains have never been Thanos, or the Kree, or Cassandra Nova, but human beings with familiar motives such as Fisk, Kilgrave, “Cottonmouth” Stokes, or Erik Killmonger—people who operate (to a degree) on our own recognizable and relatable levels and utilize casual, up-close cruelty against fellow humans. That sort of ground-level intimacy also provides additional dimensionality to another of Daredevil’s concerns: the moral complexities of heroism. Like anything else, heroism can be a corrupting and corruptible idea: a number of NYPD cops in the series wear the skull insignia of their ironic folk hero the murderous Frank Castle/Punisher (Jon Bernthal), seeing Frank as a legend and a role model for stopping crime. These heroes of their own stories commit vicious assaults—including the shooting of masked hero Hector Alaya/White Tiger (Kamar de los Reyes)—even in the face of Frank’s clear and utter contempt for them. Despite Matt’s offering that Frank might truly be of service to people by saving lives, Frank knows himself and his broken nature, and is not nor ever will be a hero. But tragically, other people desiring to free their inner savagery will always find models on which to imprint, and can always weave false heroism out of selfishness.

The ‘street-level’ Marvel heroes have almost always been set apart from the world-threatening or cosmic levels of narrative that dominate the MCU; though Matt during Daredevil’s Netflix years fought his share of faceless ninjas and a mystically resurrected Elektra, his most savage battles have always been against the ruthless and violent criminal appetites of the all-too-human Fisk. That dynamic is characteristic of the MCU in general, where the most chilling and emotionally complex villains have never been Thanos, or the Kree, or Cassandra Nova, but human beings with familiar motives such as Fisk, Kilgrave, “Cottonmouth” Stokes, or Erik Killmonger—people who operate (to a degree) on our own recognizable and relatable levels and utilize casual, up-close cruelty against fellow humans. That sort of ground-level intimacy also provides additional dimensionality to another of Daredevil’s concerns: the moral complexities of heroism. Like anything else, heroism can be a corrupting and corruptible idea: a number of NYPD cops in the series wear the skull insignia of their ironic folk hero the murderous Frank Castle/Punisher (Jon Bernthal), seeing Frank as a legend and a role model for stopping crime. These heroes of their own stories commit vicious assaults—including the shooting of masked hero Hector Alaya/White Tiger (Kamar de los Reyes)—even in the face of Frank’s clear and utter contempt for them. Despite Matt’s offering that Frank might truly be of service to people by saving lives, Frank knows himself and his broken nature, and is not nor ever will be a hero. But tragically, other people desiring to free their inner savagery will always find models on which to imprint, and can always weave false heroism out of selfishness.

But more positively, Matt reframes the concept of hero to center it not around a single costumed figure, but as a collective popular phenomenon. At the series’ conclusion, with Fisk exercising draconian control over the city, Matt decides not to attack him in traditional superheroic fashion and, rather, begins to raise an army of resistance among the ordinary people of New York. Instead of a lone hero, he embodies a call to mass heroic action. As he says in his final words of the season,

I can’t see my city. But I can feel it. The system isn’t working. And it’s rotten. Corrupt. But this is our city. Not his. And we can take it back, together. The weak… The strong… All of us… Resist. Rebel. Rebuild. Because we are the city. Without fear.

Daredevil: Born Again argues that heroism is not, indeed, should not, be the province of a single powered individual (nor even an elite team like the Avengers), but the collective effort of people working together to resist corrupt institutions and to change them to better suit the societies those institutions were created to serve. One important detail of the series is that, more so than any other MCU production, it is marked by frequent shots of New York City streets and people, with frequent commenting (via the website reporting of BB Urich [Genneya Walton]) by New Yorkers about Fisk, Daredevil, and their own fears about/faith in the city. New York City and the people who make it what it is are equal participants in the series with Matt, Fisk, or anyone else. There is a popular sentiment in Daredevil that we have not yet seen in the MCU, and that sentiment and its concomitant social relevance gives the series particular significance. It should prove a profitable source of study for scholars studying the evolution of the superhero trope or those interested in the ways in which popular culture reflects and amplifies the concerns of our time.

Jeremy Brett is an archivist and librarian at Cushing Memorial Library & Archives, Texas A&M University. There he serves as Curator of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Research Collection, one of the largest of its kind in the world. Both his M.A. (History) and his M.L.S. (Library Science) were obtained at the University of Maryland, College Park. His professional interests include science fiction, fan studies, and the intersection of libraries and social justice.

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Legendary Television / HBO’s Dune: Prophecy series expands the universe created by Frank Herbert with a prequel set 10,000 years before the events of the first Dune novel, focusing on the origins of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood during the tumultuous period following the Butlerian Jihad. Based on Sisterhood of Dune (2012) by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson (who also serve as executive producers) and positioned as a prequel to Denis Villeneuve’s Dune movies (2021 and 2024), the series explores the early machinations of the enigmatic order of women whose genetic breeding program and political manoeuvring would eventually shape the destiny of the known universe. The series’ narrative centers on sisters and Reverend Mothers Valya and Tula Harkonnen (played by Emily Watson and Olivia Williams) and their involvement in the nascent Bene Gesserit, tracing how personal vendettas and political necessities transform into the cold, calculated practices that define the sisterhood in Herbert’s original novels. In the course of season one’s six episodes, Valya and Tula must overcome social and supernatural forces that threaten the stability and the political prominence of the Sisterhood: the growing suspicions of Emperor Javicco Corrino (interpreted by Mark Strong), the rift between the Harkonnens and the other Great Houses, the haunting violent legacy of the Sisterhood itself, and a new enemy who seeks to oust them from the Imperium (played by Desmond Hart).

Dune: Prophecy enters a television landscape already transformed by prestige science-fiction series based on classics of the genre, such as Isaac Asimov’s Foundation (Apple TV, 2021) and Liu Cixin’s 3 Body Problem (Netflix, 2024). However, the series positions itself not merely as a television adaptation, as it was the case for previous Syfy-produced series Frank Herbert’s Dune (2000)and Frank Herbert’s Children of Dune (2003), but an expansion of the Dune universe itself by focusing on aspects only alluded to in the original hexalogy as well as in the current cinematic revival of Dune. For this reason, Prophecy is in itself a valuable addition for any scholar working on the Dune universe, particularly when inscribing it in a multimedia framework. Spawning licensed game boards (six, as of 2025), video games (six, as of 2025), graphic novels adaptations and expansions, Dune has established itself as one of the most relevant and successful multimedia franchises in decades, particularly after 2021 Villeneuve’s adaptation, and Dune: Prophecy offers new material to consolidate and expand it.

Within the Dune world, Prophecy’s positioning is particularly significant as the narrative navigates the aftermath of the Butlerian Jihad—humanity’s rebellion against thinking machines and a foundational event in Herbert’s universe. The series contextualises the rise of the Sisterhood precisely as the human response to the banning of the rebellious intelligent machines: faced with the impossibility of omniscience and objectivity, and thus of avoiding deceptions and intrigues, the Great Houses of the Imperium employ—or deploy—the Sisterhood-trained Reverend Mothers as ‘truthsayers’ capable of discerning truth from lies. This post-Butlerian setting allows the series to explore themes of technological ethics and societal reconstruction that may resonate with contemporary political and societal anxieties around artificial intelligence as well as broad epistemological concerns on the relationship between truth, post-truth, and political power.

What distinguishes Dune: Prophecy within the science fiction contemporary television landscape is its deliberate centering of female power structures within an feudal interstellar society. Where Herbert’s original novels presented the Bene Gesserit as an already-established force operating in the shadows of a patriarchal empire, Prophecy examines the sisterhood’s formation as a response to and subversion of male-dominated, patrilineal power structures. The series thereby engages with feminist science fiction traditions established by SF writers like Ursula K. Le Guin, Octavia Butler, Élisabeth Vonarburg, and Margaret Atwood, who, among others, similarly explored how female-centered societies might evolve within—or against—patriarchal frameworks. However, rather than creating a straightforward utopian feminist vision, Prophecy portrays the early Bene Gesserit as morally complex, violent and manipulative, and their accumulation of power as driven more by survival necessity than by altruistic concerns for humanity’s future. In this perspective, the show’s exploration of the Bene Gesserit’s evolution offers particularly rich ground for academic analysis of gender and power in SF.

The Bene Gesserit occupies a paradoxical position, wielding immense influence through their manipulation of bloodlines and politics while simultaneously presenting themselves as merely ‘servants’ (truthsayers) to the great houses. Prophecy illuminates the origins of this strategic self-effacement, depicting how the early sisterhood learns to transform apparent submission into covert domination precisely by being able to recognise—and to effectuate—the distinction between truth and lies. Within this scheme, the series’ portrayal of the tension between the exclusively patrilineal noble houses and the matriarchal Sisterhood raises questions about how women’s bodies and minds become sites of political contestation, and how genetic lineage intersects with gender in determining authority.

Dune: Prophecy is not without flaws. At times, for instance, it sacrifices Herbert’s philosophical depth for more conventional television tropes, such as plainly explanatory dialogues, unnecessary cliffhangers, overuse of dramatic music to signal suspense. At times, it also feels burdened with overly ambitious, almost cinematic, shots. While this provides visual continuity with Denis Villeneuve’s Dune films, Prophecy seems to resort to these techniques in order to complement its lack of interest for material environments the characters inhabit. Where Herbert’s original work meticulously detailed the ecological systems and physical environments of planets like Arrakis, Prophecy offers sweeping cosmic vistas without grounding them in tangible planetary contexts. This environmental disconnection represents a significant departure from one of the most distinctive aspects of Herbert’s universe, where human politics are inextricably shaped by their material surroundings. The series also exhibits the fundamental tension between expositional density and narrative propulsion that characterizes adaptations of Herbert’s work—an inherent challenge when translating the encyclopaedic world-building of the Dune universe into the temporal constraints and visual grammar of episodic television.

Giaime Lazzari is a translator and a PhD candidate in French Literature at Trinity College Dublin, recipient of the Claude and Vincenette Pichois Research Award (2024-2028). His research focuses on language and space in the works of David Bunch, Joanna Russ, Daniel Drode, and Monique Wittig. He previously earned joint Master’s degrees from University of Bologna and Université Paris-Nanterre, with a dissertation on ecology and geophilosophy in Frank Herbert’s Dune. His professional experience includes serving as Junior Lecturer at Université Paris 8 Vincennes—Saint Denis.

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At the heart of Agatha All Along (and its 2021 prequel WandaVision) lies the fundamental truth that the worlds we construct for ourselves are often the ones that help us manage, or indeed survive the most unbearable situations. These psychological constructions allow us spaces in which we confront our fears and our traumas, develop and play out scenarios for overcoming the myriad stresses that weigh heavy on us—our guilt, our grief, our anger—and sometimes create fantasy lives marked by denial and avoidance. These alternate realities can be seductive beyond the telling of it, allowing occupation of a happy, hopeful imaginative space; at the same time, though, they can hinder emotional growth and our acceptance of, among other things, the ultimate experience that is death. The process is natural enough in the real world, but these fantasies take on monstrous and destructive new significance when fueled by magical abilities that transform the psychological interior into the physical exterior. In WandaVision we watched the dehumanizing consequences of this transmutation when out of bottomless grief and anger Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) warped an entire town into a bubble of domestic sitcom-shaped fairyland in which she could live a life with her (non-deceased) husband Vision (Paul Bettany) and the two sons she created from nothing. In the process, she enslaved the innocent people of Westview, New Jersey, by puppeting them into characters for Wanda’s new life.  The series was an extended meditation on the damage that grief and unexamined psychological suffering can render on both trauma’s original victim and those around her. And among the lessons that WandaVision offered was the time-honored warning about the corruptive nature of great power, especially when power begins to perceive and use people as mere tools.

Agatha All Along continues along the road that its predecessor series first laid down, this time centering on WandaVision’s secondary antagonist, legendary witch Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn), and her own struggles against the tragedies of her past. At series opening, Agatha is still in Westview, living out the fading ramifications of Wanda’s now-distorted spell that imprisoned Agatha in a false past and identity—she believes herself a hard-nosed cop in a small-town police procedural. When a mysterious red-haired woman turns up dead and snarky FBI agent Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza) arrives on the scene dropping enigmatic hints about the truth of Agatha’s situation (early on she asks Agatha, “Is this really how you see yourself?” and later, “Do you remember why you hate me?”), Agatha’s constructed world begins to crack. The appearance of a young man (Joe Locke) asking questions about Agatha and chanting in Latin becomes the catalyst for the walls to finally collapse and Agatha to reassert her true identity in the real Westview (albeit now without her Wanda-removed witching powers). Now back in control of her faculties, Agatha discovers at once that Rio is a sister witch (and former lover) come for revenge against her, that she is being pursued by the children of the Salem witches Agatha murdered in 1693, and that the young man (whom she names “Teen”) has his own agenda requiring Agatha’s assistance. Teen seeks the legendary Witches’ Road, a magical pathway that promises the fulfilment of one’s deepest desires to whomever can survive the Road’s various trials. Both Agatha and Teen are in search of power, something Teen senses he had but is now missing and something that Agatha knows she once wielded. The two bring together a coven, each member marked by a desire for liberation from their own traumatic pasts: Divination Witch Lilia Calderu (Patti LuPone), Potions Witch Jen Kale (Sasheer Zamata), and Protector Witch Alice Wu-Gulliver (Ali Ahn), with Rio herself eventually joining as the coven’s Green Witch. In addition, Agatha dragoons her Westview neighbor and fellow victim of Wanda’s magic Sharon Davis (Debra Jo Rupp) along for the perilous journey as the original Green Witch, an early sign of Agatha’s willingness to pitilessly use other people for her own selfish ends. The Road is conjured (via a haunting ballad which recurs throughout the series), and the trials begin.

Much of the series centers on the inability to control the chaos that imbues the world, and a concomitant desire for agency. Just as Wanda—scarred not only by Vision’s death but by those deaths she accidentally caused during her tenure as an Avenger—temporarily wrested the order of time and space into an emotionally satisfying frame, so Agatha throughout the series continually struggles for control, or at least be seen to have the semblance of control. She frequently and expertly deploys sarcastic confidence as a defense mechanism when her agency comes into question, even during her own Road-caused trial as she dares to taunt the spirits that come to punish her for her transgressions. Agatha is a figure determined to shape her own destiny—she accomplished this (gaining a noxious reputation among her sister witches) by serially murdering her covens and stealing their power. These killings were accomplished through Agatha’s careful, elaborate construction of a psychologically seductive narrative. In short, we learn Agatha invented the concept of the Witches’ Road, its generative ballad, its rituals and trials, and its possibilities for revelation and recovery—all framed as an ancient mythos to attract desirous witches into her trap. Over time her invention assumes an imaginative life of its own and becomes a fundamental part of witch lore despite its objective nonexistence—the emotional and psychological significance of story and its value as a mechanism of human control are key facets of the series (as they were in WandaVision). 

The power of narrative formation reveals itself with the existence of the Road; Agatha is as shocked as the rest of the coven, whom she planned to murder for their magic, to see her fictional creation appear from nothing as the ballad is sung (though she covers her surprise as part of her elaborate façade of omniscience). A competing story has suddenly emerged to force Agatha’s own into reality, as “Teen” turns out to be Wanda’s conjured son Billy, whose spirit entered the body of a recently dead teenager. Billy struggles throughout the series with his own identity, being unsure who he really is; that identity crisis fuels the recognition of the vast power of creation he inherited from his mother. Seduced by the idea of the Road, he unconsciously wills it into existence and sets the coven upon the path but within this larger storyworld there emerges the potential for individual autonomy. We see Lilia, Jen, and Alice face down their own past regrets and fears: for Lilia, the trauma of the death of her coven and loved ones; for Jen, the binding that separated her from her magic; and for Alice, the generational curse that destroyed her mother. In the process, each witch gains a certain measure of liberation—unlike the toxic, dehumanizing stories of Wanda and Agatha, in which people are merely characters to be cast or instruments to be used, Billy’s more empathic narrative allows for agency and emotional progress. For example, at one point, an angry Billy protests to Agatha that coven members should look out for one another and that “people can’t be replaced.” Agatha replies characteristically and drily, “Can’t they?”      

The root of Agatha’s nonchalance about others and ease of taking life, however, lies, as did Wanda’s actions, in deeply buried personal tragedy. Flashbacks show how in the 1750s Agatha had a son, Nicholas (Abel Lysenko), with whose six years of life she bargained for with Death (revealed to be Rio’s true identity). At Nicholas’ death, he had begun to work on Agatha’s conscience, proposing another way to live beside preying on other witches. A traumatized Agatha then develops the mythology of the Road as a psychological defense for her toxic grief, with tragic results. However, Agatha’s exposure to Billy’s capability for compassion and empathy, as well as her fatal embrace by Rio and subsequent reemergence as a ghost, marks a potential change in Agatha’s behavior and the ways in which she chooses to see the world. Agatha All Along proposes that the true power of narrative construction lies in its malleability and the many ways that stories and their narrators may exchange toxicity and trauma for emotional and personal renewal. It is no coincidence that the series centers on witches—a class of people marked by traditions of undergoing harsh injury, suffering, misogyny, and persecution—hoping to inject into this troubled historical legacy the potential for hope, escape, and recognition.

Jeremy Brett is a librarian at Cushing Memorial Library & Archives, where he is, among other things, the Curator of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Research Collection. He has also worked at the University of Iowa, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the National Archives and Records Administration-Pacific Region, and the Wisconsin Historical Society. He received his MLS and his MA in History from the University of Maryland – College Park in 1999. His professional interests include science fiction, fan studies, and the intersection of libraries and social justice.