The slasher boom that followed the massive success of John Carpenter's Halloween in 1978 gave birth to countless similar titles, many of which were terrible. Throughout the course of the next decade, you could barely turn around in a movie theater without bumping into some kind of homicidal maniac, but arguably only Friday the 13th's Jason Voorhees and A Nightmare on Elm Street's Freddy Krueger joined Michael Myers in becoming bona fide pop culture icons.
The Russo brothers bowed out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in spectacular fashion, directing the highest-grossing movie of all-time and drawing the Infinity Saga to an epic conclusion with Avengers: Endgame. Next year's crime thriller Cherry starring Tom Holland marks the first time since 2006's You, Me and Dupree that the siblings have stepped behind the camera for a feature film that hasn't involved superheroes and spandex, but they've also branched out into producing through their AGBO company.
It wouldn't be unfair to say that Ray Fisher owes his entire career to the DCEU, with the actor having never appeared in a movie outside the confines of Warner Bros.' shared universe, while the HBO Max exclusive release of Zack Snyder's Justice League will mark just his third small screen credit after showing up in a single episode of ABC drama The Astronaut Wives Club and playing a main role in the third season of True Detective.
This week, Netflix confirmed the long-held fan theory that there's in fact a Christmas Cinematic Universe exclusively on the streaming service, connecting A Christmas Prince, The Princess Switch, The Holiday Calendar, The Knight Before Christmas, Christmas Inheritance and Holiday in the Wild. No offense to any of the cast and crew members who no doubt worked very hard on all of those respective titles, but for the most part, they're absolute garbage.
From almost the second it was first announced to the joy of Star Wars fans everywhere that Ahsoka Tano would be coming to live-action in The Mandalorian, the rumor mill instantly began churning about a potential spinoff series. After all, former Disney CEO Bob Iger admitted that the show would act as a jumping-off point for the next generation of stories set in a galaxy far, far away, and Anakin Skywalker's former Padawan is one of the most popular figures in the expanded mythology.
There was a lot going on in this week's episode of The Mandalorian, which would be putting it lightly. Rosario Dawson finally brought Ahsoka Tano into live-action, and it's safe to say that viewers gave her a resounding thumbs up. Anakin Skywalker's former Padawan also made it clear that she was on the hunt for Grand Admiral Thrawn in another major slice of fan service, while we got ten times more information about Baby Yoda in "The Jedi" alone than the rest of the show's entire run combined.
Stephen Hopkins' Predator 2 may not have been released until November 1990, but it continued the precedent set in the original by casting several mainstays of 1980s genre cinema. John McTiernan's action classic boasted Arnold Schwarzenegger in the lead role, while the cast was filled out with several of the decade's most macho men like Carl Weathers, Bill Duke and Jesse Ventura, while Jean-Claude Van Damme was originally cast as the titular alien when it was a more insect-like creature, before the design was reworked from the ground up and the production settled on the iconic look that fans know and love.
This week's episode of The Mandalorian gave viewers some huge insight into The Child's backstory via a lengthy expository spiel from Rosario Dawson's debuting Ahsoka Tano, and the little guy even has a name now. Of course, it would be foolish to expect anyone to call Grogu anything other than Baby Yoda given how deeply he's ingrained himself into the hearts and minds of the fanbase, but it at least unravels several layers of the mystery surrounding him.
Unsurprisingly, Rosario Dawson's Ahsoka Tano captured all of The Mandalorian headlines this week after finally bringing the fan favorite into live-action. The actress did so in spectacular fashion, too, with Dave Filoni making the right call in opening the episode with an action sequence to both send The Clone Wars fans into raptures and also make it perfectly clear to viewers who don't follow the expanded lore that the dual-wielding Jedi is a badass and force to be reckoned with.