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How Batman II Became Batman Returns

How did Batman II, the sequel to one of the most successful summer movies of all time, turn into the very anti-commercial Batman Returns?

Who broods more than Batman? That is at least the point of view filmmakers took with Batman Returns, a Tim Burton art-piece masquerading as blockbuster entertainment. The bleakest and kinkiest superhero movie ever made, Batman Returns takes the first line of the original Sam Hamm screenplay to heart: “It’s finally happened; Hell’s frozen over.” Decorating his urban decay with shiny Yuletide wrapping, Burton and his collaborators crafted the most artful cape and cowl picture—a German Expressionist painting so cynical about the holidays, abhorrent commercialism, and the supposed goodwill of man that Ebenezer Scrooge might even cringe.

How this definitively anti-Christmas movie got made on a staggering $80 million budget and then slapped on the back of McDonald’s Happy Meals is almost as fascinating as the skintight vinyl of the movie itself.

Batman Returns is the perverse product of studio logic that in desire to repeat success allowed for a wholly different creature to claw its way past the red tape of formulae and onto the big screen.

Following up on the financial rewards of 1989’s Batman was a no-brainer in the immediate aftermath of its world domination. The highest grossing movie all time upon its release, the Caped Crusader took in an unheard of $400 million worldwide and toppled the summer’s other heavy hitters, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Ghostbusters II. But more impressively, the Dark Knight reached pop culture icon status in a way never before seen when his simple gold-and-black logo became ubiquitous on every T-shirt, trading card, and toy store window. It was inescapable for everyone… except for perhaps a slightly nauseous Tim Burton and Michael Keaton.

Whereas studio executives and even screenwriter Hamm were clamoring at the idea of “Batman II,” Burton famously called a continuation of the film in 1989 a “dumbfounded idea.” Consider that while Batman was nigh universally loved during the heights of Batmania, Burton described the film to Empire magazine in 1992 as “a little boring at times.”

Keaton held out for a significant pay raise, but Burton wanted the discretion of choosing a screenplay and story different than what came before—a decision that would drastically change the direction of the picture and perhaps the entire franchise.

Batman II

In the months before Batman’s phenomenal success, screenwriter Sam Hamm hinted to Comics Scene that he really wanted to use Two-Face and explore how heroic DA Harvey Dent (played by the unflappably charismatic Billy Dee Williams in the 1989 film) became the tragically deranged Two-Face. However, Warner Bros. and Burton had other ideas.

Likely based off the popularity of Burgess Meredith’s foul performance in the 1966 Batman TV series, WB insisted that Penguin be the big bad of Batman II. Further, both Hamm and Burton had a thing for Catwoman. 

“They really wanted the Penguin,” Hamm explained in the 2005 documentary Shadows of the Bat. “Because they sort of saw the Penguin as the number two Batman villain. We wanted to do Catwoman, so we wound up doing Penguin and Catwoman.”

The result was two drafts Hamm turned in for Batman II, which would have made a very different present than what we finally unwrapped in 1992. Literally continuing from the first line of his 1988 Batman screenplay (which began by describing Gotham as “hell has erupted through the sidewalks”), Hamm’s treatment was a direct follow-up to the 1989 film.

While it was certainly Hamm’s conceit to set the Batman sequel in the doldrums of Holiday Cheer, the blanket of snow and Christmas wreaths were more a decorative ornamentation around St. Batman, and the story feels like a direct expansion of what came before: Bruce Wayne is still dating Kim Basinger’s Vicki Vale and is even engaged to her by the end, and he is fighting criminals of the same cartoon-noir decadence as Jack Nicholson’s Joker. Sure, one bad guy is dressed like a dastardly Santa Claus, but instead of having a comical toy gag like the Penguin’s umbrellas in the final film, evil Santa is sporting an AK-47 and mowing down police officers with the kind of stylized grittiness associated with the first Batman picture.

Batman II might have been an interesting film since it would have carried over many more of the elements from the 1989 experience that people loved. The villains were psychotic and violent, but they were not freaks in that patented Tim Burton way. The Penguin is a small time criminal with a penchant for birds—which he often uses as weapons with Hitchcock-inspired attack pigeons—and Selina Kyle is the highly sexualized vamp that she’s usually portrayed as in the comics, albeit turned up to 11. Her costume is described as literal “bondage” gear, and she has no qualms about massacring large groups of men with assault rifles or her own claws.

However, Batman II further attempted to ground the title character back in his comic book roots. Bruce Wayne (and even Vicki Vale) is far more the protagonist than he ended up being in the finished film, and one who has developed a strict “no kill” policy. The story is also haphazardly about Bruce Wayne trying to protect the homeless, who are about to get Giuliani’d in Gotham’s Central Park equivalent. He’s also uncovering the secret history of the Waynes.

This leads to the rather lackluster main plotline about Penguin and Catwoman murdering the wealthiest men in Gotham (and framing the Batman while doing it) in an attempt to collect secret “Raven” statues, which ultimately leads to a Christmas Eve Agatha Christie-esque visit to Wayne Manor in the bizarre hope of finding buried treasure hidden (unbeknownst to Bruce) in the Batcave. Oh, and it also introduces Robin as a 12-year-old homeless orphan kid that knows martial arts.

Obviously a busy take on the character, these early drafts needed plenty of work. Still, they maintained the old Hollywood feel of the previous movie. If Batman drew liberally from wiseguy gangster dramas, Batman II appeared to be pulling from The Maltese Falcon except with Sydney Greenstreet and Mary Astor doing the public service of bumping off the most corruptible of one percenters.

Burton was severely disappointed in this approach and wouldn’t sign the dotted line. Not until WB promised, in Hamm’s words, to let Tim make a “Tim Burton movie,” as opposed to a Batman sequel.

“A Tim Burton Movie”

What finally brought Tim Burton onboard for the sequel was the free rein that he and his handpicked new screenwriter, Daniel Waters, received for their vision. Burton had been a fan of Waters’ work on the ultimate dark teen comedy, Heathers (think Mean Girls except actually mean). As a result Burton and Waters had a level of latitude relatively unprecedented before or since with superhero movies.

“Tim and I never had a conversation about ‘what are fans of the comic books going to think?’” Waters said in the Shadows of the Bat documentary. “We never thought about them. We were really just about the art.”

As a result, and with Keaton’s insistence (who deleted much of Batman’s dialogue by choice in the scripting process), the focus bounced back from Batman to the villains, who changed dramatically in the script. As Burton himself expressed, he never really got the appeal of his main villain in the comics. “You could find the psychological profile of Batman, Catwoman, Joker, but the Penguin was just this guy with a cigarette and a top hat. What is he?!” Burton mused in 2005.

The result was Waters and Burton agreeing to turn the Penguin into a tragic figure every bit as freakish as the Batman. Indeed, Oswald Cobblepot became a repulsive mirror for our hero, a child of wealth who lost his parents when he was abandoned in the sewers on Christmas Eve like a freak show version of Moses.

Also, as Burton admitted to Empire in 1992, Waters brought a political and social satire element to the plot by taking from the Batman TV series and having this repellent oddity run for Mayor of Gotham in a recall election (think episodes “Hizzoner The Penguin” and “Dizzoner The Penguin”). This was only made possible by the smiling machinations of Gotham industrialist Max Shreck, a Waters invention. “I wanted to show that true villains of our world don’t necessarily wear costumes,” Waters said to Empire.

However, his most unique change was his metamorphosis of Selina Kyle from street-wise femme fatale to the ultimate 1990s feminist allegory. “Sam Hamm went back to the way comic books in general treat women,” Waters told Film Review in 2008. “Like fetishy sexual fantasy. I wanted to start off just at the lowest point in society, a very beaten down secretary.” While the ripped costume stitches came from Burton, Waters imagined Catwoman being a psychological (and sexual) fable about the feminine. It was a change Waters half-joked in 2005 that he was ready to “lose the job” over.

Other changes included distancing itself from Batman II’s strict “no kill” policy subplot. Instead, Batman liberally murders many, many people in Batman Returns. “A lot of people complained that our Batman actually killed people,” Waters said in a 2005 Batman Returns special feature. “Some purists would say, ‘Batman would never kill people!’ But I would always say, ‘We don’t live in the time where you can drop criminals off with a net on the front of City Hall.’ The times are darker, so you have to make your character darker.”

Waters ultimately wrote five drafts, which changed aspects drastically. Max Shreck was initially Billy Dee Williams’ Harvey Dent (Catwoman’s electro-kiss at the end of Batman Returns would have left him with the scar and split personality), and in a later draft, Shreck became the Penguin’s long lost brother, a secret Cobblepot (a layer that had to be removed from an overstuffed script). Even Robin made an appearance. However, as Waters later described Robin as “the most worthless character in the world,” his and Burton’s attempt was half-hearted at best: Robin was a fully-grown Batmobile mechanic with a faded “R” on his jump suit uniform. Marlon Wayans was even cast in the role and an action figure was made until the character’s last-minute excision from the screenplay. Wayans still gets residual checks for his two-picture Robin deal (Joel Schumacher later opted to recast Robin with white actor Chris O’Donnell for Batman Forever).

Christmastime in Hell

The actual production of Batman Returns went relatively well after more pre-production nightmares. Danny DeVito was the first and only choice to play the Penguin, a role that Waters admitted he wrote for with DeVito in mind, but the casting of Catwoman was an ordeal unto itself. Despite casting Annette Bening in the role, even Burton and company couldn't anticipate how strange the role's importance would become. After Bening had to drop out at the last minute due to pregnancy, many, many actresses campaigned for the part through traditional channels—including Jennifer Jason Leigh, Madonna, Bridget Fonda, and Cher—but they all paled in comparison to Sean Young, the actress who played Vicki Vale for several days until a horse riding injury caused her to be replaced on the original Batman production.

Convinced that as a result she should have been given the female lead in Batman Returns, Young appeared unannounced on the Warner Bros. lot in a homemade Catwoman costume with the intent of making an on-the-spot audition for Burton. The director reportedly hid under his desk from what he later described as a “UFO sighting,” but producer Mark Canton recalled the event vividly for Shadows of the Bat.

“Michael Keaton and I saw Sean Young dressed as Catwoman leap over my sofa and say, ‘I am Catwoman!’ We looked over at each other and went, ‘Woah.’”

Burton wisely went on to finally cast Michelle Pfeiffer in one of her most iconic roles.

Burton had similar struggles with WB about the new approach to the film, causing him to abandon the sets and aesthetic of the 1989 film. Tragically, the designer of those Oscar winning sets, Anton Furst, committed suicide in 1991, but WB had left them untouched at Pinewood Studios in the UK for the inevitable sequel. However, Burton was adamant that a new look and approach be designed from the bottom up for Batman Returns, leading to the claustrophobic gothic fantasias created by Bo Welch at WB and Universal’s Californian soundstages.

“I wanted to use American actors in supporting parts,” Burton told Empire in 1992. “I felt Batman suffered from a British subtext. I loved being over there, but it’s such a different culture that things got filtered. They could have brought somebody else in for the sequel, and had the same sets, and shot in London, but I couldn’t do that because I’d have lost interest. I wanted to treat it like it was another movie altogether—there’s no point in doing the exact same thing again.”

Indeed, the result was a very, very different movie.

The Greatest Anti-Christmas Gift of All

Batman Returns is not a Batman movie; it’s a modern psychosexual gothic fairy tale that happens to enjoy some broad similarities with characters that have appeared in DC Comics. In short, it really is a Tim Burton movie, much more so than even the studio could have expected.

Rather than having a three-act structure of escalating narrative tension, this Batman sequel acts as an intentionally obtuse physical manifestation of its supposed protagonist’s fractured psyche, as well as a denouncement of the culture that birthed Batman and made him a merchandising must-buy item during the heights of Bat-mania—a fact someone may have tried to dull since a self-satirical “Bat-mania” merchandising store that gets smoked by the Penguin’s goons was erased in editing, as seen in the picture below.

This actual purpose of Burton and Waters’ approach is so overbearing that Wesley Strick was brought aboard to do an uncredited polish of Waters’ final draft. The main reason? WB wanted Penguin to have a master plan, which only added to the nastiness of Burton's reverse Moses. If Waters and Burton had Penguin abandoned by his parents as a baby in a raft on Christmas Eve, Stitch gave us the relatively dippy third act scheme of Penguin trying to lure all of Gotham’s first born children into the sewer and to a deep watery grave. This then gives way to blowing them all up with rocket-sporting penguins.

But that paradoxically disturbing kitsch did little to undermine the true purpose of the film: all three villains, including Christopher Walken’s scene-stealing and truly evil businessman, Max Shreck, are twisted reflections of the hero.

Shreck is a populist businessman who makes fools out of Christmas revelers early in the movie by gaining their love with worthless presents tossed into a crowd (not unlike how Joker earned Gothamites’ adulation by throwing away $20 million to the greedy and materialistic masses in Batman). He shares the same public persona that Bruce Wayne mimics, except there is not much beyond his greed. Maybe Bruce Wayne could be every bit as vain and self-interested as his rival billionaire if the death of his parents hadn’t set him on the path of the freak?

Shreck is also thus the true protagonist of the movie, as his proactive manipulation sets everything in motion. Keaton has the wonderful early moment of sitting near-comatose in his brooding Wayne Manor until the Bat-signal comes on, but Shreck waits for no one else’s time. He’s the reason the Penguin made good on his fiendish fantasies of bedeviling Gotham. Initially, Penguin may have wanted revenge on all the wealthy children that had the life he never enjoyed, but the blubbering freak is also the character that Burton spends the most time with and is by far the most sympathetic towards.

As seen in an above portrait, drawn by Burton’s own hand, the Penguin’s childhood is imagined to be an unhappy one robbed of the materialism afforded to Bruce Wayne and the far less vengeful Max Shreck. While Wayne used his wealth to become a vigilante, and Shreck uses it to procure more power—as Walken gleefully muses, “There’s no such thing as too much power; if my life has a meaning that’s the meaning”—Penguin just longs to be accepted like an even more grotesque version of the Phantom of the Opera that would not have tween theatergoers swooning at his sorrow.

When the Penguin’s monstrous visage is embraced by the fickle masses that literally buy anything Shreck sells them (he owns all the department stores on Christmas), Oswald is contented until Shreck convinces him to run for mayor. This is merely done to obtain more of that aforementioned power from the mindless electorate who sigh for Penguin one day and throw tomatoes at him the next. Oswald Cobblepot is a freak of nature, an oddity as coded by his animal nom de guerre as Batman and Catwoman, but he longs for acceptance. He only begins blowing up storefronts when Shreck eggs him on to create a phony crisis for a recall election, and it’s only when he’s rejected by society that he literally goes Biblical on Gotham.

The end of the movie is not focused on Batman, because his villains are both the stars and his character arc. As they reach and fail, the empty gestures of the Dark Knight’s pathetic crusade are underlined and unpacked for both the hero and his audience. That is why the climax of the picture is about Selina Kyle’s revenge and the Penguin’s ultimate demise, a death treated with far more tragedy than Bruce Wayne’s pity parties.

During their final confrontation, the boorish Penguin hisses to Batman, “You’re just jealous because I’m a genuine freak, and you have to wear a mask.” Batman concedes, “You might be right.” Burton and Waters certainly think so.

But the crowning achievement of Batman Returns is Selina Kyle’s expressionistic arc to the edges of 1990s feminism and beyond.

Forget comic book changes—for a more panel-accurate Catwoman, see the also excellent and memorable (if intentionally subdued) turn by Anne Hathaway in The Dark Knight Rises—Pfeiffer’s Catwoman is one of the all-time great villainesses of film, and is certainly a richer role than any actress has enjoyed in a superhero movie since.

Pfeiffer plays Selina Kyle as a modern day storybook princess that is decidedly the antithesis of the kind that sell out Disney department stores every December. Selina Kyle begins the picture as a mousy secretary who doesn’t even get a close-up for the first 25 minutes of the movie. Taught be the “good girl” her whole life, Selina lives in a one-bedroom apartment adorned with all the codifying trinkets of eternal girlhood expected of her. Dollhouses; stuffed animals; pink furniture. Yet, strangely, her prince has never come, but she is told via intrusive phone solicitors that if she buys the right perfume that maybe she’ll be able to seduce her boss and get a promotion.

And as it so happens, Selina’s boss is, of course, Max Shreck. He instigates her transformation when he makes her admit that he is being “mean to someone so meaningless.” This is her plea for mercy before he has his way with her and pushes her out the top floor of a skyscraper. The fall should have killed her and probably did, but in typical Burton fairy tale logic, she is resurrected by cats and she now has nine lives. In the hands of typical studio hacks, this would have been unbearably awful (and it was when WB made a belated cash-in spin-off with 2004’s Catwoman, starring Halle Berry), but in Batman Returns, it serves a purpose for both her tragic arc, as well as Batman’s.

Selina Kyle becomes the Catwoman and in the process destroys all tokens of her submissive girlishness, taking control of her sexuality with a fetishistic homemade costume. But while Burton plays up the kinkiness of her relationship with Batman by having their foreplay fights devolve into actual cat-licking make-out sessions, Selina is never anything less than victimized or marginalized by men in the story.

After joining forces with Penguin, he decides to kill her when she won’t go to bed with his flippers. Having a romance with Bruce Wayne during the day leads to him trying to arrest her at night. And with each negative encounter, her costume is further destroyed. A literal representation of the expressionist ideal, Selina can only give order and sanity to her world by making this cat-costume. After each tear and rip, her visually expressed dream crumbles, as does her mental faculties. The influence on this concept is heavily apparent by simply the name of the man who first abused her by pushing her out that window: Max Shreck, which is also the name of the actor who played the vampiric Count Orlock in F.W. Murnau’s 1922 masterpiece, Nosferatu.

At the end of the picture, the Disney happy ending is achieved. Realizing that Selina Kyle and Catwoman are one in the same, Batman unmasks himself as Bruce Wayne, crystallizing how she (as with Penguin and Shreck) is a doppelganger for his own inner-turmoil. “We’re the same, split right down the center,” Bruce pleads, begging her not to lose her soul by murdering Shreck. She agrees they are the same, but Batman is a hypocrite who lost his own soul long ago when he gave into to his demons and put on this costume; we’ve even seen him kill plenty of times in this very movie. To give into Bruce would be allowing a man to once more make her decisions—to domesticate her for his own ends.

“Bruce, I would love to live with you in your castle forever, just like a fairy tale,” she deliriously mumbles before scratching him across the face. “I just couldn’t live with myself. So don’t pretend this is a happy ending.”

Indeed, it is not; it’s a tragedy of operatic proportions, a fact that's heightened by Danny Elfman’s eerily melancholy score. Catwoman rejects finding redemption with Batman and does murder Max Shreck in the sewers. This is the beating heart of Batman Returns; Bruce Wayne loses because he’s only fighting shades of himself. Batman fails to stop Catwoman from following his dark path when she kills Shreck and gets away with it, and he likewise suffers only a pyrrhic victory over the Penguin, as he watches his grotesque reflection die from a self-inflicted fall. The monster is carried off by mournful penguin ushers to his aquatic grave.

Despite the colorful costumes, the giant rubber duckie Penguin gets around on, and plentiful groan-inducing puns spat out like a horrid open mic night by all the villains, Batman Returns is infinitely darker than Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Trilogy. While each of Nolan’s masterful films is far more violent than Batman Returns, and each is littered with more serious downers, even its dreariest entry The Dark Knight concludes somewhat triumphantly. The Batman may only win because of a political conspiracy and cover-up, but he is still the “hero Gotham deserves.”

There are no heroes in Batman Returns. Tim Burton’s second film ends in complete misery and cynicism on Bruce Wayne desolately alone for Christmas Eve with only Alfred Pennyworth and Selina Kyle’s abandoned cat to keep him company. He failed to save Catwoman and he admitted to the Penguin that he’s jealous of the short man’s natural freakishness. Returning to the noirish undertones of the first Batman film, Burton has a truly noir ending where the hero fails to simply be even that. The materialistic masses of Gotham City go on oblivious to the evil machinations of the owner of their department stores, and Bruce vanishes into the snowy darkness.

Besides Nolan, no filmmaker has had so much carte blanche in making a superhero movie, nor has one reached the heights of artfulness attmpted by these two filmmakers. There are better superhero movies than Batman Returns (I wouldn't even call it Burton's best Bat-film), but few are as personal, and none are as unforgivably grim… on Christmas.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, we never saw Tim Burton’s Batman 3 (which is an article unto itself), but he still got his own final word on the Caped Crusader. That's probably the greatest gift of all. With goodwill toward men. And women.

 

[MIKA27]

Damon Lindelof Is Bringing A Watchmen Series To HBO

It's only been a few weeks since the excellent series finale of Damon Lindelof's The Leftovers left us all reeling and wondering what he'd be working on next. According to a new report, the showrunner is staying with HBO, where he's developing a new live action Watchmen series.

As Variety points out, this will be the second time that HBO's tried to kickstart a Watchmen series after a similar project failed to get off the ground back in 2014. Currently, no information has been made available about the new series' production other than the fact that it's an entirely new project separate from HBO's previous attempt. It will also be completely separate from Zach Snyder's 2009 adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' acclaimed comic.

[MIKA27]

The Han Solo Standalone Film Has Suddenly Lost Its Directors

Here's some morning Star Wars news: Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (The LEGO Movie, 21 Jump Street) will no longer be directing the much-anticipated standalone Han Solo film. The reason given is the old standby "creative differences," according to Lucasfilm's Kathleen Kennedy.

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"Phil Lord and Christopher Miller are talented filmmakers who have assembled an incredible cast and crew, but it's become clear that we had different creative visions on this film, and we've decided to part ways. A new director will be announced soon," said Kathleen Kennedy, president of Lucasfilm.

"Unfortunately, our vision and process weren't aligned with our partners on this project. We normally aren't fans of the phrase 'creative differences' but for once this cliché is true. We are really proud of the amazing and world-class work of our cast and crew," stated Phil Lord and Christopher Miller.

 

The film, which is still scheduled to come out in May 2018, has been filming since early 2017 with a cast that includes Alden Ehrenreich as a young Han Solo and Donald Glover as Lando Calrissian. We'll have more on this story as it develops — but in the meantime, who do you think should take over directorial duties?

[MIKA27]

Unseen Photos Of Mount St Helens Eruption Uncovered From Forgotten Camera

A vintage camera from the early 20th century containing a roll of undeveloped film has yielded an extraordinary set of images showing the 1980 eruption of Mount St Helens, considered among the most disastrous volcanic eruptions in US history.

Whenever photographer Kati Dimoff finds herself in southeast Portland, she stops into the Goodwill on Grand Avenue and checks the film cameras for undeveloped rolls of film. On May 26, she found an Argus C2 camera dating back to around 1938, containing a damaged roll of Kodachrome slide film. She took it to Blue Moon, a company that specialises in processing discontinued film.

"[W]hen I picked up the prints on Monday June 12th, there was a note on the package that said 'is this from the Mt St Helens eruption?'," noted Dimoff in an email to Gizmodo.

Indeed, some of the shots showed Mount St Helens way off in the distance with small puffs of ash from what appears to be the beginning of the eruption, with the Longview Bridge in view, "so it must have been shot from just off highway 30," said Dimoff.

"Two of the shots showed a larger ash cloud, with John Gumm elementary school in the foreground (in St. Helens, Oregon)." Those images are reproduced below.

No doubt, it's a rather remarkable event to find sitting forgotten in an old camera. Mount St Helens erupted on 18 May 1980, sending a massive plume of ash into the sky and levelling the surrounding forests. Nearly 60 people were killed in the explosion, which caused about $US1.1 billion ($1.43 billion) in property damage.

"Mount St. Helens is my favourite place," Dimoff wrote. "My family makes a daytrip up to Loowit Lookout every summer. It feels sacred there. So, when I realised my found film had images of the eruption, it felt like it was meant to be. Also, I was curious how it could be that anyone would shoot images of the eruption (which was such an iconic time here in the Pacific Northwest) and not run right out and get them developed. Instead, leaving them in the camera and somehow forgetting about it for 37 years."

In addition to the eruption, the camera included a shot of a family in a backyard. The photo was published in the Oregonian newspaper, which attracted the attention of Mel Purvis, and for good reason — that's him in the photo, along with his wife Karen, his late grandmother Faye and his son Tristan. Purvis contacted the paper and told them that the camera belonged to his grandmother. Dimoff will be returning the camera back to the family.

"I'm a very sentimental person, and I love old photographs," said Dimoff. "This chance happening has been really special."

[polarbear]

1 hour ago, MIKA27 said:

The Han Solo Standalone Film Has Suddenly Lost Its Directors

Here's some morning Star Wars news: Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (The LEGO Movie, 21 Jump Street) will no longer be directing the much-anticipated standalone Han Solo film. The reason given is the old standby "creative differences," according to Lucasfilm's Kathleen Kennedy.

The film, which is still scheduled to come out in May 2018, has been filming since early 2017 with a cast that includes Alden Ehrenreich as a young Han Solo and Donald Glover as Lando Calrissian. We'll have more on this story as it develops — but in the meantime, who do you think should take over directorial duties?

Is it just me or does this seem to be happening more and more with modern day blockbusters?

[MIKA27]

18 minutes ago, polarbear said:

Is it just me or does this seem to be happening more and more with modern day blockbusters?

I agree - Occurs all the time it seems

[MIKA27]

SOUTH KOREA WANTS TO FIRE UP A HYPERLOOP IN JUST 4 YEARS

SOUTH KOREA'S BULLET trains whisk people from Seoul to the city of Busan, 200 miles to the southeast, in a bit less than three hours. Apparently that isn't fast enough, because the government wants to build a hyperloop that will make the trip in just 30 minutes.

The government caught hyperloop fever in January, when it asked Hanyang University for help figuring out how to make Elon Musk's vision of vacuum tube transportation work. In a deal announced today, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies will contribute some of the know-how needed to successfully fling people through tubes at near-supersonic speed.

A quick primer for the uninitiated: Hyperloop is a wild long-distance, high-speed transit system that Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk proposed in 2012. Cargo or passengers rides in pods that zip through tubes in something approaching a vacuum. With minimal air resistance, the pods levitate in the tube with almost no friction. Musk sees them streaking along at 700 mph or more, making the trip between Los Angeles and San Francisco in no time flat.

Musk already has his hands full building electric cars, launching rockets, and digging a network of tunnels, so he left it to others to figure out how to make hyperloop work. One of the companies running with the idea is Hyperloop Transportation Technologies. After four years of work, the company has a pretty good idea how to create near-vacuum conditions within the tube, and is building a passenger capsule in Toulouse, France.

"We are ready to build," says says CEO Dirk Ahlborn. "The biggest showstopper is regulation."

Clearing that hurdle shouldn't be much trouble for the government of South Korea, which wants this thing up and running in four years. It can tell its bureaucrats to help with things like right of way and environmental reviews. "You need the support of these governments," Ahlborn says.

Hyperloop Transportation Technologies enjoys the support of a few governments. It holds an agreement to build a network in Slovakia, is exploring a project in Abu Dhabi, and is developing a test track midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

The startup employs about 30 people full-time, but much of the work falls to more than 800 engineers with regular gigs at places like SpaceX, NASA, and Boeing. They swap their time and expertise for stock options, and the chance to building something cool.

Thanks to their work and partners like vacuum maker Leybold, global engineering design firm Aecom, and composites supplier Carbures, Ahlborn thinks the age of tube-travel is nigh. "Technology is not an issue," he says.

Putting aside the fact no one's demonstrated anything close to a working hyperloop, the challenges go beyond nailing the technology and navigating the regulatory labyrinth. Making it cost-effective, let alone profitable, will be no easy feat. Ahlborn says he's got the cost element figured , too, but luring enough paying customers away from established alternatives like high-speed rail and air travel may prove trickier than popping a pod in a tube.

[MIKA27]

Daniel Day-Lewis Is Quitting Acting

Daniel Day-Lewis, three-time Academy Award winner, has announced he's retiring from acting. Yes—one of the greatest actors of his generation will give up his career.

Day-Lewis's spokeswoman Leslee Dart did not give a reason for his sudden retirement, but she did give a statement that confirmed the news according to Variety:

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"Daniel Day-Lewis will no longer be working as an actor. He is immensely grateful to all of his collaborators and audiences over the many years. This is a private decision and neither he nor his representatives will make any further comment on this subject."

Phantom Thread, an upcoming Paul Thomas Anderson film set in the fashion world of the 1950s and scheduled for December 25, appears to be Day-Lewis's final role. Considering he's again teaming up with the director who won him the Oscar for Best Actor in 2007 for There Will Be Blood, he'll probably win an Academy Award for this, too. It would be the only fitting way for Day-Lewis to end his career.

Of course, there's always a possibility that Day-Lewis—a method actor—is really preparing for a semi-autobiographical role in which he plays one of the greatest actors of his generation who retires in his prime.

[MIKA27]

There's a Bug Bite That Will Make You Allergic to Red Meat

Lyme Disease isn't the only tick-borne disease you should worry about catching this summer. The lone star tick—named after the Texas-shaped white splotch on its back—has been linked to severe allergic reactions to red meat and scientists are worried it's spreading throughout the United States, according to a report from Wired.

In the last 15 years, researchers started noticing cases of red-meat allergies growing in the southeastern United States, with people reporting symptoms as mild as hives and swelling to as serious as anaphylaxis in some patients. It's believed that something in the saliva of the lone star tick is triggering an allergy to the sugar molecule galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose—known as alpha-gal for short—that is found in red meat.

While immunologist Thomas Platts-Mills from the University of Virginia started hearing about these strange allergic reactions to meat back in the '90s, he didn't discover the link to the lone star tick until 2004 after patients from the southeast were 10 times more likely to report allergic side effects in a trial for the new cancer drug cetuximab, which just so happens to contain alpha-gal, the sugar molecule in red meat.

When he compared the blood samples from the patients who reported allergic reactions to the drug, Platts-Mills discovered that they all had pre-existing antibodies to alpha-gal. Eventually Platts-Mill realized that there was a geographic overlap to those with allergies to cetuximab and red meat and patients with Rocky Mountain spotted fever, which is caused by the lone star tick.

Upon further research, Platts-Mill and his team found that 80 percent of patients with these allergies had also been bitten by a tick and that tick bites caused a 20-fold increase in alpha-gal antibodies.

Unlike other allergies which only affect certain genes, it appears anyone is susceptible to this tick-based meat allergy.

"There's something really special about this tick," Jeff Wilson, an asthma, allergy, and immunology fellow in Platts-Mills' group, told Wired. "Just a few bites and you can render anyone really, really allergic."

Even worse? New outbreaks of this strange allergy have been detected recently as far north as Duluth, Minnesota and as far east as Hanover, New Hampshire and Long Island. Wilson and his fellow researchers are scrambling to figure out if the cause is due to the spread of the lone star tick into new territories or if an entirely different species of tick is also causing this allergy.

Since they haven't found a cure for this tick-based allergy, you'll want to check yourself extensively for ticks this summer otherwise your hamburger habit (and your life) could be seriously at risk.

[MIKA27]

STEP INSIDE ICELAND’S ZANY BUUBBLE HOTEL

The world often condones living in a bubble but not those from Iceland. Nestled deep within a secret forest a few hours from Reykjavik is the quirky Buubble Hotel, a retreat which boasts no internet and just the bare essentials to ensure their small number of guests can recuperate without today’s digital noise. 

The hotel which is commonly known as the ‘5-million star hotel’ features five transparent bubble cabins which are all reinforced with metal frames in the case of heavy snow. Other than that it’s just you, a partner and Mother Nature along with the Northern Lights. 

Creature comforts inside every bubble includes a lamp, plush bedding and a silent ventilation system which keeps the bubbles inflated and warm whilst preventing humidity during the heavy bouts of Icelandic cold. Even privacy isn’t really a concern here with every bubble home nestled amongst trees to offer the maximum personal space without impeding on nature’s way. 

Even the location of the bubbles are kept under wraps until a guest actually books in a room. For those after a family holiday the Buubble Hotel also offers larger “rooms” with double beds. The self-service kitchen and amenities are located on a separate standalone house. Room service? There is none so guests are advised to bring their own food supplies which also extends to toiletries.

It might not sound like a great deal but the forest views, Northern Lights and great memories should be enough to keep guests satisfied. Rooms from the Buubble Hotel start at US$295 a night.

[MIKA27]

Porsche ‘Dark Knight’ 911 Turbo S

Auto-Dynamics is a team of experienced automotive enthusiasts out of Poland that specialize in a broad range of automotive tuning applications that cover everything from cosmetics to performance. Their latest creation is a modified Porsche 911 Turbo S fittingly dubbed the “Dark Knight” that would be perfect for any mere mortal adventuring out for a night on the town or a caped crusader taking the evening off. Full carbon “Turbo Aerokit” exterior in matte black (complete with spoilers, skirts, vented fenders and hood, rear bumper and wing, and the list goes on). Custom exhaust components from GMG Racing and TechArt. Intake parts from IPD. Centerlock wheels. Once you factor in all the modifications and customizations the Auto-Dynamics Porsche “Dark Knight” 911 Turbo S realizes close to 700 horsepower in a murdered out black on black on black with yellow accent package that also isn’t lacking in the modern gadgets arena. It might not have harpoons, mini-guns or an ejector seat, but this is still a ride Bruce Wayne would be happy to bomb around in.

[MIKA27]

DEPICT DIGITAL CANVAS

Keep your home's walls fresh with the Depict Digital Canvas. This 49", 4K screen is specially calibrated for the display of artwork. Wrapped in a black or white wooden frame, it connects to an iOS app that gives you one-tap access to a vast library of works, from old masters to current digital artists. And since not all artwork is horizontal, it sits on a unique wall mount that lets you rotate smoothly between landscape and portrait. $900

[Fuzz]

2 hours ago, MIKA27 said:

The Han Solo Standalone Film Has Suddenly Lost Its Directors

 

1 hour ago, polarbear said:

Is it just me or does this seem to be happening more and more with modern day blockbusters?

 

42 minutes ago, MIKA27 said:

I agree - Occurs all the time it seems

I guess they couldn't agree on whether Han shot first... he did.

[MIKA27]

Just now, Fuzz said:

 

 

I guess they couldn't agree on whether Han shot first... he did.

Nice! 

[MIKA27]

The Twilight Zone Moving Forward At Warner Bros With New Writer

Warner Bros. is unlocking the door with the key of imagination to the new The Twilight Zone movie. The studio announced that Christine Lavaf is on board to write the screenplay.

Lavaf was one of the writers for Godzilla 2. She was an assistant to the showrunner on Fringe. Last year she sold three original spec pilots including Netflix’s science fiction drama I’Human.

Warner Brothers has been working on the new movie version of The Twilight Zone since 2009. Rand Ravich, Joby Harold, Anthony Peckham and Eli Coleite, who wrote episodes of the TV shows The River, Heroes and Crossing Jordan as well as the end of the world as we know it movie The End, have all had a shot at writing the script. In 2013 it was announced that Joseph Kosinski, who directed Oblivion, would to helm the film.

The first film version of Twilight Zone came out in 1983. It had four segments, each with a different director. The movie was marred by the death of Vic Morrow during the section that was directed by Jon Landis. The new movie will follow just one story that has various elements of The Twilight Zone universe.

The Twilight Zone was created and hosted by Rod Serling, who also created Night Gallery and wrote the screenplay for the classic fight film Requiem for a Heavyweight. The series ran on CBS from 1959 to 1964.  Serling wrote or co-wrote 92 of the 156 episodes that aired and delivered the iconic opening and closing monologues. The TV series was revived on CBS and was in syndication in the 1980s. UPN revived the series in 2002-2003.

The Twilight Zone movie is in the hands of Leonardo DiCaprio’s production house, Appian Way, along with his partner Jennifer Davisson and Michael Ireland. Sarah Schechter is overseeing the project for the studio.

[MIKA27]

Hunt: Showdown Latest News, Trailers, & Release Date

We were shocked to learn that Crytek's Hunt was still in development following a trip through development hell and even more shocked to learn that Hunt: Showdown may just have been the most promising game featured at E3 2017. Describing Hunt is a challenging process, but the game's basic concept sees three teams of two compete against each other and a level full of enemies in order to claim a bounty on a boss monster. It's a fascinating mix of competitive and cooperative gameplay that really shines in this recently released full walkthrough of the game's E3 demo:

Hunt: Showdown Release Date

There is no release date available for Hunt: Showdown at this time, but Crytek has commented that they plan on allowing gamers to play the game early via an early access or beta period. 

Hunt: Showdown Reveal

Way back in 2014, Crytek revealed Hunt: Horrors of the Gilded Age; a cooperative monster hunting action game that reminded some of Hunter: The Reckoning and similar multiplayer titles. 

Since then...nothing. Crytek hasn't spoken about the project much in recent years which seemed to indicate that the promising title was simply dead in the water. Given the studio's recent financial troubles, that assumed result wasn't really that shocking.

The sudden appearance of a brand new trailer for Hunt is, however, quite shocking:

Hunt, now officially titled Hunt: Showdown, is apparently alive, well, and has been altered in some fairly significant ways. Hunt is no longer a third-person action game as Crytek has converted the title into a first-person experience. The game's cooperative play seems to have survived the transition, but we now know that the game will revolve around two-player combat as opposed to a four-player experience.

Aside from those brief tidbits, we really don't know much about Hunt in its current state. That's a shame when you consider that the game itself looks relatively interesting - we're always down for period piece monster hunting - and the story of how this game has apparently survived Crytek's saga of woes is sure to be a fascinating one. 

MIKA: Shut up and take my money!

[MIKA27]

Daddy’s Home 2 Trailer Adds Mel Gibson to the Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg Mix

What do you do when you want to make a sequel to your hit comedy about domestic, family-time awkwardness? Well, as according to Meet the Fockers, doing one about the in-laws isn’t a bad idea. And hey, if it ain’t broke… thus enter Daddy’s Home 2, another Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg chuckler that is adding in the potent ingredients of John Lithgow and Mel Gibson as their respective fathers. This isn’t going to end well for them, but it might still be quite funny for us.

In the new film, Brad (Ferrell) and Dusty (Wahlberg) have put away their differences to becoming a dynamic duo of awesomeness for their kids. Two dads who get along and are quite the team. But when they take it to the next level by agreeing to combine family cheer for a Christmas with both families, they also put themselves in the path of conflict by inviting each of their own fathers. Dusty’s Dad (Gibson) is an ultra-masculine tough guy that makes Dusty look progressive, while Brad’s Dad (Lithgow) is extra-emotional and highly affectionate. Hijinks presumably ensue.

And admittedly, just watching Ferrell and Wahlberg genuinely enjoy each other’s banter, which dates all the way back to their little 2010 gem, The Other Guys, is always amusing. Plus, Gibson playing into his bad boy image makes for obvious but potentially potent comic fodder.

Sean Anders and John Morris again wrote the screenplay for Daddy’s Home 2, and Anders is likewise returning to the director’s chair. The sequel is in theaters on Nov. 10, 2017.

[polarbear]

16 hours ago, MIKA27 said:

Hunt: Showdown Latest News, Trailers, & Release Date

We were shocked to learn that Crytek's Hunt was still in development following a trip through development hell and even more shocked to learn that Hunt: Showdown may just have been the most promising game featured at E3 2017. Describing Hunt is a challenging process, but the game's basic concept sees three teams of two compete against each other and a level full of enemies in order to claim a bounty on a boss monster. It's a fascinating mix of competitive and cooperative gameplay that really shines in this recently released full walkthrough of the game's E3 demo:

Hunt: Showdown Release Date

There is no release date available for Hunt: Showdown at this time, but Crytek has commented that they plan on allowing gamers to play the game early via an early access or beta period. 

Hunt: Showdown Reveal

Way back in 2014, Crytek revealed Hunt: Horrors of the Gilded Age; a cooperative monster hunting action game that reminded some of Hunter: The Reckoning and similar multiplayer titles. 

Since then...nothing. Crytek hasn't spoken about the project much in recent years which seemed to indicate that the promising title was simply dead in the water. Given the studio's recent financial troubles, that assumed result wasn't really that shocking.

The sudden appearance of a brand new trailer for Hunt is, however, quite shocking:

Hunt, now officially titled Hunt: Showdown, is apparently alive, well, and has been altered in some fairly significant ways. Hunt is no longer a third-person action game as Crytek has converted the title into a first-person experience. The game's cooperative play seems to have survived the transition, but we now know that the game will revolve around two-player combat as opposed to a four-player experience.

Aside from those brief tidbits, we really don't know much about Hunt in its current state. That's a shame when you consider that the game itself looks relatively interesting - we're always down for period piece monster hunting - and the story of how this game has apparently survived Crytek's saga of woes is sure to be a fascinating one. 

MIKA: Shut up and take my money!

Oh dear...
There goes all my money and most of my sleep

[MIKA27]

The Newest Game Of Thrones Trailer Suggests Our Hopes And Fears Are All True

HBO has just released its latest trailer for season seven of Game of Thrones, focusing on the war that is and the war to come. Winter is here, everyone, and while things aren't looking great for the peoples of Westeros — particularly everyone who's dumb enough to be fighting against Daenerys — season seven is looking utterly fantastic for us viewers.

The trailer seems to confirm a great many rumours we've been hearing about season seven, including Danaerys in her ancestral home of Dragonstone, and that definitely sounds like Jon Snow making a plea to Dany in the voiceover. (Also, is that... is that Cleganebowl?). As for our fears, well, the White Walkers look to be making their move, a lot of things are on fire, and Sansa seems to be pretty confident not all Starks will survive the season.

[MIKA27]

This Is One Of The Coolest Shots Of The Mars Curiosity Rover We've Ever Seen

See that faint, blue dot in the middle of this NASA image? That's the Curiosity rover making its way up the rocky slopes of Mount Sharp. The robotic lander, now approaching its fifth year of operation, has never looked so lonely.

The remarkable image was captured on 5 June 2017 by a camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which obtains several images of the plucky little planet crawler each year, according to NASA. Curiosity appears as a blue splotch amid an intimidating group of rocks, cliffs and dark sand. When the image was taken, the probe was heading uphill to an area containing hematite outcrops. Mission controllers are continuing to look for evidence of prior habitability on the Red Planet.

If the colours in this image look exaggerated that's because they are. The deliberate contrasts are intended to show differences in Mars' surface materials, which makes the rover look bluer than it actually is.

Keep on truckin', Curiosity! We're all rooting for you, even though your wheels are getting pretty worn and you're 387 million km away.

[MIKA27]

SOMETHING GROSS FOR YOU ALL: I'm Sick Of The Damn Toe

There is news, fake news and Weird Viral News. That last category includes treats such as the story about the Italian court that ruled live lobsters should not be frozen before they're boiled to death because it causes too much suffering, or the one about the dead bat found in a bag of salad, or anything that happens in Florida.

This is the stuff that lights up your social media feed in waves. You see it once when the news breaks. And you see it again as the people who were getting coffee when it was first tweeted out come back. Then you see it another time as the late adopters and people with like, lives and stuff, post the same damn article over and over again. Finally, two days later, someone's mum puts it on Facebook, and you're ready to die.

Most of the time, that's fine, if mildly exhausting in the way that only the internet content cycle can be. You can't get that mad about seeing the same bear who walks on his hind legs too many times, and if you do, you're the weirdo and it's time to log off.

But not with this story. The weird news du jour is genuinely driving me insane. As you've no doubt seen on your own feeds, a man in Canada is on the run with a mummified toe he stole from a bar that sells a stupid gross drink with a toe in it.

It has everything one of these story needs. Colourful, quirky, faintly adorable quotes from locals:

Quote

"I'm really attached to that toe," Lee told the National Post from the bar on Monday night. "He's in deep trouble."

An absurd sense of importance attached to the most inconsequential thing, a delightful contrast that momentarily distracts us from the genuine misery surrounding us:

Quote

 

A man walked into a bar on Saturday night and walked out with a human toe worth $80,000. He is now being hunted by the police.

[...]

In Dawson, this is no small act of mischief. "(The toe) is an institution in Dawson," Lee said. "When someone frigs around with it, there goes our institution."

 

And an incredibly gross picture that begs to be shared:

How the f@*k is this drink even legal? Aren't there... I dunno, like licensing laws for handling corpse chunks?

And shared it was. Not only was this shrivelled digit all over Twitter today and various other social media, it was shared not once, not twice, but thrice, even at work.

The worst part about this? I already knew about the toe, as it was featured in a 2010 episode of QI, a British panel show that has soothed me through most of the migraines and hangovers I've had in the past 10 years. The toe news wasn't even news to me.

I am tired of hearing about the toe. I do not want to see, nor read, nor be told about the toe anymore. Thank god we can all avoid it here on the forum... 

[MIKA27]

Huge Collection Of Nazi Artefacts Discovered Inside Secret Room In Argentina

Federal police in Argentina recently discovered a time capsule of evil, hidden inside a house near Buenos Aires. Roughly 75 Nazi artefacts, including everything from a large knife to Nazi medical devices to a photo negative of Adolph Hitler, were uncovered in a secret room. Police are investigating when and how the items entered the South American country.

As Haaretz reports, agents from Interpol raided the home of the unnamed owner of the Nazi artefacts on June 8. Some artworks of "illicit origin" were discovered on the north side of Buenos Aires, leading police to the man's home. When investigators arrived they found a large bookcase that was hiding a secret room. The man remains free, but it's unclear if he will face any charges.

The investigators have reached out to Holocaust experts to learn more about where the Nazi pieces may have come from, but members of the Jewish community in Argentina believe that they must have been brought to the country by Nazi officials following World War II.

Members of the federal police show a bust relief portrait of Adolf Hitler at the Interpol headquarters in Buenos Aires, Argentina 

There was initially some speculation about whether the items could be reproductions, but investigators believe they're originals. But there are obviously still a number of questions surrounding how they arrived in the country.

"Our first investigations indicate that these are original pieces," Argentine Security Minister Patricia Bullrich told the Associated Press yesterday.

The discovery is the largest of its kind in Argentina, a country that has what might best be described as an unfortunate relationship with the Holocaust. After World War II, a number of top Nazi officials fled to Argentina, including Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele.

Eichmann was discovered in Bueno Aires by Nazi hunters in 1960. He was brought to Israel and tried and hanged in 1962. Mengele escaped Argentina and fled to Paraguay and later died in Brazil. It's not yet known if any of the items discovered this month personally belonged to Eichmann, Mengele or any other Nazis who escaped Germany.

One reason that authorities in Buenos Aires has some degree of certainty that they are originals is that some items from the collection are pictured in photographs with Nazi leaders. For example, one item in the collection is a magnifying glass. The same magnifying glass is seen in a photo negative from the collection showing Hitler himself. Investigators showed the photo to the Associated Press on the condition that the photo not be published.

"This is a way to commercialize them, showing that they were used by the horror, by the Fuhrer. There are photos of him with the objects," said Bullrich.

A Nazi medical device used to measure head size is seen at the Interpol headquarters in Buenos Aires, Argentina 

Some of the most disturbing items in the collection are medical devices, including items used to measure the size of human heads. Nazi scientists travelled the world in the 1930s measuring heads of different peoples, believing in a pseudoscience that superior races could be determined through facial features.

The collection also includes Nazi toys and other things that would have been targeted to Nazi youth, such as a collection of harmonicas featuring illustrations of young kids holding Nazi flags.

"There are no precedents for a find like this," Nestor Roncaglia, head of Argentina's federal police, told the Associated Press. "Pieces are stolen or are imitations. But this is original and we have to get to the bottom of it."

[MIKA27]

The New Annabelle: Creation Trailer Offers A Reminder That Orphans Shouldn't Play With Haunted Dolls 

The Conjuring universe will soon be adding a demonic nun and a Crooked Man to its firmament — but first, we'll be getting more backstory on cinema's scariest doll since Chucky. A second trailer for Annabelle: Creation dropped today, and it elaborates on the girls-in-peril plot we glimpsed in the first spot.

Directed by David F. Sandberg (Lights Out) and written by Gary Dauberman (who wrote the first Annabelle, which actually takes place after its sequel), Annabelle: Creation stars Anthony LaPaglia and Miranda Otto as grieving parents who make a pair of terrible judgement calls. First, they allow a wandering spirit which they think is their dead daughter but — duh — is actually totally evil to possess you-know-which creepy toy. Then, they decide their farmhouse (where the doll is stashed in a locked but seriously not-very-secure room) would be the perfect place to host a bunch of Catholic orphans. What could possibly go wrong?

As the new trailer suggests... a hell of a lot. There's even almost a Ring reference in there.

Annabelle: Creation opens August 10.

 

[MIKA27]

Mountain Lions Are Terrified Of Humans, And That's A Problem

We typically think of large predatory animals such as mountain lions as fearless beasts that will stop at nothing to procure a meal — even if that meal consists of human flesh. New research suggests that this view is wrong, and that big cats don't like to bump into us any more than we like to bump into them. The problem is, this fear of humans is altering the feeding behaviour of big carnivores, and that may not be a good thing.

A study published led by by scientists from UC Santa Cruz and Western University in London, Ontario and published today in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, suggests that mountain lions in the Santa Cruz mountains, sometimes known as pumas or cougars, are spooked by the sound of human voices. These fearful encounters are causing the carnivores to flee their kill sites. Afterwards, some pumas — albeit very slowly and cautiously — will return to their fallen prey, resulting in a 50 per cent reduction in their feeding time on average. To make up for these lost meals, the pumas have to kill more deer, which often requires them to encroach upon human settings. In other words, fear of humans is altering puma behaviour, and subsequently, their role in the ecosystem.

We're increasingly learning that large carnivores such as pumas and wolves are critical to the health and stability of ecosystems. Last year, similar work by the same team of researchers confirmed a long-held notion that carnivores perform an important role in ecosystems by inducing fear in their prey. The presence of large predatory animals, the study showed, generates a "landscape of fear" that alters the feeding behaviour of prey animals, which subsequently influences their impacts on other species down the food chain.

"What this new study shows is that large carnivores like pumas can experience an almost identical situation, living within a landscape of fear generated by human activity that in turn affects the large carnivore's relationship with its prey — in this case, deer," said study co-author Justin Suraci.

To assess a potential fear response in large carnivores, the researchers placed audio equipment at puma kill sites in the Santa Cruz mountains. Whenever a puma came to feed, its movements triggered a device that broadcast recordings of people having conversations at natural volumes. The researchers used recordings of Pacific tree frog vocalisations as a control.

A hidden camera captured images of the animals' responses, revealing that pumas almost always run away from human voices, but practically never from the sounds of frogs. Across 20 experiments involving 17 pumas, 83 per cent of pumas fled when exposed to human voices, and only one puma ran away when hearing frogs (wow, that must be one nervous puma).

Revealingly, pumas took longer to return to their kills after hearing human voices, reducing their feeding on these kills by half. Previous work from these scientists revealed higher kill rates of deer in more urbanised settings, and this finding is finally offering a plausible explanation as to why. Unable to eat the entire carcass in peace, the pumas are forced to kill more deer, which ironically often leads them into contact with more humans. More dead deer may seem trivial, perhaps even potentially beneficial, but the change in hunting habits could be altering the ecosystem in unexpected ways. There are often downstream effects to consider — but future work will have to suss this out.

"To our knowledge this is the first direct experimental test of whether large carnivores respond fearfully to human presence, and whether this response has measurable ecological consequences," write the researchers in their study.

That mountain lions fear humans may come as a surprise to some, but there's good reason for this behaviour.

"For many large carnivore populations (including the pumas in our study area), humans are a primary source of mortality, and this is nothing new," said Suraci. "People have been persecuting big, scary predators for thousands of years because of perceived threats to human life and livelihoods (e.g., shared prey such as big game or livestock), and pumas have been almost completely wiped out across much of North America over the past couple of centuries. Indeed several states offered bounties to kill pumas well into the 1960s. So there is plenty of cause for pumas to fear humans."

As to how pumas learn this behaviour, Suraci says that's a much trickier question. All of the pumas in their study had some form of human habitation or development within their home range, and were likely to have experienced interactions — some of them potentially negative — with people. Suraci says it may also be the case that puma kittens, who spend up to a year with their mum, learn appropriate human avoidance behaviour from her.

"But in short, we really don't know exactly how they develop their fear of humans," he said. "That they do behave fearfully towards humans, however, may be beneficial for both pumas and people, as pumas may actively try to avoid interactions with humans, reducing the likelihood of human-wildlife conflict."

It may seem counterintuitive and even dangerous to maintain populations of large carnivorous animals, but Suraci says they're important for maintaining balanced ecosystems, preventing outbreaks of smaller predators (such as raccoons and coyotes) and large herbivores (such as deer) that act as pests to humans and can devastate biodiversity when unchecked.

"What our study shows is that just having the large carnivores present may not be sufficient to allow them to fulfil this important role, if the fear of humans is changing the way they interact with their prey," he said. "We need to consider how our own activities affect not just species abundance but also behaviour if we want to maintain healthy ecosystems."

 

 

 

[MIKA27]

Dracula Will Be The Next TV Show From The Creators Of Sherlock

The BBC is in the very early stages of bringing a live-action Dracula series based on Bram Stoker's novel to television with the help of Sherlock co-creators and producers Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss.

According to Variety, Moffat and Gatiss plan on adapting the untitled Dracula project much in the same way that the pair did Sherlock — as a very short miniseries of feature-length episodes. Currently, there are no stars attached to the show and no word as to whether this take on Stoker's urbane monster will be modernised (please no) or kept in the 19th century (where he belongs).

Ideally, the show will follow the immortal monster over the course of a number of lifetimes, delving into his various adventures and struggles as he does whatever it is what vampires do in shadows.